Looking for some assistance…

Next week, a very talented singer/songwriter named Sonnet (www.sonnetmusic.com, www.youtube.com/sonnetsings) is coming to Provo/Orem from Los Angeles to shoot a real music video and perform a house concert which will be broadcast over the Internet.  Sonnet is well known in Utah for her “You’re So Good For Me” song, which was featured as the music for the 2009 Lagoon Park advertising campaign.  If you were in Utah last summer, you most likely have heard the song.  Her other music is just as good.

My role in it all?  Well, I kind of organized the whole thing, and I’m providing the equipment to make it all happen.

This is going to be an affair that lasts for several days and is going to require a significant number of people to pull it off, so we’re looking for a few extra hands to help out.

Before you stop reading thinking, “I don’t have any technical skills, so I can’t be of any help” please do take the time to finish reading.  While we do require some technical skill for some tasks, most of those are already filled, and many of the remaining roles do not require any technical expertise. 

Music Video – Tues-Wed, June 8th & 9th

We’ll be shooting the music video for her new song “Seesaw” on Tuesday and Wednesday (June 8/9) at various locations in and near Utah valley.  We have technical crew more-or-less covered for these events, but we could use a few extra people for various other things that it takes to shoot a video: extras to appear in the background in a few scenes, people to hold reflectors and other lighting elements, someone to be in charge of music playback, people to move props and equipment, and maybe even run errands at various times both days.

Unfortunately this whole project is being done pro-bono so we can’t offer any sort of financial compensation.  You will, however, appear in the credits for the video, and food will be provided while we are shooting.

For the technically minded, we are doing something new and trendy: we are shooting the entire video on Canon digital SLR cameras, just like this season’s finale of House, and some feature films currently in production.  The video quality is amazing!  We’ll also be doing a significant amount of green-screen work.  This is the real deal here, folks – it’s going to be shot professionally, complete with special effects, and is going to look fantastic.

If you’ve ever wanted to be involved in the creation of a real music video, whether as an extra, or crew, this is a great opportunity.  And certainly something that can go on the resume of anyone wanting to do any video or film work.  We don’t require that you be available all day, but if you have a few hours to help out it, we would be very grateful.  We’ll have a schedule of events finalized by this weekend, which I will send to anyone who expresses any interest in helping.

House Concert – Thurs, June 10th

Rather than doing a big concert in a regular venue, we have elected to do a small, intimate concert.  House concerts are currently popping up everywhere, and are becoming quite popular, even for well-established artists, so that’s the directly we have elected to take.  Her concert will be next Thursday at 7pm in Orem.

Sonnet has invited about 30 guests, giving her the opportunity to actually interact with those who attend and talk about her music in an informal setting.  We will also be shooting and broadcasting that event over the Internet for any of her fans to view (at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sonnetlive).  The resulting video will be re-edited later and be uploaded to her web site and YouTube for all to see.

Even though it will be informal, from a technical point of view it will be very sophisticated: we’re going to be shooting on 6 cameras, have everything professionally lit, and audio will be first-rate.  It will have the feel of something small and intimate, but look and sound like a first-rate production.

We have most of the technical assistance we need (though we could use one additional camera operator), but are still looking for a little bit of additional help.  We need someone to welcome guests and make sure they are seated comfortably.  We need a few people to assist the camera operators by making sure that cables stay out of the way.  We need someone to help with the camera dolly.  We might need someone to help with controlling the lighting.  A few additional hands to move equipment in and out in the morning and evening would be very much helpful.  None of these are difficult tasks, but we’re a bit short on people-power.

Again, we can’t offer any financial compensation, but your name will appear in the credits, and you’ll get to attend a concert with excellent music, and meet the artist. 

Can you help?

If you’re at all interested, and are available any time Tuesday through Thursday next week, drop me an email at sonnetevent@djmail.org and let me know what interests you and when you’re available.  And if you know someone who is interested in this kind of thing and would be interested in being involved, please pass a link to this blog post along.

Thank you!!!

Full Circle

My life as a professional programmer has officially come full circle.

The first contract programming job I ever did was when I was 12… some 24 years ago (ugh… was it really that long ago?). It was a project for a law firm in Omaha, NE (where my family was living at the time) that downloaded data from a piece of equipment that logged all phone calls in and out of their office to a computer, and present that information in a usable and meaningful way. The firm had approached my dad about writing this software for them and he decided to pass the software portion of it on to me, while he took care of connecting the hardware. It wasn’t a big project; we didn’t work on it long, and it didn’t pay a lot, but it was significant in that it was the first time that I was being paid for doing some programming.

Today I’m part owner of a company that creates, sells, and supports restaurant management software. We currently have 7 people working at the company, 3 of which are dedicated to taking telephone support calls. I am responsible for putting together the software that they use for supporting customers, and within the last couple of days one of the features I added was the ability to log data about incoming and outgoing phone calls. A box in the office records the caller ID information coming in, sends it out to the network where my software receives it and logs it in a database along with the duration of the call as well as which employee took the call.

This new feature of the software is very similar to the first project I worked on professionally. They both record phone call information into a database.

Many other aspects of my current employment mirror programming experiences I had when I was younger as well. Knowing what to do with phone call data was a natural fit, because I had done it before.

The money that my dad and I were paid for that project went toward purchasing a printer for the computer we had at home. That printer was an Epson dot matrix printer (those really loud, slow ones). Today we are using Epson dot matrix printers for printing customer receipts as part of the cash register portion of our software. Many of the commands to control the receipt printers today are the same as the commands I learned to control that first printer we got nearly a quarter century ago. Learning to talk to the printers today was easy because I learned how to do it 25 years ago.

With the Point-of-Sale system we also talk to various pieces of equipment using serial ports on the register computers. In 1987 I wrote a telecommunication program whose primary focus was talking to other computers over serial ports. In 1989 I worked on a project where a computer would record data coming off of an induction pipe bending machine over a serial port. The project for the law firm also used the computer’s serial port.

There are other ways that I have seen things cycle back on themselves with our current project. It’s kind of weird to see things happen like that, especially considering the rapid pace of technological development. But at the same time the things I was doing 25 years ago (or more) were in a lot of ways preparing me in a unique way for the things I am doing today.

Now if only I can find a good multimedia programming project to work on so I can relive the stuff I made in the early 1990s.

Please Pay For Your Software (and Music & Movies)

Probably everybody reading this blog knows that I write software for a living.  Many of you may also know that one of my pet peeves is people using software that they haven’t paid for.

The software I have been selling for the last 10+ years, FileBack PC, took me years to develop.  Actual years.  If I had to re-write it again, it would probably take me two full years of long (16 hr) days.  That represents a huge investment of my time.  Tens of thousands of hours even.

Imagine how it must feel to me to go out on the internet and find web sites that are devoted to finding ways to cheat software manufacturers by providing commercial software for free.  My own software has been found on such sites.  And I know that people are using them because occasionally someone who is using an obviously fraudulent unlock key has the audacity to ask me for help.  It is extremely disappointing to me that people will willingly take my work without placing any value on it.  It is if they are saying, “I don’t care that you spent 8 years of your life working on this, that time you spent means absolutely nothing to me.  So I’m going to take it from you anyway.”  These people are robbing me of my time and taking money out of my pocket by not compensating me for my efforts. 

Some will justify that they would never use the software anyway, if they weren’t getting it for free.  But they are still getting the benefit of having that software, which in some way is saving them their own time and effort (or they wouldn’t bother).  Even with this argument, they are saying that their time has value, but mine doesn’t.

Some will justify that the software they are using is too expensive, or that the company that produces it already makes enough money and won’t be hurt by people stealing it.  If it’s too expensive, find a less expensive (or free) tool to do the same thing.  (Or, better yet, write their own software to do the same thing.)  And if that company sold more copies of their software, they could employ more workers, or provide their employees with a better standard of living.  Or create more software.  Most companies aren’t interested in throwing away their money; most will re-invest it into growing the company, or their employees.

The whole “too expensive” argument is kind of funny to me.  If someone were to come to me and ask me to create something like FileBack PC for them, I’d charge them about $50/hour.  And it would take roughly 10,000 hours to do it.  So the project would cost $50 x 10,000 = $500,000.  And yet I only ask $55 for my efforts.  Think how many people and how much time it took to create something like Photoshop, or Microsoft Word.  Those products represent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hours of work by actual real people.  The price the company is asking in return really isn’t so bad.

Without making this post too long, I beg you to be honest in the way you use your software.  Somebody has taken time to create it.  And they are asking for a small amount in return. 

The same goes for music and movies.  It is very expensive to create and market both.  Considering the budget for most movies is multiple millions of dollars, for a movie studio to ask $20 for a copy of that effort is really kind of a bargain.  Recording studio time to create a song runs well over $100/hr for the better studios, and most songs take a lot of hours to record and mix.  Add marketing and distribution to that, and the $0.99 or $1.29 that music labels and artists are asking for their songs is really a bargain as well.

Trip Summary

I just got back from a long trip…

Duration: 14 days
Days spent driving: 6
Nights in hotels: 10
Saved by using priceline.com for hotels: $404

Friends seen: Brian, Jess, Dale & Katie
Friends I attempted to see: lots more
Other friends connected with: Mark
Family seen: Mom & Dad

Number of Point-of-Sale systems installed: 2
Number of computers installed: 8
Number of man-hours spent installing at each store: about 12
Number of hours spent supervising and training employees: 10

Number of electronic gadgets acquired: 1 (HTC Touch Pro 2 cell phone, 32GB iPod Touch given to Brian for his help with POS installations)
Number of electronic gadgets that died: 2 (80GB Zune, Dash Express GPS)
Repairs to Truck: New brake light switch to repair failing brake lights

Number of miles driven: 3136.0
Gallons of fuel purchased: 141.151
Highest MPG on one tank: 25.993 (75 MPH freeway + 65 MPH highway in NM)
Lowest MPG on one tank: 19.924 (70 MPH freeway in OK, KS… dang oxygenated fuel!)
Average MPG Overall: 22.217
Average Fuel Per Gallon: $2.437
Tolls Paid: $8.90

Weather…
Every day but the last two were overcast, with some mist and rain.  The last day was the most varied, with snow, rain, cold, hot, and dry all within a couple hundred miles. 

Audiobooks: C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem of Pain,” Jeffrey R. Holland’s “Christ and the New Covenant.”

Highs: Getting to stay with my parents for a few days, seeing Jess for a couple days, hanging out with Brian when POS installations permitted, getting a new cell phone, playing with the computer I learned to program on in the early-to-mid 1980s.

Lows: GPS and Zune dying, staying up all night for POS installation, crawling around in ceilings with fiberglass insulation.

This is what a typical register looks like when we do an installation.
That’s my software running on the computer. Most stores have 3-4 like this,
plus a server computer. I installed 6 registers, two servers, and two
LCD monitors at the make line.

This is Brian.  We went to High School together, and have kept in contact since.
He drove up from Houston and helped me with the installation.
Without his help I would have been in trouble.  I wish I got a picture of his Corvette.

 
Me with Jess.  I spent Friday evening, Saturday afternoon,
and part of Sunday with her in Denton, TX.

On Monday night my parents took me to Braum’s for ice cream.  I got a Strawberry Shortcake Sundae.  It was excellent.  But we were surprised by how much inflation has affected the price of the food there.  Actually, it got worse after this picture was taken.  The next day, instead of $29, the same meal was $299.

I, unfortunately, didn’t get any pictures of my parents while I was there.  Or any part of the drive home for that matter, even though I saw some beautiful scenery.  But the drive was already long enough, and I didn’t really want to make it a lot longer by stopping every few minutes for pictures.  Some other trip when I don’t have pressing tasks waiting for my attention.

Desktop

What does your computer desktop look like?

Here’s a pretty typical example of mine…

Except I hate when my text goes blurry like that.  Oh well.

Mike’s Right

http://www.mikeroweworks.com/mikes-office/letter-to-the-president/

Doug’s Typical Day

Times vary widely, but the activities are fairly typical of any given day, Monday through Saturday.

11:00 am – Wake up, process any incoming software orders, grab some toast, a yogurt, banana, or bowl of cereal from the kitchen, head back to the computer to eat while continuing the day.

11:05 am – Look over the 50-60 emails received overnight, begin responding to the most critical, easiest to answer, and the ones that have been sitting in my inbox too long.

11:45 am – Check the technology news sites for anything new and exciting in the last 24 hours. 

12:00 pm – Take a look over the databases and logs from the different stores running our Point-of-Sale software.  Perform any needed grooming and fix any issues with any servers or registers that have obvious problems. 

12:30 pm – Begin working on one of the various programming projects I’m involved with… these days that is usually the Point-of-Sale system, in preparation for Pizza Expo in early March.

4:00 pm – Time for a break.  That usually involves showering, getting dressed, checking the mail, processing any email from the last few hours, and making a quick lunch/snack.

4:30 pm – If I have any shopping or other errands to do, do that for the next little while.  Back to the computer to do (you guessed it) more coding.

6:00 pm – I’m on shift now for technical support calls for the Point-of-Sale system, though I often get some rollover from the prior shift starting around mid-afternoon.  Still coding when I’m not taking care of POS issues.

7:45 pm – Time for another break.  Quick second lunch or snack.  This is usually when the TV gets turned on to catch any evening shows I follow, but only in the background (I’m not mentally able to just sit and watch TV without doing something else). 

8:00 pm - Back to coding, unless it’s Friday, in which case it’s time to start cleaning up the living room and kitchen areas for Movie Night guests.

10:00 pm – Phone calls and emails have subsided by now, so I can really concentrate on getting some good programming done.  (Phone calls during the day, even quick ones, throw me off by as much as 30-45 minutes each, so my post-10 pm ‘no interruptions’ time is special.)

12:00 am – Snack break.  Check tech and news sites and my email again and catch up on any friends’ blogs that have been updated.  Back to coding.

3:30 am – Start to look for a good place to wind down programming for the day. 

4:00 am – Really start to look for a good place to wind down programming for the day.  Start thinking about going to bed.  On a night when I’m at a good stopping place, this is about where I can start wrapping things up.  Otherwise…

Between 4:15 am and 5:00 am – Finally getting to a point where I can really wrap up coding for the day.  Climb into bed.

Between 5:00 am and 5:30 am – Scripture study if it’s a day where I can still keep my eyes open.  Flip on a TV show or two or three I’ve seen a million times so I can …

Between 5:15 am and 6:00 am – Finally fall asleep.

What is your typical day like?   Post on your blog, then paste a link in the comments section below.

I think I might be sick

I can't sit still.  I have a really hard time sitting and doing next to nothing, whether it be to watch TV, read, even talk on the phone.  My mind goes a million miles an hour, thinking about everything that I need to do, as well as everything I want to do.  I just can't get the various projects I have out of my mind no matter what I do.

There are times when I should be relaxing to maintain my sanity.  We can't just work all of the time, right?  But every time I try I feel guilty that I'm not doing something productive. 

I can't go to sleep at night because I have so many things that I want to do.  And I'm only getting about 5-6 hours of sleep (or less) every night because I want to get back to work on different projects as soon as I can.

I find myself not taking time to eat.  One "meal" a day is all I take time for, and even then it's only long enough to prepare whatever I eat (usually something quick, like cereal, or a sandwich) and eat while I'm doing something else. 

I sometimes don't answer the phone when friends call, just because I'm right in the middle of an idea that I don't want to interrupt.

The funny thing about this is that none of this seems to be causing me any stress.  Deadlines and pressure from people to finish other non-work-related projects cause some stress, but not any of the "work" I'm involved with.

Is this a mental illness?

(This is meant as a rhetorical question; I'm not asking for responses.)