Have I mentioned I'm super active in Google Reader?

Even if you don't use Google reader (hey, not everyone can be a baller, right?), you can still see all my awesome finds here. Why? Because I ready something like 50-75 blogs at any given time, and sometimes I get lazy with this blog and don't post for a while. But just because I'm not writing, doesn't mean I'm not reading. It's a lot easier to click a button that says "share" than it is to create an entire blog post about said item. Bear with me - I don't see you going out of your way to show me all the awesome things you see on the netterwebs. (But I'd probably like you a lot more if you did) (Only if your findings are as rad as mine, though)

 

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Tetris Love

 

(via FAIL Blog)

 

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less-than-three!

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Guest blogger: My Dad!

Yesterday I sent my dad a link to the post I wrote that mentioned him. He's a huge reason I am as geeky as I am. I remember growing up with a basement full of computers that he was always taking apart and putting back together. I learned to type before I learned cursive. And I'm guessing the fact that we're both obnoxiously analytical and overly curious has something to do with that whole parent-passing-traits-to-their-offspring theory. After reading my post, he wrote back, and he had a lot of great points. Thusly, I present to you, the first guest-post here on my fabulous blog. An email from my father, Steve Wikoff, Operations Analyst for the DOD.

 

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Hi ya,

I'm not sure how to take being called an expert in "hitting rakes".  Seems like I should be smart enough not to keep getting hit by them after a while.  I do agree about your salient point; experience can trump education.

I was once told by a supervisor that I couldn't think right (a misnomer since he never supervised me on anything).  I asked him why he would say such a thing?  He responded  "You don't have a degree. A degree teaches you how to arrange your thinking and present coherent ideas".  I ask him why it was that his engineers, some with Masters degrees, are in my office, every day, and I am teaching them on my white board.  He responded : "Well, you have experience".  I looked at him incredulously and replied; "No shit". 

A degree, particularly in technology, is only as good as what you are taught.  As technology evolves, if you don't keep up, you are left behind.  If you you don't have a degree but keep up with technology, are you less educated than the degreed engineer that doesn't keep up?

I have always said  "You can buy an education but you can't buy experience".

I am constantly fighting the idea that somehow you can replace experience with saturation training.  I have been told by two Army Colonels (a rank that usually takes 18-25 years to achieve) that if I accelerate the training of the soldiers I work with I can achieve "Senior Satellite Controllers" quicker; as though exposing someone to concepts can replace experience. I use the analogy " You can't train someone to be a senior citizen. It takes time to get there.  If accelerated training would work we could train 2nd Lieutenants to become Colonels in three years". Some reason or another that analogy hasn't been received well.

So, thank you for using me as a reference in your blog, even though I keep hitting myself with that damn rake.

ILY

Dad

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The only staircase I ever want

 

 

 

 

When Leonie and Rhodri added the upstairs, the architect proposed a handsome and clever book-lined staircase to house their formidable combined libraries in one streamlined space. "It's just brilliant because the way it's conceived, you can walk by it and not even notice it,” Leonie says. "So it's like this fabulous surprise.”

 

(via Apartment Therapy)

 

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I want to go to there. My roommate is always giving me a hard time about how many books I have in my room, so maybe this is the eloquent solution I need! Now if only my apartment had stairs...

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Experience is Currency

I learn by trying to build something, there's no other way I can discover the devils-in-the-details. Unfortunately that's an incredibly inefficient way to gain knowledge. I basically wander around stepping on every rake in the grass, while the A Students memorize someone else's route and carefully pick their way across the lawn without incident. My only saving graces are that every now and again I discover a better path, and faced with a completely new lawn I have an instinct for where the rakes are.

 

(via Pete Warden)

 

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So many of the founders of start-ups that I have met over the years never finished college. My father is one of the smartest men I've ever met, and he has yet to achieve a degree (though Lord knows in the past 30 years he's taken far more college courses than I ever did to get my B.A.). He's also one of only a small handful of men in the world who is capable of doing his job - something to do with satellites for the military: it's rocket science and I'll never really understand it - because for the last thirty years he's had to troubleshoot myriad problems, and each test has taught him more about his craft. He pioneered the lawn, and he has a natural intuition about where the rakes are. More importantly, when he hits one, he knows that he's still ok because it's not like he's never hit a rake before. And most importantly, he has a better feel for how to deal with the proverbial rake that's hit him because he's an expert in hitting rakes.

 

I have a lot of concerns for the education system in our country, because I feel it's encouraging memorization of facts rather than promoting critical thinking and creativity in problem solving. Indeed, so many successful professionals can navigate the lawn with no problem avoiding the rakes, but they will never discover new lawns, and should they accidentally stumble upon one, they would doubtlessly collapse under the disappointment of hitting rake after rake when they are used to knowing how to avoid them.

 

I value curiosity over academic conformity any day. While I appreciate that I was fortunate enough to go to college and get a degree, and that without that piece of paper there are plenty of jobs that would turn me away instantly for lack of a tic in that box, I believe that college degrees - especially liberal arts degrees - are paradoxically overvalued and simultaneously worthless. Overvalued because they shouldn't be the gold standard for a person's worth in a marketplace, and worthless because so very many people who achieve one will never actually apply the knowledge they learned during their four-plus years of study. I know I won't.

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BUT ME THIS!

​Behold the Gamerator. It's one of those home arcade cabinets that I've always wanted. It has 85 classic arcade games on it, which isn't a ton but it also comes with a Gametap Gamefly subscription so you can play all those games as well. It has joysticks and buttons and a trackball and yadda yadda yadda. So why am I so excited about the Gamerator when these sorts of things have been available for years?

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BECAUSE IT'S ALSO A KEGERATOR. This arcade cabinet also houses "a refrigerated interior capable of holding a pony keg of domestic beer." Without fear of hyperbole, I can say AAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAA AAAAAAA THIS IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. Infinite thanks to Vaderfan70 for the tip.

 

(via Topless Robot)

 

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This just in: Technosocialite now accepting donations for aid and assistance in procuring a Gamerator...

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My Little Mario Bros

 

 

(via geekcraft)

 

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Ridiculous? Absolutely. Fantastic? Of course. Love it, love it, love it.

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