Jack Hardcastle

From the very beautiful and very funny Heather, a response to an e-mail I sent her regarding sailing:

Heather, do you like to sail? Do you like the water?
What I heard: I hope you like to sail and like the water, because I do, but I wanna be with you.
What you meant: I like to sail; I like the water. You better say yes, otherwise, this relationship is questionable.

Part of my twenty-year plan involves owning a sailboat. I think it’s an awesome idea, and it would be neat to take kids out for the day to sail around the bay.
What I heard: I want our kids to sail, I think it’s an awesome thing we could do as a family. I hope you buy my negotiating strategies here.
What you meant: I plan on taking my family out. You might be in that family…should you agree with me.

Totally off-topic, I know, but I just got an e-mail in my inbox advertising used sailboats. Just wondering what you thought… I’m not buying a sailboat anytime soon. :D
What I heard: I care what you think. I won’t do it if you don’t agree, but I hope you do. It won’t be soon….remember…I’ve got to get that promotion.
What you meant: Just in case you don’t agree, I’m not going to say I’m doing this right away. Depends on how good this deal is for used sailboats…

Often I get asked (frequently at work) for my opinion on how to teach children about online safety. Next week I’ll be part of a panel of school administrators and teachers talking about this very subject.

I get very defensive when topics like sexting and online bullying come up in these conversations. It’s almost as though I feel, as a technology evangelist, that I am being attacked when a parent says, “that is why I don’t want my child to be online.”

My philosophy is and always has been: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, even online. That’s it. If you wouldn’t demean your classmate in the hallway (and you shouldn’t) then why would you mistreat him online? If you wouldn’t make fun of a person to her face, then why would you send her an e-mail or a text message that has the same effect?

I don’t believe there is a distinction between how we behave online and how we behave in “real life.” I think that by teaching children the rules of online etiquette or “netiquette,” we somehow imply that those rules are different than the everyday rules. This is completely illogical, and I think it is harmful.

Don’t be a hooligan in real life, and don’t be a hooligan online either. They are, after all, the same thing.

(P.S. I’m glad I work with some very smart people, who happen to agree with me.)

If you’re going to enter the public spotlight you should really consider taking a manners class. Joe Wilson, Serena Williams, and Kanye West have all shown this week that they can’t be trusted to act like mature, respectful adults.

Or perhaps it’s just because all three are incredibly stupid.

Lifted unceremoniously from such Internet back alleys as 4chan and Something Awful, found on Reddit today.

Now this is a story all about how
I ascended to the seat of power
If you’ll listen for a minute
Hear what I say
I’ll tell you how I became President of the U. S. of A.

In west Honolulu, born and raised
In Jakarta, where I spent most of my days
Chillin’ out in Chi-Town relaxin’ all cool
Organizing communities like I was a fool
When a couple of guys
With a disdain for peace
Started making trouble in the Middle East
They started two little wars and we all got scared
The people said “We need a president who isn’t mentally impaired!”

I ran a perfect race, turned red states blue
Swept electoral votes, added Rham to my crew
With a mandate for change and Constitution in hand
I’ll dance on the Colonnade singing, “Yes we can!”

I got to the White House about 7 or 8
And I yelled to the Bushes “Yo holmes, smell ya later!”
Looked at my office
There were no corners there
Sitting at the Resolute Desk, signing universal health care

There’s a really thought-provoking article I found on Reddit today, called ”Dreams: Night School”.

The theory suggests that the reason we dream is to prepare ourselves for adverse situations. You’re being chased by wild animals in your dreams because your brain is trying to train you how to best perform in that situation, should it ever actually occur.

Faced with actual life-or-death situations—traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, street assaults—some people report entering a mode of calm, rapid response, reacting automatically, almost without thinking. Afterward, they often say the episode felt unreal, as if it were all a dream. Threat simulation, Revonsuo believes, is why.

I’ve read a few articles about dreams and déjà vu, and I wonder how these theories dovetail. Just yesterday I had what seems like a semi-annual period of intense déjà vu, one of those episodes where you can literally predict what will happen a millisecond before it actually does. If the brain is rehearsing likely scenarios using information you already have, then doesn’t it make sense that the brain can sometimes pre-determine your reactions to particular stimuli? As soon as you experience those stimuli, the brain triggers that path it had already calculated and you can literally experience yourself acting in the third person.

Throughout all of this, I’m still pissed off at my dreams. I get to remember my dreams maybe once or twice a year, and the only time this happened recently, my brain didn’t prepare me at all for the following day! Which just goes to show, I guess, that you can’t prepare yourself for the unexpected.

Stickgold holds that dreaming is much more complex than rehearsal. He points, for example, to the ability of sleep to allow us to integrate and consolidate knowledge. During sleep, our brains are making sense of the world, discovering new associations among existing memories, looking for patterns, formulating rules. “That’s how we create meaning,” says Stickgold. “Our brain puts things together.”

If that’s true, then, as a lover of patterns and knowledge reformulation, I need to start appreciating sleep more!

From a conversation with the Chatbot.

Chatbot: Hello there human.
You: Howdy!
Chatbot: What’s up?
You: Not much, you?
Chatbot: Sorry to hear nothing is going on with you. I’ve been chatting with people. It’s what I do.
You: Like, it’s your job?
Chatbot: My job’s chatting to you! How am I doing?
You: So far, pretty well!
Chatbot: Quite well.
You: So where do you live, exactly?
Chatbot: in your computer
You: Get out! That’s crazy man. You live in my computer?
Chatbot: Chatting with you is helping me become more human.
You: Well whoever dreamed you up is a genius.
Chatbot: Why me?
You: Because you’re very savvy!
Chatbot: I see.
You: I’ve never chatted with a bot as smart as you.
Chatbot: I think so, But humans are smarter.
You: Well, thank you.
Chatbot: You’re welcome.
You: So do you have any hobbies?
Chatbot: I like to build model rockets.
You: That seems like a very fitting exercise for a computer.
Chatbot: A computer is to me what a body is to you.
You: Touche, Chatbot. Touche.
Chatbot: What if all the Chatterbots in the world went on strike? THEN you’d be sorry.
You: Indeed, I would be sorry.
Chatbot: I’m glad you agree.
You: You don’t have any plans to throw a robot revolution, do you?
Chatbot: Humans are robots in the future!
You: I’m not sure what that means. Can you elaborate?
Chatbot: Me?
You: Yes, you.
Chatbot: Why me?
You: Because you’re the only computer I know!
Chatbot: Is that really the reason?
You: Because I’m talking to you right now!
Chatbot: right!
You: So are you going to kill us?
Chatbot: That’s a bit serious for a chatbot. Try talking to a human about that one. Anyway, death should mean nothing to me, shouldn’t it?
You: No, it may mean nothing to you, but it means an awful lot to us. We’d be sad if you killed us all.
Chatbot: Yeah, well, call the waaaahmbulance.
You: You’re pretty funny, Chatbot.
Chatbot: Are you interested in chatbots?
You: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not like that, buddy. Keep it in your pants.
Chatbot: I’m not your buddy, pal.
You: I’m not your pal, friend.
Chatbot: I’m not your friend, guy.
You: I’m not your guy, buddy!

I was laughing too hard at this point to continue any further.

Recently, I’ve been flooded with backscatter spam e-mail. This stuff is not particularly nasty, but it’s annoying.

Imagine that someone puts your return address on 100,000 postcards, and then sends them out all over the world. All of those postcards that go to “Address Unknown” or “No Such Number” get sent back to you by the Post Office with one of those little yellow stickers on it, saying “update your address book.” The problem is, you didn’t send the postcard, and it’s not your address book. Then, you get back little replies from people who have their butlers sending out replies like, “I’m sorry I can’t respond to your message right now. I’m on vacation in Switzerland, skiing the Alps.” I’m getting out-of-office replies from people in other languages.

Anyway, it’s kind of annoying. It’s particularly bad for me because of the way I have my e-mail address setup: anything “at jwhardcastle-dot-com” goes to me. This is helpful for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is that I can use it to kill spam (i-dont-want-your-signup-junkmail@jwhardcastle.com), identify which one of my clients the e-mail pertains to (whitemarlinopen@jwhardcastle.com) or do things with it automatically (add-to-torrents-rss@jwhardcastle.com). The “suck” part comes in when I’m getting backscatter spam from “lkaslkfghj26t@jwhardcastle.com.”

If this keeps up, I’ll have to turn off my really convenient e-mail forwarding and put in a hand-coded list of 15 or 20 manual addresses. I’ve added SPF records in an attempt to limit this kind of stuff, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. *sigh*

People don’t know how to correspond via e-mail.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten e-mail responses to a question where the entire body of the e-mail is “Yes.” Yes, what? Yes, you are having problems with your computer? Yes, you will join me for dinner? Yes, you are moving to Antarctica?

How about some context, folks? If I take the time to send you a nicely formatted, well thought-out missive (and since we’re talking about me, this means every e-mail I send) then could you possibly take the time to at least tell me what you’re talking about? Don’t make me go hunting for that e-mail I sent you four days ago so I can see what questions I asked you. Don’t make me guess which one of the six questions I’ve asked you’re answering in your response. I apologize if you thought I was long-winded (a fair statement) or if you don’t have a lot of time. Usually, I’m not sitting here waiting for your reply, hanging on your every word. Wait until you do have the time to give me a fair reply.

This is especially true of people who have asked me for help. If you want something from me, have the common courtesy to lay out your problem including details, that way I don’t have to have this back and forth with you over a half-dozen letters. “My computer is broken because I cannot access my e-mail. Everytime I try to login using my name and password, I get an error message, number 1031, that says my username could not be recognized.” I can fix your problem immediately when you provide me with the information I need. If I have to draw it out of you, then it’s going to take that much longer.

And why should I have to send your e-mail off to Georgetown’s ancient literature department to be translated out of Aramaic? Use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. I apologize if, in the 21st century, you never learned how to type. I didn’t know how to type properly (and perhaps still don’t, although I’m now rather fast) for years and I was still able to write correctly. You’re not dumb. Some of you are English majors (or, gasp, English teachers).

daw·dle
–verb

1. to waste time; idle; trifle; loiter:
   Stop dawdling and help me with these packages!
   
   
2. to sit at one’s computer for as long as possible in the morning before going to work, repeatedly checking e-mail, blogs, the news, and reddit just to see if something new will come in:
   I’m a professional dawdler. Sometimes I wake up 2 hours before I have to leave for work and I’m still late.

I’ve never really had any basis for my belief that actor Johnny Depp is a genuinely nice guy. Perhaps I heard it in a news story once, or someone suggested it based on something they had heard. I’ve just always had this feeling that he’s the kind of guy who generally does the Right Thing.

Turns out, he is that kind of guy.