Tag Archives: Wickenburg

Reach Out and Meet Someone

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I remember what online community is all about.

I got my start in the online world back in 1984, when I bought my first computer. It was an Apple //c and I quickly began visiting bulletin board systems (BBSes) using my 300 baud modem. You could get away with 300 bps in those days — there were no graphics, no big downloads, no Flash or PDF or QuickTime files.

Back in those days I visited BBSes to participate in online discussions on what were called message boards: the precursor to today’s forums and blog comment features. Later, in 1989, when I bought my first Mac, I was quick to start my own BBS, The Electronic Pen. I kept it up and running for years, until the Web made BBSes archaic. Then I hopped on board Web 1.0 with a Web site — back in 1995 or so? — and have been a Web publisher ever since.

It Was about Meeting People

In exchanging comments and ideas on BBSes, I met a lot of people:

  • There was Tim, who ran a BBS out of the same office where he sold tombstones. (Really!) Tim was my age and a Mac user and he’s part of what made me so enthusiastic about Macs. He introduced me to Mark, a legally blind albino guy who worked as a graphic designer. (Really!) Mark couldn’t drive, so we’d take him out to dinner once in a while. He had all this high-tech computer equipment that he’d show off to us: things like CD-ROM writers, 20″ monitors, and high-end graphic software. (Remember, this was in the early 90s.) Although I lost touch with Mark, I still exchange e-mail with Tim, who married his high school sweetheart, fathered three boys, and got a job as an IT guy for some medical information company.
  • There was May, who ran a BBS for writers. She wanted to become a writer, but she couldn’t seem to get her foot in the door with any publisher. She even quit her day job to devote all her energy to writing. She wound up broke and depressed. She went back to work. Years later, she finally got some stories published. I don’t know what she’s doing now. She once called me an “overachiever,” which is something I’ll never forget. It made me feel as if I should be ashamed of my success.
  • There was Art, a computer programmer who knew everything — or thought he did. At thirty-something, he still lived at home with his parents. When I met him in person, I was very surprised to see that he was only about 4’10” tall. He bitched a lot about his employer and I wasn’t too surprised when he got canned. When he got 18 months pay in his severance package, I encouraged him to travel around a bit before getting back to work. He visited his brother in Seattle. “There’s snow on the Rockies,” he told me after his trip. “Art,” I replied, “there’s always snow on the Rockies.” Some people really need to get out more. We lost touch just a few years ago.
  • There was Bill, a copywriter. Here was a middle-aged man who wrote for a living. And he made a good living. He offered me advice (when I asked for it) and was amazed when I told him that I thought something I’d written “sounded good.” “That’s the point,” he said, obviously excited that I’d made the comment. “Good writing should sound good when it’s read out loud.” I learned a lot from him, but ironically, we lost touch soon after my first book was published.
  • There was Martin, a computer geek like me, but with an arty streak. He did design work and computer training for a local computer store. If my memory serves me right, he helped me get my foot in the door there and I worked for them for some time. I went to his wedding and, when I moved out to Arizona, he, his wife, and their new baby spent a day with us. When he set up his own consulting firm, he sent me a full complement of his high-class giveaways. I still use the logo-embroidered throw blanket when I sit on the sofa to watch television some evenings. I haven’t seen him in years, but he’s one of my LinkedIn contacts.

These are just some of the people who entered my world through the world of online communication. (And no, these aren’t their real names.) They were friends, despite our mutual shortcomings, and we socialized both online and off. In fact, I was better friends with these people than my college classmates.

What Changed

Somewhere along the line, things changed. I think it had something to do with switching from the two-way communication of BBSes to the one-sided Web sites of Web 1.0. Although I remained friends with this handful of people for some time, I didn’t meet anyone new.

And I didn’t miss meeting people.

After all, I was busy with work — writing books and articles, teaching computer courses for two different companies, writing course material. And then we moved to Arizona and I was busy with my new home, learning to fly, and exploring my surroundings. As my old BBS friendships faded away, new ones didn’t replace them. But I didn’t even notice the gap in my life.

Social Networking

Until yesterday, I never realized the value of social networking sites like LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, and Twitter. You see, I wasn’t in the market for new friends. I didn’t need any. I have friends around here, I have friends elsewhere.

The trouble is, our friends around here are either 20 to 30 years older than we are (remember, Wickenburg is a retirement community) or, if they’re younger, they’re transient, passing through Wickenburg on their way to someplace where they’re not always the youngest person in a restaurant or supermarket. (Okay, so that’s an exaggeration. There are usually a few people younger than me in the supermarket, and some of them are even customers.) We lost two friends our age just last month when he got a better job in Michigan and they just packed up and left. Other friends have been bailing out regularly: one couple to Colorado, one to San Diego, one to New Mexico.

Mike and I aren’t movers. We like to stay in one place a good, long time. But with the way things in Wickenburg are going, I’m ready to bail out. We’ve been here 10 years — that’s longer than most of our friends (in any age group).

So I’m starting to think about new friends who live someplace other than Wickenburg.

Yesterday, I read “How to Use MyBlogLog to Succesfully Build Massive Blog or Website Traffic.” I’d signed up for MyBlogLog back in January, but never did anything with my membership. I had some time, so I went through the instructions in the article. And I started finding blogs for people who write about the same kinds of things I write about. People with similar thoughts and ideas and concerns. And I began to realize that I could make friends online again. Perhaps even good friends.

Now if you’re reading this and actively participate in social networking sites, you’re probably thinking that I must be some kind of moron. Of course that’s what social networking sites are for.

Hoof PickWell, have you ever seen a hoof pick? There’s a picture of one right here. You use it to scrape horse poop and mud and rocks from the bottom of a horse’s foot. It’s standard equipment for everyone who rides a horse — a responsible rider wouldn’t even consider getting into the saddle unless the horse’s feet had been checked and scraped. But if I didn’t tell you this and you’d never needed one and someone handed one to you, would you know what it was for?

That was me with social networking Web sites. I couldn’t understand the purpose.

Now I do.

(Duh.)

Build Community Through Participation

Yesterday, I also realized that what’s holding back my blog from reaching the next level (whatever that is) is the sporadic participation of visitors.

Sometimes I’ll write a post, hundreds of people will read it, and a bunch of people will post comments with other viewpoints about what I’ve said. This adds substance to the blog and makes it more valuable not only to visitors, but to me. I learn by starting a conversation and reading what others add to it. (I love to learn.)

Most times, however, I’ll write a post and even though many people will read it, no one will post comments to it. Which makes me wonder whether I “got it right” or if anyone cared about what I said. Are these posts a waste of time? Are they useless bandwidth suckers? Why did Post A get a lot of response while Post B, with a similar topic, generate “dead air”?

I may never know.

But the one thing I do know is that I want more participation here. And since I want it here, I’m sure other bloggers want it on their sites. So I’m actively trying to add something to a comment string — sometimes even starting a comment string — when I have something to add. Even if what I have to say is just a quick note to thank the blogger or give him/her my support on that issue. (Whatever that’s worth.)

Twitter Really Is More than Just a Waste of Time

Yesterday was also the day that I realized that Twitter is a lot more interesting if you’re monitoring the tweets of people you know and/or care about. I realized this as I started adding “friends” to my Twitter account — the same people whose blogs I was beginning to monitor. When you follow the tweets of a select group of people, you learn more about them and the things they do. Like me, some of these people publish tweets about the major work-related things they do throughout the day. Or about ideas that have just gone through their heads. Or about life’s frustrations.

And I think that Twitter can be a great way to help decide whether I want to take another step toward a real friendship with someone. A person’s tweets reveal not only what he/she is doing or thinking, but his/her personality. I could never pursue a friendship with someone who composed tweets like AOL chat room IMs. Or a person who took him/herself too seriously. Or someone who used Twitter solely to market a product or service.

So I’m going to be more active in the blogging world, both in my blog and on other people’s it will be interesting to see what new friends I can make.

KBSZ Interview

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Maria Speaks Episode 36: KBSZ Interview.

I was interviewed again by local radio station KBSZ 1250-AM. Pete’s a great interviewer and always makes his guests feel comfortable. We talked for about 40 minutes, mostly about my wickenburg-az.com Web site, which celebrates its 8-year anniversary this month. We also talked about blogging in general, search engine optimization (which I’m no expert in), and my flying business. Keep in mind that the station’s audience isn’t exactly computer savvy, so I do a lot of explaining and simplifying when discussing some computer topics.

On Notebooks and Scratchpads

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Some organization/productivity tips.

When I’m working in my office, I’m sitting in front of a computer all day. Although I have three different tools for taking notes on my computer while I’m working, I always turn to pen and paper when I need to make a note. And I recently realized that that isn’t a bad thing after all.

Sure, you can use software to jot down notes as you need to, but there’s really no substitute for a notebook or scratchpad. I have both, although I prefer the notebook.

It’s usually a spiral bound notebook, the kind with page perforations so you can cleanly rip off a sheet. I keep it open on my desk to the “current” page, which is the page I last used for jotting down a note. I try hard to start a new page each time I have a series of related notes to jot down, but I don’t always succeed. Sometimes, I simply forget.

Recently, I used up all the pages in my notebook and haven’t replaced it. So I’m using a scratchpad. I make the scratch pads out of the galley pages for my Quicken books. Really. Here’s how it works. I write my Quicken book and submit it electronically as Word files. I get back edited Word files, accept or reject changes, and send them back. Then the book goes to layout. The publisher prints the galley pages and sends them to me. I mark up the pages that have problems and send them back to the publisher. Since there’s no reason to send back pages without problems — after all, why pay to ship more than you have to? — I save them. I bring them to Kwikprint here in Wickenburg and they cut them into 1/4 or 1/2 size sheets and pad them up with about 200 pages per pad with the blank side facing up. Throughout the year, I use the scratch pads in my office and house to jot down notes.

What kinds of things do I jot down? Well, one look at the notebook will reveal all. Here’s my current scratchpad (1/4 page size) by page:

  1. The phone number for the local museum (highly recommended), along with the user ID, password, and domain address for a recently created MySQL file.
  2. A list of the template files I plan to create for my series of articles about creating a WordPress Theme from scratch. (The same list appears in the first article of the series.)
  3. My ScratchpadMeasurements of content, sidebar, and page sizes, in pixels, for the WordPress theme I’m designing from scratch and writing about in the article series (see image).
  4. Another page of the same thing but with a different layout and different measurements.
  5. A list of hexadecimal codes corresponding to the colors I plan to use in the WordPress theme I’m creating.
  6. Dates for the beta and Gold Master releases of a software program I’m not allowed to talk about.
  7. Domain names for a few adventure travel sites I checked out for possible advertising of Flying M Air excursions. (They all suck.) Also the phrases Whirly Girls, instrument rating, and Part 136 jotted down during a conversation with a fellow pilot this afternoon.

What’s not listed here are the pages I don’t need anymore, the ones I’ve torn out and discarded. (Don’t worry; I have a recycle box under my desk.) That’s the beauty of notebooks and scratchpads. You can write down the information you need when you get it and discard the pages when you’re done with them. Or file the pages if you think you’ll need them in the future.

Getting Things DoneI’ve been trying hard lately to get and stay organized. I have been reading Getting Things Done by David Allen and it’s been helping. Although I think he goes to far — no, I do not need a label maker to properly file or label things — he has a lot of good ideas. And although he recommends blank, unlined paper — like the kind in your copy machine — I prefer lined notebook paper for notes I want to keep. What I like best about the notebooks is that the pages stay bound together until I’m ready to discard or file them. No loose paper scattered all over my desk, waiting for me to do something with it.

So although I still rely on iCal to keep track of appointments and schedule items, I don’t use any computer-based tool for jotting down notes. All notes are in my notebook or scratchpad (or both), where I can note things wherever I am, without having to open a program or document and use a keyboard.

After all, it only takes one hand to write with a pen.

Off-the-Grid Internet

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I spend two hours hunting for a solution.

I have two books that need to be written this summer: my Mac OS X VQS revision for Leopard and my annual mystery book (which I can’t talk about until September). In order to write them, I not only need my computers, but access to the Internet. That means I need to work in my office all summer.

Or does it?

One of the things I did last year when I had to buy new test mules — the computers I run software on when I write about the software — was to replace my desktop PC and Mac with laptops. The idea was to make my office more portable, so I could work somewhere other than in my office at home. Both laptops have wireless cards in them, so they communicate wirelessly with any wireless network. But neither have any other Internet access solution. In other words, they rely on being able to access a network to get on the Internet.

But nowadays, there are Internet solutions that don’t require wires. So, theoretically, I should be able to get the computers on the Internet in a place where wires don’t go.

Like our place at Howard Mesa, which is entirely off-the-grid.

Now if you’re not familiar with the phrase off-the-grid, it’s pretty simple. It means that it has no access to any kind of publicly accessible utilities, such as electricity, telephone, water, gas, or cable television. People who live off-the-grid have to provide for their own utilities.

Our camping shed at Howard Mesa has a solar electricity system with two solar panels, four batteries, and an inverter, providing AC and DC power. (We have a 1000-watt gas-powered generator to provide additional power when we need it, but we haven’t needed it yet.) We have 2100 gallons of water storage and haul water to it with a borrowed 450-gallon tank that fits in the back of a pickup truck. We have a propane tank that’s serviced by a local gas provider. We use cell phones. We don’t have television, although I suspect that we could pick up a signal with a standard TV antenna.

I had heard a rumor that an ISP provided wireless Internet access from an antenna on top of Bill Williams Mountain, which is about 15 miles south of our place. We can clearly see the mountain from our shed — which is a good thing, since line-of-sight visibility is required. The only problem is, I didn’t know the name of the company that provided service from that location.

I started with the Williams, AZ Chamber of Commerce. The way I see it, if a company offers a service in Williams, the CofC should know about it. Right?

Wrong. The guy who answered the phone was too new in Williams to know about it. He asked someone else and she said that she tried the service but couldn’t access it. She said Qwest provided it.

So I spent at least 30 minutes tracking down a phone number at Qwest to ask about it. Of course, they didn’t have any service at my address and obviously knew nothing about wireless from Bill Williams Mountain.

I tried the other two ISPs listed on the Williams CofC Web site. Neither of them provided wireless service.

Maybe the antenna on Bill Williams Mountain was a myth.

I went to the Verizon Wireless Web site. I am a Verizon subscriber and my phone works okay up at Howard Mesa. (Not great; just okay.) What solutions did they have?

They had a good solution. Actually, a few that would work. The one I liked was the USB “modem” that made it possible for any USB-compatible computer to access the Internet with Verizon service. It would cost me $129 (after rebate) to buy with a 2-year contract and then $59/month in addition to my existing Verizon plan. Ouch! That was a lot more than I wanted to spend, but the benefit is that it would work on either laptop — or even my desktop machine — in a Verizon service area. Verizon has excellent service in Arizona, so it looked like a very workable situation.

On a whim, I sent an e-mail message to Bluewire, which provides wireless Internet service to my house in Wickenburg. (We’re beyond fiber-optic cable or cable television, so we need wireless access.) Did they know of any similar provider in the Williams area? I got my answer an hour after posting the message. They didn’t know of any provider up there, but why not try the WISP Directory?

So I surfed on over and got on the Arizona page with a few clicks. Bluewire was listed (of course), along with one called CommSPEED, based in Prescott Valley, AZ (and Iowa, if you can believe that). I called. And guess what? They had the antenna on top of Bill Williams Mountain!

While it isn’t clear whether I’m within range of the antenna, they’re willing to come up to Howard Mesa to check it out. If all goes well, the install cost is $49 and there’s a 3-month startup special for 512Kbps access for only $29/month. After that, it goes to $39/month. But get this: they can put my account “on vacation” when I’m not there, so I don’t have to pay when I’m not at Howard Mesa. So I can use it all summer, go “on vacation” and turn it back on during months I’m up there.

I signed up for an account. With luck, I’ll be able to meet with them some this month to see if I’m within range and, if so, they’ll set me up.

Otherwise, I’ll be going with the costly but effective Verizon plan.

Updates to come.

Alaska, Here We Come

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Reservations finally made.

For the past three years, Mike has been whining (for lack of a better word) about wanting to go to Alaska. Not knowing what he has in mind and unable to connect with him to discuss it (which is amazing, since we live in the same house), no plans have been made.

This year was different. He decided in April that this was the year we’d go. My cherry drying gig fell through and my Leopard book was rescheduled, so I was not going to pick up a flying job elsewhere. So he went to a travel agent here in Wickenburg (if you can believe that) and told her what he wanted. With tight date restrictions — I need to be working on the Leopard book by mid June and my annual mystery project will be sucking time in July — the travel agent achieved the impossible: a 7-night cruise with a 2-night Denali visit that includes some time on the ground for visiting Mike’s cousin in Seattle and Mike’s friend in Anchorage.

Radiance of the SeasThe trip will start with the Anchorage visit, then the train ride with overnight stays at the Princess Denali lodge. From there, we get on Radiance of the Seas — ironically, the only other cruise ship we’ve ever been on (that’s why I have a photo of it), and that was in the Caribbean — for a 7 days/nights cruising down to the Vancouver, with stops at the usual tourist ports almost every day. From there, we go to Seattle for two nights. Then home. We’ll be gone about two weeks — the longest vacation we’ve ever taken together.

Our accommodations on the ship will be similar to what we had on the last cruise: a mini suite with balcony. I seriously doubt whether we’ll get the concierge key this time; that was too much of a dumb luck coincidence last time. But it’ll be nice to spend late nights watching the sun set from the balcony. I just hope I can stay up late enough to make the most of it. Almost wish there was a way I could do all my sleeping before the trip so I only need a few hours a night. Wouldn’t that be great?

I’ll blog the trip. Of course. And if I can get an Internet connection while I’m away, I’ll actually send entries before I get back. With pictures.

Before that, though, Mike and I are heading to Torrance, CA for a week. Mike needs to take the Robinson Factory Safety course before he can get on my insurance. I decided to take it again with him. (This will be my third time.) We’ll fly out to California, spend the weekdays at an area hotel, then spend a few days in Malibu, just to get away. This was set up before the Alaska trip — a kind of mini vacation.

We deserve — and need — the time away.