10 thoughts for November 26, 2013

I have a lot of thoughts going through my head, all the time.  Here's my way of getting a bunch of them out of my head, without taking the whole day to write long form.

1. I wrote about this several months ago: Cable TV is dying.  Business Insider has a much wider write up of the trend than I did last May.  I happen to be ahead of most curves, though.
2. Things that I have been ahead of the curve on: Bought the first Android phone because I knew Android was going to become the primary global mobile OS; I bought the Windows 7 upgrade, but not W8, because I knew W8 was a lousy interface that made little sense for anything but tablets; I cut my home phone line 7 years ago and went 100% wireless; I dropped cable a decade ago.
3. I got into an online argument, offering that Cover Oregon's hiring of 400 new workers to handle paper and pencil applications would lead to serious breaches of privacy, possibly violating HIPAA.  Sure enough, it's already happened.  Three times, as a matter of fact.
4. KitKat update has come to my Nexus 7.  It turns out, the implementations of Google Now and the home screens aren't quite like that of my Nexus 5 -- this might confuse some folks.  A massive benefit of the KitKat implementation on my phone is the unlimited number of home screens you can create...although obviously navigating a dozen home screens becomes tricky.
5. CGI Global, the same company whose most infamous job is the federal ACA exchange, also built Hawai'i's website, and -- surprise, surprise -- they screwed that one up, too.  CGI is now synonymous with mud.
6. Today The Economist tweeted: "At present Obama will go down in history, alongside Bush, as a skipper who ignored the looming fiscal iceberg" -- "American fears about the future are distorted" -- "America’s economic difficulties are mostly political".  I guess what they're trying to say is that there's a giant iceberg ahead, but when you look closer, it's just an ice cube, and it'll melt soon.
7. You should read Michael Hughes, a HuffPo foreign affairs writer, on Saudi Arabia.  I've never understood why Saudi women aren't allowed to drive, and why they need a guardian in life.
8. I had fun yesterday with the Google Translate app on my tablet.  Spoke a phrase in English and had it translated in spoken Japanese and in written Hiragana.  Some things weren't quite right, though.
9. Sisters of the Road Cafe (downtown Portland) allow you to buy $2 coupons (I'd call them scripts, but they call them coupons) for free meals, that you can give out to homeless people.  I only point this out because KGW covered the program Meals on Wheels which delivers meals to seniors in their homes, whose cost is $3.95 to provide one meal to one senior.  And so, the crazy thought popped in my mind: Why not buy a bunch of Sisters of the Road Cafe meals and deliver them to seniors?
10. Scroll down to the bottom of this Make Magazine post and see the price comparison between different 3D printing companies.  I'd noticed this last year when I was comparing Ponoko with Shapeways.  It's astonishing how wide of a difference 3D printing costs are.