Findings:

• Love how it has improved my posture. Feels great for my back and my shoulders.
• I don’t slouch like I did in a chair. No more resting my elbow on the chair or my desk.
• Can’t get as sleepy as I could sitting in a chair.
• Feels like I have better blood flow and generally feel more active.
• Legs and feet get sore after a while.
• Would be really great to have a tall stool to rest my legs and feet throughout the day.
• I’ve heard that a padded mat will help some with the feet hurting.
• I find myself wanting to continue to stand at my desk even when my feet and legs are tired.
• Many people within WCG and outside WCG on my social networks have either asked questions or shared their love for standing at their desk.

Insights:

• Based on reactions and questions, I think there is a lot of interest both internally to WCG and outside of WCG for working at a desk while standing.
• I believe that standing at my desk has made me somewhat more productive in my work day because I don’t get as sleepy and I feel more active throughout the day.
• I also believe that I continue to want to stand at my desk because of how good my posture feels standing at my desk versus sitting.
• Working at a desk may not be feasible for everyone since it does put a fair amount of stress on the feet and legs. Some may be able to stand for longer periods at a time than others. I think the key for some will be to have a tall stool so they can gradually work up to standing and working for long periods of time.

The next step for me is to get a tall stool to be able to rest my feet and legs throughout the day as they get tired. I may also want to look into a standing pad to reduce the stress on my feet. Standing has been worth the effort and I recommend it to anyone looking to improve their posture and their general health while at work.

I now get to work for WCG and will be working out of their Austin Texas office on 6th street.

My wife and I are very excited to be in Austin, experience the culture, and bask in the warmth of the sun. We are especially excited for the warm winters that we are going to have here ;) I am excited to be part of a winning team, doing amazing things, and making a difference in the lives of others.

You can expect to continue to see me blog here and possibly on WCG’s blog as well. You can connect with me and stay up on the latest on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ where I like to share what I learn and get to know other awesome people.

A huge thank you to family, real life friends, and online friends who reached out and responded to my announcement of looking for work. It always amazes me how supportive and helpful everyone is. The response was amazing and I had lots of good options to choose from. Thank you!

Photos are from the Utah 2011 Tour de Donut ride I did recently. Last photo was taken with the famous “Fat Cyclist” (left) that is making a difference doing what he loves to raise money to fund cancer research and help others with cancer, and my good friend Sam Curren (right).

– SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT! –

If you haven’t checked out my latest Kynetx apps, you should because they are HOT!   The first one filters out foul language and hides animated gifs on G+. The second makes browsing craigslist much easier, faster, and more enjoyable.

Those who have worked with me before know that I am passionate about what I do. Please check out my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StackOverflow and Endomondo profiles. While you are here, if you are curious to learn more about me, please take a few minutes and go through some recent posts here on my geek blog or browse through some of the photography I have done on smugmug.

More details –

My wife and I are willing to live just about anywhere with the exception of Idaho (been there, done that). We would be especially excited to live in any of the following areas:

• Western Washington
• California
• Utah
• Austin Texas

I loved working for Kynetx and building apps that helped make the web and browsing experience better. I also really enjoyed building tutorials to help developers just getting into developing Kynetx applications. I’ve had some of my applications featured in The New York Times, Gawker, and more. I enjoy using GIT for projects. I have done work in PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, used the Ruby on Rails, Django, and jQuery frameworks, and work well with HTML and CSS.

Vision –

My dream is to make the world a better place and work on teams that are striving to change the world. I dream of one day being able to work on projects that will make a difference in people’s lives without having to worry about how much money I am making. I dream of one day being able to ride my bike across America, meeting people, touring this great country, and raising money for a great cause.

I dream of one day being able to help others who want to change the world but don’t have the money or the tools to do it.

If you are looking for someone like me or know of a job opportunity that you think might be a good fit for me, please contact me through any of my listed social networks.

… and now I am going to go for a bike ride because that is how I deal with stress : )

My wife and I moved to Utah almost a year ago and we have loved every minute of it. Since moving here I have been riding my bicycle a lot and not using my Honda Gold Wing so much. I decided recently that it would be a good idea to sell my motorcycle and use the money to buy my wife a computer since she has been without one since her MacBook Air died a few months ago. I’m really sad that I no loger have a motorcycle to ride but I think what I got in return is worth more. : )

I’m going to tell you all about what that app looks like and what it does but first some background. I use Twitter a lot.

I have really enjoyed the whole experience. I have found over the past 2 years that connecting with people is what makes Twitter great for me.

Tweeting lots every day is easy along with following lots of people. These two actions only require a little typing and clicking buttons. The hard part is following people and listening to them and engaging in meaningful conversation. I read most updates of the 900 something people that I follow and it takes lots of time and effort.

Here are my goals with Twitter:

• Find more interesting people to follow and build meaningful relationships with them
• Spend less time reading tweets that I’m not interested in that have no relevance or are basically spam
• Spend more time engaged in tweets that are relevant, will help me grow as a person, and build meaningful relationships
• Help my friends do the same things listed above

Here are some things that stand in the way of me accomplishing those goals

• Don’t have a way to quantify and report the relevance of a “follow”
• Don’t have a way to quantify the time spent time on Twitter and different Twitter activities
• Don’t have a way to quantify the amount of load a particular follow puts on my  Twitter stream

I want to find more people to connect with but it’s a double edged sword. If I follow more people I increase my chances of finding interesting people to connect with but this same action causes more content to come through my Twitter stream. This makes it harder to stay connected with the people that I have already established a meaningful connection with.

I think an app/service can be created to help me reach all my goals and take care of all the road blocks. This is where My6Sense, TweetStats, SocialToo, Twitter, and Kynetx come in. I envision creating a Kynetx app that

• records how much time is spent on Twitter reading tweets
• what percentage of the tweets I read  are from each follow
• the relevance of Tweets and follows as I read and give feedback

Because a Kynetx app can be deployed as a browser extension it is fairly easy to get this kind of data and report it to a system through a simple API. The server could then take this data and start doing interesting and helpful things with the data. Things like

• make suggestions to un-follow people based on a ratio of load vs quality content created much like SocialToo attempts to do through rules
• build cool looking, informative, and geeky charts like TweetStats
• help me sort Twitter stream based on context similar to what My6Sense does
• suggest people to follow based on the relevance data received from my friends

Just imagine being able to see personal trends of how much time you spend going through your tweet stream. You could also see trends of the percentage of relevant people you are following, who is generating the most load on your stream, who you find the most relevant, and more. Because all of this is based on your actions on Twitter.com and is quantified you could set goals to improve in different areas. Rewards for achieving those goals could be given and the app could give me help along the way. Built correctly and used well, it could be a powerful tool to transform any social network into an astoundingly strong group of friends and acquaintances that are relevant, meaningful, and create much more benefit than cost to build and maintain.

If you like this idea, have suggestions, or have something you want to say, let me know in the comments or tweet me!

There is lots more that I could write about but I think I’ll hold off for now and see what people have to say about this.

I went through each slide reading the notes at the bottom and thinking through each slide. I am genuinely impressed by the thought that has gone into this presentation. In a moment of awesomeness, I experienced an aha moment on slide #103. I found the key to understanding something that has left me perplexed since my childhood.

Back when I was younger, I was often charged with doing the dishes. I hated doing the dishes! Or, so I thought that I hated doing the dishes. Several times I had decided that I wanted to surprise my mom and do the dishes without her asking instead of the often, “Michael, will you PLEASE do the dishes?!”. Walking into the kitchen I was excited to do something nice for my mom until I heard, “Will you please do the dishes Michael?”. I was furious and my mom was confused. Even though my mom asked nicely, what changed when she asked that made me so mad? I finally understood today on slide #103. Enjoy! : )

(be sure to go through the slides in full screen)

“INPUT!!!!”

Reasons why I think I am addicted to stats:

1. I love tracking statistics within my applications to know what is going on
   
2. Built my own stats API to easily track what my Kynetx apps are doing in JavaScript
   
3. I have been checking http://tweetstats.com/graphs/mikegrace for over a year
   
4. I installed DD-WRT on my router mostly for the statistical functionality and for geek cred
   
5. Built my own round robin style load tracker for my server so I could better understand its load http://status.michaelgrace.info/
   
6. I built my own JSON interface to the command line top program to monitor who and what is creating the most load on my server
7. This blog post by the etsy engineering team about tracking everything made me drool http://codeascraft.etsy.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/
8. Even though I didn’t really enjoy the homework, I absolutely loved my statistics class in college.
9. Sites like onetruefan.com that give me stats about what I do on the web make my geeky heart beat faster
   
10. Purchased a wall plug that would tell me stats on how much electricity my different appliances use

As you can see I am fairly addicted to numbers and stats and I haven’t even listed everything here.  I wish that more stuff was webhook enabled so I could gather meaningful statistics and build cool apps that tied more of my ‘stuff’ together in meaningful ways like Kynetx envisions. Here is to a future where life is made better and more interesting through the application and correlation of meaningful data.

1) Yes, at the time of this blog post I am unemployed.

2) Kynetx is still kickin butt and taking names. Kynetx FTW!

Yesterday morning I found out that I no longer had a job at Kynetx as Kynetx was shifting to plan B. Any good startup worth their salt always has a plan B and Kynetx is executing that plan B. In Steve Fulling’s own words, “failed bridge financing. Re-aligned staffing to revenue. We’re open & okay”. I’m bummed out that I don’t get to be a part of that plan B execution but I have known since the day I joined the team that this was always a possibility and I have absolutely no regrets about joining the Kynetx team. One of my best friends, Michael Farmer, expresses my feelings better than I could over on his blog post at http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

While the last 48 hours have been a roller coaster of an emotional ride, my wife and I are very excited for the future and all of the possibilities that it holds. I am overflowing with gratitude and love for everyone on the Kynetx team family. I have grown tremendously as an individual and as a developer while working at Kynetx and have learned so very much from all the extremely smart and talented team. I gladly welcome any future opportunities to work with anyone on the team and highly recommend each one of them.

Here’s to an exciting future.

oh! And what blog post from me about Kynetx would be complete without some “Grace faces” that have become somewhat legendary within the Kynetx team.

Update:

Several of my co-workers have also blogged about the recent change at Kynetx and they are all a good read.

Mike Farmer -> http://michaelfarmer.info/people-thought-i-was-crazy

Q Wade Billings -> http://scramswitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-of-my-favorite-musical-artist-is.html

Sam Curren -> http://www.mostlybaked.com/changing-sails

Jessie Morris -> http://www.jessieamorris.com/content/so-long-and-thanks-all-fishing-lessons

Phil Windley -> http://www.windley.com/archives/2011/02/starting_a_high_tech_business_making_hard_decisions.shtml

Alex Olson -> http://www.alexkolson.com/2011/03/01/reduction-in-force/

Also, a friend/fan of Kynetx has also blogged about his thoughts on the recent events

Holden Page -> http://pagesaresocial.com/2011/02/28/extending-best-wishes-kynetx/

The adventures of a box maker from Mike Grace on Vimeo.

Cassie Grace showing off her box making skills.

I have also been impressed to see Buzz pulling my flickr photos intelligently into my buzz stream. I had 3 photos of our new front door being replaced on flickr that I posted via 3 separate tweets and all 3 got grouped together in the same buzz.

With the way Buzz facilitates conversation and does some intelligent work with managing other social network data, I really think Buzz will become a powerful player in the social networking world.

ARCHATHOR’IAN THE ERADICATOR

I spent the day learning and working on Kynetx code that was my first assignment since joining the team. I sure hope I won’t disappoint. Finally as the final hours of the day were counting down I was helping my wife make the bed when IT happened. Yes! IT happened! What is it? I was throwing the sheets up so I could get them to lay flat on the bed. When on the last throw, I threw them too hard, I hit the ugly glass plate covering our light hanging from the ceiling and it came crashing down. The largest shard was able to somehow maneuver it’s way to my head and connected with whatever sound glass makes when it hits flesh. *{insert sound here}* Once I got the wound covered we were able to clean it up and bandage it enough to get to bed. Here are some photos of the battle wound. Enjoy! ; D

Chicks dig scars right?!  ; )

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

How Designers Think, Fourth Edition: The Design Process Demystified

The Design of Everyday Things

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

Coders at Work

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!! : )

Enjoy your Halloween and thanks for watching!

Trick or Tweet!

I have officially entered the world of Podcasting! The podcast is about technology and learning and incidentally enough, is hosted at http://technologyforlearning.info I am privileged to be able to co-produce the podcast with a good friend of mine, http://michaelfarmer.info. We both have a lot of fun being geeks and really digging into technology and what it means for us today and how it will impact us in the future. We are both amateurs and don’t have any formal voice training but we do love what we do. So, if you would like to join in on the fun and the conversation subscribe to the podcast and tune in each week as we review current technology and how it applies to learning.

Brother Judkins Comm 313
http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/b8dvinssolbf8qce3r2tam0alc%40group.calendar.google.com/private-87267a1ca2dc1e499bd46ab3dae40b26/basic.ics

Brother Ercanbrack CS 165

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/ca0dn9amvkt8f3a10j7ch0huqg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

Chalkboard Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frozenchipmunk/ / CC BY 2.0

THE PROBLEM

Information is flying all around us like debris from a tornado going through a trailer park. Information overload is a real problem now for the average person and it can wreak havoc on a persons productivity and goals. Never before in the history man has there been soo much information available. Experts, books, seminars, awareness: the availability of these are low if not non-existent. We are like little children who have been handed a gun with incredible power but no one is talking about how to safely handle it, and people are getting hurt!

WHAT TO DO

Fortunately for you, if you “shoot yourself in the foot” its your fault! Probably not what you were expecting, but it’s true. You have control over most of the information you subscribe to.

• RSS Feeds
• Television
• Radio
• Email
• Social Networks
• Magazines
• Newspaper

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY BROWSER?

You can control what your Firefox looks like. I have seen too many people who try to browse the web with so many buttons, bars, and add-ons that much of the space for actually viewing web pages is reduced by about a third or more. Take back your browser real estate and surf the web with freedom again!

WHAT CAN I DO?

Here is an example of two extremes.

If the bloated one looks similar to yours or a friends browser then you are in the right place.

To Do:

• Use the Toolbar collapse button to hide the clutter until you need it

• Remove all add-ons you aren’t using all of the time (Spring Cleaning!)
• Hide toolbars (functionality can often be accessed through the application menu)
• Remove buttons that aren’t needed (most have keyboard shortcuts which are faster)

This is really fun because you get to drag and drop buttons where ever you like.

• Hide status bar if you don’t use it (Bottom gray bar)

• Disable “Always show the tab bar”

The real trick is to balance the functionality of add-ons and buttons with space. After many months of trying different configurations, this has been the most effective layout for me.

I use the keyboard shortcuts for the Firebug add-on and the other basic browser buttons like forward, back, refresh, so I have removed all those buttons and add-on bars. I show the status bar on the bottom so I can see if the HTML pages I am coding are validating as strict without running a validator. I also hide the bookmarks bar because I don’t use them very frequently. Everyone uses the web differently which makes Firefox great for many people because it can be customized for their needs. Play around with your layout, reduce distractions, and find what works best for you.

Storm Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liebedich/ / CC BY 2.0

1. Properly secure a wireless router.
2. Crack the WEP key on a wireless router.
3. Leech Wifi from your neighbor.
4. Screw with Wifi leeches.
5. Setup and use a VPN.
6. Work from home or a coffee shop as effectively as you do at the office.
7. Wire your own home with Ethernet cable.
8. Turn a web camera into security camera.
9. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point.
10. Understand what “There’s no Place Like 127.0.0.1” means.
11. Identify key-loggers.
12. Properly connect a TV, Tivo, XBox, Wii, and Apple TV so they all work together with the one remote.
13. Program a universal remote.
14. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone.
15. Benchmark Your Computer
16. Identify all computer components on sight.
17. Know which parts to order from NewEgg.com, and how to assemble them into a working PC.
18. Troubleshoot any computer/gadget problem, over the phone.
19. Use any piece of technology intuitively, without instruction or prior knowledge.
20. How to irrecoverably protect data.
21. Recover data from a dead hard drive.
22. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network.
23. Install a Linux distribution. (Hint: Ubuntu 9.04 is easier than installing Windows)
24. Remove a virus from a computer.
25. Dual (or more) boot a computer.
26. Boot a computer off a thumb drive.
27. Boot a computer off a network drive.
28. Replace or repair a laptop keyboard.
29. Run more than two monitors on a single computer.
30. Successfully disassemble and reassemble a laptop.
31. Know at least 10 software easter eggs off the top of your head.
32. Bypass a computer password on all major operating systems. Windows, Mac, Linux
33. Carrying a computer cleaning arsenal on your USB drive.
34. Bypass content filters on public computers.
35. Protect your privacy when using a public computer.
36. Surf the web anonymously from home.
37. Buy a domain, configure bind, apache, MySQL, php, and WordPress without Googling a how-to.
38. Basic *nix command shell knowledge with the ability to edit and save a file with vi.
39. Create a web site using vi.
40. Transcode a DVD to play on a portable device.
41. Hide a file in an image using steganography.
42. Knowing the answer to life, the universe and everything.
43. Share a single keyboard and mouse between multiple computers without a KVM switch.
44. Google obscure facts in under 3 searches. Bonus point if you can use I Feel Lucky.
45. Build amazing structures with LEGO and invent a compelling back story for the creation.
46. Understand that it is LEGO, not Lego, Legos, or Lego’s.
47. Build a two story house out of LEGO, in monochrome, with a balcony.
48. Construct a costume for you or your kid out of scraps, duct tape, paper mâché, and imagination.
49. Be able to pick a lock.
50. Determine the combination of a Master combination padlock in under 10 minutes.
51. Assemble IKEA furniture without looking at the instructions. Bonus point if you don’t have to backtrack.
52. Use a digital SLR in full manual mode.
53. Do cool things to Altoids tins.
54. Be able to construct paper craft versions of space ships.
55. Origami! Bonus point for duct tape origami. (Ductigami)
56. Fix anything with duct tape, chewing gum and wire.
57. Knowing how to avoid being eaten by a grue.
58. Know what a grue is.
59. Understand where XYZZY came from, and have used it.
60. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator.
61. Burn the rope.
62. Know the Konami code, and where to use it.
63. Whistle, hum, or play on an iPhone, the Cantina song.
64. Learning to play the theme songs to the kids favorite TV shows.
65. Solve a Rubik’s Cube.
66. Calculate THAC0.
67. Know the difference between skills and traits.
68. Explain special relativity in terms an eight-year-old can grasp.
69. Recite pi to 10 places or more.
70. Be able to calculate tip and split the check, all in your head.
71. Explain that the colours in a rainbow are roygbiv.
72. Understand the electromagnetic spectrum – xray, uv, visible, infrared, microwave, radio.
73. Know the difference between radiation and radioactive contamination.
74. Understand basic electronics components like resistors, capacitors, inductors and transistors.
75. Solder a circuit while bottle feeding an infant. (lead free solder please.)
76. The meaning of technical acronyms.
77. The coffee dash, blindfolded (or blurry eyed). Coffee <brew> [cream] [sugar]. In under a minute.
78. Build a fighting robot.
79. Program a fighting robot.
80. Build a failsafe into a fighting robot so it doesn’t kill you.
81. Be able to trace the Fellowship’s journey on a map of Middle Earth.
82. Know all the names of the Dwarves in The Hobbit.
83. Understand the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel.
84. Know where your towel is and why it is important.
85. Re-enact the parrot sketch.
86. Know the words to The Lumberjack Song.
87. Reciting key scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
88. Be able to recite at least one Geek Movie word for word.
89. Know what the 8th Chevron does on a Stargate and how much power is required to get a lock.
90. Be able to explain why it’s important that Han shot first.
91. Know why it is just wrong for Luke and Leia to kiss.
92. Stop talking Star Wars long enough to get laid.
93. The ability to name actors, characters and plotlines from the majority of sci-fi movies produced since 1968.
94. Cite Mythbusters when debunking a myth or urban legend.
95. Sleep with a Cricket bat next to your bed.
96. Have a documented plan on what to do during a zombie or robot uprising.
97. Identify evil alternate universe versions of friends, family, co-workers or self.
98. Be able to convince TSA that the electronic parts you are carrying are really not a threat to passengers.
99. Talk about things that aren’t tech related.
100. Get something on the front page of Digg.

Photo by bellafer*:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gataclark/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Defcon – Getting There from Mike Grace on Vimeo.

Photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kratz/ / CC BY-SA 2.0