B17FltLog

I think I will be part of a lost generation…

Not lost in the classic sense, but lost in the sense that my children and my grandchildren may not be able to look back on the history of our family during this time, because as a generation, we are in a transitional state of technology where our ability to manage and store data has not kept up with out ability to produce it.

I remember while growing up that I would often look thought my parents’ storage trunks and find old photos of them during their teenage years, or from when they were my age now. It was fun at the time to see what they looked like and the clothes that they wore, Image_1but it also gave me a sense of history and helped me see my parents and family as people rather than just “Mom and Dad”.

The photos that I, and I am sure others have found, are old and dirty, some of them are torn and have water stains and other random damage to them over the years, but for the most part it’s just like looking through a dirty window on history: it might not be perfect, but you don’t necessarily need it to be perfect. These photos become a visual record of both history and the people and events surrounding a person and family life.

However, my generation is a special one. My generation is one that started out with old-school film cameras and then found the wonder and flexibility of digital imaging. Digital cameras help scratch that itch of instant gratification but also give us the flexibility of sending out copies to friends and family with incredible ease and at virtually no cost.

My fear however is that as digital becomes the prevalent type of camera used in homes around the world, that users of these cameras now have a new responsibility to maintain the images in their computer systems using technology and tools that they probably barley understand. Photos from film that are printed on paper can be placed in a box and left in a person’s attic for years, only to be found later by some adventurous child or family member, but digital pictures have to live in a more controlled environment than an old box.

BarryAs digital imaging and storage technology progresses, people will be not only faced with how to manage and store their digital images on a day-to-day basis, but they will also have to consider how to create backups of them that are resilient to failure. Users will have to understand that the CD or DVD that they backup on today may become unusable in the future due to damage, or the media may be intact but the technology that reads it will no longer be available.

Users who store their images on their desktop computers will be faced with an ever-growing problem of digital information management. As time goes on, the probability for a catastrophic failure in their machine, or backups, greatly increases. Users will have to adopt a multifaceted backup strategy that will give them several things to fall back on in the event of a failure. That’s a lot to ask of some people who have trouble not clicking on an unknown person’s e-mail attachment.

So we see now that at any point during the lifetime of a person, if they should become lax, they could run the risk of losing their entire history of digital information.

Some would argue that there are companies that will store your information for you for a fee, they will ensure that it’s managed, backed up, and secured for a monthly cost. However, as we have seen with the dot.com boom (and subsequent bust) of the late 1990s, long-term outlook for private and public corporations is questionable at best. People may also face a time in their lives when they become financially unable to pay the monthly fee, only to see decades of digital information become lost due to their inability to pay.

Not all of the information that users have on their machines would fall into a category where they would want to keep it over long periods of time, in fact I believe that most people’s personal data needs fall into one of a few categories:

Type 1 Data – Transitory Class Information

Data that a person uses on a day to day basis, but that loses its value over time rapidly. This would be classified as casual e-mail on a user’s machine, a birthday card they are creating for a loved one, or a letter to a possible employer. Desired retention for this information is usually measured in weeks.

Type 2 Data – Persistent Class Information

Data that users access that is important enough that its loss would represent significant loss of time, expense, or emotional distress. This would include information such as digital music files, digital movies, address book, and long-term projects. Information in this category would usually have a lifespan of a few years, as digital standards for music and video will change over time, and data such as contact information is constantly in flux.

Type 3 Data – Heirloom Class Information

This final class of information represents information that would be of interest over very long periods of time. Digital images that are important to future generations such as family portraits, holidays, vacations, the birth of a child, etc. Digital information such as a person’s will, diaries, and medical history. Heirloom class information would be of interest for possibly 100 years or more.

As time marches on and future generations have access to more advanced computing technology, there will probably be solutions for future individuals to keep many copies of their data in some type of computing data collective.

However, for this generation, which has the ability to generate tens of thousands of images within just a few years, I fear we may become a lost generation without a visual historic record unless something is done.

The solution that I have kicking around in my head is patterned from the company Alcor. Alcor does cryogenic preservation of human bodies. The idea being that medical science might not be able to save a person today, but years from now the technology will be available to cure them of whatever they were suffering from. Even the technology to reconstitute cells damaged by the freezing process has yet to be invented.

However, one (of the many) risks in this sort of thing would be that Alcor as a viable business entity fails to sell their product and turn a profit and becomes financially insolvent sometime down the road, say ten, 20, or 50 years from now. That would be really unfortunate for everyone who was banking on the technology being available in the future to solve their problem when the company that keeps them on ice has to let them thaw out due to cash-flow issues.

Image_6So what Alcor did was to allocate part of the money that you pay them to put yourself on ice toward the creation of an irrevocable legal trust. In the event that Alcor as a corporate entity should fail in their business, this legal trust would take over and has enough money invested in low risk, long-term investments to keep their facility maintained in perpetuity (at least in theory.)

This same approach needs to be taken with digital information that someone wants to keep for an extended period of time. As an example, a person could purchase space on a storage server for a one time cost of say $1,000.00 for 50GB today. This seems very high, but consider that this really is just a one time purchase; users would never have to pay again for the space for their information, and part of the money would be used in a legal trust to ensure that in the event that the storage management company were to fail that the trust could take over and keep your data on-line in perpetuity.

Also keep in mind that there are certain real expenses (which will decrease over time) involved with maintaining data at this level of redundancy and availability. As an example, let’s assume four copies (that’s now 200 actual Gigabytes for the 50GB you have purchased) on high-speed, redundant storage arrays located on four different continents available online 24/7 over high-speed connections, along with a “hard” back-up archive located in a decommissioned missile silo.

As times moves on, your data would have to be migrated to new systems and new storage technology. Unlike the “freezing a human body” business model, costs would come down over time as storage technology was improved and updated. In 20 years the cost to maintain 50GB would be an order of magnitude, less than today.

This storage area would not be a place to host images for web sites and blogs, but a place to keep data that you want to keep for a lifetime. At the time of creation you would also be able to set inheritance rights for your information, so that the generations to come would have access to it. Encrypted personal information could be marked for deletion upon your death.

Steps need to be taken now to create something like this so that we don’t lose an entire generation’s visual historic record. Although my grandkids may not be able to rummage through old trunks of photos in an attic, they might be able to find them in some digital repository that still lets them see their family’s history.

I hope I will not be part of a lost generation…

#Updated February 18th, 2010
Holy crap, I just saw a company on-line doing EXACTLY that I laid out in this blog post…. Check them out Swiss Picture Bank

You have to be a US Citizen, and willing to keep it in an indoor climate controlled room where it can be put on display.

I’m in for $50, who’s with me?

Here’s a link to the NY Times Article.

<DISCLAIMER>
First, before I start telling this story, I want to be clear that *I* was the person who was being crazy here, and the girl in question was put into a very uncomfortable position.

I was an over zealous lonely geek who was willing to try whatever it took to impress my first real crush.

Personally I blame 18 years of watching romantic comedies, watching guys doing outlandish things that got them the girl, where in the real world it would just get them a restraining order or arrested.
</DISCLAIMER>

Back Story
I was 18, never been on a date, never kissed a girl, and was a card carrying member of Nerds of America. In most ways I am sure I was similar to tens of thousands of nerds all over America, socially awkward, looking for acceptance, and starved for affection.

The one thing that I did have going for me at the time was that I landed a good paying job (for 1988) at a post production company that colorized old movies. AFT paid me ten dollars an hour, and I thought I had won the fucking lottery

The Girl
I had a few minor crushes in High School, but my first real all consuming crush I ever had, let’s call her Kim (I have changed the names to protect the innocent).

I met Kim through some mutual friends, and was instantly smitten, not only was she nice to me, she was interested in similar nerdy/geeky things, had a bit of an air of mystery about her, and shared my sense of humor, oh and she was smoking hot.

What she did not share with me was a mutual attraction, and that is where our story really gets started.

The Idea
Also during this period in my life I became good friends with one of the guys at AFT ,Gary, and Gary was REALLY into buried Treasure books.

I don’t mean the “Where is Black Beards Gold” books, but instead books where the author has buried something of really high value, and then writes a book with clues on how to find it.

The first of which was called Masquerade painted by Kit Williams, the book gave clues to where he had hidden a jeweled golden hare had he had created and hidden somewhere in Briton. Needless to say it was a huge hit, and sparked creation of the second such contest.

The current book that Gary was trying to crack was “Treasure, Search for the Golden Horse” and as I was helping him try and find the solution, I had an idea, and idea that ultimately became what you could call one of the greatest bad plans I’v ever had.

I decided that I had one shot at going from friend to something else and Kim’s 18th Birthday was approaching in Oct, approximately 8 months away.

My plan was to create such a wildly imaginative, romantic, time intensive gift, that she would see me for who I really was.

You can see where things are about to go pear shaped.

The Plan
Although I’m fantastic with ideas, I’m not an artist, which means i would have to outsource just about everything, so I had to have a complete plan before I could start farming the pieces out.

In a nut shell I wrote down everything I could think of that she liked, and from that list, create a mythology, a prize, and clues that would ultimately become the building blocks of the project.

Kim played the flute, and loved medieval imagery, dolphins, adventures, emeralds, puzzles, fantasy art, etc. So I started to work out how to involve all of these into the aforementioned hair brained plan.

Design

Synopsis: I would give her a book for her birthday detailing a story of a Princess (yes of course it was her) that had to rescue her little brother from demons that stolen him in the night.

Somewhere along on her adventures she was given a silver flute that she would ultimately use to summon a spectral army to defeat the demons and return her bother back home. Only the next morning to realize she had lost the silver flute at some point during the battle.

My first problem was that I needed to get a writer to write the story for the book, since it obviously wasn’t going to be me, so I hired Gary to be the writer, and had him place the elements into the story that needed to happen, I guess Gary could say this was his first spec writing gig.

Although Gary did a great job, I ask another fiend Ted, to come in and make some changes, and punch it up a bit story wise. Ted also did all of the original illustrations for the book, about 12 pieces in all, and did a bang up job on each of them.

Then of course I needed to get it printed, this was before laser printers were around, so I used a contact at a type setting company to type set the book for me in a nice looking layout/font, and then got it bound in leather.

Next up was trying to find someone that could make a solid silver flute, it’s not what you would call an everyday item, especially since I wanted it to look like something out of a fantasy novel, so after a few months of hunting around I found a local silver smith who would take the job on. Four months later I was handed a solid silver flute, and really nasty bill.

Next up I found a local graphic artist to create the map, I wanted something challenging, and yet not something that was going to have her still working on it day later. So we created a really nice parchment map that had her astrological constellation in the middle, with a poem around the outside.

Looked like something out of Time Bandits if you remember that movie, then if you folded the map just right, the star constellation changed to that of a map to a park near her house, and the poem if you followed these lines said something like “Look you under third tree from right, park of childhood youth”

I made the wooden box for the flue since I couldn’t find anyone to do it, and I placed the flute in it, and locked it with a little emerald encrusted key.

All in all it was about eight months of my life working on the project, and wouldn’t you know it, about two months before her birthday she started casually seeing someone.

Obviously this sucked balls, but I was to far down the path to stop, I had spent so much of my time, energy and creativity on this thing, I had to see it through.

Execution
The night of her Birthday came and went, and well, you can guess how this story ends. I’m sure she was very flattered, but in the end it wasn’t going to change how she felt about me, and stress of putting her in such an uncomfortable situation took a toll on our friendship so we ended up drifting apart as friends.

In the end though, I’m glad I did it, I’d rather be the person that was capable creating something like that, even having failed, than be the person who aways thought about it, but never tried. I would rather be The Man in the Arena.

http://mashable.com/2010/01/21/kindle-app-store/

I love my Kindle, it’s a fantastic piece of hardware, so this announcement should be very interesting, considering the success that Apple has enjoyed on the iPhone/iTouch, and to do it so close to the possible iTablet launch… going to make for an interesting year.

I guess it would be hard for you to really feel what it’s like to be adopted, just like it’s probably not possible for me to feel what it’s like to not be adopted, but recently I had someone ask me this question and I was noodling it over, so although I probably can’t convey every nuance of it, I might be able to give you some insight.

My Own Background
First we can start with my background, I was born in 1970 here in San Diego California, for the next few months of my life I was kept with foster parents or in a communal home for children, until they found a home for me.

When my parents adopted me there were given the briefest oral history of my biological parents you can imagine, things like my grand father was an engineer, I was part American Indian, and I was of Irish, Scottish background as well.

Other than that, they got dick for any background information.

For the next 30 years of my life nothing much changed. They told me I was adopted before I even understood what it even meant. I thought all kids were like that at one point, and it took awhile to understand that not everything worked that way.

You might have wondered during this process, did I ever think about my biological parents as my REAL parents, and my folks as my adopted parents? NEVER not once, not ever. That kinda thing just doesn’t occur since my Mother and Father are the only parents I have ever known, they raised me, they held me when I cried etc. There can be, and never will be others that I think of like that.

However, both my parents were supportive of me looking for my biological parents if I ever wanted to, they told me that on several occasions. They both understand they are my parents and nothing will ever change that, but they wanted to be supportive.

I have considered looking for my biological parents, but mostly more out of curiosity than anything else. One thing about being adopted, you have never seen anyone with your own facial features, and let me tell you, that idea really trips me out that somewhere out there, there are people that kinda look like me.

I even got curious enough to talk to the court to release my adoption records, at least the stuff that wasn’t sealed.

They gave me a two page report, saying that my mother and father came from Kansas, that my father stepped on a toe popper in Vietnam and came home, got my biological mother pregnant and she came to San Diego where her sister lived to have me, she was 18.

None of this was a huge surprise to me, as it was common at the time and I knew that, but what did surprise me was that were was a microfiche copy of a letter sent from my biological mother to my social worker two months after I was born that they enclosed with the information.

Reading that letter was like taking a taking a baseball to the face. I had no idea it was coming, and in a thousand years didn’t think it would effect me, but when I read it, I quietly closed the door to my office (I was at work) and proceeded to get fairly emotional for about 30 minutes.

Although I don’t view this woman as my mother, this was the person that choose to bring me into this world, and before me I had a two page, hand written letter. It was a powerful thing, and something that I was not expecting to ever see.

Before this event I had considered hiring a private investigator to look for my biological parents, getting all of the findings and putting them in a folder. I would give the folder to a close friend and say “Read this, and tell me if I was to read it”.

One thing I learned from other adopted kids who went looking for their biological parents, is that you can’t “unsee” something. What if they were living in poverty, would I feel the responsibility to help etc?

I’v met people that did the whole phone call with “Does the date August 30th 1970 stand out to you” kinda thing. Sometimes it’s a joyous reunion, and other times it’s ended to finding out you a were dirty secret they hoped would stay secret.

In the end I decided to wait before I did anything and leave the decision to a future Kevin to decide.

You might be wondering “Well if they are not that important to you, why look?”, and the answer is I am damn curious to see someone that has my facial features, to at least understand my heritage and maybe even meet my biological parents as peers.

It’s complicated set of feelings there that is really hard to describe if you haven’t been through it., but curiosity is chief among them, but again, it’s hard to explain.

Imagine young Jor-El, happy with his parents, in Kansas no less, but still feeling that tug of curiosity about his home world. (If you don’t get the reference, sorry, it’s a geek thing)

So there you have it, I don’t think there are really any Con’s of being adopted other than not having a good understanding of your families medical history, and the positives are that you are the only kid on the street that gets to be Superman when your playing since everyone else’s parents are obviously not from Krypton.

Oh, and the day that I have a child, will be the first time I see my features in another human being, and that will be nothing short of magical.

PS. Biological parents names were Linda and Jerry (The Unlucky), the unlucky part I added i my head in reference to the toe popper.

Also if your a die hard gamer, this is not going to apply to you.  The information may be  beneficial to you, but since your life is mostly defined by the frame rate on your video card, you can just take this as informational.

This article is really directed at those people out there that are running 3-4 year old machine, particularly those who use notebooks, who are not avid gamers but people who are avid internet users, who browse the web, download videos, use Photoshop etc.

These people own machines that are 3-4 years into their life , and their machine has just become slow over time, it just doesn’t seem to have that same speed as when they first bought it.

They might have reinstalled Windows and enjoyed a speedier machine for a few weeks or months, but then sure enough it was back to that old sluggish beast of a machine that they had before, and now they are considering buying a new machine.

I’m here to tell you that you might want to re-think that.

You see, large companies experience these same things with their machines that they give users, and they also tend to load them down with all types of things that end users never would, so our “slow down creep” issues tend to be much more pronounced than that of your home machine.

They load theirs down with virus scanners, malware blockers, software firewalls, software inventory agents, backup agents, hardware inventory agents, compliance engines, etc.  So if you imagine your machine carrying around a knapsack of things to keep in running, imagine that ours carry around a 50lb rucksack of crap.

The end result is that after a few years corporate users, much like yourselves,  start to complain that they need a new machine, that their machine has just become unusable, slow to boot, etc and ask for the powers that be to give them a shiny new notebook so that they can once again have that snappy machine that they remember getting three years ago.

Since all companies are trying to save money we decided at my company to take a long hard look at why machines tend to slow down over time, and if there was a way to fix the problems without incurring the cost of a new machine.

What we found might make you raise and eyebrow.

I won’t go into the gory details of what we found, but it really boiled down to there is no one thing that is occurring to slow our machines, down, but it’s a combination of issues compounded on an aging machine that creates an environment that causes the machine to slow down over time.

While although there was no one thing that was singularly responsible for machine slow down, we did find a solution that fixed 99% of the slow down problems, and that is move to a solid state disk.

The increase in overall machine speed was nothing short of amazing in initial testing and it became very apparent that users did not need a “new machine” with a faster processor, memory, blah blah blah, but that they have been I/O bound for years and held back by a piece of technology that has not advanced at the same rate as the other components.

For years most of the computer industry was set on selling people faster CPU’s, 2Ghz vs 1.90Ghz etc.  What we as the consumers of the machines failed to realize was that the Achilles heel of our computers we were buying was the hard disk, which for all intents and purposes has not gotten that much faster in the last 15 years compared to CPU’s, memory, video cards etc.

In other words, the disk’s performance sucks.

However the manufactures of the CPU’s, Motherboards, etc only make money when we buy new machines, so it was not in their best interest to point out that ….yeah… CPU’s got “fast enough” a few years back for most people, and since that was’t really conducive to selling more new machines they left that out of the marketing materials.

The Test

T-60 – (Time to Boot 12:30)
We took a 40 month old T-60 notebook running Windows XP that the person had major complaints about, and did a boot time test where they would power the machine on, boot into Windows, Login, open Outlook and send a test message.

We found on the older machine took about twelve minutes and thirty seconds, not what I would call very snappy.

T-400 – (Time to Boot 5:40)
Then we found a relatively new three month old machine,a T-400, and did the same boot time test and found that the T-400‘s time to reach the same point in the boot process was around five minutes and forty seconds, not bad, and if I was the guy with the T-60 you can imagine how I would want a new machine looking this T-400.

T-60 – (w/Solid State Disk 1:46)
We then did a block for block copy of the T-60 machine to a SSD so that we preserved all of the fragmentation, bloated registry etc, and did the same test, and found that the T-60 was able to reach the boot process goal in just one minute forty six seconds.

This was a machine that was 40 months old, and was three generations older in it’s CPU, Memory Speed, Graphics, etc.

Seeing the impact of what an SSD could do for an aging system it became apparent that we could retrofit our existing machines with an SSD drive for about $350, and give them back a machine that was faster (by a long shot) than a band new machine that was just three months old, and also save the company millions of dollars in the process.

I doubt the first generation of SSD’s would have given us anywhere close to this performance, since they were more of a novelty item than anything else, but with the current generation of NAND Flash memory technology, it’s possible to deliver a complete silent drive that uses less power, and has no moving parts and breathes new life into an existing ailing machine.

Well there you have it, so before you run out and buy a new shiny notebook or desktop for Christmas because yours is just to slow, think about the use case that I just mentioned and if your not some crazy gamer, or trying to find Pi, then a low cost SSD just might be for you.

Just for the record you can find SSD’s that are almost as fast in the consumer space for right around $240, in fact here is a link to one on Amazon.

I love the company that I work for, they have done nothing but treat myself and the other employees with the utmost respect and they have been there for me most of my adult life as a positive force.

Throughout this journey I have taken with them I have worn many hats, Novell Systems Administrator, Windows System Administrator, Software Development Manager, and Technologist.  At some point or another I have probably worked with most areas of IT at some level or another, and because of that I think it’s given me an understanding of the challenges and issues that we have faced both over the years and today as a large 15,000+ employee company.

So having reflected upon all of this, I sat down and started rethinking my job, and came to the conclusion that I,  like many others out there, might suffer the problem of being unable to see the forest for the trees, when it comes to what my job is vs what I do for work.

My job is not the Windows 7 Rollout or launching an e-commerce site for Qualcomm.  It’s not software patching, or hardware roadmaps.

My job is  looking for ways to bring our chips to market sooner, to make our legal team more nimble to defend us in litigation, to enable our engineers to be more productive, to find ways to reduce costs, and to overall improve the value of the company for the stock holders, and I can help achieve these goals by some of the tasks I just mentioned.

I think more thought needs to be given to the bigger picture.

When you consider what I just said, I imagine if I sat down with the top eight business unit executives at Qualcomm and said “If I could fix, improve, or achieve just one thing in each of your businesses that would have the greatest impact to Qualcomm, what would that be?”

I doubt they would be asking me migrate to the new 8.3.x e-mail client, or look at moving to 15k drives in the Hitachi disk array.

I believe they might say things like  “Reduce our build times from hours to minutes”, “Allow any attorney to have access to case information anywhere at any time”, or “Make Gobi the ubiquitous solution for computer OEMS”.

These are the strategic goals that would help our company succeed, and my job as an engineer should be to determine how best I can help achieve them working in IT.

To borrow a phrase from the green movement, “Think globally, act locally” might be a better way for IT engineers to think of our job, in the framework of a large corporation.

Instead, more often than not I think we suffer from a combination of isolationism and disconnection from goals that leave us thinking about success and failure in the terms of our department rather than the long term goals of the company.

For those of you who don’t work in the technology sector, much of what IT engineers are focused on, is ensuring that everything is up and running, and that users have access to their data.   One of the easiest ways of doing this is by not introducing change into a working system unless necessitated  by capacity need, security risk, or some other reason that would make the risk of disrupting an existing system worth while.

Unfortunately this has often become the primary or sometimes even sole metric in measuring success for an IT department, which just re-enforces the desire on the part of IT to not want to initiate change into an existing working system and to not take risk and stifling innovation.

The culture of “maintaining” the existing status quo, and keeping an adherence to extensively planned evolution has become what I believe to be an Achilles Heel of the IT culture and although I’m not advocating radical risk, I am a proponent of calculated risk that could lead to a competitive advantage for the company.

So I’m rethinking my job and how I  keep the big picture in mind, and not lose ourselves in our own world, and that we are a cog in a much larger machine.

Not an easy task, and effecting change is never an easy process, but I’m not hired to do just the easy tasks or the popular ones but to do the ones that will help the company succeed in what is a very competitive world.

So, being a geek myself I never get stuck trying to come up with ideas to buy other geeks, I just ask myself what is it that I want, and then apply it to others, saves time, and it’s almost 100% spot on.

So this year I decided to sit down and give folks who are less knowledgeable in the ways of the geek an insight into what their geek might want under the tree this year.   Obviously each geek is unique (just like everyone else) and have their own take on things, but the list below has some obviously geeky items, as well as a few that might truly impress your favorite propeller head.

COMPUTER GEEKS

First up are the computer geeks, now your geek might fall into several of these areas, but usually computers are a common element in any geek house.

	Kingston 128GB SSD Solid State Drive
	Ok, so here’s the deal, for years now hard drives in mobile computers have sucked, we all knew it, but there wasn’t much we could do about it until now.   By moving to a solid state disk you can take a four year old computer and make it seem like it’s a brand new machine.   Great way to breathe some life into an older machine and not shell out $1200 for a entirely new notebook. Make sure your geeks notebook takes “SATA” drives, and not “IDE” , type the model number into Google and find somewhere where it gives the specifications for that model, SATA=WIN  IDE=FAIL Approximate Cost: $245
	CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

	G-Technology 1TB External Hard Drive
	Yes you can find cheaper external drives, yes Best Buy has some really cheap ones that look just as good, but here’s why I love G-Technology.  They answer the phone… no really, they have real people answer the phone in their technical support dept, and they know what they are talking about.  Your call is not being bounced off a satalite to India where someone is reading from a script and asking you if you also might want to switch phone carriers. G-Technology also understand that heat kills hard drives and they do a damn good job of using the entire enclosure (the metal around the hard drive) as a big heat sink to pull the heat away from the drive. This particular model sports USB, 400MB Fire Wire, 800MB Fire Wire, and eSata, which means it will plug into damn near anything.   If they need more space than this, your geek has a porn habit, and you should get them a Drobo. Approximate Cost: $179
	CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

	Drobo
	Behold the kick ass power of the Drobo. What does the Drobo do you might ask?  The Drobo lets your geek store a crap ton of data in this nifty little box on hard drives and still keep it safe if one of the drives takes a crap. The magic of the Drobo lets your geek use their existing drives, and even drives that are not the same sized, and all geeks have a ton of old drives laying around, so this lets them put them all in a nice little box and makes them look like one big drive to the computer, all the while ensuring that their precious collection of…. um….. wild life photos are kept safe. Approximate Cost: $249
	CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

	Logitech Webcam Pro 9000
	Yes, I know web cams have been around forever, why would my geek want a newer one?  Well this new generation of web cams sport HD video and a 16×9 aspect ratio just their their geeky HD TV’s.   The logic sports a kick ass Carl Zeiss lens (Carl kicks lens ass) and auto focus. Of note here, if your geek has a Mac, don’t buy this since they have one built in, and Mac people we all weird if their computer parts don’t color coordinate. Approximate Cost: $65 Extra credit, buy two and then you and your geek can video chat… hot.
	CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

CREATIVE GEEKS

Your geek might be one of those creative types, may into photography, art, drawing etc.  I’v tried to put together a few unique ideas that will make your geek swoon with delight.

	Lecia D-Lux 4 Digital Camera – Approx $699
	This camera kicks all kinds of ass. Yes, I know it’s not a Nikon, or a Cannon, it’s from some euro sounding company called Lecia, but trust me on this, Lecia has been around forever, and makes some kick ass camera that put out just amazing images. This one is a 10mp (Trust me if your not doing prints more mega pixels doesn’t mean better pictures, it just means you can see nose hairs) and takes video as well.   It’s small enough to fit in the pocket, but put out images comparable to a $1,400 DSLR camera. Approximate Cost: $699
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	Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet – Approx $350
	If you have one of those creative geeks who loves to draw, paint, etc, then the Wacom tablet is for you. I picked one of these up at Comic-Con two years ago and I love it.It allows you to draw on the surface just like you would with a pen, can detect what angle the pen is at, how much pressure your putting on it etc.  Fully compatible with Photoshop, Illustrator, and other applications that your geek uses. These new ones even come with “on tablet” controls to change ink, pen type etc. Approximate Cost: $350
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	Final Cut Express 3.5 – Approx $150
	If your geek is the movie making type, or a up and coming YouTube star, and they want to kick up their game from iMovie, Final Cut Express could be the answer if they are on a Mac. Final Cut Express is the little brother to Final Cut Pro (which I list later on).  It picks up where iMovie leaves off and opens up some truly professional editing tools for your geek to become famous with.  Note, this only works on a Mac, if they have a PC, have a look at Adobe Premier Approximate Cost: $299
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GAMER GEEKS

OK, disclaimer here.  If your geek is a huge gamer there is a good chance they have one or all of these titles, so it’s best to make sure if they already own it.  Also often these games come out for various systems such as XBOX, PS3, Wii, etc, so be sure to check which system they have as well.

	Dragon Age – Origins
	My friend Paul came over and was giddy to show me a game trailer for this thing, and I almost went out and bought a XBOX just to play the damn thing.  Really kick ass RPG, amazing graphics and game play and it’s got FUCKING DRAGONS in it, how bad ass is that? Check out the kick ass trailer here. Remember find out if your geek has a XBOX or PS3 before buying. Approximate Cost: $65
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	Uncharted 2: Among the Thieves
	The second game that Paul wanted to show me was this, Uncharted 2.  Evidently it has some of the best story writing anyone has seen in a game in a long fucking time. It’s compelling, interesting, and the game play really kicks the lamas ass as well.  It’s been compared to playing inside of a movie. Check out the even more kick ass trailer here. This is for PS3 only Approximate Cost: $50
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	Left 4 Dead 2
	You can’t go wrong with zombies, and this game kicks so much ass, it kicks it’s own ass! The game can be different every time you play due to the way it was created.  Play with a group or play on your own, this is probably the best zombie video game to date.There are few things more geeky that mixing zombies and video games, so this is a sure fire winner. Probably has one of the best video game trailers of all time, click here to check it out Approximate Cost: $50
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Sci- Fi Movie Geek

2009 was an amazing year for science fiction movies, and I might even so on record as saying it was one of the best ever.

	Moon
	The entire movie has just one person in it, Sam Rockwell, and he pulls off an amazing performance as the sole astronaut on a moon base. Directed by David Bowie’s son (yes that David Bowie) it was one of the best Sci-Fi movies I have ever soon, well done, not cheesy, and really original.  Get it on Blue-Ray if your geek has a Blue-Ray player. Approximate Cost: $50
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	District 9
	This was honestly one of the best sci-fi movies that I have ever seen.  It’s currently tied for first place with Blade Runner in my book, and really is not only an amazing sci-fi movie, but a scathing look at social issues . The look and feel of the movie is incredible visceral and has an element of realism that is not often seen in sci-fi movies.   Be sure to get this on Blue-Ray if your geek has it, and I for one am picking up the two disk set. Approximate Cost: $50
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Mobility Geek

It’s no secret that I recently decided to go 100% mobile with my computer setup.  I realized I was only using my notebook, and have decided to make the move to try and make all of my tech/geek stuff as mobile as possible.  These are a few of the tools that will help keep your geek on the move.

	MiFi Mobile Access Point
	This  is amazingly bad ass.  It’s a mobile WiFi hotspot that uses the cellular network to reach the internet.  There is one button that turns it on and off.  When you turn it on, suddenly your computer, phone, etc all see a WiFi hotspot that you can use. Since it just uses your regular WiFi connection there are no crazy drivers that fuck up your machine, and you can share it with up to 4 other people so that you can all be on-line at the same time.   Battery lasts about 3 hours in normal use I have found, and if you’re near a plug you can go forever. Approximate Cost: NA / It’s free with a contract
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	Amazon Kindle
	ONE OF THE MOST BAD ASS THINGS TO HAVE EVER BEEN MADE FOR GEEKS No, I’m not kidding. For someone on the go, or hell just sitting at home this thing is amazing.  It’s an ebook reader that is connected wireless to your Amazon account, so you can buy books and such over the air. Not only are the books cheaper on the Kindle you can get them RIGHT NOW, when you buy a book on the Kindle it’s downloaded to your device in about 5 seconds.   No more running into the crappy airport book stores and paying list price for something, you just click, and you have your book in seconds. Did I also mention that the wireless service is over the cellular network and FREE FOR LIFE?  Yeah pretty bad ass. The other bad ass thing about these are, when you purchase a book you buy the right to own the book, so if you loose your Kindle, just down load it again for free!   Need to make room because you filled it up with 2,000 books?  Just delete some knowing you can always download them again. The screen looks like paper, so it doesn’t wear your eyes out, and you can control the font size, so if your vision is not up to reading the tiny print of books, hit a button and suddenly the text of the entire book is huge. The Amish are jealous of this one, and your geeks friends will be too. Approximate Cost: $250
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	Flip Video Camera
	Since I’m a video geek, I get a ton of people asking me what’s the best camera to get to take home movies and such, which one has he best picture, features etc. I tell them “The best camera, is the one you have with you” The problem with big expensive cameras is they are just that, big and expensive, so people don’t lug them around all the time, or if they do, they are afraid something will happen to it etc. The Flip camera takes good video, is brain dead simple, and fits in your pocket.  You can’t beat it for the price, and it does 720P video, and you just plug it into your computer. Ideal for home movies…. if you know what I mean. Approximate Cost: $129
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Podcasting/On-Line Video Geek

Maybe your geek is trying to become internet famous, maybe they want to host their own news show, either way here are some cheap ways to get them on-line and still put on a quality show for the masses.

	Flashmic
	If your geek is going down the audio podcasting route and maybe wants to take the show on the road, this thing is amazing.  Not cheap, but it’s a professional microphone that records to a solid state card.  There are no cables, or wireless options to figure out, you just turn it on and go. Ideal for man on the street interviews and locations where you need to be able to fit your entire studio into your pocket. All around fantastic product. Approximate Cost: $999
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	Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera
	Ok, this is a bit more than the flip camera, but not by much.  It can even do 1080P video, but chances are your geek isn’t going to need to use that option. What sets this camera apart from the flip is the fact that it can take external audio, why is that important you might ask?   Because using the mic on the camera sounds like ass. People are often willing to watch crappy video, but they are not willing to listen to crappy audio, by having an external audio port on this camera you can attach a quality microphone to it, and sound like a pro! Approximate Cost: $199
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	AZDEN  Lavaliere Mic
	This is an ideal mic to go with the Kodak video camera above.  Small discreet and 10x better audio that what you would get out of the mic on the camera. These things are delicate so best to start out on the cheaper side and work your way up to the ones that are 100’s of dollars, maybe they can use their new found internet fame to buy one of those. Approximate Cost: $24
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