The new year is upon us and as I do each year it’s the time to take a look back at the year just ended. Mobile Tech Manor saw many big events and changes that have played a major role in my life and my work here on jkOnTheRun. Join me in this look back at 2008.
2008 began with a bang
Last year started like most with a big trip to attend the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The show is massive and can be intimidating to cover but is the geek’s Utopia with so much cool gear in one place. The show was disappointing with nothing exciting appearing there for the first time. There wasn’t anything at the show surprising with the exception of a video of Kevin and his son Tyler appearing on the 30-foot screen at the Asus international press event. That was a real hoot.
Days after returning from the CES trip I had one of the biggest scares of my life when I had the minor stroke. That was an event that made me adjust my lifestyle and think long and hard about reducing the stress in my life. That thought process would factor in a big decision I made later in the year that I’ll cover in a bit. My recovery from the stroke was a complete success and I’m probably in the best health I have been in a very long time. Sometimes you have to heed the warnings, no matter how low they are fired over the bow.
The new Mobile Tech Manor
A big event the past year was moving to a new house in the summer. The move went as well as one can go but as is usual it took months to get truly settled in. Having a new office makes a move doubly impactful and my entire work routine had to be adjusted to the new digs. The new office is smaller than the one in the old house so that meant assessing my needs from a gear standpoint which led to trimming the toolkit significantly.
I sold three laptops this year and simplified my work setup intentionally. I did this to streamline my workflow and remove any complications that interfered with my routine. This was a big part of my effort to reduce my day-to-day stress and it has worked beautifully. I have long worked with a Mac and a Windows laptop sitting side-by-side on the desk and I felt the constant switching from one platform to the other was creating more work than I needed.
I always have Windows notebooks that I am evaluating which added to the switching complications so getting down to just a Mac workspace has made things much simpler. I still have at least one Windows system on the side “evaluation” desk but I don’t have to worry about keeping all my stuff synchronized between the two platforms continually. I still get to play with the latest and greatest Windows systems, I just don’t have to make them fit into my actual work.
The biggest decision ever- bye bye career
Easily the biggest event of 2008 was selling jkOnTheRun to GigaOM and leaving my real career of 25+ years. That qualifies as huge in anyone’s book and it certainly was in mine.
I have always separated my “real” job with the work here on the site over the years although I’ve shared how the gadgetry has played a role in that work. Since I quit that career there’s nothing keeping me from sharing with you what I did for so long.
I worked over 25 years as a geophysicist in the oil industry. Specifically, I have been working with 3D seismic imaging projects that produce “cubes” of seismic data that picture the subsurface. You have probably seen them on TV at some point. These images depict the rock formations of the subsurface which are used to determine where to drill for oil, define oil and gas reservoirs, help place offshore oil platforms, etc. They are also used increasingly in environmental processes.
The career as a geophysicist has moved me around a lot over the years. I have lived in South America twice, Denver, San Antonio and Houston. I have traveled all over the world performing this seismic imaging work. I went independent five years ago and have been a consulting geophysicist for oil companies since then.
The decision to end this career was incredibly difficult as you might imagine but selling jkOnTheRun was the vehicle to make it possible. My primary client last year was pushing very hard for me to go to work for them full-time, something that would not make continuing the work here on the site possible. That was not something I even wanted to consider so when GigaOM stepped in it was a real godsend for me.
To write about mobile tech full-time has been a dream of mine for a very long time and with GigaOM willing to make that a reality the decision to step away from the geophysical career was much easier. Even so it was still hard to walk away but I am very glad I did so. This job rocks!
The big storm
The hurricane season in 2008 was as bad as they come with Hurricane Ike hitting the Houston area dead on. I knew we were in trouble when the weather experts predicted that Ike would be passing directly over my house. Ike ended up moving slightly to the east but still hammered Houston mercilessly.
While I have never doubted how powerful a hurricane can be viewing the destruction while driving around the area after the storm passed certainly drove that home. It was common to see entire buildings ravaged all around another sitting unscathed right in the middle. It made it clear how big a factor luck can be with a massive storm like Ike.
The aftermath of the storm impacted my appreciation of technology in dealing with the lack of power for almost two weeks. You have to get by any way you can and I found my mobile technology made that possible while others around me were simply cut off totally for the duration of the power outage.
I was impressed how the Verizon EV-DO network never had an outage during the Ike event which made them about the only service not knocked out. Even with the entire city of Houston powerless (I think I read over 1.5 million folks were without power after the storm) Verizon kept me online and informed about the storm news. I was able to track the storm aftermath online thanks to EV-DO and that went a long way to making this period bearable. Most folks were cut off not just from the power grid but from the information grid as well but we were able to keep up with the happenings thanks to the Verizon network.
Having multiple mobile computers with batteries made it possible for me to keep working during the power outage. I would run one laptop’s battery dry, pop in the spare and run it dry. Then I would switch to another laptop and start the process all over again. Finding working power was difficult so it was not easy to keep all those batteries charged during the outage but thankfully Starbucks nearby made it open a few days after Ike. Their WiFi hotspot wasn’t working due to provider downtime but I was able to share my EV-DO connection with those sharing the outlets with me. It was the first that most of those present were able to get online and see what was going on so it made me feel good to provide the pipe. It affirmed the benefits of redundant web connectivity for a web worker like me.
Simplifying the work
I have always advocated making one’s work flow as easy as possible and I made a concerted effort to do that in 2008. I sold three laptops, the Fujitsu P1620, HP 2710p and the MacBook Pro. This was done to get back to the basics as far as the daily work goes and to keep things as simple as possible. It’s far easier to use just one system daily and deal with the one operating system.
I settled on the Mac OS as it is simpler than Windows. I know that will set some folks off who disagree with me but that is just my own experience. I find that OS X rarely grabs my attention when I am trying to work which is not what I experience with Windows. Don’t get me wrong, Windows is a fine OS and works well and I am not saying OS X is better or that Windows is not good. I am just saying that for the way I work, OS X stays out of my way better than Windows.
Of the three laptops I sold last year I still really miss the P1620. That small form coupled with the ability to use it in slate mode is just sweet. I miss sitting in my chair with the P1620 in slate mode while surfing the web using the touch interface. Yep, I sure do.
On to 2009
You would have to agree with me that 2008 was a big life-changing year for me. My wife Sheri and I celebrated our 10th anniversary which was a high point in the year.
It was a huge year for us all with the financial melt-down globally. We have seen the economic troubles push us farther from capitalism and closer towards socialism with the “bail-out”. We have seen the election of the first African-American president in the US who has pushed the desire for change to a fevered pace.
I believe that 2009 will be a great year for me personally and for the world. I have an optimistic outlook for the global economy and for the US situation going into this historic period. I hope we see exciting things in the mobile tech space that will make us geeks very happy. Thanks for sharing this time with me, see you next week.
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