Paul-Watkins.com - Life, Politics, Technology, Randomness

Mar
28

Gesture Keyboards

I have become addicted to using my phone keyboard thanks to a gesture keyboard. Thanks to my phones latest update I now have a native gesture keyboard. For those that don’t know what that is, it allows you to type by just drawing over the letters you want to use lifting your finger between words.

I wrote my last post using it and am using it right now. I find that I can type much faster this way. For those of you not running the latest version Android, I encourage you to download an app that will add gesture functionality to your phone. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Mar
28

By Paul

My latest thoughts on family

Category: Life Thoughts

Lately I have been thinking a lot about family. I’ve been told that’s normal for someone working with his fiancé to plan a wedding. She comes from a large family and I from a small one. I have definitely been having a lot of fun experiences with it all. As I
talk to people I know and see how their families work, I’ve realized a few things that seem to be a theme in successfully joining two families together.

The first thing relates to mother and father in-laws. They should be respected as you would (or should) respect your own parents. You may not always agree with them and you don’t necessarily have to follow their advice, but respecting they have an opinion seems to go a long ways.

The second thing is compromise. It’s important for everyone to know that things will inherently change when two people get engaged and married. Occasions and traditions may have to be adapted to help accommodate everyone as much as possible. It will never be perfect but even attempting to make it work is a step in the right direction.

The third big thing is communication. Everyone has to be open and honest about how they feel and what’s going on. Partial communication and miscommunication only lead to hurt feelings.

I think this post is really here to serve as more of a reminder to me than anything. Hopefully this all serves me well in the future.

Sep
24

By Paul

IU Kokomo Well Represented at IU’s Statewide IT Conference

Category: IU

Today marks the beginning of IU’s Statewide IT conference for 2012. Hosted this year on the IU Bloomington campus, the conference kicks off with a debate on just how secure the cloud really is followed by IU CIO Brad Wheeler’s keynote address at 10:30am. You can watch these two events live here.

The afternoon today and the morning tomorrow are filled with breakout sessions on a variety of topics ranging from teaching and learning to leveraging enterprise systems to using the powerful tools at our disposal to solve problems instead of purchasing more sets of expensive tools.

During the summer, groups submitted proposals to host breakout sessions on these topics and of those submissions two were chosen. Today at 5pm in the Walnut Room of the the Indiana Memorial Union, Manager of Systems Administration, Paul Watkins will host a session discussing changing the way systems administration works, both for administrators and end users. Tomorrow morning at 10am Executive Director, Craig Swoverland, Digital Media Specialist, Ed Ventura, and Manger of Web Services, Rudy Kizer will host a session on the power of WCMS. During their session they are expected to showcase some of their work with standard and touch digital signs and present a call to action to the development community to work together. Archived video of these presentations should be available following the conference.

Each year IU’s Statewide IT Conference gives IT professionals from all around the university the opportunity to come together, collaborate, and form relationships that can be carried forward to provide new innovations for the university community and beyond.

You can find out more about this year’s Statewide IT Conference by visiting http://statewideit.iu.edu. You can also follow the conversation on Twitter by looking for #switc.

Sep
3

By Paul

Weekend Project – Episode 1

Category: Life Thoughts

With the girlfriend on vacation and the sky dropping water fairly consistently, what is a guy to do on his weekend? That’s right, find something broken in the house and fix it. Hence we have a (deep announcer voice) WEEKEND PROJECT! For tonight’s project I chose to fix something that really was broken – and no, I didn’t break it just so I could fix it. In fact, I bought the house with this problem. You see, one of the previous owners of the house apparently thought he was a master electrician. I have found light switched wired to nothing and some very odd circuit layouts. Needless to say, he thought he would do some work to the over head light in the garage. When I bought the house, this is how the light looked. For reference, this is also how it looked earlier today.

I do some testing to find out if Mr. Master Electrician was attempting to wire this thing to a light switch or what. After some testing…nope. Constant power through the junction box and right into the outlet that is feeding the garage door opener.

Time for a trip to the ~~hardware~~ home improvement store. Yay! I go. I buy stuff. It’s what capitalism tells me to do.

I return home to make this mess look better. I don’t want others that see my garage to think that I don’t care about unsightly electrical problems. I have a reputation to keep here in the neighborhood as the guy who just doesn’t care when his lawn gets really tall. There is only so much not caring I can do.

So, a few wire nuts later I am ready to place my cover. Cover fits. Excellent. Now for the screws……about those screws. While searching for those screws, I send a text to the girlfriend, “I lost my screws ” Her reply was, “In your head?” Thanks hun. Love you too.

Okay, I found the screws – the real ones – the jury is still out about the ones for my head.

Much better!

I still need some light though. The garage door opener light doesn’t cut it for long periods of time and isn’t the most energy efficient 120w light bulb on the market.

Oh no! An excuse to hang the shop light that was on sale that I happened to purchase while at the store has arisen!

<Insert random unnecessary sawing and hammering noises>….and we add the zip tie. TADA!

Nice bright light in the garage that I can leave on while I work!

While not the perfect solution, it is a quick and easy solution to turn an unsightly electrical problem into something functional. The best part is that I have just under $30 in the whole project.

Well that concludes this weekend project. Stay tuned as I might find another one next weekend!