Tag: tech

Blog post: twenty years of a blog

Carl Setzer2 Comments

I launched this blog twenty years ago today. It’s rather mind blowing to consider how much has transpired over that time. George W. Bush was President. I still worked at Starbucks, and have had 6 other jobs since. I’ve moved once. I’ve gone through multiple stints of unemployment. A lot of my life has gone into this site.

This site started as a Blogspot page. Years ago, I migrated to self-hosted WordPress. Mainly, I became concerned about the number of services Google has abandoned. Also, WordPress was becoming a key player in the website ecosystem. Having skills and understanding in this system would be powerful. I’ve LONG aspired to move into web development. And here we are.

I’ve moved from executive support to general administrative support to project coordination to tech support and data analytics and management. I’ve documented so many changes in the tech scene, in Seattle, and wrote so many haiku. I’ve evolved, changed, and grown and failed.

I’m glad you’ve come along for the ride. It’s been fascinating. I’m still growing and changing, and my blog will evolve with that. I’m exploring how I want to evolve. One of my goals is to be better at proactivity. To have a plan and a direction. I want my blog, and connected social media to support all this. We’ll see what comes of all this.

So, thanks for reading. I appreciate your support and presence.

Don’t Mess With My Gear!

Carl Setzer

One thing a lot of folks know: I also run and manage sound systems. I started doing this in high school and have been doing sound tech work ever since. Currently, I am the main focus for sound at the event center I work for.

Yesterday I was called by them while at my other job because our Bluetooth transceiver wasn’t working. Long story short, they opted to not bring me in right away, but I needed to tackle this immediately when I got there (which I had planned for early afternoon).

Once I got there, it took me a couple minutes to figure out that someone had pulled the cables out. Argh! Now, in the grand scheme, minor problem. But I struggle with understanding any “why” for this besides simply being a jerk.

Frustrating for my poor morning users who, though they don’t depend on it, do like to use Bluetooth to play music. I do have regular users who do depend on that, though. Playing music from a modern phone via an aux port isn’t so easy anymore.

So, please, don’t mess with my gear! Ugh!

Another Certificate Earned: Agile Project Management

Carl Setzer3 Comments
eyeglasses resting on laptop keyboard close up

I’ve been busy the past few weeks. Today I completed the second-to-last course for the Google Project Management certificate: Agile Project Management. The purpose of this series is to help tie together my years of admin work with my passion for technology. I now just need to finish my capstone project. After that, I will work on the Power BI Certificate.

I’m currently seeking to leverage the disparate parts of my career (the years of admin work, studies of web development, data systems, databases, SQL, my weird love of Excel, and my project management work into a hybrid role that leverages my strengths in organization, communication, and data analysis to facilitate seamless technical operations and enhance digital strategies.

Using Google’s Gemini, I am building plans for this work. I have a solid short-term plan in place, and am working on the medium and long-term parts. I’m pretty pleased with what’s been pulled together. I find it a nice use of AI. It can aggregate and summarize research that would take me hours (at best) or days to do.

I’ve also done some re-design on my website as part of the plan. It’s a key part of my communications and marketing. (Side note: I’m not sure I like this new theme, but I’ll give it a bit and see if it grows on me). I have a fair amount of work to do, so I’ll be tackling this in waves.

Thanks for reading all the way through. I have more to talk about with this journey, so subscribe to stay in touch. Most importantly, I appreciate each and every one of you!

Tech Support Flowchart

Carl Setzer
pexels-photo-4705636.jpeg

As someone who works in IT, I find this flowchart funny. Well, I’m pretty amused by everything that xkcd posts.

Anyway, I hope you have a delightful and refreshing weekend.

Seth Godin’s “The Use (And Design) Of Tools”

Carl Setzer1 Comment

As I read Seth’s post today, I started wondering how tools like AI can be impacted by, or actually impact the attitude of “Too Busy To Learn”. I think one of AI’s key potentials is to make the need to understand the tool’s operation non-essential (think coding).

Mainly, I think the future will be dominated by those who understand the tools, not by the people who can simply operate them.

Ah, Yes…Another Scam

Carl Setzer
scam alert letting text on black background

I posted this article to Facebook last week. My son let me know he received one that day. And I won this lottery today!

This one is text based. Watch for these E-Z Pass texts that state you have an unpaid toll. Well, it’s fraudulent. As always, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK! Report it as a scam or junk text, then delete it.

Oh, and it’s more than E-Z Pass, but also SunPass, Peach Pass, EZDriveMA…and I’m sure others. And I expect this list will expand as the scammers find other passes to spoof.

I expect this one will get larger before it fades into the next scam.

Be safe my friends!

All Hail The Sysadmins!

Carl Setzer
ethernet cables plugged on a server rack

I’ve long loved the webcomic xkcd. This one drifted through my inbox and thought it worthy of all the sysadmins I know.

As far as my own sysadmin skills, I do hate running cables and (shudder) crimping connectors. As I only have one thumb, these evolutions are rather uncomfortable, and sometimes painful.

Anyway, sysadmin types out there, you have my respect and admiration! Keep that uptime high!

Today’s Tech Annoyance

Carl Setzer
young ethnic male with laptop screaming

So, one of the things I do regularly is markup PDF documents. Every time I add text I get the notice below:

No, I don’t need to have someone sign this. I know how to set up e-signing, I’ve done it literally hundreds of times. Quit bugging me, Adobe! I know what I’m doing. Argh! Nagging me every few seconds is, *ahem* annoying.

Yeah, I know, first world problems, but geez, trust your users to know what they’re doing.

Today’s Podcast

Carl Setzer2 Comments
an artificial intelligence illustration on the wall

One of my favorite things is listening to podcasts on my walks. During today’s walk (you can check that out on Strava, if you care) I listened to Saturday’s (June 8) Geekwire podcast: “How This Professor teaches AI and thinks about human creativity“. Featuring Léonard Boussioux, I appreciated his positive outlook on the potential that AI offers. I agree with those folks who think AI is in a hype-cycle. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no gains or innovations that will be coming out of this. I deeply believe this technology will be significantly transformative. However, I doubt it will be as destructive as some predict, nor as positive as others are thinking.

I also appreciate that they touched on the sustainability issues surrounding AI. Huge amounts of energy and water are part of this equation. These will be key elements for the efficacy of this technology.

I have a few ideas that I want to explore with AI tools. These tools will be critical ones to learn and master. I’m confident many jobs that will be replaced by AI, will create new roles on the other side of this equation.

They had a side discussion looking at the ethics of using AI to enhance photography, and what should be disclosed. Todd Bishop, one of Geekwire’s founders, used an AI tool to enhance (de-noise is the phrase they used) an image. When I first heard the situation, I thought that disclosing was unnecessary. Mainly, I don’t see any difference between “de-noising” and color-correcting, or cropping. As they went on and explored the issue, I shifted to thinking disclosure is the wisest course. As I respect the distrust many feel towards AI, so it makes sense to just be conscientious.

There’s so much that AI is challenging in our lives. I really appreciated this unique dive into it.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

More Web Dev Projects

Carl Setzer2 Comments
data codes through eyeglasses

I didn’t post yesterday, so I’ll post about the project I did yesterday and the one I did today. Yesterday, the project was for an Animated Countdown timer. Using CSS and JavaScript to create this animation was pretty cool. My consternation came from a bunch of mistyped elements in my code. Finding those little glitches (like typing “igm” vs “img”) gets wearying after awhile.

Today’s project was an Image Carousel. I only made one code error, but it was a sneaky one. The images would not sit well in their frame. Turns out, I tried to set the size to 500px, but I had a stray “1” in there (1500px…opps). Once I found that, viola!

These are rather small projects, where I’m mostly trying to refresh my understanding of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I want to be far better than I am, even if I don’t end up becoming a coder. I really enjoy this and want to grow.

I also am working on Google’s IT Support Professional and Project Management certificates. Both of these are valuable skills, and useful things to understand regardless of role in IT.