Banks made bad decisions.  They got bailed out, and they are still being given access to a lot of cash for 0% or very very low percentages. This means they can make even more money.

Merchant Accounts, the good and bad.

Banks also give merchant accounts.  These accounts let business do commerce with your credit and debit cards.  They don’t cost the consumer, they cost the merchant.  My business gets charged between 1.8% to 3% + a .20-.30c transaction fee.  In terms we can all understand if we cleared $10k through 400 purchases we paid them somewhere around $320 for the privilege.

Now we work hard not to pass this on to the consumer, we just soak it as a cost of doing business.  The point is that we pay for those cards.

On to debit cards.

Then the government said you can’t charge a heck of a lot more to merchants for those debit cards.  Rates were almost competitive to the above numbers where they used to be pretty cheap.

We like debit, saved us money, but lately, not so much. To the point we stopped asking, “Credit or Debit?” We just charged it credit, made so little difference.

Now banks are pilot testing charging their customers a “convenience” charge to use their debit cards (yea the BoA $5/a month comes to mind today.)

It’d be like charging you for basic check usage.  All because the government said you can’t keep extorting money from merchants. They turn and look back at the consumer directly.

Bank of America said that they need to make a profit.

I’m all for profit, really.  You make profit through excellent products and customer service. Not from just taking money for something which has been paid for 100x over.

Lets recap.

Banks make a lot of money.

Banks make a lot of money off your money.

Banks make a lot of money off merchants.

Banks want you to pay for more without giving you more.

Banks are not innovating.

Why should anyone pay more for the current level of services?

Why is banking culture so bad?

Now I know this isn’t all banks, and it probably doesn’t involve 70% of the private credit unions but there is an endemic problem with banking culture. I think it needs to really be thrashed for being so callous, stupid, and outright heavy handed with how it is doing business with our capital.  While our money sleeps in their coffers they use it to make more money.  They often charge us for this benefit, rarely give us anything back, and have you seen the current savings interest rate?  Oh yea it’s too small to see.

If I were a bank I’d be looking at how I can serve the consumer, what I could do to make their life easier, better, faster, while earning more with what little we have.

Instead many who took bailout paid back early (illegally) so they could get their kickbacks set back up for the executive arms.

It’s just sad, and I had to rant about it for a moment.  I’ve got a keen eye on those banks which hold mine, and my businesses monies.

July 15th, 2011 my first son was born into the world.  We’ve had our trials and tribulations but the birth of Richard Logan Ciordia was without incident.  Robin began mild contractions on July 14th, at around 1am.  For 21 hours we stayed at home and I got to take care of her, 3 square meals, a bath, even a little wine recommended by our doula to keep her relaxed for the long haul.  Her water broke amid transition and we went to the hospital where a calm and collected Robin said she really wanted to push and the nurse midwife didn’t really believe her.  On inspection she was -2 and Logan was nearly waving at them to let him out.  A quick 45m later Logan entered the world with a squeal and ready to have his first of many many feedings.

Richard Logan Ciordia

That was his birthday in a nutshell.  I’d have love to written this earlier but being a newly minted father, self-employed to many businesses I can easily say how overwhelmed I was, and rather still am.

The journey since then has been trying but expected.  If you are a parent you can grin and remember where we are. Sleep schedules that start at 8pm to try and fit 7-8 hours of cumulative (yea cumulative—no more contiguous) sleep.  He feeds nearly every 2 hours from mom.  Robin is a trooper, as always.  She is woman hear her roar and all that.  She keeps up with Logan’s demands like they were nothing and only into the evening starts to show wear.  I support her wherever I can.

Logan came into the world 7lb 8oz and is now a 9lb 13oz, I’d say he’s getting everything he needs.  I try and work a few times a day on tummy-time, neck building, baby massages and the like.  He’s not a docile one so we try and have him well entertained.  He started that way and has continued to be so, wide eyed.  His fussy moments are all valid so-far; I need a new diaper, feeding, or working on putting things in the diaper.

The Littlest Chocolatier

It’s been written over on The Secret Chocolatier’s Blog his first visit to our shop. Now he can be found with us in the shop nearly every day.  He doesn’t like being left alone so Robin or I can be found with him in a sling doing work or having a grandparent give him some love.  He has no idea how loved he is or how lucky he is to have so much family (and chocolate) around.  It’s going to be neat seeing him grow up in such a social environment.

I could say more but there is always more to be done.  We’re overjoyed with Logan and are looking forward to seeing him develop around us.

These days with a life so busy the only self-study I’ve had focus for is ways of getting a better nights sleep and a more vibrant way to wake up. There are many products on the market that cost too much or have subscription prices which are untenable. Especially since I don’t have a sleep disorder. Enter Wakemate, a little company that uses actigraphy technology where you wear a wristband to sleep.

The Way We Move

The way the wristband works is to monitor your motion during your sleep cycles.  We move around more when we are in ligher sleep than the motionless when we are in deep sleep.

As you can see in the above screenshot when I first go to sleep I’m fidgety then it slows into some basic rhythms.  Wakemate takes this data and turns it into something a bit more understandable (see below).

This is data that can be used…

When to Wake

If you had a choice would you rather wake up from a deep sleep or a light one?  Generally when you wake up from a deep sleep it’s like rising out of a fog—you drag the full weight of sleep and try to find enough inertia to wake.  That’s not the kindest way to wake in the morning.  With Wakemate you use your smartphone (or iDevice) to set a wake up time window usually within 20m. If you wanted to wake up at 7:00am then Wakemate will attempt to find you in a light sleep from 6:40 with a forced alarm at 7:00am.

We’re Too Smart

Putting the idea into practice is a bit more interesting.  The reality is we human’s are very adaptable and don’t like to be monitored or told what to do.  Really, who loves their alarm?

Throughout most of the first week I was conscious going to sleep that there was something watching me. Waiting for me to sleep.  I’d think in my mind, ‘I’m not asleep yet, but I’m motionless—it’s going to think I’m asleep—but I’m not.’  Strangest thoughts that would cross my mind.  That eventually subsided as your caring for its opinion waned.  Even so once and a while I know I’m moving my wrist now when I’m awake but motionless.  Silly, right?

The rest of the nights sleep is your own.  Waking though.. the alarm catches you.  You roll over, little thoughts flit across your still mind and then the alarm catches you with one of it’s rather melodic tunes.  That’s how simple the first few wakings were.  From this point you are somewhat awake, pulling yourself out of that floating comfort zone might take some effort but you were closer than farther.

Adaptation is Amazing

Over time you adapt, you know it’s watching again when you wake.  You roll over, this time as little thoughts flit within your head you have one that startles you… it says, ‘You’re awake, but if you move or do anything more than this thought the alarm will go off and this moment will be over.’  Now that’s amazing right?

Some mornings now I’ll pre-wake and make sure I am deadly still so that I might not leave my tranquil comfort zone.  No matter what I am no longer surprised to hear the alarm.  I rise up in sleep, acknowledge my conscious mind and then *alarm-chimes* it’s time to get up.  Then the onslaught of psychological modifiers that want to beg me to stay warm and sleepy hit—Wakemate doesn’t help with those thoughts.  It’s up to you and what your day has in store for you to wipe those away.

Getting Better Sleep

If finding out how to outwit technology isn’t something you care about maybe you just want to study your sleep.  Wakemate allows you to see your sleep objectively over time.

When we begin to watch our actions we can change our behavior (something to really remember).  Wakemate allows us to catalog our evenings data with tags. Were you stressed, drink a lot of caffeine, have a late night, watch tv, fan on, fan off, etc.  If you are doing your own sleep studies and want to see how a behavioral modification will effect you.  Do a trial of a week with or without the behavior and correlate your own information on better/worse nights sleep.  Not a bad beginning for <$60.

Future Thoughts

Wakemate has taught me to recognize it when I am lightly sleeping and if I am of a good mindset I can act upon it easily.  I don’t know how much I’ll use Wakemate as my alarm though because of how I get snarky about waking up by being monitored.  My favorite part of Wakemate is evaluating my evenings sleep and knowing that I can get a good night sleep by changing a few things in my routine for the day.

• Currently we have a very shallow way of working with our data and after reading and voting within the User Voice Wakemate community know that they want to give us this type of functionality.
• Let me add context to the evening’s sleep; if I remember dreaming at 1am then lets add notes to a timeline.
• System corrections, sometimes the actigraphy is off—I was awake at 3am but there it says I was not.  One thing white papers talk about on actigraphy as that it needs to be trained to the individual.  Right now I don’t know how or even if the Wakemate system has any adaptation to you as an individual.  Let the users help.
• Wakemate requires at least 4 hours before it will offload your data, what about nappers (being worked on)
• Interruptions, if I have to use the restroom the iDevice might complain that it can’t reach the wristband. I need to have a pause or Sleep Interrupt button.  Especially with a newborn on the way this device is not going to be able to keep up with that style of sleep but I’d love to record it so I can help adapt to it.
• Exporting of Actigraphy data, let me at my data—I want to run cool plots of my own.
• Longer battery life. Currently we get 1 maybe 2 days of charge.

Wakemate is in it’s infancy and has a lot of good room to grow.  I hope they can continue to pull in ideas and desires of their public to make better and better ways of looking at a time in our life we usually feel we have little control over.

Sleep well.

I keep going back to this point in my head..

You Pay for What?

We pay what for these services?  We have rights to these services?

It’s a mousetrap that has some fantastic connectivity and resources and we get upset when the capital motivations are there by default?

Yes this is the question game.

Look at your web browsers. You accept cookies, beacons, and report all your whimsical anonymous data every moment.  It’s not off by default.  Why?  Because it would kill the ad revenue of browser business models.

Natural Born Skeptic

We should be born skeptics is all it comes down to. If you don’t pay for a service, expect the service to want something out of you for using it. If you pay for the service I expect a lot more for my money and expect to have recourse when things go awry (hear that check baggage fee!)

Defensive Driving

You are taught that a defensive driver is the best driver—they’re all out to get you I can hear my parents saying.

Same thing exists online.  Enjoy the ride but beware of all the caveats.  Find out what data you are bleeding out—if it’s anonymous, how it’s correlated, is it sold, and then come to peace with those things or use anonymizers and a load of plugins to attempt (and I say attempt because it is an attempt—not a guarantee of true anonymity) to stay off the radar.

Free Will

We use these services of our own free will.  Eagerly walking into a commercial trap because we like what it has to offer at a price that can’t be beat. While I expect some civility in these services I don’t expect them to look out for my interests and neither should you.

I’ll be curious to see how the course of data laws, options, our expectations, and free enterprise all mingle over the next decade.

We’ll see.

Here we are leaving at a little over 13,000ft to just have a fun sit-fly. I get to geek out and fail at some neat tricks but all in all it was a blast and I look forward to our next jump together.

Research Required

This wasn’t undertaken lightly. Even though I have a long background in technology I don’t have a lot of time to spend tinkering. All I needed was another time sink.

It all begins with netbook selection. There are a number of netbooks out there, some work well, others not so well. BoingBoing has a matrix up (last updated July 09) of compatibilities of Netbooks.

Luckily there is a lot of community out there trying to make this possible.

• Gizmodo’s How-to Hackintosh (getting dusty but got me started)
• My Dell Mini, forum community.
• Mechdrew, the guides and drivers (from meklort) you need.

In a Nutshell

With those three sites you can do this in less than 4 hours (being very literate) on a Dell Mini 10v.

1. Install Snowleopard OSX onto USB Key (>=8gb) with NetbookBootMaker
2. Downgrade Bios A06 to A05
3. Reboot Mini onto USB Key
4. Install Snowleopard 10.6 onto Mini
5. Finalize Install with NetbookInstaller
6. Upgrade to 10.6.2
7. Enjoy!

None of this would be possible without the spare time of dedicated individuals who want to see this happen. Hopefully someday Apple will allow others to run OSX without needing the Lexus machinery underneath.

Trials, No Errors

Experiences vary but for myself I have had nothing but pleasant ones. USB, Camera, Touchpad, Bluetooth,  Audio, all work as they should.

The first thing I setup was Dropbox and with their new local-lan sync all my files we’re ready to use in about 20m. I don’t think I’ve ever setup a computer this fast.

Without the extended battery you’re looking at less than 2 hours of work time. Being that my stints go longer than that I went ahead and got the extended battery and writing blog articles and general surfing give about 5h of time.

Going beyond the basics of iWork, OpenOffice, etc I’ve installed photo processing applications Lightroom and Aperture. The computer wasn’t built for them but they do an admirable job and get the process of processing pictures well underway.  Using such processor intensive applications however will suck the power out of your battery at a pretty alarming rate.

Personalizing Your NetBook

The machine is no longer as advertised, it’s mine, and what better way to showcase that than by getting your own skin for it.  Again in the forums there was talk of a number of different skin providers but the designer in me wanted my own creation so I went with UniqueSkins. For a little over $14 I got one of the advanced 3M re-applicable decals and it is so sharp.

The Downside

For what it’s worthy I don’t have much of a con list yet, I haven’t hit my head enough. The trackpad is probably the only thing I am having trouble using from MBP & iBook (now Macbook) experiences. While it works and seemingly without issue, I can’t seem to adapt yet to it’s style. There are a few nice bluetooth enabled mice I’m looking at but the need hasn’t driven me that far yet.  I’ll probably end up using my wireless Wacom tablet as an intermediary.

The Upside

This unit replaces my kick around iBook G4. It’s got a better processor, 1/3rd of the weight, and more HDD than I had for a cost of about $400. This little machine will carry most of what you have to do on an average day well and get you ready to be back at your larger machine efficiently. I even find myself using vnc/screen sharing to it to write things like this article.  Then whenever I pick it up I’m already where I need to be.  That’s pretty cool.

Even though this machine is more or less tiding me over until the next generations come out I think I’ll have use of this machine for many years to come as it’s too easy and able.

It’s a time of year when families draw near and if yours goes beyond the grabbing, ripping, digesting of the season you might get a tale or two from your peers and elders. If not this is for you to work on that.

Is Your Family History Fading?

Here in America I feel we are so quick to move forward we never take a moment to look back. We may know the big picture but do we know the tapestry threads that binds it all together? You may know how your great grandparents made it to this country but what of the shared memory of their lives, and their parents lives, and that of their countries. To many of us it may already be too late to recover much of this.

Remember Storytelling

While we may have lost some of our oral tradition it’s never too late to start telling tales of what you do know and what your parents may have known. The point is to talk, to spin a tale, to encourage a connection to your lineage. Beyond giving the storyteller a moment to enjoy their own past they can hook a younger generation into the tale and give them something to think on as they mature.

Through the Senses

How many of us have family dishes that have been passed down over the years. We can divine a lot of culture from food. The missing ingredient a lot of the time is how the dish came to be. Whose great-great grandmother cooked this and the family so loved they kept it. Or what meager meal got a family through tough times and thus became a cornerstone of the families recipes throughout the years. Many times we are able to enjoy these meals without their connected meaning but how much richer would we be to know it and to pass that knowledge along.

Next time you’re at a family meal and there is something from the past on the table ask about it, inquire to it’s history and meaning to the family.

It’s All About Context

In my own eyes I have a not too distant connection to relatives that extend from America, to Puerto Rico, to Spain, but I know so little beyond the gestalt. Some of my families stories were written down but they stop only a few generations ago. The greater context of our family and our culture is a mystery to me.

If you have a family dish to an heirloom that is being passed on make sure you tell the context that goes with it. Who made it, how many hands has it passed through, do you know their stories? While you may know the context your children do not.

Dying Libraries

Over the last five years I have heard in many different forms how our elders are passing on but their knowledge is not. For every elder that passes we lose a library. Think of your own wealth of knowledge that is in your head and ponder how much you share of it. When you are gone  how much goes with you and how much will be here for others to share and pass along?

Take a moment and look for the precious moments that you don’t want to lose and begin putting pen to paper or telling stories at your next gathering. Think about the stories you were told growing up and do your children know them?

Our lives are very brief in the way the universe works and it’s a shame how much experience and hard earned wisdom is lost from generation to generation. It’s one reason I started blogging so many years ago. I wanted to make a record of moments, of a person, of a family, that can be shared and looked through to understand who I was and what I was a part of.

I write this because I lost both of my grandparents in 2008 and when I reflect upon their photo albums, letters, and memorabilia I realize I only knew a fraction of what I would have loved to know.  Now it is lost within fragments of my parents and extended family but the easiest connection to it is gone forever.

New Holiday Meaning

So this holiday season, this new year, take it upon yourself to rekindle your families stories and culture. Let it be alive once again and writ or told to others so that it maybe kept alive and fresh. Revel in who you all are, where you came from, and the connection from here to there.

If the sky would just open up here, the blazing sun would make it look like the leaves are on fire.. 

But the sky just chuckles and rolls on gray.. gray.. I need to stop thinking about the gray and just integrate it somehow but that’s for one who has more time than I at the moment!

In the meantime down near Chester, SC there is a lot of rural areas with fields changing colors like this one.

Posted via web from IMI Photography