Author: John

John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 123 books and over 600 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. Some of his current offerings include topics on machine learning, AI, Python programming, Android programming, and C++ programming. His technical editing skills have helped over more than 70 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. John also provides a wealth of other services, such as writing certification exams, performing technical edits, and writing articles to custom specifications. You can reach John on the Internet at [email protected].

Calculating Your Actual Bulk Goods Store Savings

We grow most of what we eat—around 95% in fact. However, there are items we must purchase from the store like oatmeal. Even if we were to grow our own oats, purchasing the equipment required to turn it into oatmeal would be impossibly expensive. Sometimes self-sufficiency can go too far and end up costing you a lot more for a product that really isn’t different from what you get in the store. However, now you need to decide whether to buy the item in a bulk goods store or to get it at your local supermarket.

About once every other month, we go to the bulk goods store in our area and stock up. Some items are incredibly less expensive than the same item at the local store. For example, it’s possible to buy 6 pounds of oatmeal for $3.80 at our bulk goods store. The same amount of product at our local store would cost around $11.10 for a $7.30 difference. If you have enough of these sorts of items to purchase and you can use enough of the product before it goes bad, then buying in bulk makes sense. Oatmeal will easily last several months when stored correctly, as will flour and many of the other items we buy at the bulk goods store.

It’s important to know just how many servings are in a bulk product. For example, a heart healthy serving of oatmeal starts with ¾ cup of dry oatmeal, which weighs in at 2.1 ounces. So, 6 pounds of oatmeal would supply about 46 heart healthy servings. Given that we eat oatmeal as breakfast cereal, use it in cookies, and rely on it as an alternative filler in dishes like meatloaf, 46 heart healthy servings is quite doable in 2 months. However, when you buy in bulk, think servings. If you waste part of the product, then you’re really not saving much (if anything). It’s tempting to think of the savings you get by buying in bulk, but those savings are only realized when you use all of the product.

Of course, the bulk goods store is further away than the local store. The actual difference in our case is 1.5 miles. It costs us about $0.14 per mile in gas to drive there in our car. When you add in maintenance and other costs, it adds up to around $0.32 per mile. So, it costs $0.48 to save the $7.30, which is still a good deal. However, when making a decision as to buying in bulk, you have to consider the cost of driving to the store. A lot of people forget to add this to the cost of buying in bulk and end up losing money instead of saving it. With the cost of driving to the bulk goods store in mind, the savings on that 6 pounds of oatmeal is now whittled down to $6.82.

Shopping at a bulk goods store also requires additional time and your time is worth something. Not only does it cost time to drive the extra distance, but bulk goods stores aren’t as customer friendly in most cases as local stores are. We have found that we spend about 15 minutes extra to use the bulk goods store. So, when you put that $6.82 savings into an hourly rate, we make $27.28 per hour by going to the bulk goods store. As far as we’re concerned, it’s definitely an acceptable rate of pay. However, you need to consider whether your savings actually warrant the cost in time. You could do something else in that time that could add up to a better hourly rate.

There is one more consideration when buying in bulk. You need to think about the source of the bulk goods and the freshness of the product when you get it. Some bulk goods are castoffs of local stores. In fact, they have have already passed their sell by date (or are close enough that you have to suspect the product will go bad before you use it). With this in mind, we won’t buy some items from a bulk goods store even if doing so would save us money. The problem is that the item is of inferior quality, too old when we purchase it, or a dubious purchase for other reasons. Always consider what you’re getting for your money before you buy it.

Bulk goods stores do fill an important niche in the purchasing picture for most people, but be sure to shop smart to get a real deal, rather than just a perceived savings. Let me know your thoughts about bulk goods stores at [email protected].

Winter Egg Production

Chickens are affected by the amount of daylight available. In fact, layers typically need 12 to 14 hours of light each day to lay eggs consistently. Commercial egg laying operations will provide this amount of light artificially, if necessary, to ensure the chickens keep laying eggs. Of course, commercial egg laying operations also heat their coops and keep chickens in conditions that reduce the quality of the egg that you get in the store. Part of the benefit of raising chickens in natural conditions is that you obtain a high quality egg that actually contains more good elements and fewer bad elements (such as cholesterol and fat). However, there is a cost involved with getting this higher quality egg and that’s a reduced winter production.

A number of sources online mistakenly say that egg production stops completely during the winter months. However, my own experience says otherwise. Yes, the production is greatly reduced, but we still obtained 63 eggs from our ten hens during the month of December. This is contrasted with 248 during August, which is a typical summer month. So, you probably won’t have enough eggs to sell in December if you bake and eat eggs regularly. However, you also won’t have to go completely without eggs.

Of course, the question is why you wouldn’t provide a light in the coop if it will induce the chickens to lay more eggs. The problem with using a light is that it robs the chickens of important nutrients they need during the winter months. The chickens need these nutrients to stay warm during the winter, especially if your coop is unheated. Heating and lighting a coop is also expensive, so you’d need to consider the tradeoff in additional costs. When all is said and done, most small operations will be better off letting the chickens have a bit of a rest during the winter.

You can improve egg production by ensuring your coop has south facing windows so that the chickens do get the maximum light available. This strategy will also keep the chickens warmer because the sunlight will heat the coop during the day. Given the experience we’re having with the chickens, I credit the south facing window for getting any eggs at all.

One of the things you can do if you really must have more eggs during the winter months is to freeze your eggs. That’s right, you can freeze eggs during the late fall (as production is going down) for use during the winter months. You can whip the eggs up and freeze them for up to 12 months. It’s also possible to freeze just the whites. Unfortunately yolks don’t freeze well, so you need to choose how you plan to use your eggs as part of your strategy.

There are tradeoffs for nearly any self-sufficiency strategy you use. We’ve chosen to follow a natural path when it comes to egg production by giving our chickens a bit of a vacation during the winter months to ensure that we continue to get quality eggs when they do lay and also to extend the life of our layers by not overtaxing their systems. What is your experience with winter egg laying? Let me know at [email protected].

Your Security is an Illusion

I receive a number of queries about security from administrators and users every month, and many of these questions have links to all sorts of security issues that have occurred recently-everything from National Security Agency (NSA) spying to the Target security breach (incidentally, a number of other businesses have been attacked in the same manner). The fact of the matter is that books such as Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core, Microsoft Windows Command Line Administration Instant Reference, and Windows 8 for Dummies Quick Reference have been telling you all along that security is a matter of vigilance-that software will never do the job alone. Even so, readers keep sending requests for some sort of magic bullet that will allay all their fears and make the task of security automatic.

Maintaining a reasonably secure system is a matter of observing personal, data, and system-wide best practices, something that SeedboxCo.net could help with if you’re unsure about how to go about it. Many other authors have listed these best practices in the past, but here are some of the techniques that people fail to use most often:

Use complex passwords that are easy to remember so you don’t need to write them down-consider using a passphrase whenever possible.
Change your password reasonably often and don’t rely on the same set of passwords all the time.
Keep your passwords secret so that no one else can abuse them.
Encrypt your data.
Perform local data backups regularly.
Ensure your applications remain updated with the latest security fixes.
Update your system as needed to ensure it provides a full set of modern security features.
Install security applications that check the incoming and outgoing flow of data, and block anything that looks remotely dangerous.
Check your system regularly for any files, folders, software, or other items that look out of place.

This list doesn’t even include some of the common user foibles, such as opening e-mail from parties they don’t know. In addition, none of these techniques are automated. You have to perform the manually in order to get the benefits they provide. Yes, it’s true that some of the techniques are automated once you start them, but you still have to start them. For example, installing security software will automatically monitor the data flow on your system, but you still have to install the security software manually.

Even with all of these security measures in place, someone who is truly determined can break into your system. You should simply count on it happening at some point, even if you’re incredibly careful. When a security breach does occur, you need to have a contingency plan in place.

Any good contingency plan will include a method of evaluating the damage caused by the security breach. You need to know just what was compromised and what the fallout of the compromise will be. Make sure that you are open and honest with your customers at this time as failure to do so can lead to other consequences. Silencing employees who speak out is even worse – you don’t want to juggle a legal fight with a whistleblower lawyer at the same time as cleaning up a data breach – so remain open to conversation at this time. Even individuals experience fallout from security breaches, such as identity theft. Once the damage is evaluated, you need a method for fixing the problems it has caused. In some cases, you may actually have to format the drive and start from scratch, which is where that data backup is going to become critical.

There is no magic bullet when it comes to security. Over the years I’ve searched, in vain, for a magic bullet and it isn’t even possible to conceive of one. Therefore, it’s the user and administrator who are best prepared for the eventuality of spying and security breaches that are in the best position to handle it later. Let me know your thoughts on security at [email protected].

It’s All in the Engineering

A considerable amount of my time in fulfilling the self-sufficiency dreams Rebecca and I have is spent building new items and repairing existing items. Existing equipment of all types requires constant maintenance as well. If you leave a cage exposed to the elements long enough, it’ll simply rot away. Everything has a tendency to fail without some sort of maintenance. All of these efforts—everything from building to maintaining to tearing down when an item is no longer useful—relies on some sort of engineering principle. If you want to get water to your garden, but the hose diameter is too small, the resulting trickle will only serve to frustrate you. Building shelves that don’t rely on proper engineering principles are downright dangerous. Installing electrical elements without regard to the amount of current the circuit needs to handle will almost certainly result in a fire. In short, in order to know in advance just how well something will work and what you need to do to maintain it, you need to know the engineering behind it.

In the Building Larder Shelving post, you learned about the engineering behind building shelves that will hold up to the weight of canning jars, which is considerable. This is just one of many posts that I’ve created that define the math behind self-sufficiency. If you ever find an error in my calculations, please let me know so that I can provide an update with the correct information. It’s also important to realize that my calculations are for a specific project type and you need to use them with your project in mind (making any required changes).

Fortunately, there are other places where you can find interesting information about engineering principles. One of the best places I’ve found recently (as passed on by a friend) is Engineering Toolbox. This site provides all sorts of useful information about various engineering disciplines, including how to create the proper sort of concrete for a project that you have in mind. If you were to mix the concrete without using a recipe, you’d either end up spending way too much money for your project or you’d end up with a project that won’t hold up to any kind of abuse.

It’s incredibly dangerous to take on a building or maintenance tasks for which you lack the proper equipment or training. Always make sure you understand not only the engineering behind the task, but that you also adhere to any required building codes and obtain the proper permits and inspections, as required. More than a few people have gotten hurt by not taking the proper precautions, so always verify that every step of a process you perform is done correctly before you proceed to the next step. The care you take in performing self-sufficiency tasks will always pay dividends in your personal safety and the longevity of the project.

Finding the right site to discover just how to create, maintain, and tear down the equipment needed to be self-sufficient can be an adventure akin to the mysteries solved by Holmes. You need to exercise care in using the information you find and verify that information across several different sites to ensure it’s accurate. Of course, there always comes a time when you’re simply in deep water and need the help of a professional. Some professionals will mentor you in building your project (for a fee in most cases); others will let you help them perform the task so that you gain needed knowledge and experience.

Building and maintaining your equipment can be a lot of fun. However, doing it the wrong way can be a disaster. Let me know your thoughts about building and maintaining equipment at [email protected].

Improving Your Technical Writing

I receive a number of e-mails each month from people who want to improve their technical writing skills. Most of the people who write are in a technical trade, but not writers by profession. For example, I might get an e-mail from a software engineer or an IT manager who needs to write better reports. Of course, the primary way to improve your writing is to practice. A good friend of mine expresses this idea in Make Writing a Habit. It’s good advice. No matter how much talent you might possess, you can’t become good at something until you practice (often, quite a lot).

Practicing applies to any sort of writing, but technical writing has a few special requirements that you need to consider. The first rule of good technical writing is to ensure you know what you want to say. This means creating an outline, even if you’re working on an article length project. In some cases, you won’t even use the headings you create as part of the resulting piece-the headings are there to keep you on track and focused. The more detailed you can make your outline, the better your writing will go.

Creating an outline doesn’t guarantee any sort of success, unfortunately. People often see a heading and can’t quite remember what they planned to put there. It’s a common problem, so you shouldn’t worry about it. What you should do instead is provide notes to yourself on what you plan to put into a heading. I often include URLs for sites that I want to review in depth or provide as part of my piece right there with the notes. If you got an idea for something you’d like to do by reading some resource, make sure you include a specific reference to that resource as well (never plagiarize though-always create your own text from the sources you use). As a little extra safety cushion while you’re working, you may consider downloading a grammar tool, and this grammarly review might help you decide if something like this would help – our eyes alone are not always enough.

In depth research is also a huge part of writing technical documents. Keep thinking about what you want to write and verify every fact by researching it in some way. In some cases, research includes creating an experimental setup on your own system. This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s often the best part of technical writing. Experimenting to find out whether some idea will actually work is fun and interesting. It’s also time consuming, so make sure you plan ahead if you want to perform some experiments as part of creating your piece.

All of these approaches will help improve your technical writing. However, the biggest mistake that many technical writers make is writing for themselves, rather than for their target audience. You have to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and answer the sorts of questions your readers will have. Role-playing may not seem like part of technical writing, but it is. You have to put on your reader hat to be successful. In some cases, getting the reader hat on right is nearly impossible, which is why I also rely on beta readers to read my material. These people ask questions I’d never think of even if I spend weeks trying to do so.

Technical writing is about organized and succinct content. It’s about creating a flow of ideas from your mind to the reader’s mind through the medium of the written word. You’re a teacher of sorts, but your classroom is vast and you’re not able to speak with your pupils. To write good technical documentation you have to think about the sorts of questions your reader will ask or find someone who will ask them for you. The outline, research, and roll playing all come together to help you create a document that conveys information to your target audience in a unique manner that reflects your particular philosophy of solving technical issues.

Creating good technical documentation is something that most people can do with enough practice, thought, and research. Knowing your audience is an essential part of any kind of writing, but with technical writing it’s an absolute necessity. Let me know your thoughts about technical writing at [email protected].

Where is the Global Warming?

If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know that I take a moderate view of global warming. In fact, I’ve even written a post by that title, The Moderate View of Global Warming. It doesn’t surprise me that a number of readers have recently written to ask if I still believe in global warming given the recent cold wave that hit the United States. Yes, I do. Of course, a belief must be based on something, so I went looking for some statistics. My own blog provides some. For example, the harvest was earlier this year than any other year for which I’ve recorded statistics (17 of them). In fact, I’ve made quite a few observations about the effects of global warming on me personally because global warming seems like this really big issue that affects everyone else.

For most people, my personal observations are nice, but unless they happen to live in the same area of the world in which I live, the observations aren’t really relevant. At first I thought I was going to have to painstakingly research the statistics myself, but then I found an article entitled, Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps. It turns out that the US regularly experiences freezes of the sort that we’ve recently had, but that the interval has been 17 years this time. It turns out that in the past 115 years, there have been 27 distinct cold snaps where the average temperature across the country have dropped below 18 degrees. That’s an average of one cold snap every 4 years-so waiting 17 years is an unprecedented interval.

The recent cold snap isn’t even very high on the list of cold snaps-it ranks 55th in the list of cold snaps since 1900 when the statistics were first collected. So, the recent cold snap wasn’t only long overdue, it wasn’t particularly cold. Our predecessors faced much colder weather than we do today.

The statistics that made things clearest for me is that there have only been two days that rank in the list of the top 100 coldest days since 2000. However, there have been 13 days that rank in the list of the top 100 warmest days in the same time period. At this point, I’m genuinely interested in recording some of my own data around the area I live, and with weather stations like Weather Underground and others, it can be easier to find user recorded statistics in a specific location. As well as record and upload my own to see any changes throughout any given time periods which could come in handy for statistic analysis. Although these statistics aren’t much comfort to anyone who has suffered broken pipes due to the cold, they all point to one thing-even though it has been cold, the earth is generally getting warmer.

Reducing pollution is an essential part of bringing global warming (defined as a general warming trend with more frequent extremes in weather conditions) under control. Personalizing global warming is an important part of understanding it. Create a list of changes that you’ve noted over the past ten or so years, such as the additional costs for cooling your home and the number of days you have to use the air conditioner each year. Once you start looking around and seeing how global warming is affecting both finances and health, you begin seeing why it’s personally important for you to control it. Let me know your thoughts about global warming and controlling pollution at [email protected].

Diamonds

Winds and the mists that swirl,
their fierce beauty unfurl,
glistening diamonds in the sky.

The barren branches creak,
subtle language they speak,
lustrous diamonds on the plant.

Nature’s children at play,
frolic throughout the day,
gleaming diamonds on the ground.

Light beams shatter and break,
their paths beguile and quake,
polished diamonds in my eye.

The day is at an end,
no more light can it bend,
reflecting diamonds no more.

The Ongoing Evolution of Libraries

I read a news story this weekend that confirms some of the things I’ve been saying about the future of libraries. The story, Texas library offers glimpse of bookless future, describes a new library in Texas, Bexar County’s BiblioTech, that doesn’t actually contain any books. This library contains computers and e-book readers that people use to work with content electronically. The article states that a lot of people are looking at this library to see how successful it becomes because the cost of maintaining such a library is significantly less than a traditional library. In fact, advances in technology will continue to make it possible to further reduce the cost of maintaining this particular kind of library.

However, I’ve been exploring a question for a while now about the future viability of libraries as physical entities. I first described this particular issue in my A New Emphasis On Libraries post. For 3 ½ years now I’ve tried to expand on the theme discussed in the Future of Libraries? post. The problem with a library that serves up only electronic media is that it’s overkill. Eventually, such libraries will disappear because people will be able to find the content online. A national library that’s based on the Internet will eventually take hold and that will be the death knell for the local library.

Something that the article brings up is that this library serves a neighborhood where few people have the hardware required to read electronic books and there is no Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) connection in the area for them to use. At one time rural areas didn’t have telephones because it was too expensive to service them. Now rural areas have good satellite or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections. It won’t be long before rural and less serviced areas in cities have WiFi connectivity. So, the first problem this library solves won’t be a long term condition. We’re in a transitional phase.

The devices used to read books electronically will continue to evolve and become less expensive. At some point, the government will figure out that it’s less expensive to simply issue a device to those in need, rather than build physical libraries. At that point, a virtual national library will become feasible and probably appear on the scene. Paper books will eventually be relegated to the niche market—sold to those who have the money required to buy such products.

I’m one of the few, I’m sure, who will miss the paper book when this change happens. Using e-books for technical reading really is quite nice, but the feel of paper when I read fiction just can’t be overcome by the convenience of using an e-book reader. At one time I predicted that paper would continue to be available and preferred to meet my fiction needs, but things have changed faster than I could have ever predicted. It may very well be that the transition to e-book as the only viable media will happen within the next few years—only time will tell.

What do you feel about the transition to e-books and virtual libraries? If you like the idea of being able to find any book and check it out using a virtual library, let me know how you envision this system working. More importantly, how will such a system compensate authors for the time and effort spent putting the books together? Send me your ideas to [email protected].

Understanding the Need for Perspective in Development

I have received a lot of e-mails over the years from developers who don’t quite get the idea behind application design. The problem is that developers are taught about tools, strategies, patterns, and all sorts of other technical details, but are never taught an essential lesson that all applications are essentially products and that it’s up to the developer to sell them. The societal claim that all developers are socially inept nerds who are incapable of communicating with other humans doesn’t help. The fact of the matter is that an application that doesn’t serve the customer’s need will never get used—it will never be successful. Developers need to get the idea that they’re creating a product that must satisfy customer needs in order to be successful.

Many applications today are akin to inflexible restaurants. Imagine how you’d feel if you went into a restaurant and ordered a single egg, fried, with white toast, and a side of sausage and the server says, “I can’t fulfill your order.” Your first question would be why the order is so hard and her response of, “It’s not on the menu.” takes you completely by surprise. It turns out that the menu specifies two eggs, not one. Many applications present users with precisely that sort of choice, yet developers seem surprised when users are less than thrilled. A response of, “It’s not on the menu.” was never a good or valid one, yet that’s the response developers have offered users for a long time now.

In order to be successful, an application must be flexible enough to meet user demand. A developer must understand the user perspective and create an application that can meet the demand for one, two, or even three eggs (or how many ever eggs the user wants). After all, it doesn’t matter how many of an item the user ultimately wants, as long as the user is willing to pay for those items. In order to gain that perspective, developers must talk to users, listen to what they have to say, and engage them in the development process. All other businesses that I know of engage their customers in some way to ensure their products meet customer needs and the computer industry must learn to do the same.

Many applications also make things entirely too complicated. It’s akin to going into a restaurant and not being able to order until you provide the secret handshake. Servers who say, “Talk to the hand because the head isn’t listening.” won’t stay employed for very long. A restaurant won’t stay in business very long with that attitude and neither will the developer. A user isn’t interested in the arcane science of development or how many cool widgets your application uses. The user is only interested in taking a picture or performing some other activity that has nothing whatsoever to do with development or even computers for that matter. As far as the user is concerned, your application should be invisible.

So, why my preoccupation with restaurants in this post? I was watching someone use one of those restaurant data entry programs this morning. After the server provided the secret handshake, she had to navigate no less than ten menus before she was able to complete the order, which then failed because they were out of a particular item. So, she had to cancel the order and reenter everything. Would it really have been all that hard to add a feature where the cook could simply tell the server that something was out of stock? Does an order really require navigation of ten menus to accomplish? It surprises me that this order entry system is actually installed somewhere—perhaps nothing better was available.

The day where a developer can offer inflexible solutions that don’t meet user needs and offer only complexity is over. As users become less interested in accommodating developer needs because there is always another solution to try, developers will need to accommodate the user’s needs. Actually, that’s what should have happened in the first place. No other industry would have tolerated what users have had to tolerate from the computer industry. Let me know your thoughts on gaining the user perspective at [email protected].

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the New Year! It’s going to be an interesting year from a number of perspectives. I’m really looking forward to seeing the changes and I hope that you are too! Make sure you subscribe to my blog to keep up with all of the new material I provide with greater ease. A subscription will automatically send a synopsis of new content directly to your e-mail, which will make it a lot easier to determine whether you want to follow a certain post (and it’s associated comments).

The computer market will continue to move away from the desktop toward all sorts of mobile devices. Of course, this will make browser-based applications become even more popular because you can achieve the same look and feel no matter which platform you use to interact with the application. I’m not saying the desktop is dead, but look for browser-based applications to take on added importance. In some respects, browser-based applications can still be limited, so you’ll continue to see the desktop used in situations where a user must interact with complex data from multiple sources.

Self-sufficiency is going to take on added importance as well. There are a number of reasons for the increased participation by people. Of course, the economy continues to provide ample reason for many people who are looking to ways to make their money go further. A lot of people are starting to realize that self-sufficiency also comes with substantial health benefits and is also good for the environment. In fact, except for the time commitment and the requirement to learn new skills, self-sufficiency has a lot to recommend it. I’m planning to provide more emphasis on self-sufficiency in the coming months.

My blog will also feature some of the additional kinds of content that you’ve come to know and love. I’ll be posting a number of reviews and a bit more of my poetry as time permits. A few posts on writing technique are almost a requirement. A number of you have sent e-mail asking about my crafting. A few personal issues have kept me from posting on the crafts that I enjoy, but I plan to address that particular need soon. I hope that you continue to enjoy my blog and will let me know the sorts of content you’d like to see at [email protected]. In the meantime, Happy New Year!