Star Trek is coming back to theaters soon, and I’ve been watching Season 1 of Star Trek: TNG while running.

It got me thinking. I know it’s a show, and they have to fit their episodes into a model, but wouldn’t there be programmers on the Enterprise? I’d hope by 2520, or whenever it’s set, that programming, and IT, would be more of an engineering discipline, but wouldn’t there be a need on a starship for some IT work? Some bugs would crop up, someone to monitor things, make sure data was intact.

Or at least some BI folks. After all they’re gathering data constantly, wouldn’t there be a need for someone to help work with that data? Wouldn't there be someone that they'd call to help with analyzing things from a data perspective. Besides Data, I mean.

I can see it now:

Wanted: BI Analyst, Galactic class starship Enterprise. Must be able to interpolate all types of alien data patterns, no aversions to non-human life forms and must like working with children.

For the second year in a row I didn’t purchase opening day Rockies tickets. I had a nice streak of 6 or 7 years, including a couple with my son, of watching the opening day game of each season. This year, for a few reasons, I won’t be going, but it did make me think about why I didn’t get tickets for any games.

A Random Chance

It used to be that I would see the ticket order form each February in the sports page of the local paper. That would trigger me to order 10-12 pairs of tickets to go see a variety of games with my kids or friends. With the local paper gone for me, that’s no longer something that could happen.

I don’t get the paper anymore, partially because it’s 1/2 mile to my mailbox/delivery point, and partially I’ve gone to the Internet. With a laptop in the bedroom most of the time and a desktop I look over while having coffee on the weekends, I don’t really get much out of the paper.

The delivery of information has changed in my life, and while I still like the information, I don’t miss the paper.

However I wonder how much I’m missing out on. I target certain sites, missing others, I don’t get the off-topic local article that I used to see. Perhaps I just get others, but I wonder if I have a slightly less “random chance” of finding something new that might interest me.

Or inspire me.

Or teach me.

In the data world we get so focused on things, we have filters, we have RSS feeds, we look to limit out those extraneous, distracting elements, that I wonder if we’re missing something in our lives by not just taking in more of what’s presented to us.

Of course, I didn’t have control over that. The Denver Post (and the Virginian  Pilot before that) chose what to show me, often with no regard for the importance as much as the chance it would interest the greatest number of people and keep them as subscribers.

I worry sometimes that Business Intelligence systems fall into this trap. They look for patterns, models, and present information in an organized, structured way. That means that they also influence thinking, and perhaps, retard the ideas that might occur to analysts if they had to slog through more things on their own.

There were other reasons, some of which I won’t go into in this blog, but I’m skipping opening day again, and it’s a little sad, but not enough to get me down there.

Last week, on April Fool’s Day, I woke up to find quite a few birthday congratulations in my email. I was surprised for a minute, and then I realized that quite a few of these were coming from Facebook. When I signed up, I used Apr 1 as my birthday, and so it triggered on a bunch of other people’s pages.

I’m not overly concerned with Identity Theft, but I do try to be prudent. One of those things that people use to validate identity is your birthday, so I hesitate to actually give mine out. It’s also that I don’t make a big deal of my birthday. Last year I actually went to a scout meeting with my son that night instead of celebrating.

For years, when I’ve been asked for a birthday, on ESPN, Facebook, almost anywhere, I’ve used Apr 1 as the date, and then a year that’s close to my own. Sometimes I got a year older or a year younger, but I want to try and prevent my birthday from being released when one of these places loses data.

And I’m sure one of them will.

So it was a fun surprise, and I’m sure that there are some downstream BI systems collecting all this data that are struggling to match up this Steve Jones with that one. :)

Second try. The video didn’t embed in the previous post. Nor this one. Here's the link

Microsoft Surface Demo

This is from the BI Conference in 2008 that took place in October. It’s an interesting use of Surface technology, but is it that useful? Is Surface that much better than a mouse and screen?

I can see the hands being used in a presentation. It’s more natural than a keyboard mouse, and it’s less likely you’ll make mistakes.

I would like to see a "Surface” desktop, maybe twice the size of the current models (think 42” TV) that functions as my desktop (literally and computer-wise). If I could move windows around, grow/shrink, and then have a “virtual keyboard” (think iPhone) pop out at the bottom when I needed it, that might make me more productive.

As far as Surface in business, it’s eye candy. That’s OK, but it’s not revolutionary.

This is interesting. I’m not sold on Surface, though I did play with one last week in Seattle.