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The more things change, the more they stay the same

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“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
That’s one phrase I remember from college. I’m not sure where the phrase originates from, but I’m pretty sure I heard it from the head of the CIS program at GVSU, and professor for one of my final undergrad classes. At the time I thought it was a little strange to be coming from a technology professional, because we were inundated everyday with how once we get out in the “real world” if we didn’t keep updating our skills and staying on the cutting edge we would get left behind. As I go through the beginning of my career however, I am beginning to see the wisdom of that phrase.

Lately I have been reading a book called Blogging Heroes. A spur of the moment grab from the library, it interviews 30 of the top bloggers at the time about their experience and advice for blogging. The book is a little dated, published in 2007, but most of the bloggers they interviewed were still relevant, so I thought it would be a decent read. While it was interesting, what I found most intriguing was their perspectives on blogs. Most started their blogs in the early adapter stage of blogging, and talk about how they didn’t know where blogs were going. What was so interesting to me is that if I changed the word blog into social media, Facebook, or Twitter it looks remarkably similar to many articles I read today. Will ____ survive the test of time? Does ____ really add business value? Are ____ too personal and biased to be considered journalism? Across a period of four years and a ton of technological advances, the same questions are being asked now. Today, blogs are mostly taken for granted as a good idea that will be around for a long time, now it is social media that is being questioned.

As I look at other aspects of technology, the phrase rings true as well. Printers today are wireless, vibrantly colored, direct-from-camera enabled, and yet, I spend as much time un-jamming and power cycling them as ever. Today I program mostly in coldfusion, jquery, php, and asp.net, but the concepts I first learned in basic HTML and Java still hold true and influence how I code. Despite how connected and networked our everyday lives have become, the go to utility to test a connection (ping) has been around since at least the early 80’s, probably before I was even born.

It seems, especially concerning technology, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

August: Five posts a week

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For August, I am working on getting back into blogging on a regular basis. I enjoy it, it helps me polish my writing, and it is the one new year’s resolution that I really haven’t been making any progress on. So this month, I will be writing five posts a week, either here or at teageek.org (my tea blog that has been seriously neglected as of late) It’s been a while since I have really written anything, and five posts is a lot of content to come up with in a week, but it should be fun, stay tuned!

June Update: No TV

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I’m finally writing a follow up to last months challenge, not TV for a month.  It was an interesting challenge because it was both a lot easier and a lot harder than I thought it would be.  it was a lot easier than I thought to not watch TV when I was by myself. Reading a book, going for a run, or working on a website were all there to fill the gap, and it really wasn’t that hard.  What was a little difficult, which I didn’t expect, was how much I watch TV with other people. My girlfriend and I watch TV together almost every night, and the few times (twice) that I “slipper up” was with other people. All in all, it was an interesting challenge I would recommend, you get a lot more free time, and it’s nice to switch things up, especially if its a beautiful Michigan summer!

I also am taking July off from challenges, everybody needs a summer break of some kind right? Look for a new post in August!

June: No TV

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Well its been a while since I’ve posted here, life has been a little crazy lately.  I’ve just started a new job, and I’m three days out from my very first triathlon.  With all of this exciting/stressful stuff going on however, my whole “personal challenge” a month idea has kind of gone down the drain.  Now that things are getting back on track, I’m starting up again with one that I have wanted to do since I started: no TV for a month. Pretty simple, no TV, Netflix, movies, video games, etc. for a month. Since I am trying to get caught up with life I thought this might help me, TV is definitely my biggest distraction from getting things done around my apartment.

April: Spring Cleaning!

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Brent Swisher - Spring CleaningApril is a really busy month for me, so I decided to take it a little bit easier on myself with the challenge.  This month I want to completely go through and clean/organize everything in my apartment – every drawer, closet, and pile of crap sitting on the floor. I have a friend moving, and that reminded me of just how much crap can accumulate in an apartment when you live there for a while. Since there is a good chance I won’t be in this apartment for too much longer, I decided its better to just do it now. While some of you may assume this to be nearly impossible, the truth is that I have been working on getting rid of stuff and generally reorganizing myself for a while, and this will just be a final push to finish everything. It certainly will take some time, but since I have a whole month to do it it shouldn’t be too bad.

Image via flickr