Notes to copy files from phone to MacBook Air

These instructions at the link below are a good outline with the notes I have below;

https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/2840804

The key steps from this link are quoted below:

Your computer must be running Mac OS X 10.5 and up. Your Android device must be running Android 3.0 and up.

Move files by USB

1. Download and install Android File Transfer on your computer.
2. Open Android File Transfer. (The next time that you connect your device, it opens automatically.)
3. Unlock your Android device.
4. With a USB cable, connect your device to your computer.
5. On your device, tap the "USB for..." notification.
6. Select Transfer files.
7. An Android File Transfer window will open on your computer. Use it to drag files.
8. When you're done, unplug the USB cable.

Fred's Notes:

The moment the USB cable is connected a notification shows at the bottom of the drop down notification list on the phone's "desktop."

This notification will default report USB being used for charging. 

If you catch the notice fast enough it provides an option to select "use USB to copy files". Check this option.  If you miss the timing, unplug the USB, plug it in again and tap the notice as soon as it appears.

I tried the copy pictures option but it didn't work for me, ?, strange.

Then Open Android File Transfer application.  (If it is already open, close and reopen. Use the menu "Go|Open Folder" or Command-down arrow to find the photos on the phone. The photos may be in a top level folder path named 

"DCIM\Camera."

Open a Finder window and drag and drop the phone's Camera folder to target location on the Mac.  (/Users/fred/Downloads/Android_transfers/Amanda's_Phone)

Once the files are on the Mac they maybe either viewed or imported into Photos application.

Note the MacBook Air is very "cloud centric."  My most reliable way to store files on the Mac without them automatically transferring to the cloud is to use the Downloads folder.

I found that the MacBook Air keeps a cache of all my user files, such as perl programs, in a special cache so that they are available to me in the absence of connection to the Web.  I didn't know this, so the first time I went off line I had them all backed up to a thumb drive.  Pretty slick, but surprising.

Fred

Virtue

Three basic virtues are courage, temperance, and justice.

1. Courage is getting results.
2. Temperance is balancing our results
3. Justice is treating others according to their virtue.

Courage is dealing with the world.

Temperance is dealing with myself.

Justice is dealing with others.

We all earn our way in the world.

The baby starts with a smile, then learns to take care of it's self, then learns to get results outside the family by cultivating it's own virtue.

The three basic virtues may be restate in many ways, depending upon context and audience.

• Courage is taking action to mitigate threats and enhance opportunities, i.e. make a profit.
• Temperance is balancing our portfolios.
• Justice is negotiating with people and honoring our agreements.

    or 

• Courage is finding out and doing the right thing.
• Temperance is avoiding overindulgence in the wrong things.
• Justice is paying people what they have earned, a smile, an apple, or money.

The virtues are built on a foundation of reason, productivity, and pride in our virtue.

Earned Value Measurement!

Earned value measurement, EVM!

I just learned about this in the past year. It is a magnificent concept. If only I had known about it decades ago.

Management Administration tools such as EVM are to daily activities as algebra is to arithmetic! One equation represents endless calculations.

I never realized the conceptual power of business administration.  And my father had an MBA. He taught business administration.  I wish that I had paid more attention to his work, instead of my fascination with technology and procedural excellence.

How do I know if I am "losing it?"

Over the past year I have finally narrowed down a description of what it means to know that I am losing my faculties.  Span of focus.

First of all, my mother suffered from a slow attach of dementia that started at about age 55 and grew steadily worse until she died at age 77.  The first symptom  for many years was loss of memory, especially memory of what is happening now.

Worried about the potential of the same affliction hitting me, I decided to shift my work activities into the world of IT when I was about 45.  The theory was that if I am working among many young folks at tasks that require attention to detail and good memory, then the people around me would alert me to the fact that I was losing it a long time before I became conscious of this.  I also recalled working for managers in the past that seemed to have totally "lost it" but a good subordinate, like me, covered for them sufficiently that they could maintain their reputation. I did not want to become one of those clueless managers!

Time went by. I passed 55, 57, and at age 60 I decided that OK, I think I may not be a victim of what ever it was that got my mother at age 55.

So now what do I do?

Since I have become fairly skillful, at least in my current context, of providing IT solutions for my employers, and it is a lot of fun, then why not keep going at the same activities?

I have continued to monitor my own consciousness and I have learned to gain some insight, so I believe, into the consciousness of the folks I work with.  What makes me different from them?  My current theory is that my span of mental focus, conscious awareness is greater, hence I can maintain context and see implications that I need to lead other folks through step by step.  Eventually I came to  see that my own mental field of vision can be limited by fatigue, boredom, or sickness (alcohol) and that even though I feel great and competent, I can tell by memory that my span of focus, span of attention is less that it has been at many times in the past.  Hence I am not as smart as I think I am.

The lesson, tentatively, is that span of focus, defines the progression of dementia in my own experience. My guess is that it is the same in others.  If my mind worked at the level of some of the people I know with who have similar experience and training in writing software I would consider myself to be demented.

The sad thing is they don't know. And I fear I won't know when it hits me!
"I see Iterators, but they don't know they are Iterators!"
(ref: "6th Sense" movie for those too young to get it.)

Is this post too harsh?  

Programming Productivity?

Many years ago, about 1995 or so, I started keeping a personal log of my time spent coding per the instructions of the famous Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process. What I learned in the first year or so, especially as I move to new jobs was that the tools I used to do the tasks I was recording kept changing, and what was a lengthy  task in 1995 became a quick simple task in 1997.  The tools for the trade keep improving and productivity logs have limited usefulness.

So how do we manage to measure our own productivity as software developers?

This is not to say that such a log is useless. In 20 years it has saved me once from an attempt to blame me for something that I didn't do. Several times it has provided real data for how long a project takes if it is using the same tools in the same environment as previously recorded. But how often do repetitious jobs come up? Well that depends upon how long I decide to to hang around a job where I have already mastered the skills, and now I am in the process of teaching new folks how to do what I have done.  Probably a sign of stagnation, now that I write about it.

Conceptual Consciousness

Why don't I think conceptually as much as I could?

I witnessed myself getting side tracked from productive effort today pursuing what is likely to be a "red herring" in the current context that my client brought up. I had the thought that successful business people don't get detoured like this? I found that my motivation had shifted from ROI to pleasing what appeared to be irrational requests from the people who are paying me. What I needed to do was stop and reassess, challenge the ideas, and provide the estimate of what the current activities were costing us.

Did I do this? Well sorta ...

Concepts are so remarkably intangible! We all know the concept of circle, but our imagination can only imagine specific instances of circles! So obvious once it is pointed out, but it wasn't pointed out to me until I read about it (Mortimer Adler's "Ten Philosophical Mistakes" ?) when I about 58 years old! Even worse is that this was my second reading of this great book and I had totally missed the idea the first time! My goodness what if I had died before that life changing insight was revealed to me? What other life changing insights are still to come?

For those of us who aren't clear about the concept circle, consider money. This is a concept that everyone seems to understand, but we cannot imagine the concept money, all we can imagine are specific examples of what represents money, e.g. gold, bills, goods, life style, etc. Money is a concept that most people don't fundamentally understand, such as the information value of prices, but everyone knows how to earn it and invest it. Keep in mind that knowing and doing are two different things. This is where I started this post. I do things that I know, conceptually, are not right, but in the moment my sensations, feelings and imagination run the show called "me."

And I suspect I have a fundamental fear of thinking conceptually, that I will lose something that I can't quite verbalize. What is this fear? Napoleon Hill would probably tell me it is fear of success. Ayn Rand might say it is evading the responsibility of being human. Aristotle may say that it is the lack of courage to live the planned life because the unplanned life isn't worth living! Gurdjieff may hint that I have allowed my self to become identified with my imagination, I am a sleeping automaton. All useful pieces of advice and in a sense they are all saying the same thing to me, aren't they?

What if I had mastered these ideas as a young person, instead of a man with gray hair?

The Many Selves Begin to Reveal Themselves?

Walking in the city, remembering myself, wearing canvas sneakers. I feel the sensations of my body and feet. I am learning a new way of walking, having my heel come down a gently as a feather falling as my foot rolls forward to the next push off. There are the various emotions coming and going in response to my own thoughts and perceptions.

I suddenly realize there is something new in my awareness. I "see" my many impulses of thought and emotion. Should I feel frustrated about events of yesterday that need to be handled today, should I feel excited about developing solutions to other current issues, should I day dream about finishing the day and relaxing, etc., etc.

It reminds me of standing next to a spring time puddle and seeing tadpoles scurry under the surface for cover in the mud. Only by being still and patient do they begin to reveal themselves.

This is very subtle and a very profound insight for me. All these years of striving to remember myself, and it is gradually elaborating.

The interesting thing is that once I see this new aspect of my being, it seems to have always been there, but never before distinguished from the background of all else in my span of awareness.