Archive for May 5th, 2007

Today’s commencement address was delivered by Kathryn Sullivan, first American woman to walk in space. I thought her speech was interesting, informative and well received. She touched on most of the normal graduation speech topics: reflections of the past, excitement of the moment and expectations of the future.

The highlight was when she spoke of “conversation.” With all the technology we have available, we are becoming a people who don’t talk to each other. To “chat” means something completely different than it did ten years ago. We don’t ask face-to-face questions to each other. Instead we ask Google. As a result, many of us don’t even know our neighbors. Sullivan says we should have more conversations with each other. It’s good for everyone.

Personally, I have been working on this for more than a year. In the spring of 2006, I was reading an article on simple things that can improve brain efficiency. One of the things listed was having a conversation with a stranger. I don’t recommend this for children. The “don’t talk to strangers” rule still applies if you haven’t graduated from high school.

You only need to talk to someone for a minute or two. It’s pretty easy to do. The next time you are waiting in line somewhere (we wait in line all the time), talk to the person behind you. They will be in the line longer than you will be… because they are behind you. Conversation is easy because they likely have a cart full of possible topics. If there is no one behind you, talk to the cashier. Those people have thankless jobs. They will definitely talk to you if you talk to them. Don’t talk about the weather either. All the cashiers I talk with have name tags so I say something like, “Delilah. That is an interesting name. Are you named after someone?” That’s all it takes.

Did you ever notice how older people seem to know everyone? It’s because they have taken the time to have conversations with people.

The next time you think your computer is running slow, check the CPU with by pressing Shift-Ctrl-Esc all at the same time. This will start the task manager. There are several tabs on the task manager that can give you an idea about the performance of your computer.

Click the Performance tab. If the processor is continuously at 100%, you may have a problem. The graphic at the top right of this post is my CPU Usage History as I write this post. You can see the processor has gone up and down as I interact with different software.

The Application tab shows each interactive application running on your computer. These are programs you have started, like Word, IE and Outlook. If an application has crashed, the phrase “not responding” will appear next to the program.

The Processes tab shows every process running on your computer. Processes include applications you have started plus system programs started by the operating system.

By clicking a column heading – Image Name – CPU – Memory Usage – the information is sorted by that category. You can determine which applications are using the most processing power and memory. In the graphic above, I have sorted by CPU. The System Idle Process is using 92% of the CPU. That means 92% of the CPU is idling or doing nothing. If you have an application that has pegged the processor (CPU=100%), you should take note of it. It could be something you have initiated. For instance, making a movie in MovieMaker will require nearly 100% of the CPU for an extended period. You may have other applications that do the same.

If a process uses 100% (or close to it) of the CPU, it will slow all other processes to a crawl. If you have an application that has gone out of control and you need to stop it, right-click it and End Process or End Task.

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