[Agency] is Hosed and Everybody is a Victim

So I have this problem at work.  I am an IT consultant (of some sort) and operate in the interest of my organization.  IT for the entire state has been privatized, all IT personnel have been taken on by the contracting companies, and I am left as a state employee - the guy on the inside.  I now find myself in a defensive position - we fight constantly with the contractor about service levels, response times, help desk attitude, consistency in practices, communication, and worst of all - IT best practices.

I have this thing now that I might become known widely for.  Let me explain:

I handle issues for about 20 sites.  19 of those sites have their own server, which the workers log in to every morning.  It handles directory services and network storage.  Without this, well - I won't discuss client/server architecture vs. peer-to-peer networking here.  I'll just say that the server has to be up all the time.  Wouldn't you agree?  There is also a bunch of networking equipment, namely the Integrated Services Router (ISR) that handles DHCP and provides a gateway to the Internet and the virtual tunnel to the centrally-located state-operated services.  I can safely assume we'd want that to stay on all the time too.

These items get their power through an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) so if the power blinks for three seconds or is out for five minutes, the server and network systems do not shut down or have to reset.  Zero network interruption - everything goes back to normal when the power comes back on.  Computers boot up and everything is available.

Our UPS devices are over five years old.  We all know from our iPod experiences that batteries don't last forever, and at least three of the 19 that are in place have gone bad.  The technician from the multi-billion-dollar company came out to look at it and said "Your UPS is bad."  The conversation went like this:

Me: "Okay.  When are you going to bring a new one?"
Tech: "Uh...  I don't know.  We don't know who's going to pay for it."
Me: "I'm sorry?"
Tech: "Yeah... There's some confusion on who is going to replace the UPS."
Me: "Why?"
Tech: "I don't know.  We plugged the server into a surge protector and it's back up.  Bye."

That was three months ago.  After asking several people and not getting a straight answer, only "We're looking in to it..." and "[this person] agrees that [the contract] should cover it", I get a simple reply from above: "[contracting agency] flat-out states that UPS devices are not covered by [project]."

Okay.  I will publicly make the assumption, given that statement, that our contracting agency does not think UPS devices are necessary.  They now own the infrastructure - the servers, LAN, WAN, client systems.  If they don't cover UPSs, then they don't feel that power protection is important to their systems.  I am told that my sites, with their limited budget, should buy the UPS for their server.  Problem is, it's not their server.  It's [contracting agency]'s.  Sure, it serves that office, but responsibility for uptime, service level agreements, security, and data backups of that server fall on the big (stupid) guys.  Yes, I said stupid.  They know not what they do.  When the server goes down, and it does so weekly, no one cares that the entire office is impacted.

From what I hear, one of the services on one of the servers requires human interaction to finish the boot/startup process.  I don't know this for sure because I'm never there when the power blinks, but if that is true, we have to have someone on-site to press the F1 key every time.  That brings up another good point - we have storms at night.  What else runs at night, you ask?  The backup.  What happens if the backup process is interrupted?  What happens if that power failure causes hardware failure?  What happens if no one knows it?  There is no monitoring service - I get calls from the office saying "There's a message on the server about backup somethingoranother..."  Shouldn't IT already know there's a problem?  Why does our infrastructure depend so heavily on our users?

Service is interrupted too often.  Sites are short-handed because there's a hiring freeze.  More people need benefits these days, so enrollment in our programs is up.  Efficiency in our work has never been more important, and [stupid agency] wants to bicker over a $500 device to keep the server up.  Every time the power goes out (keep in mind we just went through hurricane season) the office is interrupted for at least an hour.  I could go on and on about how we could virtualize the desktops and maintain our environment so much easier and operate more efficiently (and probably cheaper), but all I want today is the fucking server to stay on.  Is that too much to ask?

I'll keep asking, and I'll keep writing, and maybe one day I'll get what I want.  Then we might actually get what we need.
                

Some Advice

I just read an article about Google providing public DNS servers for everyone to use.  I thought, "why?"  There are enough ways to provide DNS resolution, and most ISPs provide pretty good DNS service, so why would any corporation or individual need the services of Google for DNS resolution?

I still haven't answered that.

Anyway, I looked in to starting up my own internal DNS server and went looking on the boards to see how I might go about it.  I was presented with a problem that most people on those boards experienced - I didn't have enough experience and didn't know what I was doing.  I noticed that folks on the only site I looked on were having trouble with the little example there, and directly asked for help.

I'm not so interested anymore and I don't have the time (or the server), but if I did I wouldn't subscribe to a single post, follow examples, and ask for help directly.  Some of the comments lead me to believe that the folks asking questions actually work in the IT field and can't go somewhere else to find what they need to do their job.  I would recommend the following for you if you are the type of person who asks for help on free examples:

Find another example.  Plenty of times I find that some dude's code is crap and another site has better examples to follow.  Viewing other sources and hacking away with more information is much better than waiting for someone to answer a question about something they wrote over a year ago.

Read about the technology.  If you want to set up a specific service, be it DNS, Secure FTP, CVS, or whatever, take a minute to read about the technology itself - are there standards you can learn about?  Protocols?  Specific requirements?  If you can find out how something works, it will be easier to configure a server to do it because then you'll know what all that extra stuff in the .conf file is, and you might actually remember some of the settings if you need to change something later.

Go to the source.  If it's a service on Ubuntu, there is definitely some documentation on it.  In that documentation you can find out a lot of configuration information, syntax, and security practices for the service that you might not find out on Bob's FTP tutorial.

Help yourself, people.  I'm glad I don't write tutorials.

                

I Have Two Legs

I was having trouble thinking of a name for the software company under which I'll release my apps for Android.  I really like Fog Creek Software, and I could only think of that genre of name. Bear Creek Software came to mind, but I don't really connect with that and it's nearly a copy.  And there's already a Bear Creek Technology company somewhere and they have the domain name.

It hit me in the car last week, I think.  I have been battling recently with the fact that I haven't actually produced anything - I've just talked about it.  I've talked the talk.  Now it's time to walk the walk, to exacerbate the cliché.

So was born Two Leg Software, where we produce software that helps folks get things done.  All the apps fit the name, in a way.  This might work.  Everything I've thought of so far will help me my life easier, so I deem those the best apps to produce and sell.

Now that I have a name and a domain, I need someone to donate their time in to building a site there.  I don't suck at web design, but I don't have the time.  I'll write it out and someone else can implement it.  Any takers?
                

Tifton Kiwanis 5K and Valdosta Winterfest 5K

If they do it again next year, and I run all the time until then, I'll do it again.  If I take a break, hurt myself, or stop training for any other reason, I probably will shy away from running two races in one afternoon.  But I had fun and scored two t-shirts, so I can't say it was all for nothing.

I'll have to say I'm proud of myself for not walking (as I had done many times in the past) and for actually finishing the second race faster than the last time I ran that course.  If I happened to tell anyone, I ran a 34:18 on July 4, 2009 and today I ran that same route in 31:00.

I only wonder how fast I'd have run it if I hadn't done the Tifton 5K.  Oh, well.  There's always July 4, 2010.

                

More New Beginnings

I pre-ordered John Mayer's Battle Studies last week and got it Tuesday (release day). To make the order more fulfilling, I got a book I've been meaning to buy for some time now: Joel Spolsky's Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity, a great guide to running a software company.

I had seen the book every once-in-awhile when shopping in the programming sections of bookstores, but never really realized what it was. At the time of discovery, I would not have read it - the book is full of software project management and all that garbage related to schedules, estimates, supervision, etc.

After all the research I performed during my undergraduate studies, however, I have a renewed interest in software projects. Having learned what I did about software design (I have a degree in Information Technology with a concentration in Software Systems Engineering) I like the higher-level design and also like to code when I know what's going on. I discovered early on that coding directly from an idea in my head really results in wasting time and cognition. Even my little JavaScript project that generates MD5 and SHA1 hashes from strings took hours because I didn't have an end result in mind. That single page should have taken about 30 minutes to set up, but I admit that I was simply playing with DOM manipulation and just happened to think of something to do with it.

I have always supported design-before-build practices, and now that I have finished school I have an appreciation for the same principles applied to fabricating software.  The whole management thing is interesting now; I haven't had the chance yet to "manage" formally, as long as you don't count the "Team Leader" position I had at the auto parts store just after high school.  I supervised two people.  Ten years later, I haven't done it since.

The most super-cool thing about creating a software company is creating something that changes the way people do things.  Writing computer programs that many people use is the most powerful thing I can think of within my ability range.  When I write a little ditty that saves someone 45 minutes of manually editing an Excel spreadsheet, the user shares that with someone else, and it goes down the line.  I alone am able to save my current organization literally hours of time every week, with just a few lines of code.  I want to do that for the public, and I want to have at least some impact on how people use computers - whether they realize they're using a computer or not.

My main development focus at this point is on Android applications (sorry, iPhone users) because the platform is so open and I can do anything within the limits of the device.  I have to get it right the first time, though; the majority of folks who to post reviews about apps are not nice when they don't like the app, and don't seem to give much constructive feedback.  There's a lot to learn about the Android platform and the market, but there's even more to learn about customers.

I'm off to run five miles now, in an effort to get ready for yet another one of my ideas: joining the FBI.  Is that random enough for you?

Directions Please

I used to have a floppy disk I used to keep ideas on. I wrote on the disk: "Ideas for my Engineering Career." I think I might have it here somewhere, but today I couldn't find it to add something to. Also, I no longer have a floppy drive.

I thought of something yesterday that might help a group of people in a certain way (the ambiguity is intentional). I just wrote a quick summary out in my Maker's Notebook instead of typing something. The project has been named Furious Plutonium (more ambiguity there. You're welcome.) Now here's the dilemma:

How will I ever remember to build a prototype or perform further work on the project? I need to conduct more research, but after that I have to get to building and tuning. I am scared now that it will fall into my personal /dev/null, where all my other projects have gone with the exception of those I completed within a number of hours one can count on a single hand.

I've been saying for years that I need a proper workshop - I have nowhere to build anything, and no tools either. Time is a rare commodity these days as well.

Blog posts are supposed to come to some conclusion or provide some kind of solution to the stated problem. I have no solutions, because I can't pinpoint the problems. This post is getting off-topic, so I'll quit.

2009 Winterfest 5K

The Winterfest 5K in Valdosta will benefit Toys for Tots. The registration form was just released, and you can click here to get it.

Keep in mind that if you're crazy as I am there's another race that day in Tifton at 2:00pm, and you can finish that in time to get to the Winterfest at 4:30. Contact the Tifton Kiwanis Club for more information on that race.

30:33. Record Time.

I'm no track star, but yesterday I ran the fastest 5K of my life thus far. Either it was a good lung day or it was the 15 miles I ran in the previous ten days. The running seems to help, so I'll be running for the next four days, take Friday off, and see what happens at the 5K for Missions on the 21st. Today I'll just bask in my own glory.

Blazer Corps 5K

The form is here if you want it. I'll be running and I expect to get a much better time than I do on average. From my previous six 5K races, I'm averaging somewhere around 33 minutes. That's horrible, given that I need a much faster pace to join the FBI. I'm running every day until the 14th, so I'll see where that gets me.

Georgia Bike Rescue

New Project: a community-based, nonprofit venture that may actually get somewhere. If I get the support it needs.

I have started Georgia Bike Rescue, a little organization (just me right now) that accepts old bicycles to make new and give away. In celebration of this first day of the organization, I swiped the first bike out of someone's trash this evening. Kinda just happened upon it.

Anyway, gabikerescue.org is up and running, complete with analytics. The Facebook page has been created but no content yet. Please become a fan if you can stand the idea.

I had been thinking about doing this for a few months now, and the time came today to start something. I know I've started a lot of things without finishing them and I will never deny that. I just think this one can continue even without me, with the help of many local supporters.

What I can imagine happening is:

1. I get a group of people together who like this kind of thing and feel that it would benefit the community.
2. We collect bikes that are donated from around the county and maybe further.
3. We get the good parts from the donations and make complete bicycles.
4. We take the bad parts to the scrap metal place to get money.
5. The money is used for inner tubes, cables, materials, etc.
6. The finished bikes are given to local charities who then choose a recipient (in December).
7. We do it all again the next Christmas season.

So there it is. We need some things from supporters, however. We (I) currently do not have anywhere to store the bikes or perform the work. We (I) could use some storage/work space that is at least semi-secure. I don't have any bicycle-specific tools or equipment, so those things would be nice. For now I'll try to garner support and resources from the interested people and I'll see where that gets us (me). It is hoped that I will have more to report at some point in the near future.

5K For Missions

There will be a 5K race November 21 at 8 am to benefit Liz Norris on the World Race. From the form:

The World Race is an 11 month mission trip to 11 different countries. I will leave in January 2010 and return in December. I have to raise a total of $14,000. I am reaching out to the Valdosta community to help make this happen. For more information, visit liznorris.theworldrace.org.

You can get the registration form by clicking here.

St. John Road Race 2009

The St. John Road Race 2009 is being held on October 31 in Valdosta. The form is available on this site. Click here.

Think Pink 5K

I had some trouble finding the registration form for this one, so I'm sharing it.

Click Here. Hurry and register!

The End of the Weekend

It sucks thinking about it - back to work tomorrow. Due to furloughs, I had a four-day weekend and it seemed pretty long. I thought I'd have forever to get things done, but reality is to the contrary. I'm getting ready to run the Labor Day 5K in Valdosta, and then the day is pretty much over after that.

What's worse is that I don't enjoy my job anymore. When you don't look forward to going to work or talking to people about the work, it may be time to move on. My career is at a standstill at present and has been for some time now. I'm not allowed to touch computers in fear of a contract violation (sounds like a court order, doesn't it?) and I don't manage anyone. I manage information that is painfully extracted from those who care about these things less than I do. I see the job now as a futile effort to get things done and make things right. IBM has hosed this all up and there is almost nothing else to take apart. I'll say this: it takes at least five days to install a desktop printer and there is nothing I can do to make that any faster. Everything is officiated and nothing is efficient in State Government I.T.

So I just don't like it anymore. All we've been doing for three months is bitch and moan about how IBM/Dell/AT&T have come in and screwed everything up and GTA let them do it. And nothing has happened as a result of it. We are absolutely powerless. The things we say make a whole lot of sense, but no one hears it. It's like telling the CEO that the server has a security issue, to which he replies "...hmph. We'll have to look in to that," while never making eye contact. He doesn't care what you're saying. The sun is up and people are at work, aren't they? Everything is grand!

I am beginning to feel as if I'm rambling. I am losing the organization of my thoughts and that means it's time to quit writing for now.

Facebook Experiment Conclusion

The experiment didn't exactly go as planned, and I think the fact that I conceived, planned, and executed it within two hours could have contributed to its demise. The entire point of my exercise was to see how far and how quickly something can spread on Facebook. There is no other way (that I know of) to measure the note-sharing than to do what I did.

I like data and wanted to see the numbers grow. I expected more than 30 to respond, from all of Facebook. Turns out that my idea wasn't so well received as I'd hoped it would be.

Anyway, here are the final numbers, as the experiment is finished today with dwindling results:

30 Absolute Unique Visitors
All sourced from Facebook except for my own direct entry
Every visitor was from US or Canada (only one Canadian)

Overall result:



And by the way - if you want to shoot those numbers up, tell all your friends to go to http://fb.49times.com. There they can read all about it and continue the experiment, though I won't be watching or reporting on it unless it blows up as I had expected it to the first time.

9 Unique August 25

Sorry - I was reading it wrong. Google Analytics (hereafter GA) says the FB page has had 9 absolutely unique visitors yesterday. Again, more tomorrow.

12 Visits

Google Analytics shows 12 visits yesterday, and I guess that could be considered good since I sent it out at 1700 EST and not everyone uses Facebook every day.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the results of today's visits. The counter was just at 36 page loads so I expect more than 24 unique visits as of today. We'll see.

Until then,

The Facebook Experiment Starts Now

I just thought of this today and will now begin the experiment. I've tagged 30 people in a note on Facebook that asks them to copy the note, paste it in a note of their own, and tag 30 people with it. Then they should follow the link in the note that goes to a single page I created.

I won't give the page away because I want every reference to come from Facebook itself. What I want to happen is to see 100,000 or more hits to that page over the next week. I expect this because social networking is viral (if people cooperate) and word can spread very quickly. I want to see just how quickly that is.

I will publish the results here and under the label "Facebook Experiment" as the project progresses.

Better Verizon Coverage

I went to check my BlackBerry last night for new messages, and couldn't help but notice a full signal meter. This was odd.

When we moved to Adel three years ago, we had great service in the then-out-of-area part of Verizon's network. We weren't charged for roaming or anything, and the signal was usable.

Some time last year, Verizon thought it would be a good idea to move in. They took Valdosta and put up towers in Adel and up to Tifton, covering a large area where they did not previously. I don't know how everything works, but their moving in and activating towers really changed things about service quality. For instance: I could not talk on the phone in my house. To send a text, I had to move toward an open door or window while holding up my phone until I got "Message Sent." I held conversations with people, but only in the driveway or the back yard.

So yeah, last night was odd - my personal phone also showed a very good signal level. I haven't confirmed any of this, but I believe it has to do with Verizon's acquisition of Alltel. We'll see if this lasts. And for their sake, Verizon better do something to keep service at this level - I was determined to switch at the end of this contract after five years with them.

But now I guess we'll stay. Seems a lot of nothing to blog about, but I'm pretty excited about my new ability to talk on the phone inside my house.

8 Mile

Well that sucked. Good movie, theatrics, whatever. I expected more at the end, like him getting a record deal or something.

At least I can say it sucked now having seen it. People who don't like movies they haven't seen tend to carry that mentality to other aspects of life. And that's why I try my best to watch every movie through to the end. I'm not a generalist.

May 12, 2009

It took the entire eight weeks of the 6-8 weeks for delivery to get it, and I'm still not sure it was worth all the time, tears, and money. It was just a few minutes ago that I decided to post it here to be archived.

The arrival of my undergraduate degree certificate was not a very special occasion. I thought I would cry when I finally reached that point in my life. After all, I did spend about eight years working on it. But no tears. Just back to work.

No raise, no added responsibility, no prestigious stance about me. No speeches. Just calls from Sallie Mae. No period of enlightenment or revelations. Just me. Same as I was out of high school, but with a whole lot more debt. And more kids.

I could be for and against higher education at this point, but either perspective is useless. The pursuit of education is at the personal level, and some people will sacrifice more than others to achieve their academic goals. Even after all of this, I still want to go to grad school. I might be borderline psychotic for that reason.

But Only So Much...

In these times of cost-cutting, I don't have a home phone. My company has no overhead or monthly bills beyond those services it provides to its customers. At home we don't really have or do anything extra. We live on one income and thrive on information from books and the Internet. No cable TV or satellite. I have a subscription to Xbox Live and Netflix - a combination unparalleled anywhere. I have considered cutting that, but tonight I am forever changed.

I'm sick today as I have been for the past two weeks with vertigo. I don't want to go anywhere and I slept all day. Beth is away with the kids at her parents' house, and I am left with nothing to do but put a Website proposal together (boring) and watch television. We don't get PBS because the DTV antenna I built doesn't face the right way. No public TV = no TV. I don't have the money to go to the video store, and that's usually not worth it anyway. Besides - I'm dizzy, remember?

Enter Netflix. Tie in Xbox Live. I picked at least 15 titles to watch this evening, to include movies I have only heard of and television series that I missed while in college. No, I don't think I'm going to cut that expense. I'm not out spending money when I'm on the couch. I just fell in love with technology all over again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go get my money's worth while keeping my head as still as possible.

Needs Improvement

This was me near the finish line yesterday. I clearly need some training before the next one. Look at me - my stride is so short - stamina needs improvement. My cool Army PT shirt is getting soaked; I don't think it does what I was led to believe. Clothing needs improvement. I have two weeks until the Barnes Health Care 5K on the 18th, and I intend to finish a lot sooner. At least by a minute.

Off to RunnersWorld.com to get some training tips.

Post-Valdosta 5K - 34:18

The run was fun, as it should have been. Last night I decided that I wasn't going to go because I hadn't taken enough time to prepare. If you look back two posts, I ran 5K in 35:22 six days ago. Having not trained any since then, I still ran a faster time this morning: 34:18.

Now that I'm finished with college for a while, I actually have time to make this a hobby. I tried to do it in 2007, but as soon as I started back to school all the physical activity ceased. I don't have any more excuses to run more often. If I'm still going in to Federal service I had better get going.

Valdosta 5K

I haven't run any more but I guess I'll go anyway tomorrow. In all consideration, I don't need to be the fastest guy running (even though it would never happen anyway). I really just need to go and be there. As long as I have fun and get the t-shirt, all will be well. What else did I pay $20 for anyway? I will try to remember to report the results.

35:22

I wasn't dragging the dog on this one and I actually changed the units on the GPS to metric. 5K in 35:22, which isn't bad since I ran 31:24 in 2007 after running for two months. We'll see what it is tomorrow, if I even make it out. I didn't even run the whole way. I walked more than I wanted to.

44:20

This post is back-dated. I am trying to chronicle this week as I take seven days to train for a 5K on July 4. Tonight I was dragging the dog, so I don't think I'll do that again.

Redesign #13 or so...

As the world constantly changes, so does my mind. I wanted a simple layout for this blog, but still couldn't fit all the details in to this slight redesign. Still, it was a welcome change. Not much change, mind you, but settling on a largely black-and-white theme pleased me. Things might get simpler still. If you don't bother noting the post time here, I'll tell you anyway: I'm off to bed as I have nothing more to say at this hour.

Via @aplusk on Twitter

I found this pretty funny and no one follows @rtech on Twitter, so I post here:

are my subscribers bombarded with these messages?

this is to test SMS to my blog and make me look smart. My very own twitter!

Another Break

Wow. It's been a long time since April 14. It's June 6 already. Let me catch you up:

I graduated college on May 12. We had a little party on the 16th. As of today I have not received my diploma.

My son was born five days ago, on June 1st. I kept those in-the-know updated via Twitter from my iPod over WiFi at the hospital. Say what you want.

Braden Michael Rehberg was born at 07:53 EST on June 1, 2009. 8lb, 9oz and 21" long.

Having written that, I now realize that this blog is five years old. I know this because I started writing here way before my daughter was born. I announced her birth somewhere back there in the archives, too. Is this turning into a career?

In between graduating and Braden's arrival, my business blew up and I was busier than I had ever been. It's still going and I am glad I took this entire month off from work. Maybe I can catch up. I'm loving it so far.

As much as I hated doing all that schoolwork and having sworn it off, I caught myself at school with Beth today thumbing through the 2008-2009 Graduate catalog. They still don't have any interesting Masters programs. I have changed my direction a bit away from IT, but it's still a close relation: Project Management. The PM courses I had in my undergrad were interesting, and there's quite a bit of science to the art that is Project Management. A lot of projects today are technical ones anyway, so it won't hurt to have a background in computers and networks. Having decided that, I have not come to a conclusion as to whether a graduate degree would help me any more after I become a PMP.

More on that later. I hope to have some kind of theme to write about here, but my brain is certainly too full and prone to wander. Don't believe me? Check the archives.

Late-

Automated Web Albums

A friend showed me yesterday that Photoshop has the ability to create a photo album for the web. I decided to play with it this morning. I discovered that it does pretty much the same thing that Picasa does when you export to an HTML page, but with a few more options and the ability to create a Flash-based album too. I won't provide any instructions here (that would be for the other blog), but only links. The Flash site is so far the prettiest, but I don't think there are enough options. The HTML site from Photoshop is pretty good, but there could always be better templates. The Picasa web album leaves too much to be desired - UX being the biggest piece. Not very pretty or dynamic.

Anyway, it's time to do some real work.

It Was Over a Long Time Ago

I forgot to tell you that my Windows 7 Beta box crashed over a month ago. It wasn't Windows 7, though - the hard drive was one that I'd bought back in '01. Maybe before that. The old Seagate 40GB EIDE just couldn't hang any longer.

I have tried to restore the machine to a new drive via a backup from the Windows Home Server, but the backups weren't available for some reason. I have not had the time or inclination to try again, and I simply don't want a computer in my bedroom any longer. I enjoyed the time I spent with Windows 7, and it looks to be a good change for Microsoft.

In contrast, I thought of something the other day: I have been scouting computers for years, even though I have so many. Since I got this MacBook a year ago, I can't remember the last time I tried to plan out buying another computer. It just doesn't happen anymore. I believe that deep down inside, I am content with my current computer. The only things I research anymore are servers. I want to build a distributed system for cluster computing. I haven't shopped for a Windows Laptop (or any laptop, for that matter) for a long time, and I believe my next trip to get another computer will be a short one. The MacBook Pro will do.

SLAM Fun-Fly

If you've ever wanted to see someone knock a plastic bottle off of a traffic cone with the tail of a radio-controlled airplane, here's a video of it. Warning: >29MB. Please right-click and download as you'll likely encounter problems trying to stream it.

We had a great time at the first-ever SLAM Fun-Fly on April 4. Visit South Land Aero Modelers at slamrc.com.

Practitioner

That's my word. It's the only word I continually misspell (that I know of). I used to misspell ridiculous, but since Beth pointed that out sometime in 2006 I have corrected my memory. I just can't get practicioner in the noggin correctly formed.

Anyway, I had an exciting day on furlough in which I got dressed expecting to go round up new clients. I didn't talk to a single person for the same reason as last time: If I get new customers, how do I guarantee I can help them when they call? How do I know they won't dismiss me if I don't show up immediately?

That said, I can't really afford to put my reputation on the line. This day job really gets in the way, but I like the steady (yet reduced) income because I enjoy owning a home and having fewer risks of not making the payment on it. I will take customers as they come, so they understand that I am generally unavailable during the day and my specialization is after-hours response.

I should spend the next furlough re-writing the website to suit my style and communicate my intentions a little better.

My Switch to Digital TV

Instead of making a note about it, I'll just post the inspiring video so I can remember how this is done. Or I can just go here.

In Support of the Mobile SDK

There may be a few "iPhone Killers" coming out, but I believe that the only one with a shot at triggering the demise of Apple's cute little two-hundred-dollar-bill is the "Google Phone." I don't call it a Google Phone, but I'm trying to use it in a general sense. By "Google Phone" I mean any phone running the Android operating system. There are many touch-screen phones coming out, and they all look great, don't they? None will kill Apple's iPhone or the Android platform.

The Nokia 5800 is a fantastic device from what I have read. It has all the features the iPhone does, and Nokia is even launching an audio store. The Blackberry Storm is the world's first touchscreen from RIM, and it seems to be getting rave reviews for its functionality. You can watch videos, listen to music, check e-mail, update Facebook, and all those cool things you always wanted to do with what the mobile phone has become.

I have one reason that the iPhone and the Android platform will survive: the SDK. That Nokia 5800 is great, but what if there's just one more thing you want to do with it, and Nokia never provided that function? What if you decided your Blackberry Storm couldn't do enough?

As a (budding) developer, I feel that the openness of the platforms (the ability to create your own software for any purpose to make a device even more useful) is the driving force behind the iPhone, and what will eventually be Android's success (even moreso now that it's free to develop for Android and fantastically cheap to submit to the Android market).

Tell me: Could you do this with your 5800 or Storm? I didn't think so.

Coming Right Up...

They came around today. I had the same problem today as yesterday installing Java, and finally a message popped up with a solution.

I followed these instructions (please don't ask me to explain the registry key we deleted, because I can't), and Java installed perfectly. Office 2007 went smoothly just now as well. Enterprise Architect is on its way to my system, and I think I might have a fully-functional machine now. Isn't that weird? I wonder if Microsoft reads this blog (they don't) because it seems to be an eerie coincidence that I write about something and they fix it. Also, they don't allow me to write anything to go along with the crash reports like Apple does.

Let's try NetBeans now.

Uh-Oh. Installer Problems in Windows 7

I'm having problems installing software on Windows 7. I'm not going to freak out and blast Microsoft for this; it's a beta system, and the same error has occurred with two different software packages: Sun's JDK 6 and Microsoft Office 2007. I have found some search results that lead me to believe that someone has succeeded in installing Office '07 on Windows 7, but I can't find out a whole lot about it.

One thought is that this is the 64-bit edition of Windows, and not much has been tested on it. XP x64 brought some pain to the compatibility area, and I don't think I've ever installed Vista x64. So I can't say that I have a lot of experience, and I don't know what to do to find the culprit. I do know that I get the same two dialog boxes when installing either the JDK or Office 2007.

Another thought is that Microsoft might have changed something in their installer (or did they even have it before Win7?), or it's a combination of the two. Whatever the case, today the computer is simply a radio.
I guess I'll have to use my laptop for the rest of the day; I need to do a White Box Test Plan for my Software Testing class, and draw several UML diagrams for my capstone. I can't install NetBeans because I can't install the JDK, and I can't install Office 2007 to do the report. I'm not mad, but I really wanted the desktop to do all this design work instead of cramming it all on the laptop.

Gloomy Times

Just when I'm about to finish college again, the economy and all the job markets take a shit. It was the same way in 2004 (we were just coming out of the dot-com bust and Enron), and in 2009 I'll be stuck with an undergraduate degree without the new job that is supposed to come along with it.

And no one can escape this one, it seems. Not even Google.

On another note, I am still pursuing Army/Air Force Officer candidacy.

Video Driver Update Without Restart in Windows 7

Does anyone remember not having to restart after the simplest Windows Update? I think there was one last year...

Something happened today that blew my mind. I started Windows Update on my Vista laptop and saw there were 4 important updates. "What updates are necessary today for Windows 7?," I asked myself. I opened Windows Update (herein referred to as WU because I am tired of typing it) and there were no critical updates, but two optional ones.

One was for the monitor I'm using, an Acer V193W (who knows why?) and for my video card, a GeForce 6600. I told WU to go ahead with both updates and went about whatever it was I wanted to do. I was reading e-mail when it happened, and swore I'd experienced the first hiccup with the beta OS.

The screen went black and I saw a blinking cursor at top left, as if the machine had restarted as a result of a hard crash. "WTF just happened?," I said. Then the desktop came back and the browser window resituated itself in the maximized position where I had it previously. A little pop-up at bottom right told me that my video driver had been installed successfully.

This tells me something wonderful - that things in Windows 7 are so modular that restarting the GUI with a new graphics driver doesn't even bother any other part of the system. Isn't that great? Vista promised fewer restarts and I believed them. They lied. Windows 7 just surprised the crap out of me with the <blink> "Okay, done" -style of updating this morning.

Just for reference, I've been running Windows 7 since Friday, January 10, 2009 and I have not been forced to restart yet.