Category Archives: Work

Is it a commute or a video game?

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I saw a review of Waze in a blog post by The Unofficial Apple Weblog and while they were a bit cool on it as a navigation app, it is free and has an interesting take. I picked up a Kingston windshield mount which replaced where I had my GPS so am in the market for a GPS app for my iPhone. The reality is, however, that in spite of my frequent time in my car, it’s really just to and from work (all 500+ miles per week). Obviously, I know how to get to work so I can’t justify a significant expense. Since Waze is free, it was a clear choice to give a spin.

The program uses a map that is fed over the phone’s data connection and is community driven. Anytime you drive on a road that hasn’t been traversed before, you “munch” dots much like Pac Man which verifies the geometry and your speed and is uploaded to their servers which is then fed back to others as traffic information for routing alternatives. You can also point out specific traffic problems, speed traps, or even just “chit chat” which can be viewed by other users. As you munch roads, provide updates, or just confirm traffic, you get points and your points determine your ranking. I never thought that driving around would count for anything.

The website allows you to view your routes or edit the dynamic map (presented much like Google’s) to add new roads and update other aspects (house numbers, name, road connections, etc.).

The downside, is that currently the maps have some trouble with accuracy but that presumably will improve as more users use it and especially if they update it from the website. The navigation app is a little rough as well with its presentation but that’ll hopefully improve as well.

It’s a decent little app and a creative service. Back to road munching. I wonder how many points are needed for an extra life?

Yup, it’s Monday

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I have a fall routine that I enjoy. After dropping off my bag in my office, I go to the kitchen, I mix a packet of hot chocolate with about 1/3 C of hot water and then top it off with steamed milk from our espresso machine.

Today, the milk had turned bad over the weekend. Wanna know what hot chocolate tastes like when made with sour milk? No, really, you don’t.

Can you go back?

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Gryphons flagship program

Gryphon's flagship program

In a few hours I’ll be going to a reunion party for a company which was my first job out of college. I first started at Gryphon Software in 1992 and worked there officially until 1998 but continued working with many of the folks until I left for RedZone in 2000. It’s a bit of a long story that I may write up sometime.

The reunion was the idea of my old boss and one of the founders of Gryphon after a group of them saw each other at the memorial of another employee that died earlier this year. Whenever you are in a situation like that, someone will often say “we should get together” but it rarely happens. I’m happy that Duane made the effort.

I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and acquaintances. I suppose it’s like a school reunion without the awkwardness of having old girlfriends or boyfriends in attendance. I’m sure will comment on how we look the same “but older” and how big our kids have gotten as well as talking about the “good old days.” They were good, you know.

Have we hit bottom?

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No, this is not about the national or world economic “crisis.” This is far more important. I am writing about my work, my job, and my ever-illustrious team of guys at work.

As you have seen in previous posts, tweets, and if you read between the lines, the lack of them, things have been quite stressful at work. Video games, being a luxury, are subject to soft sales when people are worried about their jobs which results in a “do more with less” mantra which can be especially frustrating in IT when things cost what they cost and doing without only works in the short-term. I have also had a position open since February which really was needed to be filled back when I was promoted to manager last November.

While the ink isn’t dry, I am happy to say that a fifth member will be joining our elite team of geeks. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that shortly, we won’t need to be doing things part-way due to the workload. We’ll finally be able to get to all those things we know we should but always seem to never address.

Other changes at the office include just that, offices. We’ve moved around and while the current configuration is less-than-ideal, we are working towards a “center of excellence” which will allow us to work more closely with colleagues of another group which will end up making each of us better as a result.

Hope is a good thing, but only if it is realistic. You can dream all you want, but if there is no way to get there, there is no drive. No passion. Not only will things be different a year from now, they will be better and we’ll be stronger, smarter, and most definitely better looking.

In all sereousness, stress has been a frequent companion for most of this year. If it wasn’t for the skill, dedication, and flexibility of my guys, the moral support of my wife, and the strength of my savior, Jesus, I don’t think I would have been able to hold it together. Thanks to all of you.

Do the due

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Life has been busy for me at work. In fact, I can’t remember being this busy ever before. Sure, I have a position open that will help with the load but that has been proving hard to fill so things won’t be improving anytime soon. I also have been trying to keep myself organized so that I can manage all the tasks I have to worry about. David Allen‘s Getting Things Done method makes a lot of sense and I have been using The Omni Group’s OmniFocus which has kept me sane as I don’t have to sorry about forgetting things (if I’m good about capturing them).

The problem is that there is so much to do, too little time, and enough unexpected things that come up, my productivity is seriously disrupted. It gets so bad that the due dates I set on tasks to try and keep priorities set are becoming past due more and more often. What does one do? Do I simply keep pushing the due dates forwards until they start stacking up and becoming even more useless? Do I drop drop due dates from anything not truly essential and risk not ever getting to it?

There are several blog and forum posts on strategies that I’ve been meaning to read, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t made the time. Perhaps I have to take the time to make the time.

I’m Still Alive

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I know this is the Occasional Blog, but posts have been too far in between (the Twitter posts don’t count). Please forgive me. I’m not dead, just busy. For the sake of an update here are some highlights of the last several weeks.

  • I’m trying to find a Senior Systems Administrator at work (you’d think that Sony Playstation would have stacks of resumés)
  • My daughter turned twelve and after today’s haircut, she looks ready for high school
  • The pond got its spring cleaning a few weeks ago and looks abfab. Too bad the heron got all our koi and we’re left with only 4-5″ feeders
  • We took a family vacation to San Francisco to coincide with spring break and a business meeting
  • The MacBook Mini is working out quite well especially after adding 2G of RAM and an 8G SDHC card
  • I will be going to both E3 (definite) and WWDC (very likely) so June will be busy as well

I’ll do my best to do an actual post soon, but until I can find a candidate, things will still be busy.

MacBook Mini lives!

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I was happy to receive shipment confirmation on my Dell Mini 9 order on Thursday and it showed up Tuesday afternoon. After quickly archiving the SSD (I had considered evaluating the pre-installed Ubuntu Linux setup, but ‘eh, I’ve used Ubuntu before), I proceeded to install OS X Leopard (10.5).

My initial attempt didn’t work directly off of the install DVD (the easy way) so I had to resort to the more mucky copy-install-DVD-to-external-drive solution. On the plus side, the install proceeded fairly quickly as it was not hampered by the slowness of installing from DVD.

After a few reboots and updates, I now have this:

I must say that it is the cutest and coolest little laptop that I’ve used in a while. I’ve been able to install the apps I want to use (Firefox, OmniFocus, 1Password, iStat Menus, Growl, and Adium) as well as the VPN software for work so I can respond to any issue that might come up. After purging items mentioned in my last post, I have 4.5G free on the 16G SSD (formats to 14.03G).

It isn’t all paradise, however. Getting used to the keyboard is proving challenging. Not surprisingly, the keys are about 80% normal size, but I can live with that. The part that’s really strange is that the ‘/” key which is normally to the right of ;/: is now below ./> but the really annoying thing is the right shift key is half size right next to the up arrow. More often than not I end up moving the cursor up a line whenever I try to capitalize something.

While I will opt for my work MacBook or the family MacBook Pro for anything really serious, the Mini 9 is a great little “goof around” Mac that Apple never made. After our budget digests the purchase in a month or two, I’ll pick up a 2G DIMM as I’m noticing the slowdown of OS X on 1G. I’ll also get a 8G SDHC Flash card for scratch and I’ll be ready for anything.

A little playing around

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As I mentioned in a previous post, a few colleagues at work have several of the ever more popular netbooks. One of the guys has been opting to use his personal one and leaving his work one sitting largely idle. He was kind enough to let me take his Acer Aspire One for a spin. At the same time, I’ve been taking a look at the recently released Windows 7 beta. This post is a mini review of both.

Acer Aspire One

First, the Apire One is certainly a cute system but it’s not without its faults. The screen is 8.9″ and 1024×600. It’s enough to get work done, but you don’t realize how spoiled you get with screen real estate until you don’t have it. The one I’m borrowing has a 6 cell battery (rather than the standard 3 cell) which gives it about 4-5 hours of use which is quite nice.

Acer Trackpad

For the Acer itself, I really dislike the fact the trackpad buttons are on the left and right rather than below which makes it awkward to use. Also, due to the smaller form-factor, my palms hang off the side which causes the case edge to dig into them. Of course, if I wasn’t quite so lazy it wouldn’t be a problem.

I’m watching the upcoming 10″ Aspire which has a normal trackpad but with all the other features. I’ll be keeping my eye on it and may look to get one for myself. As solid-state disk (SSD) gets cheaper, the idea of a 64-128G flash drive instead of 2.5″ disk is attractive as the drive on the Apsire is just noisy enough to be noticeable (though not bothersome).

Windows 7

If you know me or have read this site, you know that I’m a Mac guy. I’ve used Macs since 1986 and while I have access to just about any type of system in use, if I’m trying to get something done, I use a Mac.

I do use Windows every day and have since Windows 3.1. Microsoft has done some good things and some bad things. I’ve been using Windows Vista for a bit now and have been underwhelmed but I do think it isn’t quite as bad as the general public perception.

Windows 7 Screenshot

Windows 7 was released as a public beta a few weeks ago and I first created a VM on my MacBook and most recently installed it on the Acer. I can honestly say, for Windows, it is a nice operating system. Netbooks are, by design, lower end systems. As operating systems evolve, they generally require more and more resources. Vista’s requirements have been a source of complaint and at least one lawsuit. Windows 7, as I’ve seen, is far more efficient and runs quite nicely on the little bugger. It’s taken some effort to find proper drivers for things like wireless, touchpad, and video, but even stock, the system was usable.

Having a system you can simply cary around makes keeping a computer handy easy. Of course, I personally hope that Apple jumps into the game, but I’m not holding my breath.

My phone is happy (and so am I)

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I picked up a Xtand by Just Mobile to use with my iPhone at work. I previously was using a modified Coke can made by a friend of mine but that wouldn’t allow me to stand the phone vertically while using the audio cable (which comes out the bottom).

This new stand is quite nice. Not only does it match the general Apple aesthetic, it swivels to allow the phone to be displayed both portrait and landscape. Now, I can use my phone as a little digital picture frame while I work.

The other plusses are the fact the rubber corners can be removed to allow my phone to sit nicely while still in its silicon case and the best (and unexpected) of all is the fact it resolve the GSM noise problem I have been trying to eliminate for months.

Since I am done with travels for a bit, I am now all set for spending far too much time at my desk. I guess that’s good?