Shaker Cup

So I get geeked out on the weirdest stuff, I recognize that and embrace it. Yesterday, I found a new shaker cup for my protein drinks that I have to share with the world because it is so simple but effective. Its called the Blender Bottle. You can find it here:
http://www.blenderbottle.com/

This thing is pure awesome goodness.

The hypocrisy of our School System

Last night one of my sons brought me a letter from his high school which was a permission slip that we needed to sign in order for him to hear the presidential speech. Now, of course we signed it; but I am outraged that this had to be done.
Regardless of 'who' is in the presidential office; what sort of message does it send to our youth when they have to have a signature to hear our leader speak?
It is appalling to think that the right-wing extremists of our country have scared the system of our leader so much that the presidential speeches are now lumped in the same category as pornography, racism, and other taboo topics. I encourage everybody to write their local and state representatives to have this practice removed.

So much new stuff

So, I think I have finally hit a wall in my learning process; I survived Delphi, Java, D, and numerous other languages but the .NET development team has finally beaten me. How in the world does a fresh new .net recruit keep up with the Jones's (so to speak).
Just currently, a 'good' (not great) .NET developer needs to have a handle on C# 3.0 (and all its goodness), WCF, WPF,Winform,MSMQ direct bindings,ASP.NET, HTML, CSS (in all 400 of its possible variations) and the list goes on and on. Now, you don't need to be a master of all you can pick your specialty if you want; but to be a truly useful 'pluggable' developer you should be decent. Now, I'm not whining to whine, as I would rather have all the activity going on than to be a dead language or have the 'bolt-ons' that Java has but geez.. maybe slow the pace a tad? Or rather finish up documenting things .net team?

Construction of Black Freight

I'm spent my career developing both proprietary software for companies and contributed to *many* open-source projects on an unofficial basis (never obtained the fabled labeled developer status)... :(

One of the projects I took the most pride in is the overhaul to the TS 2000 plus project at Trans-soft. I had started migrating the application to a Java infrastructure before the source line was closed when they merged with our compeitor CargoWise. The Transportation Logistics market is an interesting market in that companies come and go quite rapidly and there are so few companies that service the space.
The companies that do service the space are either extremely expensive; or they are developed with dead (read Visual Basic) or dying (read Delphi) programming environments. The reason to be concerned is that these companies will have a hard-time staying at the top of their game by taking advantage of the changes that come with the evolving architecture.
There are many that use hackish solutions by emulating web clients by using products like Citrix Metaframe and using their aging server architecture to 'serve' their dying applications and passing the costs to their customers.
After I had heard that my former employer agreed to no longer sell and develop the TS 2000 Plus application, I started on a design for an open Transportation Logistics application I have labeled Black Freight to be distributed by Coding Rage. I plan to blog about the design and development of many of the aspects of the application as we gear up for our first public release of the application.

My goal is to release the public alpha as "Free"; however, importing of data from customers of Magaya, CargoWise, former Trans-soft customers will be billed out on an hourly basis.

Stay tuned!

Can I play Ball 2?

It doesn't really matter the industry or the profession of the individual, but I always seem to run into 'protectionism' of the job. And it almost always results into damaging the company in some way or form.
Can't we all just work together to fix neat problems and make the world a geekier place to live in?

Microsoft Web Hosting

You can definately tell its a down economy when the biggest of the big gets into a lowly market like basic web page hosting to scrape a few extra dollars. Microsoft has formally entered into the web page hosting business with its Office Live product. They even offer a year free if you sign up today?
Microsoft has already entered this market on the side with their Azure Windows product line that we learned about during the 2008 PDC Conference.

Price Gouging By Sirius

Yesterday, I received a email from Sirius Satellite Radio with the subject line of:
"Immediate Action Required Regarding Your SIRIUS Service"

The email was notifying me that my satellite radio was going to cut me off of the internet streaming for my Sirius Stiletto unless I pay an extra 3 dollars a month or an extra 36 dollars a year. I am already paying 12.95 a month and don't feel I am getting the value for an additional increase.

I am very upset about this because I no longer have a competitor to switch to. The foundation of the arguement for the merger was that there would be no price increases and greater content available for the average consumer. Less than one month after the merger, I started to lose channels and now I am loosing the single greatest feature for the average office worker "to listen to sirius when I'm not in the car".

Sadly, I will be selling my radio and dropping my subscription after march 11th. Sirius defrauded me and now I am paying the price. What is on regular radio nowadays?

The 'what' is not as important as the how

As we are nearing the close of January, I have had some time to reflect not only on my New Years resolutions; but other folks that surround me. A common thing that people do is they set a generalized goal rather than a specific. Such as: Lose weight, Drive Less, Be More Green, Smell Better.

I find that more often than not I fail at generalizations and others fail because they are just a goal, there is nothing specific to them that gives you a reachable target. For example, if my only goal is to 'lose weight'; there are dozens of ways to accomplish this and you lose target. If your goal was to smell better, this could be accomplished by bathing, using soap, changing your sheets, etc..etc...

Do we generalize for the secret wish to not achieve our goals?

To Fat To Fish

So, I just finished reading Artie Lange's new book "Too Fat To Fish". The book was an interesting read into the mindset of a self destructive person that had every reason to celebrate his success but consistently chooses to destroy himself. It's worth the read.