So My in-house SAN was at it's limits; but considering I had built it before I had arrived at Ping it had served its purpose. It was time to go! I had a few reasons 1. I am considering going without a home PC. 2. It wouldn't work right with my MacBook. 3. I had no access to my files from my iPad / Android Phone I started reviewing the solutions out there as well as considering my online options. I ended up ruling out online options as I wanted to be able to stream / view from boxee box(s) as well. I was stuck with going back to a local SAN. I have long been a reader of TheRegister and ran across a article from the hardware side called 10 local storage solutions. I loved the reviewof the WD Live box. I personally don't care about the throughput as long as it is quick enough for my purposes. The single terabyte size isn't good enough and I was happy to see Fry's carried a 2 TB version. There are lots of plus's to this device. 1. It manages its own share's and its DLNA certified so I can attached from any device! 2. Its super tiny, and is a fraction of the size of my previous solution. 3. With the myCloud solution, I can access my files from anywhere. 4. Very economical for the size and purpose. Now i need to find a off-site backup solution...

E-Books

I've been a fan of e-books for quite some time. From epub, to pdf, to Kindle. I was actually an early adopter of the Kindle platform, first owning a 1st gen to the DX model where I happily stay. When it was announced that Ottawa would migrate to e-books I was absolutely thrilled! That is, until I had a class that used them. The company is called CourseLoad and it is more locked down than some IT departments PC's! No copy-paste, printing is throttled, and the resolution is horrible. My thinking is that this is some-kind of anti-theft model; however, the book is auto-charged at registration you don't have a choice. Given my warm-and-fuzzy personality, I have written the company and suggested they enroll in some reader program as their software sucks.

Camping

Just got back from camping, with 8 (yes 8) kids. Ages ranged from 18 to 5 and I think we hit our maximum. It was a mixture of ours and nieces and friends of the kids and we had a blast. We visited Jerome and the gold mine near it, something some of them had never done. Had ice cream at the artists park and talked and laughed and built some memories. Sadly I look around and not too many parents do that with their kids today, I know mine didn't do that.

The Hammer Approach

I ran across this interesting little tidbit today while waiting on my son:
"Decision makers engage in solution-focused problem identification because it provides comforting closure to the otherwise ambiguous and uncertain nature of problems"

The coarse is a masters level "Organization Behavior" which while interesting to me; is not in my core learning passion block (more later).  What stuck me to it is that we see this everywhere, even in IT.  People tend to grow comfortable with their daily approach to problem solving and  they tend to become rooted in their approach from motivation to implementation.  Most people characterize this in the phrase "When all you own is a hammer, everything is a nail".

If you apply this to software development, people tend to pull out the language they know, the toolkit their used to, the design pattern they know.  It is comforting to know that the problem is a human nature one, not a skill-rot problem that we see so often.

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?