"We're here to make a dent in the universe..."

"Why else even be here?" - Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs, 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'

Really though, what's the point of being here if we're not going to make a major dent in this world and totally change its face? Do something! Make something! Be somebody great! I see so much squander day in and day out. It's absolutely heart-wrenching. So much wasted effort! Put your minds to good use! Do something worthwhile that will benefit all humankind.

It's only natural to want to sleaze off and be lazy. I'm guilty of this, too. Just realize that's what you're doing, though and do something about it. Change yourself. The future of humankind depends on it; depends on you...

It's your duty as a productive human being to add something to the time period in which you live (not to mention benefit future generations). It's your duty to learn something new daily. Study something worthy of your time and that information which will propel you to accomplishing bigger, better things.

You can't just approach it in such a way that your are the sole beneficiary either. The entire group must benefit and, through your benevolence, so will you. Governing dynamics, my friends.

So go do something great. Time waits for no man.

End of an era

Well, "Battlestar Galactica" is finally over and I was not dissatisfied with how they ended it. I know BC felt it to be a bit preachy but I don't think so. Very few shows end well, at least in my humble opinion, but this was, thankfully, not one of them.

I've discovered, or finally accepted, something recently. I'm a pretty terrible student. I think it may have something to do with being completely adverse to sitting in class for a given period of time day after day. Maybe it's just me but I despise this aspect of school.

Sitting in a room with others while the lecturer simply regurgitates information that can easily be found in the class textbook just doesn't sit well with me. They move so God-awful slowly too in the exposition of new subject matter. It's really quite maddening.

I love learning, that's not the issue here. My grades aren't suffering because of this affliction. I guess it's just that I need to learn on my own terms and at a time of my choosing. Maybe I'm just being selfish or stubborn or what have you. This is just the way it is, contrary to my best efforts to actually make myself want to be in class.

I actually find that I get really excited about school or going to class just before the class begins but when I actually have to sit through the lecture, my attitude toward the situation does a complete 180. I'm doing all I can to rectify the situation, but all previous efforts have failed. Perhaps I just don't like being a prisoner to this social requisite. Maybe I'm just completely full of it and should suck it up and just do it.

Whatever the case may be, I'm going to continue to do my best to participate in whatever this institution calls me to do. I will find a way to like it! Eventually...

In the meantime, I'll just keep doing what I've been doing and suffering through the lengthy lectures.

This will be the end of the era of 'Karl, the underperforming student' and will, with it's ousting, usher in one of scholarly prosperity and enjoyment. It must be this way.

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Ram Charan

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Ram Charan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a fine read but is mostly meant to target either fledgling leaders just entering a corporate executive position or one who is currently serving in such a capacity.

It has quite a lot of insightful information regarding management of large sets of people, resources, and funds in an efficient and realistic way. The information is, however, really only applicable if you are in a management position at a fairly high level in the organization.

View all my reviews.

Too much Twitter...

I have Twittered all too much since I signed up. In an attempt to curtail this bad habit of mine, I am vowing to "tweet" a maximum of 5 times in a single day. Even this is probably too much but at least I'm making an effort to spare you all from the majority of my mundane existence.

In lieu of so much Twitter activity, I will probably turn to this silly blog of mine (which really serves no purpose other than my periodic brain dumps) to put my thoughts in front of me in order that I might review them more thoroughly.

I really just need a journal...

Also, does it upset anyone else that ANYTHING can be used as a verb (or perhaps...verbalized) these days? Googled, facebooked, twittered, myspaced, etc. Seriously, what the hell is happening to our beautiful language and what does this say about the future of english speakers? Just consider the possible eventuality we're leading up to...

Two books, one month.

I've decide that I must read a minimum of two books in a one-month period. One fiction, one non-; both educational. It's got to be this way as my list of books to read continues to mount and it seems I've not made anything more than a minor dent in a good, long while.

This rate of two per month may need to be increased in the future, but this will be my minimum for the time being. With school, work, projects etc. it's difficult to do anything more...

Also, for every book that I finish, I will be writing a review covering that book, posted on my blog, in order to solidify the information that I've acquired in the process of reading it and ensure that I fully understand what it is I've read.

"Thomas Tipp was right; people will READ AGAIN!" - David, Vanilla Sky

Live Diggnation SXSW '09

This weekend was nothing short of incredible. I can't remember the last time I've had more fun. We did it all. Everything I had planned to do this weekend was fulfilled to the very last detail and then some. Perfect.

I got a huge charge out of attending the live Diggnation event at SXSW in Austin. It was something like a rock concert only with nothing but nerds, geeks and faboys/girls (yes, there were girls there ;).

While waiting in line outside Stubbs, I met Nic, a fledgling podcaster who recently started a show titled, "The Sunday Show". After Diggnation was over, we went around recording interviews and such for his show. We interviewed pretty much everyone from the Rev3 podcast crews who was there.

Then I got to meet Kevin Rose. We got our photograph taken together (which is unfortunately a bit grainy as it was dark). He seems like a really neat guy. Meeting him actually caused me to attach a human quality to him that I had not before considered much. He's flesh and blood just like any of us (and pretty darn cool IRL, too).

At any rate, I can't wait to attend SXSW next year full on! I'm going to make sure I get the entire friggin' week off for that one. It's just that great!

I Saw "Watchmen" today, just before leaving Austin, and it wasn't exactly what I expected. I suppose I was expecting a sort of gritty superhero type of thing but it wasn't really like that. I suppose it just didn't contain the impact I expected. I'll have to see it again and perhaps just break down and read the graphic novel (it will be my first of these), and perhaps the story will grab me. Currently I have neutral feeling towards it. The music was also pretty out of place for the most part. I dunno, I'll just have to give it another chance.

Right, well, I'll be off then. G'night, blogosphere!

Wtvr dude...

I'm really tired and for some reason, instead of going off to bed to enjoy the warm comfort of my bed and a good book, I'm writing a bloody blog post. Today was pretty hell yeah. I got a lot done and felt pretty good about it overall. I found, while constructing a Java-based Twitter client, that my Java's pretty darn rusty. That's something I'm going to need to refine in the coming months, I suppose. NetBeans is great, though...at least for Java stuff. Going to do some Ruby in it tomorrow and see how it works out. (I actually tried it with a simple "hello world" program and the interpreter seemed kinda slow...doesn't bode well for NetBeans Ruby, I'm afraid)

My roommate got a drum kit (bongo pictured above[also that is not my roommate...]) and is playing it right now (perhaps this is why I'm not going to bed quite yet...). He's not really playing anything that sounds remotely musical yet, but has mostly just been banging around on it, testing the tensile strength of the heads or some such I suppose... All I know is that it's loud and sometimes disturbs concentration levels.

I'm really really glad to not be programming on my laptop anymore. I'm sure nobody else cares but I certainly do and I feel it my duty to inform fledgling coders who might make attempts to code on a screen smaller than 17" JUST DON'T DO IT!

I love listening to techno/electronica while I code (courtesy Pandora.com).

That is all.

Goodnight.

On coding (with a tiny screen)...

Yes, I program occasionally. Lately, I've been executing this arduous task on my 13" MacBook (not pictured left). The programming itself is not at all difficult; it is the available screen real estate I've available to work with. I have recently come to realize that it is impossible to read/write/modify a large code base on a tiny little 13" screen! It's actually been quite madenning of late... I find myself scrolling more then executing any other task involved in the process of coding. This is unacceptable.

My temporary solution to this is to set up my old desktop once again. I pulled it from it's previous duty as my living room's media center PC and have since refitted it to function as a desktop PC. It now runs Windows 7 and sports a dual head monitor setup with a 15" and a 17" (which is still not nearly enough screen space but'll do for now). Windows 7 is very nice by the way. It's much less resource-intensive than it's predecessor Vista (it's very fast!) and has a gorgeously reworked interface flow. Just try it, you'll see.

This solution is working out beautifully well. I must say, there's just something about coding on a desktop that makes it so much more comfortable.

At any rate, the long term solution I've got worked up is to build a custom rig for about $1800 which will be the sweetest, most sexy thing you've ever seen (as far as computers go...). I will have:

• 2 x 24" widescreen ASUS 1080P flats (w/HDMI support)
  
• Intel i7 Core CPU
• 6GB of RAM in triple channel configuration
• Radeon 4870X2
• etc.
  

...and yeah, it'll be fast.

Anyway, so I suppose I'll stop procrastinating my duties and return to work. Catch ya' later blogosphere!

Mac vs Windows vs Linux vs Unix vs ...

Ok, look, nobody cares what OS it is that you prefer. Be it Windows because that's all you've ever had the pleasure of using or OS X if you've become an enlightened member of society (or so you peddle off on others). Maybe you like Linux because it's a great OS for developing and extremely stable. The thing is, all of these operating systems have their place which is why they're still around and being developed on.

Microsoft Windows gives us a good and simple ubiquitous platform that's very well suited for workstations in large multi-workstation environments. It makes it easier to manage end users as they're already familiar with this OS.

Apple's OS X is a really nice, simple and intuitive UI on top of UNIX. It's ultra clean and stable. This is really great but there's not that much software support for the OS. I'm still stuck with running Paralells on my Mac because I need Windows so that I may run Microsoft's really great Office products.

Linux is an extremely stable and ultra configureable environment in which everything is free and open source. The problem with open source, however, is that it's NOT EASY TO USE. The average user isn't gonna want to install a piece of software and, when it doesn't work correctly, go hacking around in the teriminal for hours on end, perusing forums to locate the answer to their issue. If you are an advanced UNIX user with years of experience then this doesn't seem like any big deal BECAUSE YOU'RE USED TO IT! Guess what, though, generally people aren't as geeky as you or I.

UNIX and Linux are both great operating systems quite well suited to be server platforms. This is probably their strongest selling point because you can pretty much set them and forget them. They have minimal security holes and are built on a massively stable kernel.

The point is, there's no point to arguing which OS is better because they ALL have their place in the world of computing. They all do. Don't try to push your favorite OS on others, just let them in on the particular OS's strengths or weaknesses or the deployment of such an OS that would achieve maximum leverage for the task. Don't be a fanboy! Nobody likes them.

Rant complete.

Freedom at last!

Finally done with my midterms and I feel so elated right now. Now I can get back to the basics. It's been tough and annoying not having the time to work on OrgFlo because I've been so heavily engaged in studying. What a nightmare! It's over now, however and development in proper can finally resume!

I'm currently reading "Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done" co-authored by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan (who also wrote "Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business" among others [highly recommended]). It's a very insightful book so far that I would recommend to anyone who is currently a leader or thinking of going into a leadership position in the future. It's catered to CEOs but the leadership ideas are the same no matter at what level you exercise your leadership.

The gist of the book is that a good leader is one who doesn't just automatically sign off on a plan of action. He must go through the plan to the very deepest depths, through the entire process of implementation and make sure it will work from the planning stage all the way through the launch and support. If there's a snare, find out what it is and rework the plan. If there aren't any viable alternatives to see the plan through, scrap it and move on. This is the process of execution. For the execution phase is the one most often neglected and leads to the squander of valuable time and resources.

A good leader knows his business through and through. He has his entire heart and soul invested in it. This is the only way you can lead a business (or team) effectively. They have to know that you are invested and care about what you and they are doing.

Jack Welch was such a man that possessed these traits. He lead GE into an era of unprecedented capital growth. He knew what he was doing. He was an executor.

Well, that's about enough for now. I'll have a more thorough review on the book at a later time. Also working on a review of "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning" by Andy Hunt which will be posted presently.

Thanks for reading!

Pragmatic Thinking & Learning

"Pragmatic Thinking & Learning: Refactor Your Wetware"
Author: Andy Hunt

"Pragmatic Thinking & Learning" is a veritable goldmine of useful information if it's your goal to optimize your learning capabilities. This volume includes the following tips which I've found particularly useful:

1. The morning pages technique
   
2. Creating a "Pragmatic Investment Plan" (PIP)
3. Mind maps for collaborative brainstorming
4. Creating a Personal Wiki
5. Avoiding Context Switching

Morning Papers:

Writing morning papers is the practice of getting up in the morning, every morning, and before you have your coffee or even have time to shake off the grogginess, you write 3 pages, long hand in a notebook. It sounds a bit dull and time-consuming, I know, but it can lead to some really great insights.

The purpose for doing this is that this is basically an "unguarded brain dump." First thing in the morning you're not completely awake and are still operating partially within the subconscious portion of your brain. This way you get a fairly direct link to the most creative side of your mind (referred to as R-mode in this book). Just try it out and you might be pleased with the results. I know I've been.

The rules for this practice are as follows:

• Write your morning pages first thing in the morning--before your coffee, before the traffic report, before talking to Mr. Showerhead, before packing the kids off to school or letting the dog out.
• Write at least three pages, long hand. No typing, no computer.
• Do not censor out what you write. Whether it's brilliant or banal, just let it out.
• Do not skip a day.

Your pragmatic investment plan (PIP) is essentially a portfolio of knowledge and skills that you currently possess and the level at which you can execute the use of said skills plus those skills and bodies of knowledge you'd like to seek in the future. The purpose of this is to track the expenditure of your time on skill building and honing and to allot more or less time to each individual item.

"Just having a plan is an incredibly effective step toward achieving any goal. Too often, most of us slip into a kind of default learning schedule: you might take some time to learn a new language when you have a free moment or to look at the new library in your spare time. Unfortunately, relegating learning activities to your 'free time' is a recipe for failure." (Pg. 154)

Free time is like closet space or disk drive space: it always gets filled with one thing or another. You need a solid plan of action if you're serious about learning this new trick you're after.

For more on PIP check out this post on Brian Mavity's blog.

Mind Maps:

Mind maps when used for collaborative brainstorming can be a great learning/teaching device because it enables a high level of interaction amongst your team.

If you create a "safe zone" in which your team members aren't rebuked for pitching an idea that isn't the most brilliant or practical, you can get a really great flow of information set up which will lead to more well thought-out projects and products. This will allow for you to get your whole team involved in the development process without anybody feeling constrained.

The great thing about mind maps are that they visually represent the flow of information and each node is a branch off of a another so the information can be understood via visualization and re-factored by all those involved whether technical or not; therefore not excluding any in your team.

Of course mind maps aren't exclusively suited simply for collaboration but they're also a great development tool that can help you outline a problem or solution and devise an attack plan by being able to visualize the entire structure of the problem. It's a really wonderful device.

Some great software to use for mind map creation on your Windows/Linux/OSX machine is FreeMind which is a free/OSS mind map creation software that is fairly simple to use. There are also proprietary implementations which will cost you such as ConceptDraw PRO MINDMAP and MS Office Visio. Both of these are great tools and capable of much more than just mind mapping but I like to keep it simple when I'm creating mind maps and, frankly, like to stick to paper for the first draft anyhow (post-it notes on a whiteboard are also a great technique for collaboration: allows for quick re-factoring of ideas). The software should only be for the formalization of a mind map if this is ever necessary.

Personal Wiki:

Creating a personal wiki may be one of the single most important things I took from reading this book. This is one of those things that, when it's revealed to you, makes you think "wow, why didn't I think of this before?"

This is great storage method for information that's relevant to your everyday life kept on an external device that isn't your brain. The wiki serves as an "exocortex" or external storage device which is best suited for keeping large amounts of information in order that your brain doesn't slow down. You need to do this to augment your brain's processing capabilities to the maximum level.

If you keep storing more and more things on your brain all the time, clutter amongst your thoughts accumulate and you're not as quick or decisive in your thoughts or actions. Also, you're unable to keep focused because there are always other things you feel you must be attending to as you're trying to focus, unsuccessfully, on the task at hand.

The wiki is great tool because it allows you to put all the information into one place in a structured and hyper-linked format. It's sort of along the same lines as a mind map in the way it organizes data except that it's not in a visualized format but a text one.

Your wiki is a great place to store all the ideas that accumulate over time in your "thought bucket" (such as a Moleskine notebook you keep for ideas) in a more hardened and structured manner.

"This is not some mere clerical activity. According to the research into distributed cognition, the tolls you use for mental support outside your brain become part of your operating mind. As marvelous as the brain is, we can turbo-charge it by providing some key external support." (Pg. 220)

Of course, now you need the software to enable the creation of this magical device. The typical MediaWiki wiki software (which is the backbone of wikipedia.com) can be found here and is free/OSS. This is not, however what I would recommend the average user use to develop his/her wiki as it is rather complicated to setup unless you're technically inclined (know how to setup an Apache server on your system and enable PHP support with a MySQL backend for data storage).

The software that I use for keeping a wiki is Microsoft Office OneNote. It's not the primary purpose of this software I suppose but it does everything I need it to do. It will link files together and allows you to organized everything in a hierarchically structured way which is paramount in keeping data organized properly.


Context Switching:

"You can't pay attention to too many different things at once, because to change your focus from one item to another means you have to switch context. And unfortunately, our brains just aren't wired to support context switching very well."

The problem today is that there are just too many things to pay attention to. There are far too many distraction (thanks, Internet...) and we can't manage it very well if we don't have a well-established system for doing so.

Setting up a system for organizing and processing tasks efficiently is key to managing context switching. This streamlining of your daily workflow would be most effective if modeled after David Allen's "Getting Thing's Done" routine which entails:

1. Scan the input queue only once: Whatever input queue you are dealing with, be it in an email inbox, voicemail, or paper inbox, don't use the arrival box as a storage device. go through and sort the new arrivals into whatever piles are necessary, but don't keep rescanning the same old stuff in the input queue. If it's something that can be dispatched in less than two minutes, then do it and get it over with, or pawn it off on someone else entirely if you can (aka delegation). Constantly reviewing the same 1,000 inbox messages to work on the last 20 important ones just wastes your time and mental energy.
2. Process each pile of work in order: Once you have your piles, work them. Stay on taskand avoid context switching. As we saw earlier, switching to another task will blow your mental stack and you'll lose more time as you get back into the task. We programmer types are highly susceptible to being distracted by shiny things. Stick to your pile.
3. Don't keep lists in your head: Allen spots another important aspect of maintaining and exocortex. Dynamic refresh of mental lists is very expensive. Instead, keep to to-do lists and such somewhere in your exocortex--on a sticky note, in a wiki, in a calendaring or dedicated to-do list tool, or in something similar.

I know this was a long post and if you're reading this that's because you either liked it or just have some compulsive problem where you need finish whatever you start (or you skipped to the very end). In any case, I applaud your valiant effort.

Thanks for reading!

Officially tired of studying...

Well, I've been reading, annotating, highlighting and every other '-ing' you can think of that's involved in the process of studying... My hand is cramped so I am forced to stop for a bit of a rest. Midterms FTL...

It's been an exciting and enjoyable weekend, I'm pleased to report. We've picked up the pace once again with the development of OrgFlo and finally have an official Alpha launch date (May 1st, 2009). Things are humming along quite nicely and the pace will be quickening substantially in the coming weeks. We finally got our SharePoint server up (thanks mostly to BC) so that we may now begin development full-swing!

Ram's moving back to the valley which is exciting news indeed! Our team may now operate from a single, physical CP without the necessity of Skype (et al.) as the facilitator of communications. This will speed development considerably.

Well, I suppose I should get back to my studying then...
Catch you on the flipside ;)

Rough week...

I've been really out of sorts this week since having my car accident Monday evening. Everything seemed to fall out of sync afterward and my mind was in a perpetually scattered state. It's mending, however and as long as I have my work to occupy me, I'll be back in the groove in no time flat.

I've accomplished some this week but definitely not as much as I would have had I been hitting on all 8 cylinders. It's maddening and even now as I write this post, I find myself preoccupied by the fact that I've been so unproductive these past days.

I'm sort of glad to be back on my bike, though. I'm sure that I've lowered my carbon footprint by at least a little bit just riding my bicycle not to mention it's pretty good exercise riding to work and back every day.

We're going to have an all day dev session tomorrow for OrgFlo which I'm pretty excited about. We decided at last nights meeting that our Alpha launch date will be May 1st, 2009. We're going to need to work pretty hard to meet that date but I'm fairly certain we're up for it. I'm truly excited about bringing this product to all of you and soon. If it turns out as we're envisioning, it will completely revolutionize commerce and relations between small and medium businesses and their customers.

The scope of the project is massive but we'll be developing it in bite-sized iterations so as to ensure the proper attention to detail regarding even the most minutiae feature or detail.

Well, I suppose I'm off to pore over the RoR API for the next several hours. Stay classy all you readers of weblogs.

NetBeans v. TextMate

Well, I've been working nonstop for the past 5 or so hours on an application for the university computer science department. It's slow-going and I'm tired of coding... So, I guess I'll take a break and do my assignment for CSCI 2380 which is in a different language, at least (C++).

For the record, I did try the NetBeans IDE and it didn't really suit my fancy. It's not a bad piece of software, it's just that I really prefer to work with the more lightweight TextMate. NetBeans does have some nice features, however that I may utilize in the future such as global error-checking for one. I'm sure I'll be giving it another shot but for now, I just needed to get some coding done; didn't want to have to worry about figuring out a new IDE UI.

I checked my code into my git repository and hopefully BC can do something with it while I'm off duty. We have to get this app finished before we can start on our OrgFlo development in ernest.

On another subject, I'm going to start reading the book "Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Projects" by Jim Highsmith (whose website is in desperate need of a new graphical frontend). It comes highly recommended as project management books go and hopefully it'll aid in my ability to better manage my teams and projects.

Currently, I'm in the middle of "Pragmatic Thinking & Learning: Refactor Your Wetware" by Andy Hunt. I'm nearly done with it but it's taken extra long as it is one of those books you have to read and form new habits in your daily routines as you go along. It takes practice and a lot of steady note-taking (not to mention discipline). Despite all the effort involved, however, it's a really great book. It contains some true gems and I recommend it very highly.

Apologies if this sounds a bit dry, my mind's just a bit sluggish after all that coding. I promise the next post will be more upbeat and contain more interesting content.

Don't forget to stay tuned for updates on OrgFlo. We will have something to show you all very soon.

OrgFlo!

Well, I haven't posted in a while and the reason for that is I've been a bit preoccupied with what we're doing over at OrgFlo.com. Billy, Ram, Cam, and I have been working steadfastly on developing this new service so that we may (hopefully) roll it out in the very near future.

The pace of development is quickening and hopefully we'll have something to show you guys very soon! Stay tuned for updates.

OrgFlo Twitter: http://twitter.com/orgflo

OrgFlo Blog: http://orgflo.com

Sequel Pro - MySQL Frontend Extraordinaire

Ok, so I was hacking around with Rails on my Mac today and I decided to make an app using MySQL (which isn't the default database handler since 2.x.x came along) and I needed a tool to poke around at the data I entered.

So I was searching for the tool I used to use for Mac to mess around with my MySQL databases called 'CocoaMySQL' and apparently, to my utter delight, it's now free and operating under a new title: 'Sequel Pro'.

Well, I love it so far and if you need a GUI frontend for your MySQL database on your Mac you should definitely download it.

That's all. Just thought this might be useful info for all those pro Rails developers out there ;)

Re-building (Windows) Workstations

There are rules!

OK, this isn't really a pleasure-read so much as it is a checklist for me to follow so I don't forget anything. Also it serves as a handy tool to pass along to techs/irritating people that constantly harangue me about how to do this sort of thing. Here's the right way to do it...so don't bother me no more!


What you'll need:

1. A brain ;)
   
2. Some basic knowledge of how to use software tools
3. A working (preferably speedy) internet connection
4. Your Windows OS install disk (XP, Vista, 7, etc.)
5. A (large) flash drive/external hard drive/file storage server (depending on how large the backup is that you'll be making)
6. Install media/files for software needing to be restored (e.g. Microsoft Office, Quickbooks, etc.)
   

1. Ask the user what he/she can't live without (locally stored documents, photos, videos, music, etc kinda go without saying...) and back those items up on some sort of external storage device.

2. If possible (or necessary) perform a full system backup with either VMWare Converter (which is free) or Norton Ghost (This is just good policy for CYA purposes)

3. Run a Belarc Advisor(free) audit to collect such information as:

• Installed hardware (so you can find get the right drivers later)
• Installed software (for re-installation/data file backup purposes [e.g. QuickBooks data file])
• Software license keys (e.g. Microsoft Windows license key required on installation)
• IP Addresses (if statically configured)
• Etc...
  

4. Run the driver backup program: Double Driver(free) which will auto-select third-party drivers and back them up so that you may restore them once Windows is re-installed. (Don't forget to offload the backup file to an external storage device!)

5. Verify that all pertinent data has been backed up and offloaded then reformat/re-install Windows.

6. Restore drivers using Double Driver restore option.

7. Re-install all necessary software user needs to operate and download and install latest updates/patches.

8. Run Windows update until there are no more updates to install (may require several restarts)

9. Defragment main hard drive (twice or three times would be better for a cleaner defragment)

10. Create a Norton Ghost image (for future quick restoration from a fresh install [stored on an external device such as a file server])

11. Restore user data (Documents, outlook email file, pictures, etc.)

12. Join PC to Windows Domain (if you have a PDC)

13. Load VMWare image onto VMWare server(free) in case user needs to access their previous OS (in case something wasn't properly backed up)

14. Sit back, relax and enjoy the bliss of a trouble-free workstation ;D

Home at last...and loving it!

Well, I'm back home now and ever so glad. Everything's in it right place.

I got a puppy on Monday, January 20 (pictured left). Her name is Starbuck (as in the crack pilot Kara Thrace from Battlestar Galactica NOT Starbucks the coffee shop...) and she's just great; highly intelligent and very energetic. I never fancied myself a dog person so much as a cat kinda guy but she's really growing on me. I know most people disagree with the name but I don't care so much as you might think. That is her name and it's staying that way.

I was invited to the private beta of the Bolt browser for BlackBerry and I LOVE IT! It's really an amazing browser. It's feature-rich and fairly snappy. The best part is it has full ajax/css support and renders the actual page and not some stripped-down mobile version. Also it doesn't choke on scripts the way the native BB browser does which is huge in my book. I know iPhone already does this but I don't have an iPhone and don't plan on having one for the forseeable future.

The new OS (v4.5) was also recently released for 8xxx series BlackBerrys which is really exciting. Some features I'm really looking forward to are the full HTML email support, document attachment editing (MS Word and PowerPoint), streaming video in the native BB browser. Here's the full list of new features. Download it here.

Well that's about all for now. School's great and so's work. Also, I have the biggest crush on my Biology Lab instructor. Aside from that everything's pretty much hunky-dory.

Star Wars as told by one who's never seen it...

Ok, this was just too funny to not post...


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Bolt - a newer, better, faster BlackBerry browser

A new browser for BlackBerry is being developed by Bitstream. It's called Bolt. The following video demoes the incredible speed at which this browser renders full-size pages. It looks pretty impressive from what I've seen.

It's currently in private beta but you can request an invite here. Check out the video...


Preview: Bolt Browser for BlackBerry Beta from CrackBerry2 on Vimeo.

This day in history...

I woke up early this morning (0600hrs) and watched a couple of podcasts while cooking breakfast. I gotta say, I'm really liking where Hak5 is going since the Revision3 acquisition. Podcasts are so great. Their content isn't driven purely by their funding sources which can really twist up an otherwise great show.

Anyway, the majority of my day was spent studying up on Ruby on Rails. I was catching up on all the 2.x.x version deltas from version 1.2.3. Not really all that different I suppose but I'm running through the book 'Simply Rails 2' by Patrick Lentz which is proving an enjoyable and informative experience. I'd recommend this book to anyone needing to update their Rails coding skills. In case any of you guys are interested in RoR development, here are some great podcasts on Ruby on Rails (found on iTunes): Learning Rails, Rails Envy Podcast, and Railscasts.

In the afternoon I moseyed over to our local Barnes and Noble and picked up a copy of Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations', read the first chapter and was absolutely enamored. I really do enjoy the romantic notion of economics in all its glory. Economic theory tickles my fancy quite unlike anything else. It's part philosophy, part sociology, part statistics and probability, and part magic, and pure goodness.

I'm actually considering dropping my Computer Science major altogether to be replaced by an MBA in Economics. I truly love computers and all that has to do with them. Since I was 5 years old, in fact, I've been fascinated by the multitude of mysteries these machines offered that I may decrypt them. This mystery drove me to study and tinker and build and tweak these systems incessantly.

I've had a love affair with everything from hardware technology to networking to network penetration to programming to software development to processor architecture to kernel and driver development for as long as I can remember. It's always been just a natural ability for me. It always came so easily and I it enjoyed immensely.

This was true until I began working as a Network Administrator. At that point studying or performing network-related tasks became quite the chore. I don't want that to happen with the sister components I mentioned earlier. I still love and enjoy those remaining aspects of the field and I'd really like to keep it that way. I'm not willing to kill off one of my most intense passions in trade for money.

So, I suppose I'll be going for a business degree and study computer-related things on my own. I find that I learn much faster that way and get the bleeding-edge of the field instead of the outdated and outmoded information the professors blather on about in class.

Well, it's late here and I'm pretty tired. I can't wait to be back home in my own bed. Ah, to be home again!

Well, goodnight all.

Pictures and more!

Well, I'd promised you guys pictures and I finally was reunited with the elusive camera cable which enabled me to upload several images to Picasa (I <3 Picasa btw...) Anyway, without further ado, here are my photographs of the adventures in England.


Adventures in York:




Manchester:




London Movieum:




London cityscape:




On the go in London:




The Imperial War Museum:




London come nightfall:



I had a very long flight back to the States; nearly 9 hours :/ Fortunately (or unfortunately) I was unable to sleep during the flight so I was able to accomplish quite a bit throughout the extended period in the air. I finished a book, watched two podcasts, started another book, got halfway through it, then watched HellBoy II (which I thought was pretty terrible...) All-in-all, a fairly productive experience. Now, I'm back home on Eastern time and it's nearly midnight. I suppose jet lag doesn't affect the young as heavily as the aged.

Well, that just about sums up my day. Exciting, I know! Yeah, anyway, I hope you enjoyed the photographs above. I will bid you adieu.

Good night, and good luck.

Going home.

Well, I'll be leaving jolly ol' England tomorrow. I've had a lot of fun here. I traveled all over this island and saw a whole lot of really amazing things and I'm ready to go home now. I'm actually really excited to be heading home tomorrow. I've missed my apartment, my roommate, my dog, my family, my BlackBerry, and my bed for far too long now. These are a few of my favorite things to be sure.

Today was my last day in England and it really wasn't the most friendly weather-wise. It was cold and drizzly all day which made it very unpleasant to do any of the sort of tourist-type things I would have liked to have done. I got a bit of sightseeing in nonetheless so I'm satisfied. Overall, It's been a really great time and I will definitely be coming back across the ocean again very soon.

At any rate, I showed the 9-year-old son of the family that I am staying with how to start a blog so that he may publish his art. Let me tell you, he was absolutely ecstatic. Then I helped him figure out how to upload some videos he'd made to YouTube so that he can show all of his friends. He thought that was the coolest thing ever. He was so excited. Kids are uncannily intelligent and so very quick to learn.

I also happened upon an old classic on YouTube which really took me back and made me smile. That's right: Star Wars Gansta Rap!



Well, I won't bore you by droning on about my day. Nothing too terribly exciting happened today. I'll ensure that doesn't happen tomorrow ;) But, I'll leave you with this video of Steve Jobs giving a commencement address for the Stanford graduating class of 2005. Jobs speaks of the importance of trusting your intuition to make those decisions in life where conventional wisdom tells you to follow the popular, well-beaten path through life even though your heart tells you something different. I find that it's quite inspirational and I hope you will too.

Hello, again.

Well, I'm still here in London for the moment. I had a wonderful day filled with lovely sights, sounds and smells of this terrific city. I really never cared for London too much before today. That's not to say that I disliked it but I felt that I'd definitely experienced much more entertaining and exciting places before. Today changed all that for me.

I was able to go all around the city on the bus. End to end (of city center, that is...) and saw so much of London in it's rawest form wherein, I believe, it's true beauty and allure lies. It's a very intense and enchanting city full of gorgeous architecture, expansive museums, decadent local cuisine, and many other various attractions. I definitely recommend you make a visit here at least once in your lifetime. Pictures will be up as soon as possible ;)

At any rate, I discovered a number of great Google tools for all you Mac users out there. I know, I know, I'm one of them too... but c'mon, at least I'm not an "Apple fanboy" and just own one for the sake of being trendy and chic. I have real, solid reasons for loving OS X, but let's not get into that. Anyway, I happened upon this great site today which is the hub of all the Mac apps made by Google which include: Picasa, Google Notifier (for Gmail and GCal users), Google Earth, Google SketchUp, and Picasa Web Albums Uploader.

I also heard of a documentary, as I was catching up with Hak5 last night (featured in episode 4x15). I'm very much interested in viewing this as it deals with true hacker culture, as most of us in the industry really understand it to be, and exactly opposite the way it's portrayed in popular media circles. The film, by Ashley Schwartau, is meant to expose to viewers hackers in their true form, as they really live and work. Sounds fascinating. Here's the trailer:


Hackers Are People Too Trailer from Ashley Schwartau on Vimeo.

In other news, I am currently in the middle of a very good book, entitled "Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business", written by Ram Charan who is brilliant when it comes to business-related efficiency and optimizing revenue streams and, obviously, profitable growth of your company. Now, of course, I am currently not operating a company per se but I have a feeling that this kind of knowledge will come in surprisingly handy in the near future. Here's hoping...

My projects seem to be developing nice and slowly, which is how I usually prefer it; at the beginning leastwise. Now there's the task of really organizing all the data and structuring it in such a way that it will be completable in the near future. Now there's the true challenge. And challenging it will be but I have a feeling I'm up for it.

Also, something I'd forgotten to write about in yesterday's update is that I travelled to the Imperial War Museum and it was absolutely phenomenal! I had such an amazing time looking overall the past and present war implements and various documents and information they had on display there. It was simply stupendous. One of the top 5 war museums I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. That really is my cup of tea, I must say. I don't know why the subject fascinates me so but it just holds an allure like no other for me. Definitely one of my true passions. (Again, pictures will be up soon)

Of course that's not to say that I condone war just for the sake of it but I do admire the speed of productivity, especially in the field of technology, during wartime. Not only that, but the developments across the span of the entire human race. We learn how to be more sneaky, diplomatic, efficient in all capacities, and truly unified behind one common goal. However, the cons of such a thing are also just as high on the richter scale, so to speak, on the opposite end of the spectrum, unforunately.

Enough of this dark talk, though. I will continue to have a wonderful time here and hopefully have another one of these for you tomorrow. Here's to all my loyal followers; I salute you! Thanks for being so great!

Au Revoir.

First post...

Well, my buddy just submitted his story to digg so he can fund his journey to see his girlfriend in New York. I am attempting to flex my internet muscles and get him the capital he needs to make it happen. I really do hope it works. With all of us working together it will.

At any rate, I'm here in England at the moment. London, specifically. A friend of mine and I are staying with some of my mom's old friends, Kate, Jack, Django, and Alfie. It's a lot of fun so far. Django's 9 and Alfie's 3 and they're great fun. I really do love kids. So vivacious and curious.

I've been all around England in the past several days. We began in London then traveled by train to Edinburgh, Scotland, York, England, Manchester, Bristol, Salisbury, and back to London. I've traveled so much in the past several days that they all seem to have run together. I've seen quite a lot so far and have really enjoyed myself here but I'll be glad to return to the states. I definitely miss the good ol' U.S.A.

This vacation hasn't been all about the travel and sightseeing, however. I really did need the break from work and school and just the general routine and I think it really has paid off in droves. I feel so much more rested and my mental vitality is loads better than it's been in months. I've gotten a chance to really study some valuable information related to my persuit of a web-based service for small- and medium-businesses that I'm currently developing in cooperation with a few very bright individuals. I hope to have it in beta in a few months. Still putting together the teams however and we'll need to hammer out the overall implementation strategy as well.

I really do enjoy doing this type of thing so much more than school. Projects, startups, programming just for fun... It's really neat just to improve your skill with no real goal in mind. It takes all the pressure out of it and just allows for a truly enjoyable experience. Not like school; nothing like school. I detest the thouht of going back this semester. It just brings to mind thoughts of mundane lecture periods, uninterested professors, furious nights of homework, etc. However, I'll approach this semester with a sense of optimism in hopes that it will turn out better than experience has shown. It's all about attitude, after all, right?

I am definitely excited about all I stand to get done this new year and all the self-improvement I can impose upon myself. It's going to be great. I do need to find a way to relax, though, without having to fly across the ocean to vacation :P Something local perhaps. I just need a quick way to relieve some stress within a 30-minute timespan, haha.

Well, it's getting a bit late here. I forgot the cable for my camera so I suppose I'll post a few snaps when I get back to the states. I'll put up a few on my Facebook too ;)

Well,
Until next time...