Cindy and Greg

After several months of thinking about it, I finally made a decision. I decided to go with the Canon XTi a 10.1 Megapixel Digital SLR. Should be here next week. I took a tip from mom. You can’t beat 4 months of no interest payments, while still accumulating Membership Reward points from American Express.

Share on Facebook

About a year ago, I wrote a post about getting ready for 2006 and the list of things I wanted to do in the new year. So, here is how I did in 2006.

• Volunteer more - I volunteered with AARP Tax Aide Services in 2006 and am slated to do the same for the 2007 tax year.
• Generate 100k in revenue for Perceiva - DONE!
• Work on becoming a father - Not yet, but it sure is fun trying
• Learn to do more things around the house by myself - Well, I am trying, but things aren’t going as well as I would have hoped.
• Learn more about wines - Not learning much about them, but certainly trying a lot of new wines. Check out the Markham 2004 Reserve - Chardonnay, excellent stuff.
• Try new foods/resturants - Tons of new resturants, have a few more to try
• Participate in Relay for Life - We had a family obligation come up for that weekend, but we did the Race for the Cure.
• Donate more money to worthly causes (American Cancer Society and American Heart Association - we have donated a bit more to ACS.
• Participate in the community (school board meetings, town meetings, Fernbrook HoA) - I have done some of this, but not enough

Check back on Sunday for the 2007 To Do List.

Share on Facebook

We arrived yesterday morning to pick mom up from DCA. Stephen has been stuck in Denver over the last couple of days before he and his business partner decided to drive from Denver to Salt Lake City to catch a Delta flight into DCA yesterday afternoon.

After mom landed, we took her to Tony Chengs a local Mongolian BBQ place. While I don’t think it will make her favorites list, she was a good sport about it. After we picked up Stephen we went to dinner at City Lights, so mom has had more Chinese food this weekend then she has in her entire life.

Today we have a nice dinner planned and then Stephen has a few performances tonight and tomorrow. In the morning Cindy and I will be driving up to Tom’s River to celebrate Christmas day with Cindy’s family

Have a great holiday!

Share on Facebook

Since the early days of e-mail people have tried to cram all sorts of information into their “signatures.” I can even be accused of using “The Honk Master” in one of my signatures during the early days of e-mail at Indiana Univeristy. But I have come across a signature that takes the cake. It is 1901 characters in length, here is the signature, edited to protect the non-netiquette savvy.

xxx.xxx.xxx

XXX xxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx’x xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx.

xxx.xxxx.xxx

Xxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx (xxx.xxxx.xxx) xx Xxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx’x xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx’x xxxx-xxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxxxxx, xxx xxxxxxxxx. Xx xxx xxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxx Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx: Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx - Xxx Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx (xxx.xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx); Xxxx Xxxxxxxx - Xxxxxxxx’x Xxxxxx xxx Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx (xxx.xxx.xxx) xxx Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxx (xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx); xxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx - Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx (xxx.xxx.xxx), Xxxxxxx (xxx.xxxxxxx.xxx), Xxxxxxxx (xxx.xxxxxxxx.xxx), Xxxx, Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx (xxx.xxx-xxx.xxx), xxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx (xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx). Xxxxxx x xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxx xxxxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxx’ xxxx-xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

xxx.xxxxx.xxx

Xxx Xxxxxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxxx (Xxxxxx (XXXXX) xx xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxx-xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxx. Xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxx Xxxxxxxx xx (x) xxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxx-xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xx xx xxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxx; (x) xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx; xxx (x) xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxx’x xxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxx, xxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxx.

xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx

xxx.xxxxxx.xxx

So as a public service announcement, I would like to suggest the following guidelines for an e-mail signature:

• Start the signature with a line that is: –
• Include your name, company, phone number, fax, maybe cell, and web site address
• Do not include any graphics in your signature
• Do not include your e-mail address, remember, you just sent the e-mail

Share on Facebook

It has been a crazy week or so. I found early last week that I needed to be in California Monday and Tuesday of this week. So after a quick trip to Brewster for Thanksgiving (and some excellent stuffing), Cindy and I made our way back to Williamsburg yesterday morning. This morning, I left the house at 4:30a to catch a plane to SFO. I was met by the security line at Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport. I have to say, of all of the airports I have been this was the biggest combination of staff incompetence and traveler inexperience I have ever seen. Anyway, I made it to my flight (barely) and was off to my favorite airport in the world, Atlanta. I made my way to the plane and sat next to a nice lady name Ivy. We made some small talk and then she asked if we (referring to Cindy and I) were god fearing folks…imagine the luck, 4 minutes into the flight I saw the next 5 hours of my life flash by my face.

Ivy was a nice enough lady, though we clearly had ideological differences.

So alas, I am here in San Mateo for the next two days and I have the red-eye back on Tuesday night.

Share on Facebook

About three weeks ago our 1.2TB disk array went to the big disk array place in the sky. The drives themselves were fine (thank god), but the enclosure that made it all run wasn’t working properly. I have been going back on forth on what to replace it with and finally came up with the Infrant ReadyNAS NV which I purchased from Newegg. It came in yesterday while I was traveling down from DC. A couple of minutes of setup and I was up and running. While the web interface is a little klunky the unit itself is VERY fast. And I have finally run across a very usefull Dashboard widget, the Infrant Widget

Share on Facebook

** WARNING - The following contains geek content, side effects of reading this include severe nausa, dry mouth, and headaches. If you experience an erection lasting more then 4 hours, please add comments below to let us know how you did it. Please do not read while operating heavy equipment as it may cause immediate sleep and could endanger you or others around you **

VMWare released Fusion, the code name for their Macintosh virtualization product. Over the past few months I have become infatuated with the whole concept of virtualization. One thing most folks don’t realize is that they go out, buy the latest and greatest hardware and its fasters, but it is not actually working the computer very hard. Expecially with the release of dual core or even quad core processors, the hardware you are paying for simply isn’t working to its potential (most of the time). You might be surprised at how fast MS Office would open if you didn’t have to see the opening splash screen.

Anyway, what Fusion allows you to do, is run other “machines” in a window. For example, on my MacBookPro, I have the best of both worlds. I run MS Windows in a window for our credit card processing requirements. So I can still use my all time favorite operating system (OS X), why still being able to get paid by our customers (which requires windows). See the screen shot below.

A lot of folks are already utilizing this same technology in their server infrastructures…so instead of needing 10 servers at 15k a pop, they can have 5 servers or less. I think we will start to see virtualization as more mainstream for smaller environments.

Share on Facebook