scott

Zach’s Birthday Party

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My nephew had his first birthday party today. It was an interesting event. I mean he didn’t really care what was going on. He had cake, got to run around with his little helper walker thing, and got held allot. It was a great day for him, but he had no idea it was a special day. Overall I think everyone had fun. It was a one year olds birthday party, so it wasn’t total fun for adults with no kids, but the kids had fun.

I got to see my grandmother who flew up from florida to see Zach for the first time. I also saw a bunch of friends of the family that i don’t see that often.

After the party i meet up with Jayson and we headed to John’s for some poker. I lost, so did Jayson. It was a relatively early night! All in all a good Saturday.

2007-06-02 - 56 2007-06-02 - 35 Zach resting

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Apartment Hunting, or Not?

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It is that time of year again. Yes, summer time but that is not what i meant. It is time for me to renew my lease. I have been eagerly awaiting the paperwork from my current building to see how outrageous the rent increase will be. I have read that the average increase in NYC is 9-13% this year. That is of course crazy. I love my apartment, and my neighborhood but I don’t think i will want to pay that much to live here if the rent goes up. I am looking into alternatives, but everything is a trade off. My current apartments trade off is the cost. I have been pondering this issue for a while, and i still don’t have a final decision, but i know deep down that the rent increase is going to be so great that i won’t want to pay it. Can i afford it, maybe. The point is do I want to shell out that amount of money per month when I could get someplace nice for significantly less? If I do move the location might not be as nice. Of course that last statement isn’t true from some peoples points of view. So for now i just ponder my choices, and hope the right decision comes to me, eventually!

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The Curve

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I have only had the Blackberry Pearl for a short time, but it is now out! I now have a Blackberry Curve from work, and I am very happy. Yes the Pearl is really small, but the Curve is not much bigger. It is only slightly wider. The rest of the dimensions are the same, and it has a full keyboard. That makes all the difference to me. That means my Pearl goes up on Ebay!

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Now My Mac Knows its Location

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My Macbook is getting smarter every day. With the help of some nifty new free software it now knows where it is. What is even better is now I can program rules based off of where the Macbook is. It is all because i tried out MarcoPolo. I have seen other products that do similar things, but this one is just so simple and cool. Based off of what IP, IP range, USB devices, available Airport or Bluetooth networks, etc MarcoPolo decides what location you are in. Once you train it to figure that out you can tell it to do things when you switch location. I for one have my default printer switch from my work printer to my home printer. I also have different applications i almost always open when i get home and when i get to work. Now i have MarcoPolo do it. That works out well when for example i have a different Skype USB phone at home than i do at work and each one has its own application that needs to run in order for the phone to work. Now based on the location the correct device launches.

This is some really cool software that just makes my computer experience easier. Isn’t that what software is supposed to do?

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X-33 Discontinued?

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Apparently my Omega Speedmaster X-33 has been discontinued from sale to the public. I love this watch, and when I traded up from a used one to a new one i was kind of ticked off that i had to wait 2 weeks for them to get it to me. At the time Tourneau did tell me that they only saw about 9 or so of them in Omega’s world wide inventory. Now that makes sense, since I am seeing people posted noticing that it had been discontinued about a month after i got mine. The final tip off was that Omega does not have it up on their website anymore. I guess that NASA still can order them, but the general public can’t. Lets hope that means i can still get parts for it beyond the typical amount of time for a discontinued model since they will still be making them for the government.

For me this is the perfect watch. it is a nice real grown up watch, but it has digital features also. I think it looks allot nicer than the comparable model from Breitling. Now that Omega isn’t making the X-33 any more I just need to be sure i take good care of mine.

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Blackberry Pearl Hard Reset Update

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Apparently RIM is not as smart as other hardware vendors. When you do a hard reset of a Pearl you don’t actually get all the programs refreshed to the factory default. I would argue that it isn’t a hard reset, but whatever. It boils down to the fact that when you mess up an install you can’t fix it. It took me a while, but i was able to get the lost applications back after following the instructions from this forum post.

My issue isn’t even 100% resolved since i lost the new AT&T phone theme i had with my Pearl and instead have the older not as nice looking Cingular theme on the phone since the software I was able to get the restore to work from must have been older than what was on my phone. In any case I am all better for now.

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Looking Forward

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I wanted to write a bit about some of the cool new projects i am working on at my new job. I am not going to go into great detail but it is something.

One of the biggest things i am doing is working on a plan to move an existing self hosted data center to a Co-Location facility. We just need more space. Thankfully instead of physically moving all of our gear we are looking at getting an all new setup built out and retire most of the old gear. The timing works out perfectly for us so we are giving it a try. We will be moving some stuff, but not a whole lot. Another thing we are trying to do is make this data center site the model (for us at least) for Virtualization. We are going to build out as much if not everything with the exception of SQL server as Virtual Machines running on VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3. If all goes according to plan it will be really cool setup. The TCO will also be allot less than doing it physically, it will be quicker to build out and deploy, and it will consume allot less power! The way i think about it is if we get a request for new servers to be build we just see how much Virtual capacity we have and just provision a new machine. If we don’t have extra space, we just purchase an additional node and more SAN storage and add to our VI3 cluster. The goal is to stay far enough ahead in available capacity (minus the N+1 for redundancy) that we always can accommodate even the largest provisioning requests. I can’t wait to see how this turns out! It will be interesting.

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Sunday in the Park

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The weather cleared up today enough so i was able to get a good ride in Central Park in the afternoon. I don’t know why (maybe the lack of any exercise all week) but i was more tired after my work out than i can remember ever being on the same route. Even last week wasn’t that bad. I guess that means i need to do my own self made course more often to build up my stamina. Hopefully i can get out a few nights this week.

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Skype Caller ID

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So close, yet not yet. That is what I am thinking about Skype’s new Caller Identification. This has been one feature I have wanted on Skype for some time. With it, I can finally think about using it as a true phone replacement for my current Broadvoice home phone. Now all I have to do is wait for them to enable the service for use in the US.

I also realized that it would be really cool if Skype passed through caller ID info from a caller when you use call forwarding. Right now I see the same crazy 0012345678 show up on my forwarded calls as people see when I call them. Maybe this Caller Identification resolves this also? I hope it does.

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