Recently in Blogging Category

Here's the stuff I read while I was on my summer vacation. Not as high volume this year because of a lot of other things going on. Still was productive.

Clapton, The Autobiography - Not really a tell-all like recent rock biographies. More like a story of a guy from England that overcame his addictions. It just happens that this particular guy's one of the most influential rock and blues guitarists ever.

Chessplayer by William Pearson - Somewhat typical 80's era cold war US/Soviet spy book. It was interesting. Lots of action. Lots of cold war paranoia and spycraft. Good ending.

Flower Net by Lisa See - Another cold war era book. A murdered Triad honcho puts an LA lawyer together with a Chinese cop to work out what happened and who's responsible. Lots of more cold war intrigue in both LA and China. It was alright. Lots of twists and turns. Interesting ending. Good lead-in for the Olympics being in China this year.

The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman - This was a crazy book. Also good timing with the Olympics in China. Basically, it's a book talks about how various factors have flattened the world in the context of global economic competition. Lots of information about where we are, how we got here and how to deal with it going into the future. Very eye opening.

The Good War by Studs Terkel - Memories about World War II from the people that lived through it. The people that fought the war from all sides, as well as the people that were left on the home front. It's a testament to the hell that is war and also to the men and women that went through it. They are the greatest generation.

The Shack by William P Young - It's a story of a man who meets God in the shack where his daughter died and spends the weekend learning about the nature of God and himself while working through what he calls The Great Sadness. There are reviews of this book all over the place but make no mistake...this is a Christian book. It was interesting. I haven't really decided what I think about its message.

The Idiot by Dostoyevsky - I tried...I really did. I wanted to make it through this book but I couldn't. Well written classic literature. Not enough action to keep me going while I'm at the beach.

The Murderer Next Door by David Buss - This is more of a psychology and anthropology thesis than a regular book. The author's theory is that while most of us won't ever kill another person, the drive to kill is built into how our brain works. He works to prove his theory by using both modern crime statistics as well as archaeological evidence. I'm not done with this book either. It's interesting though. Should finish it off in a week or so.

Getting back into town after having been on vacation at the beach over the last 10 days or so. I've never been a "work hard play harder" kind of guy. When I'm on vacation, I want to relax and enjoy myself and decompress because I don't want to be more tired than I was when I left home.

At the expense of maybe making myself look really boring, here's some of the things I did (some of them with Margo, even) while on my summer vacation;

• Read (more details coming)
• Ate (more details coming)
• Celebrated Margo's birthday (sunset photos didn't come out)
• Ate birthday cake for breakfast (I'm getting too old to do it)
• Took pictures
• Dodged grasshoppers (large swarm of grasshoppers on the beach..didn't have camera)
• Watched a school of fish get swarmed by porpoises (also didn't have camera)
• Got in a lot of guitar practice (Tony gave me a lot of work to do and I think I made progress)
• Saw The Dark Knight and really enjoyed it

Now I'm home after my first day back. I'm tired but really enjoyed myself even if the above looks boring. :P

Time to get started on some home projects.

I started the year meaning to get posting more to the blog. I had a good start going for a while.

Then I discovered Twitter a couple months ago and pretty much ground the blog to a halt. I tend to think of a blog post as a longer-form article kind of thing. Twitter's 140 character limit makes for a much lower psychological threshold to fire something out there. Also, feedback is easier and faster on twitter than a blog.

Originally this site was all about Margo and I and our wedding. When I came out as a blogger in late 2005, I wanted to turn it into more technical blog. It became a little bit of a problem for me to post useful tech info for things I do at work without talking too much about where I work and who I work for.

While the blog's still at its core about what ever I want to write about, it's been trending towards music a lot lately. I've been thinking a lot about music and independent artists lately and I want to explore that more on the blog.

Since I have a decent recording rig, one of the things I'm working on is a regular series of posts on my learning to play guitar. I'm also working on some audio walkthroughs of the gear that I have too.

I'm going to do more music related posts...some regular some not so regular... and see where it goes. I will still post on technology because it's still all about what I want to write about but I'm going to see where the music stuff take me for a while.

I hate doing these kinds of things because it feels like I'm just running around following the crowd. This particular thing is going around the Lotus Notes/Domino community.

I do tend to get some odd results on these things though. This is no exception.

I'm learning to play guitar these days. I'll have to remember this if I ever have an album to do.

The game goes like this:

Band name from Wikipedia random page, the album title is the last four words from the final quote on the random quotes page and the art should be the third image from the Flickr Interestingness / Last 7 days page.

Comments are back. Upgraded MT to 4.1 while I was at it. I still have problems with the templates on the site for some reason. I don't know why but it is what it is.

Feel free to comment on whatever you like. Unless you're a robot spammer of course.

Just in time for Lotusphere, Lotus911 has released BleedYellow as a resource for the Lotus community....those of us that bleed Lotus yellow.

It'll be interesting to watch this evolve. As it is, it's a good way for Lotus software enthusiasts to meet and exchange ideas and learn from each other. I hope that eventually it will become a place where non-Bleeders can come and see that Lotus software isn't as ugly as it used to be and learn about why those of us that do bleed yellow love this software so much (the reactions to the news of Notes coming to the iPhone last week show that Lotus and the Lotus community still have a long way to go with that).

via Chris Whisonant, Chris Blatnick, Ed Brill, Duffbert, the Connections Blog and probably some others that I haven't seen yet.

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted anything here.

I still have a few things in my mind and in draft mode in ecto that I haven't gotten to finishing out yet.

I hate excuse postings, but with the new job, hosting Christmas and some other stuff that's going on I have more that needs to get done now that things like blogging get back-burnered.

Will be back next week, I hope.

Have a good Christmas everyone.

Manager Tools' latest podcast, "Getting Laid Off - Finances Rule" is a great illustration of why I listen every week.

This week's episode cuts through the BS straight to the core of the issue in Mike and Mark's typical direct style: Whether you get laid off or terminated, the state of your finances are what determine how well you are able to handle the situation.

Most folks reaction is focusing on the job hunt and totally miss the fact that if their finances are in order, and have a an emergency fund that they can live on while they search, they can afford to take the time and make better choices in resolving the situation.

In early 2001, the tech bubble was collapsing and I went through a layoff situation. One company I was in was collapsing, so I got laid off, but I quickly landed another job and thought I was set. Then I got laid off from that job a couple weeks later and spent the next few weeks without a job. I didn't have my finances together then and we suffered through that time. By the time I was able to land my next job, I was desperate and glad to drive 40 miles each way to get a paycheck.

If I was in a better financial situation at the time, I wouldn't have taken the job. On the flip side though, I spent the next seven years working there. Tomorrow's my last day there, actually, so I guess it wasn't all bad. I learned a lot and grew a lot and got to work with some really great people.

We've been working really hard getting our finances together...taking care of things, building that emergency fund, etc. I got lucky pulling out of my last layoff, but I'm not taking that chance next time.

This episode of Manager Tools comes at a good time. While I'm already working hard on my finances, but it puts financial issues in an atypical context that really hit home for me. Thanks, guys.

I am a classic introvert. I have been for as long as I remember. Being around large groups of people is pretty draining to me. Social interactions, especially in small groups are also awkward and difficult for me which can make it difficult to make new friends, be as good as I should to old friends, and do the real life kinds of 'social networking' that relationships are made of. But for some reason I don't have trouble talking in large groups.

I went to Lotusphere 2006 by myself and found it pretty traumatic. Everybody there was very nice and several made an effort to include me in their festivities but by Wednesday, I was pretty much a mess. I have thought a lot about that week in the almost two years since...more in times like now when the new Lotusphere is approaching. While I did have fun and I learned a lot, I still would very much like to do it again sometime and have a different experience.

The pastor at my church is an introvert as well but with a big difference. He describes it by saying "I'm an introvert but I'm not shy." I find it completely liberating to think that being introverted and being shy aren't necessarily stuck together. I don't have to change my personality to get out, do things and be more naturally sociable...I just need to remember to go home and recharge.

I'm not really a "name it and claim it" kind of guy. I believe very strongly in working hard for what you want in life. I also believe, though, that you do need to come up with specific goals to be able to get there. So I'm working hard to keep "I'm an introvert but I'm not shy" in mind as I make my way through life from now on until becomes a natural part of who I am. Til I get there, I'll stumble and fall, but at least I'm trying to keep it going.

I have been meaning to step up my blogging over the last several months but it doesn't seem to be working out that way. I'm finding that the harder I try to come up with things to write, the less I'm able to think of.

I'm sure that part of my blockage has to do with some things going on in the background here that I'm not going to talk about for a while. I do have one item that I'm working on specifically to feed out to another website, but it's taking me longer than I'd hoped to get it all together.

I've seen a lot of interesting stuff out on the net lately on different topics but I'd rather not turn this into just ann outgoing link farm.

In the end, this post is pretty useless, but that's how it goes sometimes. I'll probably have a bunch of things to post now that I've admitted that the well's kinda dry... Oh well

It's a strange thing, losing a pet. Bianca was a little dog, didn't make a lot of noise and, except for the last couple of months, wasn't really high maintenance.

For some reason, though, there's a big change in the feel of the house now that she's not there anymore. It's much quieter and emptier in the house. What used to feel full and homey is now big and empty.

I don't know if it's a life force, spiritual energy, or what they call spiritual pressure in Bleach or if it's all just in my head, but there's such a big difference in how our house feels right now I'm amazed.

I'm sure that as time goes on we'll become less and less aware of this difference but for now, it makes it hard to walk in the front door.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

This is a photo of Bianca in her younger and healthier days...6 years ago or so, back when we lived in Fairfax and I still took a camera with me wherever I went and shot actual film. I still have the print and the negative in the basement with the rest of my photography.

I got this print back and thought “I'm just a little girl in this great big world” was a good caption/title. She was a little chubby then...a lot more than she has been lately....but she's still our little girl.

Later tonight, she's not going to be with us anymore and we're going to miss her.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

It's amazing to learn how much I took having hot running water for granted.

Sometime on Tuesday, the hot water heater stopped working. I tried restarting it (I am a computer guy after all) but it didn't help. Called for a plumber and through some schedule and parts issues, the house has been without hot water for almost 4 days. Boiling water for some things, and just sucking it up with cold water for others. Dishes stacked up and so did some of the laundry. Shaving's been pretty awful too when I didn't have the patience to microwave more water.

The problem ended up being the igniter in the water heater (it's natural gas powered). It got fixed this morning finally. I had a great time washing my hands in wonderful, glorious hot water a few minutes ago. I'm going to try not to take hot running water for granted again, too.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Actually, I have been for a while. My brother and sisters are right in the middle of the target demographic for things like Facebook so that's how I ended up with an account there. I have pretty much ignored it since signing up, only hitting it when my brother posts something to my wall or tagged me in a photo, etc.

I received a couple of new friend requests recently from people I know recently, so I'm spending a little time poking around the site lately. It's interesting. I don't know if I'll use it much yet...it depends on how well I can integrate it with this site because I intend this to be the authoritative source for internet content that I have created.

Here's my Facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506943416

I also have a profile on Virb. It's more neglected than Facebook, but I tried it out specifically because I can have it publish an RSS feed of this site.

My Virb profile is here: http://www.virb.com/scottgentzen

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Since I got back from vacation, I decided that I wanted to make a more concentrated effort to put more into this site. Just looking at the front page, though it doesn't look like I succeeded but I actually am getting some things done.

Once I got Movable Type set up I started moving entries over from what used to be a photo blog that I ran on the site separate from the main blog. Most of the entries from that side are from 2003-2005 (I'm currently halfway through April 2003) so none of that stuff is going to show up as new on the RSS feeds. Because I'm moving the entries over using MT's Asset management system, the photos are showing up under the Photo widget to the right of where my normal entry text goes.

Once I'm all caught up on the archives, things should start getting somewhat back to normal around here, whatever that is.

It looks like some of the problems I'm having affected Ecto's publishing of blog entries.

It's resolved for now. I'm still looking into some issues with templates. I'm hoping that I can work the rest out without messing anything else up. Most of it's backend stuff that I don't know what it'll affect. I also still need to mod the widgets on the columns on the right side of the page. I want to add the photo widget and change things around so it looks better with the new layout.

I still have a post about my King's Dominion trip over the weekend and a wrap-up on my beach trip from a couple weeks ago. I'm getting there....

Technorati Tags: Blogging

For some reason, whenever I do a major release upgrade on Movable Type, I have problems with the templates and stylesheets. I do the upgrade, and all of the design elements of the site stay the way they were so when I try to use a new “Style” it breaks.

To fix it, I had to create a test blog so MT4 will create a fresh set of templates and then copy them over to the old blog.

I’m going to stick with the new column layout, I think. Over the next few days I’m going to try to get the content of the right-side bars set. Once that’s done, I’ll get into some of the new things in MT4 (Assets? Finally.) and maybe do a little tweaking. In between, I have a couple of things to post related to vacation.

Looks like ecto isn't working with my upgraded MT install. Nice. At least the posting interface is improved.

Going to be a little weird while I figure stuff out.

It made me smile.

Updated: Here's the original. Also makes me smile.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Music

I always thought I was more of a geek than a nerd but online quizzes like this never lie, do they?

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I went to the Costco site tonight looking for the closing time for my local store, I noticed a Funeral link at the top of the site.

Sure enough. Costco sells caskets and urns. They really do have everything. I'm surprised that they aren't supersized or available only in two-packs or something.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I went back to the site and reproduced it.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Yeah, I had to. That reminds me...I have one from that South Park character generator that I never posted. I have a printout on the fridge. I'll see if I can find it later.

Get yours here

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Current Events, Movies

I turned trackbacks off.

I like trackbacks. It's an interesting way of giving feedback while keeping your writing on your own site.

The problem is that there's too many bottom feeders spamming trackbacks for them to be useful.

Maybe someday they'll come back, but not likely.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Do you mark all of your emails with a High importance flag?

It makes the flag useless and makes kittens cry.

Please stop. Think of the kittens.

Much love;
Scott

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Current Events

I'm not going to tag this as "Show and Tell Thursday" but it this post is somewhat inspired by the phrase.

Sometime in 1998 I got my first taste of working with Lotus Notes and Domino. I was the new guy in the IT department of a biotech services company. The development group was doing some final pre-testing before rolling out a new application, and they asked me to check it out as a set of fresh eyes.

It was an unfamiliar application and at the time I had no idea what the intended users were meant to accomplish with it but I was willing to take up the challenge to see if I could break it...and I broke it. I got a repeatable Red Box of Death error and was able to explain exactly what I did to get it. The developers were able to fix the error and were spared an embarrassing post-lanch showstopper. I was launched into a new career as a Domino administrator.

I think I got a spot award from the department which was nice and always appreciated. The developers gave me the Lotus Notes mug pictured below which I thought was a really cool expression of appreciation. They picked this much specifically because of the tagline under the Notes logo:

"...because information has no value until it's shared.

I still frequently use this cup for my morning coffee. I also try to keep the tagline in mind as I go about my days. I think I'm a lot more valuable to the people around me if I share my knowledge rather than horde it.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Domino, Lotus, Technology

John Head had an amusing post yesterday: Soundtrack of your life

The idea is to put your music library on shuffle, hit skip 3 times and then write down the songs that come up in order and then line them up with a set of life events. With my music collection, I thought it'd be an interesting thing to see, so here goes:

Opening Credits: Collide "Halo" from Chasing the Ghost
Waking Up: Cruciform Injection "Vacant Bodies" from Epilogue
First Day at School: Metallica "Prince Charming" from ReLoad
Falling in Love: Third Eye Blind "Thanks A Lot" from Third Eye Blind
Fight Song: Megadeth "Ecstasy" from Risk
Breaking Up: Korn "Freak on a Leash" from Follow the Leader
Prom: Metallica "Hero of the Day" from Load
Life: Kate Bush "Sunset" from Aerial
Mental Breakdown: Innocent Blood "Enter Sandman" from The Blackest Album 2
Driving: Marty Casey & Lovehammers "Clouds" from Marty Casey & Lovehammers
Flashback: Fatboy Slim "Santa Cruz" from Better Living Through Chemistry
Wedding: Buckethead "Machete Mirage" from Bucketheadland Vol 2
Final Battle: Prince "Sign O' The Times" from The Very Best of Prince
Death Scene: AC/DC "Hell or High Water" from from Fly on the Wall
Funeral Song: Gary Numan "I Can't Breathe" from Pure
End Credit: Marilyn Manson "Antichrist Superstar (Live)" from Remix & Repent

Um. Wow. That's weird.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Music

Every year, information on the internet becomes completely unreliable.

Well, more unreliable than normal. You always have to filter and think about what you read but today, even people I trust start posting stupid crap. I'm better off just marking everything read when I do an RSS refresh tomorrow night.

Looks like a good guitar practice day.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I've been trying to think of something to say about what went down over on Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users blog the other day but I just can't do it.

It just goes to show that there are a lot of messed up people out there and the internet can give them an audience where previously they would either just be ignored or locked up.

zabuni at Metafilter points out that it's more proof of Penny Arcades Internet Fuckwad Theory though.

I hate letting someone speak for me on my own site, but I'm making an exception today. Though in this case, I don't think the fuckwad in question started off as a normal person. I hope this issue gets resolved soon. I'd hate to see Ms. Sierra's current state continue because of some asshole out there somewhere.

If you're in certain parts of Russia, you're not getting here anymore.

I need to figure out something to do here to get more people than spammers checking in on the site. Hmm.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Spam

I like the Dinosaur Rule.

It probably wasn't the intended take-away for episode 85 of the Cranky Middle Manager but sometimes you can't control your outcomes.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I'm doing some back-end work on the site today.

This site's anti-spam setup is doing a great job at keeping spam from being displayed on the site while hopefully not interfering with the experience of legitimate readers.

The problem at this point is that the attempts at comment spam are are actually starting to account for more site traffic than actual visitors are. The referrer spam also has pretty much made my referrer stats useless too.

Because of that, I'm working on blocking spammers' access to the site now. There are some interesting tools and ideas out there and I'm going to be trying some of them out starting today. Hopefully, it won't interfere too much with any of the regulars getting here.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Spam

I already suspected the answer for me, but I like Richard's answer better.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Looks like I got tagged by Jonvon for the 5-things...uh...thing (I don't like the "meme" meme). Here it is, in no particular order...

I went to speech therapy classes in school because a teacher thought I had a problem speaking. I don't know if it helped any, but the classes gave me a fascination about how languages sound and how others speak. I learned Esperanto in school around that time. Now I listen to a Klingon-language podcast (though I don't speak or read the language), and watched Sabado Gigante before I had a TiVo. Whenever I'm talking to someone, at some level I still pay a lot of attention to stuff like regional accents, how they're forming their words, stuff like that.

I can't swim. For some reason, I don't float. I get the mechanics fine, and I can swim underwater with no trouble. My first swimming lessons were in the summer between Kindergarden and First grade and I have had help on and off since then. On my honeymoon, I went snorkeling for the first time and thought I was going to drown even with the floatation belt...ended up spending the swim time on the zodiac. Almost drowned myself in the surf after a hurricane once too....boogie board in hand, I got dragged out and pummeled. I lasted long enough to get out past the breakers to rest and decide how I'm going to get back to the sand.

I learned to solder and stuff circuit boards by watching my mother as a kid. My first "real" job after high school was on the assembly floor building networking and comm gear (frame relay boxes and ISDN modems at the time mostly) and learning Vietnamese from the people I worked with. It's not on my resume anymore because sysadmins don't need to solder anymore. I did use the one of my overtime-beefy paychecks to buy my first real computer (a nice-for-the-time custom-built first-rev 486) which was probably what got me good enough at computers to get my first admin/support job (which, oddly enough was all Macs).

In high school I was on the It's Academic team. I didn't want to be on TV so I stopped when I started my Junior year. I did some intramural events while I was in though. I thought I was pretty good, though I don't have any stats to back that up. I can hang pretty well in Jeopardy at home still.

Coming out of high school, I wanted to be a programmer. I did some college work towards a Computer Science degree. Coursework included computer architecture (circuit design mostly), programming in ANSI C and x86 Assembler. At home, I was using some of what I was picking up in school to try to do what the demoscene was doing at the time (not nearly so well) and learning how computer viruses worked (which were almost all written in assembler at the time). Then my first job in IT was a sysadmin for a small network of Macs and I've been in similar support roles since.

By the time things like this get to me (Technorati rank 620,897 with a bullet!), I think they're already pretty much done with. I think that everyone that I know that hasn't been tagged at this point doesn't have a blog to react to the tagging from. If there's anyone left that sees this, leave a comment and I'll make it official. :D

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I added my coComment feed to the right sidebar today. I've been meaning to do it for a while but didn't get around to it for a bunch of different reasons.

I tend to comment out there in the world more often than I write here. coComment is a good way for me to keep track of those discussions...when I remember to tag them. Maybe making them more public will serve to make me remember more.

There's still some work I want to do with the design of the site (it's too narrow, for example). I'm not a developer though so that's going to happen really slowly.

So, the guitar that I won from Otto's Daughter arrived on the Saturday before Christmas. The band wanted me to send them pictures, which panicked me a bit because my digital camera's been down for quite a long time because of a missing battery charger. I got a replacement and got it done over the long weekend.

Here's the stuff that's packed with the guitar:

An Otto's Daughter yo yo (a yo yo? I love yo yo's!)
G's sticks with an initialed note that they're from the show
The setlist from the 15 Dec show
A screw with a nut on it (!)
Mo's strap (I almost feel bad about this one, but it is a comfortable strap)
A promo poster for the show and guitar giveaway signed by the band ("This ain't the poster - JVB" on the back)
An OD promo card
Four Otto's Daughter picks from HorrorPicks
A dirty rag (ooo...sweat from the show)
OD stickers
(not pictured) Bubble wrap personally squeezed by Jacqueline Van Bierk
(not pictured) A plastic tag (couldn't find it)
(not pictured) A business card for a place in CA that does guitar lessons

Not a Gibson, in front of a tree

SG Hearts OD

Everyone needs a screw with a nut on it...and staples...

Baby's first chord. With me anyway (JVB has had her way with it already). Em if it's not obvious from the way the photo came out...the 1 and 4 fingers aren't touching.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be poking around the local pawn shops for a decent amp. I don't think I'm up for the commitment of having actual live lessons yet. Will see what I can do with what's available online (I'm working on chord transitions with pivot and guide fingers lately, plus I'm looking through some tabs) and will do a progress check in a couple of months. The goal at the moment is to be able to say that I can play it by the time Otto's Daughter get around to playing somewhere around here.

My longer term goal is to be able to hang in there at Lotusphere's JAMfest next time I go. I'm not going to be at Lotusphere 2007 so I have at least a year to learn how to play the instrument and figure out how to work my musical sensibilities into more of a blues influenced situation.

This could be interesting.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, GuitarHero, Jamfest, Lotusphere, Music

This blog runs on Movable Type. In its history, it's also been run on Xoops and Post Nuke. Before it was anything like a blog, it was just a hand coded (DreamWeaver and Notepad mostly) web page with information about our wedding (directions, etc for guests that could make it, pictures for those that couldn't). I made the switch to Movable Type sometime in 2003, I think and haven't really spent any time thinking about moving it again since.

I am a Lotus Domino professional (certified and some would say certifiable), so some people find it odd that I'm not using the Dominoblog template or the newly released IBM Blog template. I was asked that a few times from people at Lotusphere 2006 about that as well. At the time, I hadn't really considered a move and hadn't played around with the Dominoblog template.

I've been thinking about it more recently, and below I'm listing the barriers that I currently have for making the move. I only have a couple hours worth of time invested in messing with the Dominoblog template so far and none with the 7.0.2 template. There's a lot that I like about the template, and I'll drop that in another post after I have more time to play.

Cheap Hosting:
At the time that I was shopping around for a a host for my site (2001 sometime), I was considering Domino-based hosting providers. Most of the ones that I found had free options that were insufficient. I'm currently using about 80MB of space for my site between the content directories and the database. I don't get enough traffic to worry about hitting the limit in most hosting arrangements.

Importing of content from MovaleType:
In the past, I hadn't really worried about losing content on the site when moving platforms. The amount of actual content was pretty light. In the past year or so, it's picked up a lot, and I kinda care about the old stuff now. Anything I move to in the future must be able to import the Movable Type data that I already have. Probably doesn't really have to be Movable Type specific, if I can point it at an RSS/ATOM feed that has everything on the site, then import that.

Trackbacks
I've been fiddling around with the Dominoblog 3.0.2 template, and I don't see how/if trackbacks actually work. I haven't seen any Dominoblog based blogs that accept trackbacks. I'm wondering if that's a trackback spam thing or not. A robust anti-spam configuration is a must. I've been plugged into Akismet for my blog for a while and it's a beautiful thing.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Domino, Lotus, Technology

I'm playing around with the layout a bit today. I worked out how to add a third column. I'm planning on adding some things in the sidebars that would be too much if I only had one column to put them in.

Problem at the moment is that the overall width set in the current template (actually in the stylesheet for MovableType) is set too narrow, so the middle column ("beta"...where the content is now) is getting squashed.

I'm a sysadmin, not a programmer, so it takes me a little longer than normal to straighten things like this out. Will get there. I'll try not to post anything too wide til I get it worked out.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

JonVon turned 41 on Saturday. He and some friends had goat vindaloo for dinner. That got me thinking that I haven't had non-vegetarian Indian food for quite a while. My favorite Indian restaurant in the area is Woodlands, but they're souther Indian which means it's vegetarian.

Margo came home tonight, and asked what's for dinner. I asked what she'd like me to go get (haven't been shopping since we got back from the beach yet). She goes, "How about Indian?". I didn't need to be asked twice. Preet Palace is the closest Indian restaurant to our house. No goat vindaloo. Still very good though...I had mug tikka masala. No beer in the house (!). Should have made a lassi but didn't want to go shopping for yogurt.

Technorati Tags: Food

I should have expected it.

Sametime 7.5 dropped on Friday the 18th, as reported by Ed Brill and others. I downloaded the server, client and dev kit this morning and will try to get a test server up this week. Started the process of getting the client into the software testing/approval cycle.

Looks like the first test accounts started getting issued for testing NCES' Sametime installation while I was gone too. I pre-registerest for the testing and they're rolling the accounts in small groups, and I didn't get one on the first set.

I'm looking forward to a couple different things with the NCES Sametime setup. With the 7.5 client, I should be able to connect to my local community and the DISA one at the same time. I'm also hoping that there will be the possibility of connecting existing Sametime communities to the main NCES community. Some orgs in the DoD prefer to own their services, so something like registering their users with NCES and only using that might not be doable, but if they can connect the Communities the the collaboration is still there without making the local IA guys too nervous.

Technorati Tags: Lotus, Sametime, Travel

Via Scoble: Wait, that was MY bug? Ouch!

Microsoft's Larry Osterman steps up and claims responsibility for the code that botched the demo I posted on Saturday.

Here's something new and interesting from Microsoft. Someone stepping up and saying that the demo got messed up because of code that they are responsible for. I think it's probably a natural extension of Microsoft's recent blogging strategy which is to put a more human face on the company.

While Microsoft tends to act like a giant faceless machine a lot of the time, most of its employees are just regular people, and it's good to remember that sometimes.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Technology

http://www.learningmovabletype.com/archives/001566a_safe_way_to_upgrade_to_mt_33.php

Via the MT Community Forums.

For those of you out there that like to take things a little smarter.

I'm not even going to do the Technorati tags on this one.

The previous post was the 100th post on the curent incarnation of the blog. I have to work with that milestone as I didn't keep track of that stuff on previous versions of the site. It's also nice that the 100th post is about a mod to the site that has at least for now stopped my daily spam-junking routine. I didn't have any comment spam to junk this morning and it looks like the comments form still works.

I tried importing the content from the previous version of the site, so I don't completely lose it but it didn't work. I didn't spend enough time on the import to see what it was that failed. It's one of those frustrating things where the process said it worked, but the data isn't there....so something failed and didn't throw an error.

Most of what's importing is photos from the Photo blog that I set up a long time ago to catch my photography. I've decided that there really isn't a reason to completely separate my photography from my online identity here. Maybe if it's more visible on the site, I'll be more encouraged to shoot more.

Two blog posts today really stood out to me. The first was Eileen Brown's Weblog post "The Death of the iPod?" and then Seth Godin's post "The problem with mobile."

Eileen's post was centered around an article on TechWeb about how in five years, they think that dedicated portable music devices will disappear in favor of combined cell phone/media player devices. I have a relatively long comment there that mostly boils down to the fact that I think the prediction has more to do with Microsoft trying to define the next personal electronics battlefield since they lost the last one to Apple.

Then in Seth Godin's post questions why the cell phone industry hasn't gotten as big as it should have. He answers his own question by stating:

"I think we're going to discover a whole new universe of cell phone services that people want to pay for, things that we won't be able to live without. Like... ringtones."

I don't get ideas like these at all. I really don't. I'm 32, I work in technology, I'm a gadget lover, so I would think that I'm at least a little bit in the demographic that the cell carriers are looking to tap. The problem is that I have no interest in any of it.

I don't want to watch videos on my phone, whether downloaded from my Mac or streamed live from some site over an EDGE/EVDO network...and I especially don't want to pay extra to do it. I pay enough for the music I already have, so I don't see any reason to pay even more for a chunk of a song that will play on my phone whenever someone calls (I prefer vibrate). I don't want to check stocks on my phone, surf the web from it or do instant messaging though I've done all three. Candy bar phones are the wrong format, and I wouldn't carry one of those PDA-style ones because they're too big.

My cell phone is not, nor has it ever been an accessory. It's not for display and is not any indication of my "lifestyle." It's for me to make calls when I need to and take calls when I have to.

I've had cell phones since the original Ericsson Sprint Spectrum phones in 1996 or so. Currently I have two phones. A Nokia 6010 for personal use and a Nokia 9300 for work.

The 9300 is too big, too heavy and wants to do too much. The 6010 is too big, doesn't have bluetooth, isn't supported by iSync and really makes me miss my Sony Ericsson t610.

And I have a 2GB iPod Nano. It's just the right size physically, the interface is just what it needs...no more, no less. I just wish I got the 4GB one. Or that there was a 40GB Nano. No, I don't want anything to do with the ROKR.

Yes, this has been long and rambling but there is a point here. I think that the two articles were just good timing. The 6010's screen is dying so I'm in the market for a new phone, so I've been thinking about current and near future tech as it relates to cell phones....and I seem to have a really hard time finding what I want.

I want a cell phone that's just a phone. I have an iPod and I like it better. I want it to fit in the front pocket of a pair of jeans with room for my wallet. I want it to sync up with the my Address Book on my Mac over bluetooth. I want it to also be able to use a bluetooth earpiece so I can drive and talk if I have to. I don't want any camera on it (cameraphones are banned and confiscated in certain areas and I'd rather not have a crappy camera when I need it than not have a phone when I need it).

And for the love of all that's good in this world, I don't under any circumstances don't want it to be a conduit for people to market at me through. I don't want ringtones, or exclusive music and videos whether it's over a high speed or slow speed wireless link.

Is that so hard? It's definitely hard to find. The t610 was close, except for the camera part. The Samsung t509 looks like it comes close too, but I'm waiting to see how the quality reports come out. In the mean time, I might just pick up a used t610 on eBay.

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Gadgets, Technology, Marketing, iPod, iTunes

I'm about two thirds of the way through the hard level. Some days I'm better than others but I'm getting better at it all the time. Won't help me with most of what I'd expect to see at Jamfest now (though Spanish Castle Magic and Crossroads, maybe Godzilla could be close). I'm having a hell of a time with Guitar Hero. It's loads of fun, and has a very playable learning curve. It's actually kind of seductive...when you start getting good you're almost left feeling that you could pick up a real guitar and play it on that too. The music's good too if you're into guitar rock.

There's a conversion out there where you can plug these controllers into USB and use it as a MIDI controller. That could be fun.

I have some other ideas for Jamfest next time. Will post on that when I have it more fleshed out. It might work out, but it might not. Will see.

Technorati Tags: Lotusphere, Review, Music, Jamfest, GuitarHero

I bet that title gets used a lot in blogging. Oh well.

I'm kinda offline for a little while. My Powerbook's hard drive started to fail over the weekend. Late Sunday and last night I was trying to see if there was anything I could do to stop the problem progression. I gave up last night. Today on the way home, I'm going to make a pit stop and get a new hard drive, and an external drive enclosure and maybe an extra external drive too.

Once the hardware comes home, I need to swap the drives install my OS back and do a backup restore. Then I need to see what I can salvage from the old disk from its external enclosure (I didn't have my music on backup), reinstall some software, etc. It might be a couple days before I'm completely back online again.

With the other external disk, I'm going to set it up as another backup disk...and I'll be archiving complete disk images to it. This crash could have been worse if I had no backups at all but it's going to be really inconvenient and time consuming. It wouldn't have been if I'd spent the time and money up front to protect myself.

Fun.

I've obviously been slacking out on keeping up with the blog. I'm not sure if it's meant to be a blog still or something else. I read a lot of blogs, so I see how good and how bad blogs can be. I just don't know if I have the time to make this something better than a place to dump stuff that family can get to.

Vacation's coming up so I'll have some time off to think about it. I know I need to get the old content back online from when I goofed up the site the last time.

Holy crap! It's been a long time since I've touched the site. I haven't done any of the things I'd planned and promised to do with it. Nothing. Actually, I'd even let the domain name lapse for a couple of weeks. That's just sad.
I have a lot of excuses. Some good, some bad. While there are a lot of things that are more important than keeping up a website, it's still a resource that I'm wasting. While I can't say that I'm definately going to get to everyhing I was planning, I do intend to pay more attention to the site.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Well, not quite. We spent 24 July to 3 Aug at the beach.

When we came in, Bootsie's in Ocean View was open. We got a pair of baby back rib racks and some pulled pork. The ribs were ok. We never did get to the pork.

Later in the week, we got around to seeing the new place....Bethany Blues in Bethany Beach. It's a nice looking upscale kind of place. All of their BBQ is hickory and oak-fired which is a nice change. Margo said it was really good. I was sick so I couldn't taste it too well. Looking forward to going back next weekend.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Food

Haven't updated the site in a while. I did something dumb to the home PC that kept me knocked offline for a while. I could dial up pppd kept timing out. I feel better using Linux at home rather than Windows but sometimes it makes the simple things difficult.

I'm back online as of last night. Reinstalled the system which is pretty easy and simple. I'd been wanting to change the filesystem over to ReiserFS for a while anyway. The only bad part is that I have 400MB of updates do download and install, as it's been a while since the Mandrake 9.1 CDs came out.

I'm still slacking on redesigning the site too much. The way it is now isn't prety but it works and the layout is clean.
Next thing I'll be doing with the site is adding PHPRecipeBook. I'm going to be using it to keep up with some of the recipes I've been collecting lately. Not sure how public it'll be yet.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Upgraded to MovableType 2.64. It's been out for a while. Not sure of everything that's updated, but new versions are always a good thing.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Wow, it's been over a month since I've touched the site. This isn't good. I never meant for this to be a daily weblog thing but I'd meant to get more stuff in here much more often than I have.

I haven't made any proress on the visual redesign of the site. I haven't been taking many photographs. I haven't gotten any film developed. I need to pant the foyer. I want to smoke a turkey.

I actually haven't really been getting anything done other than the basics. I've been sick for a couple weeks. I've BBQ'd another pork shoulder. Done some house maintenance. That's it. Need to get a move-on...

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I'm feeling creative today. Saw the Friday Five and thought I'd do it. Read more to see the questions and answers.

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
No. I'm a slob and really, really disorganized. People that know me know this too well. People that don't find out quickly.

2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
Not at all. I try sometimes but can't keep up with it. Too much overhead.

3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
Oddly, yes. I have piles of things. It's organized to me.

4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
I sort them to begin with, but they end up unsorted eventually.

5. What's the hardest thing you've ever had to organize?
I don't think I've ever really organized anything for real.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I don't think I mentioned it when I added the MayDay Project to the links section. Basically, the idea is to take a picture every hour that you're awake for the day. This will be going on tomorrow. I thought it'd be cute since I've got some stuff going on tomorrow. It'll also give me a chance to get more familiar with te digital camera.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

It's been a while since I've updated any parts of the site. I've started working on creating a new set of templates for the site so it isn't the default MovableType look and feel anymore. I'm not going to go overboard. Most of the work I think is going to be on the archive templates, as it's the area that needs the most work. Especially on the Photolog.

I'm thinking of participating in the MayDay Project because the day they picked for it is the day before my birthday. I thought it might be interesting. I dropped them into my Links section here and will put it into the Photolog's later.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

It's been a while since I've updated any parts of the site. I've started working on creating a new set of templates for the site so it isn't the default MovableType look and feel anymore. I'm not going to go overboard. Most of the work I think is going to be on the archive templates, as it's the area that needs the most work. Especially on the Photolog.
I'm thinking of participating in the MayDay Project because the day they picked for it is the day before my birthday. I thought it might be interesting. I dropped them into my Links section here and will put it into the Photolog's later.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I've been working on adding all of the photos that have been on the site since I started doing this. There's 140 or so so it's going to take a while. I'm going to do a bunch per day until it's done. It'll hopefully organize better with dates once the backlog is done and I'm entering things in real-time.

I still need to format the Archives section there. I also need to finish what I started on getting a thumbnail gallery from the Photolog to show on the main site here.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

've started work on the photo log site. The main point of this site after the wedding was to hold pictures of us from the wedding. Now that I'm shooting more than I used to, it'll also hold stuff that I think is viewable as I get around to posting it.

The link to it is in the Links section on the left side of the page here.

I'm also linking it in this entry here.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

I'm just getting started on the configuration of the site. I've been reading the fine manuals so far and not getting much useful out of it.

First thing I need to get done is change the templates. There seems to be a lot of different parts that determine the look and feel of the site depending on what part you're looking at. I need to decide what I wnat to change and how. I want to keep things pretty clean (not unlike the version of the site before the most recent one). I'm probably not going to make a huge number of changes to the layout as it's pretty clean as it is. Mostly small customizations.

Later on, I'll try to get more familiar with now MovableType works and see what programmatic changes I should use for the site.

The first priority content-wise is the photos. First the stuff from the old site(s) since that's what most folks will be coming for. Then as I get along, I'll be adding some of my own photography.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

This is the new site. I finally have a webhost again. Let's hope that they last longer than the last one.

Lots of things to do before the site's back in business. I need to get the MovableType system the way I want ti, thenstart uploading all of the photo stuff. I might set up a sub-site so that Margo and I each have our own personal section. Will see.

Technorati Tags: Blogging