2008 draws near a close. It has been a fantastic year, full of new friends, learning and fresh experiences. 2008 had its challenges of course, but I honestly couldn't ask for a better year.
Involved in a ton of projects right now. Still refining my SharePoint skills for the new day job; also getting familiar with Microsoft Dynamics/CRM. I'm getting a serious Hyper-V setup going on in the home office, for dev/test/play purposes.
We're working to rebuild the Change Round-Up website and webservice API from the ground up; I'm getting ready to deploy the first piece of the new framework to production sometime in January. Various Higher Efficiency projects include work on an IVR+.NET webservices project, PHP/MySQL work for a Moodle module, and a complete overhaul of the Higher Efficiency website to boot.
Together with Griff Townshend and TVUG, I'm working on Tech Valley Code Camp 2009.1 -- we've settled on a March date, though we haven't picked a weekend yet. Details to follow of course; website in the process of being put up again, the host paved it with a default Plesk install after TVCC 2008.
Personally, I'm getting up to speed on Azure and SDS, as well as continuing Python explorations with Google App Engine (GAE) and BigTable. Starting to do some work with Amazon Web Service's (AWS) SimpleDB as well -- I hope to be able to present a session comparing these horizontal data offerings sometime in the spring.
Hoping everyone has safe and happy holidays, and here's to an even more awesome 2009!
Monday, December 29
Wednesday, December 10
Busy busy busy! Server upgrade ... Oxite ...
Long time no post, I know.
Been getting up to speed on the intricacies of SharePoint farms. Recently rebuilt my home office dev/test Win server, from 2003 R2 x64 to 2008 Enterprise x64; perhaps more details on that fun experience later. Installed SharePoint on 2008, installed SQL Server 2008 on 2008, but most interestingly, I've installed Hyper-V on 2008. Again, more posts to follow on this stuff.
Life onsite at NYS DOCS is your typical consulting scenario ... with a few twists. Inmate cleaning crews. Mandated TB testing. Metal detector for visitors and inmates. Correctional officers working front desk and other security points. You get used to it. Mostly.
Will be in Manhattan overnight on 12-19, returning noon 12-20; calendar's already full for that day and a half, but I think I'll be down again at least once in January.
Now that I've gone to Windows Server 2008, I'm hoping to use Hyper-V in place of XP, 2003, Vista, etc. VPCs for development and testing purposes, as well as live archives of stuff like my current Vista x64 notebook. It has a 120GB drive with 14 months worth of installations, uninstallations, reinstallations, service packs. I want to slap a fresh 200GB drive in here, but I don't want to lose access to the OS that was my primary working machine for over a year. Having ugpraded my fileserver to 1TB RAID5, I have room to drop a Hyper-V virtual machine of a stripped-down image of my notebook. Peace of mind for all those passwords and personal data you don't want to lose.
However, that server's workload has increased pretty significantly as of late. It's a white box Asus P5KC with a Q6600 2.4GHz quad core; 4GB of Corsair 1066 DDR2. With a BIOS upgrade, the motherboard can, according to Asus, support 45nm technology. If I can remove/replace the CPU, I'm looking at moving to an Intel Xeon X3370 Yorkfield 3.0GHz 1333FSB Quad-Core Server Processor. (Good thing I overdid it on the PSU I initially purchased, but still, with this CPU and the RAID5, I may need a bigger PSU as well.) I'd be moving to 8GB DDR3 1333 at the same time.
Cheaper than buying a new server ... but one of these days, I need to get around to investing in an HP or a Dell. Now might be the time -- this box would serve pretty well as a Linux server, but even maxed out, I'm not sure how well it will support my Hyper-V aspirations.
Final note, did anybody else catch the Oxite announcement from MSFT? I've been working toward rebuilding my various sites into an integrated landing page with lightweight CMS ... Oxite might be a better solution than homebrew after all ...
Been getting up to speed on the intricacies of SharePoint farms. Recently rebuilt my home office dev/test Win server, from 2003 R2 x64 to 2008 Enterprise x64; perhaps more details on that fun experience later. Installed SharePoint on 2008, installed SQL Server 2008 on 2008, but most interestingly, I've installed Hyper-V on 2008. Again, more posts to follow on this stuff.
Life onsite at NYS DOCS is your typical consulting scenario ... with a few twists. Inmate cleaning crews. Mandated TB testing. Metal detector for visitors and inmates. Correctional officers working front desk and other security points. You get used to it. Mostly.
Will be in Manhattan overnight on 12-19, returning noon 12-20; calendar's already full for that day and a half, but I think I'll be down again at least once in January.
Now that I've gone to Windows Server 2008, I'm hoping to use Hyper-V in place of XP, 2003, Vista, etc. VPCs for development and testing purposes, as well as live archives of stuff like my current Vista x64 notebook. It has a 120GB drive with 14 months worth of installations, uninstallations, reinstallations, service packs. I want to slap a fresh 200GB drive in here, but I don't want to lose access to the OS that was my primary working machine for over a year. Having ugpraded my fileserver to 1TB RAID5, I have room to drop a Hyper-V virtual machine of a stripped-down image of my notebook. Peace of mind for all those passwords and personal data you don't want to lose.
However, that server's workload has increased pretty significantly as of late. It's a white box Asus P5KC with a Q6600 2.4GHz quad core; 4GB of Corsair 1066 DDR2. With a BIOS upgrade, the motherboard can, according to Asus, support 45nm technology. If I can remove/replace the CPU, I'm looking at moving to an Intel Xeon X3370 Yorkfield 3.0GHz 1333FSB Quad-Core Server Processor. (Good thing I overdid it on the PSU I initially purchased, but still, with this CPU and the RAID5, I may need a bigger PSU as well.) I'd be moving to 8GB DDR3 1333 at the same time.
Cheaper than buying a new server ... but one of these days, I need to get around to investing in an HP or a Dell. Now might be the time -- this box would serve pretty well as a Linux server, but even maxed out, I'm not sure how well it will support my Hyper-V aspirations.
Final note, did anybody else catch the Oxite announcement from MSFT? I've been working toward rebuilding my various sites into an integrated landing page with lightweight CMS ... Oxite might be a better solution than homebrew after all ...
Monday, November 17
I did a podcast interview
"The Startup Success Podcast, Show #5: Our first Social Media President, Change Round-Up"
I did my first podcast interview, for Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley's The Startup Success Podcast. I'm afraid to listen. We discuss Change Round-Up.
Bob Walsh is a successful software small business (mISV? ISV?) founder/owner, author, writer, etc. Pat Foley is an ISV evangelist for Microsoft.
I did my first podcast interview, for Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley's The Startup Success Podcast. I'm afraid to listen. We discuss Change Round-Up.
Bob Walsh is a successful software small business (mISV? ISV?) founder/owner, author, writer, etc. Pat Foley is an ISV evangelist for Microsoft.
Sunday, November 16
Brian Peek @ TVUG: Animated Musical Holiday Lights
Brian Peek, Microsoft MVP, book author and writer at Coding4Fun, will be presenting a how-to on "Animated Musical Holiday Lights" this Tuesday, November 18th, at 6:30PM at Tech Valley .NET User Group (TVUG).
VersaTrans:
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- Abstract: This month, learn how to build an animated light show set to music, much like the famous holiday light show videos you may have seen on YouTube. This session will cover how to build the hardware, how to build the software, and how to combine them to create a synchronized musical show for your home.
- When: Tuesday November 18th, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
- Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY
VersaTrans:
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Monday, November 3
FriendFeed is exposing user email addresses
I happened to take a closer look at a FriendFeed subscription notification today, and noted that the reply-to field is populated with user email addresses. FriendFeed is giving your email address away to anyone you subscribe to.
Conversation on FriendFeed.
UPDATE: Reported fixed by Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed as of approximately 5:40PM Eastern. Thanks for the quick fix, Paul & FF.
Conversation on FriendFeed.
UPDATE: Reported fixed by Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed as of approximately 5:40PM Eastern. Thanks for the quick fix, Paul & FF.
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