Snowbound day 2

So today marks the second day of being totally snowed in.  Yesterday we did manage to get the driveway mostly cleared off and get my car free, but this morning when I tried to go to work, we learned that the main road that goes from our house had been closed for the day so that abandoned cars could be cleared out!

This snow storm has been crazy.  I think the final total was somewhere around 20 – 24 inches of the white stuff, which is more than anyone has seen around here in something like 20 years!  At least we now have my car and Amy’s car dug out and we can get out of our driveway (it may take some effort, but at least we can get out.)

It has been nice though, Amy and I have gotten a number of chores done and we’re almost done with all of our Christmas cookies for family and friends!  Now I have the issue of wrapping Amy’s presents…

I’ve never really been good at wrapping presents but this time of year just brings that whole issue to a head.  Despite many offers of cash bribes for wrapping her own presents Amy has yet to accept the offer (sadly.)  I soldier through it year after year though, I have gotten better than I was our first year, but my wrapping is, let’s say, expressive, I express all my rage at wrapping presents and put it into the wrapping itself, let’s just say I can keep 3M in business for a good long while with how much tape I use :)

Ok, one last thing; in my last post I mentioned the trip to PAX East at the end of March.  What I failed to mention is that it won’t only be my wife and I on this trip, but also my friend Aaron and his wife Anna.  Anna and Aaron have been friends for a long time and we try and get together quite often to hang-out, have dinner, and play video games.  As I said before, it should be an awesome trip and I can’t think of two better people we’d rather spend the time with! 

That’s it for now, more later on!

~C

Snow and Cookies

If you’ve been under a rock for the past 3 days, there’s a small snow storm currently centered over the Mid-Atlantic states and it’s dropping EPIC amounts of snow on the ground…it is in this area that my wife and I happen to live.  At last measurement (a few hours ago) it was over 18” of the white stuff, and it’s still snowing pretty hard.  I’m guessing by tomorrow morning we should have over 2 feet of snow!!!  That’s just crazy!

On the plus side, Amy and I had a ton of social plans that have been, unluckily, cancelled due to weather, but this has given us time to take care of all the Christmas stuff we’ve been needing to do, so we’re sure we are ready for the holidays.  It’s actually been kind of a stress relief to have the snow and allow us to get all this other stuff done.

One of the main things we needed to do was to make some Christmas cookies (yummy!)  So far we are at 8+ dozen cookies.  I add the plus in because we had just a few over that.  Our biggest asset today in baking has been the addition of Amy’s Kitchen Aid stand mixer which I got her for her birthday.  That thing is awesome when it comes to making cookies!  Previously all of our cookies had been hand mixed, which when all the dry ingredients were added made mixing pretty hard, but with the mixer, just dump the dry ingredients in and it handles all the mixing no problem, it’s great fun.  Tomorrow is another baking day for us and it’s going to be great fun, lots of good cookies planned, I can’t wait!

Oh yeah, one more thing that I don’t believe I have mentioned here is the fact that Amy and I are headed to PAX East this year in Boston!  For those who don’t know PAX (or Penny Arcade Expo) was started by the two guys who run Penny Arcade (penny-arcade.com) which is an online web comic for gamers by gamers.  The guys over at Penny Arcade are also known for the other major charity we support beside Toy Lift (toylift.org), known as Child's Play (childsplaycharity.org.)  It’s a great charity to help get video games and video game systems for children’s hospitals so the kids who have to be there can have something fun to do while they are there.  Any, I digress…

PAX has typically been a massive once a year gaming event in Seattle and it’s one of the largest gaming conventions the world over.  In 2010 though PAX is breaking into two events, PAX Prime (which is the event in Seattle) and PAX East (which is the event in Boston.)  So far from the forums that I’ve been reading, it looks like PAX east is shaping up to be tons of fun.  There will be a BYOC (Bring your own computer) room so I’m sure I’ll be brining a laptop with me for a bit of gaming fun and enjoyment.  Also there will be a table top gaming room, along with a hall full of every major, and I’m sure many smaller, video game vendors out there.  Amy even has a Saturday pass so she can see what all the hype is about and also have some fun playing all the different games the various vendors will bring.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to post from PAX with some pictures or other fun things, but if you want to follow all the fun make sure to follow me on Twitter @itzerokewl.  PAX East takes place near the end of March, so I’m sure I’ll post more as details come out about PAX. 

Well, it’s still snowing but I think I’m going to curl up with a good book and read for a while, more later on.

~C

Thursday evening rant

So the title isn’t super original, oh well…that’s how it goes sometimes.  Making pan seared pork chops with mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner tonight…yummy
!

It hasn’t been too long since my last blog, not a lot has really happened.  The toy lift did happen though and it was a great success!  It ended up being a great day (the warmest toy lift day on record) and we did well as far as money and toy collections went.  Another bit of great news with the toy lift is that I got voted onto the board of advisors!  I got listed as the IT advisor this year, we’ll see what happens next year.  It was a ton of work for sure, but it was very rewarding on Saturday when I got the chance to deliver some of the toys to the schools where the parents of the kids would pick-up the toys over the next few days to get them wrapped and ready for Christmas!  If this all sounds really alien to you go on and check out the website http://www.toylift.org it’s a great charity and a great bunch of people who run the event each year and I’m really excited about next year!

Speaking of the holidays, they’re just around the corner, can you believe it?  It seems like just yesterday we were toasting in 2009 and now we’re getting ready to ring in 2010 in just a few short weeks, crazy times.

I’ll have to say, it’s been a pretty good 2009, lots of crazy experiences and lots of fun and I’m really looking forward to 2010, it seems to be holding a lot of promise already!  The coolest part of 2010 so far is that Amy and I along with some friends will be going to PAX East (Penny Arcade).  I can’t wait!  We already have the hotel booked and I think we’re getting the flights to Boston booked in the next couple of days.  It should be a great time in a great city and with great friends, what more could a guy ask for. 

Ok, I think we’re going to pop in a movie now, more later on!

~C

Catching Up

So it's been over a month since I've posted anything here and lots of things have been going on, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and lay-out life, work, and general going-on's over the past month or so.

First was the vacation, freakin' awesome! Got the visit the Yuengling brewery and it was SO great. You really could at one point reach out and grab a bottle off the line. The tasting area was kind of lame, but it really didn't matter since the tour was so awesome! The rest of the trip was great too. Lancaster and the Dutch Country was really fun and educational, Hershey was a great place and we learned that Mr. Hershey (the guy that started Hershey) was WAY more than just a chocolate guy, he even has his own boarding school for at-risk youth! Gettysburg was also lots of fun. We went on a ghost tour the first night we were there, and it was pretty lame. I always thought ghost tours would be super cool, I was wrong. Oh well, we did the battlefield tour and that was a lot of fun and the museum was really cool too.

After the trip it's been pretty crazy at work. The release of Windows 7 has been a huge deal for us, but it's also been really good. I'm currently running Windows 7 on all of my systems at work (2 Desktops and a Laptop) and also running Windows 7 on my home Desktop, so far, it's great. It just feels better than Vista. I'm sure it's because of all the negative media that Vista received, but every time I booted into a Vista machine, it just felt really sluggish. This isn't to say that Vista is a totally crap OS. I used it for about a year, and overall, I have very few complaints about it. A few things I found annoying, but most of those things are an easy fix if you know how, in both Vista and Windows 7.

I guess that pretty much brings us up-to-date. Mostly been busting my butt at work. I did turn the big 3-0 on vacation and we had a great birthday party for me that weekend, that was tons of fun. I was kind of scared to turn 30, I mean, that's pretty old, but since I've turned 30, things have been going pretty well. I have a great job that I love, I just celebrated my two year anniversary at work, and have just been having a great time with life recently.

On the gaming front, WCG 2009 happened and, yet again, Korea dominated the tournament. I got a chance to watch a few of the replays for Broodwar and wow, now I know why Korea dominates the world...they're REALLY good. One American did make it out of the group stage, so that was pretty cool, but this guy trains in Korea so I'm not really sure if that counts one of the US or just one more for Korea. It has been announced that WCG 2010 will take place in California which is really awesome. I think I may try to qualify again this year. I'll need to do some serious play between now and then, but I think if I practice a lot and really stick with it, I may have a chance of making it past the qualifier stage :P

The big news this week though is the Toy Lift http://kidslift.org. I know I've talked about this a bit before, but it's one of those things that I'm pretty adamant about so I wanted to bring it up again. The event is taking place on December 4th (Friday), at the Fashion Square Mall in Charlottesville, VA. They are collecting toys and books for under-privileged children who may otherwise have nothing under the tree for Christmas. This will be my second year working with the Toy Lift and this year I'm the guy that will be coordinating all the people who will actually be going up into the bucket trucks we have which were donated by Virginia Power and Comcast. Toy Lift is a great charity and it's a great event for a great cause. Come on out Friday December 4th between 7am and 9pm and bring a toy to donate!

Ok, I think that's probably enough my rantings, more later on!

~C

Time for a vacation

That’s right, it’s time for the IT guy to finally unplug for a couple of days and take a trip with the wife.  This year, we’ve decided to take a trip to Pennsylvania.  It should be a great trip, here’s how it shapes up:

We’re leaving early morning Sunday and heading to Lancaster, PA for a couple days of shopping in the Lancaster Outlets and to check out the Amish country.  After that it’s off to the main reason for this whole trip, the Yuengling brewery in Pottsville, PA (I’ll expand more on this later.)  Next is a trip to Hershey to check out the Hershey factory and maybe see what it feels like to dive into a vat of chocolate (I’m sure OSHA won’t mind if we take a small dip ;))  Finally, if the weather holds out for us, we’re going to hit up Gettysburg, since the last time I went I was a little kid and Amy has never been, so that should be pretty interesting too.  As a recap, in the span of 5 days, we have: shopping, beer, chocolate, and history…what more could you want from a vacation?

Now, you may have heard that Yuengling is America's Oldest Brewery (yuengling.com).  Because of this, we have been told by reliable sources, that OSHA does not apply.  This means that instead of the normal brewery tour you go on where there is a 3” piece of bullet proof glass between you and the beer, you’re right there, on the line, within arms reach of the golden delicious nectar that they call Yuengling.  I’m not really sure why, but this really excites me.  It could have something to do with the fact that when we went on Jack Daniels tour we didn’t even get to see them making the liquor, instead all we saw were the old workshops and old methods of how bourbon used to be made.   It was pretty cool and really educational, but it just felt like something was missing.  I’m hoping this trip to Yuengling will help fill that missing feeling I had.

In case you’re wondering why we’re randomly taking a vacation to the northern United States in late October (not exactly your tropical oasis by any sense) I should probably mention that next week is my 30th birthday and the one thing I really wanted to do for my birthday was to check out the Yuengling brewery.  So, off we go for a week of fun and adventure Amy and Charlie style, it should be a really good time.

In case you’re wondering, the answer the burning question is no, the fact is not lost on me that next week will mark the release of Windows 7 (microsoft.com).  I am really excited and I can’t wait to get my hands on the final version (even though I’ve been using RTM pretty happily for the last couple of months.)  The one thing that I can’t figure out yet, is weather or not Microsoft is planning on shipping Windows 7 with XP mode already installed, or is it going to be something that you’ll have to know about and surf though the massive confusing website that is Microsoft’s website to try and download and install it…should be interesting to see. 

Oh yeah, on a somewhat amusing note, check out this article from Gizmodo related to their <sarcasm> love for the Blackberry Storm </sarcasm> Also, I read somewhere about the heavily rumored iPad from apple which now has an apparent ship date of early 2010…I’m feeling another massive keynote speech from Jobs at MacWorld…who’s with me?

Ok, that’s gonna be it for this one, more later on.

~C

U2 and a Wedding

This weekend is shaping up to be a crazy one…tomorrow is the U2 concert here and it’s looking to be EPIC!  I saw some pictures of the building of the stage and they look a lot like this:

It’s pretty crazy stuff…I can’t wait!

If that wasn’t enough, Amy’s brother is going to get married on Saturday so we have lots of crazy wedding stuff to do starting Friday morning bright and early.  Yeah, crazy weekend in store…it should be a lot of fun though so I’m pretty excited.

On the IT front Google has released their Wave product (Google) to Beta testers.  Been waiting all day for my invite from Google but still nothing :(  If you have a spare Wave invite, please Let me know  Google has also been making waves (ha ha) in the OS world with talk of the Google Chrome OS which is a Linux based OS for netbooks.  Basically it looks like Google is trying to take a foothold in a market that is currently dominated by Windows XP.  That’s right boys and girls, you heard me right, with all the grand technology and money Microsoft is putting into Vista and Windows 7 the best solution (and still sold solution) M$ can offer for netbooks is an OS that’s about 9 years old (a lifetime in the computing world.)  How nuts is that?  Anyway, that part of the rant is for a totally different post, the main point here is that Google is finally taking the plunge into the OS market, a place many have gone, but very few have returned…it’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out.

The other hot topic right now is the tablet market.  With Microsoft announcing their Courier (ZDNet) and Apple’s highly rumored iPad (Gizmodo) the tablet market is shaping up to be something of a clash of the titans.  While the Courier does look cooler and the prospect of having a computer that carries and opens like a notebook, vs Apple’s more Kindle (Amazon) style tablet is very appealing, it’s going to be hard to compete with Apple though which already has a mobile OS (OSX for iPhone) that has been tested numerous times and already has a substantial App store behind it.  We shall see though, the rumor is the Courier will be running the new Windows 7 mobile edition which even Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer admitted they screwed up. (PC Pro) 

Ah yes, Windows 7…as I call it, my personal gift from Microsoft (since it’s being released on my birthday.)  As you all have previously read, I have been running Windows 7 since the Beta onto RC and now happily running RTM (actually I’m blogging on a Windows 7 laptop come to think of it.)  In short, Windows 7 is great.  It feels as though all the wrongs with Vista have been fixed and the world will once again sing the praises of the mighty Microsoft…notice I said it feels like all the wrongs of Vista have been fixed.  Through my testing I have found a few minor things that have made me scratch my head and while doing some reading various blogs and sites I have found some users who are having troubles with software compatibility even though their software runs fine on Vista…I wish I could make this crap up.

Now I know 7 won’t be perfect, no OS is ever perfect, but the one thing Windows 7 does WAY better than Vista ever did or ever will, is to restore faith in Microsoft and their ability to release a cutting edge OS that is user friendly not only in the home environment, but also in a corporate setting.  To get a sense of how Microsoft is trying to restore the good will, as it were, check out this commercial:

 

Yeah, let’s see, cute little girl looking on her daddy’s new Windows 7 system and she makes this great little slide show with the theme to Rocky…pretty good selling skillz if you ask me.

Ok, I think I’ve babbled on long enough and I’m sure after this weekend I’ll have another long entry, so I’ll stop now.  More later on!

~C 

iPhone…the next, next gen gaming system?

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while and I’ve got some today so thought I would take some time and really look at the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming system.

On the surface it doesn’t appear to viable as a gaming system, I mean after all…it’s a freakin’ phone.  If you look a bit closer though and take some time to really surf though the app store gaming section, you will find some of the current hot titles in the gaming world ready for download and play on your iPhone…

Example: Tiger Woods 10…this is one of those epic titles for console gaming that has been strong for years.  I got it for my iPhone about 4 months ago or so and I have to say…the game mechanics and the playability are really good!  Sure the graphics may not be a pretty as on the Xbox or the PS3, but the game only cost me 6 bucks (as opposed to the 60 it costs on Xbox) and I don’t really feel like I’m missing anything as far as the game experience goes…in fact, I had the opportunity to mess around with Tiger Woods 10 on Xbox and after playing it, I have to say that the version on the iPhone is possibly more challenging due to the way you swing your clubs.

Another example that brings me to think of the iPhone as a gaming system is Wolfenstein 3D…you all remember this game from back in the day…basically the granddaddy of all 3D FPS games.  While this is an older game and not nearly as system intensive as say Tiger Woods, it’s still a great game on the iPhone.  The controls do take a bit of getting used to, but once you get the customizable controls in the place that works best for you…it’s an amazing game all over again…and at 2 bucks, you really can’t beat the price! 

So that covers the sports genre and the FPS genre, let’s look at the racing genre on the iPhone…more specifically Asphalt 4 and Need for Speed.  Asphalt 4 has come into it’s own as a mobile gaming app…it’s even one of the games they play in the WCG for the Samsung mobile challenge.  As mentioned before, the game mechanics are quite good with the opting of steering either via touch or by using the iPhone’s accelerometer.  I have tried both methods and I’m really very good at using either, but the game is fun and I’m sure once I spend some real time with the game, it will quickly move into one of my favorite racing games (although I’m pretty sure nothing will ever top the Midnight Club series for me.)  I will admit that I have yet to download Need for Speed for my iPhone but from the reviews I have read and what I have heard about it from other sources, it looks like the Need for Speed developers have really nailed it for an iPhone app…I can’t wait to get my hands on!

There we are…those are but a few of the main reasons why I have found the iPhone/iPod touch to be as good of next gen gaming system as there currently is.  The only real short coming I have been able to find is the graphics…but as more developers build games with the iPhone in mind and as Apple constantly improves the iPhone (and then the release of the rumored iPad) I’m sure the graphics problem will quickly dissipate. 

Anyway, so what are you thoughts?  I’d be curious to hear what you think about this…do you think I’m totally nuts or do you see some reason behind the madness?

~C

Totally Random Post

So this is totally off topic and something that I wouldn't normally post, but OMG, it's so freakin' funny.



Also, you may have noticed the new poll up in the right hand corner...go on and vote, I'm just curious to see who all I'm going to be able to place SC with when it comes out :)

Anyway, that's really it, don't have much to say right now, hopefully I'll get a good post in this weekend.

~C

The life of a sys admin

I had seen this a few months ago and then had lost the links to them, but then surfing around today I found these two videos. The title is IT guy vs Sales guy and as a warning this is very much rated PG-13 for language (don't start these if the kids are around)





Enjoy!

~C

Link

...and of course just as I finish posting Live decides it wants to work again...anyway, here's the link if you're interested in downloading the replays of my StarCraft match:

http://cid-148d5e6a1cda65f9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/WCG%202009%20Star%20Craft/WCG%7C_SC.zip

~C

Back to it...

I know I have been out of the blog sphere for a long while...I guess my practice for the Star Craft tournament took up more time than I thought it would. Well, the tournament is over...it was not good for me. I did save the replays and as soon as Live get it's head out of it's a$$ then I'll upload them to my Sky Drive and post a link here for anyone that's curious on how the games went.

If you do want to check out the brackets, you can see them here http://qualify.us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=2837 I got beat by Eric Rothmuller who was the number 2 Brood Wars player in the US last year...the replays will show you why!

So that was my first plunge into the world of professional gaming and I did beat my goal of making it past the first round, so I feel pretty good about that. I was talking to a friend of mine after the tournament and his exact quote was: "Sorry to hear about the loss, let's get some more practice in and we'll get you ready for the next one." So, depending on how life plays out, I'll probably give this another shot, just to see if I can make it past round 2 next year.

In other news, life in the IT world has been crazy. Haven't really been messing with Hyper-V as much I would like, but have been playing around a lot with Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and then Sun's Virtual Box. The biggest draw back of the M$ product is apparently they have no 64 bit support for guest operating systems...I have NO idea why they would do this, but there you have it. Virtual Box does come with 64 bit guest OS support, but it seems to consume my entire system when trying to run it. I really don't understand the difference, since I've been running Virtual Box on my home system for months now with a Linux distro on it and I can do lots of other things while running Virtual Box. For some reason though, when I'm running virtual box on my 64 bit Vista machine at work and have a Vista guess OS open, it bring my system to it's knees...I mean, it's not like my work system is crappy, it's a core 2 duo with 8 GB of DDR2 RAM with a decent HDD, so I really don't see the reason why it runs SO slow. If any of you have experienced this or know why this is happening...PLEASE let me know!

It does seem though that most of the IT world is beginning to focus more and more on virtual environments and could computing. As I've said before, I do see a lot of promise and a lot of very nice possibilities of life in the cloud, but there is also a very risk if you live your life in the could. There is a very nice article over at Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5325169/the-hidden-risks-of-cloud-computing that goes into detail about some of the dangers of cloud computing...just a very interesting read. I do have a large amount of data stored on the could (this blog being one, plus my email, plus, plus, plus) and I do think it's very cool to be able to have all of your important data accessible from any system, all you need is a simple browser and you're good to go.

Speaking of browsers, I know a number of have heard about this, but I thought I'd post something here also. Google has officially announced the creation of their own OS: Chrome OS http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html [Google blog], this OS is designed to uproot XP which currently has a strangle hold on the netbook market. Maybe it will succeed where many other Linux flavors have failed...lord knows it has the monetary backing that Linux does not, but who knows...to date there is no official release date for Chrome OS, but you can bet Google is going to try their best to get a high quality good product to market as fast as they can. Hopefully this will not fall victim the Google Beta monster which holds amazing products (such as Gmail) in Beta for the better part of 5 years! Lucky for Gmail though, Google was able to bribe the beta monster and finally pull Gmail out of beta and into a fully grown-up web-app.

Ok, it's getting late and still can't get into my Live account to post the links, so I'll stop here for now and post more hopefully tomorrow.

~C

Crazy Week...

The last week has been really crazy. Not really sure why...it's not like the work load was any heavier than normal, but it all just seemed to happen so quickly...I don't know, I was sure glad when Friday came around for sure.

Anyway, it's the weekend so no need to ramble on about work...on to more exiting things. Not sure if I've mentioned this before but there are two charities that are very near and dear to me, they are Child's Play and The Charlottesville Toy Lift. Both charities are geared towards kids. Child's Play was started by Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade as a way to raise money so children in hospitals can have games to take their minds off of their pain and sickness and try and bring some happiness to kids, if only for a short while. This one is important to me for two reasons...first...I'm a gamer. Too often gamers are looked upon as shut-in's or people who only care about themselves and their games...this goes out to prove that gamers do care about trying to help people the best way we know. The second reason is the main reason the charity was started in the first place. A few years ago the media really started pounding on games (such as GTA, Doom, Unreal, etc.) as super violent and the only things these games were leading to was teaching children that it's OK to kill. In response to the this, the Penny Arcade guys started Child's Play. This allowed the media to see what games are really for, an escape. A machine that allows an escape from the world and have some fun.

There is a point this whole rant. There are these 3 guys and they decided the best way they could help Child's Play was to play Mario all weekend long...hince Mario Marathon was born. This is the second year they've been doing it and as of this posting they have about 11,300 bucks already raised. Their goals is around 12,000 bucks and they still have one whole day to play...I think they'll make the goal. Anyway, you should totally check it out, they're streaming live for the entire time they're playing.

The other charity, that I mentioned previously is Toy Lift. I actually volunteered last year with this group and it was a great time and a great cause for kids. If you get a chance you should check it out and if you're in the Charlottesville area, the Toy lift is going to be taking place this year on Friday December 4th...I know it's a crazy long ways away, but since I know I'll be volunteering again this year, I'm sure I'll be writing way more about this later.

As far as gaming goes, not much new. Been playing as much Brood Wars as I can, trying to get ready for the WCG tournament at the end of July and other than that, been playing a lot of TF2 (of course.) It's really strange, usually I can only play a game for a few months before becoming totally board with it, but for some reason TF2 has managed to stay fresh with all of the updates, so it still stays at the top of list of games to play.

Ok, that's gonna be about it from me. Sorry about the ranting on and on about charities in this one, we'll return to a normally scheduled blogging program next time.

~C

StarCraft

So I finally took the plunge…after much debating with myself I finally signed up for an online WCG qualifier tournament.  I really doubt I’ll get pas the first round (or the first night for that matter) but it’s pretty cool to know I’ll be in a qualifier for something that I could be a pro at. 

I’ve been looking around the net to try and get some idea of what competition I was going to be up against so here’s some video of some crazy good StarCraft players:

 

 

The one thing I’ve learned over the past week or so is that I think StarCraft is the Korean national past time…crazy. 

Other than StarCraft, been playing TF2 as usual, still a freakin’ awesome game and I finally got the backburner for the Pyro..that’s a great weapon I’ve had so much fun with it!

Oh yeah, if you haven’t see this yet…it’s awesome:

 

Ok, that’s it for now, more later on

~C

Can't sleep yet...

So here it is, about 1:30 in the morning, I just got done playing a GREAT round of TF2 with friends and also with total strangers who became quick friends, it was just a good time. Also it helps I ended up being #1 on the leader board and that always makes you feel really good.

I guess I really haven't posted much here recently, work has been crazy and then Amy and I got a new kitten and he's been really keeping us on our toes, so that would explain why I haven't been posting here that much recently. The new kitten is doing well and he is slowly adapting to all the other pets we have around. The one girl cat we have wants nothing to do with him, while the boy cat loves to play with him when he gets a chance. The dogs both think this is great new toy we've brought home just for them...hopefully they don't try and squeeze the stuffing out of this one *gross*

As I said, work has also been crazy, have been using Windows 7 though on a regular basis (it's installed on my main laptop and then my second desktop) and aside from a few very minor things that I'm not really sure are even related to Windows 7, it's been a really good OS. I can't wait until the full thing is released on October 22nd (also my birthday) of this year...it should be a good time.

On the game front, obviously I've been playing a lot of TF2 recently and I also recently got Left 4 Dead...quite possibly one of the cooler games out on the market. The game is really quite simple in design: 4 people survived a plague, and now that plague that killed everyone is turning them all into Zombies. The main goal of the game...kill Zombies and get the heck out of dodge and out of the area you are in. It almost seems too simple, but really it's just a ton of fun. No real strategy...stay together and blow the crap of things. There are various points in the game where you get rushed by hundreds of Zombies and all 4 of you stand in a circle and just cook off as many rounds as you can and kill some Zombies. I tell you, such a simple game concept really can go a long way. The other nice part about it, is 4 real humans can play all 4 characters in the game. So if you and three of your friends get together (in real life or just meet online) you all can go off and hunt Zombies as a team...pretty freakin' awesome.

Other than that, not much gaming going on...oh yeah...I did upgrade my gaming system finally. I had previously been running Pentium D processor with 3 GB of DDR 2 RAM. I had looked at the iCore7 processors and motherboards for my upgrade but that stuff is still just WAY too expensive. I ended up getting a Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz processor, with 4 GB of DDR 3 RAM. I've noticed a very marked improvement in system performance since getting everything change over.

Fear not though, I didn't trash the old parts to my system, I also bought a cheapish case and a new DVD-ROM drive and dropped my old processor, RAM and power supply into the new case and ta da...a new media center for my wife and I in our bedroom!!! It's really great having the computer in there. Amy can sit in there and do class stuff, or listen to streaming music from our server...it's just really nice.

OK, that whole amped up feeling is starting to fade, so I guess I'll head off to bed. More later on.

~C

Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King

If you for some reason have been under a rock, that is the name of the new Dave Matthew’s Band Album.  I grew up listening to DMB in their early years, since I grew up in Charlottesville, because of this I’ve always been a big fan of DMB.  This album is something special though.  It really does feel like their old albums (old being Remember two things, under the table, etc.)  It’s a great album.  I’d have to say my favorite song is Why I am.  I really don’t know what it is about it, but something about the song just speaks to me…it’s great!

 

Anyway, so that’s been the big news around here.  DMB played here back in April and it was an amazing concert and then with the release of the new album, I believe DMB has established themselves as true rock and roll royalty.  It’s really good to see.

 

In other news, Amy and I got a new kitten yesterday.  He’s a very cute boy and we have decided to name him Strider, after the character from Lord of the Rings.  For those counting at home that now takes us to 7 pets…yes 7…there is hope in site though, one of the deals for getting this kitten is that we need to get rid of our rabbit Shaun.  Shaun is a great rabbit, but it turns out that I’m allergic to rabbits so he really hasn’t worked out well.  If you happen to have any interest in this rabbit, PLEASE let me know and I will be more than happy to send you more info. 

 

On the game front, still playing lots of TF2…have actually managed to finally get the Krtizkrieg, I was so happy.  I’ve also gotten all the Stout, Spy, and Medic stuff.  I am super stoked about having all the medic stuff finally, but now I’m hoping to get Natasha and the backburner and I’ll be super stoked.   

 

Ok, that’s it for now, more later on.

 

~C

American Chopper and Windows 7

What a great combo, right? Normally I like to have the TV on while I'm doing work at home. It gives me some nice background noise that's always changing. I know most people prefer some type of music, or some other thing, but for me, the TV or a movie seem to work best for me when working on systems.

Anyway, here I am, Thursday night and American Chopper is on. I haven't seen this show in about a year...apparently I missed somethings...Jr. no longer works at OCC, holy crap! The show has lost some of it's luster though since there's no Jr and Sr fighting, now it's just kind of strange...oh well, I guess that's just how it goes.

Now onto my current obsession, Windows 7. Been using it about 3.5 weeks or so and it's still freakin' awesome. I don't really think I've come across many new or great extra features that I haven't already written about before, but the performance just still blows me away. The boot-up time, from the time you press the power button to the time you get the login screen is WAY faster than Vista every was and I'm pretty sure it's a bit faster than XP. The time it takes to get from the login screen to a fully loaded desktop again is WAY faster than Vista (we're talking half the time of Vista.)

Ok, that's about it...tomorrow's Friday and then it's a 3 day weekend...can't wait!

~C

Short Sunday Post

It's late, but I wanted to just get a quick post in before going to bed.

This weekend was awesome, my buddy Brent came down from DC to hang out for the weekend and we had a great time. Also, since I got Amy a KitchenAid stand mixer for her birthday she's been going crazy with the homemade goodies (cookies, muffins, bread, etc.) She made some amazing chocolate chip cookies yesterday, along with some lemon/blueberry muffins, which are also pretty good.

Work has been really crazy so I haven't had much time for gaming, but hopefully soon I'll be able to get back into some PC gaming again.

I'll post more later on.

~C

Happy Mother's Day!

First off, a very happy Mother's day to all the mom's out there.

Ok, that's out of the way, now on to business. As you could have probably guessed I've really been digging into Windows 7 over the past week and have found a lot of really cool features that Microsoft has added in.

First is XP mode...this feature is freaking amazing. Of course with something this great M$ can't just give it away to the masses to make it easy, no...there are limits. When Windows 7 is released (currently rumored date is October 23rd) you will only be able to get XP mode with Windows 7 Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional Editions. If you have older app's that still need XP though, this is the answer! Basically this is like running the old Microsoft Virtual PC on your machine, but with a twist. Once you install an app on your virtual machine, it will be available from the start menu in Windows 7. You can even pin the app to your task bar. I finally got all the kinks worked out and installed on Friday afternoon and I'm here to say, it's really good. I'm currently running a copy of CFdesign v9 in XP mode and it runs super smooth. I'm really enjoying it. I plan on playing with this a lot more next week at work, so I'll let you know how that turns out.

Up until now I've really only been running Windows 7 on a laptop, but I finally got around to getting a 64 bit version installed on spare desktop I have at my desk and I have to say, it's really nice. I do think it runs smooth than Vista, and for sure it installs WAY faster than Vista.

I think at this point (about a week into my tests) I'm really happy with Windows 7 and glad to see that M$ finally got their heads out of their butts and decided to put out another quality OS that will not only be "pretty" for the user, but also has functions that won't drive the IT pro completely mad (like UAC.)

On the gaming front, I've been playing a lot of Guitar Hero World Tour (since I gave it to Amy for her birthday.) I'm really digging the ability to play the drums in the game. Since I used to be a real drummer (in a band and everything) it's a nice feeling to get back into that in the virtual world. The songs on World Tour are WAY better than any of the other games too. Lots of well known songs by well known artists, and all are original tracks, no "Song name - originally done by (insert original band here)." That part always did get me with Guitar Hero, I never did see why they didn't take the effort to market one of the most popular games in the world to the artists better. I guess they finally learned this time around...thank goodness.

Ok, that's gonna be about it from me...more later on.

~C

Windows 7 Review

So it’s been about 4 days since I originally downloaded and installed Windows 7 on a Dell Vostro 1400 with an Intel Celeron Processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 150 GB HDD. 

First a few thoughts on the system itself.  We got this system back in the early days of Vista as a machine for us to test various applications out on, to confirm or deny Vista compatibility.  We really haven’t used it since the IT department made the move to upgrade all our systems to Vista (basically since SP1 was released.)  So really it’s been a little laptop that’s sat on a shelf completely unused.

I downloaded Windows 7 Ultimate RC on the 30th, the first day it was available to TechNet and MSDN subscribers.  After battling though the multiple problems with Microsoft’s Website due to massive amounts of traffic I was able to get my hands and get it burned onto a DVD…next step, stick the DVD in and get this thing installed.

I had used the Beta when it was released back in January so there was really nothing surprising about the start-up and installation.  I will say, after doing about 100 Vista installs at this point, Windows 7 does install way faster than Vista ever has (even on the crappy little laptop I’m using as a tester.) 

After going though the OS install (probably about a 15-20 minute process total) it came time to start making the process work.  To my pleasant surprise 99% of the drivers on this old little laptop were already recognized and installed.  After a single reboot I had the video card drivers installed, and after a quick trip to the Dell website I also managed to get the Wireless card drivers installed (just used the Vista x86 drivers and they worked no problem.)

Now I was ready to start installing app’s.  I started simple, Office 2007, of course no problems.  Next came Google Chrome, again no problems.  After that, I decided to go a bit off the beaten path and installed Rocket Dock, again I had no problem getting it installed and running.  Ok, time for the big test, I decided to install Daemon Tools Lite.  This really is a unique app that, while still very popular amount the IT crowd, it doesn’t exactly have a wide user base.  Again to my surprise it worked with no problem, I was amazed.  After installing a few other App’s, including Windows Live Writer, FeedDemon 3.0 Beta, and Twhirl, I was ready to go with this laptop.

After using the laptop for about 30 seconds I quickly closed and uninstalled Rocket Dock.  The first and so far coolest feature I’ve found with Win 7 is the ability to pin things to your taskbar.  I know this is one of those very touted features that M$ has been talking about forever, but when I finally got the play with it, it’s pretty nice.  They claimed it would give more of an OSX feel, I really don’t agree with that, since I find Rocket Dock does a WAY better job of that.  It is a nice feature though, and cuts down on what has become one of my biggest complaints of Windows, that being the clutter on the bottom task bar.  It also helps you to keep your desktop nice and icon free (something I’ve become a HUGE fan of since starting to use Rocket Dock.)

Yet another nice feature of Windows 7 is the constant changing background.  I know this will become a fan favorite feature amount most users, and I do think it’s pretty cool.  Basically whatever theme you choose (even custom made themes) you can choose to have various backgrounds move in a slide show form.  You can change how often the backgrounds change (anything from 1 minute, to once a day.)  It’s pretty nice.

The best part of Win 7 that I’ve seen so far, is the biggest thing M$ has been talking about.  We all know Vista is a hog, both in HDD and RAM usage.  Win 7 is the opposite.  It also seems (at least in my tests so far) that it’s got a smaller overall footprint than XP…simply amazing!   

One more upside to Win 7 is the UAC.  As promised it has been GREATLY toned down (THANK GOD!)  I’ve installed a number of app’s at this point and while I am prompted one extra time when making Windows Wide changes, I really haven’t had to make any custom adjustments to the UAC because it got so annoying.  I can get into the control panel, see the device manager, and I’m not even prompted by UAC, it’s a very nice change…for once.

Now this hasn’t been a total Windows 7 love-fest.  There have been a few things I’ve run into that I find less than wonderful.  First off is the icon for network connections.  In Vista the little network connection icon in the task bar has two different pictures, a little picture of two monitors when you’re not connected the net and a picture of the two monitors plus a little picture of a globe when connected the net…this does not exist in Win 7.  There’s only one picture.  A single monitor with what I guess is a little antenna and it doesn’t matter if you have local access only or connection to the net, it all looks the same.  I know this isn’t a huge deal for most users, but as an IT guy it’s nice to be able to look down real quick and see if the system is connected or not.

The other annoying feature is the notification center.  That thing gets SUPER annoying quick.  If your mouse it’ll let you know something’s going on.  I did find a way to turn off the annoying pop-up’s that tell you everything is wrong, so the flag just sits there taunting you, daring you to click on the icon so you can feel bad that according to Windows 7, you’re computer is all jacked up.  I’m still holding out hope that maybe, just maybe these two things will be fixed in the final release, but from what M$ has been saying, I really don’t think it’s going to happen.

Well, I know this has been a really long post and I’m sorry about that, but I wanted to get as much detail out as I could about the system.  There’s also a current rumor that Win 7 is set to release on October 23rd.  Microsoft is keeping mum on the news and is still holding to it’s official story that it won’t be released until early 2010.  We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Ok, that’s gonna be it from me.  I’m sure I’ll be writing more on Windows 7 as I mess around with it more so stay tuned.

~C

A nice Saturday

Here I am sitting outside (I know…shocking) and the dogs are outside with me.  Zephyr is sitting up on the hill and Beatrice is now chasing Zephyr around. 

It’s good to see BZ up and going this morning.  Yesterday Amy took her to the clinic and she had a dental.  Now I’m not really 100% sure what happens during a dental but I do know that they do knock the dogs out with gas, and Beatrice apparently doesn’t respond too well to the anesthesia.   When she got home yesterday she was very tired and really wanted nothing to do with anyone (even Zephyr.)  It was really strange.  This morning she was still a bit out of it, but it seems like this being outside is helping her get herself back together.  Maybe a bit of ball play would wake her up…hmmmm…I’ll do it in a bit. 

Today also marks the first time that I’ve tried out the Suns Virtual Box Virtual Machine system that I found on Lifehacker a few days ago.  You can Google virtual box and you’ll get what I’m talking about.  It’s actually a really nice, really simple to set-up VM client, sort of like the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.  This one is totally free though (big bonus.)  I downloaded the latest flavor of Ubuntu this morning Jaunty Jackalope, so far so good.  Since it’s really my first time with a full blow version of Linux to mess around with on my own, I’m really going to have to dive in over the next few days and see if Linux really has become as easy to use as everyone now claims it is.  I have messed with Ubuntu previously, about 3 or 4 years ago, and I know many improvements have been made since you now get Ubuntu installed on your Dell machines.  I’ll let you know how it goes. 

Ok, so Beatrice is looking at me being very hot, so I guess it’s time to go inside.  I’ll write more later.

~C

Tuesday Night Rant

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here so I thought I should get something here.

Life has been pretty crazy since we got back from Louisville.  Work has been really busy, since we still only have two IT guys it’s pretty nuts.

Home life has been nice though, we had some friends over last weekend which was very nice and we’re going to have a birthday party for Amy this weekend so that should be good time too. 

Now, onto the real meat and potatoes of this rant…more random stuff :)

Fringe: If you haven’t seen this show, you need to either turn on Fox right now or check out the Fringe channel on Hulu http://www.hulu.com/fringe.  It’s an awesome show.  More of a mix between Bones and X-Files.  Since I am an X-Phile and also a huge fan of Bones, it’s pretty much the perfect show for me.  It’s been on a 2 month hiatus back at the beginning of the year due to the beginning of American Idol, the election, and then all of the presidential press conferences.  It’s no problem though since the show is SO AMAZING! 

HULU: Another one of those super amazing things…streaming TV…how cool is this?  I know I’ve talked about this some before, and also just linked it above, but it’s really great.  Mostly they have Fox, NBC, and CBS network shows, but it’s limited commercials, plus they also have movies, mind you only old ones and less popular ones, but still, you can find an occasional gem on there that’s good for a laugh, or good when you have about 2 hours to kill. 

Games: Not really much new on the gaming front for me, still playing TF2 (not much recently though.)  Did bust out some old school StarCraft recently though, that was a good time.  It made me realize how much I really need to practice before getting back into the LAN party world since I used to be able to tear up some StarCraft, but I couldn’t really even keep up with the AI when I played, it was a strange feeling.

Ok, Fringe is on, I’ll post more later on.

~C

Post from Louisville

For the past 3 days Amy and I have been in Louisville for a wedding. Amy's old college room mate Ingrid got married today. It was a beautiful wedding and a good time at the reception.

Amy and I decided to make this a full blown road trip...we started out leaving early Wednesday morning, and headed off to Tennessee to visit my mom's parents (which Amy had never met.) Then we left Thursday afternoon to come to Louisville to hang out with Ingrid and her fiance and attend the wedding today.

It's been a great trip. We got to see the Jim Beam Distillery...awesome! Aside from being pretty cold, it was a good time and even got to sample a few of the products from the factory. It was great. After that Amy and I went to Zappos, for those of you who don't know this is a massive online shoe store and they have a big outlet store in Louisville. They had great deals on shoes and Amy was able to score 4 (yes, count 'em 4) pairs of Dansko's for the price of one normal pair...craziness. Amy is super excited though cause now she has Dansko's that will last her a super long time.

In other news, not much else has been going on as far as gaming goes. Hopefully I'll be able to get some TF2 play in soon, I'm hoping to get my Medic fully upgraded with all the new weapons so I can be a much more effective medic for the team. I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, it's getting late and Amy and I have to get up early to start back on what will probably be a 10 hour trip home. I'll post more later on.

~C

Thursday Blues

So I just realized it's been a REALLY long time since I've blogged, so I thought it was about time for another round.

Nothing really crazy has been going on since I last wrote. I've been working the plans for our Germany trip in October and next week we're headed off to Tennessee to visit my mom's parents (who Amy has yet to meet...yes I know we've been married 3 1/2 years), and then off to Ingrid's wedding in Kentucky. Should be a good time, and it'll be a nice long road trip for Amy and I.

Other than that, not much really going on. Hopefully I'll be able to get back to blogging on a more regular basis, but we'll see.

~C

Snow Day with the Dogs

So I finally got off my lazy butt and uploaded the video we took of the dogs to you tube. Enjoy:



~C

Snow Day

So yesterday my wife and I woke up to find everything covered in a very deep blanket of white snow. We went out to measure and come to find out we got about 5.5” of the white stuff…awesome! Since we couldn’t even the road (it really was totally white) I got to stay home and work from home for the day.

It’s always a nice feeling to be able to stay home and work, got to spend time with the dogs and Amy, so it was a nice time.

Ok, on to different subjects…gaming! Last weekend I went over to my buddies house and we played Team Fortress 2 for a long time…it was tons of fun. I’m really start to get into the groove of being a Medic when my team is on offense, and then be an Engineer when my team is defense….oh yeah, speaking of Engineer, a great story:

We were playing the map that only has 2 capture points and we were on defense…at one point on a team of 15, there were 11 engineers…we didn’t bother protecting the first point, but the second point was totally on lock-down…the other team couldn’t even get near the cap point…it was so much fun. Granted, we went on offense the next game and couldn’t even get near the first cap point…oh well, that’s life. It was a blast though!

Aside from that I’ve been playing some more DoW 2, and trying to dig deeper into the game, I want to fully understand it before I write my next review. I still think it’s a good game, but it is very different from any other RTS you’ve ever played.

Anyway, that’s about it from me. More later on.

~C

Back to it (Dawn of War 2 Review)

Here we go again, another Sunday evening and another few minutes to blog about life...the best way to unwind from a busy weekend.

So Dawn of War II came out and after much pain and suffering I was able to get my hands on it Thursday and so far, I'm fairly impressed. At first I was a bit disappointed, I have been playing the original Dawn of War for so long I went into this with the expectation that this new version would be exactly the same as the last. I was wrong.

The first and most obvious difference is that there's no building in Dawn of War II. You have one base that you get at the beginning of the game and that's it. No expanding up a crazy tech tree with lots of cool looking buildings, nope just one single building that you can upgrade to three different levels. Obviously with less building choices, this also means less unit and vehicle choices, sadness. The next thing that is different is the way unit upgrades work. It used to be that in each different building you built, you could research different upgrades...well, since you only have one base and you can't build other buildings, upgrades are handled much differently now. Each unit has war gear that they have access to, and if you have the resources, you can do the research get that war gear for the unit, this actually pretty cool. The final main difference is the character focus. In the original DoW the focus was on the entire army and putting together the best combination of vehicles / troops that you can to mount a full attack on the enemy. Now, since you building options are VERY limited, more focus gets shifted onto your commanding officer (or Champion.) Basically at the start of each game you choose what champion you want, you can choose Offense, Defense, or Medical (or something similar to medical.) Based on this choice, you have various units available to you and your champion can build different things to help with your cause.

This is good example of real game play with the Tyranids vs. Eldar:



As you can see most of the game is no longer focused on large armies going to crush you opponents, but small unit tactics and movements. Gone are the days where you can take your massive force and crush you opponent who isn't as far along in the tech tree as you are, oh well.

Now don't get me wrong, I in no way believe that these changes made in this game are for the worse. They are different and will take some getting used to, but I do think they are for the betterment of the DoW universe. The first real benefit to this whole thing is the incorporation of Tyranids into the mix. This race was totally left out of the first DoW series, and it's easy to see why. In the original game, the Tyranid Army would have to be MASSIVE in order to compare with any of the other armies, I really don't think the engine that drove DoW could of handled the amount of characters they have had to put on the map to make the Tyranid army balanced. Now with the focus being more on small unit tactics, the makers are able to bring the Nids into the mix and allow the full Warhammer 40,000 universe to join the game. Based on previous experience though, with the other races in the 40K universe, I really am wondering how they plan on bringing in races, such as the Imperial Guard (again, another group who in the original game had TONS of troops, but each unit was very weak.) I guess only time will tell how THQ plans to roll out the expansions, but I do look forward to seeing what they have in store.

Secondly, as I've said before, it forces you to change your tactics. The only real gripe I ever had with the first DoW is that it was like every other RTS out there. Get lots of resources, build a big army, go kill your opponent. With the new way they've made DoW II those tactics won't work...period. You can't even being to start building a big army. Sure you do still have collect minerals and collect energy, but from what I've seen so far the unit cap is hard set a 100 units (no matter what) so even if you do manage to get massive amounts of minerals and energy, there's no real benefit to it because you're going to rapidly hit your unit cap.

It's a crazy game, as I get more into the game and manage to get further along in the first player campaign (which is awesome by the way) I will write more here. I also have only done a little bit in the multi-player campaign but again, it looks really nice.

Other than Dawn of War life has been good. Rally trails were successful for this first time handler! I took our beagle Zephyr though the courses and we managed to get two qualifying scores and both times we placed...first time we got 5th the second time we got first! It was a good weekend in the end, and hopefully now in June we can get Zephyr's level 1 title :) One of our friends has an English Bulldog and she took her though the courses and got 4 qualifying scores, and also managed to get her title the first weekend out...we were all very proud of her :) My wife Amy, took Beatrice through (as she has for the past 3 years) but they did manage to get their level 1 championship so we are also very proud of our Mutt Pup!

On the work front, I've still been playing with Hyper-V a lot and after doing some extensive reading, discovered that M$ also has App-V which is virtualization for applications. This is something that is very interesting and we have had a few customers asking us about the possibility of running CFdesign as a virtual app.

Ok, I think that's about it for now. More later on.

~C

Rally-O Weekend

So not many people know this about my wife and I, but we do compete with our dogs.  Not in the normal stuff you see on TV where you owner and dog trot around and look all pretty.  Also not the other thing you see on TV where the dogs go over crazy jumps and over really tall a-frames (this is agility.) 

We compete in something called Rally Obedience (Rally-O for short.)  It’s a great time for both the owner and the dog!  We have been taking our Mutt Beatrice to competitions for the past 3 years and this is the first year that we are brining our Beagle, Zephyr, to competition with us.  This also means it’s the first time that I’ve been a handler in the competition.  Previously I’ve just been the equipment manager, dog holder, food getter, and video camera guy. 

If you’ve been checking my facebook status recently you can see that Zephyr and I have been working really hard and we’re both really exited about the weekend and I really hope we do well.

On a gaming note, if you haven’t seen Dawn of War II is set to come out on the February 18th…I’m going to get my copy reserved this week during lunch so I can make sure I get it on the 18th.  If you haven’t seen anything from DoW II yet, check this out:

Yeah, it’s going to be a crazy game…and there’s NIDS!!!  Can’t wait!  Anyway, off to get some dinner.  More later on.

~C

Windows Live Writer

So I’m currently writing from my desktop, with out actually being logged into blogspot.  How can I do this you ask??  The answer is a nifty little program called Windows Live Writer.  I know it’s been out a while, but I just finally got my crap together enough to start really concentrating on this whole cloud computing thing.  This is really nice though.  It makes blogging WAY easier, especially since you don’t have to visit a site to login and then blog, just click an icon on your desktop and there ya go, a space to blog. 

Anyway, now on to my other recent favorite topic, Hyper-V (pleas let all groans out here.) 

I got my hands on Hyper-V server 2008 R2 and wow, what a huge improvement it is over the initial Beta.  The command line utility that they have, has way more options and makes life way easier for those of us who have become spoiled by the WYSIWYG interfaces that exist now-a-days. 

Another really nice feature that has been added in is the ability to enable Failover Clustering.  This is a new feature that was rolled out with Server 2008, and from what I’ve read about it, it looks really cool, and the perfect solution for a fully VM environment.  The only downside right now, besides the need for setting up a test environment and then destroying it (ok, so that’s more of the fun part and not really a challenge) but all the management tools that exist only work with server 2008 and not with hyper-v server…I know, hyper-v server is only in Beta form and I’m sure once it gets out of Beta then MS will release tools that will work with it…hopefully. 

Ok, that’s about it from me.  More later on.

~C

Nintendo Acapella

So I've been meaning to post this for a while. I will give credit to my wife Amy for finding this and showing it to me...enjoy!



~C

Back in the Saddle

So after a brief respite to recover from kick-off, here I am again, another Sunday evening and another entry into the good 'ol blog. Not much has really changed since the last entry. I did manage to get my brother a new / first system built. That was kind of cool. Instead of a traditional monitor, we ended up hooking up the system to his big 42" Plasma TV, it looks pretty nice, crappy resolution (I think we maxed it out at 1280 x 1024) but still, looks really pretty.

Aside from that, I haven't been doing much gaming (kind of sad really.) I've been back playing my PSP more recently, got Midnight Club LA remix, which is the newest installment of the Midnight Club games. I was totally addicted to Midnight Club 3 when we had our PS2, and I was really bummed that I wasn't going to be able to play the series when we got rid of the PS2, but with the release of Midnight Club LA, Sony decided to port it to the PSP, I was super stoked!

So yeah, it's probably not as pretty as it is on the PS3, but for me, I get to feed my addiction to high performance rice rockets, and it's a fun game too.

On another note, I did promise in the last blog to talk some about dodge ball during kick-off...it really was awesome. One of the guys from work used to work up in DC so he knew this nice health club that was fairly close to the hotel where we could reserve a gym and they'd let us play dodge ball. In the end I think the staff had way more fun watching us than anything else. Literally it was about 10 engineers, 1 IT guy (me), a handful of sales guys, and two girls who are two of our new NBD hires. This had to look crazy, and pretty dorky at the same time. It was a ton of though, I ended up doing pretty well, I was only the first one out a few games and most of time I was hanging around until the bitter end, for better or worse.

Anyway, that's about it from me tonight, I'll post more later on.

~C

Back Home

After a long week in DC, I'm finally back home. Feels good to come home after long trips like that.

DC was a blast though, I have lots of fun stories to tell, but for right now just a few of the main points:

- Hotel = Awesome
- Paying for Internet = Lame
- Dodge Ball, 30 engineers, what could go wrong?
- SalesForce class, coldest day of the year, I'm walking around in DC, good idea, I think not...good class though.

Like I said, I'll elaborate more on these later, especially the dodge ball game.

~C

Having fun in Herndon

So every year my company has the big meeting, where all of the employees from all over the world come together for 3 - 4 days of learning, fun, and general silliness at times. This year, kick-off, as we call it, is happening right near the beautiful Dullas Airport...yeah, let me tell ya, lots to see here.

It is a good time so far though. Today we had our big group meeting where everyone in the company piles into one room and we talk about the previous year, both the good and the bad, and then we shift focus to the coming year and set the expectations and goals for the year. It's a lot of info to absorb in 8 hours, and frankly my head is still swimming, but I know my roll fairly well in the company, so I feel pretty good.

This evening we got to eat at this restaurant called Red, Hot, and Blue. It was a pretty good BBQ joint (still nothing like Belmot BBQ, but pretty good.) They had pulled chicken, pulled pork, and ribs...so really you just couldn't go wrong.

It was very nice and then a fair number of us came back to the hotel for a few drinks, and here I am back in my room getting ready for bed.

In other, more geek-like, news, the public Beta of windows 7 was released last Friday (it was available to those with MSDN subscriptions on Thursday though.) So I got my hands on both the 64 and 32 bit versions. So far I've only had time to install the 32 bit version on a Virtual Machine, but so far, it really does look just like Vista, with a few different colors, and the UAC is designed differently (thank goodness) but otherwise, it feels about the same.

My plan, once I get back from DC, is to start running some tests to see how Windows 7 handles some of the programs that we know work really well on Vista (ok, so really I'm going to install my companies software, CFdesign, and see how it does.) It should be really interesting to see if Microsoft really has changed anything in the back-end. I'm sure I'll end up posting results here and letting you all know.

Ok, it's now past mid-night so it's time for bed. More soon.

~C

Facebook

So I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but a few months ago I took the plunge and got my own facebook account (mostly at the urging of Amy.) It's been good so far, not nearly as annoying as I thought it would be.

Anyway, since I just liked this blog on my account, figured I should at least write SOMETHING in here.

More later on.

~C

Happy New Year

Well, here we are again, another year has come and gone and we're into 2009. In case you fell asleep and missed it, here's the ball drop from Times Square in New York:



Just wanted to wish you all a very Happy New year. I've had a ton of fun posting in 2008, hopefully I can keep it going strong in 2009.

~C