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Round 1 goes to the server

December 15, 2008

For the past 5 years (maybe more), I’ve had an eMachines (yes, an eMachines) computer sitting under my desk running Linux and acting as my local development server. It’s doesn’t serve any pages out to the interweb, only to me sitting at my desk. So the performance level has never been an issue. Actually, even to this day the performance has been fantastic. Unfortunately, none of the software on the machine has been updated since it was first installed, so that means I’m running an ancient version of PHP and MySQL. Thanks to a recent upgrade to WordPress, this became an issue.

I invited my Linux Guru friend Todd over for the evening. The initial plan was to upgrade PHP and MySQL on the box. Once Todd had a look at how the machine was set up (Todd did the original setup all those years ago), he concluded that it would be easier to ditch the Mandrake installation that currently existed and upgrade the operating system to Ubuntu. [If it sounds like I'm making some of these words up, I apologize.] Before we could do an upgrade like this, I needed to move all the files and database off the server for safe keeping. Since the PC is so ancient, the speed (or lack there of) of the hard drive really shows. Moving the files ended up taking way longer than we expected. While we were waiting for the files to copy we cooked and ate dinner and with the help of some instructions, I solved the Rubik’s Cube for the first time in my life. While this was a very cool accomplishment, it didn’t change the fact that we had been waiting for more than 2 hours while the data moved from the server to the PC, and it still wasn’t finished.

We finally had to give up and call it a night. We’ve made alternate plans on how we are going to handle the server upgrade, but for now, the server is winning 1-0. I’m not even going to act surprised.

Filed Under: Ranting

Get one thing done

December 12, 2008

As you may already know, I’m in the process of organizing a conference called WordCamp:Las Vegas. It’s less than a month away now so it’s really starting to become Crunch Time! All those things I knew I had to get done before the show didn’t seem like that big of a deal a few months ago when I started this journey. However, as the event draws near, it’s time to do like the jolly guy from the North Pole is doing right now; make a list and check it twice!

Last night while I had some down time, I started brainstorming. I wanted to work on a list of items I’m going to need for the conference that aren’t the big obvious things (like chairs, a stage, a microphone, etc…). I decided that the best way to do this was going to be on the iPhone using an app called Toodledo. Each time I would think of a new item I needed to get, I’d create a new task for it. By the time I was done I realized I have some work to do. And some of it I need to get done soon!

This morning I opened up Toodledo to double-check the list. When I first saw all the tasks staring back at me with their due dates and importance level (most say HIGH), it was a little overwhelming. I quickly closed the app and went back in to my shell of denial and headed off to work. Luckily, on my lunch break I came to my senses. I opened up the app again and took a quick look and found exactly what I was looking for. A simple task on the list that could be done with minimal effort. I quickly hit the Internet, did a search on Google, found 3 stores selling the product I needed. I found the store that had the item that best fit my needs and had the best price and I placed the order. I opened up Toodledo again and checked the item off the list. With that check mark went a sizable amount of stress.

When staring at the entire list of things to do, it can be overwhelming. When looking at any of the tasks on the list, none are to challenging and likely need only a few minutes attention each. Getting just one thing done of my list helped reinforce that fact.

I feel better already.

Filed Under: Ranting, WordCamp Tagged With: , , ,

Mid-week Concerts

December 11, 2008

It’s Thursday night in Las Vegas. Tomorrow I have to be to work at 7:00. Tonight, however, we have tickets to see Gary Allan in concert at the House of Blues. I’m predicting tomorrow morning is gonna suck.

When I got off work today, I knew we were going to the concert tonight, but the one thing I wasn’t sure of was what time the show started. My guess was that the doors would open at 6:00 and the show would start at 7:00. There’d be an opening band and then Gary Allan would be on stage around 8:30, play until about 10:00 and we’d be home by 10:20. I was wrong on all accounts. When I checked the tickets, it just says “Doors at 8:00.” This tells me several things;

  • There will be no opening act
  • The show won’t start until 9:00
  • The show is not going to end until 10:30 or so
  • I was right, tomorrow is gonna suck

I’ve been to the House of Blues many times. I know that for their mid-week concerts (and maybe their weekend concerts), they have a curfew. I thought I remembered hearing that it’s a city ordinance, but I could be wrong on this. I know one thing, though; I am not a fan of mid-week concerts that start so late. I don’t think I’m getting the value I deserve for my ticket price. If I’m going to pay $40 to see a show, I expect either an opening band or the headliner better play 2 and a half hours at least.

My wife and I both enjoyed the show tonight while we were there. But as I was heading home and thinking about the situation, it really irked me. I don’t know that I would skip a show just because of these circumstances, but it will definitely play a part in my decision making prior to purchasing tickets in the future.

Filed Under: Music, Ranting Tagged With:

Music in the background

December 8, 2008

Growing up I was always surrounded my music. My Mom would blast bands like Queen and Supertramp while were in the car. When she started dating the guy who would end up becoming my step dad, he was in a band that would practice at our house seemingly 24/7. Even after I moved out on my own, music has always been a big part of my life.

I’ve always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but fear that opportunity may be behind me. Oh, I know I could learn to play guitar if I practiced. But, putting in the time needed to become even mediocre just isn’t something I see myself doing any time soon. But man, I sure want to play!

I grew up a rocker. I’ve always loved heavy metal, hard rock and some punk music. As I got a little older my likes and dislikes bounced all over the place. Today you could find me listening to Motley Crue, Garth Brooks, Madonna, The Beastie Boys, Nirvana or the Soundtrack to Juno. You just never know.

As much as I love all the bands I listed above and as much as I love music in general, when it comes time to dig in and get some work done on the computer, bet it blogging or programming, I have a very hard time leaving any of their music on in the background. Don’t get me wrong, I love to have music in the background, but listening to music with lyrics while I’m trying to write is nearly impossible for me. Instead I’ll listen to something like Blue Man Group’s Audio CD. This for me is the ultimate background music for getting work done.

I’m writing this post as a reminder to myself. I wasted 2 hours sitting at my desk trying to work on a project while simultaneously listening to the new Guns n Roses CD, Chinese Democracy. There’s nothing wrong with the CD. I’m actually growing quite fond of it. But, there’s a time and a place for it with me. At my computer while trying to work is NOT that place.

What music do you have on in the background while you are working?

Filed Under: Blogging, Music, Ranting Tagged With: ,

Getting ready for the holidays

December 7, 2008
christmas_lights

Going in to it, I knew this was going to be a busy weekend. It started right after work on Friday when we went to the First Friday event. Saturday I woke up late, spent a few hours helping a friend with his website and then took a nap before we headed out to my company holiday party. Since we didn’t get in until late, and we had a few cocktails at the party, I was expecting to sleep in on Sunday. Oh how wrong I was.

Our day started around 6:45 this morning with our dogs waking us up to be let outside. Neither of us were able to go back to sleep, so we got up and headed out to pick up the boxes of Christmas decorations from storage. We also brought home a 9 foot artificial Christmas tree that somebody gave us. When we got it home we realized that it was going to be too big to place in the spot where we normally put our Christmas tree. So we started working on alternate locations. The process was not going well, to say the least. Ultimately we decided not to use the new tree and went back to our old standby. An artificial tree that belongs to my Mother-in-Law. We’ve used it at our house for the past 5 years and it’s served us pretty well, I must say. Once we put the tree together and strung it with lights, we let the kids decorate it with ornaments. This is a lengthy process as we have amassed quite a collection of them over the years.

With the tree taken care of it was time to head outside to hang the Christmas lights outside. This is one of my leasts favorite things to do. It’s nerve wracking! We have a 2 story house and the Little Giant ladder we have gets us close, but with the unlevel ground and lava rock in our front yard, it makes for an interesting experience. I’m a bit of a thrill seeker, but get sorta freaked out being 2 stories up standing on the 2nd to last rung on a ladder.

When it’s all said and done, the house does look pretty nice.

As an amusing side-note, while we were using the ladder to hang the lights out front, a neighbor came over and made a comment about how nice the ladder was. He then carried on for a few minutes about a lightbulb that is burnt out on his front porch. Somehow, after we were done with the lights, my brother-in-law and I ended up dragging my ladder over to the neighbor’s house and changing the bulb for him. Call it my good deed for the day, I guess.

So the lights are hung, the tree is trimmed and the neighbor’s porch light is a-glow with holiday cheer. Yep, the holidays are here.

Filed Under: Family, Ranting Tagged With: ,

What the Flock?

December 3, 2008

I’ve been a strong supporter of Mozilla’s Firefox browser for quite a while now. Once I switched over to it, it has been hard to even consider using a different browser. Sure, I’ve tried them all to see what features they are going to give me, but I always end up going back to Firefox because of the amount of plug-ins I have become accustomed to using daily. As much as I love Google and I really do love the Google browser, without support for the plug-ins I use, I’m sorry but you just can’t be my default browser.

With that said, today I decided I was going to give Flock another shot. I had installed it shortly after it came out, ran through my normal routine of testing it out for 2 days and then rushing back to Firefox. But with the expansive growth of Social Media, I figured it was time to grab an update and see what’s new. What followed where 3 gigantic no-nos that left a sour taste in my mouth before I even started to check out any new features.

I loaded up Flock and went to the help menu and chose “Check for Updates.” No surprise there was one available and I told it to download the 16MB file and install it for me. When it was done I started Flock and was redirected to a page that said, “But wait, version 2.0.2 is available. Download now.” Wait a second! I just uploaded one minute ago. Why did the “Check for Updates” feature update me to a version that was already out of date?

Undeterred I upgraded to the latest version and started kicking the tires. A minute later I received an email in my 3rd party email application that contained a link. When I clicked the link, Flock opens up a new tab and starts loading the page. Wait just a second again! Without asking me (2 installs in 5 minutes and I don’t recall being asked) if I wanted Flock to be my default browser, they took it upon themselves to make Flock the default. This is monumentally NOT COOL. Don’t hide it in the terms and say “but you agreed to the terms.” Do not change settings on my computer without asking me first. Period!

When Firefox didn’t open up as my default, I went to my quick launch bar to start it up. The Firefox logo was no longer in it’s customary spot and it took me a second to realize what happened. During the install process for Flock my Firefox icon was replaced by a Flock icon. Clicking the link started Flock, not Firefox. This is inexcusable. I’m curious if they do the same thing to the Internet Explorer icon if that is your default browser. I’m betting not since Microsoft would likely reign down legal armageddon on them in 2.367 seconds.

Now, I know what you are going to say, “But Flock is now powered by Mozilla so it’s fine.” No, no it’s not. Until such a time that Flock and Firefox merge in to 1 product, they should treat my computer accordingly and not mess with settings that should be mutually exclusive.

And now that I’ve got this off my chest, I’m going to go back and test out Flock’s ability to run Firefox plugins as it says it can.

</rant>

Filed Under: Ranting, Technology Tagged With: , ,

Black Friday : 2008

November 28, 2008
best-buy-camping.jpg

best buy campingMy Black Friday story actually starts on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. It was about 4pm when my wife and I pulled up to Best Buy. As we walked in I snapped this photo of the 2 tents that had already been set up out front by the guys waiting for the Black Friday sales rush. I don’t know what item they could have been so interested in that they would be willing to spend roughly 36 hours in front of Best Buy, but I hope it was worth it for them.

This morning the alarm was set for 4:00 am. I woke up (slowly), threw on some clothes, grabbed a sweatshirt and a jacket and was out the door by 4:15. Today was my first ever trip out in to the craziness that is Black Friday Shopping Madness and I was excited and ready to go.

My wife and sister headed off to Kohl’s while I went to get in line at Game Stop. When I got there, I noticed that the line for Target was really short. There were maybe 15 people in line. So I hopped in that line thinking they’d have the 1 item I was in search of (can’t talk exact item here) and as an added bonus, they opened at 6am rather than 7am. I figured if I wasn’t able to get what I wanted at Target, I could always hop in to the Game Stop line after the initial madness at Target.

By 5:15, the line hadn’t really grown as much as I expected. It maybe tripled in size. My wife showed up to hang out with me while my sister headed to the mall. The channel 13 news van arrived and the reporter stood right in front of us on the sidewalk, so there’s a very good chance we were on TV this morning while she talked about those “crazy people camped out at Target. Actually she was saying how there was a line, but the line wasn’t nearly as crazy as past years. Apparently this was the story all over.

Between 5:30 and 5:45 the line really grew. Then, with about 5 minutes left before the store opened, something really interesting happed. People started gathering in front of the doors in the parking lot (pictured below). It looked like they were going to make a mad rush for the doors when they opened. People in line started to get agitated. They brought out a couple security guards to try and block the people from coming in. But, as the doors opened and we started to file in, sure enough, here they came. The security guards kept back most of them, but one guy made a break for it and bust through the security guards and headed in to the store. By the time we got in and made it to the electronics section, we saw the cheater standing at the front of the line holding the item he had set out to get. Some other customers were getting in his face and calling him pathetic and whatnot. We just carried on with our mission. Unfortunately, even though we were one of the very first people to the electronics section, the item we were looking for was not available. There’s no way they had any in stock that morning because it would have been impossible for them all to have gone out the door before we got there. Whatever. We headed back out the front door and as we passed the registers out front, my wife noticed the coolest thing. The security guards were talking to Mr. Cheater who was trying to check out. They politely explained to him that since he cut in front of the line, they would not be accepting his purchases today and took his merchandise away from him. That made my day right there!

Target crowd 

We got in line at Game Stop and began to wait. 10 minutes later I got a call from my sister at the mall. She says, “I’m at Game Stop in the mall. Is this the item you are looking for?” Well yes it is! She picked it up for us as we stepped out of line. The bulk of our Black Friday shopping is now complete and we can carry on with no worries!

We headed over to Best Buy as I wanted to pick up the Photoshop/Premier software bundle that was listed in their ad. I didn’t expect it would be one of the products flying off the shelves. We walked in the store, turned right and immediately saw two of the items that we had been waiting in line at Target to get. Since the item is limited edition, this surprised the heck out of me and really drove home the hit that retailers are taking this year. Any other year these would have been gone within 30 minutes of the store opening with no chance of finding one nearly 3 hours after they opened. We grabbed the software and headed to the line which snaked up and down every aisle to the back of the store. Even though it looked like a crazy line, we were out of there in 30 minutes. I have to hand it to Best Buy, they really had their shit together. Target could learn a thing or two from them.

We met up with my sister at the mall and did a bit of browsing. We bought a couple more items, had a little breakfast (Hot Dog on a Stick and Cinnabon FTW) and then headed home for a nap.

All-in-all, I have to say that my first Black Friday experience was a good one. I think several factors played in to that, though. First off, nothing on our list of things to buy today was one of the “GOTTA HAVE” items on everybody elses list. Also, none of the items we were after were gotta have items for the people we were shopping for. If we walked out entirely empty handed, it wouldn’t have been tragic. And of course, the economy definitely played a part in the size of the crowds. Even though Target was pretty well packed with people, I heard a couple employees talking about how this year was “nothing compared to last year.” Oi! I can only imagine.

Did you head out on Black Friday? How was your shopping experience?

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: , , ,

I think I may be a control freak

November 21, 2008

I’m not gonna lie, I love to organize events. Normally small events. Poker tournaments, trips with friends to the movies or things like that. But this is the first time I’ve ever taken on an event the size of WordCamp:Las Vegas. If things go well and we manage to sell out, we are talking about 200 attendees, 10 speakers, a dozen-ish sponsors and a handful of volunteers. That’s a bigger group than I’ve ever put together by a roughly 10:1 ratio.

Everybody I’ve talked to and everything I’ve read online has said that the best way to do organize something like WordCamp is to delegate certain portions of the organization process to different people. Put one person in charge of sponsorship, put somebody else in charge of rounding up speakers, etc, etc, etc… The thing is, when I decided to step up and take on the WordCamp project, it didn’t dawn on me to go around and ask if anybody else was interested in taking on part of the responsibility. This isn’t to say that I haven’t had help. A couple of people have provided me with some excellent contacts. But, the legwork has been all mine.

Here’s the thing… I’m not bothered by this in the least. To be quite honest, this is exactly how I would have wanted it. That’s not to say that I don’t want/need any help. Far from it. I’ve got my dad driving in from L.A. to do the audio, I’ve got a friend lined up to shoot video and manage the livecast, I’ve got another friend lined up to shoot photos and live blog the event and a third friend lined up to help with technical issues (wireless network, etc…), plus I’m still in need of a couple people to work the registration booth the day of the event, a couple people to play “security” and check badges at the door, and probably somebody to be a gopher for the miscellaneous things that come up during the day. But other than that, I’d like to think that things are coming together nicely.

Had to do over again, it would be nice to be sharing the duties with a partner. Unfortunately the one guy who I know would have been the perfect candidate to help out has moved a few thousand miles away. True, he’s still been a great help in providing me information and some direction, but not getting to see him daily (or even weekly) to bounce ideas off is a big bummer for me.

But hey, with him out of the way, there’s nobody to tell me I can’t start the show off by riding in on a Shetland Pony surrounded by the ladies of Olympic Garden! (The Power Is MINE!)

If you plan on taking on a project like organizing a WordCamp, don’t do it the way I’m doing it. Find a small group of people who you can rely on and hand off projects to save your sanity. You will be happy you did.

Filed Under: Ranting, WordCamp Tagged With: , , ,

I'm in serious need of an office

November 20, 2008

Without trying to make this sound like an excuse, I’ve been noticing lately that I am in serious need of a home office. Currently my desk is in our loft. Also in the loft are my Son and Daughter’s Computer desks. That’s a total of 4 computers (I have 2) plus 3 people in the loft most of the time. When the kids go to bed at 9, that’s when I can usually sit down and get a bunch of work done. But, my wife, a light sleeper if ever there was one, is usually sleeping down the hall at this point. So, the idea of creating video blog posts or recording a podcast are typically out the window.

We have a guestroom downstairs. Currently it’s being occupied by my brother-in-law and his wife as they are waiting for escrow to close on their new house. Don’t get me wrong, they have been absolutely NO trouble at all. But, as soon as they go, I’m taking over that room pronto. We’ve been without it’s services for the past couple months while they’ve been staying in there, so I don’t see how me taking it over full time can be that big a deal. Plus, it will give me a place to store all my camera equipment. I could set up a mini-recording studio and hopefully I can use it to produce the weekly podcast show I’ve been pondering for way to long now.

By this time next month if I have not posted at least 1 podcast and/or 1 video blog post, please proceed to give me a ton of crap for it. Thanks.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: , ,