Tag Archives: Personal

TMM reloaded, jogging strollers, and other notes

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My The Mobile Minute series, like much of my blogging, has been rather spotty for oh, the last year or so as I have come to deal with a new responsibility while still attempting to do everything I was doing before that new responsibility.  That has worked out pretty well, eh?  Meh.

At one point, I was thinking about killing TMM (although I’m certain many folk already assume it to be dead), one reason being was that, despite 160+ posts, I still had not felt,well, comfortable doing it.  I still had not.. ‘gotten in the groove’. Odd, but that’s where I was. I was also thinking about how much of an echo it is (is it?).  Anyway..

I’ve decided to change the format a bit, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m committing to one TMM daily during the week, and at least one, longer, non-TMM, technical post per week as well.   Let’s see how that goes.

Oh, and for those wanting an C25K update, here it is:  It’s not going.  I haven’t made the time for it (or the walking).

On that note, we’re looking for a jogging stroller. Not that we necessarily jog (although I plan to, and this is a great way for me to get out with him after work and on the weekends), but regular strollers just suck when they’re not on a complete flat surface (i.e. walking the mall). I was looking at the BOB strollers (which you can find some nice deals for on eBay) – any other suggestions?   My wife has mandated a feature of swivel wheels (lockable, of course) to make it easier for her to push it around.  The other requirement we have is that the handles need to be high enough for tall people (she’s 6′, I’m 6’4″).  Anyone have suggestions for a ‘regular’ stroller that fits this last requirement as well?

Goals for 2008

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Yes, it is the 21st of January and I’m posting a ‘goals for the year post’ which one might usually expect on the 1st; I’m at the tail end of my ‘catching up on things’, so, well, meh.   I only published 58 blog posts in 2007, 46 of those prior to July 2007.  In contrast, I published 92 blog posts in 2006.  What happened?  My son was born in July 2007. As you can see, that knocked me for a loop, community participation-wise. 

I think it’s fair to say that my wife and I, even now, at the six month mark, are still adjusting to what I call “the new normal”.  That said, I would like to think that I have a decent handle on things (home/work/community) and have a somewhat-workable balance in place (one that is ever-changing and seeking improvement).  Even though I have not been blogging much during the latter half of 2007, I’ve been working on some things that I’ll be publishing soon-ish. 

Improve my health 
If there ever were reasons to maintain my overall health, being around to watch my son grow up and grow old with my wife are pretty good ones in my book.  Not your standard weight loss goal, this encompasses more in my book:

  • Achieve a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 24.9 or less (I’m currently at 29.8, which puts me 0.2 away from “Obese”). Wow, Nino’s a fat ***, isn’t he? Well, those of you who know me know that that’s not quite the case. To put things into perspective, I’m 6’4″ (1.93m) and weight 245lbs (111kg).  I clearly (IMO) do not appear nearly obese, but it’s not all muscle, either. To achieve my target BMI, I will need to finish the year near the 202lb (91.6kg) mark.   Lose 40+ pounds in the next 11 1/2 months, that’s going to take some work and some discipline.
  • Improve my cardiovascular conditioning.  This will mandate a minimum 30 minutes of walking every day (and I need to get anaerobic workouts in, too). But, that’s not enough.  Nope. I’ve somehow got it in my head to complete a 5k race this year. Once I get past this respiratory infection that’s been dogging me since before Christmas, I’m going to start the C25K program.
  • Build my core and improve my posture.  One helps the other, ’nuff said.
  • Get a minimum of six hours sleep every night, preferably eight hours.  Lack of sleep, alone, has contributed to more of my health problems than anything else. 
  • Lower my cholesterol to a healthy level.  This one largely speaks to dietary changes (can’t do much about the genetic contribution here).  On the topic of diet (not dieting, in the bastardized American way), I’m looking at some software for my Windows Mobile device (you knew WM was going to get a mention here, didn’t you?) over at Handango to help track this.  Any suggestions?

Simplify
A fad?  Perhaps for some. This is essentially a continuation of the prioritization that began when my son was born last year. A great many things became incredibly less important once he arrived.  To that end:

  • Reduce my online presence. I started this one last week when I deleted my Twitter account.  Next up is probably MySpace and Facebook, perhaps LinkedIn, too.  And then there are the six (6!) personal email addresses.  Oh, and then there is the three hundred forty-six (yes, 346!) items in my blogroll.  WTF?!? 
  • Reduce my home IT demands.  Rather, become less of my own IT department. Seven servers (P+V) and two clients (my desktop and Shannon’s new laptop [used my EB's for this]). This is just getting crazy to manage.  Steve had the same thought back in ’06.  I’m not sure what my approach will be, but it will likely be a longer-term plan given that I just built a new desktop last year (not to mention my 2×20″, 1×24″ monitor setup on this machine), and I need to sit down and sort out what my goals are (i.e. what do I want/need here and what I do not need / can outsource).
  • Purge the house of stuff we don’t use.  This one is a bit of a given. Toss it, sell it, give it, recycle it.  However it’s done, stuff’s going to go.  (not to mention we’re considering moving within the next year, so the less stuff to move, the better).  Although, this is going to be tough given all the baby stuff that seems to keep appearing.  I need to work on convincing family and friends not to buy stuff (other than clothes or giving money) for the baby.

Community Involvement

  • Re-engage with the online mobile community.  Like blogging, my involvement with the online mobile community (primarily newsgroups and forums) declined quite in the latter half of last year, for similar reasons.    I’ve already started this one; need to keep it up, although I think that concentrating in one area will be key.
  • Make it to more CINNUG meetings.  Despite being part of CINNUG leadership, it has been really difficult to get to meetings.  Either I was on the road or had baby issues.
  • Regular blogging and writing.  Not only will this help me contribute to the community, but more ‘practice’ writing can only be helpful.  On that note, I would like to get published this year – hoping to start with a periodical.

Improve personal/professional balance.  This is a tough one.  I’ve often found these goals to be conflicting, and I’m stubborn enough that I don’t want to sacrifice either one.  Last year, while I traveling five days (+, sometimes) a week to western Maryland, I was really enjoying the project because of its intense technical challenges, despite the constant (and often heavy) overtime; however, my home life suffered. (Similar story the year before when I was working in NJ/DC).  That’s the challenge with consulting, though. In the late winter / early spring of 2007, I needed to find a local project where I could be home at night as my wife was have a rather difficult time with the pregnancy, and, of course, my son would be arriving not long in the future.  I found one (and many thanks to Tom, Doug, and Isaac for their help), but, to be honest, it is a less-than-optimal role.  But I knew that going in, so that’s ok. 

The question now is, do I stay there for another year? Or, do I head back on the road?  Do I re-locate to a different geography (i.e. larger metro area outside of Heartland district) with my current employer, or do I find a new employer in a new geography?  I’m working with my manager to see if we can address some of this. Let’s face it, Heartland district (which we define as OH, KY, MI) is a tough market, and there’s not much going on in Cincinnati, particularly for what I want to do.  In sum, how do I reconcile achieving professional success and advancement and having a good family life?  Is that possible in the consulting world?  (I’ve spent most of my career in consulting, and I haven’t seen it yet)

It’s going to be a busy year, but one in which I hope to be healthier and happier, and have achieved a greater sense of balance in my life.

Lately

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I’ve been a bit spotty the last few months on the blog and in my usual newsgroup and forum participation as well.  What’s up with that? In a word, work. I just rolled off of a project that was, in some respects, like no other. It had a very aggressive schedule (not so rare), had a large and diverse team from different corporate cultures (made things…interesting), and posed some rather difficult and interesting technical challenges.

 It has been nine or so months of a lot of hard work, and there is a bunch more work to do, but the foundation is laid (we did good, CoreArch).   If you make it to MEDC 2007, check out a session entitled Building Windows Mobile Applications for Large Scale Deployment and see what I spent my time on (sorry, won’t be me presenting, but I’m sure Jay will do a good job).  For the curious, I was the technical architect (and dev lead) on the core architecture team. I would like to give a shout out to the folks who I worked with on this project, in particular some folks I worked really closely with - Ryan, Ryan, Rabi, Megan, Shawn, and Evan – thanks [for so many things],  and I hope our paths cross again. 

So, as I was saying, the months of late nights, long weeks, and even shorter weekends put anything that wasn’t work or family on the back burner (ok, family hit the back burner a few times – sorry, dear).  You might say I have some catching up to do.  I’ve already started hitting the newsgroups again, and the blog will be picking up shortly as well (there ought to be a few posts before Monday..). I certainly have plenty around the house to do to…and that isn’t the half of it (we’ll get to that). 

This week, I’ve been on vacation, or, rather, taking_a_week_off_of_work_to_catch_up_on_all_the_stuff_I_neglected_for_the_last_nine-ish_months. It’s been a very busy week. I think I need a vacation [from my vacation]. Meh.  I’m doing training next week (primarily for my MCPD EA cert – mandated completion by July 31 for work), and then [had to cancel on the Summit]  I’ll be in Seattle for the MVP Summit. I’m really looking forward to the MVP Summit – I’ll get to see many of my fellow Device Application Development/Embedded/Mobile Devices MVPs, meet other MVPs, chat with the product teams, and hopefully take in a little of Seattle, a city I enjoy. And not a bad way to earn a few thousand miles (and w00t, I made Delta Gold Medallion on my project).

After I get back from the summit, I’ll soon start my new project – which will be local (finally!), and I’ll get to work with some really great guys I haven’t worked with in a long time.  Unfortunately, due to timing  issues, I will not be able to attend MEDC this year. Most unfortunate, but worth the sacrifice. You can bet I’ll be at MEDC 2008. While this next project is not of the mobility sort, I’ll be getting my hands on some ASP.NET and .NET 3.0 goodness, and it has a sane schedule. That will allow me plenty of time for writing and blogging and a number of mobility-ish things I have in the queue.  And, I’ll be local – which is important.

Important because v2.0 [Ahem!] is currently compiling and should finish in July (25). Frankly, it has been a challenging road for us to get to this point; we’ve had some builds that broke and some builds that wouldn’t even start, but now it looks like we leveraged the right technology and we’ve got a good one – just taking it day by day.  As a result of the upcoming release of v2.0, I’ve got even more things to do around the house to prepare for its arrival (you can bet this is fodder for future blog entries). One of these things is that my office is getting moved to..um, tbd (basement, formal living room?). Regardless, I have a finite deadline to move it somwhere else in the house and prepare that room for 2.0. That said, 2.0 (hmm, Two-oh, how about that for a name?) has [finally] made me change some of my priorities, which is a GoodThing. ..and I’m not getting any younger, either.

Stay tuned and enjoy the ride.

A new addition to the collective

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Update: I just noticed that, despite having set a title for each link, apparantly Windows Live Writer dumped those when it published this post. Sorry, folks.  

Seems as though several folks are buying or building new computers right about now. Well, me too.  Yep, time to replace my home workstation. I received a couple of boxes via UPS this week, so you know what my weekend will be like. :-)

It’s been about thirty months (aka 2.5 years) since I updated it last.  Due to severe cost constraints last time I replaced my home workstation, I <gasp> bought </gasp> a Dell SC420 (and no, I didn’t do the PCI Express mod).  Yeah, I bought a computer instead of building one, violating my directive on building. It replaced a very aged (and failing) PIII-based machine (which I built).  The SC420 worked pretty well, but was obviously limited in the graphics department and there some other things that made it less than ideal for a workstation. One of area disappointment was in the noise department (see my recent Vista/laptop adventure).  And did I mention noise? (kind of a pet peeve of mine)  However, given that I was not home much due to my travel schedule for work, and when I was, I didn’t use it much. I was reluctantly ok with that given I had more important things to worry about during that time.

I’ve been saving up my per diem and my spare change and now have some coin to use on new hardware. Additionally (and importantly), I got a good WAF score. As Hanselman noted recently, let’s be realistic here…nearly all purchasing decisions are dependant on WAF, and if the WAF (1st definition) score is zero or near zero, it ain’t gonna happen.

I firmly believe in building my own machines, like Atwood (scroll down a bit).  I like having complete control over every component, and I can build a machine that is fast and quiet.  With few exceptions, 98% of the machines in my “NOC” (my wife calls it the “NASA control center”) are hand-built, too (I let these be a bit louder than silent since the noise would be good to chase away the dust bunnies in the basement).  I’m slowly working on a server consolidation effort there, if for no other reasons but to decrease the administrative/management effort and to reduce energy consumption.

Here’s the rundown on my new workstation:

A well-reviewed (here and here-1,2) case that brings a number of good things to the table: composite panels, partitioned cooling zones, and two adjustable speed 120mm fans.  Couple that with quality construction, thoughtful touches, and, IMO, good looks and I’m sold. While I’m no fan of the boring beige box, I’m not going to get some neon-lighted, suspended_fish-bowl_with_a_disco_ball, blinged-out case, either (after noise, comes the visuals – I can’t stand unnecessary lights on a PC).  With the front panel closed, it’s pretty minimalist, and I like the silver/stainless look (you can get it in black, too).  Granted, I’m going to spend extra time with cable management given the layout (the power supply is on the bottom), but it will be worth it (and SATA cables are a whole lot easier to deal with that PATA ribbon cables).  Oh, and I’m not quite sure if I’m going to put on the top fan exhaust protector thingy.  That’s the one part of the P180 I’m not really crazy about.

I had also considered the CoolerMaster CM Stacker 830 and CoolerMaster Centurion 5, but felt that they didn’t meet all of my criteria (and I thought the Stacker was ugly and would exacerbate noise transmission). They, too, are well reviewed at SPCR and many other places.

While Atwood thinks that needing a 500 (or greater) watt power supply is a myth, I’m not so sure when you factor in overclocking, several hard drives, and video cards that have their own cooling fan, talent agent, entourage, and sport more memory than the main memory of most people’s PCs.  For most folks, yeah, Jeff’s right. And a for a large part of the work I do, he’s right there, too. I like some overhead though.  SPCR reviewed the 700w version, but I extrapolated down 100 watts and liked what I saw.

Built-in gigabit Ethernet, 6 SATA connectors, 1 IDE, support for up to 8 USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, 2 PCI-Express x16 slots, 1 PCI-e x1 slot, 3 PCI slots, eSATA, and a 802.11b/g antenna jack. Yummy. Did I mention excellent OC potential?  Tom’s Hardware has a review.

2.4GHz of dual core love. Did I mention the 4MB of shared L2 cache and 64-bit support?  IMO, this is the sweet spot (price/performance) right now in Intel’s Core 2 Duo lineup. Core 2 Duo’s overclock very nicely, too.

Pretty inexpensive, and a damn good heatsink.  While it ships with a fan (which the SPCR crowd has given a thumbs-down on, so find a different one), given the placement of the rear and top (yes, top) fan of the P180, I ought to be able to run this fanless (i.e. passively), at least until I OC the CPU.  This thing is huge – twenty-three aluminum fins stacked horizontally with six copper heat pipes. One of the issues with this heatsink is size. It’s not going to fit in all cases (but will work in a P180 with a P5B mobo), so be sure to do your research.

Atwood says don’t waste your cash on 4GB of RAM on a 32-bit OS.  Well, I’m going to be running 32-bit Vista (and I’ll be 32-bit for a while), so I won’t be able to realize all 4GB, but I’m ok with that.  And I’ll have all 4GB when I do go 64-bit.

I debated this one long and hard. I, of course, looked at the 8800GTX, but couldn’t justify spending well over $500 on a video card. Perhaps if my name was “Thresh“, but it ain’t. (dated myself a bit with that one, eh?)   But. Nearly $400 (I got it for $359, after rebate) is still a chunk of change for a video card. It does have DirectX 10 support, and it will rock DirectX 9.  But I don’t do that much gaming.  What is useful is that it has has dual DVI, which is great for me as I’m currently running my LCDs in analog (eww, gross, analog).  What can I say, this was a splurge.

Oh. Yeah. This will be the system drive. 150GB capacity, 10,000RPM spindle speed, and SATA I (aka 150MB/s max. external transfer rate) interface. Skeptical? Use a box with a 10k RPM drive, then come talk to me.  Why only 150MB capacity? Again, it’s the system drive, it doesn’t need to be that big. I need to see the noise levels from this in the case as it will be in the bottom part of the case – the drive cage, which has rubber mounting grommets. I may need to get more extreme on it (i.e. change to a suspension mounting or put some sorbothane in place).

This is the big drive. All my apps and VMs will live here.  500GB capacity, 7200RPM spindle speed, and SATA II (300MB/s max external transfer rate). Don’t let that SATA II transfer rate fool you.. it doesn’t really matter much.  Hopefully this drive is no louder than the Raptor. Again, we’ll see. Someone is going to ask: “Why didn’t you use a RAID 0 setup on this or the Raptor?”.   RAID 0, eh? Are you nuts? I have a drive failure and I’m screwed.  While we’re at it, what about RAID 1?  Good question. I might do that. Greatly improved read performance + redundancy in exchange for a small-ish hit on write performance. Need to save more $ (of course, if I hadn’t splurged on the video card…).

  • Internal card reader

I picked up a generic one at MicroCenter when I bought my SATA cables. This will definitely beat scrounging around for a card reader when I need one.  This one does MMC/MMC2/SD/CF/CFII/SM/Microdrive/MS/MS DUO/MS Pro/MS Pro DUO.  $20. cool.

That was all the new bits, existing bits include:

  • 2 – Samsung 193P 19″ LCD monitors

I bought these several years ago and am still quite happy with them. If I have one complaint, it is the resolution (1280×1024).  Here’s a 193P review at AnandTech.  I may purchase another LCD at some point (and other video card) and join the three monitor club, but that’s likely a ways off.

  • Samsung SH-S183L DVD writer

This one is somewhat unique (er, rare) as it is SATA – an interface that will soon become commonplace for optical drives.  Hopefully this will work well under Vista..  Here is one of the only reviews I’ve found on it.  Yeah, it’s a tad slower on DVD writing, but it’s SATA and that’s why I bought it.

  • Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

NEK4000, I love you! I longed for the days of old until I found the NEK4000. Bliss. And I shamefully must note that I only purchased it last year.  Why am I so enthralled with this keyboard? 

  • Comfy naugahyde(?) palm rest
  • Solid keyboard.
  • The PgUp/PgDn cluster is configured correctly.
  • The arrow keys are configured correctly.
  • The LEDs are front-and-center. Particularly nice to see if F Lock is on or off, along with Scroll, Caps, and Num Lock.
  • The multimedia buttons are useful.
  • It’s black.
  • Damn it, man, it just feels good to type on.
  • It’s wired.

Before I get burned at the stake for having a wired keyboard in the year 2007, let me explain. I previously had the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop Pro set. The keyboard felt good, although not as good as the NEK400, and the mouse felt good. The wireless part of things was a huge annoyance.  I couldn’t have that damn transceiver thingy more than fifteen inches away. And even then things were flaky.  Additionally, the lock indicator LEDs (F, Caps, Scroll, Num) were on the transciever thingy, not on the keyboard. So, if you try to tuck it out of site, you are out of luck. Note: I do use a wireless mouse with may laptop; a Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. It allows me to have three devices (mouse, laser pointer, remote Powerpoint gizmo) in one (i.e. less crap to haul around in my bag).

  • Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical

Yep, still using the trusty IntelliMouse Optical. It works well and has additional buttons I can map to forward/back, which I like. It is not necessarily extremly comfortable (read:ergonomic), though. I’m still searching for desktop mouse nirvana – not sure where I’ll end up.  Suggestions? Drop me a comment. 

  • Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtrmeGamer

Yeah. I like it. It’s a friggin’ [nice] sound card.

  • Cambridge SoundWorks speakers

Apparently, my speakers (two satellites and a sub) are _so_ old, I can’t find them online anymore.  They work for me, though.

Notes:
I reference Jeff Atwood a lot in the post. Why? Am I just some fanboy? No. He’s smart and knows what he’s talking about..and I have similar philosophies in a number of areas. Also, readers of The Tech Report may notice a resemblance between my new rig’s configuration and their “The Sweet Spot” system.  Clearly, I agreed with a number of their recommendations.

Doug Reilly – you will be missed

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Catching up on blogs I just saw Ryan’s post about fellow MVP Doug Reilly.  Doug lost his battle with cancer on December 23 (Here’s Jean’s post).  Scott Watermasysk posts, too.

As both Scott and Ryan noted, Doug was a great guy. Admittedly, I didn’t know him well (mostly virtually), but I can say that he was one of the nicest, most helpful guys out there.

Why not spare a few dollars and make a donation to the LiveStrong foundation?

Visiting the mothership

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I’m heading to Seattle on Tuesday (2006/09/05) for some project related meetings at Microsoft (buildings 117, 119) Wednesday and Thursday. I’m hoping to meet up with some Avanade folks and [hopefully] some additional Microsoft folks while I’m in the area.  I’m looking forwarding to this trip; not only for some of the folks I’m going to be meeting with (Microsoft and non-Microsoft) in my scheduled meetings, but just to being back in Seattle.  Did I mention I’m looking forward to getting to the Microsoft campus? Yes, this will be my <gasp!> first trip there.

I’ve decided to take Friday as a vacation day, so I’ll have all day Friday to, well, do whatever (I’ll see if I can make it to Cafe Vendi, Jim).   Hopefully, that will include meeting some folks and seeing more of Seattle before I jump on the red-eye home.

-Nino

This blog post created and posted from Windows Live Writer (beta).  Not too shabby; definitely gives BlogJet a run for its money. I need to experiment a bit more before I decide if I dump BlogJet.

Accessing Slingbox through Microsoft ISA Server

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I recently had a reader of my SlingBox review from last spring inquire about my ISA Server configuration to allow me to remotely access it the Slingbox. Here’s what I did:

On the ISA Server:

Note: I am running Microsoft ISA Server 2006; these instructions should also work on Microsoft ISA Server 2004.  I am also assuming that you are comfortable with creating new protocols and firewall access rules.

  1. Create a new protocol (I called it ‘Sling’) with:
    1. Protocol type of TCP
    2. Direction of Inbound
    3. Port range of 5001.
  2. Create a new access rule (called it ‘Remote Slingbox’) with:
    1. Action of ‘Allow’
    2. Traffic using the previously created ‘Sling’ protocol
    3. From External
    4. Tto your Slingbox’s IP (I also have ‘requests appear to come from the original client’ selected, but the use of this option somewhat depends on how you have things set up) 
    5. Networks for the listener of ‘External’
    6. Schedule set to your preferences (I’m using ‘Always’).
  3. Apply the access rule and ensure it is enabled.

On the Slingbox:

  1. Connect to your SlingBox via SlingPlayer on your PC, then navigate to Slingbox > Properties in the menu.
  2. Select the Slingbox Configuration tab.
  3. Location the ‘Network Settings’ section. Click the Change button, this will launch the Slingbox Setup Wizard.
  4. Enter in the administrator password as prompted, hit next.
  5. Check the “I’m ready to setup remote viewing for my Slingbox” box.  Also check the “A do-it-yourself kind of person?” box (since we won’t be using UPnP to configure ISA) Click Next.
  6. Enter in the IP Address of your Slingbox, the subnet mask, and the default gateway (which, if it is your gateway, is the internal IP address of your ISA Server).  Also enter in the port number you want your Slingbox to listen on (I’m using the default of 5001). Click Next.
  7. Select the ‘Manually configure your router’ radio button (again, as we’re using ISA Server…). Click Next.
  8. Click Next on the ‘Manual setup’ dialog without making any selections.
  9. If you have your ISA Server already configured (see above), you might want to test your connection now, otherwise, select ‘I want to skip this for now’. Click Next.
  10. Click Finish, which returns you back to the Slingbox Configuration tab. Click OK.

At this point, you’re ready to test. Fire up your Slingbox client (I tested using my Windows Mobile Smartphone).

Something else that may be useful here is a dynamic DNS service to make it easier to find access your system remotely (which, if you’re running ISA Server at home, you very well already have).  I’d like to toss out a recommendation for DynDNS (http://www.dyndns.com).

MVP 2007

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My MVP award [Device Application Development] was renewed* for 2007.  Very cool.  Thank you, Microsoft!

 

*or is it more accurate to just say ‘awarded for 2007′ ?

Land of 10,000 lakes

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I’m in the “Land of 10,000 lakes” this week on a ‘special assignment’ and it is has been quite the interesting week so far. Tuesday started with a diverted flight and ended with dinner during a nasty storm and a loss of electrical power.  As my flight neared the airport, a line of storms arose and the plane did not have enough fuel to hold a pattern, so we were diverted north to Duluth (saw some beautiful foliage on the approach, btw) and ended up on the ground there for over two hours, so I had some time to make some new friends :-) .   Oh, and no GPRS service from T-Mobile there, just voice (GSM).  I also need to remember to pack a jacket this time of year; the weather seems to have changed a bit from what was predicted when I packed my bag Monday night.

At the end of the day Tuesday, my co-worker DaveG took me to a really cool place for dinner – Chino Latino.  What a great place!  I really liked this place and it had a great atmosphere as well. I will definitely look this place up again if I am back in the area. While we were waiting on dessert, the power went out, which made things interesting. Unforunately, Dave couldn’t get his fried ice cream, but I did get my chocolate flan-dango thing (awesome!), which I shared.

Wednesday was a long but productive day and I got a majority of my goals accomplished (woohoo!).  I found that if I don’t wait for VMWare (where I’m running VS2005 RC) to fully disconnect the USB connection for the device before I pull the cable, it is *not* happy (I got the BSOD on my Toshiba M3 twice this way).

I’m working with HTC Apache devices and I must say – very nifty (I’m looking to pick up an HTC Wizard for myself given that I’m on T-Mobile). I’ll have some more technical blog entries later this week (or weekend) about some issues I’ve encountered.  I’m on a really tight schedule this week, so TMM will likely be suspended as well until the weekend.

Oh yeah.. the whole “stoplights on Interstate on-ramps” thing is…interesting.

-Nino

status check…

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For those wondering, The Mobile Minute (and my sanity) took a bit of a break last week.  I spent the better part of the week tending to my wife (recovering from a septoplasty[1]) and to a bunch of things around the house that were going on (poor scheduling on our part).  Of course, my [work] productivity plummeted (sorry, guys). She got her stents out on Friday (the surgery was Monday) and is doing better, although still in some pain (her Vicodin consumption is nearly nil now). 

My work queue is back to a nominal state (I put in some serious weekend hours) and my wife and I are healthy (after a few months of illnesses).  I’m back to being hip-deep in WiX (and going to be for a while) and looking forward to Friday (12/23), when the sessions for the Dayton-Cincinnati Code Camp will be announced (I submitted four session abstracts and think that two of them have a pretty good chance).

oh yeah..one of my ‘friends’ told me that my blog photo makes me look like a serial killer.  Thanks, man.  I’ll get a new, friendlier pic up soon.

-Nino

[1]For the curious, her doctor did not use packing; he used soft silcone stents. 

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