This is an Improvement?

By Tom | Filed in Family Bits | No comments yet.

I’ve mentioned a few times now about my son and his ‘high functioning autism spectral disorder‘ concerns when he was four.

Every once in a while he will do something though that reminds you of the child that is inside instead of the odd behaviors we get some of the time. To me this is both an improvement and a blessing all together. The most recent one was last night. Read the remainder of this entry »

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My new employer has had me now start publishing regular entries on the web about my work with my former employer. You can find insightful information about data center SAN technologies here.

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I’ve never been happy with Quicken on the Macintosh computer. It’s a steaming pile of junk. So ever since I switched to the Mac in 2002 I’ve always kept windows around, or Boot Camp, so that I could run Microsoft Money.

Well now it’s being reported that Microsoft has decided to halt production of the software and by 2011 it will no longer work with banks.

Peachy.

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I’ve developed a pretty bad Love/Hate relationship with Apple Products.

When they work, they work well. When they fail, they take everything they can down with in a 20 mile radius and salt the earth.

Case and Point, the Time Capsule Read the remainder of this entry »

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innnn 3-Deeeee

By Tom | Filed in Family Bits | No comments yet.

So we went to a movie for the first time in a while. Aliens vs. Monsters, a cute movie.

A surprise however was that it’s in 3-D, this new 3-D that doesn’t use the red/blue dork glasses, but a new looks like nerd sunglasses type of glasses. They even fit my big giant head. SHould have taken a picture but didn’t think of it at the time.
Read the remainder of this entry »

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E-Booking

By Tom | Filed in On the Web | No comments yet.

One of the many things that I’ve been always interested in has been the thing that is e-books. Carrying around four, five or six books on long business trips. When I had a smaller laptop it wasn’t a problem but with the new job I have a 15″ display which while wonderful when you’re not moving it really takes up a ton of space inside the laptop bag making adding a few paperbacks for every trip a chore, and even harder to get them out.

I tried the ‘Peanut Press’ books which I now think is eReader that were on the Palm Pilot back in the late 90s early 2000 time frame but they had several flaws. One of the key flaws to me has always been the airline and how they treat electronic devices. However I got burned when I had to restore my data to a palm pilot and it needs the credit card – that you bought with – to unlock the ebook. imagine my annoyance when I didn’t have that card anymore because due to a security concern they changed my account number and the statement account vs. the card number were different. Goodbye about 10 eBooks.

Amazon has a different tact with theirs, you can always get them again but this time you’re locked into the reader. I’m really tempted, but there is no economy of scale with the thing. It’s $359 for the reader, and the books while maybe $1 – $2 less expensive you’d have to buy at least 300 to 400 before the reader paid for itself. That’s a lot of books to go out and read. Not that I probably wouldn’t do it but not in enough time to justify the cost. I was really hoping they’d lower the price some this time around but if I’m not mistaken it went up $30 as it was at $329 i thought.

I love the concept of an all in one reader, but $359 to read some books I guess i’ll have to figure out how to stuff things into my bag still.

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I’ve never been a big fan of Pope Benedict XVI. Mostly because how do you follow up such a great man that was Pope John Paul the II. Plus he’s kinda creepy looking.

The biggest issue I had was Pope John Paul the II risked his life to worship the catholic mass while living in Poland as a young man, and Pope Benedict XVI was a member of the Nazi Youth as a child. The ‘oh everyone was doing it’ to me rang kinda hollow because everyone wasn’t, the young man that became Pope John Paul the II didn’t.

Now, Pope Benedict XVI has decided to reinstate some folks excommunicated from the church by Pope John Paul the II. Not normally a big deal except they did it a few days after the lead nut job of the group decided to go on Swedish television and tell the world that there were no gas chambers in the jewish concentration camps. He also de-valued the total dead from 6,000,000 to a mere 200,000 to 300,000.

He’s under investigation for ‘inciting racial hatred’ in Germany, where saying things like that is highly illegal. Where this guy was interviewed was also were ol’ Pope Benedict XVI happened to teach from as well.

I’m sure in the age of the internet the pope managed to miss that interview, but come on. Of course the requisite jewish communities are up in arms about it as well.

Update: Apparently, the ex-communicated ‘there are no gas chambers’ bishop is also a 9/11 Troofer.

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The End of an Era

By Tom | Filed in At Work @IBM | No comments yet.

Friday, January 16th 2009 marked the end of an era for me. I ended my employment with IBM voluntarily. It wasn’t like the threat last time and I left on very good terms with the magic ‘can work here again’ box checked.

I’m not going to offer much detail publicly about my new role until I understand if/what the policies about publicly identifying what you do for a living is. IBM had a very liberal policy with regards to identifying yourself and rules for identifying things.

So I’m off to California for a week to attend a conference & start the new job. This is quite the role change for me so hopefully everything will work out great, but so far, 2009 is shaping up to be a huge improvement over 2008.

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Wordpress 2.7

By Tom | Filed in Uncategorized | No comments yet.

I’ve finally gotten some of this working after attempting to upgrade to wordpress 2.7. Of course it broke a few things but it appears to be working now

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Getting Lucky

By Tom | Filed in Family Bits | No comments yet.

Either it was Calvin’s Proclimation that did it, or it was a Christmas present to rival most presents.

However on the 2nd of January Angi figured out she was pregnant, and about six to seven weeks along. This of course shut down any ability to adopt and on one hand I’m a bit bummed about that it’s still very nice to be getting the option of having another child of our own.

At the moment the two names for front runners are Oliver if it’s a boy and Quinn if it’s a girl. Looks like late August.

My whole life growing up I barely new anyone with a birthday in August. Now as an adult I can’t get the month to myself anymore. That’ll be me, Calvin and the new one all having birthdays in August.

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