Thursday, February 18, 2010

Lent 2010

I'm not a practicing catholic, but my wife's family has a strong Catholic background. A few years ago I started practicing Lent with the family. In previous years I've used it steady my eating habits and curb my processed carbs.

This year I'm taking a more Additive Step, doing something positive instead of removing something negative. I'm working on doing some application development work. So what's on target? Not sure yet. I have a few more iPhone apps percolating in head. Maybe another Web App. Experimenting with Clouds? Something with Firefox?

Perhaps a mix of all 4. I plan to post daily updates and see where it takes me. Goal is to have an idea by Friday and start the process.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

New Year New Goals!

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2010.

Lots going on this year. Lots of plans and projects in the works. I plan to use this blog to think out loud. I'll be posting progress on different projects as the continue. The focus is on my personal development. I am looking at spawning some other blogs to handle other projects, but first I need to get back into the habit of posting on this one :)

Cheers!

Friday, October 23, 2009

head in the cloud?

Well a cloud of windows at any rate.

It is interesting I can figure out how diffused my head is by watching the number of open browser windows I keep. I have 2-3 instances of firefox with 3-8 windows each holding 2-10 tabs. That's alot of material I'm juggling. It takes a lot of work to get down to 1 window with 1 tab. Lots of open loops I need to close.

Closing those loops will be a relief.

I am working to declutter the house. I think I need to stay sharp about cleaning out my virtual desktop as well. Too many windows and too many project to track what is going on. Close windows and complete tasks.

Anybody out there?

Lots going on that I'm trying to wrap my head around. Might be a good time to start posting out again.

For most of the year I've been keeping my journal old school -- pen and paper. It helped keep my brains in order and kept me moving forward, but I'm starting to get back in a mode where I need to discuss my ideas. Or at least vent them semi-publically.

What am I working on
- Sekret Project 2 - well it's secret!
- iPhone development - fixing up LibrayList. Looking to build some additional apps
- Self education - building skills in the following
- Algorithms
- Learning Python
- UNIX/POSIX

- General Education -- recently involved in a panel to look at how education can be improved with cloud computing. Very intersting topic near and dear to me. Looking to spend more time thinking and talking on the topic.
- Public accountability -- need to give myself some accountability to help me work my goals.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

rusty...

Been a while since I got a consistent blogging effort.   For the past 8 months I've been focused on getting more of my writing done in a paper (how retro!) journal, but I'm starting to feel the need to publish again.  

Lots going on these day.  Keeping very busy with work and home-life but I do find some time to squeeze in some interesting side projects.  Well interesting to me at any rate.  Will start posting more updates as things change.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Good rules

  1. Don't reinvent the wheel.
  2. Use open source.
  3. Automate everything.
  4. Design for scale - plan to be lazy from the start.
  5. Design for hardware manageability.
  6. Use good cluster management software - don't dig wells with teaspoons.
  7. Use open source monitoring solutions.
  8. Control your users with a queuing system.
  9. Verify you get what you pay for - benchmark it!
  10. Manage cluster communication.

  11. Look for ways to become lazier.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-11sysadtips/index.html?ca=dgr-twtrLazyClusterAdmin&S_TACT=105AGY83&S_CMP=TWDW

Sunday, February 1, 2009

1 Month Down

4 weeks, or 31 days are done for 2008.  I've got 47 weeks until the end of 2009.  13 weeks until I run the half marathon.  Where am I in my goals?    I have my current targets for the year.  I know what I want to finish by the end of the quarter.   

Here is where I want to be by end of quarter

 - iPhone App (20%)

 - Fund 2008 IRA

 - 1 Paper (0)

 - Renew my IT Cert (20%)

 - Read 24 books (6/24)

 - Met the 100 pushups challenge