Bootay's House O' Pain

Viva, Las Vegas!

2008-05-05T08:08:00.003-05:00

I've wasted 10 years of Vegas trips...never played craps (at least not understanding it while doing so). And it's SO easy.

Shooter is the guy with the dice. Shooter throws, 2,3,12 loses immediately, 7 or 11 wins immediately. If you bet "the pass line", you win even money.

If the shooter throws something else, that # becomes "the point". A block is put on that number (physically on the table) to show it. Your "pass line" bet stays, and if the shooter throws "the point" again before throwing a seven, you win (again, even money). If a seven comes first, you lose.

Once "the point" is set, you can add an odds bet to your pass line bet. That bet can be any size up to some house limit, typically a multiple of the pass bet you made between 3x and 100x depending where you play. That bet provides even odds, so it's a GREAT bet to load up on. If the shooter rolls the point before a seven, you win the odds bet, and you get a varying payout depending what the point was - a 4 or 10 is harder to get than a 6 or 8, so they pay more.

Once "the point" is set, you can also bet the specific numbers. So, if the point is 5, you could bet $15 each on 6 and 8 (for $30 total). If the shooter rolls a 6 or an 8 before they roll a 7, you win a multiple of your bet. These bets are lots of fun, as they don't have to come off the table when you win - if the shooter is hot, they can keep rolling 6 or 8 repeatedly and you keep winning without making more bets!

And if you feel unlucky, you can pull your odds bets and number bets any time you want...if you have a lot of them out and the shooter rolls a 7, you can lose a LOT of money all at once, so sometimes following your gut is a good thing :). But it's even better to load up the table on a hot shooter, screaming and yelling the whole time. Bring lots of cash, even a $15 minimum bet table will require $500 to really play...maybe more if you max out your odds bets like you should.

WOOHOO!!

GTA IV

2008-05-05T08:01:00.002-05:00

Grand Theft Auto IV rocks:

1) Stealing a car, having the person try to grab the door just as you take off and they're holding on as you fly around the streets (for a while :)).
2) HUGE stunt jumps in cars! The game needs more jumps scattered around, these things are just too good. Hitting one perfect is so hard with traffic thick in many areas, and I'd love to do them all in different cars and try sliding into them or hitting off-center to get great effects.
3) Bowling a turkey is HARD. Throwing 180 in darts should be fairly easy but has eluded me so far. Shooting a perfect game in 8-ball will be near impossible.
4) Michelle is easy.
5) Controlling slides while driving on big bridges through traffic, never hitting another car.

Multiplayer looks really good, only did some quick trials last night but it appears to be goofy fun, especially when you get 3-4 people loaded in a car, all hanging out firing at some other car loaded up the same way racing through the city :).

A night in the life

2008-05-05T07:51:00.002-05:00

A typical night with the bears (on the weekend):

Dinner at 5-6
A walk outside around the block or playing in the backyard
Bath at 7
Dressed for bed at 7:30
Pillow fight with Philip until 8
Katarina and Philip pile-on daddy until 8:05
Karatina and Philip jump over "alligator" daddy until 8:10
Katarina gets a book to read, Philip runs off and gets trucks from another room
Philip gets a book to read, Katarina needs a tiny bit of milk
We forgot to brush our teeth!
Katarina screams to read her book first, Philip goes to play with his trucks
Halfway through Katarina's book, Philip wants to start it over so he can see all of it, big fight ensues
Katarina and Philip read Philips book
In the bed and lights off around 9, but no one knows since the last hour was insane
I need to go peepee!
5 minutes later
I need to go poopoo!
15 minutes later
I need a drink
Philip is stealing the covers!
Katarina sings "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's AMORREEEEEEE!"
Daddy falls asleep...

ROCK YOUR FACE OFF!

2008-01-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

I'm in a rock band. Actually several. And they perform all over the world, most recently in Madison Square Garden with flames going off everywhere. I guess it was a'ight.

As one friend put it, it seems to be in our DNA to play one role/instrument in a band. I'm definitely a bass guy at heart, but I like the guitar and drums and vocals, so I guess I just have a lot of DNA.

Anywho:
Rock Band
Best. Game. Ever.

'Nuff Said.

Security Vulnerabilities

2008-01-23T21:21:00.000-05:00

Wow - fascinating data on the first year of various popular operating systems and the security vulnerabilities and fixes released.

http://blogs.technet.com/security/archive/2008/01/23/download-windows-vista-one-year-vulnerability-report.aspx

Thanksgiving 2007

2007-11-25T21:58:00.001-05:00

Doro the Pinata didn't last long...

These guys had nothing to do with it - pre/post holiday paintball is the most awesome idea ever.

Teach a 3-year old to fish...

And they'll throw rocks at you.

Leasing (a BMW)

2007-11-25T20:40:00.000-05:00

Leasing had a bad rap with me, but no more. Cars are depreciating assets, and it makes no sense to own depreciating assets as a general rule. So, renting one seems like a good call, and after my buddy told me he had recently switched to leasing, I decided to run the numbers.

1) Much lower opportunity cost - zero money down
Leasing can be negotiated to have zero money down, simply making the first car payment when you pick up the car. That means ZERO opportunity cost - opportunity cost is the killer for paying cash for a car. Treat opportunity cost as the loss of money you WOULD have made if you were investing that money instead in the market - for a $45,000 car, 8% = $3600 loss per year). That's not wholy accurate as you are making payments, Excel can help do the EXACT math with some future value functions, but it gives you an idea that this isn't a small factor.

2) You save a ton on the initial 3% NC taxes
Leasing only requires you to pay tax on the part of the car that you are consuming (i.e. the depreciation of the car). For a BMW 335i Sedan on a 3 year, 10,000 mile per year lease, that's 64% of the MSRP. So, if you option the car out to $45,000 MSRP, the depreciation is $45k * .36 = $16,200, and you pay the NC 3% tax on that over 3 years instead of paying 3% ALL AT ONCE on ALL $45,000 (or whatever you negotiate the purchase price down to)... Call that $486 spread over 3 years vs. $1350 out of pocket immediately - it's a big difference.

3) You might be able to buy it and flip it at the end of the lease
The lease residual is fixed for a BMW based on the car and the term, so that gets rid of one big complexity in the calculations. As noted above, a $45,000 2008 335i Sedan will have a residual value after a 3-year 10,000 mile per year term of $28,800. If it turns out you kept the car in PERFECT condition and it's still selling HOT, it might be worth more than that. You have a fixed purchase price option in the lease, so you might be able to make some quick cash just flipping it at the end (or keeping the car if you really love it). There's NO risk in that option, kind of amazes me that it's so in favor of the consumer but there it is...

4) BMW includes GAP insurance in the lease - no risk of being upside down
GAP insurance makes sure that if the car is wrecked or stolen and the insurance payout is less than the amount you owe, you don't end up with NO car and OWING money... BMW includes that coverage in the lease, allowing the zero money down option in #1 with zero risk.

5) BMW CCA rebates?
BMW Car Club of America, which anyone can join for like $75 for a 3 year membership, provides a rebate to purchasers AND leasers of a new BMW, maximum of 1 per year. Any 3-series gets $500, 5-series gets $1000, etc. So in the course of a lease for 9 years, that's 3 cars and 3 rebates vs. just 1 for purchasing the car.

6) You'd have to keep a car for many years to make purchasing cheaper
Depending on the car and interest rates and such, it could be a lot longer than you'd think before buying the car makes sense. Leasing a car for 9 years with a $600 payment = 9*12*600 = $64,800, a very large sum. But, you'd have had at least 3 new cars in that period and therefore never have paid ANY maintenance costs (BMW's include all maintenance for 4 years/50,000 miles), and avoided several replacement sets of tires (at $1250 a set...), and received 3 BMW CCA rebates. And most of that money was earning for you during the 9 years (see opportunity cost and tax savings, #1 and #2). I think it would be pretty safe to assume it's at best break-even for the owning scenario at 9 years..

7) If you own a company, LEASE!
Leasing is an expense, owning a car is a capital item that is depreciated. Suffice it to say that leasing a car through your company as a cost of doing business, thereby reducing profits of said company and thereby avoiding all taxes on that income, is unbelievably advantageous. 3-year lease costs at $600/mo are $21,600, imagine if that was discounted 33%, which is basically what the lease does when run through your company...

8) You get a new car every 2-3 years!
C'mon, that's pretty awesome! Assuming you're not paying through the nose for it (see 1-7 above :)). You can try out models/features that you don't want forever or might not be as popular and not be stuck with it on resale time (convertibles, getting a manual transmission in a model that mostly sells automatics, etc.). Tons of coolness here.

9) It's not your car! Little things won't drive you nuts
You don't have to sweat a break-in period, it won't be your car in 50,000 or 100,000 miles or whenever that would make a difference :). And if it gets a small ding (a dent of a quarter-size or smaller is okay on the lease turn-in), you don't sweat it!

10) Your sales rep will like you, so you can get better deals
When a sales rep gets you to lease, they are building a portfolio of recurring sales. If they have 600 people they have done leases for after 20 years, each of them comes back every 2-3 years on a schedule for a car (if they like you and the brand), so you basically just have to start writing the orders and life is very easy. No beating the pavement to eat. So, they are likely to work with you on the purchase price to keep that recurring revenue coming (keeping or selling more to an existing customer costs 10% of getting a new customer).

11) You can buy extra miles cheap
Before the end of the lease, you can buy extra miles cheaper than paying for overage at the last second. This makes it smart to take the lowest estimate of your miles per year and do that in the lease. At $.20 per mile, the cost at the end of the lease, you pay a lot more than normal. But at $.16 per mile, the cost 4 payments before the end of the lease, you are not that far from the standard lease cost per mile... Again, that saves you on opportunity cost (you don't pay for the miles until the end of the 3-years), and you don't risk paying for miles that you don't use (paying for them the whole 3 years).

The final analysis:

So, after all that, it came down to WHICH lease terms to take. Factoring in how many miles I might have to buy, how much tires cost and how many miles they would last, BMW CCA rebates, etc., I calculated the total lease costs over 6 years (to synch a 2 and 3 year) and did a 3 year 10k mile lease. If not for the acquisition fees and doc fees (the one-time hits), a 2 year lease would be VERY appealing. Even with them, it almost makes sense.

Resources and other miscellania:
BMW Financial Services rates (new every month, search yourself when ready)
BMW dealers will try to mark up the BMW Financial Services money factor. They can't manipulate the residual value, so find the money factor above and negotiate that. Going .0004 above is the max they are allowed, and .00015 more if you want to waive the security deposit. Mine tried for the max, .00255, it was EASY to get them down to .00225 and next time I'll get it lower. You can also pay extra security deposits, which you get back at the end of your lease, to lower that money factor even more - .0007 for each deposit I believe.
BMW Financial Services charges $625 for an acquisition fee, the dealer can mark it up (mine wanted $825).
State of NC has fixed title and tag fees. Factor those in, roll them into the lease.
BMW dealers (and all dealers) have to charge a fixed doc fee to ALL customers, it is legally non-negotiable. $399 at my dealer.
Lease Payment Calculator - I found this was precisely accurate. If your numbers don't match, the dealer hasn't told you everything (I discovered some other fees this way :)).
BMW Car Club of America

2008 BMW 335i

2007-11-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah. This thing is incredible.

BMW says 300hp, other dyno tests say significantly more.
BMW claims 0-60 in 5.4, other tests say 4.8.
If my wife had been driving this when she crashed her civic, she wouldn't have crashed.
And I'll be a LOT happier to drive to work and everywhere else now :).

Look for a post later on leasing. I did a lot of homework on that, and surprisingly it was a much better decision than paying cash or doing a loan... We'll see if I still feel that way in 3 years...

XM vs. Sirius

2007-11-19T07:56:00.000-05:00

The Odyssey van has XM Radio, which has been great. And it's the start of the NCAA Basketball season, and XM has exclusive coverage of NCAA and specifically ACC basketball...sweet for driving while a game is on, and it has a simple scoreboard that has constantly updated scores for any game.

Anywho, the new ride coming in to replace the Subaru Outback has Sirius as the only option. So, each vendor (XM and Sirius) does a $6.99/mo deal for extra subscriptions over the first, so they strongly incent you to have all of your satellite radio from a single source. And since I can add Sirius to the van for $50 in hardware, sell the XM hardware for $50, it's technically very easy for me to manage this.

So I called XM to tell them not to auto-renew my subscription when it ends in December, and I get the normal "let me transfer you to our custome retention department". They go nuts, offering free radios and discounted service. So I let them give me a year at half-price, which amounts to the identical cost to put both cars on Sirius. I win - no changes required in the van, I can still get ACC Basketball in that car, and my daily driver will have Sirius for FREE (1st year is free) and it has better normal stuff (other than ACC basketball)!

Looks like you've got to push all of your vendors. DirecTV does this BIG-TIME too, they hate to think you'll move to cable and they'll make HBO and HD feeds and everything free for 6 months if you just think about switching. Credit card companies will waive yearly fees, cut interest rates, etc. if they think you'll close your account. It's a consumers world baby!

Silence is golden

2007-11-18T20:52:00.000-05:00

Finally did a silent machine RIGHT.
I'll post on the details later, along with the Virtual Server machine I posted on a second ago. Suffice to say, I am VERY happy with the results. I even have a high-end video card (8800GTS 640mb, bought before the GT was announced) and it's still almost inaudible. I've lived with it for 3-4 months now and I'm thrilled with the results.

Coming to a driveway near me Nov. 26

2007-11-18T20:48:00.001-05:00

It's a Virtual World

2007-11-18T20:37:00.000-05:00

Well, it's taken me forever to post about this, but here's the start. Virtual Machine technology is a game-changer, which the explosion of the VMWare and Microsoft products (Virtual Server/Virtual PC/System Center Virtual Machine Manager) attest to. Of course, Microsoft also has Application Virtualization and OS Virtualization, the only vendor with end-to-end coverage for all possibly scenarios.

At home, I decided to stop messing around and do this right. I coughed up $2000 and bought a huge box - quad-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, 3TB of storage, and totally silent. I cranked that baby up and now have near instantaneous access to any of the virtual machines I need to keep my skills sharp. I also added 2 more drives for another 1TB of storage to allow me to replace my 1TB NAS device for home data storage, and that has been GREAT (much faster, much more compatible with things, much quieter, much cheaper).

Anyway, I'll blog more on the exact specs of this box, but I've been living with it for 3 months or so now and it's really amazing...I can spin up 10 VM's without problems, simulating very complex scenarios, and I have the right software included to manage a library of VM's and relevant software (ISO's of CD/DVDs for easy software installation, scripts, etc.) and make the whole thing accessible to the internet in a very secure fashion.

Shown below - VMRC Plus as the console for accessing the VM's, 7 VM's running easily, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager up.

Wow, and Ow

2007-06-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

It's been a long couple of months, full of fun and way too much work.
End of the year for me (June 22 is the official end) marks the time I start tracking every hour to make sure I'm hitting my utilization goals. Since my bonus is paid on exceeding that goal, I have to crank...that and the work at my customer is piling up faster than I can think...up to 28 projects and counting.
Lici was able to finish her teaching nicely, but it was a rough couple of weeks for both of us at the end - finals and grading put her out of commission, and we had a lot of babysitters for a while :).

We finally bought the playset for the kids (thanks to Gilbert for helping get it to the house) so they can swing and slide and climb outside, then it took over a month before there was time to build it. That day was awesome - the posse arrived at 1pm on Saturday, stayed until 8pm and it was done (had a tiny bit of help from the sunray forums). The kids were THRILLED!

The nerds and I then spent a long weekend nerding out hard at Gilberts. Having Vance, Tom, and Guy come in from out of town rocked. Dawn of War was a great game, solid networking and a somewhat working A/C made it all complete. That and TMC putting on a perfect show :). Lici had a long weekend with the kids but survived intact.

The next weekend Lici went to Orlando for a 4-day conference with all of her buddies, leaving me to handle things. It was a GREAT weekend, had tons of fun with my bears, and then Lici came back with some phat shades :).

After 2 weeks of 14 hour days, we finally got to Eric "Shane" Dawson's wedding, being held in lovely San Sebastian, Spain! Wednesday had me running to the airport after squeezing in a few hours at my customer, 5pm and we're off. Monday we're back at 3pm and back to work on Tuesday morning, but what a weekend! More on that later, and at Jake's blog.

I was able to snag a few gifts, including these nifty masks. Tiger and Kitty Cat faceoff!

Can't wait til Friday night and the end of these insanely long days - 1-2 hours of kid time max per day, 1-2 hours of book/movie, and the rest is work/sleep...ugh.

Kiki and Popo MAMBO!

2006-11-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

Office, Vista, and Exchange OH MY!

2006-11-12T21:15:00.000-05:00

Everything shipped. SWEET!
Office 2007 is the first version of Office in YEARS to excite me, and it REALLY excites me! And amazingly, everyone I've had use it agrees - this is a BIG improvement. I write better docs, faster, and I use more of the power of the system for sure. And for companies, Sharepoint and Groove REALLY integrate well and have power, vs. the kinda lame stuff previously. I'm sold. Congrats to these teams, they really hit it out of the park.

Vista is out the door, I'm about to upgrade all of my machines. It's SWEET, and carries a LOT of infrastructure with it that will be the basis for tweakers, developers, and such to create REALLY neat interfaces and gadgets, let alone real apps. Oh, and the security is TIGHT, to the point of being annoying sometimes :).

Exchange is another big cash cow for MSFT, and rightly so - it destroys all comers in the messaging space. The new OWA is amazing, let alone the back-end improvements.

Happy days for MSFT stock owners!

Techno Refresh

2006-11-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

Holy mackerel, the tech has been flying fast and furious recently.

Brought my media center PC into the office - I've stayed with my HD DirecTiVo vs. Media Center for now...we'll join that fight again once I get cablecard support from TimeWarner and can put Vista's Media Center mojo to work. While I had it around, I upgraded the CPU from an Athlon64 3000+ to an Athlon64 x2 4200+ - dual core and 50% faster clock = MUCH nicer. Tossed in another gig of RAM for 2GB, upgraded the video to a nice 7600GT (the former 6600GT was fine, but the new one has more RAM and remains heat-pipe only for sweet silent operation).

With that done, I tossed in a new Dell 2407FPW (24" widescreen LCD), and put the 20" to the side for dual-monitor joy. That old Dell 2000FP will be moving to ebay soon, to be replaced by a sideways tilted 1907 or 2007, AWESOME for web browsing and such and with a MUCH sleeker look and brighter display.

Getting my variety of USB hard drives in order was next, so I picked up a Buffalo Terastation, a true NAS solution - bunch of RAID-5 disks in a box with a network cable and a web interface. That thing was up and running in 5 minutes, truly great, and has the security I need without headaches managing it. All of my data from my laptops and my PCs, and the usb hard drives, is now on that NAS device and accessible from any other device. And it's all redundant. Now the USB drives are for VMs and off-site backups to my safety deposit boxes...100GB of pictures and videos of the kids already, 65GB of MP3's...

With all that data on the network, I realized the network speed just needed to get cranked. My netgear pre-N wireless router has been FANTASTIC, so I picked up a $60 8-port Netgear gig-e switch (can't BELIEVE they're that cheap). The NAS device now feels like local storage, if not faster...it's FANTASTIC!

Finally, one of the laptops crashed, which has been fun trying to recover some data that hadn't been backed up for 3-4 months (fortunately, nothing critical, but JUST IN CASE I've gotta go after it). So, with Dell having their quarter end last week, I picked up a nice Dell 1505 laptop at 30% off, loaded with a Core 2 Duo 7200, 2GB of RAM, 7200RPM disk, bluetooth, wireless goodness, etc. And the best laptop screen I've ever seen - WUXGA TrueLife+ 15" widescreen - fantastic!

And I'm spent...but wait, there's more! For work, with all of the new products coming out this year, I need a revamped lab. The main PC, with 2GB of RAM and such, can do VMs pretty well, but I need a dedicated lab. So, I'm about to order a $850 box that can run 8+ VMs at full speed simultaneously. Hardware these days is incredible... Core 2 Duo + 4GB RAM + a tiny microatx MB and case + dual internal hard drives + USB external drives = Virtual Server goodness. Maybe I'll save the 2000FP monitor for that machine so I don't have to use a switchbox or something equally inelegant...

Vacation ain't always what it's cracked up to be

2006-10-24T00:23:00.000-05:00

Ketchup posting

2006-10-14T11:17:00.000-05:00

Kiki and Popo are 21 months old...it goes fast. Kiki is starting to say sentences, Popo clearly understands everything but greatly prefers B and D sounds to anything real...everything is a BAAA or dada or mama.
We bought a minivan...jet black and tinted out for maximum evilage. Say goodbye to my trusty hoopty - bought it for $3500, drive it for 50,000 expensed miles @ $20,000, sold it for $750. I love it!
Alica is slaving away at Davidson - teaching two classes is a full-time job, and then some, but mostly because she pushes for perfection in her work.
I'm still cooking over at my project, keeping everyone in-line and coming up with kewl solutions every day. If we're lucky, they'll sign in the near future for another 1-2 years of my time...giddy up!
I had a decent review for the first time in 3 years, and I have a new manager (or three). Bonus was tasty - we get paid on two bonuses, one hard metric on how much you billed during the year, one soft metric on "how you achieved against your goals". That last one was ALL you were measured on before, and while utilization was a big piece of it, it still let managers play favorites a LOT, and that happened to me on the positive and negative end of the equation. Anywho, I spanked out the utilization, so even though I was robbed on the other piece, I couldn't be totally hosed. And while I have a new manager, who would be great, it appears I'm moving under new management so I'll have a new big boss and new immediate boss, both of which should be GREAT. And most importantly, I'm back on a local team...woohoo!!!
We've bounced around between different house options, even working the financials to see if we can swing a $1m place on Ridgewood (we could, but if there was a blip in one of our jobs it wouldn't be fun). So, we're sticking around on Hassell, as the houses on streets we like more are insanely priced and still need work, or have NO lot, or whatever. Anywho, so we'll likely be doing a tear down again. We strongly considered the small addition, but that's been nixed again. I'm sure it will all change 20 more times before we do it, but hopefully this summer the work begins.

Woohoo!

Back in the US of A!

2006-08-10T06:11:00.000-05:00

You don't know how lucky you are...that you haven't had to travel with 2 1.5 year olds on a 10 hour flight in the middle of the day... Those babies were WIRED, we barely made it...

But we're back, and the kids have grown and learned a LOT. It's FANTASTIC to be able to talk with them now, and they're sooo much happier. And they're now going to sleep and staying asleep much better, though Kiki has a little more work to do there.

Anywho, videos and pictures later from the big trip.

Davidson or bust!

2006-07-02T18:13:00.000-05:00

Lici got a job at Davidson.

I miss my babies!

2006-07-02T08:32:00.000-05:00

Tuesday was a crazy day - Alica, Kiki, Popo, and Sona took off for Slovakia for 6 weeks. I'll join them at the end of July for about 2 weeks, but I'll be apart from my kids for 4 weeks... Even the first night was rough - I imagined hearing them cry, the sounds of their footsteps... But I am sleeping better and getting a LOT of work done :).

Sleeping on the way to Slovakia, Popo got the two seats, Kiki got a sweet hammock-like setup, and Alica got 1/4 of the rest of where Popo slept :).

In the Munich airport:

And finally, they go native (wearing traditional Slovak gardening outfits):

And here's what I miss most of all, their nutty antics. This one went on for 30 minutes or so right before bedtime.

In Production!

2006-06-16T07:43:00.000-05:00

My >1 year project is now in production. Of course, because it's a service, it isn't doing much yet, but within a few weeks it will start deploying new machines and upgrades, and within a few months we're expecting a few million in hard $$ savings. I love it!

Meanwhile, BillG is leaving production. Ugh.

And finally, Popo and Kiki are in production, causing trouble everywhere.

Recent Reading

2006-06-04T15:00:00.000-05:00

I got caught in about 6 books at once recently, just wrapping a few up.

On a recent trip to San Diego, I was stuck in the airport for 6 hours waiting on a flight and picked up Al Franken's new book, The Truth (with jokes). Finished it before the flight. That dude is awesome. I sure hope his epilogue pans out - we all look back on these last 6 or so years as the dark years, and it leads to a time of enlightenment for the US and the world as the public backlash to the corruption, lies, death, and destruction brings in a new era.

A few weeks ago, my light reading was The Know-It-All : One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. The tale of an editor of Esquire reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't sound like all that, but it's hysterical. Well worth the read for grins, and you just might learn something too.

Today I finished a long-term project,
John Adams, a fantastic book about probably the single-most important man in the founding of America. He led an amazing and exemplary life, unlike his on-and-off again friend Thomas Jefferson.

Interesting factoid - the two main people involved in debating for independence and writing the declaration, the two ambassadors to France to gain support during the war, etc. etc., both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the commonly celebrated Independence Day.
Interesting factoid 2 - July 2, 1776 was when the Continental Congress voted to declare independence, which they all thought and wrote about being a HUGE day that would be celebrated for centuries. July 4 was just the order to print the documents, which were signed over the next month or two - it was a pretty minor day according to the writings of the time...go figure.

And I've got another cool one in the works, written by my next-door-neighbor growing up: To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever : A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry . Whew, that's a mouthful! The URL is shorter than the title!

It's the big one!

2006-05-24T02:07:00.000-05:00

Microsoft acquired Softricity today. This is something no one knows much about, but will change how EVERYONE uses a computer - other than a major interface change to solid voice, cheap holograms or another paradigm shift, this is the biggest thing in IT today.

Simply put, Softricity allows applications to be virtualized.

This means there is no more application compatibility issue moving between OS's, and a HUGE host of other issues (from licensing to uninstalls that work to eliminating DLL-hell forever). Because it's part of MSFT now, this may make it into the OS itself (read - free to most people). Basically, it takes an application and packages it in a proprietary format. The install package then runs inside of a virtual environment, but instead of virtualizing a whole machine like VMWare/Virtual PC/etc., only the OS underneath the app is virtualized - support the core Windows API's in the Softricity wrapper, and the app no longer needs to know what OS it is on, nor does it need to write to a common registry, use common dll's, etc. And they manage to keep DCOM, OLE, etc. all working... There are a host of other neato things it can do, including streaming apps to you on-demand, but that's the gist.

In short, your PC just became a LOT easier to use. Like managing config.sys files and such, I think we'll just forget about the pains of PC management within the next 5 years or so... We can automate OS deployment with state capture, and now we can automate the app compat for enterprises. For home users, apps will just work.

WOOHOOO!

First pics were enough, now video, soon smell-o-vision...

2006-05-16T08:40:00.000-05:00

Pizza Snobbery

2006-05-14T19:49:00.000-05:00

Had pizza tonight from Pepperoni's. $45 with tip for 2 large's with 2 toppings each, nothing fancy.
We've had a bunch from Luisa's Pizza over the last few weeks. They are similar in price but don't deliver, but are essentially walking distance so who cares. Anywho, they at least have some funky wood-fired crust and pesto sauces and artichoke stuff, kind of like a PieWorks-lite.

It's hard to make an argument for those after returning to a Papa Johns special a few nights ago - $20 for 2 pizzas, a desert pizza, some drinks, tax, tip, etc. You could easily get similar for $15 or less with their specials.

I'm done with snob pizza - more Myers Park specialities, cranking the price without offering much value other than bragging rights...

Life news nuggets

2006-05-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

The mother-in-law returns end of May, Lici and the kids take off for Slovakia 3rd week in June, and I fly out first thing in August for a week, and then Lici, me, and the kids fly back together. Nutty.

We are nearing completion on phase 1 of my gig - my longest-term project ever, by far the most complex and interesting, and some amazing business benefits keep popping up, WAY over our calculations at the start of the project in our business case...gotta love that!

I've got whitepapers in development for a couple of interesting scenarios that I've encountered recently, looking to get some great press out of these. That + my incredible utilization this year should take me home to the promised land of a good bonus and good review.

And that leads to the house - we'll meet with the contractor before Lici leaves and discuss the options one final time and then make a decision and hopefully get to work.

Oh, and we got a lovely bicycle stroller (one of those thingies that you pull behind your bike, seats two babies) at a yard sale for $40. It ROCKS.

Narnia is great

2006-04-10T07:25:00.000-05:00

to POOP on!

Seriously, comparing Narnia to Lord of the Rings shows what a difference a talented director with a vision makes. The Narnia story doesn't feel connected, lot's of random scenes, and whiney children that instantly transform into heroic warriors. There are moments where the story is just compelling, but there are times when the story would have been compelling except the director has the camera change angles 25 times in 3 seconds and never really captures the scene in ANY of them.

And who is this thing targetted at? Young kids would love the talking beavers and heroic kids, but there is way too much evil (wolves attacking, huge battles (although bloodless)) depicted for really young kids. Maybe it's the 10-13 crowd that they're going for - seems pretty narrow...

Beach blanket babies

2006-04-02T23:48:00.000-05:00

Christian and Maja ROCK! Thanks to the Weiss family, we got to spend a weekend at their family beach house in Isle of Palms, just outside of Charleston. We stayed in the master suite, which was PHAT, and had a wonderful day on the beach. It was the first time on a beach for Kiki and Popo, and the first time in the ocean.

That's the house behind us, the middle top floor balcony is off the master suite we stayed in. The house on the right is Kyle Petty's...

Popo plays his banjo

I see your schwartz is as big as mine...

Going for a stroll

Who's happier?

Pushing Popo

I sentence you to hang until you are DEAD DEAD DEAD!

2006-03-23T21:15:00.000-05:00

Jury duty is kewl. I get off work, get to hang out with 70 of my closest friends in a quaint 1960's courthouse, and I get to decide the fate of another human.

Here's the case:

HUGE party at an apartment complex. Apartment complex has one of those security gates (pretty flimsy) that requires a card or a code or one of the residents to push a button to lift the gate. Police are called at 2am, 15 or so arrive to a party of 400-500 people spilling out of the apartment (with a DJ) into a central area. The police can get in to the gated complex easily because the gate has been broken clean off, which has happened a lot.

Cop hears a loud noise while breaking up the party, turns, sees a car backed up over the curb onto the grassy median, and a one-way sign now firmly underneath the car. Car starts forward, cop gets in his car nearby and pulls the car over before it leaves the apartment complex. The driver is a hot UNCC student, blows a 0.11. She admits (in court) to being being drunk and driving.

BUT, she claims that the apartment complex is not a "public vehicular area", which is part of the requirement for a DUI. It did have a lot of signs up at the gate saying towing enforced and so forth, and the road from the highway to the complex went pretty much straight there, nothing else on the road. The complex has a roadway system with normal signage like a standard road (one-way signs, street names, etc.).

So we had to deliberate on that. Our initial poll showed I was the only one holding my position. I worked my magic, and turned EVERYONE within an hour. You decide what I did, why I did it, and what you think the right decision is.

Here are the relevant statutes:

NC Statute 20-4.01:30 and 32, 20-138.1

"§ 20‑138.1. Impaired driving.
(a) Offense. – A person commits the offense of impaired driving if he drives any vehicle upon any highway, any street, or any public vehicular area within this State:
(1) While under the influence of an impairing substance; or
(2) After having consumed sufficient alcohol that he has, at any relevant time after the driving, an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more."

"(32) Public Vehicular Area. – Any area within the State of North Carolina that meets one or more of the following requirements:
a. The area is generally open to and used by the public for vehicular traffic, including by way of illustration and not limitation any drive, driveway, road, roadway, street, alley, or parking lot upon the grounds and premises of any of the following:
1. Any public or private hospital, college, university, school, orphanage, church, or any of the institutions, parks or other facilities maintained and supported by the State of North Carolina or any of its subdivisions.
2. Any service station, drive‑in theater, supermarket, store, restaurant, or office building, or any other business, residential, or municipal establishment providing parking space for customers, patrons, or the public.
3. Any property owned by the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the State of North Carolina. (The inclusion of property owned by the United States in this definition shall not limit assimilation of North Carolina law when applicable under the provisions of Title 18, United States Code, section 13).
b. The area is a beach area used by the public for vehicular traffic.
c. The area is a road opened to vehicular traffic within or leading to a subdivision for use by subdivision residents, their guests, and members of the public, whether or not the subdivision roads have been offered for dedication to the public."

Kids top moments - pictures

2006-03-21T13:45:00.000-05:00

Top moments with the monkeys, year 1

2006-03-20T08:27:00.000-05:00

The firsts: the first time Kiki grabbed an object, the first time Popo turned over from his back, the first time both had a laughing fit (thanks Lisa and Kim), the first time Kiki walked, the first time Popo RAN, the first time Kiki yelled Da-da!

The day both they and I were healthy (after 4 months+).

Waking up with Popo and Kiki standing at the side of our bed, laying their heads down on the mattress and staring at us.

Kiki, Popo, Alica, and me dancing together to the spiderman theme song.

Kiki and Popo running to the book bin, each grabbing a book and bringing it to me, and both sitting down in front of me for a story.

Kiki chasing Zena the warrior cat around outside, squealing in pleasure.

Popo picking up boxes and pushing several chairs around the den, marveling in his power.

Waking up at 6am to find that Kiki slept through the night.

Popo walking around the kitchen with a large semi-transparent scarf covering him head to toe, waving his arms like a ghost.

Coming home after work, opening the door, and hearing Kiki and Popo racing towards the front door screaming Daddy!

Intestines

2006-03-13T15:50:00.000-05:00

I hate mine. And they hate me. This damn 24-hour stomach flu thing that's been going around finally got us. Kiki got it Friday night, Popo Saturday night, and I got it Sunday. Let me just go on record saying this is the most painful thing I have experienced in recent memory, with my intestinal issues in Mexico being worse but 15+ years ago.

Anywho, with the spray of goo phase over, I hope, I'm lingering in a post-white-blood-cell haze. And my two other roomies, Lici and Sonicka, are in dire fear of any gurgles in their stomaches.

BEWARE!

Sick but Cute

2006-03-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

I'm talking about me.

Now, on to the babies.

February came early

2006-02-05T22:41:00.000-05:00

How has it been two months already?

Kiki and Popo are walking now. Kiki can go fully independently all over the house, smiling the whole way. It's unbearably cute. Popo still walks behind his little car, but he's doing that much better now and can walk well while holding our hands.

I've been a little sick recently, likely due to too much travel. Popped up to Seattle for TechReady2, the big MSFT training event, and went skiing at Whistler for 4 days beforehand. When I got back into the US, I found out Popo was in the hospital and flew home on the redeye to take care of Kiki. Popo is fine, but it was a long week.

Sona arrived to help out again for 6 weeks right after this, and I took off for another trip to Seattle for the Windows Vista TAP - Rapid Deployment with some Wachovia people. I went skiing in Whistler again for the weekend, some of the best skiing I've ever had. Perfect snow, big football games drew away the normal traffic, and I was able to hit my first double-black diamond. WOOHOO! The airlift was great - Vista looks like a solid product, HUGE amounts of improvements scattered all throughout the system.

Alica is wrapping up her writing on the dissertation, which is GIGANTIC! Hopefully she'll get that done by the time Sona leaves, and by summer she'll have defended it and can graduate!

We've been doing great things at work, constantly uncovering new cost savings for the bank that we can claim for our project. The core deliverable was tested out last week and we are exceeding all expectations. WOOHOO!

Finally, I played a ton of poker this weekend while locked away in my office (too sick to go outside, too contagious to take care of kids, not too sick to do something). Saturday was my day - hit 2nd place in a $4,500 prize pool tournament, winning over $1000, and then hit another one later that night coming in 7th in a $8,500 tournament for $400! A month ago or so I placed 7th in a similar event, winning $500, but I really wanted a $1000+ victory. The babies are getting a new stroller and some new toys out of that :).

Happy times at home!

And then it was December

2005-12-04T12:33:00.000-05:00

Time flies with these little monkeys.

Sona, the best mother-in-law in the world, has just returned home after being with us for yet another 6-week period, and she already has her next visit booked for mid-January. That works out great as it turns out I'll be in Seattle for a big training event (and some awesome skiing with the guys) for 1.5 weeks, and another week for the Windows Vista Rapid Deployment conference (and some awesome skiing with the guys).

Meanwhile, Alica continues to work on her dissertation, getting VERY close to being done with the number crunching phase and starting the final write-up of results. The kids are still in daycare during the week when they're not sick, letting her get some work done, but it's slow when Sona is gone (nearly nothing gets done on the weekends). Jobs are going to be over a year away given the PhD won't come until this Summer 2006, but that's okay and gives us some options on the house remodel and potentially a move.

In my world, work progresses fantastically on the customer front. We're doing REALLY challenging and impactful work, and as mentioned earlier I'll now be leading this customer through an early adopter program for Windows Vista, meaning we will deploy 1000 desktops on Vista by June... And there are tons of side projects I'm involved with that are stretching my skills, including app/dev architecture, large-scale database design, and some significant political challenges. Tons of fun.

On the work front at MSFT, I am skipping vacations and otherwise doing whatever it takes to hit the measurements they are using, regardless if I agree with them. I'll take my top review this year and get another job within the company; as I found out from the last round, I've got to have that good review to leave. The good thing is I have a much better understanding of where I stand, have very frank discussions with my manager regularly (and in writing), so there won't be any surprises. On track for 50% bonus for the year, good stock, etc.

Finally, the house decision keeps varying depending on the news of the day. With the Leskos getting a 3-month sweet gig in Seattle, I keep thinking of moving, and we wouldn't want to invest a ton if we're leaving. On the other hand, even more houses are doing massive renovations on the street and one has even listed for $789k, so we can DEFINITELY make money with even the full remodel and likely with the teardown. We're considering a smaller remodel that will be MUCH less expensive, MUCH less intrusive - just adding an office and master-suite where our garage currently is, maybe converting the current half-bath to a full, and do the basic repair work (siding, roof, some windows, gutters) that the full renovation would have had to do as part of the project. We can live through that easily, get 700 sq. ft. more, add 2 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, and still do the front porch and rear deck to complete the place.

Definitely staying busy and having fun. Gotta blog more than once a month, these monsters are rough :).

People Like Me

2005-10-24T23:56:00.000-05:00

Feedback from people that love me, and I still get a terrible review and turned down for a new job...

Account Manager

Mark is one of the brightest, deep technical folks I’ve worked with in 5 yrs at MS and backs up his talk with hands-on experience and passion that is very persuasive to customers. He is a Rock Star and would be an awesome addition to the strong team you are building. Feel free to give me a call with any questions on Mark or my interactions with him over the years.

Account Manager

In short – RUN (don’t walk) to HIRE this guy. I have been at MSFT for 12 years working in many capacities out of Charlotte, and worked w/ Mark for probably 6 or 7 of those (since whenever he came) and I have never seen such a passionate, knowledgeable, awesome and INCREDBILY consistent MSFT employee (I mean this guy NEVER has a bad day!). I have used him in my accounts in the past and he doesn’t just hit solid doubles and triples every time he gets in front of one – he hits home runs. Customers LOVE him and he advances sales with every discussion.

I frankly have been trying to steal him over to one of the team’s I have been on for years, but he has always had some “gig” going on w/ MCS that stopped him from jumping over.

Sales Manager

I nearly jumped out of my chair with disappointment when I heard he was finally considering a sales role as I’ve been recruiting him for the last 5 years to come to my team for a sales position. When I was a sales manager, I tried unsuccessfully to get him to my team every time I had a TS position open, so you are a very lucky man in my book.
...
His enthusiasm, passion, drive for results and relentless desire to win have always made him one of my favorite consultants to work with.

Mark is the type of person who makes people around him better because of his thirst to learn more. Back in the RFP days for messaging and directory services it was always Mark Sparling who was there for me the night before the document was due checking our factual representation. He set the bar very high for his peers and demonstrated time and time again his commitment both to Microsoft and our value of making other’s great. As a result our little slice of Microsoft in Raleigh, NC was a better place.

Good luck with the interviews and I hope you can convince him to really come to sales this time.

MCS Engagement Manager

1. One of Mark’s many gifts as a consultant is that of teamwork. He very quickly can coalesce a team, building trust and teamwork while at the same time showing incredible leadership. The team gave me direct feedback on him indicating that his technical, management, and team work skills got them to where they needed to be ahead of schedule.
2. Another area where Mark excels is in expectation delivery. Mark is very clear with the customer regarding project deliverables, risks, issues, etc. He does this in a supportive, yet firm manner that allows the customer to get involved and own these areas. Direct feedback from the customer is overwhelmingly positive.
3. Mark exceeded expectations in many areas, including leadership skills, working with new product technologies, communications, commitment and thought leadership. The best example of this is demonstrated through the immediate benefit received from his skills once on site, the extension requested and the Very Satisfied customer survey rating. Mark did an outstanding and noteworthy job on this engagement (as he does on all engagements he has worked on for me), proving once again, that he can take customer challenges and turn them into great experiences for both the customer and Microsoft. I know with confidence that when I put Mark on an engagement it will result in a happy customer situation and result in making MCS look great. Mark has been working at levels that exceed his current Senior II level and should be moved to a more appropriate level for his skill set. Management needs to ensure that Mark is taken care of so he can continue to make these kinds of contributions to our customers while at the same time providing challenges to Mark’s professional career. It is a true pleasure to have Mark on my engagements.

Baby Pics

2005-10-24T23:50:00.000-05:00

No job for Alica

2005-10-24T23:48:00.000-05:00

When it rains, it pours. Alica was replaced at UNC-Charlotte because she wouldn't have her PhD in time for the spring semester. We knew it was coming, but it still sucks. Fortunately, it frees her to apply for several other positions at UNC-Charlotte, including ones paying far more in the Business school.

More interestingly, with my job going where it is, we may consider moving to somewhere more interesting as she applies for jobs over the next few months. Mountains are goodness, we'll see.

Healthy Babies are GOLD

2005-10-23T23:00:00.000-05:00

We've had serious sickness in the house for nearly 3 weeks. It's been hell - crunch time for my woman and her PhD work, insanity on my job, and sick babies and parents...we're surviving only because Popo didn't get all that sick and was able to go to day care, and Lisa was able to come over and help out in the afternoon 3 days in a row.

Fortunately, it seems to have passed as of this weekend. The house is a mess, haven't done laundry in weeks, and we're exhausted. My womain meets Monday with the new boss's, hopefully she'll still have a job given the PhD won't be done after the sickness downtime. Meanwhile, my bank gig was formally extended for 12 months (it'll actually extend one month at a time, but it's set for 12 months). It's going to be fun, local, and 100% billable so my review next year (before I try to leave consulting again) should be rock solid (our reviews are now purely utilization).

No dice

2005-10-23T22:54:00.000-05:00

My 2.5 review is clearly causing an issue. Interviews take place, I'm #1 for BOTH jobs per the interviewers informal comments afterwards. I start doing the new job with my peer, and it's fun and I'm good at it.

Manager calls me the following week to informally offer the job (making sure I wanted it). He hears about the 2.5, says I'll need to talk to his boss and he'll have to do some investigation into my history. No sweat, I've got a great history and great reputation. My conversation with the big boss goes well enough, but he's extremely worried about the 2.5. I get on the wire, tons of people send in recommedations for me. I think I'm in, but I get the call on the 14th saying I am not getting the job. All of a sudden, my interview wasn't so great and I have a terrible reputation, but the 2.5 isn't a factor at all. Several HR people are cc'd on an e-mail saying the same thing, and the phone conversation was held on a bridge line even though it was 1-1 (meaning it was likely recorded). All that says I'm at risk for my job, let alone new jobs...

So, I try to ping my HR contacts 1-2 more times, and on 10/21 I ping the top HR person in the company. She responds in seconds, and I should know what's going on by mid-week.

To be continued...

Popo can crawl!

2005-10-08T11:53:00.000-05:00

Finally, our little man has learned to crawl forward! If we separate all of the toys from him, he'll eventually move from sitting to crawling and do it quite well now. That little lazy turd just got used to us bringing him his toys, so now we've got to break that habit :).

Angus McLees

2005-10-08T11:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the 2nd anniversary of his passing. We lit a candle at the house and put up a picture of him (bonking Jason Smith on the head in my room at college). He was at times the stinkiest of us, definitely one of the brightest and most physically talented, but most of all he had the most heart, and I wish I had spent more time with him. Time is limited, make the most of it.

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

2005-10-08T10:13:00.000-05:00

OH YEAH!
This movie delivers. If you've seen the original Wallace and Gromit 30-minute sets, this movie is that done better and much longer. It's encouraging to see that not all feature movies from cult favorites turn into crap - witness Serenity and now this as two shining examples of movies done right.

Tons of silliness with rabbits and Wallace and wonky English-types, lots of little jokes scattered off to the side, easy to miss, but the movie was so full of goodness they didn't need to draw attention to every one, and it makes it worth seeing again to capture details.

I LOVE IT.

What's new in the life o' me

2005-10-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

Isn't that what this whole damn thing is about? Whateva'.

2-3 weeks ago I received a job-threatening review. Why, after 7 years of being constantly rated as a top performer with all kinds of awards, commendations, special bonuses, etc.? Because I took time off work to care for my kids when they were delivered 2 months early and suffering life-threatening illness in the NICU. Needless to say, I'm engaged with HR and battling the forces of evil.

Meanwhile, I interviewed for 3 jobs last week (all at MSFT). The one I really want is a pure sales job - I have a territory, quota, and a bonus schedule to match (read: time to get PAID). Unfortunately, I was competing with my best buddy, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Last Friday, at my current project for my current job, we presented the financial case we've been building for 5 months. Senior management said we'd done an incredible job, and we're approved for the full enterprise-wide deployment. That means 12+ months of consulting work locally, and great work with a great team. Too bad I'm leaving.

I got the call Monday night from the hiring manager, and I got the best job of the bunch. SWEET. I keep my current salary and level, but gain a huge bonus with a multiplier based on my sales goals, could be incredible. But he still has to check with my current mananger and HR because of my review. Should be a formality, but still makes me nervous.

Now I'm splitting my time between my current gig with a project that just wants to run after being kept caged up for 5 months, and the new gig (that I don't officially have yet) where I'm 4 months behind and need to start cranking.

Oh, and my woman is still going insane trying to finish her PhD dissertation. She meets with the Dean of the school and her direct boss on Thursday, they're worried about her having the PhD by January when she is supposed to start teaching. Unfortunately, her very first class is a PhD level class, so it's important that she actually already has her degree... Unfortunately, it appears she cannot get it before the end of the Spring semester due to some technicalities at UNC-CH...and that assumes she finishes the work, which is a challenge.

Meanwhile, the babies are doing insanely great. Kiki can crawl to anything, and climb up anything. At 9 months, but really 7 months given her premature delivery, she's already doing 11+ month-old stuff. We're afraid she'll be walking in a month... Meanwhile, Popo seems slow in comparison but he's a little ahead of the curve himself. He still crawls backwards only, but can sit perfectly and transition from crawling to sitting to crawling easily. More importantly, they're both incredibly cute and cuddly, smiling and laughing and playing all the time.
The daycare, is working out great, taking the kids for 4-8 hours per day M-F. That lets Alica work, me take a break if I'm home, and Sona (mother-in-law) can clean my shorts ;). Popo was holding a spoon at daycare, another kid (same age) tried to grab it from him. Popo just held on, all casual. The other kid tried a few more times, Popo finally looked at him, opened his hand, and giggled. That boy is a hoss, strong as hell! Kiki was playing with a bucket, another kid came over and tried to take it. Kiki just stared her down, and 1 minute later Kiki was playing with 2 buckets - hers and that kids! She's definitely the boss...

Still contemplating the big house stuff. We'll see how my gig is going, see if I'm going to hit/exceed my quota by May/June (end of fiscal year), and that'll greatly impact our cash position. Meanwhile, hopefully Alica will be in a good paying job, and happy doing it. If both jobs are good, we'll either buy another house and tear it down and build new, or salvage from our place and demolish/build new. If things are uncertain in either job, we'll sit still, possibly move somewhere fun :).

WorD!

Movies

2005-09-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

OldBoy: The ultimate movie about revenge. Definitly a few moments of classic Japanese violence, but mostly incredibly well shot and acted, with twists that just rock.
Buddy: Great Norwegian film about normal life. Has sappy moments, but overal it's just funny, and not just because of the moon language they're speaking... Full of hotties too...
The Aristocrats: In theaters now - strange, but funny. A good movie to see with JC.

Soon to be watched:
Together
Ikiru
Silverado

Books

2005-09-18T00:45:00.000-05:00

Recent reads:
Lance Armstrong's War: good stuff about what it really takes to win in professional cycling. Lance is doping.
Drug Lords: sucked, too much of factual narration, not enough story telling. And there's plenty of story to tell, as shown by...
Killing Pablo: great story of the rise and eventual death of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel.
Making Love (The Bruce Campbell Way): Super fun read, totally light.
1776: Great storytelling from the year that almost ended the USA.
Harry Potter :)

Up next:
The Physics of Superheroes (once it releases on Sept 29)
finish Collapse
finish Guns Germs and Steel

Looking for good reads in the history department: US, world, the church

Babies

2005-09-17T22:21:00.000-05:00

The kids...

Build or remodel?

2005-09-12T21:23:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking of the value of remodeling vs. just tear down and build new.

Remodel = $220,000 or so for our dream setup, 8 months+ of work, results in ~3100-3200 sq. ft. of nice space, 5br, 4.5bath.

Tear down and rebuild = $250,000 or so for a similar spec house, but it would have 9' ceilings, all new everything (plumbing, electrical, etc.) vs. mostly new everything, better flow, and be done in 6 months with fewer surprises...

We could keep our kitchen cabinets, sink, granite counters, appliances, light fixtures, new windows/doors, electrical boxes, HVAC system, etc. that we just put in the remodeled space, and the education we got in the process. I figure we'd only lose about $10k vs. having just done the tear-down to start with.

Seems like a no-brainer, but I'm not 100% certain of what it would cost to build a new 3100 sq. ft. house, subtracting maybe $20-40k worth of stuff by re-using some salvaged parts from the current house. I'm guessing $85-95 per sq. ft., which should be $260-300k roughly, and that variation is just enough to be a problem. Gotta go across the street tomorrow and see what the new house cost to build...

Finally a stable wireless network

2005-09-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

After trying high-gain antennas and all kinds of other stuff, I finally just replaced my Linksys G router with a Netgear MIMO NetRange (model 824) and the NIC in my worst-case machine with a Netgear 311WPN MIMO PCI card. I'm only getting 5.5-11mbps on average, but it's solidly connected. With the linksys, even with high-gain antennas, I was 0-2.2mbps, and usually couldn't connect at all. If I pull the case away from the wall a little and move some of the 6 other components off of it a little, I get 108mbps connections. Can't wait to finally get that damn AV furniture and get things looking good in that room...

WORD!

Katrina links

2005-09-10T18:28:00.000-05:00

Article written before hurricane hits about likely damage and mandatory evacuation.

Story about false rumors of killings/rapes/etc. in the astrodome/convention center/baton rouge, shooting at helicopters, etc.

Wikipedia entry for Hurricane Katrina (FANTASTIC source of info)

I'm looking for the specifics about what the feds are allowed to do when (can the National Guard/Army be sent in by George without the Governor/other locals requesting it, what exactly does FEMA do when a Disaster Area is declared (as it was on Aug 29), etc.)...

Microsoft Sucks

2005-09-09T18:42:00.000-05:00

It's an epidemic in the company these days...too many metrics, middle managers adding zero value, direction-less product lines, etc.

Buck Fush

2005-09-05T09:32:00.000-05:00

Google for "Impeach Bush" reaches new hit high.

Vote to Impeach:
http://www.votetoimpeach.org/
http://www.petitiontoimpeach.com/

Sweet stuff you need:

Popo the Dog

2005-09-02T14:50:00.000-05:00

MCE Parts and thoughts

2005-08-18T18:50:00.000-05:00

Everying arrived yesterday, got built after a lovely poker game (4:30am completion...ugh), and is wowing the wife already.

Silverstone LC17 case
Seasonic S12-430 power supply
Gigabyte NForce4 Ultra MB (passive cooling on northbridge)
AMD64 3000+
Zalman CNPS7700-Cu CPU cooler (HUGE)
Gigabyte 6600GT with passive cooling
1 GB RAM
Seagate Barracuda 300GB SATA-2 hard drive
Plextor DVD-DL
Media Center IR and Remote

Coming later: NTSC tuner now that it appears I have a way to control a cable STB and receive HD content into Media Center. If that works out, bye-bye TiVo, and I'll be down to a single box for my entire home entertainment rack. All music, videos, pictures, DVD playing, PVR functions, etc. will be through this one PC. SWEET.

So far, this thing is looking good, is quiet, and Media Center went in without a single hitch. Either I've gotten good in my old age and 5 billionth PC build, or this stuff is just getting way easier. I'll post later on my software experiences, but for $1200, this is a hell of a parts list for a quiet and powerful HTPC (all from NewEgg.com).

Media Center PC on the way

2005-08-16T09:11:00.000-05:00

Just ordered (Sunday night) my parts for my Home Theater PC running Windows Media Center Edition. Goals: silent computer, play DVDs and music to replace DVD player, display pictures/videos on big screen, browse/e-mail on big screen, game on big screen, internet/local radio with timeshifting. The big thing missing: TV. I am going to try an option for getting cable signals into Media Center over firewire, allowing MCE to seamlessly record even HD signals. The HD TiVo still rocks for TV, but I'd love to move to MCE eventually...

Pics and specs later.

Popo's Pants

2005-08-16T09:04:00.000-05:00

My little dude is having his pants let out right now. His belly is too big for pants that fit him...like father, like son...

What will they make next?

2005-08-11T07:46:00.000-05:00

This just totally rocks.

Life with Slovaks

2005-08-09T09:39:00.000-05:00

Week 4 of the Slovak invasion has begun. Sona is a superhero, got a work ethic that just won't stop, and Igor is a man looking for a project (other than babies). He's a good pair of hands when you need him with them, but he really wants to build a house :).

Alica and I get up at 6am, as usual, but the babies are taken care of by Igor and Sona and then they go for a walk. If I'm going to work, I may be gone by the time they get back at 9am or so. Unreal. And then I get home at 6pm or so, play with the kids, give them a bath, and put them to bed. If bedtime is trouble, Sona is right there.

Makes this baby thing almost easy :).

Proving the concept

2005-08-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

This is amazing. I've been on my current gig since May, and it's now August. I just found out I'm paid for through October. And all of this is just to develop the case to do a technology project, not to actually DO the project. I think this is somewhere around $200k by the time we're done, and we have another $500k budgeted to actually do the work.

It's fun for me, and I guess it's valuable for the customer, but it sure feels goofy.

Of course, we're telling them it'll save at least $2,000,000 per year in hard costs, so it's good to question it and do the analysis, it's just strange to have ME do that analysis... :)

Cashing out - I'm a dork

2005-08-03T17:50:00.000-05:00

DAMN YOU ANALYSTS, DAMN YOU!

Finally, after the stock sits dormant for years, the analysts are going nuts about MSFT futures. Stock dividend increases are expected, and general company performance has people excited with a new desktop OS, office suite, and server coming soon. Meanwhile, 26.35 sale price isn't looking so good for me, with stock up at 27.25 and still going strong...

DOH!

MBA in 3 days?

2005-07-31T13:04:00.000-05:00

I just attended a 3 day course that preps you for C-level executive conversations (CEO, CFO, etc.). The basics are simply understanding what they get measured on, who they really report to, and how to read the financial data that they are driven by.

In summary:
CEO - reports to Board of Directors (i.e. shareholders)
CFO, COO - report to CEO
CIO - reports to COO or CFO usually, essentially a VP or Director position, not a true C.

Income Statement = Profit statement, broken down into a couple of key items: operating income (revenues - cost of goods), EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization), EBIT, and Gross Profit. Operating Income is really critical - it's the core business and how well it is doing. EBITDA is critical as well as it shows the fully loaded costs of business, with sales/marketing and other costs outside of core production included. The numbers below get funny, as you start including funky accounting stuff in there with depreciation and amortization...

Balance Sheet = What we own and how we paid for it (Assets, Liabilities, Equity), should always come to a ZERO balance. Retained earnings is often used as a plug for filling gaps between assets (one side of the equation) and liabilities+equity (the other side) - after a few years of operation, Retained Earnings can be hard to track down how it got to be what it is... Assets can be bad (Accounts Receivable = free loans to our customers), Liabilities can be good (Accounts Payable = free loans TO US from our suppliers).

Statement of Cash Flow are interesting as well, as it describes the REAL flow of cash in the business, and the Income statement doesn't always since it allows some accounting trickery.

Finally, reading the Annual Reports Letter to Shareholders/Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A), SEC 10k filing, and any Prospectus out there can give you a ton of insight into what the executives are being paid, how they are paid, what initiatives are critical to the company, risks they see coming, etc. Sometimes you have to dig a little, but some companies will list the data out very clearly.

With that under your belt, you can then figure out things like Inventory Turns, Return on Assets, etc. as simple formulas. For each industry (manufacturing), and for each specific sub-group of an industry (ink manufacturing), you'll likely find they care about a specific set of ratios and have a specific area those ratios should hit (Return on Assets is important to an airline with HUGE assets, not as important to a software manufacturer). One fun item: Inventory Carrying Cost (ICC). Financial Services companies don't have inventory, but most others do, and inventory is bad. Product sitting around has to be stored, goes obsolete/goes bad, etc. And it ties up cash that could be used elsewhere. 20% per year is a rough ICC number to start with but it'll vary greatly, so this is a BIG issue for many customers and the driving force behind just-in-time inventory...

I'm so much smarter now. Time to read the Wall Street Journal.

Not-so-Fantastic Four

2005-07-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

Fantastic Four ranks as a classic summer action movie, except less so. It has all the proper elements - poor plot, forgettable lines, cool action and special effects, and Jessica Alba in a skin-tight suit. Unfortunately, because of what it is - a super-hero movie with 4 super-heros and 1 super-villian to develop in 1.5 hours, it fails to do much else. Fantastic Four 2 should do much better now that the basics are covered.

For now, see it as a matinee wben you need to avoid the heat.

How can these be my kids?

2005-07-27T01:28:00.000-05:00

I'm legal!

2005-07-25T20:10:00.000-05:00

I'm legal on the highways of NC again! Suspended license 2 years ago, and expired license 1 month ago combined to get me into the evil DMV office and stare into bacteria infested Dukes of Hazard-era goggles to prove I am ready for the road. I passed with flying colors and had my new license in 20 minutes.

Of course, there's still this lovely matter...

Cashing out

2005-07-22T11:22:00.000-05:00

Just cashed out the first stock options I got when I joined MSFT. I wish I still had the sheet HR gave out back then, explaining what options are. They included a chart to show how the value of these options would grow based on historical stock performance. I should be a multi-millionaire right now, but instead I think I can afford to biggie size my next meal at Wendy's. Ugh.

At least I cashed at the peak before earnings were announced. We always beat estimates and the stock always drops right after that, which is strange but predictable...

Now the fun years start - options were granted every year, and for a while they had a 7 year life, so I have to cash some every year or lose them. The great part is that only that first year had a positive value, so for a few years I will LOSE money if I exercise the options :). Fortunately some later year grants will make up for that down the road, and those changed to a 10 year life, so in 2012 I'll put up another blog entry that hopefully will read "Bootay Becomes Billionaire, Beats Bill Badly with Bags of Bucks!"

Day care of champions

2005-07-22T10:59:00.000-05:00

Are Easter Seals anything like Navy Seals (maybe just with bunny tails added to the scuba gear)? Anyway, we're kicking the kids out, and they found a new home already. Easter Seals United Cerebral Palsy Child Development Center (whew), just down on Marsh Road (off of Park Rd.) about 3-5 minutes from our place. They're partially federally funded because of the special needs kids (about 50%), so it's cheaper than most, and it's a 5-star center. Add the special care that the kids get with lower teacher to kid ratios, greater training for teachers, and regular visits from OT/PTs, music therapists, speech therapists, etc., and you've got yourself one kick-butt joint. 7:30am to 5:30pm M-F, although we'll likely keep them there a little less than that.

Anyway, turns out my mother used to work in and later run the sister center in Raleigh, and she even did site visits to this one. My sister and I used to spend our sick days with her at the center, which was tons of fun. Of course, they now require sick kids to stay home for at least 24 hours past the last symptom... Anyway, full circle by total chance. What a world.

In-laws are in-sane

2005-07-22T10:54:00.001-05:00

Mother-in-law, codename "Sona", and father-in-law, codename "Igor", are on-site and causing trouble. Well, Sona is anyway, Igor is in transit, arriving in 9 days or so. Nothing like having more hands to take care of babies... Alica and I are actually getting out a little, sleeping a little more, and eating a little better. August 30 they leave, and then we hit the daycare scene. Alica is supposed to be using all of the free time this will generate for her to work on her dissertation, we'll see if she gets around to it...that UNC-Charlotte job won't wait forever.

Top 10 Zombie ISPs

2005-07-19T10:04:00.000-05:00

Wedding Crashers = Cialis

2005-07-17T22:56:00.000-05:00

Joy to me, a decent summer movie is born! This movie rocked - all kinds of people left it calling friends to talk about how much they laughed. Vince Vaughn is a GOD, the rest of the movie and characters are good enough to keep it flowing.

Planning for the big renovation

2005-07-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

Hassell Place and Brandywine (the street behind us) are now hitting $600k post-remodeling regularly, with houses rapidly changing from 1800-2000 sq. ft. and older to 3000 sq. ft.+ and nicely renovated.

So, the plans outlined below are now getting 1 laundry room, 2 kids rooms and 1 master suite upstairs, and 1 guest bedroom and 1 office and a foyer + the existing kitchen/den/dining room/living room/half-bath setup downstairs. And we'll add the front and rear porches to make it cozy :).

Bids start going around in the next 3 months or so, expecting somewhere in the $200-220k range. Likely 6-8 months of work, so we'll start when Alica takes the kids to Slovakia for next summer, and well need to get a temporary place nearby for the remaining 3-6 months. I'm considering buying a condo at the place just finishing up the street, renting it out after we move back into our house.

2nd story floor plans

2005-07-17T13:31:00.000-05:00

2 bedrooms with private baths.
1 master suite (bathroom layout to change, but close enough)
1 laundry room
Pull-down stairs to full attic
Doorway to over-den storage from laundry to be added
Stairway layout is now straightened, bedrooms may brow into the hallway a little.

1st floor sketched renovation plans

2005-07-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

Big changes:
Swapped full and half bath (to give 1st floor guest bedroom a private bath and add room in the foyer - kitchen area).
Take tub area from current full bath, convert to large pantry in kitchen.
Stairs up to second story.
Area under stairs to become multiple pull-out pantry-style closets.
Bedroom/Office becomes new entrance.

Our House with 2nd story from front

2005-07-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

2005-07-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

Our house as-is from the front.

2005-07-11T08:24:00.000-05:00

Battle-scarred and balancing toys on her head, Kiki still finds time to enjoy a refreshing meal of powdered goop.

2005-07-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

Popo in his post-bath monkey towel

2005-07-11T08:19:00.000-05:00

If I rolled over, SQUASH for dinner!

2005-07-11T08:13:00.000-05:00

Bryan and Emily's baby present for us - Bryan is a MASTER woodworker, as shown by this purple heartwood and walnut hope chest. I can't imagine the hours he put into making this, totally blew us away...

Dumb people

2005-07-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

Sisterhood of Travelling Pants = Slow Death

2005-07-08T09:25:00.000-05:00

My wife, rest her soul, convinced me to go see this movie with her yesterday. Not only did I interrupt work and spend 2 valuable hours of Lori's time babysitting the kids on this, but I actually paid for the pleasure to the tune of about $20. I should have known by the N-Sync t-shirts and rhinestone-studded cell phones the other people going to the movie were carrying that I was in trouble...

I'll cut to the chase and say there is one redeeming factor - 25-year-old actresses playing 17-year-old horny soccer players in Mexico trying to seduce someone... that chick was hot and all about swinging that thing around. Me likey.

2005-06-17T12:49:00.001-05:00

Popo and his Peepee Teepee

2005-06-17T12:49:00.000-05:00

Getting ready to go out - 1 hand, 2 babies

2005-06-17T12:48:00.001-05:00

Peakaboo is best played behind someone thicker than Kim

2005-06-17T12:48:00.000-05:00

Babies babies everywhere - Erin and Michael with Lollipop and Monster

2005-06-17T12:47:00.001-05:00

Jake and G mac'n while I slave away at the grill...

2005-06-17T12:47:00.000-05:00

Gobbling food June 14th with the neighbors and Kim

2005-06-17T12:46:00.000-05:00

Lisa passes out early after sharing a few pints with Kiki

2005-06-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

How to take a nap with babies

Batman Begins...to be pooped on!

2005-06-15T21:19:00.000-05:00

That movie sucked big bootay. Michael Cho. and I saw that monsterous stinking pile of feces in packed theater on opening night, and it was a humungous waste of time, money, ear hair, ass felt, and good will.

Special effects and mysterious people don't make a movie. These guys really need to learn to write a script, then make it into a cool movie. This one clearly had a need to drive home about 20 points about Batman, and they wrapped tbose with some explosions and insane camera movements (I think these were supposed to be fight scenes, but I never saw a punch, kick, or sword swing for more than .0000001 seconds so it was hard to tell).

The Scarecrow was pleasing, but he is a really dumb arch villian. To illustrate how lame he is, he would lose badly to Aquaman (both in coolness and fishing ability).

2005-06-13T23:27:00.001-05:00

Popo the Entertained

2005-06-13T23:27:00.000-05:00

Popo and Lisa having dinner (Popo decided to get some desert too...)

2005-06-13T23:26:00.001-05:00

Kiki gets lovin'

2005-06-13T23:26:00.000-05:00

I never expected the eye gouge!

2005-06-13T23:25:00.000-05:00

Kiki sitting on her own

2005-06-11T21:24:00.000-05:00

With Oliverko on my back, I'm still an underdog against the Norwegian Stallion and some 7-year old ringers

2005-06-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

Lici, Pierka, Popo, Kiki, Piggy

2005-06-11T21:21:00.000-05:00

Momma said knock you out!

2005-06-11T16:40:00.001-05:00

It's good to have friends...

2005-06-11T16:40:00.000-05:00

What kind of woman am I raising?