First day at the office was wonderful. It's probably just due to the fact that everything is different. I love the more modern looking office. I actually, for now, enjoy the nicer dress code. I love the opportunity to learn a lot in a short time frame, and a lack of distractions in the way.

We haven't quite worked out all the Feng Shui of the office Josh and I share. I haven't figured out how to get quality coffee. I haven't figured out exactly what machine I'll be using for work (Still hoping to upgrade to a 15" macbook pro). I have been really impressed with the performance of the macbook thus far, and in fact, a new cable and a new monitor somehow equaled no lock-ups today.

Very excited, will post more tomorrow, with pictures, and hopefully after doing something closer to real work as today was pretty much paperwork and fighting to set all the stuff up on my computer.

Today I had an encounter with greatness. Not a life altering one, not God style greatness, just pragmatic and capitalistic greatness. I called Apple technical support.

I've only had my Macbook Pro for about 1 month now, and for the first 3 weeks, it functioned flawlessly, as I had hoped. As I sit and type on it from home, it continues to amaze me in its simple, elegant functionality and beauty. But then I hooked up an external monitor and it turned into a temperamental child.

It turns out I'm far from the only person struggling with this. Forums abounded with people claiming the exact problems I saw, and described them as intermittent, possibly the worst description of any bug ever, and certainly the most frightening. So I've been fighting this for a couple days and decided to call Apple about it.

First, I actually initiated a tech support request online, which yielded a human answer in less than 1 minute, which was impressive. She was fluent in English, friendly but respective of my time and concerns. Her suggestion was one I was skeptical of (connecting the external monitor to a different power outlet to ensure no fluctuations in power consumption by the monitor were affecting the laptop), but she was knowledgeable enough to describe it in a way that sounded worth trying, and made it super simple for me to follow up. Which I did 15 minutes later when my laptop locked up again.

Again, less than 1 minute from my dialing a number, I'm on the phone with another English speaking gentleman who mentioned that he'd seen different displays behave differently, to which I responded that I'd be using a different monitor starting tomorrow, which would likely be the one that matters. He still brought on a higher level tech to advise, and he advised having the cable inspected at an Apple store. So although I had purchased a knock-off cable, which they never asked about, I purchased an official cable from Best Buy today to make sure the blame cannot lie with third party adapters.

All this to say, I'm thinking about actually paying for Apple's nearly legendary, and also stupidly expensive tech support. For a machine that is to become my daily driver, I need to know someone is covering for me. So far, so good. Now let's see if Apple can deliver a laptop capable of driving an external monitor. :-(

We went to see The Social Network this weekend with the 4's and Matty. This movie got me thinking, and reading, about the value of ideas.

Jeff Atwood's post regarding this is one of my favorites. I feel like I agree, and although I probably suffer from at least a bit of the American obsession with coming up with "the next big idea", I think my priority right now needs to be on perfecting my execution. It seems likely to me that this involves not just discipline in every new task, but also practice and dedication to learning new concepts. I want to become a better developer, and this movie was a little bit inspiring in that way.

I also find it interesting that so many reviews of the movie bring up the fact that the portrayal of Mark Zucherberg is of someone to be pitied, an unlikable anti-hero. I don't know this guy, or anything about him, but I watched the movie and was motivated, at least in part, to try to be a little bit like him.

People are describing him as an SOB who thinks he's smarter than everyone else. Newsflash, if you think you're smart enough to create something that grabs 500 million people's attention, do it. Accidental billionaire is such a lame title, betraying petty jealousy, from a lesser contributor seeking significance. It's interesting to talk about the character, or even the real life person's capability to connect personally with other people in a non-threatening, non abrasive way. It's not interesting to hear your description of how that guy that accomplished more than you've ever dreamed possible is only a legend in his own mind, propelled by some fortuitous alignment of the stars.

In the middle of writing this, I've read some more reviews bringing misogyny into the equation, which is funny to me. They describe how unfair it is that there are no positive female characters in the movie. Cry me a river, which female creator of Facebook did they leave out? Was there a substantial financial contributor that was removed because she was female? Is it truly misogynistic, or even racist to tell a story based on real life without checking our race and gender cards to make sure it's a full house (and yes, race jumped into a bunch or reviews as well).

I read my own post, and I'll admit it's not that facinating, and not particularly entertaining. What I'm severely disappointed by is the fact that I rarely hear anyone besides Ayn Rand and her proponents lifting up the concept of hard work anymore. I read and hear so many people talk about unfairness and playing fields, and circumstances, blah, blah, blah. Nobody seems to take seriously the concept that they need to step it up a bit. There are people who can be admired for what they accomplished, without idolizing and wanting to emulate every mistake they may or may not make.

So this week I've started the transition from the only job I've had since graduation to my first full time developer position. My job with MTSI has been awesome, and I've really enjoyed working with such a large group of friends, with flexibility and low stress for a majority of my stay.

What I feel has been missing has been challenge and accountability. While I love the fact that my input carries weight here, I have stagnated in my development by not having someone holding my feet to the fire, reviewing my work with an eye to proper procedures and potential for improvement. I have been able to try my hand at a number of different things, for which I'm grateful, but I'm excited to finally be in the deep end of large(larger) scale development, working with someone who knows way more than me.

My decision was also influenced by a need for uninterrupted time to work. Right now I freeze and tense up every time I hear the overhead paging system kick on, knowing that it's likely to bring me a new interruption.

I will miss my cubicle with a view. I will miss my collection of friends at lunch. I will miss my boss Kevin. The 13th will begin a new phase for me, and I can't wait.

Stack overflow had the first piece of the puzzle, one I'm still putting together one piece at a time. 32 bit to 64 bit conversion is proving to be quite difficult, especially since I was heavily relying on the class we downloaded to enumerate and connect to our HID. It's time spent learning, and working on code, which I always appreciate.

I was also approached today, in regards to one of my least favorite projects of all time. This project was one of our infamous "T&M with a CAP", which if you're not familiar with billable projects, is a nonsensical way of saying "We'll take our cake, eat it, and make you pay for it." Did you finish under your estimate? Great, we pay you less. Did you go over, great, finish the job for free.

I understand the thought process, there's a desire to stop the bleeding of a project gone bad, and to hedge your bets. But that's the problem with the whole "services" business model. You're trusting that the people you hire can get the job done in close to the amount of time they say, and you budget accordingly. But in any undertaking, there is risk, and to force one side to assume all the risk with none of the reward, seems both unfair and unreasonable. With such a past history, I'm not entirely optimistic about our future dealings. To say the least, I'd like to see it in writing, another one of our weaknesses.

In the meantime, Shannon leaves us tomorrow, Shain is the new Shannon. A new era for the Lynx department begins, as the old one fades into the sunset, or some such nonsense. And the training begins anew.

A lot is happening, and yet there's a lot of waiting. Today was more of the same. I confirmed today that the USB panic button software is not working on 64-bit Windows, which is becoming a larger share of our clients with Windows 7, especially since most of our clients skipped Vista altogether.

Late in the day I found a Stackoverflow question that seems to have the exact answer I need, though I didn't bring the USB button home, and really don't wish to work on it all that much tonight. I'm reminded quite frequently just what a great resource Stack Overflow is, and as I hope to be doing significantly more .NET work in the near future, I hope to become more involved in the community of developers.

I played briefly today with adding my laptop to my collection of monitors, making 4. One for the Mac mini, two for my PC desktop, and the display of my MacBook Pro. It's a bit much having to traverse the wide expanse from left to right, and moving my head side to side is hardly desirable. I'd also like to see an increase in screen real estate in the near future, but I feel that's probably much less likely.

Jacob was adorable again tonight, though quite delirious by the time I got home. He's communicating alot more now, even with few full words at his disposal. He clearly understands what we're saying, making discipline finally necessary, and unpleasant. He's a very strong willed boy, as I'm sure most parents describe their kids, but he's so sweet and even obedient most of the time I see him. Makes the crying when I scold him all the harder to take.

I'll post more when the other shoe drops, but until then, I wait.

Ever since having Jacob, I've noticed I'm about a million times more sensitive to all the smarmy moments in movies and shows involving kids. Brooke and I have both noticed this, all the more ridiculous in the case of District 9, where the involved father and son were aliens. All the same, nearly cried. Don't remember being emotional about The Patriot until I saw it on tv again recently. His daughter not wanting to talk to him, then running to him not wanting him to go to war, classic corn. Turned me into a teary mess.

So I take it becoming a father has weakened me, at least in the sense of controlling emotional response to depictions of parent/child interactions and separations, but I find a renewed sense of purpose that I'm unsure how to feel about.

When I'm curious if anything I'm doing has any value or permanence, I think of Jacob. I think of the impact I'll have on him, and that he'll have on others, and it makes me think that somehow all the stuff I do has more meaning than before. I suppose it could just be some built in genetic quirk, but I will say it's been quite calming, and emotionally balancing. I'm not saying I all of a sudden feel like I'm making this big difference in the world, but I do think I worry less about what the point of every day is. That's something I suppose. Thanks Jacob.

Months later, though I love my iPad, I have decided that I certainly can do some real work on the iPad, have had opportunity on a business trip to do so, and also that I most definitely do not want to. So I bought a MacBook Pro, with the full intent of using it primarily for .NET development.

As with many of my stubborn ideas, this one also brings up quite a few questions, such as why on earth would I want to pay a gazillion dollars for an over-priced, under-performing notebook with an operating system incompatible with my primary use? Glad you asked.

I didn't pay a gazillion dollars, I paid $900, thanks to Microcenter's curiously timed clearance sale of $999, and someone kind enough to purchase this one, gently open it and put it back in the box and return it (and suffer a 15% re-stocking fee), allowing me to purchase a perfectly good open box unit for another $100 off.

Second, I wanted a 13 inch laptop because I feel it's more portable and convenient for use on the couch, which is where I'll be using it 80% of the time. This is due to my wife preferring my company, even when I'm off in my own world.

Third, this laptop feels as solid as a lightweight brick. It has a touchpad bigger than my entire iPod touch, which by the way started my love affair with Apple. It has more multi-touch functions than I've seen on any other laptop, with more than enough room for four fingers to actually make it usable, and I do use it. It's clean design and solid feel make it seem just that much more important that I use it to create clean and solid code. I know that sounds retarded, but it's a tiny bit true too.

So, I'm jumping into the world of ASP .NET development, for better or worse. I'm using VMWare Fusion on a 30-day trial, starting off with 2010 Visual Studio Express, and hoping to blog to chart my progress, if nothing else. Off we go.

The more I work with the iPad, the more I'm impressed with it's capabilities. I've installed plants vs zombies, and I think it shows incredible promise as a gaming platform (all the better because Brooke is more addicted than me), and sketchpad HD shows it's also got great potential as an artistic tool, and could do wonders with basic photo editing and diagramming. Right now I'm contemplating getting "things" for the iPad to see how it works for organization and personal project management. Also, due to how easy Astaro has made it to set up vpn access through the iPhone OS, i'm well on my way to doing real work with it, if only to prove such a thing is possible, even if it remains impractical.

New post from the iPad, my first attempt to type anything on the touch screen. It's annoying to have to change menus just to put in an apostrophe, but with the intelligent spell correction, it's not that hard to type much faster than on my iPod.

To say that my motivations for getting the iPad were entirely practical would be a bit of a stretch, but so far I'm quite impressed with the functionality, and quite satisfied with the over-all shiny Apple sexiness. I really thought remote desktop software would make the ipad revolutionary, and it may still, but it's not there at launch,

I won't likely be able to get real work done on such a device for a while yet, though that won't stop me from trying. Highlights are netflix for sure, love having my kindle books on such a large screen (have been reading on my iPod touch), and hopefully gaming, which I will be trying out next.

Linux changed my life today

I'm not even joking. This weekend was full of confusing thoughts and life evaluations. I went to work on a project with my life group (church people) to help renovate a room for an elderly couple who were friends with one of the newer members of our group. The project took about 15 hours, was one of the most grueling experiences of my life, and ended up being a wonderful transformation.

The room started as a host for mildew, mold, and dust, on top of being dangerous for elderly navigation, and in general quite unpleasant. It ended up being something I'd be proud to have as my front room. It brought up alot of questions regarding what is most beneficial for people you're serving, and what is an act pleasing to God. I'm still not sure how I feel about many of the different aspects, but what I do know is I was exhausted, and in physical pain after the ordeal.

This lead me to decide to descend into a vegetative state today, and just take it easy. This didn't go as planned. I started off playing Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox, but quickly became caught up in trying to set up a connection between the Wii and my work laptop, the only dual core machine that spends time at my house (required for reliable PlayOn performance). This became the obsession of hours of cursing and high blood pressure. This was followed by an unsuccessful attempt to connect the laptop directly to the TV using the monitor output, unsuccessful because the tv input is DVI, and the DVI to vga converter is not recognized by the laptop, so it refused to display anything.

Then as the Cowboys began to play, I set my work laptop to installing Ubuntu. The most amazing thing happened. Since getting this laptop, the speakers have been completely nonfunctional. No matter what I did, I could never get them to work. Before I could even log into my fresh Ubuntu install, it was playing little jingles over the laptop speakers. A quick downloading of flash and I was watching videos over youtube and hulu that used to require headphones, which was annoying when sharing with Brooke. A download of RealVNC allowed me to quickly connect to my desktop to adjust Vista's resolution on my TV. Function keys for things like volume, brightness, and others all simply work now. Not only was this Linux installation not more difficult to configure than Windows, it took auto configuration past plug and play and resurrected my proprietary LAPTOP hardware, and I've fought with Laptop hardware for days. I'm solidly in love.

Coders At Work by Peter Seibel

This is an absolutely amazing book. I'm only about 100 pages in, and I'm hooked. It's a collection of interviews with 15 high profile programmers in recent history, and it's motivation to become a better programmer, and inspiration on the things I want my son to see and experience growing up. It's a great history lesson to hear how some of the great contributors to our current state of software development came to be where they are, and it's thought provoking to hear where they see things going. Borrow it from me when I'm done, but seriously, think about buying a copy to keep on hand for yourself.

Also, my poor car is looking for attention, due in large part I think to jealousy over my current obsession with my infant boy and programming. It's been sputtering, died on the way home on Friday, and refused to start this morning, forcing me to bum a ride with Shannon, my next door neighbor, who now works with me.

It feels so good to finally finish the car project. When there's an overall feeling that life is out of your control, aided by a lawn that has grown to epic proportions while your garage looks like a car bomb went off, you're low on sleep and have a baby who just learned that crying beats sleeping 9 out of 10 times in a recent baby survey, just getting to check one thing off feels like maybe it really will get back to normal someday.

This on top of the fact that I've always loved my car, and every time I spend a significant amount of time working on her I feel like we've bonded more. The new transmission feels noticeably better than the old one, even before it started grinding its teeth, though I remember changing the transmission oil made almost as much of an improvement when I did that last time. Either way she's doing great, and it makes me happy. I've added a cable to connect my new ipod to the stereo too, which is great. The list of car repairs itself is not finished, I have also purchased the full set of rear suspension bushings which need replacing which will necessitate an alignment, I intend on replacing the differential fluid and changing my oil this next week as well, and inspection is due this month, but the car is running, which for almost a week wasn't the case.

I'm feeling exhausted at work, not sure if I can make it another 5 hours, but I still get a little emotional boost looking out the window at my baby. The 2200 pound one.

The hard part is done! I took my time and used some silicone gasket maker stuff to put the rear housing onto the new transmission, greased all the appropriate bearings and surfaces, and figured why not try putting the thing up in there by myself.

So I got out my floor jack, jack stands, and proceeded for nearly an hour to do it the half-right way (I'm supposing here the right way is to use a transmission jack), balancing the transmission on top of a wooden block on top of my jack. After catching the falling transmission for the third time and letting out a few more choice words, I recognized that I was now in what must be very close to the same position Jeremy was in when he completed the first transmission swap on this car. I decided to give that a try, and I must say, I can't recommend any other option now. He ended up hurting himself, which leads me to believe that I had the car at just the right height and my legs are longer, making this maneuver so easy for me.

With the rear of the transmission on my knees and the front grasped like a medicine ball in my hands, I was able to lift it into place and carefully rotate and try several angles. It probably took about 5 minutes total for me to lift it, position it, and get four bolts threaded through to make sure it stayed in place. I felt like a rock-star and semi-pro mechanic at the same time. As always, when I succeed at something, I envision myself to be the expert, so I feel like I could work on Miata transmissions all day, I even think I could try a re-build. Silly how my mind works on stuff like this.

Next up, re-attach the clutch slave, put the cat and appropriate braces back in place, and we should be off and running!

After missing several autocross events due to having a baby and all that goes with it, I went ahead and put my new Dunlop Star Shines on in anticipation of the next event. This was a good thing as I had passed the wear bars and then some on all four of my Azenis, and inspection is due this month. On the way home I noticed some faint clicking sounds, leading me to believe the guy who put the tires on must have messed something up. This grew louder and louder, and I finally noticed it was only occurring in 2nd gear, leading me to believe the transmission was finally getting tired after about 240,000 miles (it was a replacement transmission Jeremy put in with over 200k on it when he got the car).

I hunted down the cheapest transmission within 50 miles, which was listed at 134k miles at a junkyard, and prepared myself for the biggest repair my Miata has required in my 5 years of ownership. With the help of C4 and Jeremy, I got the car up and transmission out, which is when my help had to leave.



I then found that the rear oil seal on the junkyard transmission was completely destroyed, and that there was a curious difference between the new and old transmissions.



This caused the oil seal to bunch up when I tried to put it in and would not allow the drive shaft to fit, due to that raised center sleeve. After much swearing and dismay, and hours of investigating on the internet and finding nothing, I took picture in hand and transmission in trunk of Brooke's car to the Mazda dealership in Richardson. Steve at the parts department graciously looked over it, had the mechanics inspect the pictures, and finally helped me realize it was some sort of bushing, and that only some kind of extreme high mileage or drive shaft failure could have caused it to be raised like it was.

The good news is that the rear housing of the transmission is remarkably easy to remove and replace, and afforded me an opportunity to learn a little bit more about how the transmission works.





In taking apart the old transmission I also found two gear teeth over half an inch in length floating around, which makes me extremely thankful I didn't suffer a complete lock-up, especially since I'd been driving it with a self-imposed first to third skip-shift for nearly two weeks as I was investigating and procrastinating.

So now the old rear housing is on the "new" transmission, ready to be put back in the car. Now I just need to find a friend to help me put the thing back in, as I don't want to repeat Jeremy's back and leg impairing feat of one-man re-assembly.

In an attempt to write more, and in so doing perhaps become better at it, I'm trying my hand at writing using my new toy, the iPod touch. I don't like the fact that I can't very easily add pictures since the iPod doesn't have a camera, but now that I've figured out that the iPod guesses what you're typing even when you fat finger it, I'm compelled to try writing on it.

I've always loved gadgets of all kinds, particularly electronic ones, but I'd say this is by far the coolest, and so far looks to be the most useful ones I've purchased so far. I've got a bible reader, ebook reader, skype, as well as my calender and email always with me now. It's also been really handy to use when I'm feeding Jacob a bottle and only have one hand free.

Today was rather boring, which sounds bad to me right now because I feel like I should have somehow seized some opportunity and made it awesome. I had to wake up at like 4 to drive in to Connecticut to fly to Baltimore to drive to Hanover, PA. Which was all done by like 11 this morning, but like a loser, I hung out at a Starbucks in a mall fielding phone calls from work, and then took a nap at the hotel.

I've been thinking about my dog all day due to a stupid article I read on reddit about shelters and it was railing against dog breeders, and I always get all worked up when I think about puppy doggies with sad eyes at shelters....yeah, so I'm dumb for clicking on that one. It's curious to me the feelings I have about animals, and trying to gauge the validity of feelings. Is it right or wrong to feel emotional connection with an animal, and are they capable of reciprocal feelings. They can have what we call separation anxiety, so I'm prone to believe they've got something close to it. I'm basically turning into a tree hugging hippie, I can feel it. It's Dexter's fault.

Lafayette was everything I'd hoped it'd be and more, which isn't saying much since I expected a po-dunk Louisiana town. The hotel was more of a disappointment than I'd expected, looking like something out of a horror movie, but with all the friendliness and charm of middle America.

I enjoyed an early dinner thanks to the generosity of my boss sending me in early to enjoy the Cajun cuisine, and I wasn't disappointed there. Blue Dog cafe had mediocre art for which it's apparently locally famous, but also featured decent cajun inspired food, whatever that means. I think around here the concept of Cajun is held in high regard, much as East Texans revere their own heritage as such. I don't discount it, I just clearly don't understand it. They love Community Coffee, believe Abitas beer to be something special in the world of brewing, and extol the values of Cajun music, which as described to me is Blue Grass sung in French. We each need our own identity.

I think homebrew is God's gift to man-kind, Miatas represent a masterpiece of automotive engineering, and that dogs are not just man's best friend, but are in many ways superior to man. Understand that my sarcasm does not equal a sense of superiority, I'm an odd-duck too.

I think all of us are completely bizarre, and it makes humanity all the more amazing. I think I underestimate the beauty and complexity of people I don't understand too often. I mentally cut down people who don't drive the way I think they should, or grow up in cities bigger or smaller than my own, and it's wrong. I'm probably suffering a bout of post-business trip introspection, combined with a lack of writing, which for me is a creative outlet, no matter how base or unimaginative it may be. There's a whole host of people I disagree with and seek to debate with, hoping to prove my way of thinking, and I think part of that is a healthy search to define myself, while I also think I need to seek to understand how others see the world.

I'm simultaneously re-engaging Orthodoxy and trying to understand that perspective, while reading through Velvet Elvis, what has been described as a Post-Modern treatise on Christiantiy (or at least nearly aledged to be). I feel in many ways I'm coming to see Post-Modernism as being simply a dose of common sense, while perhaps taken to extremes by people as many good things are. I've always felt that absolute truth, while it exists, is in many cases un-provable, which nearly equates to unknowable. The next step for the post-Modernist might be unbelief, whereas for me the next step is to have faith in what I can't necessarily prove.

What I don't see is a serious affront to Christianity, as some of my fellow Christians see, in the belief that there's truth in nearly everything. Even the most effective lies of the devil wrap truth in them, and I don't think we should be scared to pick anything apart and accept what aligns with what we see to be true. While I treat very positively the thing I hear from those I "trust", nothing should escape scrutiny because of its source, and everything I believe is, and should be I think, open to question. It may sound like I hold nothing sacred, but I don't think that's the same thing. I think child-like faith is open to all possibilities, not blind in it's lack of critical thought. A child still questions, he just doesn't have the history of being burned to make him overly skeptical of things which may very well end up being the truth.

Lest there every be any confusion, I love dogs. I think I've always loved dogs, or at least always felt an affinity for them, and after bringing Dexter home, interacting with all the other dogs at the dog park, and seeing my wife become a dog lover, too, it's become part of who I am. We now watch every dog show that comes on TV, we recently made a trip to Tyler and stayed longer so we could go see an appearance by one of the dogs on Greatest American Dog, and both Brooke and I are excited about decorating our little boy's room with a puppy theme.

We've gone through some very frustrating times with our little boy, such as when he was really young and thought that playful meant biting. Currently he still has a tendency to get excited and jump up on people when he's not supposed to. He's coming along with training though, and seems to be paying heed a lot more when we ask him to do things. He's very nearly housebroken, except when he's been given unlimited access to water. He has no concept of limiting his intake, and I really think he'd explode if we gave him enough water.

He's also become a rather frequent part of my dreams. The first couple of times I dreamed I had to kill him, once because he was a demon's dog. It was rather disturbing, and more recently I just dream about losing him and trying to find him again. He's my precious boy, and I hope he loves our more precious boy once he gets here.

This weekend we had an amazing time, thanks largely to the efforts of Joy, Jackie, and Emily the party planners, as well as their co-operative husbands. Brooke's 30th, and last publicly acknowledged birthday until further notice, was a surprise vampire themed party, which she loved.



There were elaborate and tasty foods, dancing with reckless abandon, and at one point a pit bull roaming the neighborhood ran in the front door and attacked our hosts' Chihuahua. Luckily Rowdy suffered only a couple scrapes and emotional scarring. Without realizing all that had occurred inside, I bonded with the pit who ran around to the backyard, let it in through the gate and called the phone number on its tags to get the owner to come pick her up. She was quite friendly, and the owner was apologetic, though I felt bad when I realized I had let the perpetrator of terror on the premises.

There's a ton of photos on Flickr now, documenting the party, thanks to my obsession with my new toy (Nikon D40).