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.