Recently in Work Category

So, I decided last night that I really should start trying to write a blog post every day. So I figure the best way to do this is to try and write something when I get up every morning.

This morning, I have 2 things on my mind. The first is today's Apple event. Sounds like we will be getting iTunes 8.0 and iPhone 2.1 software. Should be very interesting to see what comes with iPhone 2.1. Hopefully they fixed the bug that caused my iPhone to become bricked twice this past weekend (not fun while trying to make birthday plans with a lot of people). The only thing I really still want is freakin' MMS messaging. Cut & paste would be nice, but I can deal most of the time without it.

The other big thing on my mind is my project at work. I have a really cool project going on at work, which I should be about 50% done with by now, but sadly I am about 10% done. So, it's going to be a very busy day/week in order to get this project caught up to where it should be. But in the end, it should be really fun :)

Well, I guess I better get started then :)

The day started with some excitement

Happened to notice this while on Google. My name got mentioned in this article over at Dealing with Technology. Neat!

Been trying to re-organize my desk here at work the last few days to hopefully make myself more efficient.

The first step I have taken is moving some of my laptops closer to me, so I can easily access them and use them during the course of the day. In the past I just used these laptops for trade shows and not for my daily work. Now, I am trying to use them to get more done.

Right now, I have 3 of the 4 laptops set up. Directly in front of me, I have my full time laptop, which currently runs Fedora Core Development. This handles all my e-mail, general web, irc, IM, blog reading, etc. Basically, this is the catch-all.

To the left, I have a machine I installed Novell Linux Desktop on yesterday. This machine right now is designated to 2 things. First off, playing with NLD9. I've heard good things from the Novell folks, so I want to play around and see how it is. The second is to use this machine to set up for LinuxWorld.

To the right, I have a Windows XP machine. This machine is going to be used for all the Windows stuff I am currently working on. This will get me out of worrying about incompatabilities and whatnot.

Hopefully, using three machine will help me get more things done, we'll see. It may just make me more scatter brained.

That was step one. Next steps include cleaning up all the paperwork laying around my desk, removing the big monitor that I don't use, cleaning up all my wiring, and then trying to add the 4th laptop (and maybe a 5th) to the setup.

Once I get it all done, hopefully I will have a very useful work environment where I can get a lot done. And then maybe I will post some pretty pictures on Flickr.

Interview with Egenera's new CEO

Egenera Inc. Names Robert M. Dutkowsky Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

The company I work for announced our new CEO today.

Egenera, the company I work for, released their new web site today. Check it out, I personally think it looks sweet.

Egenera nabs $30 million in funding | CNET News.com

Some more money for the company I work at.

In the article, Taking on the Titans: Virtual servers give Egenera traction, Mass High Tech gives a quick overview of Egenera and what we are doing with virtualized servers. Mentions some of the competition as well. Pretty good article.

Another article on my company, this time in Forbes.

Hardware for Hard Times

LWN: Egenera's blades are blooming (Register)

They are showing up in my aggregator every day now! This article on LWN points to Egenera's blades are blooming over at The Register.

AOL buys Egenera blade servers

More news about my company in my aggregator.

Egenera releases new blade servers | CNET News.com

Always fun to be reading through my aggregator and see news about the company I work at.

I've spent the last few days at work trying to get a lot of loose ends tied up. Things that I said at one point or another I would do, as well as doing general maintenance and clean up on the systems I run. Yesterday, I finally got myself to a point where I feel I have a lot of those loose ends tied up.

Now, I have to go back to my main project. The problem? I haven't touched this project in almost a month. Between a week of vacation, a week at Oracle World, playing catch up and being sick last week and now tying up loose ends this week, I just haven't had the time to touch the project.

So, I went in to the directory where I have the code and diff'ed it to CVS. I see that last time I did some work on this project I started to add in an interface to the program for outside users to use, I guess you could almost call it an API. This is good, I'm glad I never committed this because now I am slowly able to recall where I was on the project. The problem with the long wait though is that I now have to go back in and read all the code I had been working on and figure out exactly where in this coding I was.

Hopefully I will be able to spend a lot of hours over the next few days really trying to finish up this program and eventually move on to something else. This has turned somewhat in to the never ending project since my life is very interupt driven here at work. If I can spend some good time on this now, I hope to finally get this done and start trying to get myself more organized at work.

I think I am a little too comfortable in my job at work.

Went to talk to a client today and our CEO was in on the meeting. Gave my normal presentation, didn't even think twice about the fact that the CEO of the company was sitting across from me observing everything I was doing.

Just amused me.

I got the RATHER late word today that I am being sent to BEA eWorld next week. I am actually flying out Sunday morning and heading back on Wednesday. It will be interesting. The one really nice part, its in Orlando, FL. I actually get to get out of this cold for a few days! The high for tomorrow is 25 in Boston, mid-70s in Orlando. Yes, this part of the trip will be VERY nice :)

when you get in at 8:20 and people show up a few minutes later and ask you if you slept in the office the night before.

It's skadz dot com!

I made it to San Fran in one piece, currently hacking away in our booth to get everything all set up.

More later ....

I am turning in to a total blog whore. I find ones that I find interesting and start reading them. Any that have RSS feeds, I throw on to the news page and keep up with them. The ones that don't I stop by at least a few times a day to see what they are saying. I definitely am finding this an interesting way to find out about people and see what is happening in their lives.

I even keep too many blogs. I keep this one, my Dream Theater site, and I even keep one for work. That one is locked away at this point, but I do have grand plans of bringing a proposal to some of the higher ups to set them up for everyone at the company. I think it would be both a good source of knowledge management as well as a good way for people to express ideas about parts of the company they are not necessarily involved in. I know that my last 2 companies were very open. The last one we were told very often that we should express our feelings and not fear anything bad coming out of it. We set up lots of mailing lists to let people vent. I think this is somewhat a step above that. The company before, well, I took over. I'm like that sometimes.

I've even gotten very good at keeping this place up to date. I hope to keep writing as often as possible. I like being able to talk about the random things I either think about in my head or talk to myself about. Yes, I talk to myself. Live alone for a while, you end up doing it. Hopefully my forum here will help me slow up on some of that.

It's funny how different one day can be to the next. Yesterday, my whole day was interupt driven and to a maddening point. Every time I got started on something, something else came up. Now, may of these thing were minor and just needed a minute or five of my time, they were just enough of an interuption (as I was not my usual self) to totally ruin any progress, thought given, etc to the task I was already working on. Just was a very frustrating day.

Today, on the other hand, I am totally chilled out and relaxed. I got in early (8:45, yes that is very early for me), had 2 meetings which both went smoothly, and then got the tests that were frustrating me to no end yesterday to start working correctly (well, the DB load of the tests). At the second meeting I got assigned a new project, which could be very interesting. So, today has been a calm day, just letting my database build go in the background and starting to get materials for my next project together. I just finished downloading the User's Manual for the product I will be working with, so now it will just be some time reading up and getting prepared to do this work. Much nicer than yesterday.

Woo! Got new cards at work today. Now I am an Application Specialist instead of a Member of Technical Services. Much more better.