Horizon Zero

Happy SysAdmin Day

It's System Administrator Appreciation Day, and you should all appreciate your System Administrators.

After all, whoever you have doing the job, it could always be worse.

The Future Is Closer Than We Think

Spent most of today on Mizzou's main campus. I've mentioned before that the place is big - I parked in the usual lot I have access to over by the hospital. Getting to the alumni center, where the seminar I was attending was being held, took a ten minute hike.

Good exercise, although I could have done without the drizzle this morning.

The event I attended was part technique presentation and part sales pitch - Adobe provided guest speakers to show off some tricks in various parts of Creative Suite 5. Along the way, they managed to talk up the just announced CS 5.5. I'm suitably impressed with some of the new stuff coming our way - particularly additions to InDesign and Flash Professional, but I am perhaps easily swayed.

One of the speakers made an interesting assertion that I'm keen to follow up on. As 4G networks roll out across the country and smartphones continue to make inroads, he's predicting that 2014 will be the year that wireless, phone based internet connectivity overtakes landline broadband - both in raw speed and in the number of users.

That will have some major implications when it comes to designing and delivering content.

It won't be universal, of course. It will take time for 4G networks to spread just as it took time for 3G tech to reach less populated areas. (Saint Robert officially became a 3G zone only last year, and really only along a narrow corridor on either side of I-44.) Broadband and dialup will continue to be the only recourse for a not insignificant portion of non-urbanized Americans.

Will this result in a urban/rural content divide? Will there really be "Two Internet Americas"? It's not impossible to picture a period where you could carve out a niche by designing "low cal" versions of 4G sites for the hinterlands.

Now is definitely a good time to start preparing for the future though. And that should include learning to develop for at least one of the mobile platforms.

Bowling for Filthy Lucre

Today was a hectic day. A local think tank associated with Ft. Leonard Wood and the surrounding business/higher ed community is handing out around eleven million dollars in grants to small businesses and orgs that do business in a variety of fields that match their mission statement. My company put in quite a few proposals, around one or two million total, I think, including one that will be my very own Top Secret project should we win it.

Exciting. But also somewhat intimidating, as I've always shunned the administrivia side of the house in the past.

We won't have too long to wait before we find out which proposals won either - an announcement is due at the end of the month.

In other news, the air conditioning in my apartment has been acting wonky the last couple of weeks, and we've finally determined why. It turns out there was not one, but two leaks developing independently yet concurrently of each other. Said problem should now be corrected, which is comforting as I don't think I should be worried about my bottled water boiling when I bring it upstairs...

Busy Week

Things have been kind of hectic the last few days. We had a major to-do yesterday - staged a briefing for the new hires that are getting ready to start up work overseas. Which involves a lot of the typical admin type work, ie get them set up with email accounts, show them how to use the email client, cover the typical "here's how to keep your laptop operating in an environment that's 90% sand" lecture. That kind of stuff.

At the same time, I'm trying not to lose my temper with a behind schedule parts vendor, finishing up on our two new desktop PCs, fiddling around with a company branded WinXP overlay courtesy of ObjectDesktop and putting out the usual minor fires that crop up on a regular basis.

Like today - one of the desktops I built earlier in the year has stopped accepting input from the microphone, which is a big deal since we use VoIP software to communicate with our guys overseas. Near as I can tell, the on-board audio has simply stopped recognizing anything plugged into the mic jack. It should be an easy enough fix - disable the on-board audio and pop in a cheap Sound Blaster from Wal Mart - but it's one I shouldn't have to be making. Stupid RealTec '97.

Anyway, the upsurge in things to do at work has also seen a corresponding decline in gaming time at home. Hopefully that will be rectified this weekend. My paladin on WoW is right at level 55 and I'm itching to get to Outland.

Hold the Line

Didn't get to work on new computers today - stuff came up.

PC building fun rescheduled for tomorrow.

How 'bout them Heroes last night?

Assembly Line

Got the first of the two new office desktops built today. "Boris" sports an Intel E6300 processor, an ASUS motherboard with integrated video and audio, 2GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive and DVD/DVD-R drive. Normally, I recoil from integrated media the way a vampire reacts to garlic, but these are primarily office machines and won't be doing anything more taxing than MS Office or perhaps the occasional hand of Solitaire.

Tomorrow, I'll put together "Natasha" and start with the estimated 10+ hours of critical Windows XP Pro updates before moving to the rest of the needed software. I'll see about posting some pics as well.

I'm still waiting on the rest of the parts for the ASUS Whitebook (DIY Laptop). Haven't decided on a name for it, yet. I've decided that future office PCs get to be Rocky and Bullwinkle characters (and yes, there is an actual reason behind this. Not a good reason, mind you, but a reason.) but I'm still thinking of a suitable classification system for the Whitebooks, since there may end up being a lot more of them.

I'm leaning towards famous sci-fi warships. I can make sure I get the Executor, or maybe... Galactica?

Meditations on the Abyss

There are days when you can literally see your future changing, where paths that you thought were clear suddenly wall themselves off and circumstances seem to totally reconfigure themselves in front of your eyes. Sometimes it's for the better. Most of the time... not so much.

Yesterday was one of those days. I'm still not sure if it's the better version or not, yet.

Yes, more cryptic job muttering. One of the professional hazards of the field I've chosen is the extreme instability when it comes to job security. Two years working any one contract is a long time, and it looks like my time with my present setup might just be up.

The good news is that I have at least one replacement actively courting me. The bad news is they might be partly responsible for me having to look in the first place. I don't like being manuevered, but fortunately I might have a few surprise moves of my own.

Hell of a way to end my twenties, though.