April 2007

There were 50 posts published in April 2007 (this is page 2 of 5).

New Position – Product Manager!

Its past time that I can spill the beans as to what this was all about. I’ve been promoted to Technical Product Manager for the product I’ve been selling for the past four years. Now I get to do something about all those product enhancement requests I’ve submitted over the years: I get to decide which ones to implement!

There’s a lot for me to learn about the role, but I’ve certainly got the right background and experience to take it on. I know the product better than most anyone. I’ve got a unique insight into the market – having done hundreds of sales calls over the years. I’ve got a solid IT background which provides me familiarity with the problems our customers are trying to solve. Lastly, I am known and respected (I think – heh) by our development staff so interacting with them should be productive and fun.

I officially began my new role last week, and knew about it sooner as my earlier post indicated, but I didn’t announce it here because I was waiting for an official announcement. Since I am the primary person for posting announcements on the company’s internal blog, few of my coworkers could post about it there (and I can’t announce my own promotion to the rest of the company – it wouldn’t be right).

Oh, and I won’t be traveling nearly as frequently as I used to, which is a big plus. I’m still the primary contact for product training, though, so there will be occasional trips here and there. Certainly much saner than the kind I’ve been doing.

Wish me luck on my new role!

Bill, BBC Believe Bogus Bee Blurb

More breaking bee news! Alert (or somewhat conscious, anyway) MT.Net reader Matt alerted me to Bill Maher using the unverified Einstein quote to end his Real Time with Bill Maher show last week.

Also buzz-bombed is BBC Radio 2, and Discovery Channel Europe, according to Snopesters hot on the trail. Snopes now has a proper Einstein bees page in its Urban Legends section. That entry is now the top Google search result for “Einstein bees” Google queries, as it should be. I suppose my work here is done.

I consider the whole incident an insightful look at just how mentally lazy people can get when it comes to accepting facts (or those purported to be facts). Its obvious that critical thinking skills should be exercised more often than they are.

You Are What You Grow

MT.Net reader Mike B. sent me this interesting story from the New York Times, describing the effects of subsidized farming on the American waistline:

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill…. … the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. …. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

Now if people would stop stuffing their faces with Twinkies, that would help, too.

Good Weekend

We had a pretty good weekend at Chez Turner. Our good friends John and Marne brought their daughters over and shared wine and pizza with us Friday evening. It is always good to see them and as usual the time flew by.

Saturday morning, Kelly left us early to do her volunteering at WalkAmerica. I took Hallie and Travis over to Pump It Up for the birthday party of one of Hallie’s friends. Hallie had a blast on the inflated slides and such while Travis was clearly intimidated by their size and hissing noises. In spite of his best friend clearly having a ball on them, Travis could not be convinced.

Sunday morning we all hopped on our bikes and took a long ride thorugh Durant Nature Park. It was the first time the kids had been mountain biking – they clearly loved it! Both were whining about having to come home, in fact. We made it a little easier by stopping by the local ice cream place on the way home. I always feel good after biking but pulling an extra 50 pounds up long grades really built some muscles. Hallie’s big enough now that she can pedal the Trail-A-Bike and keep us both going. Pretty cool.

After lunch and naps, I geeked out with my MacMini before getting the lawn mowed. Then it was time for a quick shower before going to Pullen Park to meet friends from our childbirth education class from five years ago. The park was packed on this stunningly beautiful day and it was good to see people and kids I hadn’t seen in years.

I got a note from my shipmate Matt, pointing me to a social networking site for veterans called TogetherWeServed.Com. I quickly found a number of my former shipmates, some of which I had lost track of long ago. It was a blast from the past! I look forward to spending more time checking it out.

K and I watched the movie Bobby before bed. It was pretty good.

All in all, a good, sunny weekend.

Goodbye, Microsoft!

I officially kicked Microsoft out of my home office this week, using Windows XP for the last time to copy over our previous tax files. Now I have no need for XP and have fired up the MacMini running OS X 10.4 as my main machine. I do still have Winodws on a computer here but its my company laptop and I don’t have much choice there. My home laptop is running Ubuntu Edgy Eft at the moment and will soon be ugpraded to Feisty Fawn.

I am liking what I’ve seen so far of OS X. I spent some time today setting up automounts in NetInfo Manager. I was happy to see NetInfo Manager is an LDAP front-end, which as you know appeals to the LDAP geek in me. Now the Mac is smart enough to mount remote partitions only when I need them, without me doing anything but accessing their directories. Easy.

The second part of the equation was the sweet 22″ widescreen flat-panel LCD I picked up from Staples last week. It is capable of 1600×1050 resolution and looks absolutely beautiful at that size. It provides analog and DVI with HDCP inputs so I can use it with all my machines, old and new. My old CRT monitor wasn’t up for the larger resolutions and hurt my eyes with the ones it could show.

I’m greatly looking forward to learning more of the ins and outs of OS X: one that combines the ease of use of the Mac with the power of UNIX. Yeah, boy.

WalkAmerica Success!

Thanks to everyone who donated to our team for this year’s March Of Dimes WalkAmerica. Thanks to your generosity we raised close to $1,700! This money will go toward research to prevent premature births, a cause we hold quite dear.

We feel privileged to have such generous friends. While we were just short of our goal this time, thanks to you we pushed our total higher than any other year.

Thanks for your donations, as always. It’s nice to know that together, we can make a difference.

Lee Iacocca: Bush And Cheney Are “Bozos”

Maverick former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca takes aim at Bush and Cheney, calling them “clueless bozos” in his new book, Where Have All The Leaders Gone? Read this excerpt:

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
Continue reading →

The Ultimate Zaurus Accessory

There’s a certain charm to running a full-blown operating system on one’s PDA, like running Linux on the Sharp Zaurus. The charm has its costs, though: full-blown operating systems eat batteries like they’re going out of style. Thus my Zaurus (or “Z”) has been an interesting toy but one not as useful as it could be because it must never stray too far from a battery charger.

This week I found the missing piece to making my Z useful: a combination USB Hotsync/Charge cable. This $6 cable allows me to sync my Z to my laptop when I’m on the road and to charge it without having to drag along the docking station and transformer. All I do it plug the cable into my laptop and it charges via the USB voltage. One cable does it all!

NBC News Is Scum

My twelve MT.Net readers know how strongly I feel about freedom of speech. I feel even more strongly about human decency, though.

I totally agree with my brother Jeff. NBC News is scum for airing the tape of that deranged Virginia Tech killer. What America needs to see right now is the stories of the 30+ kids and adults murdered by that scumbag.

Shame on NBC for making a celebrity of that sorry punk, over the vehement protests of these kids’ families.