Bill Kratzer's Blog

Tivo Premiere

2010-12-08T21:18:00.003-05:00

Just a quick post to share with everyone that I finally got a Tivo Premiere.

Back in April, Comcast forced customers to go digital so that people like me with HD Tuners couldn't get free high-def local channels. Rather than opting for the crappy, free, low-definition digital decryptor, I upgraded my Comcast service so that I could get HD, including the ESPN family of channels and Big Ten network in HD (which is fantastic).

Unfortunately, this put my old Tivo in a pretty useless state (unless I wanted to try to rig the Tivo to send IR commands to my cable box). Since, that's pretty lame, I went ahead and tried a Comcast DVR (which turned out to be lamer).

I got the top of the line Motorola, Dual-Tuner HD DVR, which appears to be technology from circa 2002.

Let's review how this thing sucks:

No ability to undelete programs
The entire interface is just WAY too laggy.
Quite often sound goes out.
About once a month I need to reboot it.
Recently, deleting a program also meant that I needed to go back to the main DVR menu (this should happen automatically).
Shows never started at +0 seconds (they always started at +2 seconds)
No netflix, No you tube, No Hulu (of course, why would we want that). Suprisingly enough, no Fan-Crap-Cast either.
Online Guide is clumsy to use.
Searching for programs was ridiculously slow
Scheduling of programs was quirky at time, forcing me to manually review recording each night to make sure it was going to do what I wanted it to

I'm sure I could have found more, but that's just off the top of my head. Basically, I bought into the Comcast DVR because it was quick and easy to get and I thought it was worth the try. After a few weeks, I grew tired of the DVR. At just about the same time, the new Tivo Premiere was unveiled, and I was pretty psyched to get one. After all, I just loved my old Tivo.

Unfortunately, real life got in the way and recording live TV no longer became a priority. Fast forward seven months, and with Jenn's encouragement, I got the new Tivo Premiere.

Major benefits and good points:

I got the XL version which lets me record a 1000 hours of standard definition TV (150 hours of HD). This is fantastic when you have kids.
Accepts dual-tuner M-Series Cable Cards that are a SNAP to install (unfortunately, Comcast "forgot" to activate my HD channels, so a I had call them back a few time to fix this).
Has all of the great season pass management, conflict resolution, Tivo suggestions, remote scheduling that you'd expect from Tivo.
The new Tivo remote has a light sensor on the back so that it knows when to go into "backlit" mode. Very nice.
Support for Netflix, BlockBuster, and Amazon on demand instantly make me forget about Comcast OnDemand
Support for YouTube and PodCasts is fantastic. Collin loves watching YouTube videos.
Set up is a piece of cake, and provides a set of glasses for color-tuning your TV
Comes with all of the cables you would want
Optional wireless antenna accessory piece of cake to install

Minor complaints so far:

User interface is much prettier but is a little bit more laggy (it's like they are trying to do more with not quite enough CPU power). This is only the main menu interface, the TV watching interface is still excellent.
First time set up took about 2 hours just because lots of content and patches needed to be installed.
You Tube support is a little buggy (it doesn't pick up all of my favorites and playlists) properly.
Netflix app does not let me browse the store - I can only play out of the instant queue
Netflix app seems to not perform as well as my Wii. (not sure why)
I wish that there was support for more web video (I heard Hulu is coming soon).

Overall, I am very happy with the new Tivo. I wish it was just a little bit slicker, but overall this is a solid product and I am sure that it will be well worth the money. I wish I got it before college football started back in last August!

Migrating to Spring Security 3.0

2009-12-31T05:36:00.004-05:00

I recently upgraded my web application (a side project that I am working on at home) to use Spring 3.0 and Spring Security 3.0.

Moving to Spring 3.0 was pretty seamless - drop in the new jars (don't forget aopalliance.jar) and you are good to go. My project works the same now as it did before, and now I can start using some of the new features!

The migration to Spring Security 3.0 took an hour or two work through.

Here are some of the small issues that I ran into: (these only take minutes to fix)

Make sure you change your XSD references to reference the new 3.0 schema.
There was some package refactoring, so several of my classes had to have import references fixed.
<security:anonymous/> is really no longer needed.
The getAuthorities method on the UserDetails interface now returns a Collection (rather than an array).

Make sure to include spring-security-config.jar

The only other issue that really bit me was an XML validation issue. I was using a customer authentication provider in my XML file that looked like this:


  <security:authentication-provider ref="userDetailsService">

This was giving me the following validation error:

cvc-complex-type.2.4.c: The matching wildcard is strict, but no declaration can be found for element 'security:authentication-provider'.

Luckily, someone else ran across the same issue, and I fixed it by wrapping my authentication-provider inside an authentication-manager:


<security:authentication-manager alias="authenticationManager">
    <security:authentication-provider ref="userDetailsService"/>
</security:authentication-manager>

Crappy Graphics, Lots of Fun.

2009-12-26T13:14:00.002-05:00

So, I actually played with an XBox 360 the other day. I had some time to kill while Jenn was at church, and she gave me some errands to run. Before running the errands, I decided to drop by Best Buy and get some hands-on time with some digital cameras. The digital camera selection at Best Buy quickly bored me, so I decided to play with an XBox 360 (since there was no one using the demo kiosk).

I walked up to the kiosk, and fumbled my way through a driving game. The graphics were great (but on par with modern computers). The force feedback was good, and I was having fun playing the game... for about 5 minutes. After five minutes, I realized that I was using a little thumb nob to move a car around a race track.

I was completely amazed at how much I missed playing Mario Kart. Sure the graphics are about 10 years old. Sure the game does not have the uber-realistic physics system that allowed me to dent up the car.

But Mario Card has a controller that lets me play a game with a real steering wheel.

I walked away from a top-of-the-line gaming system, thinking "Meh".

Oh yeah.. Played Mario Kart again. It was a blast.

iPhone Development using the web.

2009-11-08T10:23:00.003-05:00

iPhone development has really been the buzz as of late. Apple is boasting 100,000 apps (unfortunately - 99,900 of them really suck -- or to use Internet speak: "they are the FAILS").

I've fallen pray for this scam... I probably have 50 apps on my iPhone (and the ones I care about most is under 10).

I feel like I am living in circa 1995 when everyone discovered the Internet and saw that they could download all sorts of crap on their computer! Come on... we all remember Elf Bowling!

I don't have anything against iPhone apps -- I think there are always going to be times when I really want to play Madden Football, rock it out on iTunes, compulsively check my Twitter account, or check my work calendar. But, it just seems more and more silly that I keep downloading apps.

What ever happened to the true mobile web? Luckily for the iPhone, it is really still alive! I can't believe I never checked out GMail on my iPhone until last month.. and you know what? It ROCKS. And it even allows me to properly archive my mail (unlike the stupid iPhone mail client). And there's no client to download!

It's amazing what you can do with Javascript and a little bit of CSS.

O'Reilly has a great online tutorial so that you can start iPhone enabling your site today.

Check it out today.

Podcasts

2009-10-13T20:17:00.002-04:00

I am still listening to a lot of podcasts. My 35 minute drive to work gives me a solid 1 hour a day of solid listening time.

What am I listening to? Here's the list! (my top podcasts are at the top of the list):

1. This Week in Tech - Let's face it. Leo is a fantastic facilitator, and it's a nice brainless podcast to listen to. Without Leo, this should would probably be further down my list. But with Leo in charge, and a revolving cast of characters on the panel, this podcast gives me a nice light view of consumer and end-user technology.

2. Security Now - Steve Gibson is just fantastic. This show goes from light and fluffy news about the latest security patches on Windoze to hard-core bit twiddling and crypto. Honestly... anyone even remotely interested in security should just start listening at Episode 1.

3. Blue White Podcast - This gives me my fall fix of PSU football.

4. Penn State Football Podcast - I like this podcast as well because it's done by two former PSU football players (that quite often give an interesting different perspective on the game and team).

5. Stuff You Should Know - It's kinda like listening to Wikipedia for 20 minutes. Great all-purpose knowledge podcast.

6. FLOSS Weekly - Leo's a great facilitator, and Randal and the Ubuntu guy are really enthusiastic. It's great hearing from a lot of folks in the open source community talk about their projects.

7. 60 Second Science - These are quick fillers when I have a few free minutes int the car. At 1 minute a piece, it's hard to turn this down.

8. LostCasts - These guys are *really* annoying, but they do a great job on keeping up with all of the latest theories on the message boards.

Stuff on my iPod that Used to be higher on my list that I don't have the time to listen to:

1. This Week in Google - I liked the two episodes, but then I found it was just taking too long to listen to. I wish truly more about cloud computing and more technical content rather than "this is how you use this google product". I hope to give this one another try in a few weeks.

2. Diggnation - I used to *really* like this podcast. And then there were the live shows that were unfunny. And then there were more advertisements. And then there was listener feedback. It seems like every Diggnation show only covers only 5 top stories. I've gone 2 months without listening to Diggnation.. It will probably leave my rotation.

3. Java Posse - As a Java developer, I *really* wanted to like this podcast. And I think that I really used to like this podcast, but I'm not sure why I drifted away. Was it the fact that I do so much Java programming during the day and I really don't need another dose of Java during my commute? Was it the bland banter of the hosts? Was it the sickening way these guys seem to get along? Was it Joe Nuxoll? Was it the fact these guys are a little too obsessed with language design? Was it the crappy audio from their open space conferences? I suspect all of the above. Don't get me wrong -- these guys are doing a great service, and I think I'll try listening to them again over the holidays (when my other podcasts run dry).

4. Windows Weekly - Boy the Windows world is really in a world of hurt when the key content contributor for this podcasts feels like he's continually beaten-down about Windows and he's more excited talking about Apple products. I like Paul, but he's really losing my interest.

Here Cometh the Cloud.

2009-08-21T06:10:00.002-04:00

I am a big fan of cloud computing. It is a giant trend that was very easy to spot from a long time ago, but I was never quite sure exactly "when it's here".

For me, I think that day is today.

I just got done trying out SpringSource's Cloud Foundry. It's basically a way to easily deploy web applications on a Spring/Java/Tomcat/Apache/MySQL platform on Amazon EC2. And you know what? It freaking works!

As a Java developer, this is what I wanted -- a really easy point-and-click web interface to deploy a distributed Java application on the cloud. I don't have to worry about all of the boring systems plumbing. (and this comes from a guy who kinda likes the boring systems plumbing!). As a developer, I just want a platform that can scale effortlessly and cheaply.

Sure... Cloud Foundry has all sorts of issues: limited DB support, limited configuration, no elastic block storage, etc. But for a first release, I think the Spring Source folks shows what the future could be like for developers.

Cloud Foundry isn't the only cloud solution out there, but it's the one I care about as a Java developer, since java/tomcat/spring apps are what I write. And let's face it: Google's App Engine for Java just sucked.

I really do see computing as a utility. And I really hope to see scalable computing systems with full software stacks to become a utility as well. I think it could usher in a whole new wave of developer innovation. When you lower the bar for the deployment of scalable applications (and you make it really cheap), you start to invite a whole new segment of developers with interesting ideas and interesting solutions.

The next 10 years are going to be cool.

Bucket List 3: Work with Someone Great (and then impress them!)

2009-08-20T20:16:00.004-04:00

I am a big believer that only true way to get better is to surround yourself by great people. I believe this works in sports, business, the economy, and just about everything.

I think it's really true for a developer. Want to write better code? Work with someone that really really really knows their craft. You'll learn a thing (or 10). Try to keep up with them -- try taking your craft to the next level!

You'll know you've succeeded when you come up with an idea that will impress the heck out of them.

Don't work with smart people? Get on a new team or a new project!

You're the smartest guy in the company? Find a new job!

Can't find a new job with smart people? Find an open source project with smart people. There are tons of them out there! Get on the forums for a software project and contribute! Impress the experts!

You'll never get any better if your the sharpest programmer in the shed!

I Heart RAID

2009-08-01T08:48:00.002-04:00

On Thursday afternoon, we had a critical situation in the Kratzer Household.

The computer was having problems and wouldn't start up. Jenn called me while I was out at lunch. I decided to leave work early because what she was describing didn't sound good.

I came home to find out that one of my disk drives was complete toast. Luckily, I made the decision to purchase a computer with a RAID controller on the motherboard. For those non-techies out there, a RAID controller allows me to make two disks look like one disk (among other configurations). This is called RAID 1 - or mirroring. Every time a piece of data is written to the disk drive, it is actually written to two disk drives. The beauty of this is that I always have a working image of my computer system (even if a drive dies).

This problem was easily fixed. I went to Best Buy (10 minute drive down the road), and found a similar disk drive (same size, same speed, same vendor even!). I installed the mounting kit and slid the new drive into the computer, removing the old drive.

When I booted the computer, the system told me that the RAID array was rebuilding itself and that it would start booting a while. After a slower boot into Windows, I was able to watch the drives "rebuild". Basically, the one good drive needed to copy all of its data to my new drive (to keep the system back in sync). This took about an hour and a half. After that, I was in tip-top shape.

When I purchased my computer three years ago, I made three conscious decisions:

+ I got the maximum amount of memory I could put in the computer at the time (4 GB). This has had a very good pay off for me in terms of performance.

+ I got a premium XPS system from Dell. Wow. I actually never opened up my computer until Thursday (I'm a software guy.. not a hardware guy). The case system was designed to open very easily (no screw drivers needed) and every component was easy to access. Thank you, Dell.

+ I invested some extra money for a RAID controller. I always knew this was a good decision. The events on Thursday proved it.

Someone once said "There are two types of disk drives. Those that have failed and those that are going to fail.". I can testify to this. I've had many computers over my time and I have had many disk failures. I knew that having RAID would "save my bacon".

And while I certainly have back-ups of everything, I am glad that this problem was fixed (with zero data loss) in a couple of hours. A re-installation and a copy of my data down from Amazon S3 would likely have taken days. And I'm sure that I would have forgotten to back up something.

Thank you, RAID.

Bucket List 2: Implementing Encrypting and Compression

2009-07-26T22:38:00.004-04:00

Every developer should have the pleasure of implementing an encryption and compression algorithm.

Why?

Why not!

There are many good reasons that every developer should have this experience:

1. Encryption and Compression are very fundamental technologies that have broad-reaching impact in much of what we do as software developers. Getting some hands-on experience with both of these subject areas only helps the developer to really understand and internalize some of this knowledge.

2. The theory behind both compression and crypto is downright fascinating.

3. It's a great opportunity to take a very solid specification, and take your hand at implementing it. This is also a great way to learn a new langauge!

4. It's a great opportunity to work with data at a byte-level and bit-level. Sometimes you just realize how one of your favorite programming platforms (Java) really sucks at byte manipulation and bit-twiddling.

5. Implementing compression algorithms is also a good opportunity to dust off your data structure skills sets. (note: implementing run-length encoding does not count) :-)

6. It's pretty darn satisfying to use your software at for one operation (like compression or encryption) and see it inter-operate with another software tool for the other operation (like decryption or uncompressing data).

So, go ahead and implement LZW or DES today!

Bucket List 1: Write Code Down at the Bare Metal.

2009-07-23T10:23:00.004-04:00

I think every developer should experience the joy, frustration, and shear thrill of programming in assembly (machine) language. While maybe not a critical day-to-day skill for many software developers, Assembly Language programming still educates the software developer in many ways.

I first started programming 6502 Assembly back in 1985. I had an 8-bit Atari computer, and I was doing a lot of programming BASIC. The problem with this platform is that the computer only had a clock speed of 1.44 Mhz, and BASIC was interpreted. This wasn't exactly the speediest platform. :-)

I soon learned that the Atari platform had some very simple hooks to allow your BASIC program to jump to a user machine language program loaded into "page 6". Each "page" on the Atari computer had 256-bytes of memory. Page 0 started at memory location 0, Page 1 started at memory location 256. Page 6 started at memory address 1536.

I remember hand-translating the assembly opcodes to machine language, and then using BASIC's DATA statements to load them into memory, starting at location 1536. If my assembly language program when awry, the computer would lock up and I'd reboot. I was in heaven a year later when I found an Assembler written in BASIC that would do the translating for me. :-)

I used 6502 Assembler to quickly redefine character sets, wipe out memory, animate graphics, mix colors, break the 4-Player limit in Player-Missile-Graphics (there were some gnarly things you could do when the screen was redrawing itself mid-screen).

6502 Assembly was a great assembly language to learn. There were only three registers (A, X, and Y). The instruction set was small. I learned a lot about the computer - everything from interfacing with external devices to programming the graphics and sound chips.

My later experience was in college. I picked up 80x86 assembly language to do some hi-performance 3D graphics. The 80x86 had more sophisticated memory management and more registers to work with, but the experience was just as invaluable. I learned the art of really fast integer math (both fixed point math and all of the neat tricks with rotates/adds that could be done to speed up calculations). I counted clock cycles. I precalculated values to make math even faster. I unrolled loops to prevent the penalty of having to branch/jump.

I haven't done any assembler since college (well over 15 years now!). But I still look back at those times very fondly. They gave me a great appreciation for how computers really work, how memory is managed, and how devices really work. You get great insights into code optimization. Finally, there was always a huge pay check at the end of the day - A HUGE performance pay off in speed.

I remember learning C and remembering how simple it was. Everyone in myu college class was having a hard time understanding pointers and memory allocation. But after programming in assembly, it was really easy to understand the abstractions that C was providing the programmer and what the programmer needed to do in order to clean up after himself.

With today's multi-core, multi-language, multi-system architectures, it's easy to see how Assembly language programming is becoming a lost art. With C/C++ compilers that produce super optimized machine code and JVM's that perform run-time analysis before compiling to machine code, I cannot see myself ever dipping back into assembly language again. But the time spent their was a fascinating part of my experience as a software developer. And I still wish every developer gets a chance to talk to the machine using its own native language.

A Software Developer's Bucket List.

2009-07-23T10:20:00.002-04:00

About 6 months ago, my wife and I watched the movie The Bucket List. The movie is about a guy that makes a list of Things to Do before he Kicks the Bucket.

This got me to thinking about my career as a software developer, and I thought I should put together a Software Developer's Bucket List. Everything a software developer should do during their career.

I'll start off with things that I've done and end with things that I have yet to do.

This should be an interesting exercise for me.

Debugging Certs using OpenSSL

2009-06-12T13:21:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, I could just kick myself. I know OpenSSL has a lot of great features, but I never spend any time learning the myriad of command line options.

Today, Matt showed me some really useful ones at work:

To print out a certificate in human-readable format:

openssl x509 -in certfile.crt -text

To print out hash fingerprint of a cert:

openssl x509 -in certfile.crt -fingerprint

To show the certs being served up by an SSL/TLS endpoint:

openssl s_client -connect hostname:443 -showcerts

I'm making a resolution that I'm going to spend a few hours going over the OpenSSL docs to learn more!

Old School Computer

2009-04-30T06:42:00.001-04:00

I just read an article on Slashdot about Old School Programming Techniques.

I'm ashamed to say that I nearly practiced every single one of these at one point in my programming history!

How many have you done yourself?

Thunderbird 3, Beta 2.

2009-04-28T07:10:00.000-04:00

At home and at work, I use Thunderbird. I like the having a nice, lightweight, open-source mail client that doesn't try to do everything (like Outlook tries).

However, over the last year, I have become extremely frustrated with Thunderbird for two major reasons:

There is a bug that causes the password to be forgotten for IMAP accounts. The end-result is that you have to needlessly type in your password.
IMAP mailbox performance just sucks.

Since I use IMAP for both my home and work e-mail, this was getting a bit unbearable (as well as my wife complaining about these two issues also... and rightfully so - this was just getting miserable).

I normally do not go out of my way to try beta software (since I run my computer at home like a production system... it's all about productivity and not having applications crash all of the time). However, I decided to download and try out Thunderbird 3, Beta 2.

And it is fantastic.

The password bug is fixed; I originally downloaded the beta because I saw in Mozilla's bug tracker that the issue had been resolved in the beta. Even, better the IMAP mailbox performance is much better. Thunderbird now locally caches mail in the background. Even better you can enable/disable this feature at a folder level. Since disk space is cheap, I take the default options which cache everything.

I have not had any stability issues or crashes since downloading it last week. If you are a Thunderbird user who uses IMAP a lot, download the beta now!

How quickly they grow!

2009-04-13T13:12:00.000-04:00

I always forget how quickly babies grow!

Here is a picture of Colin from New Years Day (he was about 2 weeks old when this picture was taken):

Here is a picture in the same swing, three months later:

Technical Links moving to Twitter.

2009-04-06T19:31:00.001-04:00

I've had a twitter account for a while. I usually squat on my name when a new service is available.

To that end, I couldn't really come to terms how I wanted to use FaceBook, SmugMug, this blog, or twitter.

For those of you out there who like reading technical links... I will now be publishing them on twitter. (the 140 character limit seems perfect for this!).

Follow on me twitter @ http://twitter.com/billkratzer

There are RSS feeds available so that you can follow me in Google Reader (or any other RSS tool).

I will continue to use this blog to post longer pieces of thought.

A Very Nice 37th Birthday.

2009-04-06T19:22:00.000-04:00

Today I turned 37.

Overall... I had a very nice day. I only spent two hours in the office, and then two hours at a client site (I am helping out an old-coworker and friend of mine). I then left early so that I could spend the day with my family. I got some cool Lego sets for my Birthday. Jenn's parents gave me some money (which will also go towards my Lego projects!).

The best part of the day was being able to just take a break from the insanity of life. My work life is very busy right now, and I am working on 5-6 projects at any given time. My side-project outside of work demands a lot of time. Factor in all of the other stuff that just needs to get done around the house, and sometimes it feels like you never have time to breathe!

Today's best gift was to ditch the co-workers, ignore the customers, delay the side-projects and just spend time with the family and enjoying the time I have with them.

Tomorrow.... the full steam ahead again!

Great Article on CSS-based form design

2009-03-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

I just ran across a great article on how to do really good form design in CSS.

Published!

2009-03-26T20:23:00.000-04:00

My wife was interviewed for a local magazine on parenting. A picture of my daughter and son was also used as the lead photo. Pretty neat!

Here's the article: (click photo to enlarge)

Contract First Web Services

2009-03-25T15:28:00.000-04:00

I must be getting old.

For a while, I resisted the Spring-WS approach of contract first web services. I quickly dismissed it as too much work. I was just more interested in annotating my pojos to get them quickly deployed so that I can get some web services available.

Well, over the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to catch my breath and have an open mind about Spring's case for Contract First Web Services.

Read it here yourself.

Their case is certainly a good one. At the end of the day, the contract really should start with the XML.

Every approach has its pro's and con's, but I think I will be giving much more serious consideration to Contract First Web Services!

Need a password to dump your postgresql database?

2009-03-25T09:47:00.000-04:00

I was putting together a quick cron job today to dump a postgresql database, using pg_dump.

If you need to connect to the database with a password (because local trust is turned off), then you need a way to pass the password into pg_dump. pg_dump does not allow a command line password specification (for good reason... you don't necessary want the password showing up in a process listing by someone else on the box).

But it appears that pg_dump will look for an environment variable named PGPASSWORD.

In your script:

export PGPASSWORD=somereallysupersecurepassword
pgdump databasename

voila!

The Year 2009 so far.

2009-03-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

So far, I've had a pretty productive 2009 (in terms of some of my personal goals):

I am really focused at work, possibly doing some of my best all around technical work.
I am working on some great projects, and generally feel invigorated by my job and my team.
My side project is going really well. We go into testing in a few weeks!
My lego house is slowly coming along.
I started studying economics in my spare time. It is turning out to be a really neat topic to delve into. Next up: some basic accounting!
Still playing oGame. :-)

One of My First Usenet posts.

2009-03-19T21:48:00.001-04:00

I was curious what was one of my earliest records of me on the Internet.

According to Google, it's this post by me to a Usenet news group back in summer of 1992:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.msdos.programmer/browse_thread/thread/89c270d2e86ef013/c3be546b21d8fa53?hl=en&q=wmk101#c3be546b21d8fa53

I had been on the internet at Penn State since Fall of 1990, but I seldom used any public Usenet news group until that summer.

Mark: This was the summer was started programming 3D game engines in MS-DOS/Pascal/Assembler! Fun times!

Good Progress

2009-02-11T18:22:00.000-05:00

I set out some goals this year, and I am pretty excited with some of my progress already.

My side project outside of work is going very well. I cannot wait to talk more about it.
My work projects are going very well. I am re-invigorated, and I am doing really solid work right now.
I have really cranked up my focus level at work. Outside of the occasional coffee break, I am seldom distracted by other attractions in the circus that we call work!
I think I found a subject area that I am going to explore outside of computers. More on that soon!

Lego Town House Model - Take 1

2009-01-18T20:59:00.000-05:00

My big order of custom bricks arrived on Saturday. Today, I took the first stab at a recreation of our town home. This was more of a conceptual build. I knew that I was well short of pieces. I just wanted to build enough of a skeleton to get a rough idea on size, scale, and a couple of building techniques.

Overall... I couldn't be more pleased! The pictures below show about an hour or so of work. And everything is coming together quite nicely. The entire model will be completely rebuilt (with lots more detail), but I think I know what I really want to do now with this house!

I've promised myself that I won't by any more bricks until my birthday, though. :-)

Review: Non-Designer's Design Book

2009-01-17T09:50:00.001-05:00

When you stumble upon a book several times in your online world of blogs, podcasts, and other web sites, you just have to give it a read!

That's what happened to me with The Non-Designer's Design Book. This book is targeted to anyone who has done (or needs to do) any type of design work. Whether it's for a web site, a news bulletin, the community news letter, business cards, or even a report -- this book is for you.

The author covers some very basic principles of design, including: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. "Dull" examples are shown, followed by ones that use these simple concepts to make the design very interesting.

If you are like me, you will quickly notice the dull designs as something you normally do! The illustrations are fantastic, making the read very visual and enjoyable at the same time. Even better: this is a book that you can polish off in 2-4 hours.

The book also gets into some very basic color theory and typography theory as well. Although, I wish a little more time was spent on these sections. Overall, I am quite impressed and will gladly recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their design skills.

Pro's: Quick read. Easy concepts. Fantastic illustrations. Very visual books. All examples list the fonts used (very cool).

Cons: A little too short. I wish the book would have gone a little more into color and typography theory and usage.

Overall: This is a great book. Everyone who has a need to design web sites, web pages, news letters, PowerPoint presentations, and even reports will get something out of this book.

Lego Art.

2009-01-08T22:34:00.000-05:00

Neya and I spent some time tonight making some Lego art:

Green Grocer Finished.

2009-01-06T19:45:00.000-05:00

Neya and I finished building the Green Grocer on Saturday.

Here are some pictures:

More pictures available here.

More Lego Building

2009-01-03T08:11:00.001-05:00

For Christmas, I got a Lego set called Green Grocer. It's a three story building that features a grocer on the bottom store, and two apartments above it. The set weights in at over 2500 pieces at will probably take me around 10 hours to fully assemble. The set has a huge amount of detail: a mouse that hides under the stairs and eats cheese, a dairy cabinet stocked with juice and milk, vegetable bins, checkout counters, mailboxes, etc.

Neya and I started to assemble the bottom floor on New Years day. Here are some pictures below. We had a lot of fun putting it together. Sometimes, getting my 5-year-old daughter involved slows the process and tests my patience, but it's totally worth it!

All of the pieces spread out on the table (for the first floor). It really pays to have a big table! (thankfully, Lego organizes the bags for the pieces by floor).

Goals for 2009.

2009-01-02T11:49:00.001-05:00

I'm not one to spend a lot of time reflecting, so here are my personal and professional goals for 2009.

Note: My prior comments about uninspired work may have confused some people, so let me clarify: I love working at Versatile. I love my job. I love the people I work with. I've done good, solid work. My customers have been happy, my employer has been happy (I think!), and overall I have been happy. However, I tend to evaluate my work output probably much more critically than most people I know, and I really want to do something much better!

Onto the list!

Loose 40 Pounds - Started off good last year. We'll see if I can do it this year! Rebuck - I'll be calling you for trips to L.A. Fitness!

Get On the Raquetball Court (and beat Rebuck) - This will take a lot of work (just getting on the court... not beating Rebuck ;-)). I love raquet sports, and I miss playing them with Mark. I hope to get my ankle in good enough shape to play again!

Family - I really want to be a better husband and father. I need to be more patient with my kids (which surprises me -- I am usually a very patient person). Overall, I need to spend more time with my family... which leads me to my next goal.

Work - Just say NO to work. I work a lot. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I enjoy it. I love what I do, and I love the challenges of the things that I get asked to deliver. But, I plan to be saying NO a little bit more to my co-workers, managers, and bosses a little more this year. My family deserves it!

Work - Do something KICK ASS. I cannot predict what I will be working on next year (our industry and my company moves way too fast), but I really want to do something really cool. I have a good shot early this year. We have a project code named Sheep Metal at work. It's a really good chance to right some wrongs, and do something really good. We'll see!

Books - I need to read more this year. And reading more does not mean "Spring in Practice, version 2.5" and "Mastering Regular Expressions". I need to finish Cryptonomicon! My goal - read 10 non-technical and non-work-related books this year! (note: Audiobooks will count for me!)

Explore More Music - I need to stop downloading safe music from iTunes. I need open my ears and listen for new stuff.

Focus - My level of focus just has not been consistent over the last 2 years. I've had those 20% moments of being in the zone. I've been much better since coming back to work after the ankle injury, but I really need to focus on this area.

Build the Business - Wally and I have a great business concept, and I plan to test it in 2009. Very exciting!!!!

Finish Playing Legend of Zelda (Twlight Princess) - I've had this game since I purchased my Wii. There is nothing wrong with it... in fact, it's fantastic! For some reason, I've never been able to get myself to finish the game.

Get Matt Hurne to purchase Little Big Planet. - Need I say more?

Get More Out of My NetFlix Membership - I love NetFlix. However, I run into stretches where I do not rent movies for months. I usually make this up by watching tons of movies in short spurts, but I really need to make more out of my membership!

Quit Playing oGame - I will do this once I get my Death Stars. I promise! (stop laughing, Andy!)

Build a Lego House - My daughter and I have been building Lego sets (using the instructions that they give you in the box). I want to do some serious building on my own. My first creation for this year will be a re-make of our home. This should be good fun!

Work-Related Goals:

Learn JavaFX - It's probably too little, too late for Sun, but I still think it's the right thing for Sun to do. I'll be learning this new technology stack soon.

Work on Design - I've always been a student of graphical design. Over the last couple of years, I've been lucky enough to put more of it into practice. I've already ordered some bibles of graphics design, so I am excited to learn more!

Learn a Functional Language - Scala, Erlang, etc. I should do this. I think this is really more hype than practice at the moment, but the mental gymnastics will be good for me.

Use More Regular Expressions - I know RegEx. I just don't use them enough. That changes this year!

Be Smarter About Tools - There are lots of tools out there that help to make me more productive. I'm going to start paying more for good software development tools.

Learn Something Completely New - I want to learn something completely new in the I.T. field. We'll see where the year takes us.......

Happy New Years!

The Year In Review...

2009-01-02T07:37:00.001-05:00

Before coming to grasp with 2009, I guess it's best to take a brief look at my life in 2008.

The year of 2009:

Collin - Jenn and I both wanted another child, and I really thought it would not be until 2009 before our next child would be born. We were lucky! Collin entered our lives in December and it's already getting hard to remember life without him.

Neya - Neya has changed quite a bit this year! She now has many friends, goes to school, and will even stay over at people's houses. She had a great Christmas with her grand parents. She is really coming out of her shell.

Personal Triumph - Breaking my ankle was a real eye-opener. It took a good 4-5 months to get over this. I actually walked downstairs (fairly) normally for the first time just last night!

Personal Health - I started the year strong by losing 20 pounds. Stress at work and my ankle injury threw a complete monkey wrench into my exercise plan.

Work - I had a really uninspiring year at work this year. I really will not look back at this year and say "wow.. you did really good work". I did not produce anything at all that I am particularly proud of. I improved some of my web-monkey skills, but that's about it.

Home Improvement - Big year for this! We finished our basement, painted the house, and expanded our deck! Jenn did a lot of the real work as I was immobilized much of the time due to my ankle injury.

Books - Sadly... I did not read many books this year. I read Prey by Michael Chrichton - good, quick, breezy read.

Music - Sadly, my sheltered world of iTunes has kept me from exploring new music. Although, I started listening to Girl Talk at the end of the year, and I've been loving it.

Games - This was a great year for gaming. But with my busy schedule, it's really hard to keep up with the scene. Although my ankle injury afforded me the time to play and master: Mario Kart, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, Da Blob. I also played of Goo, Call of Duty and way too much oGame this year.

Business Ideas - My friend Wally and I have been working on a side project that we think could be very profitable. I'm really excited about it, and should probably be working on it right now rather than working on this blog post.... more details next year as the ideas turn into real products!

Next blog post - Goals for 2009!

Back to Walking!

2008-11-24T21:01:00.000-05:00

I had my post-operation follow up with my orthopedic. They removed my stitches, and said that I can start putting weight on my ankle.

No need for physical therapy this time around. The doctor said I know my exercises, and this time should be much quicker. I got an aircast for my ankle to provide a little extra support when I go outside (since it has been wet, snowy, and icy as of late).

I already started walking with just one crutch tonight. :-)

I hope to have things back to normal in about a week.

Back from Surgery.

2008-11-18T19:14:00.000-05:00

I just got my screws and plate removed. The picture below gives you an idea how big they were:

I'll be resting and relaxing for the rest of the week. I'm allowed to use my crutches to put partial weight on my foot, but my doctor doesn't want me to be full weight-bearing until after I see him next Monday.

So, couch: here I come!!!!

Crazy Lego Creations

2008-11-09T18:51:00.000-05:00

Neya and I spent some time playing with our Lego bricks this afternoon. We made a very large house a few weeks ago, and Neya did not want to take the house apart. So, we only had a small collection of small bricks yet.

She was disappointed that she didn't have enough bricks to build another house, but I told her that we would just build crazy stuff.

So, here are our creations.

First up -- Neya:

Next up, my creations:

Farewell PSU National Championship Hopes...

2008-11-09T13:44:00.000-05:00

As a faithful Penn State alumni, and an avid college football fan, my hopes of another National Championship for my beloved Nittany Lions were dashed on Saturday night at Kinnick Stadium, where the Iowa Hawkeyes kicked a last minute field goal to beat Penn State 24 to 23.

The Nittany Lions have dropped to #7 in the AP polls, and if they win the rest of the their games, they will likely go to the Rose Bowl and play USC.

A part of me is completely disappointed and depressed right now. This was supposed to be the year for Penn State. This was supposed to be JoePa's fairy tale ending. However, I'm not as upset as I thought I'd be. A part of me is relieved. A part of me knows now that I won't be following every Blog, Podcast, and news story on Penn State. A part of me can just let a lot of this go...

Which is probably a good thing. The next two months will be busy -- projects at work, ankle surgery, Thanksgiving, new baby Collin, Christmas stuff. Obsessing over Penn State football is one less thing to worry about. :-)

Don't get me wrong -- There are still two more games in November where I'll be glued to the TV sets for at least 3 hours. :-)

Then and Now - Part 2

2008-11-06T06:57:00.001-05:00

I found some pictures of the school that I used to go to when I was little - Harry L. Bain.

This school was just a few blocks from our apartment, and we would walk their every day. Even though I hadn't been their in 30 years, I could still remember how to walk their using Google Street Maps.

The first picture is just a little amusing. I've told my friends and co-workers that we used to have recess in the middle of the street, and they would block it off so that we could safely play. It looks like this hasn't changed!

The next picture shows my Kindergarten graduation picture taken in 1977, in front of the double doors on the front of the building:

Here's a shot of those same doors today:

Trip to Manhattan

2008-11-02T13:19:00.000-05:00

Jenn and I took our daughter Neya to see Mary Poppins on Broadway, in New York city.

We made it a hassle-free day trip. We took the Amtrak train to New York city. The trip from E-Town to Penn Station was around 3 and a half hours. Not too bad! Mary Poppins was playing on West 42nd street, just nine blocks down from the train station. We just strolled up 7th Avenue, watched the play, and then visited Times Square.

The play was fantastic, and Time Square was neat. Neya liked the flagship Toys 'R Us store in Time Square.

Here are some pictures from the visit:

I got to see my friend Nate. He lives in Manhattan off 37th street, so we were able to catch up with him for a few minutes, on the way to the play:

The play was a lot of fun. Even though we were in the cheap seats, we had a great view of the stage:

Times Square was neat. I liked the Lego displays in the Toy 'R Us store. They had several mammoth Lego displays. My favorite was the one of the Empire State Building and King Kong. It was over 30 feet tall!

More pictures are available here, in our photo gallery.

Then and Now

2008-11-01T00:04:00.000-04:00

I had a lot of fun playing with Google Maps Street View. For those who are not familiar, you can actually use Google Maps in some areas to get a first-person view of the street. Google does this by driving cars all over the place and taking pictures as the car drives down the street. The photos are tagged with GPS and electronically stitched together. This allows people like me to virtually walk the streets.

Because this is really expensive and time-consuming to produce, these street views are typically only available in major cities. I was mapping our trip out to New York City and having a fun time "walking the streets" using Google Street view (quite useful actually.. I have a pretty darned good idea on where I am going tomorrow!). After I got familiar with my New York City route, I peeked across the river to New Jersey. To my astonishment, my childhood apartments and streets were now available with Google Street View.

I then began walking the streets on near the two apartments where we lived, and the elementary school where I used to go. And that is when I noticed something eerie. I actually remembered how to walk to my elementary school! Sure, some of the buildings were different, but most of them struck me with bizarre jab of deja vu.

As an interesting project, I decided to do some Then and Now pictures of my childhood with what is currently displayed in Google Street View.

First up Gutenberg, New Jersey. In 1970, we lived in the Panorama, located on 6803 Blvd East in Gutenberg. Blvd East is a major stretch of road that is near the Hudson river with a stunning view of Manhattan. I think we lived their until about 1974 or 1975.

Here is picture from 1970 (two years before I was born!):

The picture below is from Google Street View:

Across the street, there was a stone wall with a great view of Manhattan. The picture shows my mom with my older brother Rusty when he was a new born baby.

Here is the current day shot from Google Street View: (you can still see the stone wall, and the view of the city behind the trees).

Crackberry

2008-10-26T17:29:00.000-04:00

My cell phone was due for an upgrade at work (just in time too... I was getting a little frustrated with my Palm Treo).

I now have a Blackberry 8830.

I love it. The whole e-mail and messaging experience is just much better and slicker than the Treo. In a few minutes of set up and configuration, I was able to get all of my work e-mails forwarded to my Blackberry. This really makes it convenient to stay up on things when I am away from the office or in the evenings.

The device was pretty easy to figure out. After playing around for about 10 minutes and getting a quick five minute run-down from one of my co-workers, I had pretty decent command of the phone.

It's no iPhone, but it certainly is a much nicer device than my old Treo.

Done with PT!

2008-10-24T20:45:00.000-04:00

Today was my last day of physical therapy. My last goal was to get to a normal range of up and down movement in my ankle (dorsiflexion and plantarflexion). My goal was to get over 40 degrees of movement. I blew that out of the water today with movement in the low 50's.

All that said, I am still not 100 percent yet (I would classify myself near 95%). I still have a little bit of problems controlling my foot drop when walking down the stairs, and I still cannot do a one-footed tip-toe on my bad ankle.

However, I have no limp in my walk. And everything is feeling pretty good. The other stuff will come back after lots more practice and exercise.

Next up - hardware removal. I am scheduled to get my hardware removed in about 3-4 weeks.

Balance and Leg Strength Conditioning

2008-10-13T16:18:00.000-04:00

I have about 2 more weeks of physical therapy left.

The goals of the next 2 weeks involve the improving following two areas:

Balance (my balance stinks)
Leg strength (my legs feel like jello after walking up a flight of steps)

To that end, we have been tweaking my exercises as follows:

I do a higher level of resistance on the bike (level 8)
I do a 3 second hold on my wall squats.
I now do my BAPS board by standing up on it (this is ridiculously hard for me)
I now do sets of 15 leg presses (three sets with one foot, three sets with both feet)
I have to play catch with a heavy ball by bouncing it on a trampoline-like contraption. I do this while balancing on one foot.
I now do a higher level of resistance bands for my side-step exercises and ankle exercises.

Hardware comes out on November 18th. I'm excited to have it out!

Go State!

2008-09-28T20:50:00.000-04:00

Penn State passed their first real test on Saturday, beating Illinois 38-24 (although, I argue that their second week bruising of Oregon State was a good test, too).

This was probably one of the more entertaining Penn State football games in recent memory.

Go State!

More changes at P.T.

2008-09-25T07:57:00.000-04:00

I went to work on Tuesday without crutches. I walked into the office myself (no easy feat!). And yesterday, Jenn put the crutches in the basement for safe-keeping (don't worry Rebuck... I'll give them back to you!).

I can move around the house pretty well. However, when I walk up the steps, I really notice how weak my legs have become.

The folks are Physical Therapy are adjusting my normal routine to deal with it (just in time... I'm sure they saw this coming):

More changes to my exercise regimen at PT:

They moved me to a machine that gives me MUCH more resistance for my leg presses
I do a calf and leg stretches by leaning against the wall (5 sets with knee bent, 5 sets without knee bent - 30 second stretch for each set).
My ankle rotation exercises are now done with someone holding an elastic band (to help build ankle strength)

Walking!

2008-09-21T15:31:00.000-04:00

I think I can say that I am walking. I didn't bring crutches into physical therapy on Friday. On Saturday, I didn't even take out to dinner.

I still use a crutch to get up and down the stairs, but this is for more balance reasons.

My walking is all that smooth yet, but in a couple of weeks, I think I'll be close to 90% normal. It looks like I'll have one more (very small) operation in October to get the metal out. This is a good thing... I think part of my ankle rotation ability is being inhibited by the metal in their (plus, I can feel the metal in their... which is kind of...creepy).

My routine has changed slightly at physical therapy:

I now do my weight shifts with my ankle standing on a squishy rubber foam pad. It supposedly helps me balance.
I now do side-steps up an down the length of the work out area (again: working on sideways stability and balance)
I now walk over little hurdles (about 4 inches high) to help with balance and control
two legged shuttle reps are up to 7 bands
I now do one legged shuttle reps on 6 bands

Basement Finished.

2008-09-08T08:55:00.000-04:00

Our basement is officially finished. The carpet was installed late last week and we had our final walk through with the builders.

Our next big project starts next week: Painting the house!

I think Jenn has finished picking out the colors. Our basement will get painted first. Once it is painted, all of Neya's toys will move down there -- since the basement will be initially a play room.

Farewell IntelliJ...

2008-09-07T10:31:00.000-04:00

Warning: Geek Post.

For my day-to-day software development needs, I've been using Eclipse. It's a really competent Java IDE but falls short on the side of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS development.

Some folks have at work have been using IntelliJ IDEA, and many other developers just seem to gush over it. So, I thought I would try it.

I gave it a try for one month, and I have reached my verdict: I cannot believe that IntelliJ is still in business -- there is just no way I can justify spending 200 bucks on it.

My major complaints:

Key combinations and short cuts are bizarre. Control-Y to delete a line? (almost every other editor uses Ctrl-E or Ctrl-D). This list goes on and on and on....
Three forms of Ctrl-Space completion? Give me a freaking break! Ctrl-Space should match anything in my entire project and prioritize the ones that I use most often at the top of the list of matches (or the ones that match imported entries from my class).
No Automated Unit Test Creation? I was surprised that I needed a plug-in to do this. (and even then, the plug-in sucked)
Outdated GUI - The GUI is just plane outdated. It looks so 2002. Note to IntelliJ: Swing interfaces can look really nice!
No Drag and Drop - Every other IDE I have used allows me to drag files from my desktop into my project. Except IntelliJ.
Slow - IntelliJ is just plain slow. Eclipse is much snappier. Even NetBeans (which I used to classify as Bloatware) is snapier. I hate having to wait 30 seconds everytime I open a project so that it can re-index everything. This is just plain silly.
No Support for Multiple Open Projects - This is just lame. I can only have one project open in a pane at a time. If I want multiple projects, I need to spawn a new window.

I am glad I tried IntelliJ. I am hoping that next time I go to a conference, and I see poeople gushing so much about IntelliJ, they can show me what they like about it.

Note: I know that IntelliJ does have excellent Spring/Hibernate/Groovy/Rails support. However, I really think it's important to have an IDE that gets the basics done first. All of my rants above are minor things. But when so many minor things just suck, I can't get past it.

On a very pleasant note, I am currently trying the latest Beta of Netbeans (version 6.5). It is fast, snappy, and just plain works. In about 10 minutes, I was able to get my project up and running. Within a day, I am pretty productive in its environment. Nice job, Sun!

I hope IntelliJ will seriously look at their competition and see where they are falling short.

More Progress

2008-09-05T08:31:00.000-04:00

I am doing much better with one crutch. It is almost getting easy with one crutch.

On Wednesday, I took my first couple of steps with no crutches - they were baby steps, but at least they were steps!

I also had my progress report at PT. No swelling decrease in last week or so. But I am gaining more ability to move my ankle around (this is measured in degrees using a tool that looks like a protractor from geometry class).

Break through on the steps: I was doing Level 1 steps last Friday. Level 1 steps are about a half inch high. On Wednesday, I was doing Level 4 steps (several inches high -- like normal steps).

This breakthrough is due to the fact that I can now maintain my entire body weight on my ankle. However, we did a balancing test -- and I have no balance whatsoever on this foot. Something new to work on! I didn't think that I would loose my balancing ability so quickly!

Walking down the stairs!

2008-08-24T08:54:00.000-04:00

I started to walk down the stairs with the crutches yesterday. Woo hoo!

I never hopped down the stairs with the crutches before because it scared the crap out of me. But now that I can walk one-step-at-a-time, walking down is a breeze.

It's a little victory, but now that I can move up and down with relative ease, my life is getting a bit easier!

Bill's PT Routine

2008-08-24T08:21:00.001-04:00

My Physical Therapy is coming along nicely. A couple of people ask what I do at PT, so here's the list... I go through the following items in about an hour and 10 minutes.

Stretching

Calf stretches; straight leg - 5 reps, 30 seconds each
Calf stretches; bent leg - 5 reps, 30 seconds each

Ankle Non-Weight Bearing Excercies

Dorsiflexion/Plantar Flexion - move ankle/foot toward you and away from you (up and down) - 20 reps
Inversion / Eversion - move ankle/floot side-to-side - 20 reps
Rotation - 20 reps clockwise / 20 reps counter-clock wise
The same exercises as above but on the baps board (pic below)
Toe lifts - 20 reps
Heel pumps - 20 reps

This is the BAPS board... my exercises involve making sure that the ends of the board touch the ground. Each week, they put a bigger ball on the bottom, which requires that my ankle be required to do more work to have the ends touch. Note: I don't stand up on this thing yet. My exercises are sitting down.

Weight Bearing Exercises

Weight shifts - 10 reps, 10 seconds each
Bike - 10 minutes on level 4 (feels like bicycling on air, though)
Wall/Back Thrusts - 10 reps; 2 times
Stair stretch - put foot on stair and lean forward - 3 reps; 30 seconds each
Shuttle - 10 reps; 3 times

Message and Cooling

I get about a 15 minute massage of my foot and ankle to push the blood out (it helps reduce the swelling). Since I started phyiscal therapy, my foot size went down 2.5 centimeters - this is almost half of my swelling!
Finally... I spend 10 minutes in the cryo cuff. It's a boot that they pump cold water into. Apparently, I'm only one of two people in the place that actually like it.

Lego Minifig Parade

2008-08-07T19:45:00.001-04:00

Neya and I made a Lego Minifugre Parade yesterday.

New Deck!

2008-08-07T19:37:00.000-04:00

Just in time for summer to end, we finally have our new deck!

The new deck is twice as long (it extends across the entire back of the house). The floor is composite (for easy care), the railings are metal, and the railing is cedar (which we'll need to seal and stain). The steps will be completed tomorrow.

Bill can stand!

2008-08-06T12:44:00.000-04:00

I had my second day of physical therapy today, and I was able to stand today!

Some folks have been asking me what I do at physical therapy.... the first two sessions included:

ankle exercises (rotation, lateral, radial, up/down, calf stretches)
weight bearing exercises (stand up, slowly shift weight onto ankle, take weight off, repeat)
exercise bike
15-20 minutes of massage (to help get the swelling down)
10 minutes in a cold water boot

First day at Physical Therapy.

2008-08-05T17:46:00.000-04:00

I had my first appointment with my Physical Therapist today.

Overall, it was very good. I had about a half hour of exercise and a bunch of history, measurements, massage, and some liquid cooling boot for my ankle.

I'll be in physical therapy for 3 days a week for the next month. The goal is to get my walking in three weeks. Woo-Hoo!

Interesting fact of the day: My right foot is 6cm bigger than my left foot (due to the swelling). That's a lot of centimeters!

One small step for Bill

2008-08-04T14:51:00.000-04:00

... one giant leap to normalcy.

After two months of splints, casts, and a surgery, I finally had my cast removed today. Tomorrow, I start about a month of physical therapy. In the mean time, I can start putting a little bit of weight on my foot!

Hooray!!!

The picture on the right shows my ankle from three different views. You can see the screws and plate which were put in to provide more support. After physical therapy, I will get the screws and plate removed (one more trip to the hospital).

Look at that Horse!

2008-07-31T20:07:00.001-04:00

Five Weeks and Counting

2008-07-24T08:12:00.000-04:00

While I love summer, I must admit that I really love fall more.

Why? Football.

Penn State kicks their schedule off on August 30th against the formidable Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. Every year I get really excited about a powerhouse football squad, and this year is no exception. With seniors like Derrick Williams, A.Q. Shipley, Josh Gains, Deon Butler, Jordan Norwood, Tony Davis, Kevin Kelly, Rich Ohrnberger, etc. -- we have a good shot at being a real power house football team.

Of course there are questions. Star Linebacker Sean Lee will be out this season -- but I'm sure that PSU can pick up the slack here. We always seem to be loaded at the Linebacker position. The more curious question will be Quarterback. We have the Michael-Robinson-like Darryl Clark who seems really good at giving us an option as a mobile quarterback (but I've never seen him throw). We also have the highly decorated Pat Devlin (who set many Pennsylvania State high school quarter back records), who has yet to see any playing time. Will we see a two quarterback system? Will we move to a spread offense this year? With running threats Stephon Green and Evan Royster, will Joe Pa just use the receivers to set up the run?

Ah... someone like myself can just get giddy thinking of all of the possibilities.

We have a tough schedule this year: back-to-back-to-back games with Wisconsin, Michigan, and then Ohio State.

I can't wait to see how this season plays out. In the mean time, here's the obligatory PSU rah-rah video:

Worst Wheel of Fortune Move... EVER

2008-07-15T08:24:00.000-04:00

I love Wheel of Fortune.

I don't watch it anymore, but I used to watch it all of the time when I was little. In fact, my parents used to tape the episodes on the VCR so that we could watch it together as a family at night (and try to figure out the puzzles before everyone else).

This has to be two of the biggest wheel of fortunes mistakes ever....

(A little bit of) Freedom

2008-07-12T08:13:00.001-04:00

The worst thing about being in a cast right now is the lack of freedom.

I cannot drive. I am dependent upon people (and their schedules) on when I go to work, when I leave work, when I eat, when I go out to do stuff.

Don't get me wrong. I am very thankful for everybody who helps me about. But it still sucks.

Today, a small victory. I was able to get myself dressed and down the stairs... all by myself.

This means that I can get up a little early, and have a little bit of quiet time (typically what I love to do on the weekends). ... and I don't have to wait for anybody or wake anyone up to help me.

One step back to being normal.

Back in a cast!

2008-07-07T18:54:00.001-04:00

I got my staples removed today - about 20 of them in total. The picture to the right is after the staples were removed; Jenn wasn't too keen on watching and taking pictures when they were getting removed!

The swelling on my foot is definitely down. My leg is definitely starting to atrophy.

I got a brand new cast. And the guy cleaned my leg before putting the cast on. Getting my leg cleaned felt sooooooooo good. (I never thought I would be excited to have my leg cleaned by another guy).

I'll be in the cast for at least for more weeks. I am hoping to start physical therapy in early August. I'm hoping that I can be somewhat normal by September! *fingers crossed*

PNC are also Ass Clowns.

2008-07-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

Another day... another problem with a bank.

I am a new customer of PNC (not by choice - my old bank is merging with PNC).

I got my access to my online banking account today. I got myself locked out because the PIN that I thought would get me in is really not the PIN that they used.

I called up to get my account unlocked and my PIN reset. Citing "security concerns", they were unable to tell me my new PIN, and would instead mail it to me.

Really? I answered three or four of your security questions, and you can see that I am calling from my home phone number. If I did all of that, the letter you send me in the mail next week ain't gonna help at all.

The thing that really irritates me is that they mail me and print my FULL SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER on the letter that shows me my user id! In other words, they are using my SSN as my user id!

PNC: You guys a bunch of fanny bandits.

How hard is it to give me a random number for my user id? Even if the SSN is my user id, why not just tell me this in the mail ('your userid is your SSN')? As a tax-paying citizen, I should know my SSN. You certainly don't need to print out all 9 digits in the letter!

Please STOP using my SSN for things you shouldn't be using my SSN for. And stop printing it on a letter and mailing it to me!

Go America!

2008-07-06T12:55:00.000-04:00

Fourth of July is no exception. There's always one guy in the neighborhood who over-does it.

Bank of America is a bunch of ass clowns

2008-07-05T12:28:00.000-04:00

Today it took me about 15 minutes to activate my credit card.

I have a card through Bank of America. It's a card I hardly ever use (because I'm an Amazon.com card guy). But, I keep the card around in case of emergencies.

Unfortunately, they were unable to verify my identity because the phone number from which I was calling was different than the one I had online (I moved five years ago and must have never updated my home phone number).

So, they had to "dive further" to establish my identity. They asked for my last-4 digits of my ssn. Check. They asked for my mother's maiden name. Check. But they were still having difficulties. They had to transfer me to a specialist.

The "specialist" went in for a deep dive. This including giving him my current billing address and then asking for two intersecting streets to my billing address.

So lets look at the pieces of information you used to establish my identity:

+ Last four digits of SSN - just about everyone and their mom knows this number. Everyone asks for this number (and they shouldn't). Only the IRS, my employer, and myself should know this number so that they can report taxes. But because of SSN abuse, this isn't really a safe number any more. My doctor knows this number, PennDot knows this number, my bank knows this number, my credit card companies know this number. Hell, comcast probably knows this number too.

+ Mom's maiden name - 15 minutes of social engineering can easily get this piece of information

+ Billing Address - Hello? If I stole your mail, I probably already know this.

+ Two roads that intersect with my billing address - I can get this information in less than 15 seconds, using Google Maps.

Dear Bank of America:

While I truly appreciate your need to protect your profits and my card from identity theft, I think you guys suck. None of this information really helps to establish my identity and can be easily thwarted by anyone who wasn't an idiot.

Please implement something better in the future.

Bad Commercial Placement

2008-07-04T10:29:00.001-04:00

Freaking hilarious:

Stairway to Heaven

2008-07-02T07:42:00.000-04:00

Big victory for me today. I was able to use my crutches to get up the stairs. While this might not sound like a big deal to a lot of people, let me tell you: when you first start using crutches, climbing stairs is really scary.

Over the last couple of weeks, I got very good and competent with getting in and out of the house (where I either have one step onto the porch or one step into the garage). Curb hopping is now really easy.

Last night, I just told myself: "it's just a series of 20 really easy curbs". I was right. It was really easy to get up.

I did have Jenn to spot me as I went up the stairs. No, I don't expect her to catch the full weight of a 300 pound guy falling down the stairs, but she is more-than-capable of gently nudging me forward when she sees my balance teetering.

This was a small victory for me. It feels normal to walk up the stairs. At least, much more normal than scooting and crawling.

My Fracture

2008-06-30T17:25:00.001-04:00

I finally got to really clearly see my fracture today.

It turns out that I have a fracture in my lateral malleolus. Mine is a type B fracture (the middle picture).

On the road to recovery!

2008-06-30T16:04:00.000-04:00

I had my first post-op visit with my orthopedic today, and things are looking good. My screws and plate appear to be keeping my ligaments and bones together, as they would normally be.

I have two sets of surgical staples (one on each side of the ankle). I got to see them for the first time today... I look a little like Frankenstein. :-)

And my nasty fracture blister is gone!

I'm in a splint for another week. I need to rest this week, because I still have a decent amount of swelling in my foot.

If all goes well, I should have my staples remove next week, and moved into a cast. Then, I can start getting my life a little back to normal.

Out of Surgery, Out of Mind

2008-06-26T11:08:00.000-04:00

I had my surgery done on Tuesday night. I ended up getting two screws and a plate in my ankle. They are not permanent, and will be removed in a few months. They are just there to provide support in my ankle, and so that the ligaments can heal properly.

The anesthesia really worked well. All I remember is being carted to the Operating Room and scooting over to the operating room table. After scooting over, I woke up with a sore ankle.

I stayed overnight in hospital and was out by 1pm. It is nice to be at home, resting in my own bed.

They gave lots of vicodin for pain management at home. I'm trying not take a lot of them. They make me feel just a little different.

In any event... it feels good to be at home, and hopefully on the road to recovery!!!

The Best Twenty Bucks I've Spent

2008-06-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

My left ear closed up on me over the weekend. The result is that my hearing was about 50%. I noticed that I had a lot of wax in my left ear, so I scheduled an appointment to get it checked out.

The doctor took a quick look and said "yup, you have a lot of wax in that ear".

With some warm water and a syringe, she was able to quickly flush it out. When the water was in my ear, it sounded like an ocean! Two quick washes, and I saw all of the wax that was removed. It was incredible (and smelly). I wanted to take a picture, but Jenn wouldn't let me. I was really surprised how much junk has been clogging up my ears!

I instantly was able to hear much better. Now my right ear felt like the clogged one! A couple of washes later, both ears were in tip-top shape.

Twenty bucks and five minutes later, I walked out thinking that this was the best doctor's visit I've ever had. No long recovery. No prescriptions or medications. No referrals No x-rays. Just a simple procedure with dramatic results.

Next time, I won't hesitate to get my ears cleaned out. :-)

Bill Falls Down (and doesn't get up)

2008-06-17T15:50:00.001-04:00

I finally did it. I broke my ankle.

I was playing roller hockey after work. I needed to move from a forward moving position to one where I could turn sharply and backwards.

This is normally handled with a small hop of the skates. Unfortunately, my right foot gave out and twisted in a bad (and wrong) way when I fell on it.

The good news is that I only have a minor fracture. The bad news is that I have severe ligament damage and will be going to surgery next week to get my ankle cut open, fix the ligaments, and get some screws or plates for added support. This will keep me in crutches for another 6 weeks (I have a solid two weeks under my belt) plus several weeks of physical therapy.

My hockey career is over.

Here are some pictures... the first is a couple of days after the incident:

The second picture is about a week later (after my splint was taken off):

It has no where to go but to look better. :-)

I Don't Want to Operate a Data Center any more...

2008-06-03T19:58:00.000-04:00

I am a big fan of Amazon.com. They have already transformed themselves from an online book retailer to THE online retailer of just about any product. Just when everyone said that Amazon had nowhere to go, they started commercializing web services. Everything from storage to elastic computing to databases to queuing services are now available.

The services are cheap, reliable, and scalable.-- and you get to take advantage of Amazon.com's expertise at running a data center (they probably know how to do that better than most people).

I think that this is a slam dunk. I look around and see lots of companies running data centers. And it's expensive. It's even more expensive to run it properly.

Perhaps, Don MacAskill @ SmugMug said it best - I don't want to operate data centers any more.

He's right.

SmugMug (fantastic service and company, by the way) is in the business of providing me great online software to manage my photos. They are a software and services company. They should be focusing on that stuff - operating a data center for them is almost like running their own phone service or running their own power grid. Why should they?

For years I've held the belief that computing power and services are best delivered as a utility. I've heard lots of companies talking about. It's great to see Amazon making this a reality, and it's great to hear about the successes of companies like SmugMug using these services.

Power to the cloud!!!

Using sox to resample audio

2008-06-01T20:34:00.000-04:00

The following nifty one-liner will resample to 8000Mhz, convert to mono (one channel), and increase the volume level:

for i in *.wav ; do sox $i -v 1.8 -r 8000 -c 1 ../resampled/$i resample; done

Dear Sun

2008-04-20T18:10:00.000-04:00

Dear Sun:

I am a big fan of your company. I love Java (so much that I made a career around it), and I love Sun Hardware and Software.

However, I hate Sun web sites. They are slow. Pathetically slow.

How can one of the best companies with the best technologies penalize their users with one of the slowest online experiences on the 'Net?

I feel like I'm trapped in 1995.

Sun: Please fix this.

Poor Puppy

2008-04-20T08:52:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Jenn, Neya, and I went to the Penn State Blue-White game. The Blue-White game is the final practice session of the Penn State Nittany Lions. They basically scrimmage in Beaver Stadium, and 74,000 fans go to watch the game. My best estimate is that around 100,000 fans come up the event -- lots of folks tail gate and have fun at the carnival outside of the stadium.

Bailey became the lucky owner of a "I Bark for PSU" extra-small dog sweater.

Cafe Corner - Finished!

2008-04-06T21:18:00.001-04:00

Okay... I originally wasn't going to complete Cafe Corner today, but I just couldn't resist. I was too excited to finish the build, and I don't think I could actually go to work tomorrow knowing that there were bags of Lego bricks that haven't been snapped together yet!

Jenn was nice enough to sort all of the pieces for the second and third floors while I gave Neya a bath. The picture to the right shows all of the pieces for the second and third floors, all sorted (thanks, Jenn!!!).

After another 2 hours of building, we finished the model. The details are absolutely incredible and the building was a blast to build.

The final build and sort time was about 5 hours (and that was with two of us working on it in tandem -- and some interruptions from a little girl who wanted to keep stealing the mini-figs and wanted to snap in a number of blocks!).

Overall, this set was a blast to put together... now its time to figure out what project is next. :-)

A Very Lego Birthday

2008-04-06T15:15:00.000-04:00

Today is my birthday. My birthday gift from Jenn and Neya was a Lego Set - Cafe Corner.

It's a monster of Lego set. It weighs in at a little over 2000 pieces and stands over 14 inches tall when completed.

As you can see from the picture, the size of the box dwarfs my daughter!

The recommended age is for those 16 years and older (but my 4-year old daughter was able to put quite a few pieces together - with plenty of supervision!).

Unboxing the set yielded a pleasant surprise. All of the bags are labeled "1", "2", or "3" - this corresponds to the floor of the building. This was really nice because we did not want to build the entire set today!

Today, we only built the first floor. Build time was approximately 2 and a half hours. Not bad, since we had a four year old that wanted to help. :-) Jenn did a great job organizing the pieces.

We actually had four instances where we thought we did not have enough pieces:

1 piece was accidentally thrown in the garbage
1 set of pieces were just hidden from us
2 sets of pieces were mistakes between dark gray blocks and black blocks in the instructions (it's hard to distinguish between these two colors in Lego's instruction sets)

Overall, this set has some remarkable features. If you want to see more, check out my photo gallery.

Come on, Apple!

2008-04-06T15:11:00.000-04:00

I thought that these guys are supposed to be the Masters of User Interface and Design?

However, I think they dropped the ball on iTunes. iTunes has no splash screen on start-up. This would not be a problem for Firefox, Thunderbird, or even Microsoft Word (which all start nearly instantly). Unfortunately, iTunes takes about 15 seconds to start up. And my computer is no slouch! I have a Dual Core Intel Processor with 4GB of memory!

To me, this is breaking one of the cardinal sins of user interface design - show something to the user as a feedback mechanism for the action they just performed. Granted, I have a large library - around 8000 songs, but this is no excuse for no giving the user some feedback.

Dear Apple: Stop being lazy, and give me a splash screen!

Video is not always the best medium.

2008-03-24T08:31:00.000-04:00

I was surfing Digg this morning and came across a top-ten list that I wanted to read. Eager to start my day off with some procrastinating, I clicked on the article. Only, it wasn't an article, it was a video blog.

Just because you can do video doesn't mean that you have to do video! I do not want to sit and listen to you pontificate about the 10-worst-licensed-video-games-of-all-time, when I can quickly scan through an article and read the snippits I want!

Turning a Sphere Inside-Out

2008-03-22T09:51:00.001-04:00

Very geeky but very cool.

Watch the video.

Inbox Zero

2008-03-22T08:44:00.000-04:00

I'm a big believer in Inbox Zero. The approach was something that I had about 50% bought into, and I just needed to be pushed all of the way. It has radically changed the way that I approach my inbox and my job in general.

Unfortunately, it's still very difficult for me. I just "Inbox Zero'd" today, and that was the first time in about a month. However, I usually come very close. My inbox at work, which typically gets 200+ emails a day, is usually sitting at around 10 messages by 10pm.

Not too shabby.

Most of these e-mails were read and acted upon. Those that were not acted upon ended up in our software and project tracking systems (where they should reside) or ended up as the 10-mails in my mail box because I just didn't have the time to follow-up (there's just not enough time in the day!).

So, while I feel like failure for not actually being able to actually get to the Zero in Inbox-Zero, I am quite happy with my e-mail through-put and productivity. And for the days where I do reach Zero - pure bliss!

197 foot hockey goal.

2008-03-19T14:53:00.000-04:00

I feel bad for the goalie - Vesa Toskala

Worst Hockey Fight - Ever

2008-03-09T09:40:00.001-04:00

So Empty....

2008-03-02T09:06:00.000-05:00

Well, I managed to piss away four hours of my weekend, playing Protector, yet another desktop tower defense game. I am always addicted to these games. Protector mixes traditional desktop tower defense with a skills tree and role-playing theme. Needless to say, I'm hooked.

It's a stupid game, but I cannot stop playing. And after I am done playing, I feel empty.

Ah... the joy of video games...

In related video gaming news, I stopped by my Costco yesterday, and they had about 40 Wii's for sale! Woo hoo!

Competing with Wal-Mart

2008-02-26T23:44:00.001-05:00

It's a national past time to hate Wal-Mart.

Why not? They're the big, evil company that is developing that field across the street with all of the nice trees so that they can lay-down some asphalt, throw up a couple of hundred thousand square feet of sub-par retail space, and put all those good, hardworking local folk out of a job. Fire up the picket lines Bessie, Mr Walton's coming to town! We can't have this big retailer in our back yard because Mr. Bob's Hardware store will go out of business!

Let me tell you the story of shopping for a doll-house for my daughter's birthday. My wife and I met for lunch and went to the local toy store near our office. We had a shopping list of things that we wanted to get for our daughter for her birthday. After being pleasantly greeted by the staff, we went to find the doll house. This was the big gift, and many of the smaller gifts were built around accessories for the doll-house. We were disappointed to see that the doll-house was out of stock. And due to the fact that the big Toy Fair was last week, replenishment orders are slow (as all toy dealers are putting in orders for toys this week). No problem, the manager of the store upgraded our Doll-House Townhouse to the much bigger (and 50% pricier) Doll-House Manor, for the same price as the original, cheaper Townhouse.

Let's take a look at my experience at the toy store:

Greeted by friendly staff. Check.
Shelves fully stocked (except for the one item I wanted!), and everything neatly presented. Check.
An item was not in stock, so the manager gave me a nicer item for the same price. Check.
The manager carried the big item to the cash register. Check.
Store personnel offered to wrap our merchandise free of charge. Check.
Since wrapping the gifts was going to take a few minutes, I went over to Target to get some things. They said "no problem! We'll hold everything for you when you get back". Check.
We pulled up in front of store and opened car doors up. The folks are already carrying the gifts and putting them into our car. Check.

Now, let's compare this same experience with the local Wal-Mart:

Greeted by a person that I feel really uncomfortable talking to and even making eye contact with. Check.
Many items out of stock. Shelves in disarray. Always walking out with some sticky stuff on my shoes that feels creepy (even for me). Check.
Item not in stock. I usually cannot find help. If I do find help, the person is an idiot and is clueless. Check.
No one has ever asked to help with a large item at Wal-Mart. Check.
Store personnel would never wrap my gifts, nor would I trust them. I doubt they could even point me the right direction of the gift wrap. Check.
I would never, ever leave my purchased merchandise in the hands of a Wal-Mart employee why I go off and do other things. Check.
No one has ever helped me load a large item into my car that was in the employ of Wal-Mart. Check.
Bonus points for Wal-Mart - overweight customer wearing slinky clothes two-sizes too small so that I can belly fat with stretch marks popping out of her Spandex. Check.
Bonus points for Wal-Mart - over-friendly customer that insists I help her find the CD of "that guy on the Home Shopping network with the guitar that sings those Mexican songs". She assures me that I know of whom she is speaking. Check.

There is a lesson here. If you are a mom-and-pop store, there are plenty of ways of competing with Wal-Mart. However, if your plan involves trying to price-cut Wal-Mart and provide the same shitty service you have been providing over the last 30 years, you deserve to go out of business.

Instead, you must evolve. Don't price-cut Wal-Mart -- you cannot win. However, you can win on providing better products and better service. This toy store has won me over as a customer, and I cannot wait to spend my money there again.

Back to Raquetball.

2008-02-24T08:12:00.000-05:00

My wife noticed that LA Fitness was running a promotion where sign-up fees would be waved if you signed up a family member. This was the perfect opportunity to join LA Fitness. I've been holding off for a while because I just cannot stand spending $150 bucks for someone to enter my application into a computer.

With my membership in hand, I was able to start playing Raquetball again. I played with Rebuck and Mary Beth yesterday and had quite a bit of fun. The courts were very nice (very new), but I had a difficult time adjusting to the back walls. The back walls are glass which makes the contrast level completely different than the other three walls - which are bright white! This took a bit to get used to!

Bill's Newest Lego Friends

2008-02-22T20:19:00.001-05:00

Meet Victor the Lego Spider and Mr. B.

Lego Stores

2008-02-17T21:41:00.001-05:00

On our way back from Long Island, we stopped at the Bridge Water Commons in New Jersey. This mall is a nice half-way point between Long Island and Harrisburg, so it turns out to be a nice place to get out of the car and stretch our legs. We normally just stop in Bridge Water to grab lunch, but I recently found out at there is a real Lego store in Bridge Water!

Needless to say, I twisted everyone's arm to go there today. Overall the store was pretty neat. As you can see they have Huge Lego Bricks at the front of the store that are taller than my daughter. Neya had a fun time in the store looking at all of the neat creations. I got to see the new 2008 Town Plan in person as well as the Eiffel Tower (neat stuff!). They had tons of bins of free bricks that you could buy. We picked up some brick separators, a small ambulance for the town, a Mosaic set, a Lego Santa Snow Globe (hey, it was only 4 bucks!), and a couple of boxes of "just bricks".

Most of the stuff I can get online just as easy, but I'll keep coming back to the store, just because it's cool.

The New Knight Rider

2008-02-17T21:30:00.001-05:00

Worst Acting, ever.

The Ass Clowns from Cupertino are at it again

2008-02-17T18:05:00.001-05:00

I went to fire up iTunes today, and Apple for some reason thought that I would love to download 4 250 MB episodes of "MTV Facebook Sampler" content.

Thanks, Apple.

Thanks for wasting a 1 GB of my disk space. Thanks for tying up a GB of my bandwidth. Thanks for not e-mailing me and asking I would be even interested in this content.

I'm just glad that I was paying attention to my downloads when iTunes fired up.

Google Apps: Day 2 - The Calendar Strikes Back!

2008-02-10T10:03:00.000-05:00

I started to give Jenn a tutorial on Google Apps, and now it's really starting to pay off. I have created a family calendar (that is shared, with full access between our accounts). She has started to add all of the "Kratzer family stuff" that goes on.

From a personal family productivity standpoint, this is great!

My First Full Day with Google Apps.

2008-02-09T15:27:00.000-05:00

I have now been on Google apps for about 24 hours. My overall experience is good, but there is plenty of room for improvement:

Google's services have been unavailable a couple of times (I couldn't purchase a premium account and adding a calendar results in a crash, as well).
Googles Pages sucks. Let me say that again. Google Pages really sucks.
GMail is great. And the Calendar is pretty snazzy. (which is good, because this is why I wanted to migrate to Google Apps in the first place).
I have no idea why blogging isn't integrated into the suite of apps. This seems like a natural fit and a giant mis-step for Google. However, from reading the discussion boards, it looks like JotSpot will be replacing Google Pages (good) and JotSpot also supports blogging (that's good too). Google: Hurry up with this! :-)
The start page / portal stuff is a complete ghetto of widgets. I'm surprised that Google didn't spend more time to build a large library of quality widgets.
No Google Reader integration? *sniff*

All in all, I am quite happy. I will most likely upgrade to a premium account to show my support for this excellent service (and I'll still be saving money by migrating off my ISP!). I hope Google keeps working hard to improve and extend the application functionality and support!

Welcome to a Brave New Online World

2008-02-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

I've finally done it.

I've finally moved my domain (thekratzers.com) over to Google Apps.

This means that all of our e-mail is online, our calendar is online, and my blog now runs through Google.

This has been a long time coming. I moved my pictures online to SmugMug several years ago. I moved my backups to Amazon.com (thanks JungleDisk).

I've always had an online presence, but I just got tired of my hosting providing (and for $120 bucks a year, they weren't delivering anything near what Google could offer).

Next step: I need to find a way to use SVN over Amazon.com S3. :-)