In Valid Logic

One of the caveats of working from home is that it can be pretty boring.  Typically, the only person I will see and socialize with is my wife.  And while I love my wife, it is nice to get out and be among other people as well.

After getting back from my trip to Dallas, I’d decided that I need to start getting out more often.  So now, I am going to start getting up and going to Starbucks for a few hours, or go with my wife to Sacramento State to work in the Student Union (which is basically a busier coffee shop) or in the library (always a nice place to quietly work with network connectivity).  One of the limitations from working at home is that you can feel kind of trapped if you are in the same place all day and all night, but one of the great advantages of working from home is that you can work from virtually anywhere… but it is only useful if you take advantage of it.

So, I am working on getting out more often, to get out, see more people, and have a change of scenery to keep things interesting.  This morning was my first time taking advantage of it.  Got up this morning at 6am (another new thing for me, more on that in a second), got ready, did a few things, then packed up the laptop and headed up to Starbucks.  Equipped with a venti mocha and a bagel, I’ve been getting a few minor coding things done here and there, and mostly working on writing specifications for some new things coming in Mail Gateway v3.0.

In regards the other thing, I’m working on adjusting my hours.  While in Dallas and seeing how things are around the office and chatting with the other guys, I realized my habits have been changing since being married.  Previously, I used be a die hard night owl.  I’d get up around 8 to 9 in the morning (kind of late, yes), work a few hours, have a late lunch, take a break for a few hours (mainly because the afternoon heat/sun rendered my office useless), then get back to working a night until 2 to 3am.  I was single, so I could do that no problem.  Now, my habits have been changing since at night, I want to stop working and spend time with my wife.  With relaxing more at night, comes getting tired and heading to bed earlier.  So, I’ve been finding that my most productive time is early in the morning.

Now, I am working on getting up and ready right away at 6am.  The idea would be to get working by 7am, hammer out 5-6 hours til lunch, then take a break for lunch and what not, work a little more, and then be able to call it a day before the wife gets home.  I used to hate getting up early, but now, I find getting up early and all ready makes you feel more productive and it goes a lot further than simply rolling out of bed and getting on the computer.  Additionally, it is more productive than working at night now and battling the heavy eyes that are telling you to go to bed.

After doing some research into new laptops, I think I will likely be waiting a few months.  The main reason is that I want something that will be fully compatible with Windows Vista and will last me the next couple of years.  The best suited would be the new Core Duo set of chips, but only a limited number of laptops have come out using it (with limited availability).  Additionally, it looks like Intel is coming out with a low voltage version, which will probably be more suited to laptops.

So, in the interest of getting something that will suit me best and last the longest, I will probably be waiting a few months.  If I get a tablet, it would likely be the Toshiba M400, IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T60, or possibly a Dell Latitude if one comes out.

EDIT: I did manage to find this, which looks like a nice 1.83ghz Core Duo T60 with 14″ screen.  May prefer a 2ghz Core Duo 14″ though.

It seems odd that sometimes things are invented that serve a very useful purpose, but people still refuse to use them.

Take headphones for instance.  I am sitting at DFW, got 2 hours before my flight, and this guy is in here playing a video game on his laptop with the speakers away up, totally oblivious to the fact that he is annoying everybody around him.

We had some down time at the end of the day, so what do I do when I get bored?  Take out the camera!  Switched it over to jpeg mode so that I don’t have to do any conversion.

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Hanging around in Dallas, going out to the CS Launch Party tonight.  It is mainly just everyone at Telligent going out to dinner, talking about coding, and making fun of (expletive deleted) and (expletive deleted).

It has been quite interesting though.  Planning for CS v3.0 and already have a ton of things we want to do.

Been snapping a couple of pictures, but unfortunately taking shots in RAW and don’t have anything to convert them here.  Ohh well.  Maybe switch to JPEG for a bit.

One problem is that Dan has gotten me all interested tablet PCs.  I have some books on tablets at home, but haven’t done much with them.  Now, I may actually look into getting one.  Especially since I am feeling the shortcomings of my current laptop… I can’t run Outlook, 4 IE windows, SQL Server 2005, and 3 Visual Studio sessions?

Hanging out in the C# conference room.  Got Jose, Ben, James, Dan, ScottW off to the side, and Rob’s feet.

… where is my Community Server site?

Sorry for the corny quote of biblical proportions, but today is the epic day that we officially released Community Server v2.0. This release truly is huge, as it is leap and bounds ahead of v1.0 and even v1.1.

And there is no better time to release it, since precisely one year ago from Saturday, we released Community Server v1.0. It is hard to image how far we have some since then. In my opinion, we have made an incredible amount of progress in such a short amount of time. We have greatly expanded our features, usability, stability, extendability (ok, was on a -bility roll).

If we can make this much progress in one year from v1.0 to v2.0, just imagine what is going to come in v3.0. Tomorrow, the Community Server team is flying into Dallas to lay out the plan for v2.1, and more importantly, v3.0. I am certainly very excited and anxious to begin work on v3.0.

Been a quiet week for posts, but everyone at Telligent has been quite busy getting Community Server ready for v2.0 to RTM. One of the last surprise things we did was to rebrand the main site for v2.0. Go and check it out! It is quite sleek!

This new theme will be distributed with the final RTM version of CS, along with the previous blue default theme.

Today, Community Server v2.0 RC1 was released (Announcement). Now, we are finally in the release candidate phase, which means a final RTM version is just around the corner!

Expect RC1 releases of the FTP, NNTP, and Security Module add-ons later this afternoon. When they’re posted, you’ll be able to find more about them in the announcements forum.

Been keeping busy with my camera as of late…

Superbowl weekend, was snapping away some more with the Sigma 30mm f/1.4.
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Last weekend, the wife and I found this really nice sandwich shop nearby. They are a little unusual in that they don’t have any soda fountain. They just have bottled drinks, and mostly some of the less common brands. Here is a shot of this “Apple Beer” soda I got during the week. I’ve been digging the partial desaturation look, so this one was about -75 saturation.
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Last night, we were up in Sacramento to go out to dinner for my father-in-law’s birthday. Afterwards, Trish and I went down to Old Sacramento with the camera and tripod in hand to walk around snapping some shots. Came back with some pretty good ones! Were down by the river and got a nice panoramic of the Delta King and the old train station down there. Got some other shots of the draw bridge as a boat was going under it, though haven’t processed those yet.
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And the Delta King…
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Going downtown with the camera was nice. I thought it would be awkward going around with the tripod and all the equipment (though got a nice little backpack to carry all of it), but it wasn’t at all. It is surprising how people will stop for you to take a shot without even being asked when you got a nice, big camera and a tripod all set up.