Ξ November 23rd, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
The last class for the Pace University RedHat Certification was on Wed. We had a great group this time out. There was definitely the potential for a few hackers in that room. It was awesome. I’m sure a good number in that group will pass the certification on the first time out.
Thanksgiving was great. We spent Wed. with my family. Everyone is doing great. Even Shakespeare was waddling around. I get a lot of people asking how he’s doing; the answer is, he’s OK. He’s been living at my mothers house with Brownie because he can’t get up the stairs at my place any more. He seems happy there and my mom dotes on both of them. Unfortunately he’s getting older. He’s 13 now, which is old as hell for a dog his size. In dog years, that’s like a million years old. I’m glad he’ll be around for the holidays though.
On Thursday we shot out to Westchester for Turkey dinner with Rosie’s family. I truly love seeing her family, particularly Dad and her Aunts and Uncles. Very nice folks. Rosie’s aunt Pauleen prepared a traditional thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. She really put a lot of effort into everything. My belly thanks her very much. The left overs we took with us never even made it to this morning. Dinner of course was topped off with a slice of Rosie’s Aunt Ann’s delicious cheesecake. YUMMY! I’m generally not a cheesecake eater, but hers is out of this world. She told me that she was putting together a website of recipes, when she finishes up, I’ll post the URL here. In any event, both of these women can cook up a storm. We’ll do Christmas at her Aunt Ann’s house. I can’t wait 
Probably my favorite part of Thanksgiving Day is when my nieces kaileah & Grace arrived. We get to rough-house. My Nieces and Nephews slay me. I really get a kick out of the young ones, and they get a charge out of me too. I can seriously play with them for hours and have a great time.
Well, I should probably get back to work. The stock market closes at 1pm, so it’s a half day today. I can live with that
Ξ November 20th, 2007 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Blog |
It’s been a while since I’ve posted so I figured an update was in order. The first order of business is to announce that Rosie is indeed on the road now. She’s zipping around town in her snazzy 2-door blue Chevy Cavalier. I think it’s starting to dawn on her that she should have done this years ago.
If you go to “Latest Projects” you’ll notice that I’m no longer posting my latest freeware stuff there. I’ve been posting to the new site http://biff.twenex.net instead. I figured that it was as good a place as any, and there are other software developers dumping stuff there too.
School has been keeping me quite busy. I’m in a group that is working on a few projects together. The folks in the group are bright and nobody is being lazy, which is a good thing. Sometimes you get stuck with either a dumb group or a few people that want to let someone else do the work and collect the grade. That hasn’t been the case in this group and I’m pleased that we’re all working our butts off. Our current project is on JDOM and how it relates to relational databases. Naturally there will be some code involved as well as documentation, and a presentation.
The Holidays will involve quite a bit of running around. For Thanksgiving We’ll see my family on Wed night and Rosie’s family on Thursday. Her aunt throws a big shindig. Rosie comes from a very large family, so it’s nice to see everyone.
The RedHat Linux Class At Pace University is about finished. Wed. will be my last day with this group. The group was excellent, and everyone has a shot of passing the RHCT exam. The next group of victims err .. students will start my course in a few weeks leaving me with some much needed time off to study for my own finals.
Anyway, thats about it.
Best Regards
Biff
Ξ November 16th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
It’s not the biggest object in our solar system any more, now the Holmes Comet is bigger.
OK, if you’re not into the geek kinds of blog entries, just skip this one altogether.
just us geeks now!
<geekMode ON>
I guess the first thing on the agenda is Linux. I’ve just upgraded to the latest and greatest version of RedHat Fedora 8. I have only one issue with the whole thing. The “UPGRADE” option doesn’t work. It didn’t work on Fedora 7 either. Both times I’ve tried to go the upgrade route rather then the install route and it failed. To the non-geeks who continued reading despite the strong warning to do otherwise .. Upgrade means it would just upgrade the entire system .. install means that everything on the system (including my personal files) would be deleted and the whole new OS image would be put down. For me it’s not a huge deal because I back up all the important stuff, but it’s still a bit of a hassel.
Aside from that one thing, I like Fedora 8 overall. The look and feel are better then version 7, and it comes with a bunch of snazzy new features for software developers. They also have a new “Live Media” option at the download site. It means that you can just boot the cdrom, and run linux off the cd w/out having to install it on your system. It’ll give you an idea of what it’s like before making the decision to go the full install route.
Software Development. People always ask me what I use for software development. When I tell them, I typically get looks of disbelief. Yes, I’ve been using the VI Editor. It’s a bit difficult, but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature. Here’s a good page to see what it’s about. While I still love VI for lots of things, I’ve decided to make the move to a more sophisticated development environment. I have VERY recently made the switch to Eclipse. The types of things I’ve been working on recently have changed quite a bit. I’ve been working a lot more with XML, Java, C++ and Database programming with SQL and XQUERY. Most of the development I’ve done in the past was UNIX Shell Programming, C/C++, Perl and a bit of PHP. The code was fast and generally failry light. These days the projects I’m working on have become a lot more complicatedand thus require flipping back and forth between a number of source files, classes, methods etc.. Also, I’m working on a lot more projects at once, so my snazzy new IDE is able to keep my projects seperate and better organized.
I choose Eclipse because it 1) runs on multiple platforms (any kind of UNIX and windows), 2) it’s become a development standard, and 3) it supports many different languages (instead of just being a Java IDE). There were a few runners up though. ULTRA EDIT is awsome, but the problem with it is that you have to pay for it *grin*, and it only runs on Windows. I probably would have sucked it up and made the purchase, but since it doesn’t run on my laptop (linux) it was pointless. TextPad was the other option. Its basically free (although you’re supposed to buy it at some point), but it also runs only on Windows. It’s not bad overall but it lacks a lot of the features that Ultra Edit has.
So .. it’s Eclipse.
It takes a little getting used to, and I’m not quite there yet, but I’m making the transition.
<geekMode OFF>
Ξ November 12th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
This weekend was fun fun fun. We were out on Saturday night with my sister-in-law and her husband Charlie, as well as Rosie’s Aunt Mary and her Husband David. We went to dinner at Markt on 21st Street & 6th Avenue, and then to an off broadway show called Sive at the THE IRISH REPERTORY THEATRE . It was a sensational show. Afterwards, Rosie and I headed back torwards our place for a nightcap at McCarthy’s in Floral Park. It’s a great place, byut they allow smoking. Neither of us smoke, so we don’t like smelling like it. In any event, we bolted after one or two drinks and went to the Sly Fox Inn in Fresh Meadows. It’s a great bar for people watching. We had a few cocktails and danced to a song or two before heading home.
On Sunday we got Rosie her first car. We’re picking it up tonight and I think she’s excited. She didn’t get a new car this time out since she just started driving, but after she gets a bit more used to traffic and parking we’ll have to get her something really snazzy and keep this one as a spare car. A spare car is super important. You don’t want to be caught without one when you really need it.
At any rate, the Riveting Rosie will be zipping around town on her own.
Ξ November 5th, 2007 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Blog |
Over the weekend, Rosie and I had our regular date with Ann & Joe for a show at the Airport Playhouse. This weekend we saw Little Shop of Horrors. As usual the did a teriffic performance. I’m always impressed with the Playhouse.
We also spent a little bit of time looking for a car for Rosie. We’re in the market for a used car that she can drive around in for the next 8 months while she gets used to driving. She’s doing a great job so far, but driving hasn’t yet become second nature to her yet. She really just needs her own car to get out there and take a few long road trips with. My guess is that with her own car, our fiercely independant Rosie will kick herself for not getting her license sooner. I’m glad that she’ll have the opportunity to go anyplace at anytime. Driving really provides a feeling of independance that non-drivers just don’t know.
Schoo work. *sigh* I’m working on a group project with a few others. I hate that my grade is attached to the effort that others put in. I’m lucky in that everyone seems to be pulling his own weight, but I’d rather be doing it on my own.
The redhat class .. Thinking of new and interesting ways to blow up their machines, is not as easy as it may seem. Its times like this I almost wish I were teaching a MS Windows course. It would almost be to easy *grin*
