I buy a few tech gadgets once in a while (okay whenever I have the money for cool toys). And sometimes my fancy tech gadgets break. And I wonder if it is still under warranty (or if I filed the warranty at all). Well, this Lifehacker WarrantyElephant article discusses a new website called WarrantyElephant that has definitely convinced me to both fill out the warranty information and keep track of the information easily.

WarrantyElephant, in a nutshell, is a way to keep track of warranty information and receive alerts when your warranties are going to expire! I definitely recommend going to the website and checking it out. I am actually going to take out my file folder with warrantee cards and move them all to this site sometime later today.

I was cleaning house today and listening to the radio (95.1 in BCS to be exact) and I heard a song on the Weekly Top 40 countdown from Jamie Foxx called “Blame It”. The song basically goes about saying that if a girl doesn’t want to seem easy she can just drink a lot, sleep with someone [him], and then blame it on the alcohol. Now, I have a really open mind when it comes to music. I listen to everything from 40′s big band era music to pop, black metal to classical, hip hop and jazz, and yes, even rap. But, in all music (with lyrics), I try and pay attention to the message the song sends.

Now, not all lyrics are that great. I listen to Pantera still and some of their lyrics are definitely questionable. If you want to sing about sex, then do it, but don’t go and tell these girls that they can do what they want and blame it on a substance.

A song by Lady Gaga (Just Dance) saying she’s drank so much she doesn’t know where she is kind of kicked off this tyrade. I can’t believe this is making it into charts and no one is really saying anything about it. I finally had to rant about it now that this Jamie Foxx song is going up the charts.

Maybe I’m aging myself, or I’m wearing the parent goggles, I don’t know. I don’t want my daughter growing up and listening to the off shoots of this music (in 5-10 years) thinking it’s okay to get bombed out, screw a bunch of people, and then blame it on alcohol. I hope I will be a better parent than that in the first place, teaching her to be responsible for her actions, etc. But I remember when I was that age. I didn’t listen to my parents and I did listen to my peers, and the music. I don’t quite remember the music of my generation (the 90′s) being quite so blunt or … irresponsible. Maybe I just had sense not to pay attention to that kind of music and now I’m looking at it from a parent’s point of view.

My, how times change.

Everytime I think I’m going to unsubscribe from the Lifehacker feed I run across an article I really like that makes me rethink my decision. This time it is an article title Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education. It covers things such as programming, musical instruments, and languages. When I have some downtime I’m definitely going back through this and picking up a few of these. I’d really love to learn Spanish and take up the trumpet again.

I don’t have anything really planned for this post so I’m just gong to brain dump for a while. I could start with some interesting weather updates – it’s been raining. This is really good for our area and I think I’ll get out tomorrow (weather allowing) and burn some stuff I’ve had in the back for a while.

I also attended RefreshBCS last night and had a great time getting together with local entrepreneurs as well as some speakers from Austin. The speakers were from a company called TechRanchAustin, which totes itself as a business accelerator. They made the distinction between acceleration and incubation, which I found interesting. I also got a boatload of book recommendations – the best of which I think will be The E-Myth Revisited. Several people in the crowd had read it, and re-read it, and re-re-read it, and found insight each time. It must be good if it’s got that kind of capacity to affect business over a long term.

I’ve also been rushing to get some of my consulting projects wrapped up before the baby is born. My wife is having more and more contractions each day and having a harder time getting around and taking care of things. You too can try this at home – take a full sized watermelon (~ 6 lbs), tape it to your stomach, and walk around for an hour. I guarantee you’re going to be thankful it’s not you caring that around 24/7! I know I don’t help her as much as I could with the house and whatnot, but I’m trying to get our credit cards and other debts paid off before we take on the new baby.

Back to the consulting – I’ve been learning more new systems than I can throw a stick at. Joomla, WordPress Templating, Drupal, Zend Framework, NCover, and a few more I’m forgetting I’m sure. Even with learning all these in and out I’ve been feeling like I’m neglecting other technologies and skillsets I cherish. I’ve been looking for a good way to keep my security skills up to date, but it is very difficult to stay on top of that.

I know and will always have a great foundation to build on here but the security industry as it is relies heavily on 0-day exploit knowledge. If you don’t know the exploits exist, how can you possibly protect against them? And if you concentrate on building security systems in depth for you products, how much does it end up costing you neglecting the product itself? This is something I’m struggling with currently and it’s getting the best of me at the moment. I have been balancing the projects I’m getting paid to do with the realization that I’m neglecting my business administration and my network administration. I’ts a terrible feeling. Anyone volunteer to help with this?

My motorcycle is still in the shop and they have ordered some new clutch plates for it. I’m wondering why the hell it’s taking so long – a bike shouldn’t be anywhere near complicated as a car. Especially the older ones that rely on good old nuts and bolts rather than computers and cooling systems. I’m hoping to get it back soon so I can grab a motorcycle permit up on campus and save a boatload on gas each month (again, weather permitting). The motorcycle permit costs $35/yr (with a primary vehicle permit already) and it would cost me about $5 every two weeks to fill it up. That’s in contrast to the old 2004 v6 Ford Ranger I’m driving around now which takes (at minimum) $20/week.

And finally, it’s with a sad heart that I have to say I shaved my beard. I had a good 2 weeks going on it and it was filling out nicely, but my wife really hated it. It was too short to get soft enough for her sensitive skin. We’ve made a compromise. When the baby is born, I can grow it out. I plan on documenting the process on my Picasa Web account.

Well, that’s it. By the way, all of this brain dumping idea was due to the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware. Go get your copy (I have to return this one to the AgileBCS library and get my own)!

One of the first tips in The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master is about broken windows. The theory is that if you leave a broken window in a house, you’re less inclined to fix anything else and eventually the house is abandoned or otherwise abused. This of course relates originally to software development – leaving a bug in the system you know about will cause you to value the software less and will lead to other bugs that are left unfixed.

This principle however applies to anything in life that must be maintained vigilantly. I’m afraid I’ve fallen into this trap with my blog recently. I stopped posting daily and then I stopped posting weekly and now I’m barely posting at all. I can’t believe I let myself do this! I’ve been busy, but 5 minutes a day to post something isn’t a huge sacrifice and it pays for itself.

I’ve been working on a lot of PHP code lately (Zend, Dwoo, etc) that I’ll be blogging about soon. I’ve also been working on some .NET related stuff (CC.NET, NCover) that I’d like to post about as well. I’m having very interesting results now that I’ve put Windows XP x64 on my desktop. Sometimes the software – NCover – is getting confused trying to run in 64 bit mode and profiling a 32 bit application.

Finally, the most time consuming event I’ve been working on was the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC). It happened this past weekend and Texas A&M won the region and will be headed to nationals. I ended up being red team for this competition and I had a blast. I dusted off some skills I haven’t used in quite a while and put a bit of a polish on them again. However, I realize just how badly I’ve let that skillset diminish and I’m vowing to myself to bring them back.

My wife has also been having a rough time with the new baby that is on the way so I’ve been helping out with our daughter Kaylyn more. We’ll both be glad when the new baby arrives and we can turn this pregnancy leaf over for quite a while. So that’s my life in a nutshell right now. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

I have been moving dataplex.org to a new hosting provider (Dreamhost) so I had about a day long outage while I was moving the wordpress files, database, and dns records. Everything should be back to normal now, but if you can’t login or your RSS feed is messed up please shoot me an email or post a comment. Thanks. I’ll continue with some decent blog posts in a few days.

I follow the Whitehouse.gov RSS feed and saw a message this morning about helping out local communities. I really liked this part of Barrack’s campaign and was glad to see the continuing push for community involvement. The article mentioned the site http://www.usaservice.org as a way to get involved. I went and signed up and found a nice list of things I could do to help my community.

The site lists a host of ways to get involved such as food banks, blood banks, environmental projects, shelters, and more. There weren’t very many events in my area, but I do know of some old stuff in my pantry I’ll be packing up and taking to the Brazos Food Bank . I’m also motivated to take some of those old sheets in my closet to the local shelter (Twin City Mission).

I challenge you to take just an hour this month to get involved by donating food, clothing, blood, plasma, or most importantly time to a local charity. Post about your donation via comments or pingbacks.

A while ago I posted about a workout routine I took from the BUD/S school entry level program. I ended up with some really bad shin splints at the end of week 3 and they didn’t heal until this past week. Because of that I took an extended time off and gained about 3 pounds. Boo on me for bad dieting!

Well I’m glad to say that this week I got back on the horse with some help from another couple of programs that aren’t quite as stringent. I think that not having done high school sports in over 8 years hurt me for the BUD/S program. Instead, I’ve started using the OneHundredPushups program and the sister site TwoHundredSitups.

This week (T/Th/Sat) I also did the following:

• Curls with 15 lbs dumbells: 15/15/20/15
• Flies with 15 lbs dumbells: 15/15/20/15
• Dips: 20/20/25/20

I’m proud of my progess so far and I hope to get back on the BUD/s schedule in the end. A 16 mile running week would be the best accomplishment of my workout career. So far I’ve dropped 4 lbs this week and ran 6 miles. I hope this inspires someone else to pick up the weights or go outside for a walk or jog. You’ll thank yourself if you do!

Taking the day off for my wife’s birthday. Goodies about Confluence coming tomorrow…

Okay, I haven’t had time to blog in a while and I have to keep it up to form a habit, so here goes. I have several days for which to make up, so I’m going to give you cliff notes for each day since my last post on 1/26/09.

2/2/2009 – My obsessive compulsive need to keep metrics and documentation in JIRA and Confluence might finally pay off with someone who likes to analyze cost/benefit ratios. Hard metrics ftw!

2/2/2009 – I’m giving a presentation on wiki adoption in the workplace soon and I’m really hoping I nail the fine line between making it simple enough for average people to use and still cover some of the nicer complex pieces that make it really a powerhouse. Things such as macros, templates, permissions, linking, versioning, etc.

2/1/2009 – Watched the Super Bowl – disappointed with the commercial quality and the outcome. As a former Phoenix resident, I was rooting for the underdogs! As a side note, eating too many hot wings causes indigestion.

1/31/2009 – Been working on a lot of PHP stuff lately – it’s fun learning the Zend framework and coming up with new ideas in a collaborative environment. Go XP and Agile development!

1/30/2009 – Put out some fires at work dealing with PHP stuff. It really underscores my need to get phpUnderControl working so I get notifications when things break. Database destruction FTL. Precisely, don’t come into the office early and tired and delete the mysql database from a production mysql installation. All hell will ensue!

1/29/2009 – Worked on some more PHP stuff. Did some code standard cleanups for an outside project I’m on and some real estate research.

1/28/2009 – I got nothing. My memory isn’t this good!

1/27/2009 – My wife and I did our taxes. Wow doing taxes is teh suck. The good news – a refund. The bad news – another big waste of time dealing with our government.

Look forward to some decent book reviews and PHP technical stuff soon!