We are starting this year off with a vacation to Florida. It’s been two years since we visited Mickey and the gang. Two years without a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar, and two years without a picture with my old buddy Buzz Lightyear. Actually we are off to spend two weeks with my Mom, who just happens to live some 30 minutes from Disney World.

In preparation, I purchased a new camera. This time its a Canon Rebel XTi with a  Canon EF 24-105mm IS L lens. This is one sweet system. The Rebel gives me some of the control I’ve wanted and the lens provides those crystal clear professional looking images. To the right is a picture taken with the new system. Notice its only the dogs face that is in focus. This is the effect I could just never get right with my point and shoot camera’s. Photography is my next career. Well actually its what I want to do when I retire. So with this new camera (toy) I have great plans to take tons of fantastic pictures of just everything while on vacation. In between picture taking I have three photography books to read and two applications to learn. That is Aperture and Photoshop CS3. To help, I found a great learning web site, lynda.com. So far I have completed 1 and 1/2 hours of Aperture training and really like it. For a small monthly charge you can get training on some 100+ subjects.

Completed reading "Beginning PHP and MySQL 5" and have started "PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practices". The Beginning book was OK, but the PHP 5 Objects is super. Its one of those hard to put down books. For a technical book this is a rare quality. PHP 5 got my interest again because its now an OO language. Well almost fully OO. The Beginner book was disappointing because it identified areas of OO that are incomplete. Specifically PHP 5 does not provide accessors or mutators, constructor overloading, and Namespaces. The PHP 5 Objects book confirms these missing features. Bummer.

This year I make no resolution. What is the use, I never keep them. I start each new year with the best of intentions and resolved to endeavor to preserver… no mater what. Yet some how just never get it done. So this year its no pressure.

My reading of PHP and MySQL 5 continues. Have a little over 200 pages left. I finished the PHP chapters and am now into the MySQL. Coming from C# .NET, I find PHP somewhat old school. Will wait until I complete PHP 5 Objects, Patterns and Practices before making up my mind. But at this point I am not sure I really want to re-develoope my-list in PHP. At a friends insistence I picked up Ruby for Rails and Rails Recipes. After a little reading, Ruby On Rails looks very interesting. I need to complete the two PHP books before I jump into Ruby. However, in preparation I acquired a Ruby site, i.e. mylistonrails.com, with plans to do my-list in Ruby along with learning the architecture.

Jing is a great little program I stumbled onto while just poking about the internet. It’s Free. My favorite software price. When executed, it places a little sun in the upper right corner of the screen. Mousing over the sun produces rays which you select. The selection are capture, history, and more. With capture you get a cross hair to select items on your desktop. With history you see your history of select items and more is a setup screen.  Here is a really simple video I captured to test video capture. It was dirt simple and just works. Check it out…

https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=newt3-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1590595521&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=E7E7EC&f=ifr&npa=1
https://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=newt3-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1590593804&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=E7E7EC&f=ifr&npa=1

Two years ago I blogged a commitment to re-develope my-list.com in C# ASP.NET. Since then, I have been involved in one major development .NET project after another. This left no time to code my-list. But all has changed. Now a manager, I no longer write code. So to satisfy my coding urges, I can work on my-list. There is one change. That is instead of C# ASP.NET, I will re-develope in PHP 5. The change is based on PHP 5’s new OO capabilities.

The first incarnation of my-list was developed using Perl CGI script and MySQL. It was a fantastic learning experience and Perl is a great language that I truly love. However, there is a better way… that being an OO architecture. The use of C# ASP.NET is not appealing because I am just burned out on the subject. The use of PHP 5 is an opportunity to learn some new stuff and rebuild using the OO methodology.

Several years ago, I developed in PHP 4 using strictly a script methodology. So I have some knowledge of the language. To get me started I purchase two books from Amazon. Beginning PHP and MySQL 5, and PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practices. So far I like both books.  I will provide a more detailed review as I complete each. You can click on the links to the right, for details these books at Amazon.

Once again, almost a month has gone by since I last blogged. It’s not like nothing happened, just that there has been so little spare time. October started with a our trip to Vegas and a stay at the Wynn hotel. Sandy played the slot machines while I attended meetings. This arrangement worked well as Sandy won enough to pay for our meals plus her air fare. As a point of interest the buffet at the Wynn was $37 per person. The food was great… but $37? Overall it was a fun trip. The hotel accommodations were luxurious, the food was super, and Sandy’s winnings topped the trip off.

The balance of this month has been consumed by my new job. So much to learn and so little time. I do love it though. It’s the challenge of stepping into something I have never done, the learning, and the working with others to do something with real purpose.

Leopard, Apple’s new operating system was delivered Friday just a little after noon.  It actually arrived almost 6 hours before it was available in our local Apple stores. I purchase a family pack version, and had in installed on our two laptops, the G5 iMac, and Mac Pro before 6:00 PM. So far it works flawlessly. Time Machine, Apples new backup strategy, is just fantastic. Just plug in an external drive, answer one question and it’s working.

Tomorrow afternoon we are off to Los Vegas. It’s been years since we last visited. Actually it’s been several years since we flew anywhere. The last was a trip to Florida to visit my Mom. Vegas is not really a place I would choose, but there just happens to be a owners group meeting that I need to attend. So, since Sandy likes the casino’s, we are making this business trip a vacation. She can visit all the casino’s, shops and play some slots while I attend my meetings. In the evening we can enjoy some good meals and do some people watching. I’m just not a gambler… I would rather spend the money on some new gadget or computer thing.

Last week I reached a major milestone. I signed up for Medicare. It was scary… it started to make me think that I will really retire some day. It’s not a day I look forward to.The thought of that final walk out of my building, and the knowing I will never return is to terrifying to put into words. I like working, the interaction with people, the teamwork, and the purpose. Most of all its the purpose. When one retires what is the purpose? Don’t have any answers, just know that retirement is coming…

Where did August go? The last I remembered it was the middle of July. The days slip by so fast. It must be age. The older you get the faster time fly’s. Much has happened. The most significant is a pending job change. I am staying with the same company but will be working in a different organization as a Manager. I haven’t held a management position since 2000. That position ended with a layoff when the company decided to outsource all development. Never really planned on getting back into the management end of IT, was just going to stick with my passion for development. But an opportunity popped up and I just could not resist. So, I start in my new position on monday the 10th of September.
I am just finishing up an interesting book titled “The Best Software Writing I” selected and introduced by Joel Spolshy. This is not my typical technical book. However, it caught my eye because I am in the middle of documenting a major development effort that is completing this week. Thought it might give me some insight into good writing. As it turns out this book is not about writing. Well not in the sense I expected. It doesn’t tell you what elements make up a well written document. What it does present are a number of well written articles on different facets of IT. One in particular presented definitions for “Programmer” and “Developer”. Eric Sink in his “Hazards of Hiring” defines programmer as

“a programmer is someone who does nothing but code new features and [if you’re lucky] fix bugs. They don’t write specs. They don’t write automated test cases. they don’t help keep the automated build system up to date. They don’t help the customer work out tough problems. They don’t help write documentation. They don’t help with testing. They don’t even read code. All they do is write new code.”

He goes on to define a Developer as one who

“contributes in multiple ways to make the product successful.”

Developers do all those things programmers don’t. In my view, these definitions nail the programmer vs developer terms.

Mom flew in from Florida to spent a couple of weeks with us here in sunny Arizona. She loves the hot weather… especially our low humidity. A two week visit is just not long enough. We had a family gathering at a local barbecue restaurant to give everyone a chance to see Mom. Next time she committed to a three week visit… really need three months.

She made hundreds of her well loved peanut butter, chocolate chip, and butter finger cookies. We all gained at least 5 lbs. Next to baking Mom loves the pool… she spent hours outside enjoying the warm weather from her favorite spot in the pool

Yes, I bought the iPhone Friday. Although I did not wait in line. Earlier in the day I scoped out both the Apple store and our local AT&T store. Both had lines that actually started on Thursday. The Apple line was longest of the two. I talked with the manager at the AT&T store. She advised that they had not received the iPhone at this time, and did expect to sell out quickly. Now I am not much of a queuing person. So I figured I’d just order it on-line from the Apple store. Well around 8:00PM I decided to run down to our local AT&T store and see how the line was doing. To my surprise there was no line and only 6 or 7 customers in the store. So I proceeded to the counter and asked for an iPhone, fully expecting to hear we are sold out. But no, the sales person said we have 3 left. However, they are the 4 G model. I hesitated for perhaps a nano second, before blurting our "I’LL TAKE ONE". That left only two for the remaining customers. While processing my sale I chatted with the sales person and found out the store received 40 iPhones, which quickly sold out, but were able to acquire another 40. As I walked out the store, I considered myself lucky to get a phone, and a little sorry for the those in the store who would not get their iPhone.

About 20 minutes later I was home and starting the process to activate the iPhone. As with most things Apple does the process was simple and straight forward. It did take some time for AT&T to do their thing. However, my wait was like 20 minuets and not the 3 or 4 days others have experienced. I did transfer an existing AT&T account onto the phone. It was a pleasant surprise to see only a $20 monthly increase for data. I don’t talk allot on the phone, but I send lots of email.

To my amazement the iPhone worked flawlessly, just like the commercials. It is hands down the very best phone in the market place. Without any instruction, I easily figured out how to use every feature. Now in one device we have it all, phone, movies, music, pictures, camera, and the web anytime almost everywhere. One special feature is how quickly it shifts over to an available  WiFi network. This is another hit for Apple and a huge gain for all cell phone users. There is finally a cell phone that makes sense. Verizon, T-Mobile, etc…. here is the clue you have always needed.