2009. The Year I Actually Post on This Blog?

 

Maybe, maybe not. Although I’ll attempt to blog on a more regular basis, no promises J

Why I back Jack or Dave

OK, originally, this was going to be a post of why I support Jack Markell for Governor. That may still turn out to be the case, but Dave Burris over at First State Politics has announced that he is considering running for Governor. So now I have no idea who I may ultimately support. But let me tell you why I may support either of these candidates for Governor

A little background about me: I have worked for the State of Delaware for over 20 years. My first eight years I was a Correctional Officer and the last twelve years I have worked as a computer network/ IT guy for several state agencies. I will put it to you as delicately as I’m in the mood to: THERE IS SEVERE NEED FOR CHANGE in Delaware State Government. Let me list the things that I’d like in a Governor/and or political system

1. I’d like in a Governor who, I perceive, that can understand the issues.
2. I’d like a Governor who would stand by their convictions. This particular administration seems to have been put in place to grant political favors for certain people. With the exception of the smoking ban, the Governor hasn’t done anything remotely original or risky.
3. I’d like a political system that would be open and transparent, not behind closed doors or decided by the BIG HEADS
4. I’d like actual debate on the issues, not closed away in some desk drawer.

Even if I disagree on some of the issues with each candidate, I think both would do a good job for this state.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions is to update this blog weekly. We’ll see how long that lasts, but I’ll give it my best shotJ

The Case Against Vista Part 2

The last time I was ranting about Vista, I was explaining that when Windows ‘95 came out (and honestly, this wasn’t complete until Windows ‘98 SE) there was a glaring need for businesses to migrate from Windows 3.11. Let’s take a look at the pluses

1. Windows ‘95 offered long file names. For those of you who don’ t remember, when you saved a file back in the day, you needed to name it to fit the DOS 8.3 naming convention. I had users that lost files because they couldn’t remember what they named the file J
2. Although not perfect, Plug and Play (plug and pray back in 1995) was a big leap forward as far as business operating systems go. We are used to now just plugging in a camera, usb drive, etc into the computer and for the most part, it works. That wasn’t the case until Windows 95 came out
3. Windows ‘95 relieved a lot of the old DOS 640K memory limitations. It didn’t take care of it all, but it was still a lot better than Windows 3.11
4. Built-in network support for TCP/IP, Banyan, and Novell. This was HUGE as far as network administration was concerned. No more loading clients on each workstation

There were some negatives, mostly in the fact that plug and play wasn’t always reliable, and the system did crash some J. Additionally, a lot of old software didn’t play well with Windows ‘95. The end result that until Windows 98 SE, many businesses ended up using Windows NT 4 Workstation. Soon, though, Windows was about change everything with the advent of Windows XP

The Case Against Vista Part 1

Today, I am here to start to make the business case against Microsoft’s new Operating System called Windows Vista. I will consider this topic from the point of view of a business entity. I’ll take a look at the history of the OS and the features that are different between Vista and XP, we’ll also look at some of the costs involved migrating to Vista.

First, let me introduce myself from a systems administration view. I presently am a systems administrator for the State of Delaware (I don’t think the specific agency I work for is important so I’ll not disclose that information). I have been an admin for over 12 years. I have handled migrations from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT4/Windows ‘95, Windows 98 to XP, and Windows 2000 to XP.

Before we get to the nuts and bolts of Vista’s features (and I don’t plan for this to be a review of Vista), let’s look at some of the history of the Windows OS. Windows 3.1, as anyone who ever dealt with this OS on a regular basis would tell you, was a nightmare to administer. For those of you who are new to the computer game, I’ll tell you that for Windows 3.1 you had the following problems:

1. There was no built in network support. So, in order for you to allow it to use a network, you had to load a Novell (or whatever Network Operating System you used) client on the machine at startup. Additionally, Novell did not use TCP/IP to communicate, so if you needed TCP/IP on the machine (for connectivity to other non-Novell network devices or to the Internet) you also had to load a TCP/IP client at startup.
2. You had the 8.3 limit on file names. This was a huge pain in the butt for new users to grasp.
3. Windows 3.1 was built on top of DOS, so most of your programs had a 640K memory limit. As mentioned above though, you had to load the network clients. This impacted your DOS memory limit.
4. No Plug and Play hardware support. This meant that every hardware device (CD ROM’s, modems, NIC cards, etc) needed to have settings (and sometimes DIP switches on the device itself) set. An interesting aside: When people ask me how I learned my computer knowledge, I always tell them that I’d love to give them an old Packard Bell SX-25 and have them hook up a modem, video card, sound card, and then get either Lucas Arts games or DOOM to properly work. Then they’d understand how a computer geek 20 years ago learned his craft. He had to. It was the only way to get the damn thing to work!
5. With the DOS memory limit above, you had to use edit config.sys and autoexec.bat so that your programs might work. When installing a new program/game you needed to check your XMS and/or EMS memory so that your computer could run the program/game without crashing too much J. This entailed editing the config.sys and restarting, then rinse and repeat, until your EMS/XMS was right. Most of the time, I had a boot menu that entailed different loading scenarios in order to get my software to work right. For instance, if I was playing a game, I’d only load stuff that I needed. No printers, no crazy fonts, no network protocols, etc.

My point with all of this rambling, is that there was a BUSINESS NEED to replace Windows 3.1 when Windows 95 came out. My next post will cover that

Liberals and Conservatives (My Response to Rich Collins)

Over at First State Politics Rich Collins has put up a rambling document about the difference between liberals and conservatives. The gist of the piece was that liberals are stupid, naïve, ruled by emotion and that conservatives are logical and smart. Does this mean that Rich has pointy ears like Spock? J Anyhow, as a life-long liberal, I thought I’d answer back. I think Rich makes a few valid points, but most of his document just really shows why sometimes liberals and conservatives just don’t get along J

First, I really believe that, in order to tackle some of the problems that we face, these labels we use just make discussion harder. Instead of actually listening to one another, we tend to dismiss someone’s argument because they aren’t in the club. So, in that vein, I’ll list the things I think Rich got right.

Rich mentions age as a contributor to whether one is a liberal or conservative. Although I don’t believe that is completely true, it bears some scrutiny. For myself, I am a 45 year old liberal. I’ll give you the biggest example of one view of mine that has really changed over the years and that is the Death Penalty. When I was younger, I took the typical liberal view that the death penalty was wrong for moral reasons. Now, after working at a jail for eight years, my view is a bit different. I ran into many inmates that just didn’t seem to be part of the same human race that I was. But still, I’m against the death penalty. Not for moral reasons, but for pragmatic reasons. When we start executing rich white males (yes I mean you Capano), then I’ll sign on. Until then, I’m against the death penalty.

Another change in my worldview is the right to choose. As I’ve gotten older, although I still believe in the right of choice, I’m much less strident about it. I’ve come to realize that this particular issue has many valid points of view.

So I do believe that as one gets older, their views may change. Not necessarily one way or the other, but views change as you learn more and get more experience.

SO WHAT DID RICH GET WRONG??

• We (Greenpeace) have been bitching about Global Warning for at least 20 years. And we just now agree it’s a problem?
• Health Care has been an issue for almost equally as long. Again, just now discovering it?
• It is in fact the government’s duty to intervene when there are market inefficiencies. Health Care, Pollution, etc

In any case, I’ll finish up so that I don’t ramble on too much. If Rich feels that my beliefs are emotional, GOOD! Life is about emotion. We are human. Emotion is part of the human experience.

Vista at Home

I’m blogging this using my new home computer with Word 2007 and Windows Vista. I’ve been running Vista at home since yesterday and I have a few insights (I think)

1. I’m still lost, but I am slowly finding my way around this new operating system.
2. User Account Control (UAC) is still a pain, but I’m going to leave it on for now.
3. I’ve run into next to NO crashes yet, and I’m hopeful that this will stay the same
4. Although using Word 2007 seems OK, I find that I’m using the help function for a lot of things that I know how to do in Word 2003

I’ll deal with more detail as I go along. Feel free to comment, rant, etc.

Vista or Not?

As part of my day job, I am in the middle of evaluating Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. Tommorow (Jan 31st) I am driving up to Philly for a Microsoft Launch event where I’m looking to get all the free stuff I can grab.

I’ve been using Vista for a few days at work, and here are my first impressions:

1. I now have no clue where anything is anymore.
2. The new User Account Control (UAC) is a real pain.
3. I doesn’t seem any faster (or slower either).
4. I’m not sure I see the point (more on that later).

When I get back tommorow I’ll blog some more about some of my thoughts on this topic.

Octavia E Butler…RIP

OK, I’m just a little late considered Ms. Butler died in February of last year, but I’m just now getting done her last novel “Fledgling”. I don’t want to finish it, but I have to find out what happens. It’s weird, but I want to prolong this book as long as possible. Mostly because I know I’ll never read any new writings from her again.

Although Wikipedia does a much better job that I will, Ms.Butler was one of the few (the only one that I knew of anyhow) African American females writing Science Fiction. The easiest way to describe her writing is that it was very fluid and imaginitive. Although she wrote a number of Novels that were a part of a series, the first novel of hers i read was called “Kindred”.  The other easy way for me to tell what I liked about her writing was that I liked her just the same way I liked early Stephen King. With early King, (The Stand) although I liked the story and wanted to find out how it ended, the joy of King’s early work was the joy of reading his words. Most recently with King’s books (The Cell), I skipped forward pages whenever I could. Note that he still hooked me and I wanted to know how it ended, I just didn’t particularly care for the journey

So, if you are in the mood, go to a library, or run to Amazon and try out one of her books. Kindred is a good place to start.

Ms. Butler, thank you for wonderful joy of reading your work

So Maybe Root Canal’s Don’t Quite Suck Anymore

Before I start this, you need to understand one thing about me. I HATE GOING TO THE DENTIST! So where was I today? The Dentist. And let me explain something. I have had very painful experiences with most dental work. This includes the time that I wasn’t numbed sufficently, and the I could feel the drilling down to my toes.Dental work to me means xx minutes of white knuckle panic and anxiety.

 I was there for a dental crown that turned into a root canal. Had it done this morning. Now it’s 5:00 PM and the novicane has worn off.

 So my question is: Has dentristry gotten better or have I been stuck with some bad dentists? The experience I had this morning was more of boredom, not pain, not anxiety. Not that I want to pay that bill again, but maybe I’m now over my fear of dentists.