Amen, Bro!

http://www.piyooshrai.com/2014/04/lessons-for-father-who-do-you-work-for.html

A Life is to be LIVED, not built or managed.

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/leaning-out-sheryl-sandberg-women-career-work-78360/

and...

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/business-economics/will-ever-able-enjoy-shorter-work-week-78891/

Virtual Reality

So I was evangelizing OS virtualization software to my dear friend W this weekend. He's a power-sysad who maintains both Windows and *nix systems for a living. Sadly, he hasn't had an excuse to get into playng with virtualization tools such as VMWare, Hyper-V, XenServer. Many with much more experience with VM offerings than I have written much on comparisons of each (e.g. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8880 ). Although I was introduced to virtualization with MS's Virtual Server 2005, I primarily have used MS Hyper-V on my research server to really start poking into using VMs. But as of late, I've started using VMWare Workstation v6.5 at work. Although I didn't much like the admin console in VMWare as much as the simpler (and I think, more intuitive) one in Hyper-V Manager, I've come round more and more to liking VMWare. The performance of the VM guests seems a bit better on my laptop's VMWare than what I see on my more robust hardware running Hyper-V. This could be that the configuration of the host OS and the overhead of Server 2008, yet I would have expected that 64bit dual-core CPU to be a bit faster than my WinXP 32bit laptop acting as a host.

So it seems that MS has now released a free version of Server 2008 Hyper-V. I'm not sure I'd want to bother with the nuances of this version for the sake of getting Hyper-V, but for those who want to experiment with yet another "free" version, there is now an option for true MS Hyper-V without having to buy a Server 2008 license. Personally, it seems that with the availability of VMWare Workstation and Server created VMGuests, one might be just fine with VMPlayer for personal research of alternate Guest OSs. For a more robust network solution, I will be sticking with Hyper-V (since I'm so Microsoft biased), but am curious to hear my *nix-capable friend's conclusions as he digs into the plethora of (wider) options available to him (e.g. Red Hat Fedora's KVM, opensource XEN). There is no doubt in my mind that those who have wrestled with maintaining networks too small to justify enterprise-class systems-management tools MUST investigate virtualization tools or risk being rightly identified as holdouts of an antiquated-mindset.

Stop the HighDef Madness

Ok, I am well aware that it is Xmas and the retailers are doing whatever they can to stir the feeding frenzy of consumerism that passes itself off as "Christmas giving." But the whole push to digital TV and HighDef schtuff has officially gone too fucking far with this: http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6565742.html?nid=4262

South Park in High Def? The show is intentionally crappy animation with paper cuts-outs and stop-action animation. Man, get a 42" HD flat panel and you'll do ANYTHING to justify the "need" for it. Worse than crack.

But then, I'm just jealous.

Adobe Flex

Previously posted to 3t internal blog:

So Nicole's husband (John) is a user of Adobe Flex. She was talking about his efforts (ok, his and the WIFE's efforts) in the Flex developer community which made me curious. I didn't realize that this is an outgrowth (actually a rebranding post-redevelopment) of Macromedia's Flex Data Services. I know, Duh!, right?

Anyway, this looks really cool. Check out this quick demo video.

The 3.0 version looks to have greatly simplified the required component stack compared to the software needed back in 2004 for v1.0.

When you couple the simple set-up app the guy builds in the video with an SQL Server web service endpoint serving up xml data, you could build nice looking Web apps that are visible only as a Flash movie to external users. I'd be curioius to hear what the Big Tree developers think of this software compared to using MS products such as ASP.NET + AJAX (Atlas?) and Silverlilght.