My son turned 2 this week!

This past Tuesday, my son turned two. I thought it would be fun, given that our blog post this week is open, to jot down some thoughts on parenthood. And, yes, this is another avenue to show off some picture of my kid.

In the beginning, infants are very small. Yes, yes, you say. We know that. But you don't *really* know that until you see yours for the first time. Chances are, you are in a hospital. You have been there for a few hours, and you are exhausted. And suddenly you have this little purple cone headed... thing. And you panic, just for a second. "Is it supposed to be purple? Yes, they taught us that in the birthing classes. Is it always going to have a funky pointy hillbilly head? No, no, that rounds up in a few weeks. Come on, you know this stuff. Relax. Oh yeah, but WTF do I do now? Beats me, me. Relax and smile like everyone else is, and we will figure it out along the way."

Turns out, what you do next is sleep for a few hours while everyone else come in to see what you have made. And when you wake up, the kid is no longer an "it." He's pink, and healthy if still cone headed. At the hospital they teach you all manners of blanket origami, run lots of tests, and boot you out the door just as fast as they can. But home really is where the heart is.

Theo and Dad, three days old - first day at home.

As time passes, you figure out that somewhere deep down you kinda know what is required to keep an infant alive. Diapers (and the various fluids and semi-fluids that fill them) cease to be a disgusting mystery. Swaddling, feeding, cuddling and all the other things that need to happen on a regular basis become routine. You learn that infants are equipped with raptor claws - and I am SO not kidding about that. Somehow the liquid poo fountain that your child just shot several feet across the room (that you now need to clean up and will make you late for work) will be found to be amusing, and not the cause for summary execution that a similar act would have been before parenthood.

Buy the time they are 2 months old, kids have about doubled in size from when they were born. Cone heads are mostly gone, and they fit into their skin much better. As a parent, you find yourself excited over really basic steps. I was totally stoked that Theo was able to hold up his head "early." At this point they are looking at you, and maybe smiling at you, and melting your heart.

Theo, ~2 months old.

They keep growing more everyday, and the parents learn what the kids need at the same pace. By about 6 months old, they are learning and using new skills everyday. They are not infants any more. They still need lots of sleep, but not as much as before. And, oh my do they ever want to move. Theo was slow to figure out crawling but he started trying to crawl at about 6 months. He would be almost 9 months old before he finally got it.

6 months old
They are also very expressive.

Halloween - just starting to get his first teeth in.

1 Year. Nice!
Kids are learning so much at this point that it can be hard to keep up. They are transitioning from crawling to walking to running. My experience so far has been that once kids figure out how to run, they forget everything else. By 1 year, they also look more like little people and less like babies.


As they move through the 18 month period, words start to form. Not anything that can be discerned, mostly, but they are pointing and vocalizing and trying to communicate. They have definite personalities. By 18 months, Theo was captivated by Thomas the Tank Engine - though he ignored all the other TV bits. He had favorite foods, and was starting to demand that we not help him eat. I must admit, I was quite pleased when the little man began showing a large interest in Daddies old cars - primarily the old truck, which he has claimed as his personal jungle gym...

18 months old


He always runs here as soon as he gets out the front door.

As we got nearer to the big 24 months, his eagerness to speak and sing showed up more and more. He understands many more words then he can say, but is learning daily how to better communicate with us. He sings all the time - and more often then not we can recognize the tune. He is even starting to add in some of the words to his favorite songs.

A few days before his second birthday.

Two has been great so far, if only because we don't need to keep counting in months. I never understood the need to count age in months before I was a parent, but it makes sense - especially when they are under a year old. But ~ 18 months it starts being a challenge to remember off hand how many months old he is, and it takes a second to do the math when someone asks: "awwwww, how old is he?" And then I look like a dummy for not knowing right off the top of my head that he is 20 months old - but I know that I am not alone, as I have seen many other toddler parents frantically adding up months. Some parents keep up the age in months thing for a bit longer - but I am happy to be past it.

Parenthood has been a constant challenge. Sickness happens. They take headers into all manner of things that you are not supposed to smack your head into. You have to give yourself an extra hour to go anywhere, and packing for an overnighter can just about fill the car. All of that is balanced out when you see them learning new things on a daily basis. Fatherhood, though at times bewildering and frustrating, has been the most fulfilling challenge that I have met.

Online classes

I have taken online classes, in two formats.

GB704 was taken as the "online" session - meaning that we met in class 1/2 as often as regular, but had to make several posts each week on assigned topics via the Blackboard forums. I would not have taken the class had I known it was the "online" session. Well, maybe I would have. The alternate session was being taught by the prior CIO for my University. I did not want to take him as a professor as that could have caused tensions with the current CIO with whom I work with closely on my current project. So, I signed up for the "online" 704, discovering the nature of the course on the first day of classes.

My impression of the course was this: while it was nice to have the extra sessions off, which allowed me to spend a lot more time with my family that semester, I never formed any sort of bond with the other people in the class. In fact, I had a difficult time getting into the class at all as there seemed to be little time to develop a continuity from session to session. The class struck me as being perfect for the student that was just grinding through and did not much care about the subject (as I have done through say - oh - finance...) but was not good for someone interested in the subject.

The other type of online classes I have done have been the webinar type classes. They have usually run from 3 to 6 sessions, and have been usually for training at work or some other work related function. They are good for what they are. I think that they will only be beneficial for the person taking the class if the student is interested and cares about what is going on during the webinar. Otherwise, it is simply too easy to be checking email, eating dinner, playing with your kids, whatever else may be more interesting and right at hand then the webinar. None of the webinar based classes that I have taken have been graded, though fo some I have had to fill out a web based form at the end.

On the whole, I think that online classes have their place. But I think that unless you have the kind of personality that is not easily distracted, you are going to get a lot more from a traditional class setting then you would an online class. For the webinar type classes, they are great for learning software, as they can often show you real time where the different functions are. But for other types of study - like the GMATS or the PMP exam, I do not think that kind of class would be very helpful for most people.

Travelling for work

This post will be less of a blog post and more of an open ended question. I have worked for the University for nearly 13 years, and during those years I have had to travel all of 6 times for work. 4 of those time have been this semester, and Monday I will be booking airfare to Kansas City for a conference that I have been instructed to attend (by the way, I won't be in class Monday the 26th.)

I have to say, I am not really a fan. I am a person who likes a routine. To be honest, right now my schedule would probably crush me if I did not rigidly stick to a set routine, at least looking at it in broad scope. Parenthood, work, my graduate school, my wife's graduate school, and now an increasing amount of kid activities pretty much dictates planning each week out well in advance, and giving lots of notice if my wife or I have to deviate from the set schedule. I go so far as to budget myself time for failure and corrective action if I am trying something new or testing something that might not work as expected. I don't mean to say that I plan my day down to the minute, but if I am testing a new engine or looking at a trip through TSA at BWI, I make sure that I have lots of room for error in case things go awry.

I am curious as to how people work travel into their job/home/class lives. Do you travel a lot for your jobs, if at all? How do you manage to finagle your travel schedule around classes or important family activities? Or do you just head out for the wild blue yonder, and pick up the pieces when you get home?

Speakers, Part 2

Several weeks ago one of my blog posts was about building a set of speakers for my workshop. I had been using an ancient pair of powered PC speakers hooked up to my iPod, but I wanted something better. A friend of mine sent me a picture of someone who made a set of speakers out of an old NATO 50cal ammo can, and I knew what I had to do. During the Part 1 post, I wrote about buying parts. Well, the speakers are built and tested, so this blog post will include what I did, and what I might do differently the next time.


The completed unit

The ammo can that I decided to use was an East German, or possibly WWII Nazi issued 8mm box. I chose it as it was the same width as the standard NATO 30cal box, but just a little longer, which would give me room to mount everything in a narrower case then what I had seen pictured. Everything came in on time except for the 30 watt amplifier kit, which ended up being backordered for two weeks. All of the hardware not ordered from Parts Express came from the local True Value hardware store, except for a tube of electronic soldering flux which I picked up at Radio Shack.

The first thing that I did was sketch out what I wanted to make on graph paper. This let me determine before I started cutting where the best place to mount everything would be. Once I knew where I wanted it to go on the model, I marked off the center points on the ammo can, and cut them out with a 4 inch hole saw, a drill press, and lots of cutting oil. Holes cut; I dressed them with a pneumatic die grinder to remove and leftover flashing.

I thoroughly cleaned the face of the can from years grime and grease, and masked off the top and sides of the can, which I wanted to remain OD green, with 50 years of patina. I then primed the face, and then painted it John Deere yellow (which also happens to be a perfect match for all of the 1950 and 1960s era fallout and radiation bunker signs.) I let the paint dry for 24 hours before moving to the next step.


I covered the face with 2 inch blue painters tape, and drew on my stencil with a pencil and compass. The stencil was then cut out with a fresh razor, and the areas to be painted were peeled off, leaving a perfect mask. Two coats of satin black later, I was done painting. Once the paint had set, I pulled off the rest of the mask before the paint had time to completely dry and stick to the tape mask.

At this point I was ready to put in my insulation. I was using RaaMatt automotive deadener – and I will not be using it on future boxes I build. The black tar that sticks the stuff to anything made a mess once the speakers were mocked in for test fitting. To help solve the problem, I sprayed rubberized undercoating on all the insulated surfaces. This has helped, but not eliminated, the problem.

When the amp got in, I spent an evening soldering in the bits the needed soldering – which was not as much as I had expected. The amp, unlike many of the kit amps that I had found, came largely built. All I needed to solder on were the four speaker wires, aux power leads, and two output capacitors in line with the speaker wires. The amp was mounted onto the internal iPod pocket I had made out of some scrap sheet metal in my shop. It was attached with industrial strength mounting tape.


The final touch was to add rubber feet to the bottom and back face. This was to keep the metal can from rattling against whatever I had it set on when it was playing – or rattling against the wall if I had it hung up. The speakers can be used two ways. For outdoor usage, everything can be kept internally. The speakers will run off batteries, and the iPod has an internal pocket to keep it out of harm’s way. However, this makes it hard to change what you want to hear, and the batteries will eventually die. For regular usage, the iPod can attach to an input on the back of the speakers via a three foot cable. There is also a 12 volt AC adapter that plugs into the back of the set for constant use near a standard power outlet.

The set has surprisingly good bass given that it is only two 4 inch speakers. Sound quality is excellent, until the volume is turned up – at which point the amp picks up a interference and distortion. I have read that better output caps would help with that, as well as bridging the channels – which I did not do. That said it is considerably louder than the 3 watt per channel PC speakers that I had been using.
If I make more of these – either for sale or as gifts – the primary change I need to make is in insulation. I need to find something better then the automotive tar/asphalt based stuff that I used. A tall order, given the slender form factor I have to make use of In order to continue to use the 30cal ammo cans. Future units would also not use the internal iPod pocket, at least as I made mine. Fabric, instead of sheet steel, would be a simpler option.

Site Visits

Last week I was travelling to different Universities to do site evaluations for the different vendors bidding for the Paperless University project that we are running. We hit two different schools in two different states in two days. I have now seen six different vendor demos and site visits for this project, and I have learned a lot of what to do – and not to do – when suggesting a site visit. The following will be a simple list of things NOT to do as a technology vendor during a site visit. Sadly, I got to experience all of these “not to do” points.

1) Do your homework! When you arrange the site visit with the hosting company, make sure that the company is actually using your product the way that you have told your prospective customer. And if you are not sure what the hosting site is doing, err on the side of caution. Nothing irks a prospective customer more than feeling like the time and money spent in going to the site visit has been a waste.

2) Listen to the prospective customer. If the customer tells you what they want to be able to see during a site visit, make sure that they see it, or make sure that they know why they are not going to see it at the site that you have set up for them to tour. If the customer says that they want to see they best that you have to offer, make sure that they see it. This is closely related to Item 1.

3) Don’t Hover. Part of the reason a customer goes on a site visit is to be sure that they get to talk candidly with the staff and administration of the host group. This can’t happen if the vendor has someone minding the conversation at all times. A vendor that will not give its potential clients time to speak freely with the hosting company could lead to the assumption that the vendor does not want candid conversation.

4) Show up! The other side of the coin is sending the potential vendor to the site with no vendor control. It is helpful to have time with the vendor to talk about the product and explain other ways that it can be implemented. One of the biggest disappointments that my travel team had to deal with last week was the vendor paying for lunch, but not sending a rep to mind the time. The result was that the host treated the site visit as an excuse to take a long, fancy lunch – and we got very little value out of the site visit before needing to catch our plane back home. This leads us to the next and final point.

5) Cater food on site. The site visit, for the customer, is about content, not lunch. The potential customer has a limited amount of time in which to get the best idea possible about how the system they are reviewing works. While a catered lunch may not be as sexy as a fancy seafood place, having to take the time to drive to the restaurant and then wait for service is not a good use of time for the prospective customer. Have food catered on site, and plan a lightweight meeting around lunch.

Disruptive tech in the workplace

There were several very interesting presentations made on the various disruptive technologies. The assignment to to choose one of the technologies for use in my place of work was an interesting problem. The University that I work for has stated that its technology goals include adopting technology earlier into the Gartner hype circle. We already use some of the technology on campus. The campus has embraced social networking. We have been developing web mashups. There are other technologies that do not apply to a university, such as the full body scanners. At least i would not like to work here if we did.

There is an obvious choice, though, and it was not made by me. The CIO for the University had named cloud computing to be the future, and we must boldly step towards it.

The question is not when, but how. Nearly every new application being brought on campus is being looked at through the view of placement on the cloud. I am not sure that I agree with this view yet, but it is only because I am not sure that it will work as well as we are told it will work.

Costing for the clouds, while advertised as low, can actually be more expensive then traditional servers, depending on the costing scheme. Many of the cloud based systems are cheaper only if you reduce your workforce - and that simply is not the University way. There are still many questions to be answered before cloud technology will be fully accepted, but I think that many of those questions are going to have to be answered on the fly.

USB 3 is comming

Easily transportable data storage has always been something that I have been interested in, even before I worked in technology. I was one of the few people that bought Jazz drives in the late 1990s. I did not know what I would ever do with one whole gig of storage, but I knew I wanted it.

Of course, tech has advanced a lot since then. USB2 revolutionized storage with the advent of the flash drives. However as drives got bigger, USB2's slower transfer rate became the limiting factor. An 8 gig flash drive can take over 20 minutes to move data into. While the small size makes them handy in a pinch, the slow transfer rate make them unwieldy for use in applications where speed is needed.

USB3, which has been delayed now for almost a year, is supposed to come on line in 2011. When it does, the higher throughput will make using larger drives in situations where speed counts a possibility.

Depending on your source, USB3 is to have a theoretical throughput of 4.8gbps. Though that speed will not be possible in real world applications, even 50% of that speed will still be 10 times faster then USB2. USB3 will also provide more power to devices then USB2. Even so, the USB3 will throttle back the power when it is not needed. It will also be fully compatible with USB2 devices.

It is going to be a major improvement.