I am on my way out the door today, with many expectations yet, however with a certain degree of certainty that not before the day is over this coming Monday the 12th, I'll be a dad for the 3rd time.

My wife Tammy is scheduled to be induced that day, and if baby Mia comes before then we'll be extatic.  If she doesn't we are ready to coerce her into coming to us and making our lifes that much richer.  I can't wait for yet another round of incredible experiences and constant learning... for all.  My kids have been not only a source of inspiration but also many, many life lessons.  HA! If they only knew ;)

I've just recently realized that I hadn't realized that if I thought the last 3 or so months have been incredibly busy and crazy, what awaits us the next 3 or so is orders of magnitud those 3 previous in the crazy department.  We adjust and then develop amnesia for how it was "before", and then even if we do remember, never ever what to go back to the mundane life of a single guy (you know I am just kidding right?).

Don't wish me luck!  I don't need it, because I have just that.  I have all the luck in the world having them in my life.  Wish me continued happiness, and that I take all of what I can get my hands on.

for my age… and it will be officially the Hexadecimal base to define my age. 

So today, I am 0x26!, yes 26 (hex).

Back on July 2nd of this year, my wife Tammy and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary.  Today, one month later, I thought it would be a nice way to commemorate it once again by bringing in some alcohol talk into the mix.

Now, I don't need excuses to drink, and of course I am not saying that marriage is a reason to... I can feel myself digging a hole deeper and deeper...

The reason I mention this is because around that time, my Father and Mother in Law took a road trip down south and on their way up they stopped at the Woodford Reserve distillery, and brought us back this beautiful bottle of 90.4 proof whiskey!

w00t!

I felt the need to post this because a) I am grateful and this is one way to show it, b) I think the bottle is kick ass and c) I don't drink whiskey... (hmm, ok, I don't CHOOSE whiskey as my first option, but I drink just about anything with alcohol in it).

Since my wife and I are also expecting a new member of the family, due mid January, we couldn't possibly (yet) put this present to good use.  I will wait for her patiently, then maybe after the new munchkin is here and she regains strength she would agree to add willingness to do at least one shot with me.  Until then this puppy will age a year or so, and maybe we'll use it to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary, or plan B could be that it mysteriously disappears and end up with a mammoth of a headache!

All joking aside, it is a beautiful gift, a great bottle, it looks great and gives me one dumb excuse to write a post about it.

Care to share?

Even before I started even thinking about actually "blogging", one of the elements that quickly came up as important to consider was hosting.  Now, I've always hosted my own, and for the most part it has faired pretty well.  I don't (and lets be honest, most likely never will) have the traffic to even put a blip on anyone's bandwidth use radar, and that was one of my initial (unproven and unjustified) concerns.

Since we are putting an addition on the house, and redoing (read ripping it all out) the 70s looking basement, my hand was forced and I had to take down all of my infrastructure, including server and incoming Internet connection. 

I will get a new, decent, nice looking, office out of all this, and it will not be cold and an eye sore like it used to be.

I've been managing by having to relocate the physical infrastructure required to provide me with outbound access (mainly my router, modem and a power strip) which come into my basement, almost on a day to day basis, although its been stable since Wednesday or so and over the weekend because there was nothing going on down there as far as construction goes.

This has created too much downtime for me, and although I have little to no audience, it is clear that it doesn't help.

I have been evaluating options from different hosting solutions, and thus far in 1 week of on and off (15 minutes at a time) dealing with several, I have come across 2 disappointments and no true clear winner.  Of course, a huge contributing factor is that this is merely a hobby and as such justifying too much of an expense (more than say $10 a month) is a hard thing to do.  The search continues, but regardless of my convictions I should be moving this blog to a new site within a couple of days.

In the meantime, read this as somewhat of an explanation for the lack of posts, and my sincere apologies to go with it. 

I am well aware downtime and lack of constant posts are big no-nos in the list of things not to do when one is without an audience and trying to gain the trust of anyone who would listen. 

Again I apologize and my commitment continue despite some of the minor obstacles and workable setbacks.

This past Saturday evening, Tammy and I inadvertently (literally) got sucked into watching the 2004 "Build A Better Burger" food contest that the Sutter Home winery hosts every year, shown on the Food Network HD, I couldn't help my mouth watering at the parade of the very creative burger recipes. 

The outcome couldn't have been any more obvious: I set out to reproduce the winning recipe of 2004, the very next day.

Armed with the printed recipe, found on the site along other year's winning recipes, I shopped for the "delta" ingredients, and diligently assembled the heart attach on a toasted bun.

Pictured is the fruit of that labor.

My verdict:  I think the oregano and perhaps the seasoned salt may have combined to be too overpowering of a flavor. I should have thought better about the <amount of> Italian spices that the recipe called for, but that only became apparent once I had already "poured" all the ingredients together.  Next time I make this, I'll hold back on the those 2 ingredients and let the others find a better balance.

The blue cheese spread was phenomenal, and I will for sure repeat it on any sandwich calling for blue cheese.

The recipe is presented for 6 burgers, but I made 4 a little big bigger, and had enough for a second round the following day (yes, that is today and that was dinner!).

My reading habits includes cycling through books, 3 or 4 at a time, which some may consider an inefficient approach to acquiring knowledge.

However, I do this because most of my reading is on technical topics and unfortunately the content in these types of books falls under the "very repetitive" category.  You can't open any 2 or 3 books that cover related topics, without feeling somewhat insulted by the authors (or is it the publisher's that insist on the filler content?), and my solution is to factor out the common fluff and assemble my own content by parallel processing my reading!

Ok, so my point is, as a result of my "extensive" reading, I have come across a few gems that make my list of must read cover-to-cover... sometimes more than once.

The following is my list of books I have read, are in the process of reading and the ones I will tackle at the earliest chance I get:

Read (some more than once)

• Practices of an Agile Developer
• Agile Software Development with Scrum
• Extreme Programming Explained (Kent Beck)
• Ship It!

Own, scanned, read a few chapters, made my list of must read c2c

• Continuous Integration
• Refactoring to Patterns
• Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

Want to read, have not purchased, on the belt making their way to the "cashier"

• Working Effectively with Legacy Code (MUST READ!)
• Manage It!
• Release It!

Maybe...

• Agile Retrospective

At some point, when the fancy strikes

I started reading on Ruby and Rails, and have to find the time to get a fun project underway using Ruby on Rails.  At this point there are other priorities, but this is on the top of the list of must do.  Ruby Rocks!

• Agile Web Development with Rails
• Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional

Other good reads, if time allows

• C# 3.0 Design Patterns, good overview/refresher on patterns, current in its implementation examples

After looking at this list though, I realize I started going slightly off topic, but decided to leave it as is because although the list in the context of the intention of the post could be limited to the books in the first group, the list as a whole is my current state of affairs as far as my reading goes.  I'll update the list as my progress through other material yields information worth sharing.

At this point and according to Clemens Vasters classification of bloggers, I will grade myself at the lowest level... "I want to blog".

I intend on doing something about that as I make my way through this maze, without pushing the envelope. I'll do my best to keep track of my progress against this "chart" of his.  Hey, maybe if I get to be "collaborator" he'll even add me to his blogroll.  I am going to seed the good faith relationship by adding him to mine!.

P.S. I truly dissagree with the concept of "link blogs", althought I sporadically check up on them, the 3 or 4 who I've come ccross.

So I finally bit the bullet and decided to not only start "blogging", but host it as well (more about that on a follow up post).

I've been incredibly self conscious (or more accuratelly self aware) about how is it that I can contribute with my opinion on issues that are relevant, in this day in age when information is widely spread and covered before us, mere mortals, get a chance to even learn the new TLA much less make too much sense out of it for our own consumption, much less enough to share our opinion and (again) make it relevant... and hence therein lies the challenge. 

That being said, I decided I can't compare myself to the big guns of the blogosphere and I can't keep this fear of being compared, measured, from allowing me to start expressing myself. I know I have a long way to go and that this is only the beginning.  As it is the challenge is compounded by "afflictions" that are common to all of us, namely family, job, stress and the neverending feeling that length of a typical day shinks as we get older. 

My commitment is now to enjoy this process and balance its effect on my aforementioned "afflictions" (my wife probably wouldn't like that I am refering to it as afflictions so much, but oh well... censorship will come later on).

A little bit about me:

My name is Guillermo Salas and I reside in the (as of now) very cold and at the same very warm Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my tue love, my family. 

Originally hail from Caracas, Venezuela, I made Milwaukee my home in 1996 and have been here ever since.  I think that baring a force majeure (ok, I had to link to something in this my first post) I am a believer that I am here to stay, at least until the kids grow up and leave the nest, for which we are still at least 17 years away.

I love what I do (and I can't say that enough).  Notice I didn't say I love my job, because that changes with the winds, but my love for what I do remains and it is not immutable as I've found out over the years.  However this love tends to change towards the better, the more I learn, the more I grow as a professional.

Ok, I guess I didn't mention what it is that I do, but I intend to write a little bit more in depth about that in a later post.   For now, suffice it to say that I am a Professional Software Developer but please don't judge me just based on that.  As you'll see I can't help but expanding on this topic if for nothing else as a way to introspect.

I hope I can remain relevant enough, and that my opinion, ideas and sometimes advice makes enough sense for you to come back often, to subscribe and to stay with me on this my newly spawned thread. 

Cheers,

Guillermo