Notes From My Basement

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.

Tags: infrastructure, guillermo, networking

Woohoooo!

I won the raffle for 2 great software products, that Max Pool @ {codesqueeze} put out in honor of the blog's 1 year anniversary.

As entries to the contest one could twitter, blog or post videos... I twitted a couple of times and wrote a blog post here.  That was enough to make me a winner.

So freakin' cool... I can't wait to start using Bamboo CI.

Tags: software, ci, tools

Just now, about an hour ago or so, I noticed my blog was down... i.e. ugly nasty ASP.NET yellow screen.  So I set out to quickly investigate and determine the root cause of the problem, and that I did.

Suddenly, for now reason at all.. literally.. I was getting a "Input string was not in a correct format." error

Nothing changed, nothing, nothing... unless my system was somewhat compromised... so WTF??

My temporary solution was to disable that extension (by moving the .cs file out of the extensions folder in the App_code directory, out to another folder).

I will need to further dig into this, unless it is something so evident that I am missing and that my currently fried brain is not processing correctly.

Tags: troubleshooting, blogengine.net, c#

Anyone not like free?  Those of you who raised your hands… GET THE HECK OUT OF MY BLOG.. :)  In all seriousness, this is your chance to enter a drawing for some cool swag! generously hosted by Max Pool at his blog {Codesqueeze}.

He was able to get vendors to pony up some nice (and pricey) software that would make an excellent addition to any developer’s toolbox.

Me myself I am hoping, going for Bamboo 2.0 CI Server.  No I will not resell it on eBay, I have actual plans for it.  Coincidentally I am in the middle of (call it, what you will) a project to setup a CI solution using CruiseControl.net & SVN at home.  The SlickEdit tools would be a nice to have, and believe me, there is nothing like a good editor to make you productive above and beyond the powers of Notepad.

On Deck: Guillermo, get you ass in gear and evaluate "the Bamboo"!

Tags: software, tools, free, ci

Yesterday I set up a tumblr account.  You can find me here. 

Don't ask me why I did it, specifically, because I still haven't figured that one entirely myself.  As it is, "keeping up" with one forum, if you will, is something I am still trying to sort out and manage.  I guess initially I feel like I can more easily and with less scrutiny (self that is), post to and leverage the tumblr canvas, letting me try out a larger number of ideas and approach without the need to think too much about structure or content.  Lets see how this goes.

My first take is that this community is like a beginner's blog tool meets del.icio.us meets twitter (grant me some slack for the analogy) meets facebook...???  In other words, you can easily create your "typical" post but then post links and videos and audio files, etc, all from within the provided interface.  It is very nice and clean and practical.

Let me know if you join so that I can "follow" you (see, there's your twitter reach).

Tags: social networking, links

I know I have mentioned it before that one of my passions and (at one time at least, for sure) addictions are books. 

Yes, sometimes I read them!

Right now I am going through Working Effectively with Legacy Code and the less technical yet incredibly relevant but certainly more entertaining Dreaming in Code.  I'm trying to get through the former while at work, 30 minutes a day of reading when I can, the latter I am reading at home after the ripples of the hustle and bustle of what is my day to day at home come to rest.  At this point I'm at about the half way mark on both, but doing more reading at home than I am at work.

Michael Feather's book has been recommended so many times in so many different posts that I had to see for myself why this book was in those reader's opinion such a must read.  Jeff Atwood has it as part of his recommended reading list, Steven Smith posted a short review and recommendation after reading it as a recommendation from Jeffrey Palermo. For the fear you may have at this point that I post more references, I am pretty confident you get my point and trust my word!  Its been read and deemed a worthy resource.

At home I am also reading Ship It for a second time and just recently went over Practices of an Agile Developer for a third time as well.  To me both of these seemed [now] to be elementary, but yet so relevant, giving me a sense of "yeah, we are doing this the right way" and not because the books say so (hey, don't jump to conclusions), but because much of what is common sense extracted from the content of these compilations of ideas, past experience and the analysis of the results of their implementations, can be easily projected and extrapolated to the work we do, the way we do it and most importantly the way the people I work with have "learned" to relate, work, communicate with each other. 

I don't want to digress too much, but there is value in mentioning all this because most of these practices are part science, part common sense, part keeping your head above the smoke someone or some group in the industry is blowing at some point in time and at every turn.  It takes determination, self awareness and more importantly it takes focus to be able to weed through so much jargon and so much hype to extract what is really of value and what yield results.  On that last point, what yield results is always a combination of some elements from "all of the above" with what works for the group, for its dynamic for its internal makeup of skills, personality, culture & traditions.  Dare I  forget to mention keeping the business needs as a primary focus at all times.

Ok, so I did veer off a little bit too far, but what is done is done!

In summary, the message I wanted to convey with this post is that one should read not only to learn the "technology du juor", which of course is a perfectly valid reason to do so, but also and most importantly after reading so many opinions and different points of view one is able to apply these to a practical everyday life as a professional developer (in this particular case), how one then may use the same books one used to learn to now assess our level of assimilation of all this information, to gauge, to extrapolate, to connect one's own dots.

Tags: books, resources

I have configured my del.icio.us account to post daily summaries of the links I bookmark to my blog.

Since it is precisely that, a daily summary, this blog may start to show increased posting activity.

Summaries will be posted only on days on which I actually tag a URL with del.icio.us.  I find myself doing so about 2 or 3 times a week.  

I will try to keep the links relevant, the noise down and the comments appropriate and descriptive.  As usual, any feedback is certainly appreciated and encouraged.

Tags: resources, tools, links

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.

Tags: guillermo

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 

Tags: guillermo