Today Apple Announced the new MacBook. It will replace their iBook line and carries a new intel duo-core processor, just like the MacBook Pro. I personally like the one in Black, I think it would be a nice accessory for my iPod.

I am sick, I mean, ear infection, dizzy, feverish, can't situp and can't swallow my own saliva sick. This morning the little Boy came in to our room, Baseball glove on his left hand, baseball in is right looked me straight in the one eye I had open because I heard him enter the room and He asked me if I wanted to play "Spaceball". My left ear is clogged and I can't even standd up, yet it was really hard to tell him, no I was sick and I couldn't play baseball with him.

I would first like to start out by saying, I am home sick, with an achy, fevery sore throat, tired kind of thing. So this post may or may not be up to par in the writting/wit and general goodness category. However I've wanted to blog for the past two days and this is the first opportunity I've had to do so.

I know what you're thinking, but Russ you always have a laptop with you and can blog at a moments notice. And while that usually is true, this week I am sans laptop. At work we are beefing up security as everyone must do, and when installing some security software on the good ole' D800, the harddrive, said, "Now I'll not have any of this" and promptly turned itself into a non bootable drive. Well after I rebooted and and got a blue screen of death, I tried again, after all it is a Microsoft machines, and a reboot can do miraculous things for them. To quote Roy from the IT Crowd, "Have ya tried turning it off, and turning it back on again?!",  But alas on my 17th reboot and blue screen of dead, I began to get the picture that something wasn't good. Or as elegantly said by one of our Help Desk Techs. "Umm, It's toast". So the good ole' D800 will go through the PC version of Overhaulin. The case will get fixed, we'll add a bigger harddrive, clean up the video card driver and add a DVD player and 8 monitors in the doors, alligator upholstery and 4 12" subwoofers to round it out.

Well tomorrow is Moving Day for Grandma and Grandpa K. Dad and I will leave shortly before sunrise to pickup the "Moving Truck" and start the adventure. I know tomorrow is going to be a lot of work, and being sick isn't going to make the task easy, but my family will be there, so at least I know that we will have some fun. We always do no matter what the task is. The fact is that I am really looking forward to them being closer. 4 miles way, is so much better than 94 miles way.

During this week, we (Dad, Brother K, Brother J, Puddin' and Myself) were over at Grandma and Grandpa K's new house doing some work. You know helping to get it ready to move into. Well Wednesday were were drywalling the garage. Brother K wasn't feeling good that night so it was just Dad, Brother J, Puddin' and myself. It was a lot of hardwork, and a lot of fun at the same time. Brother J, who is technically the youngest, shared the bosshood with Dad. Man you should of seen that guy putting up drywall, Puddin' and I had drywall screw guns and just couldn't keep up. It really made me miss working with them. It's obvious to me that Dad is really proud of how good and fast (and I mean really fast, yet very very good), brother J is at what he does.  Dad leaned over to me and say "He may not be the easiest to work with but man that kid, kicks butt." I looked at Dad and told him "J's very easy to work for, just do what he tells you and do it his way". We both smiled. He's come a long way from that kid we were screaming at during "The worst concrete pour ever" OR TWCPE for short. Dad and I can't mention TWCPE in front of brother J with out him curling up in the fetal position. But the cryings stopped, so I think he is starting to get over it.

So as you may or many not know, I have a mole over my left eyebrow. Sometimes I think about having it removed. In fact in some photos, I've photoshoped it out, but on the other hand it's part of me so it's free to stay as long as it doesn't cause any trouble. So in short, I don't like it but I don't hate it. Until today that is, this morning sitting on the sofa with my Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy, he turns to me and says look I got a spot just like you. Apparently he has a bad pimple and it's in just about the same spot as my mole. I asked him, "how did you get that?" and he replies "From you, Silly" while smiling, Maybe this little mole isn't so bad. It can stay, as long as it doesn't cause any trouble of course.

Okay, so the talk about moles reminded me of some dialog from Austin Powers Goldmember, so I've posted it here for your enjoyment

Austin Powers: Nice to mole you... meet you. Nice to meet you, Mole.
[to Foxxy as Basil & The Mole leave]
Austin Powers: Don't say mole.
Foxxy Cleopatra: Now stop.
Austin Powers: I said mole.
Foxxy Cleopatra: Stop.
[Basil gestures him to hush]
Number Three: Bye.
Austin Powers: Mole.
[Basil & the Mole try again to leave]
Austin Powers: Mole.
[Basil warns him again to hush]
Austin Powers: Mole.
Basil Exposition: Oh, shut up!
Austin Powers: [Basil and The Mole walk out and Austin lets loose] Moley, moley, moley, moley, moley!

At the Little Boy's school, They apparently have a little toy shop that the kids are allow to pick one toy from to have if they've accomplished some goal or task. The Little Boy filled up his star card with gold stars so was allowed to go and pick up his prize. He choice was interesting to say the least. He picked a flying cow. Remember the little battery powered airplanes or birds that hung from a string to the ceiling and would fly in circles till the battery wore out, well he has the cow version of that. When I called home around lunch time to see how things were going he told me all about it, and asked that I help him play with it when I got home. Of course he was so excited he forgot it was a cow and called it a flying pig, which somehow seemed very ironic, but I didn't bother explaining it to him. Irony and five years olds don't go together. It's just one of those things. So what I didn't know was he was laying the ground work to have me install the flying cow accessories when I got home. 

Fast forward to the train station, My Beautiful Wife and the Little Boy pick me up, and as I enter the car, The Little Boy has a list of questions for me, to see how long he would have to wait to see if his flying cow could actually fly.

Little Boy: Are you sick or cranky?

Me: Well I’m not cranky but I am having a some trouble breathing.

Little Boy: Oh, so your not cranky, that’s good

Little Boy: Do you have to go poop or pee?

Me: I don’t believe that is any of your concern young man!

So after this little conversation my Beautiful Wife explains that he has been waiting all day and really would like me to assemble it for him. So with my trusty cordless drill (Thanks Brother K, this things works flawlessly) I had it mounted to the ceiling in no time and the Little Boy got to see a cow fly.

 

Being a Web Developer I have but one natural enemy in the wild, and that is documentation. Developers have written tons of software to transform documentation from a foe to a friend. I've use several of this applicattion, NDoc being a great application I use the most for this task. It that takes the comments in your code and create and MSDN style .Chm file to document the methods and properties of your application. However this kind of documentation is only useful to other Developers. Otherwise I write documentation up in Word.

The problem with that is I don't like Word. Don't get me wrong Microsoft makes a fine product, but it doesn't work like I do. Creating documents in Word is a very laborious process to me that required dedicated time, time that I usually don't have to invest. This is were a Wiki comes in. What is a Wiki. Well This is how Wikipedia defines a Wiki"

Here a wiki (IPA: [ˈwiː.kiː] <wee-kee> or [ˈwɪ.kiː] <wick-ey>^[1]) is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration.

So basically it's a website that you can edit, or add content to any time you think about it. Now this works for me. I always have a web browser open, so I always have the tool I need to do my documentation open. To me a website of this methods is a much more active type of documentation, when you read it, and see something is missing you just add to it, edit it delete whatever. A Word document is very static to me, because the barriers, you have to open a heavy application, make sure you have acess to the document, make sure it's not locked by any other users. To me Word documents are a centered around one person. Where a Wiki is much more group based and that is one of the big draws for me.

We are a small department at work with a lot of knowledge. However what happens if one us aren't there. Well usually a phone call is placed, because of being small department with a lot to do, one persons ends up having the specific knowledge needed at the time. Well a Wiki offers a great solution to that problem. I'll give you an example, today a mission critical application experience some dramatic slowness,  while there was a persons that could have recycled the application they didn’t know how. Someone else had to be called and do it remotely. While being about to do the task remotely is great, wouldn’t it of been much faster for the person that was already in and awake to do the task. I’d have to say yes. So I took 5 minutes took some screenshots and wrote and tutorial on how to recycle the application and now anyone in the team can look it up and take care of the task.

So now we are doing are documentation in a Wiki, it is fast, easy and dare I say fun.

I am trying very hard not to read every article of "Jay Leno's Garage" column in Popular Mechanics. I'm at work today and I should be working. But I keeping finding myself reading it, and thinking, I'll just finish reading this article and then I will go back to work. Most people know Jay as the host of the Tonight Show and as a stand up comedian.  However most car guys know that he has a garage to drool over.  I just found his column today while reading another article in Popular Mechanics on Alternative fuels.

Enter Bernard Juchli, foreman of the "Jay Leno More-Money-Than-Brains Garage." Bernard has built numerous race-winning cars and worked on many projects over the years. He took one look at this project and said, "Just shoot me now." -- Jay Leno

This is my favorite quote so far and it is from the article "Now That's a Hot Rod" a hand built hot rod with an 800+ bhp 1560 ft-lb of torque engine out of a M-47 Patton Tank.

Have a quick read, it's some fun stuff.