Mayo Clinic day

I just got done with Mayo’s Executive Health program visit. Living about an hour and half away from Rochester, MN means I get close access to some of the best doctors in the world. Their Executive health program is amazing – in two days, you can get done what usually take 3-4 weeks of time and multiple appointments – blood screening, tread mill stress tests, you name it.

A little high on the cholesterol and little out of shape – two things I expected after a Microsoft stint that never seemed to leave any free time – and otherwise a clean bill of health. I can’t say enough good things about the staff and doctors at Mayo – they are truly world-class.

Cisco 871

Well, Since the 831 was installed, I did a little extra research on QoS additions – the one gripe I have is the way Cisco licenses their IOS features – the initial unit should be loaded with everything, and I should be able to go to their site and purchase the key for the feature directly from the Cisco website.

Cisco’s reseller model leaves a little to be desired for the small purchaser. In researching their routers it looked initially like the 831 was the small office router for broadband cable users and the 871 was the ‘integrated services’ router that includes everything the 831 has but adds wireless. Well, the reality is that the 871 is the replacement for the 831 series and the base 871 is a wired router only, with 10/100 WAN link and LAN links. The 831 has 10/100 LAN links, but only 10Bt WAN link. This is actually OK for my current situation with a cable modem, but eventually I’ll want that 10/100 port. However, since all the online resellers do not allow for returns, I’m stuck with an older 831 router when the 871 costs about the same amount.

After calling Cisco and my vendor, PC Connection, I essentially hit a dead end where PC Connection actually said that maybe eBay would be a good option. This after only having the router for 5 days.

So – Cisco, if you are listening, help the small guys out – make your router product information sites more clear, to be blunt – your current site is HORRIBLE, confusing and your model numbering scheme is impossible to understand. Second, either use resellers at the small level with return policies or don’t allow anyone to buy a router unless they buy SMARTNet first.

All that said, I will say that the 831 is still chugging along nicely – these are great routers. If you need a professional level router for a small environment, the Cisco 870 series could easily fit the bill.

Cisco 831 addition

It’s been awhile since the last post – I certainly intended to get more postings done, but between a new job and daily happenings, the best laid plans go awry.

Murphy also likes to strike when you least expect him to and last week was no different. During my first week on the job, I had the pleasure/stress of flying to San Diego and driving to Yuma, AZ to kick off some internal projects and meetings with customers. This would have been fine, except that Thursday morning was the time that my WRT55AG Linksys A+G router decided to lock up with no way to recover except for a hard reset. Usually, it takes about 10 minutes and I have the thing up and running again – it’s happenend about 2 other times – but this time, my wife was the only one home. With Vonage being our phone solution this wasn’t an ideal situation.

Since I had some time at night and the frustration of the Linksys dying gave me reason to think about the home network, I realized that it might not be all Linksys’ fault. Why?? Because I realized that our home network probably has more going on than some busy small offices – A Vonage T/A with two lines active, an Xbox 360 on 802.11a often running it’s built-in Media Center Extender, two laptops on 802.11g, a server running email and OWA, an Xbox running Media Center Extender and the Media Center, broadcasting HDTV and music to both Xboxes along with a Power Book sharing iTunes and being used to browse the web. So, I finally realized that it’s not surprising that most of the retail consumer routers I’ve had lately haven’t been able to handle all the activity. So, I had a Cisco 831 shipped for Saturday delivery.

All I can say is that so far it’s been the best $450 spent on a technology purchase I’ve had in a long time. Configuration was far from simple, even with the excellent SDM loaded on the router and with the built-in firewall and SOHO setup instructions. However, once I figured it all out, the thing is rock solid – passing every firewall test I can throw at it and having no unexpected results – you set a NAT translation rule and it gets applied instantly, no rebooting the router and hoping it doesn’t lock up or lose some other configuration setting. It’s also got the standard NVRam built-in to save the boot-up configuration, and IOS access if you like the CLI sort of thing. The only thing it didn’t have out of the box was the QoS capability in it’s included version of IOS. However, this will be rectified when I get the SMARTNet support agreement setup.

iPod Nano

I am a gadget freak and I have to say that one of the cooler devices I’ve gotten in a long time is my 2GB Nano that I received for Christmas.

I got a gift card to the Apple Store and dealt with the hordes the day after Christmas to buy the black 2GB Nano. I was thinking of getting the 4GB version, but I want the Nano for exercising, using in the car for podcasts and bringing along on long trips – a day’s worth of music and even more time for podcasts should be plenty. I also plan on getting the 5G iPod eventually to replace the laptop on vacations – transferring digital photos to it would make it possible to ditch the laptop on long trips.

The best part about the Nano I have seen so far is the way it handles podcasts. I have a 1G iPod(I think I was also the first evidence of the ‘Halo’ effect – I had to have that iPod, so I also bought a Lampintosh.) but it doesn’t have the podcast handling that the Nano does. I like that I can subscribe to podcasts, play them, link back to the Powerbook we have now and then it downloads the updates to the subscriptions. The only change I would make is to allow you to play podcasts like a playlist – just keep going without having to go to the main menu.

Well, off to take care of the boy, he’s waking up!

Go ‘Clones!

My beloved Iowa State University Cyclones play TCU today in the EV1.Net Houston Bowl!!

I have to put a plug in for them and say, ‘Go ‘Clones!’

Best of luck to your teams and enjoy the holiday weekend!

Microsoft Time

So, while I’m up early watching the boy, I thought I would share a funny story from my early days at Microsoft.

They have a lot of internal catch phrases and sayiings – like ‘drinking from the firehose’, ’sell the app, secure the stack’, and ‘the meeting will happen on Microsoft time’.

I learned early on that ‘Microsoft Time’ could mean a lot of things – meetings start late, customer activity took such precedence that internal meetings (even mandatory ones) were an afterthought sometimes. I even saw a note sent out by a program manager once advertising the baked goods and drinks he would have at a meeting to entice people to show up. It worked.

Another interesting thing about Microsoft Time was that so many smart and dedicated people work there they can often do things in half the time you might expect – I once saw a ‘buddy fix’ created by a software engineer during the time they were flying to a customer site – from start to finish, the code was modified, reviewed and delivered all in about 3 hours – not something you should try at home, but this was a mission critical app that needed to be fixed YESTERDAY.

This has changed much over the years – internal meetings that are mandatory are now looked at more seriously and fixes and technical publications take longer for legal review and technical review, I think sometimes that the reviews and internal focus has fundamentally changed the way the company deals with customers in such a way that they are just evolving to the next IBM, but we’ll see. There are still a lot of smart, energetic people there trying to change the world.

Happy New Year!

Well, Happy New Year all!

The wife and I are hosting a New Year’s Eve party tonight – pomegranate martinis are the featured drink until 8 or 9PM, then it’s off to the next door neighbor’s house. If you’re going to attend, the secret drink is out now, but shhh – don’t let Melissa know I told you.

What a great year this should be – moving on from Microsoft and heading to a small start-up, Compellent Technology.

However, Microsoft technology will be with me for a long time and I do hope they get out of their ‘funk’. Tonight the main entertainment will be the Xbox 360 running Media Center photos with song lists playing in the background – photos from the year, including some from Microsoft events and parties with friends. We didn’t travel a lot this year, so there won’t be a lot of photos – Melissa had Rowan in July, so certainly nothing wild and crazy.

Here’s to all of you out there – Have a Happy New Year and see you in 2006! May your road go ever on and no doors block your way…

Taking Back the Web

Check out Mitch’s post on taking back the web.

Some good thoughts on technology and where we’re headed.

Media Center and Xbox 360

I was involved in a lot of Media Center Beta activity while at Microsoft and one of the coolest things that we did during that time was add HDTV tuners to the system. While I think Media Center has a long way to go in terms of ease of use and stability – changing a video driver on a consumer device? Not a good idea for Joe User – I do think that the Xbox 360 and Rollup 2 update for Media Center 2005 is one of the coolest things ever done.

I’ve got an Xbox 360 that I got on December 10th and it’s running my main floor living room’s media activities. We can watch recorded High-Def content, listen to iPod and WMA device music, watch movies, play games, listen to the radio, view thousands of photos and listen to all the MP3s I’ve ripped over the years and put on the Media Center through it. While it’s not the quietest machine in the world when playing games, it drops the fan noise significantly when playing movies or running the Media Center Extender that’s built-in. I’ve got in connected over an 802.11a wireless network and it works flawlessly with some very rare wireless interference. I also have it located in a totally enclosed cabinet that was originally designed for the Media Center PC itself so it completely blocks the noise. The cabinat has built-in slots for ventilation so while the noise is stifled, the heat isn’t stifling. I believe the Media Center was about 30-40 degrees hotter than the 360, so it has plenty of cooling room in the cabinet and the wireless controllers make it un-necessary to expose the IR port(now if someone would just make an RF wireless media remote).

I’m surprised that we have been using the 360 about 70% of the time for media of some kind and 30% for games – it works so well and is so quiet that the wife hasn’t even complained about having to use the controller for media viewing.

The First Shall be Last

So, my first blog entry is on the last day of my employment with Microsoft. Technically, my last day is 12/31/05, but nothing happens on New Year’s Eve, unless of course you were at Microsoft on 12/31/99, which is another entry all to itself.

So, ‘Hello’ and thanks for checking out my blog.