Its been a little quite on the blog front, most of you regular readers know that means its been a busy time in other areas for me.
I guess it goes with out saying that its busy at work. The amount of ‘business’ thats done in this country is staggering. I am told that the current economic climate is rather bad, more so in other parts of the country than here. Its one thing that I really don’t like, I have such a small view of whats happening in this country. While we are the same (roughly) physical size here as Australia, given the shear number of people its so much harder to really keep up with current events over here. You end up just looking at whats happening in your state which has more people in it than all of Australia. It does not give you a true view of whats happening….. wow, thats a long way to say that from where I sit, business is booming and the amount of work that is to be done is staggering.
I have been busy putting together a small Linux computer to run as a web server, data base and interface to our controllers. We have been getting it together for a demo that happens in Washington DC next week (if we get it ready in time). We have some exciting opportunities opening up on the East coast that might spread over the whole nation.
Of course all this is on top of the usual phone calls and resulting emails that come in day to day.
I have been putting in some pretty solid hours and then coming home, having dinner and then logging on and doing a few more hours. Even programing on Sundays has slipped in here and there too.
I am still finding myself surprised as to the odd skill set that I have managed to put together over the years. Its interesting to (try and find the time) stop and reflect on what events happen years ago that caused me to take the time to learn each of those skills. At the time, they were just a means to an end, they did not seem to have a big picture or future to them. It is also interesting to reflect on how I never would have thought that those skills would be drawn on over here. No one is irreplaceable, but its just so convenient having certain combinations of abilities in one mind, you don’t need to have meetings to coordinate different people.
In the same vain, I am getting frustrated with chunks of my ‘old’ life in the garage. I don’t think I am ever going to get back to tinkering with all the little projects I started in Australia. I feel I am using my skills in a different way and the stuff in the garage is just ‘noise’. I would like to have a sale and clean it out, rather dramatically if I could.
Its not going to happen anytime soon, I just don’t have time to arrange it, but the longer it sits there, the more frustrated I get with it.
For the past 2 weeks I have a really solid head cold as well. Its left me with a very raspy voice an really annoying cough. The cough has got to the point where it starting to hurt my back and chest. I’m just sore and tired. That’s a good reason just there to not be sitting at the blog.
In other news, I found a moment to install Google Chrome web browser on my Linux computer…….. I am totally shocked as to how fast it is. I have not had time to do some background research as to why it is so fast, its like I have turbo charged my internet connection, which of course I have not, but its like something has happen to make my computer and Internet so much faster. It really is a significant boost in speed. I have been using Chrome at work on my XP computer because its faster and more stable than FireFox, but after seeing it on Linux, I am thinking about getting an old 2nd hand computer, putting Linux on it and taking it to work to just use as my web browsing PC. I spend so much time on the web searching for information that if I speed up my browsing it would be a solid boost in my throughput. It really is that much faster. Its only been about 5-6 days since I have done it, but so far its been very stable. I will need to give it some more time, but there are no reports on the web about stability issues…. and there are plenty of reports of the speed boost, so at this stage it seems to be a keeper.
I know that not every one runs Linux, and I know that you have to dig around a little to get the right version of Chrome to install, but if you do and you have the skill set, I HIGHLY recommend giving it a go….. Have I mentioned how blazingly fast it is?
So, not much of a blog entry really, I just have not had time to do much of anything that most of you would find interesting…. I would love to go into depth on the technical side of what we have been doing at work but am mindful that its probably about as interesting to you all as reading food ingredients in Spanish is for me……. Be grateful that I spared you!