Like many busy people I used to politely decline requests to join LinkedIn - a social networking website for professionals. A few weeks ago I finally gave it a try and on uploading my Gmail contacts a whopping 70+ people I knew were already in LinkedIn, wow it has really taken off! Check out my shiny new LinkedIn profile here:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/PaulLockwood
What are the main benefits I see from the site? Luckily I have never have trouble finding contracts, but every so often I find myself working for really bad managers - incompetents seem to cluster, why is that? With LinkedIn I hope to avoid making such mistakes ever again:
LinkedIn should enable us to observe any company’s rate of turnover, especially to discover if competent senior developers are leaving in droves or only staying for a few months. As more and more people joined LinkedIn it will become pretty easy to contact someone who used to have the job you are interviewing for - what better way to get to the 411 on why they left than ask the individual themselves?
One thing I have found is that not every member responds to an invite immediately. After three weeks I sent a reminders to the few stragglers and all but one responded within the day - perhaps they missed the first ‘bulk request’ due to spam filters? Whatever the reason don’t forget than you can easily resend an invitation to an existing member.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 6:16 PM MST
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Steve Gibson of GRC fame spits out another useful tool:
It simply displays if some newer hardware features are available on your PC. The screen-shot is verification that the 64bit PC I built almost three years does support DEP.
DEP: Prevents buffer overflows in hardware - this a very big deal. Of course the operation system must support DEP too. Which versions of Windows support it is unclear, but 64bit Vista and XP should support it. Hopefully Steve Gibson will extend his utility to test DEP with an actual buffer overflow
Hardware Vitalization: Hardware support for running Virtual Machines - they should run with no speed degradation
You can see all of Steve’s free utilities at his circa-1995 website:
http://www.grc.com/freepopular.htm
After a period of dumbing down his Security Now podcast is again one I highly recommend:
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Podcasts, Technology at 1:58 AM MST
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When re-hosting this blog I decided to go with an engine that published plain-jane html. The main reasons are:
. Simplicity of hosting
. Speed of pages to appear (i.e. no ASP.Net engine to ‘warm up’)
. Should be simple to migrate to another engine in the future
Unfortunately I decided that Linux is a simpler and faster choice than windows. I say unfortunately because it appears Apache on Linux is case sensitive, i.e. Index.html is different from index.html.
This means there are few dead-links on this site right now, and they will have to stay that way until I return from vacation. Probably I’ll swap back to IIS hosting. Anyone else who looking to move their blog don’t make the same mistake!
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Technology at 8:52 AM MST
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Over the last few days I have been on forums and chatting with friends about HDTV.
Anyone in the market should be aware that just getting HDMI is not enough. According to this article at cnet not all HDMI devices are compatible - nice. It was interesting to read Dvorak’s rant about HDCP in last month’s PC Magazine about what will happen when someone who bought a Sony TV two years ago, plugs in a new Sony blue-ray player only to find the player refuses to send HD content to the non-HDCP capable TV. Already I can picture non-technical yuppies flipping out at innocent Best Buy clerks - ‘listen sonny boy, I spent half your yearly salary on that [bleep]ing TV so you’d better make it work or..’.
Wikipedia details differences between versions of HDMI, which are principally higher bandwidth on video + new audio codec support (lossless TrueHD and DTS-HD). The question is would play a lossless codec straight to a TV’s built in speakers?
What is next? Probably a black market for boxes that accept any version of hdmi input, handshake with hdcp and output to DRM free DVI/ hdmi/ component video.
Posted by Paul Lockwood as HDTV at 6:57 PM MST
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It is the time of year again, and since Lariam has almost totally gone my life will return even closer to normal this year.
Professional Highlights of 2006
- Lariam is barely holding me back now. About one day a month I still take a sick day, but such days are now fairly bearable. At this rate I expect zero sick days by 2008 (seven years since taking two pills!)
- Returned to an Architect role again and for the first time in years
Personal Highlights of 2006
- Almost have one rental house self sufficient. It should require little maintenance and pay for itself in 15->20 years
- Polished DIY skills. Now able to effectively manage contractors
- Track day at Road Atlanta
- Gotten a handle on Retirement
2006 was really a major regrouping after Lariam and the start of crunching numbers for retirement planning, so what about 2007:
Professional Goals for 2007
- Really make a difference at work instead of just nudging people in better directions
- Give at least two high-visibility presentations
- Re-read and fully digest classic foundation of Software-Development books such as Code Complete. Aim to be an world-class expert in directing software development teams
- At least skim-read 7 Habits and Getting Things Done etc
Personal Goals for 2007
- More retirement planning
- At least one weekend at Road Atlanta and all Solo2 schools
- At least a half-marathon, try for six minute mile or full marathon
- Unless technology takes over again, attempt to buy at least one more rental property and use >90% contractors to upgrade where necessary
Surely no-one but me is interested, but what happened to last year’s goals?
Professional Goals for 2006
- Start picking up the pace work-wise (Lariam willing)
- YES! Now I am probably at 30% of my pre-Lairam work pace, which is not bad at all
- Continuous improvement of speaking skills especially for Code Camps - rival Mark Dunn before 2007!!
- Somewhat. The skills getting close to Mark Dunn et-al, but not quite
- Find more time to help with requests for Podcasts, book writing, company foundation etc
- No, I changed focus to locking down retirement goals instead
- Ensure everything I do for the .Net community is of the highest possible quality
- Read/ skim-read all the well known management/ personal success books (cringe)
Personal Goals for 2006
- Do not annoy anyone if Lariam hits again
- YES! There were only two bad sessions last year, and I was even polite to the incompetent clowns who fired me to protect their jobs
- Live modestly, including driving a used car which gets good mpg
- YES and no. In the USA new cars can be as cheap as used cars to run - I tried to buy a used Miata more than once, but used prices were just too high
- Do at least one auto-cross every month
- Somewhat, I did every school possible including one at Road Atlanta
- Find time to achieve a 6 minute mile
- No, but kept residual fitness
- Move to a more central part of Atlanta
- Somewhat, my wife and I now how very short commutes and are with walking distance of a great pub ;)
Posted by Paul Lockwood as Other at 7:27 AM MST
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