Dead but not dying, Gone but not leaving.

That title pretty much sums up the state of my website, does it not? I still keep an eye on it and obviously I have secured some form of hosting for it since moving into my first home, though I have yet to actually do anything with it. I guess it takes two ingredients to keep a site going: Hosting and somebody producing some sort of content.

As you can imagine, I have been quite busy. Not only with the house but with work as well. The house has become a pretty accepted part of life. I have gotten into the habit of mowing the lawn once a week, tending to the hedges as they outgrow my perception of the volume that should be occupying, whacking weeds and taking potshots at the neighbors noisy dog(s) with the hose whenever the opportunity presents itself. Work has been hectic. There seems to be a stream of work and less and less time in which to do it. Our company seems to have slipped into the terrible habit of overselling software so to speak. While this tends to work to our advantage more often than not when it comes to time and material projects, it becomes a real burden on flat rate projects. I am working on at least one project that has ballooned to occupy a large chunk of my time over the last two years despite the fact that it was originally supposed to last less than a year.

There are several factors at work there, none of which I care to publicly address on my website here, suffice to say that that everybody including myself could stand to learn something from this debacle. I can only hope that I’m not the only one feeling that especially given the fact that this project is a year past due and there is still no end in sight.

But hey life is good. Seeing as my sister-in-law and mother-in-law just left, I can finally say that all of our close family members have seen our new home now. Reactions have been quite pleasing and while it may sound selfish to say so, that makes me feel at least a little more proud of myself for finally getting off my rear end and taking the plunge. Still it’s not all good being a homeowner, at least not where some of my neighbors are concerned. Just last week one of our next door neighbors appeared to be having a battle with a Repo man over one of their vehicles (of which they own three despite the fact that there are only two drivers in the household). Somehow they managed to get them to leave and keep their vehicles though. I guess a lot of people are beginning to feel the crunch, just as the government is as their backwards view of financials begins to catch up with them.

As for computers, I have just finished spending a few months getting myself familiar with the upcoming release of Windows known to the public as Vista. While Vista in and of itself does offer some nice goodies, I can’t help but to feel a bit underwhelmed by it given the fact that we have waited five years for it and all we seem to be getting is some nice eye candy and a few UI improvements. Yes I know they have added truckloads of new APIs on the driver and application levels alike. And while some of these changes are appreciated, I can’t help but wondering if Microsoft is becoming a supporter of change simply for the sake of change. Not that I can blame them, it’s got to be difficult when your biggest competitor is yourself.

Bottom Line: There is nothing notable that Vista can do that XP can’t. Not to mention that XP is a cheaper investment. Given that this is the case, I have decided to stick with Linux on my main laptop, keep Windows 2003 on my server, and keep Windows 2000/XP installed on a virtual machine on my laptop just in case I need to do some work from home. Thus far this approach has really worked out well seeing that the latest version of Ubuntu Linux really works well on my new (well not so new now) Core Duo laptop that I acquired a few months back. Some would likely presume to debate the choice, but the fact is that funds are tight and Vista is going to be pricy. And despite the fact that I’ve used Linux in one form or another for nearly 10 years, I still feel as if I’m learning something everytime I use it. And that in and of itself is quite refreshing.

Well that’s enough posting for now, perhaps I’ll post a bit more later.