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EeePC
Several weeks ago, I received an ASUS EeePC 901. I've been looking at them for awhile now and finally had an opportunity to play with one. The first thing that happened when I first pulled it out of the box was I cut myself on the box! It was one of those corrugated cardboard boxes that kind of looked like a picket fence. After that unpleasant experience, I was excited to power it up. I was easily able to get it on my WiFi network and began surfing away.
So far, it is performing well. I'm using it to read the morning paper (sometimes) as we now only get our paper on the weekends. It's a bit sluggish at times, but otherwise it works well. I've managed to get a Cisco VPN client working on it as well as a Windows RDC client. I did have some hiccups as I applied all the ASUS updates (I got the Linux version) and effectively ran out of space as it is partitioned with a small system partition. I reinstalled several times just to get things setup the way I wanted; reinstalling was easy because everything is in firmware for reformatting the box.
Are netbooks the wave of the future? They have a ton of potential as more and more services are being moved to the "cloud". Would I like to see Mac based netbook? Absolutely! I wouldn't have said that a few years back as I like having just one machine. However, with most of my work being web based these days, my mind has changed. Will Apple do it? I don't know; I can't see huge profit margins in a very inexpensive device.
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New job
As some of you that follow my blog have inferred from my posts, I have a new job. I started with alwaysBEthere, Inc. as Director of Technology. alwaysBEthere was a client of mine for several years, and I was offered a full time job. Switching from a contractor (I was a contractor for over 5 1/2 years) to an employee again wasn't that hard for me. As part of joining the company, I made it a requirement that I be able to work for home, so that part didn't change. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis with a small office here in San Diego. So while I have the option of going into our office, I only do it now and again; I find that I can get much more work done at home without having to commute.
So what do I do? I don't have much of a clue on a day to day basis! I handle all kinds of requests ranging from our internal IT to working on projects that could affects customers. Now that I'm six months into it, I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on part of my job.
What will the next six months bring? I don't know. Do I have any regrets about not being self employed anymore? Not really. I didn't become self-employed out of choice, but out of necessity (the last company I was with didn't have any work for me and frankly, I was bored, so we parted on good terms). I stayed a contractor because I was doing well and didn't think I could find a job with as much flexibility as I had. I like what I'm doing and it presents much different challenges from when I was self-employed. As long as I'm challenged and feel like I'm accomplishing something, I think I'll be happy.
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Paperless 1.0 Shipped
Mariner Paperless (the new name for ReceiptWallet) 1.0 shipped last week! I'm quite happy to see ReceiptWallet moving forward. While this 1.0 version of Paperless has mostly cosmetic changes, I'm sure that more changes will be coming soon.
There is so much that can be done, I just didn't have enough time to dedicate to it.
Congratulations, Mariner!
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My wife, the plumber
On Friday, I decided to work on our irrigation system as I had a few more things to finish up since our main plumbing problem of last month. While I was finishing the plumbing, I decided to replace the fill valve for our pool with an electronically controlled, sprinkler valve. I already had an anti-siphon device, so I just needed the valve. The old valve leaked and I had to manually remember to shut it off.
I went to unscrew the old valve and as I was doing it, the valve started turning where it shouldn't. I then realized that I had a problem. Oh no, another call to a plumber. I called my dad and he said to call my brother-in-law who had tools to do plumbing work. My brother-in-law, Chris, came over and tried to solder a cap in the line. Chris is an attorney, not a plumber, so he did his best. Unfortunately his work didn't hold and I was all set to call a plumber when my wife, Janessa, said that she wanted to take a crack at it. She does jewelry work and has soldered before. We left her alone and she soldered away. When I came back, she had finished the first joint and then started on the second joint. She finished, when tested it and bingo, it worked!
The only reason I hesitated in letting her take a crack at it in the first place is that she had never worked with plumbing or pipes before. However, soldering is soldering. I shouldn't have doubted her skills. Janessa might reject her soldering as now I can task her with tricky household maintenance work :-).