| way back web Set the way back machine to 1990. The same year we start Project A.
Tim Berners-Lee Introduces to the public WorldWideWeb which became Nexus which was the first web browser.
Cool.
He released version 1 on Christmas Day 1990. It was developed on a NeXT and released to physicists only. This photo is of his actual next which also became the world's first web server. That is pretty cool.
Coolest thing about the browser? It was the editor too. Built right in, you read and edited your content. Amazing Paradigm that we have all shifted away from.
We have come a long way from this first invention. A long way.
And we have a long ways to go from here.
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| | Massive Snow Storm, Snow Day, Servers on Generator All Day Long! Airport closed
Freeway closed
Electricity out all over
Snow Storm hits Southern Oregon
Every School is Closed.
Today was a bad day.
We lost power at 4am.
and did not get power back until 6pm.
That's 14 hours of no power.
Our generator keeps our servers up and other than a few network outages that lasted only minutes, none of our clients felt the pain.
But we had no power in our office. No heat.
The roads were too dangerous to drive on.
I told the employees to work from home.
Our house had no power too.
I kept going home to check on everyone, especially Quinn, who has been home all week with the flu.
The poor donkeys have no shelter, at least ones that they like.
The amount of snow we got hit with in just a few hours was amazing.
I'll post pics soon. I can't find the dang card reader.
Special thanks to Pacific Power we had our lights back on at 6pm.
I thanked the guys personally that showed up to get it all working.
They seemed surprised and they let me know that they had been working since 9pm the night before, restoring power all over the valley.
Our Generator had beat it's last record of 4 hours.
I'll pay to have someone come out and do a preventive maintenance and tune up.
And I'll print it's picture and call it employee of the month.
We have had bad experiences with generators in the past, it felt good that this time it worked like a champ.
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| Happy Anniversary!The years fly by. I can't imagine life without you by my side. Day in and Day out! How many years has it been? Very Many! So Many! I hope you don't think too many... Thank you! I know I don't show you enough how much I appreciate you. Thank you for yet another amazing year! Happy Anniversary Again, Rick! Even though it has been 13 years, saying thank you 13 times is not enough. I'll try to think of something clever to say next year. I promise.  |
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| | Tycho and Gabe, are you ready for us? Penny Arcade is something I stumbled upon through ITunes Pod-Casting. As usual I shared it with all of you because it made me brilliant for 'finding' it, and as usual, many of you already knew about penny-arcade, maybe not the blog, but the guys.
They are real guys, artists, comedians, warm hearted, young, passionate, guys. The style of their comic strip and their pod-cast is all guy. Offensive to some.
But their reach is around the planet. They are an example of guys that matter. THere is a piece I found today that shows you two things. The scope of their audience and the depth of their compassion. Please read the second posting (A rare opportunity) here. http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/02/21
That's what I love about thee guys most. Human Compassion. They raise money for a non-profit. They do great things and they are still, just guys.
I hope to take our guys to the PennyArcadeExpo.com this year, August 24th through the 26th.
It's a business trip honey.
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| check out Social Explorer http://www.socialexplorer.com
Look at census data via dynamic maps. A fantastic site for learning and understanding.
1. the interface is simple.
2. the data easy to understand.
3. you can go back in time and see the difference.
4. a great way to explore vast amounts of data. |
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| Dominic Joins the Navy Today! 18 years ago I wanted to have children.
But I didn't. My brother Dennis had a son, Dominic, whom I was honored to be appointed his godfather.
I remember taking him to a restaurant when Dena and I worked at a christmas tree lot in downtown Los angeles, and he poked olives on his fingers.
I remember borrowing him to take him to disneyland, because I did not have kids of my own yet.
They grow up so fast.
Today at 3am, my brother dropped my god-son, Dominic off at Naval Boot Camp.
Here is a bright kid living a clean teen life with a great future, enlisting on his own, in our countries military, and during a time of war.
I have great respect for his decision. I am proud of him and excited for him as well.
The six weeks in boot camp will go fast for us, we we all await to hear from him. I had the opportunity to spend time with the young man at MacWorld.
He is a musician, with long hair and a gentle spirit. It will be fun to see him after he graduates. After he becomes a man.
I remember when I saw my brother Eric graduate from boot camp, they all came marching out in dress whites and i heard his voice boom out above the din, ordering the direction change on the march and in amazing unison they all turned and marched perfectly to the spot. It sent chills up my spine. An example of people working together in unison.
I will try to make it to Dominic's graduation.
I will try to send him letters as well. Dennis is encouraging letters from each of us.
I'm sure they shaved his head already, made him tired and yelled at him a bunch. I'm sure Boot Camp is not fun.
It reminds me of a trip I took to Denver last year. I stayed at a hotel where recruits were dropped off by parents or recruits and picked up the next morning for Boot. I sat and chatted with young men and women, many that fit your stereotype and a few that would surprise you.
I asked them if they were nervous. Most said no. No more nervous then going to a new school. I asked if they were afraid of post boot camp deployment. Most said no. Some wanted to see action and other's tried not to think about it, but one girl (young lady) caught me off guard with her explanation. She was reading a book (I don't remember the title) and she set it down and looked at me. She quietly explained that more people die in the united states every year from a hospital visit then we have at war. Wow! I don't know if that's true, but it stuck with me and makes me think. I hope to find the time to prove or disprove what she told me.
It made me remember an article in Time Magazine about west point graduates who would lead in this war. and I have always wondered what became of those leaders? Why don't more magazines do followups?
In the end, I saw pride, excitement and wonder for what was ahead for them.
Our country is served by the honor and commitment of these volunteers. Thank you to each one of you!
Dominic, Have fun, Enjoy the journey, I'll see you on the other side.
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| | Check out LurkerFilms.com I met Andrew Migliore at the International Film Fesitval Summit. He is from Portland Oregon and started out as a software engineer and now he runs LurkerFilms.com.
from the site...
Lurker Films ... provides the best in weird tales & literary
horror H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu Mythos, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert W. Chambers ... DVDs
and Audio CDs that compile the famous, infamous and rarely-seen films and television shows
based on such classics as Pickman's Model, The Thing on the Doorstep,
The Call of Cthulhu, The Music of Erich Zann, and Cool Air, and
then combines excellent transfers with new features, short films and
in-depth commentary from both filmmakers and scholars.
Check out the site at http://www.lurkerfilms.com
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| | Check out the PowerCost Monitor(tm) by Blue Line - Innovative Energy Solutions I ran across this cool device that clips on to your electric meter and wirelessly sends the usage back to a remote clock station. Very cool stuff. Look how they did it. Low tech and high tech combined. I'll let you know how it works when i get one.
As unobtrusive as a small electric clock, the PowerCost Monitor(tm) is a powerful
real-time direct feedback display device for domestic energy consumers. It tells
them at a glance, in real-time, how much electricity their home is using in dollars
and cents and in kW.
Domestic energy use studies have demonstrated that real-time feedback yields
energy savings anywhere between 10 and 20 percent. The savings at the high end of this
range are realized when a tabletop energy display device, such as the PowerCost
Monitor(tm), is used.
The PowerCost Monitorâ„¢ technology consists of two discrete functional units:
1.A detection unit, known as the sensor unit, is affixed to an existing household utility meter with a simple ring clamp.
The sensor unit is compatible with standard North American digital and
electromechanical meter types. This is the only component of the
PowerCost Monitor(tm) that will be in direct physical contact with the
utility's meter and the clamp mechanism allows it to be attached to
the outside of the meter glass. It can also be quickly attached and
detached without making any changes to the existing meter.
2. The display unit, located inside the home, receives a wireless
signal from the transmitter and displays the consumption information
in real time and in dollars and cents for the end user. Other
information is also displayed such as time and outside temperature.
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| | 2007 Global Business & Culture Conference - How to do business in China I moderated a panel at the 2007 Global Business & Culture Conference - How to do business in China. It was the inaugural conference and was well attended and very well done. It coincided with Chinese new year and we had dragon and lion dancing. It was held at SOU and it was great to see so many chinese people in our community together sharing stories and enjoying each other.
I was fortunate enough to have the first panel that shared stories on how to do business in China.
Dr. Douglas Tseng, International Business and Marketing Professor, Portland State University, Portland, OR
He showed Commercials and Ads that American companies made with Chinese help that offended and were banned by the chinese government.
Jeff DeBoer (Sid's Son), Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Lithia Motors, Inc., Medford, OR
Jeff talked about his wife, his daughters living in china at boarding school and learning Mandarin. He shared about his sister in law and how she is buying cars in the US and selling them in China. He shared the culture of helping each other over there in a web or pay it forward concept. I got to sit next to him during lunch and it was great meeting him finally.
Irene Kai, Award winning author and speaker, Ashland, OR
Irene told stories of the people. She is a wonderful story teller.
Dallas Stahle.
China Operations Manager, Sabroso Company, Medford, OR
He shared his stories of travel, deals, culture shock, and losing face.
Next year the conference will be on doing business in Japan and I hope that I get asked to be involved again.
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| | Email that I sent someone in regards to Project A and Changes for 2007 Project A does two different things.
Provide award winning world-class services for clients.
Provide a plethora of different services for our employees.
Project A hosts websites for clients. Those sites are built
using SIB, our flagship product. The servers are located here and are
connected via AFN. Google is not our host.
But we will not host
all our clients here forever. Too many reasons, mainly security and
redundancy, when southern Oregon loses power for 6 hours, I want only
25% of my clients to be affected. The distribution of our system is
key. Apple .MAC is similar. They have outages all the time, but only
2% of their customers should be affected at any one time.
We host hundreds of sites with thousands of users and millions
of end users. Our e-commerce solutions sell over 10 million dollars a
year in goods and services for our clients, in these non-brick and
motor storefronts. That's a lot of pressure. That's where I want to
focus, not on my internal servers.
Luckily, we have been more successful in the last two years
than we have ever been in the 15 that proceeded it. Project A is 17
years old now. We have survived the perfect storm. We do so by
constantly morphing.
Project A is a company with complex needs internally. We can
support our own needs with dedicated servers (which we have done in the
past) but I'm looking forward to being a partner with Google and using
every service that makes sense for us.
Also,
2007
marks a GREEN year for Project A. I am committed to using 30% less
energy. (cold days make this hard) Our consumption over the years has
grown with our success and over half of our power use is for internal
needs. One way to combat this is to adopt new technologies from google
that will reduce our burden here and shift it to a consolidated wind
farm based servers. (or so I'm being led to believe)
I want to lead by example.
I do not want to fight change.
I want to embrace it.
It's my way.
It's what I do.
I
believe that soon we will all move to this outsourced model. My cell
phone (Apple iPhone Soon) will be my only computer. ;) A man has to dream
doesn't he? (speaking of dreaming we need to get APPLE to move the
camera to the front! - any ideas - spin off a separate thread and lets
get er done.)
I will learn the hard way, and document it so that everyone
else can learn from my experience as well. Trust me, it takes a lot of
trial and error and huge shifts in the way you think. Sometimes the
solutions don't work and you have to roll back to move forward again.
All of my internal email, calendaring, client portals, project
management, accounting are all moving off site. I pay more for it and
it's worth it.
Calendaring. - Ding! - Google
Email. - Ding! - Google
Phone System. - Ding! - Packet8
Accounting. - Ding! - Quickbooks Online.
That is 3 servers I have been able to turn off. Only 12 more to go. (internal use only).
My ISP becomes more crucial to my business, not less. AFN is the key to me being able to do this.
I'm not outsourcing who does the work, just where my data is stored. We still do all the work.
I've
spent years asking all of you to move your business computing needs off
site to partners like myself, why wouldn't I do the same.
Its all part of my plan. And it's part of Google's plan too. That's Microsoft's largest threat. Google.
;)
In
the spirit of sharing (the Japanese Open Kimono Model) I will document
and share my journey. You get a preview. It's going to be a great
year!
As far as domain registration - why I highly recommend us of course ;)
jim
p.s. I do not own Google stock. I wish I did. Too rich for my blood. |
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| | Interview with Hamad Darwish, Flickr photographer shooting Vista wallpapers Vista is a pretty cool OS. One of the neat things is that the Teletubbies rolling hills has been replaced with amazing shots of nature. When I look at it, it reminds me of home. I was very happy to learn why. It is pictures of home. Or near my home. Southern Oregon.
Hamad Darwish is the man who took the photographs for Vista. They represent the kinds of photos I hope to capture someday.
Microsoft used Flikr to find the photographers. I am very impressed with Microsoft using the web in this way.
Here is a great interview with him explaining the process and locations.
http://www.istartedsomething.com.nyud.net:8080/20070203/interview-hamad-darwish/
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| | Lorenzo International Horse Show Check out this video of a man and his amazing show with 6 horses.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqvvn_lorenzo
Best thing to come out of france since the french girl.
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| | Steve Jobs Posts His Thoughts on Music and DRM on Apple Homepage. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
It's a great read.
Funny how we always shoot the messenger. Apple is bound by the Music Distributors. So when countries proclaim war against Apple for not playing fair with the iPod, it's amazing how Apple is the one that gets accused of being the bad guy.
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