This blog has become stagnant. I’ve moved it off of Squarespace to this WordPress archive for anyone that still finds the information useful. By far the most popular post I’ve ever written was the one on Converting a PFX to a JKS. Which to this day gets a respectable 30 hits a day despite it being written in 2009. Thanks to anyone who ever read the site regularly. The site never really had much direction and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it wanted to be. In the end, after reviewing every post, it seems the main topic was technical issues that Windows System Administrators face in the field. Travel and wine, two other things that interest me, made there way in as well. I’ve moved away from day to day tech work personally and am now in an engineering role, which I think is one of the reasons I posted less. I don’t think this is the end of blogging for me. I intend to start a new project in 2012 which will not involve server technology. Thanks again for reading and have a good night!

I recently read a very thought provoking article by Julien Smith. I absolutely agree with his thoughts, especially where he points out, that the only people that will be affected are the people that have a vested interest in Social Media.  

For a quick experiment, I started writing names of anyone I’ve known offline for over five years. I chose 5 years real time as a base because these are people I’ve known long before the advent of twitter. I’d like to be clear that I mean, really know these people, on a personal level. I suspect the numbers would be different if say I used names of people I met elsewhere online over the last two years, but I have a suspicion the numbers would scale accordingly. I gave myself a time limit of three minutes. I came up with 36 individual names. I then went through and tallied the services these 36 use. The numbers came out like this:

Facebook: 27 (75%)

Twitter: 7 (19.4%)

FourSquare: 5 (13.8%)

Gowalla: 0 (0%)

A Blog (any platform other than FB or Myspace): 5 (13.8%)

I should also note here. That two of the FB accounts have no posts, they were created for the sole purpose of listening. No contribution is ever made. One of the twitter accounts exist, but has never made a single tweet and has no followers.

My point is, there are tons of people out there who are not into social media. They do not know what social media is or can care less about it. They still use the internet the “old” way. E.G: banking, research, anonymous browsing, shopping, forum lurking. The social media bubble will only affect people who have a vested interest in it. My group of people would probably be upset if Facebook bombed and shut off, but then would just go back to email, or phone calls, to keep in touch. The other services would go unnoticed, except by the people that use them.

In the very near future I am going to rework this blog. I’ve garnered a significant amount of traffic from a number of posts I wrote on the topic of Secure Socket Layer certificate conversion. I wrote the posts because, like others, I found the lack of decent documentation on the subject. Finding well-written documentation was mostly an impossible task. Most documentation I found was written horribly and typically buried deep in overwhelmingly technical talk. Lets face it Systems Administrators are typically not the best writers. Although the SSL posts, and a number of other technical tutorials I’ve written net me a respectable amount of hits per day, writing tutorials about SSL Certs and server problems is not something I’m passionate about.

The information is obviously still relevant so I am not going to delete it. I intend to move all the tutorials to an archived section of the blog, but I will be closing out the comments. I will also not be updating or writing any more tutorials. I’m not sure how long this transition will take, since I have to go in and update the links and such but the Server Administration section will be moving to a less visible part of the site.

Staring at a blank page can be one of the most daunting aspects in writing. I find it hard to just start most of the time. Maybe it’s fear of starting off weak. Or maybe I don’t like the sound of it when read aloud. Whatever it is, just start and let the thoughts flow. It can always be edited later.

Inspiration can come at a moment’s notice. With so many distractions around, I sometimes find myself writing in some awkward places. I’ve blogged before about using the iPad as a mobile blogging platform, so I won’t go too much into that again here; however I have found an app that addresses some of the shortcomings of the keyboard. It’s called iA Writer. It has a next word last word function, and arrow keys! It makes editing so much better. Instead of poking around hopelessly with my fingers, I can precision correct with the cursor. If they added “<", ">“, and “/” to the extended keys for quick access, and added Google Docs integration it would be the best thing yet.

I decided to really put iPad blogging to the test today. I’m sitting out in an area with no public WiFi around, using only a non-3G iPad, and no external keyboard. Since there is no WiFi around, my connection is being powered by a rooted HTC Hero, which is nice, because it saved me paying extra for the iPad and it’s AT&T data plan. The Hero is 3G only, but it’s plenty for blogging and email. One thing I noticed right away is that HTML markup sucks without a keyboard. To make a “<p>” you have to go into the secondary symbol screen, back to alpha, then back to the a secondary symbol screen. To much clicking around in my opinion. Referencing images is a bit of a pain to. If you need a link, say from a page on the web, you have to suspend your editor, load Safari, copy the link, suspend Safari, re-load the editor and paste it in. Again, to much clicking. IOS 4 should some of this, so I’m looking forward to it. So, although some work arounds and extra steps are needed, blogging on a non 3G iPad works fairly well.

I find I do most of my creative writing on paper. Even with all the digital gadgets I have, I find it easier to grab a notebook and a pencil and just start writing. If I don’t like a line, I just put a strike through it and move on. If I have an extra thought I scribble it on the side and write in an arrow pointing to where I want it. That’s just something I can’t seem to do as well on a laptop. I buy the notebooks without lines to. Lines are distracting. It feels confined. With no lines I’m free to scribble about, and draw whatever comes to mind. It adds an extra step in the process, since I have to type what I write, but it also gives me a chance to proofread and edit.

When I started with Gowalla, I would check in everywhere. Constantly checking my phone to see where my friends were etc. Then, about a month ago, I just got bored with it. I don’t know what changed, I just decided to stop using it. I definetly don’t pick up the phone as much now, which is nice. Location as a service application is pretty much useless. It’s better off as feature of an app, and not an app itself. I did like that I found places near me, which I may not have found on my own, but other than that, I’m over it. So bye Gowalla, I really don’t miss you.

La Gloria is located in downtown San Antonio near the Perl Brewery. It has great views of the new Riverwalk area. The food tastes great, and it’s not the typical Tex-Mex you find throughout the city. On the downside it’s overpriced, for the amount of food you get. The tortillas are about the size of a DvD and are “sprinkled” with whatever you ordered. Avoid the bar. A 6oz Margarita that was about as strong as lemonade went for $8. Bottled beers were of the airplane sized variety, except the Dos Equis. They had draft, but at that point I didn’t bother asking.

I should have taken pictures of the food, but totally spaced. The menu is fairly large, so I’ll have to go back again, but this time around I tried five different dishes.

Tacos Al Pastor – 3 DvD sized tortillas with pork marinated in a red tomato based sauce. I’ve only had Al Pastor one other time, so It’s hard to draw a comparison. Overall it was good and my only complaint is the serving size.

Mole – A thicker, although same sized, fried tortilla topped with a spicy chocolate sauce and peppers. The initial bite is cool with the chocolate, the spice really turns on as an aftertaste.

Puerquito Enchado – A spiced pork taco very similar to the Al Pastor, just a different flavor. Same servings and the Al Pastor.

Torta Loca de Carnitas – One of the larger items on the menu, It’s a marinated pork sandwich with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and avocado. I really liked the flavor combination on this one. Nothing was really overpowering.

Molcajete Arrachera en salad de tomatillo – Beef skirt steak in tomatillo sauce served in a huge bowl still boiling. Next time I’m going for the Queso version, but the beef was really tender. Juicy and delicious.

Price is a turnoff, but I’m looking forward to going back and trying different items. I’m just going to avoid the bar.

I really liked reading this post by Jason Calacanis (Twitter @Jason). A number of people I know have quit Facebook recently over privacy concerns and I’m probably next in line. One thing that FB still has going for it though is it sucks you in like World of Warcraft. When all your friends are playing, it’s hard to quit, even if you don’t like the game much anymore. Your there because you feel obligated or you think you be out of the circle if you leave. Companies with blatant disregard for their users information are going to loose the game.

One of today’s top items on Digg.com was a post from the Kindle Nation Daily talking about the iPad is the next Kindle. The author makes a number of arguments about what impact the iPad is going to have on the tech market. Since I’m sort of in the market for an eReader I figured I would take his arguments and offer up my own views.

1) The iPad will kill the Netbook. &  2) The iPad will not kill the laptop dead, but will seriously wound it’s mass appeal.
This is a pipe dream. I won’t be typing a term paper on it.  Sure there are external Bluetooth keyboards for it, but they run on batteries, and there not attached to the device. I’m kind of screwed if the battery goes out or I forget it at home because it’s charging on a wall plug somewhere. Apple has a full sized keyboard if you can find a place to lug something that annoyingly large around. Touch typing long docs is not an ideal option. The device will not even edit Word docs. Say what you want about Microsoft, but most colleges and business run on MS Office. Not every location is WiFi enabled and 3G is a battery drain even on smartphones. Some people would argue these WiFi-less places are lame and they wouldn’t be there anyway, but having an Ethernet port is infinitely more useful. The hard drive is also pretty small for the price tag. What about my boss wanting that presentation to be projected? External video outputs? Nope. It’s not a business tool. It’s not and educational tool. It’s an entertainment device.

3) The iPad will also kill or seriously cannibalize sales of the iPod Touch.
Agreed to some extent. I can’t really take it jogging with me like the Nano, the Touch, or the Zune for that matter. I wouldn’t take it on a backpacking trip either, so for people in those demographics the choice is clear: No way.  But, if your looking for an MP3 player with more bells and whistles, then yes I can see this as a solution.

4) The iPad could even cut into iPhone, BlackBerry, and Droid sales.
It’s not like you can fit it in your back pocket. I’d be interested in seeing someone comparing battery life on a Droid to an iPad using Skype to make calls, but really Installing Skype is not a big enough selling point. Most Droid apps are free and the BlackBerry is the de facto business phone. I just don’t see it.

5) Will the iPad be a Kindle Killer.
Maybe, but is that a really a bad thing? Profit margins are extremely low on the actual Kindle device. The real money is in content sales. It’s not a huge financial hit to miss out those unit sales. The PS3 would be profitable if they could sell some decent games. As long as Amazon can sell books via an application the device does not matter.