I landed in Seattle earlier this morning, and I am so looking forward to seeing all of my fellow MVP peers and my friends at Microsoft. Â
My fellow MVP Moderators were also thrown a wonderful Welcome Dinner at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Bellvue, courtesy of Microsoft’s Windows Phone Forum Management Team.  THANK YOU!!!
Just attended a local PC User Group, and got to thinking again about forming my own Special Interest Group (SIG) for Mobile Device Users.
If I do, I’m wondering what name I should give the group.   Since I’m old school, and I started-out on a PocketPC, part of me wants to start a “Sacramento PocketPC User Group”. But in reality, the term PocketPC is fairly antiquated, and the new OS from Microsoft is now actually entitled “Windows Phone”.   So if I went with “Sacramento Windows Phone User Group”, then I would effectively be excluding other OSes like Palm and Apple. Â
My best idea is to go with “Sacramento Mobile Device Users Group”, as it does not limit technology to Microsoft technology, but also infers a compact solution.  But after giving it some additional thought, I would not want to discount netbook or other technologies that just happen to be bigger than your pocket. But since latops and netbooks are mobile devices, they would still be covered…
Hmmm….
Yayess! Â
The used HP Proliant DL380 G4 is now mine!  The “Buy Now” bid was officially accepted today on eBay. Now I just have to wait until my wonderful wife can pick up the item the next time she’s in the Bay Area…
I am making arrangements to obtain an HP ProLiant DL380 G4 64-bit Rack Server.  This is a professional-grade server, but it’s about two generations old, so it can be had at a totally reasonable price.  Here are some of the specs:
Processors:
Memory:
Storage Controller:
Internal Drive Support:
Network Controller:
Expansion Slots:
USB 2.0 Ports:
Redundancy:
Management:
Form Factor:
Â
Pretty sweet, huh?
I”m going to be installing Microsoft’s Small Business Server OS on top of it, and see how well that works out.   I’m hoping that this new (to me) server will take good care of me and my business for years to come!
My hotel reservations were secured a few weeks ago, and I just recently bought my plane tickets, so I’m basically ready to go (minus packing a few days before the flight).
Having missed CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2010, I am totally bummed to have also missed CntrStg 2010.  I really miss the interaction with my MVP peers and fellow bloggers, so the 2010 MVP Summit will be a great opportunity to meet new MVPs, connect with old friends, and enjoy the best that Microsoft has to offer!
Megalith-Systems (the original publishers of the popular GPS Tuner 4.x / 5.x series) has announced the release of DynaInk, a new and exciting drawing application for Windows Mobile devices.
DynaInk is a simple yet revolutionary new drawing application, which simulates real drawing experience on a touch screen mobile device. Thanks to it’s patent pending technology, DynaInk can react your drawing dynamism, automatically changing the line width and line color accordingly. The result is a rich and eye-pleasing picture.
Top Features 
Natural Drawing Experience (Patent Pending)
Dynamic line width and color
Vector based, Scalable Graphics, EPS export
Instant E-Mail with picture attachment
Unlimited Undo with thumbnail images
Works with Integrated Camera
Manually Tracing Photos
Markup your Photos
Stylish notes and messages
With DynaInk, you can brush-up (pun intended) on your drawing skills, or quickly create a masterpiece! Kids love it too!
For more info, please visit www.dynaink.com
My IBM Server’s Power Supply died unexpectedly on Saturday or Sunday. I honestly didn’t even notice it until Jana pointed out that she couldn’t access the server on Sunday.
A quick check of the system proved the Power Supply had gone bad. Pulled it out and tried a spare and it worked fine. Just one problem. The spare wouldn’t fit inside long-term (the original server Power Supply is odd-sized, and the spare is standard-sized). So Monday after work, I was attempting to salvage parts from another system to add to the server, another component blew-up right in front of me, and took the IBM server with it entirely.
Not wanting to attempt to isolate further if the whole motherboard was bad, or just the processor, or memory, I decided to try another system entirely. Luckily I had recently obtained an older Celeron Server, which I had stored in Mothball, so I hauled it out Monday and started to add components to it as well.
Luckily, the mothballed system board still had the CPU and memory, so it was just a matter of adding the original server’s hard drive. Unfortunately, the Power Supply on that machine was defunct as well. It gave out with a bang in the dining room on Monday night, right in front of me and Jana (she was NOT happy with that). That ended Monday’s attempt to troubleshoot further.
Fortunately, the spare power supply that I had would fit into that case, so I was able to get it up and running later Tuesday.
Unfortunately (sense a pattern here?), it was an older motherboard and I didn’t have all the drivers, so I stayed up until about 1:00am this morning trying to get the right drivers loaded.
But, happily, everything is up and working. Yeow, what an adventure!
This updated version of GPS Tuner has a wider range of compatibility than the previous version, loads a lot faster, and is more finger friendly!
New map content is suppose to be due out in short order, but I do not know when this will be…
Check out this link to register an account with GPS Tuner, then select Trial Download under “my GPS Tunerâ€. This way you can download the trial, which comes with a single map-tile of your preferred area on the map. Then if you like the program as much as we think you will, you can decide whether or not you want to purchase a license!
Happy Geocaching!
Wow! I just got word that I received the Microsoft MVP Award for a second year in a row. These last couple of weeks has been truly busy! With this award I will be travelling in mid February up to Washington state to participate in the MVP Summit, and let me tell you I’m really looking forward to that!
Today begins my first day at the eNOC (Enterprise Network Operations Center) IPAG (short for Internet Protocol AGgregation) group. Training should last approximately 5 to 6 weeks, and consist of some deep-dive topics relating to Ethernet switching. The good news is that I’ll be joining my good friend Edgar (who accepted a position on the “first†wave – I’m on the second wave), and my original CMAC manager Kelly will be joining us as well!