iPhone 2 expectations

I'm really amused by all the breathless predictions and anticipation regarding iPhone 2.0, which will be announced and ship in the next couple of weeks.  It's not like the first one, where all we had was a Jobs demo, with details trickling out over the last few weeks to release in a controlled fashion.  This one will have very few surprises at all, and if there are any I expect them to be at the margins.

We already know almost all the details of the software - betas have been coming out fast and furious and they all get dissected as they hit.  We know that ActiveSync support is included.  We also know that .Mac services will be souped up (and maybe renamed) to support OTA sync as well.  GPS support is built into the software now, geotagging is now an option for pictures, and we can do a selective search for contacts.  I assume that notes will now sync to the Mac as well - this was a "left-out" feature in 1.0.

The hardware is almost as well-known.  The form factor will be similar to the existing model.  It may support video in from the screen side (for videoconferencing), we don't know that for sure yet.  We know it'll support AT&T's 3G network in the US, and it'll work overseas as well.  Apple is now doing lots of low-key announcements.  The new iPhone will be available pretty much worldwide (except for Russia and China at this writing).  Since GPS support is built into the new software, expect it in the new hardware.  And the look will change some, even though the form factor stays the same - maybe a plastic shell on a steel frame to save weight (the battery will probably be a little bigger).

The only real question extends to the pricing model.  Will the device be sold the same way the old one was, or will we get carrier subsidies?  Unfortunately, that's not the kind of question that get the hearts of Mac fanbois racing.

Another batch o' randomness

Quick thoughts:

David turned 6 last weekend. We took him to the same Mexican restaurant we've been spending all the birthdays at lately and made him wear the sombrero. He didn't like that. But we gave him a Nintendo DS Lite as a birthday gift, which made it all cool.

Work is a little more manageable right now. I still haven't hired a new person yet, but I've talked to a couple of possibilities. We'll see where that takes us.

I really wish I could vote for John McCain. Unfortunately, I just want to see the religious wing of the Republican party crushed so badly that I can't even think too hard about it. So I went with Obama - I decided on him about 2 days before the Mass. primary and I'm willing to overlook the areas where I differ with him. Why? Because he's not a Republican. Once the religious right collapses and we return to the days of a relatively moderate, secular Republican party I could come back someday. I'd rather be a conservative than a liberal, but I'd rather be a liberal than what passes for conservative nowadays.

I put a clear 3M skin on my MacBook Pro's wristrest. Nice. Now I don't have to worry so much about the wristwatch scuffing effect.

Over the last two months I have lost seven pounds.

Which doesn't make much of a dent in the basic problem. But if I can make that pace for a few more months, I'll be in a good place by the end of the year. We'll see.

The problem I had with a mail server in mid-April is now solved forever. I worked a few hours on Monday and deployed a permanent server (4 cores of Xeon goodness) to handle the system. It isn't even breaking a sweat now. Meanwhile, I got to build my first high-end system in several years to do the temporary fix, and now I'm going to stick a decent video card in it, bring it back home, and play games on it. A win-win.

Leopard 10.5.3 was released yesterday. Which means it's now finally pretty much ready for prime time.

If only

If I could write just a tenth as well as Malcolm Gladwell does, I would be making a fabulous living exploring all the oddities of human behavior. I could dive from subject to subject and write bestselling books about the ability of humans to make snap decisions, and to judge trends. I could do that because even a tenth of Gladwell is still pretty damned good.

But I'm bringing five percent, max. So I settle for fixing computers and running networks. It's not a bad consolation prize, though. Even at five percent I still write fairly well. I just pretty much have to keep it confined to this boring old blog and the occasional tech publication.

Oh well.

Another big day

Jane's parents sent us money to buy David a bicycle for his upcoming birthday - so I took him yesterday to the local bike shop to get one.  Today, he rode it all the way to the park and around it.  With training wheels.  But that won't last long, I suspect.

He named it "Thunder".

Sorry I've left folks hanging

Sunday's as good a time as any to catch up...

So here's what's going on. I had an employee leave on tax day, in the middle of a project. No warning. It left me behind the proverbial 8-ball. So I have been doing extra work to try and catch up, and repair the damage done by all the things that were hanging. It's caused some problems with customers (who have generally been very understanding, though), and it's left me in a position where I have to really think a lot about the direction this company of mine is headed in.

So far, I've been growing fairly organically. As the business has grown, I've added people to help. I start them as part-time for 3 months or so, and then move them to full-time if their skills and the business are a good match. It worked OK, and minimized risk. But here's the problem with it. I am the best employee (overall) I can afford to buy. Each of the people I have here possess skills, and in some cases they can do individual things better than me (good example - Joey is much better than me at Daylite database management). But I'm the best rounded of them, and I also know the most about things like servers and cross-platform integration. I also am the face of the company (it's got my name on it), and so I have to go get most of the business. Besides those, I'm the manager of everyone else's time and resources. Wearing all three of those hats is tough. And I feel like I've lost track of too many of the balls I need to keep in the air of late, especially this last month.

So here's what I'm trying to do for now. First of all, I'm trying to shut the doors as much as I can to new business for a while. I'm overwhelmed with what I have now overall. I am looking for a part-time person to help on the PC side and replace the one I lost. They will need to be fairly advanced in skills. I have to be able to trust them to do a lot of work and it'll take a while for me to get to that level of comfort.

Second, I'm cross-training the people I have as best as I can. I need to make folks better and more interchangable.

Third, I'm now putting more of my time into seeing the projects in-person and doing the work myself. If I'm not out getting business I can spend more of my time taking care of what I already have.

Fourth, I'm getting more aggressive on expenses. I figure if I can cut some of my other costs down internally, I can make my exisisting price structures work better and withstand any slump in business that comes from not recruiting as much new work now. If existing clients slow down I want to be ready for that eventuality.

Fifth, and most importantly, I'm re-evaluating everything. I can't work on my own, because then I get zero time to myself and very finite earnings. I can't grow and run a big organization because I don't have the patience or the skills to do so - and I want to keep doing engineering work myself. But maybe I don't have to be on my own. Maybe I could take on a partner, or join up with another company, or something of the sort. Maybe I could look at my fee structures and raise prices or go to more project-based work. Maybe I could tinker with the business model. I don't know for sure at the moment, and chances are I'll keep on this way but just get things in order. But I'll look at everything. Priority one is to keep the customers happy. If I can do that all else should follow.

Home has been better. David had a birthday party today, at the Beverly Y's Sterling Center where they do swimming and gymnastics. 2 years ago, one of his preschool friends had a party there and David went and had fun, but was nervous about things. This year was a complete 180º from the other party. What a difference 2 years make between a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old. He was experimenting with everything, vaulting, trying equipment, and doing flips on the mat. And almost all the kids were like that. A pleasure to watch (although nerve-wracking at times!). We gave his friend Olivia a ride to the party with us, and she really enjoyed going with us.

After a years' worth of nagging from Jane to get a new camcorder (ours broke a couple of years ago), I went out this morning and bought one. I got a little $170 model from RadioShack that takes 720p video. Pretty spiffy for the money, though it is solid-state only (I put an 8GB SDHC card in it - good for 4.5 hours of record time), uses a CMOS sensor, and has a relatively cheapie lens (digital zoom only). On the other hand, it's tiny, fits in a pocket, and is Good Enough for things like parties and weekend trips. If I shot tons of video I'd want something else, but it's great for what we need. The files are basic QuickTime format, and it mouts as a USB drive on the desktop. They include Windows software for those of you cursed with no Mac.

Final note for now: Kyle Busch is a very talented race car driver. He's also a menace. Little E wasn't the first person he punted and probably won't be the last.

Where, oh where, has the author been?

Yeah, I know...  No posts and you're all going back to other folks' blogs.  Sorry.  Most of them are better than me at blogging, anyways.  Here's the nutshell version of what's been up for me keeping me off the screen:

- I had an employee go AWOL last week.  Left me in a mess o' hurt.  I'm actively hunting for a replacement now.

- A major mail/calendaring system upgrade went awry.  Basically, since iCal uses HTTP connections to manage the calendar server (with a separate stateful transaction for each calendar loaded), I wound up with about 25 people sharing 25 calendars and 625 concurrent HTTP sessions (about half of which were also SSL-encrypted) to go with it.  And it turned out that's not so good on an old dual-G5 Xserve.  In fact, I'm migrating the whole system to a Core 2 Quad system I built to see if it'll handle the load better.

- While driving to get the hardware in question Tuesday night, I was pulled over for speeding.  Thankfully, I escaped with a warning.

- I've had several new clients come onboard, and I'm trying to juggle time the right way for everyone.  Minus a person.

- My wife had to spend a week down in Philly helping her folks out.

- I still have a proposal to write tomorrow and a remarkable amount of other stuff to do.

So I will try and post every once in a while, but it's looking slow for the forseeable future.  Bummer.

Another lap complete

As of a few minutes ago, I have begun my 43rd lap around the Sun.

An Easter note:

Faith:

Sticking its fingers in its ears in the face of reason and chanting "nanananana I can't hear you" since the dawn of humanity.

Been offline again

I know, you're all disappointed I went OTA for the last few weeks. Sorry. Anyhow, it's been a hectic few weeks here - I hired another person last week, had a couple of office crises to manage, and a big deployment for a new client. All has gone pretty well, shockingly. But I think I'm at my growth limit now. Granted, I've said similar in the past, but four people is about the most I can manage singlehandedly.

Tech-wise, the problems with Leopard and wireless seem better, though not-quite solved yet. I hadn't blogged it before, but Leopard has a habit of dropping wireless connections at inopportune times. I noticed yesterday that my MacBook Pro was still trying to run the Intermapper daemon even though I'd removed it in the move to the new system. So that was slowing things down and, I think, helping to mess up wireless as well. The new firmware for Time Capsules and AirPort Extremes (along with AirPort cards) seems to help, but I'm holding out hope that 10.5.3 will make even more of a difference.

My in-laws are in town for the week - I'm ducking them for a couple of days for the most part in order to minimize the chance I'll give them the cold I just am getting over. Passing it along wouldn't be a great idea.

I mentioned this before, but soon my office website will get an overhaul. Some new stuff, an updated look, and a Wordpress blog. Most of my technical blog posts will move there and just get a link back to here once that happens.

The eeePC has been handy. Still undecided on whether I'll run mainly Windows or Linux on it, though. I like the simplicity of Linux but the networking is really a kludge.

Also - I spent Tuesday at a Microsoft training event (I had to leave early, though), where I was given copies of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and Vista Ultimate with SP1. Second prize was apparently two copies of Vista. I have finally installed Vista on a Parallels VM as a clean install, though, so I can get more hands-on time with it. I still see no deployments likely in the future, though. SBS 2008 is still forthcoming a ways down the line.

Latest tech

Two new tech things of significance:  I had to pick up another laptop since I have a new guy starting in two weeks.  So I applied Company Trickle-Down Theory and got a new Penryn-based MacBook Pro to replace my Santa Rosa.  Short version - they are, for all intents and purposes, the same.  No significant differences.  The Penryn has slightly better battery life, and runs a wee bit cooler.  But it's just basically a CPU refresh.  The multi-touch trackpad?  Whoop.

More potentially cool is the handheld computer I got as an experiment.  I ordered an Asus EEE PC (the 8GB version) from Newegg last week and got it on Friday.  I used it a couple of days with the built-in Linux, and now I'm playing with Windows XP on it (I will clone the HD image and save it in a week or two, then go back to Linux).  I upgraded it to 2GB RAM (to go with the 8GB SSD in it), and it's a pretty interesting device.  Small enough to stuff in my coat pocket, a little quirky, but the short version of this one is (I'm writing a more extensive review for the BNUG blog) this:

Windows - more apps, fast boot, easier management, far easier networking (wireless networking on Linux even annoys me!).  Runs hotter, though, and the battery life is a little less.

Under Linux, pretty much all the stuff you'll need is there.  It's got good connectivity, but package management is a pain if you stick to defaults.  Honestly, though, the next generation of these is going to rock.  The specs on mine (out of the box):  1GB RAM, 8GB SSD, 10/100 Ethernet and b/g wifi, a SDHC cardslot, 7" 800x480 screen, and a 900 MHz processor underclocked to 630.  I figure the next-gen model will be like this:

2GB RAM, 16 (or maybe 32) GB of SSD, Gigabit Ethernet, b/g/n wifi, an option to add EVDO or WiMAX, a 8" or 9" screen (probably at 1024x600 or some similar resolution), and the processor will be about 1.2 GHz and able to run at that speed with lower voltage.  Battery life will probably go to 4-5 hours from the current 3-3.5.  Imagine that for a minute - that was close to state-of-the art specs from a couple of years ago, but squeezed into a paperback book.  Cool.

When that does happen, I will get one, get VMware running on it, and that'll do double duty as my Windows machine instead of picking and choosing.  Food for thought.