Carlitos' way

Day 1 - drive out of Florida

2011-06-15T23:43:00.007-05:00

Left Miami at 6:30 am. Drove straight to New Orleans. 13 hours of driving. The BRT had battery issues the night before, so we decided to change it north of Orlando.

The cargo topper was making a lot of wind noise after we reached 60 mph. So we lived with the noise. By the time I'm writing this, we are so used to the noise, it's scary.

We took some green mangoes to deliver to tom and melissa in Denver. It will make for some juicy snacks in the trip.

I have to treat them with care, which is bound to drive tracy crazy.

We arrived in New Orleans at 9 pm local time. The hotel's parking could not accomodate the BRT, so they had to park it offsite in an uncovered lot. This caused me to worry a bit but it turned out ok. the bikes and the cargo were untouched.

The great american road trip

2011-06-10T08:14:00.002-05:00

From Miami to Yellow Stone and Back. 85 hours of driving. $1,500 in gas. And many sleepless nights worrying about bears.

The Valdes, Toy, Goad family is on the road again.

iPad

2010-04-12T19:49:00.002-05:00

got one. ok, maybe two.

I love the instant boot, the PIM (email, contact, calendar) client, and the battery life. It runs for two days without a charge.

I wish it had a pen and a camera.

I think Apple should open up the OS. And let files be files.

It needs a printing subsystem.

Day 3 and 4.

2009-07-24T09:44:00.005-05:00

Drove through Cuba, NM. Had to take a shot there. And a local gave me a root of the osha plant. He spoke 4 languages (english, spanish, navajo, and other native dialect.) Some of the root followed us all the way during the trip in case anyone got a sore throat.

Arrived in Durango, CO and drove like crazy looking for a hotel. We could not find one even though there were at least 30 in town. Eventually, Tracy pull out her iPhone and found a Holiday inn. We had a home.

Hung around town and visited the train museum and the Strater Hotel there. The kids had a blast looking for the secret hiding places. We also took the free tram around town. How do you spell tourists?

Next morning we checked out and went to Mesa Verde, where the Anasazi indians lived in cliff dwellings. They lived there 1100 years ago and had to abandon the dwellings after a 24 year drought. Anthropologists theorize that they migrated south and joined the Pueblos in NM and AZ. Really neat hike also. And the museum is very informative.

From Mesa Verde, we directed our compass (AKA GPS) towards Moab, UT.

2009-07-12T08:59:00.002-05:00

The plan:

But nothing ever goes according to plan.

Back on the saddle.

2009-07-12T08:35:00.008-05:00

Albuquerque, Day 1 and 2.

Two days into our go west vacation. Arrived in Albuquerque last Friday. Tired and hungry. First stop, Satellite coffee on Alameda. Best cafe con leche ever. And we are 3000 miles away from Miami. Que pasa? i think it is the condensed milk.

Jonathan hooked us up with a ride from the Airport. Neat.

Here are some of the pictures of day two:

This 8 feet sunflower plant was born wild on granma's neighboor's garden. Never seen anything like it.

Tracy and Ila hanging out in the afternoon. Waiting for the temperature to cool off a bit.

You can get more pictures in my facebook: www.facebook.com/carlosmvaldes

We finished dinner at El Modelo. By far the best carne mechada burritos with green chile. Their tamales are good also.

I just love the West. On our way to Colorado's mesa verde. We'll stay in Durango, I think. No reservations. No particular place to go.

Two New apps

2008-09-29T21:49:00.002-05:00

UserVoice and Twitter.

First uservoice. Looked at the stackoverflow website and noticed a link for me to give them feedback. It was uservoice.com. Neat. A place for software purveyors to communicate with their users. and lets the users vote for new features or requests. I automatically signed up and created the url: http://feedback.niil.og our WELS software. This is a killer app for us.

And Twitter. While in the uservoice website and reading the FAQ's, they send me to this twitter thing. And I remember Jorge M. telling me about this service a few days back. And there was that NPR show talking about this hot app. It is a network software to tracks what the other nodes are talking about. Here is how it works, you can follow what other nodes are saying. and when they say something, it texts you on your mobile. and you can follow the conversations on the web. And there is an API so you can subscribe to the conversations. An easy way for folks to create broadcasts groups and reach them by text messages.

I signed up to follow WindowsVista, Markster, and Asterisk. You can twitter me @ https://twitter.com/bluejeanware.

Costa Rica Part 1.

2008-07-28T18:18:00.021-05:00

So we took the plunge and flew the crew of 8 to Costa Rica. We arrived on an overnight flight from Spirit that got us there at midnight. The hotel shuttle for Garden Court and Suites Hotel was waiting for us. And we went on to sleep our first night in unknown territory. Tuesday morning we had breakfast at the Denny's located on premises. It was like we never left America. Until I ordered the typical breakfast of Gallo Pinto with fried eggs. I knew there was something foreign and very local going on here...

It just so happened that the car rental company we used had a hub right there behind the hotel. I walked over to pick up the smallest car we could rent for our group, a diesel, standard transmission, micro-bus by Nissan that can fit a total of 15 people. I had not driven standard in 20 years.The adventure began...

We drove to the area of the Arenal volcano with the help of a GPS with instructions in Spanish. But they were right on. Manny's advise to get a local GPS was phenomenal. The soulless companion kept us on track and allowed us to diverge off course a few times (on purpose) without getting lost once.

The Arenal Volcano erupted for the first time exactly 40 years ago. 89 people died. But it turned the area from a sleepy farming economy to a thriving tourist destination. The Volcano is still active.

We stayed at Volcano Lodge in Arenal. Recommended by Ana. This place was amazing. The gardens are a tropical paradise. One of my first encounters with the local fauna was a hummingbird.

But the most impressive thing was the towering mountain overlooking the valley.

And here are some pictures of the flowers growing around the Volcano.

The first night at Arenal, we went to Baldi's thermal pools. There, they extract volcano spring water from the depths of the fire spitting rock and cool it down, water down the sulfur, and make it available to paying tourists. Dinner included. This was a great starter for the days to come. They have pools at different temperatures like 104, 109, and 113. We stayed away from the extreme one. The kids developed a taste for wet bars. Not sure this is what we wanted to get out of this. But we slept well, accompanied by the sounds of birds, monkeys, and chicharras.

Day 2. White water rafting in the Rio Balsa (class III and II) . We were picked up right on time by Christian and Warner from Wave Expeditions. These guys are neat. They have been running these rivers since they were little. They know the area well and take their time explaining the condition of the river. When we got to their office, we started getting cold feet after seeing some of the pictures. Warner (who turns out, owns the company), said that my mom and the babies could get on the river down after it becomes class II. We felt a little better with that and proceeded as planned.

After we arrive at the drop off point, we meet Andres. A local river guide who will be going with us on the raft. After going through a 15 minutes how to and safety talk, he suggested we let Kiki get on the class II part as well. He kept on mentioning how the river was aggressive and we needed all of our wits to keep our butts on the raft. Turns out that on the raft, the butt is your center of gravity, not your head. I chickened out and suggested I also get on the class II part. I figured, this is Tracy's deal. I just wanted to see Costa Rica through the trails. But Andres did not let me out of it. He said, I need you to get through this. I filled myself with courage and hopped on.

And the river was running hard. Our group was composed of two rafts and 1 kayak which Christian used to make sure the passages were safe. And he would take pictures of us as we went through the hard stuff.

Here you see us ready to cave into a "fun hole".

And even though it looks like we are under water, we are not. But it sure felt like it.
And I forgot to mention that it was raining so hard, we could not see past 300 feet. And the river was raging. Like a foaming Whirlpool, we pushed on past a six foot drop, which according to Andres, only one raft out of seven had made it the day before. We were lucky he was our guide. And the term rain forest, has a new meaning for all of us. And we avoided a flash flood which was coming 1/2 hour behind us. Kiki and Gabriel got on after the raging rapids and also had a memorable experience. Pura Vida!

And then it was time to cool off in the lodge's pool. It was an extreme experience that we highly recommend.

Day 3. In route to central pacific. With the help of the locals directions and our buddy the GPS, we stopped at the hanging bridges of Arenal. The trail was a heart thumping walk under a beautiful canopy ruled by monkeys and gorgeous drops. The bridges were high up. My mom was a bit disgusted with the presence of venomous snakes.

But we trailed on until we found 40 foot waterfalls at the bottom.

Here is a picture of a strange little flower.

And here is a strange root that made us stare for a while. This country is nature at its best.

And the trek went on. Now we headed to Punta Leona, near Punta Arenas. The hotel here was just gorgeous. On top of a hill overlooking the pacific ocean, over lush canyons. You could not ask for a better view.

Here is one of the locals bathing in the sun.

We stayed in Villa Caletas, again, at Ana's recommendation. The folks there (Luis Diego, Hamlet, y Henry), made us feel at home. The hotel is on top of a little mountain. It is filled with art from europe and asia. It even has an amphitheater. And the food was delicious.

The beaches of Herradura were not very impressive for us. We ended up in Playa Blanca, Punta Leona. A private beach overshadowed by lush canyons. The emerald waters of the pacific transcended us to a higher state of mind.

Your own practice - how much?

2008-06-14T10:43:00.003-05:00

I recently received an inquiry from a bright young man from Blacksburg, VA about starting his own venture in the network integration arena. He wanted specific advice on how much to charge, business directions, whether to sell hardware or not, and service structure.

I will start a series of articles on the subject. Hope someone in the cloud can make use of my experiences.

How much do I charge?

Charge enough to be competetive and yet make it worth your while. Good network engineers go for around $125 per hour. Desktop guys can get $50 to $75 per hour. There are always exceptions to this rule. I've seen good Mac desktop guys get $150 per hour. And they are usually worth it. You'll probably be somewhere in the middle.

How hard is it to raise prices?

Everytime you bring up raising the price your customer will wonder if someone else is cheaper out there. And believe me, someone else is cheaper. Might not be better but that would not matter once the customer gets the itch. So be careful with this. Make sure you charge enough going in and you'll be able to keep up.

CMV

Welcome! A late introduction.

2007-10-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Hello friends and colleagues,

My name is Carlos Manuel Valdes. I live in Miami Florida. I run an information technology service company named PC Depot Inc. We provide remote and onsite technical support to non-profit and for profit organizations in Florida.

We have physical presence in Miami, Broward, Palm Beach, and Jacksonville. But accross the net, we can help you even if you are in Cuba, New Mexico.

Ou techs are great technology pros. Alfredo, Greg, Harry, Akil, Tony, and yours truly are some of the names you'll find helpful when you are in a techno crunch.

It is a family business. We stay ahead of the technology curve by always playing and buzzing. We love this stuff. Even Vista is growing on us. A bit slowly though.

Our specialty is Microsoft server technologies like Exchange, SQL Server, Sharepoint (AKA MOSS), Windows. We also have a large install base of Blackberry servers. Some of us are "real" geeks and support Linux and Unix systems.

Our latest toy is VMWARE. Let's just say that we believe. My friend Pablo Marques helped me setup VMWARE 1.0.4 on CentoS 5.0 server. Also thanks to his expertize we deployed a 5TB Filer Appliance using CentOS , Samba, NFS, FTP, HTTP and IETD for iSCSI. It works. And it is fast. And it is cheap. And it is cool. We'll have to write that one up. This might prove to Jim that you can accomplish both, fast, good, and cheap. Time will tell.

For now, join the club. Do some posts. And welcome to my blog.

Carlos

Protect our rights!

2007-08-15T21:04:00.001-05:00

Aug 15, 2007

Senator Mel Martinez
United States Senate
356 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-3603

Dear Senator Martinez,

"Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." Benjamin Franklin

I am a constituent, and I am outraged by the “Protect America Act,” S. 1927, which undermined the Constitution and the privacy of Americans. I demand that this legislation be repealed and that Congress take immediate action to rein in the NSA's domestic spying activities and restore my fundamental rights.

After the President's unconscionable abuse of surveillance powers for nearly six years, how could you rubberstamp his demands? Congress hastily passed this legislation even though it is still lacking basic details about the NSA spying program.

Sacrificing all Americans' privacy in the name of national security doesn't make you appear strong and doesn't earn my support. Congress showed weakness in caving into the Administration's attack on reason.

The law has a weak sunset provision, but restoring protections for our fundamental rights shouldn't wait even a day. Please repeal this egregious expansion of spying powers. Before any new legislation is passed, Congress ought to thoroughly investigate the NSA spying program first and ensure the Administration is held accountable for breaking the law.

Sincerely,

Mr. Carlos Manuel Valdes Martinez

vmware's IPO is coming next week.

2007-08-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- VMware Inc. on Thursday increased the estimated price range of its initial public offering by a fat $4 a share despite volatile overall markets as the unit of EMC draws fans after doubling its second-quarter net income.
With high profile investments from Intel (INTC, Trade ) and Cisco (CSCO, Trade ) under its belt, VMware appears likely to emerge as one of the hotter IPOs of the summer, even as other IPOs pull themselves off the calendar.
In a sign of a bullish debut, VMware upped the estimated price range of its IPO to $27-$29 a share, from $23-$25 a share. Typically, companies boost their share range by only $2 a share, if at all, nowadays. The Palo Alto spin-off of EMC Corp. (EMC, Trade ), kept the size of the deal at 33 million shares, for estimated IPO proceeds of about $924 million.
It'll trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol VMW when it goes public next week.
With 375.1 million shares outstanding, VMware will carry a market cap of about $10 billion based on an IPO price of $27 a share, the midpoint of its estimated price range.
That's about 16 times the $635 million price EMC paid in 2004 to buy the company.
After the IPO, EMC will own 87% of its outstanding common stock and 98% of the combined voting power of the shares.
VMware reported preliminary second-quarter net income of $34.2 million on revenue of $297 million for the three months ended June 30, compared to net income of $15.2 million on revenue of $156 million in the year-ago period. Income surged on sales of its software that helps businesses boost the computing power of Web servers.
VMware bills itself as the leading provider of virtualization solutions, a category forecast to grow from $5.5 billion in 2006 to $11.7 billion by 2011, according to IDC.
Gentry Ganote, chief information officer of a chain of eight PGA Tour Superstore, said he bought virtualization software from VMware competitor Virtual Iron.
"We have 10 or 12 physical servers, and when we use our virtualization software, you're able to add three or four more servers to each physical server," he said. "You get more for your money."
Ganote said the virtualization business, which traces its roots to mainframe computer of the 1970s, has been snowballing for the past couple of years, starting with large companies and now moving to small- and medium-sized firms.
Late last month, Cisco said it would purchase $150 million Class A shares in VMware held by its parent Cisco (CSCO, Trade ) for a 1.6% stake in a move to collaborate on offering virtualization software to its customers. Intel Capital said July 9 it would invest $218.5 million for a 2.5% stake in VMware.
VMware comes amid choppy conditions in the IPO market. Deals such as WuxiTech (WX, Trade ), E-House (EJ, Trade ) and Lululemon Athletica (LULU, Trade ) have performed well, even as others have bowed out entirely.
Cross Match Technologies and NanoDynamics both pulled their IPOs of the calendar this week, even though the latter of the two operates in the relatively hot sub-sector of electric power efficiency.

Vista Yes - XP in the other hard drive.

2007-07-20T08:12:00.000-05:00

4 months ago I wrestled with Vista vs XP. I have now been running Vista with little pain. Most of my apps actually work. Sony Ericsson published a new version of their PC Suite which almost works. The sync stills blows up, but hey, it worked once.

Visual Studio also has a patch that makes it a viable option. Besides with Orcas coming, who cares about framework 2.0.

M oldy gateway 9310s with 1.5 gigs of ram, a new nvidia 6600 video runs aero glass and 2 monitors without a hitch. Even media center works. Just don't move the window in a middle of a video, it'll distord a bit. but it'll come back to live if I leave the window alone.

So there you have it, I did not give up and this is proof that if microsoft pushes a $400 operating system on everyone, it'll eventually work.

compile away.

Day 7 - back to Washington

2007-07-01T16:16:00.002-05:00

The trip was uneventful. Driving through Baltimore left an industrial taste in our mouths...

Parked by the department of Energy and walked to the Capitol. Quick stop at the Garden museum. Placed our wish on the tree. Living art abstract. We were so tired never made it to the Supreme Court. And did not want to make the Capitol police suspicious of all the kids...They seemed a bit paranoid.

And we got back. After a 2 mile walk.

Day 6 - Historic neighborhood

2007-07-01T16:16:00.001-05:00

We really enjoyed Philly's hospitality. From the bums by the museum district to the places that witnessed the birthing of America.

Profound history in the buildings and streets. And the people who play the history moved us. A nice way to relive it. From the blind lady that played Franklin's glass harp to the character playing Betsy Ross. So real...

Can't stop here and not try Pat's wiz wit. Also tried Jimmy's on South street but Pat's had more zing.

Day 5 To Philly

2007-07-01T14:15:00.000-05:00

On Monday (can't believe it is day 5 already) we started the drive to Philadelphia. We followed the route.

The Amish country is gorgeous. So industrious. every home had a vegetable garden. attended and full of well grown corn, tomatoes, and others. The coexist so well with nature and with each other. This was a nice experience for the kids. We had lunch at the "Good and Plenty" in Smoketown, PA. It was both.

We got to Philly in the late afternoon. Ready for a stop in a suite.

The colonial trip - Day 4. A day in the park.

2007-06-25T18:21:00.000-05:00

Hersheypark is huge. They have over 10 roller coasters. 3 wooden ones and lots of metal structures. I like the fact that all the big rides were sorrounded by kiddie rides, giving the whole family a chance for fun.

Bailey and Zak enjoyed the coasters the most. But most of the fun came in the waterpark. It is huge with two buckets of freezing water that would empty every 15 minutes.

They sized this ride family

And here is a rare occurance of Zak actually smiling.

The final stop at Chocolate world! This place is full of subliminal messages about Hershey chocolates and you leave with an unconcious desire for kisses by the time you leave,

The colonial trip - day 3. Saturday

2007-06-25T17:20:00.001-05:00

We spent sometime in Arlington cemetery. Never knew this used to be a plantation whose land belonged to Robert E. Lee. And that the taxman confiscated it! Interesting how a legacy can be born.

if you are ever here, don't miss the changing of the guard and the Kennedy's tombs. Mr. Lee's memorial is a bit of a disappointment as the house is unfurnished. But worth the hike up, if anything to see all the cool tomb stones.

And we headed for the national zoo. And we saw actual Giant Panda bears. The mom, the dad, and the baby. Chris and I got to see the back monitoring room with all the cameras. Pretty high tech stuff. But the zoo was crowded. Probably because it was free and it was Saturday and it was a gorgeous day. And we headed out. Took Connecticut avenue all the way through Maryland to Pennsylvania.

We stopped in Gettysburg and spoke to really smart people when it comes to the civil war. We had a weapons specialist and a medic. They knew all kinds of stuff about the war. I did not know that the civil war changed the strategy of wars. For example, entrenchment was first done here to minimize the casualties and the first world war used this technique. Bayonet blades were also used as candle holders. They are now considered illegal according to the Geneva convention because they tend to tear instead of clean cuts. Union soldiers were given a ration of fresh beef every three days. You can imagine how fresh that was after 2 days in a leather pouch. No wonder disease killed over 400,000 men and trauma inflicted from the war "only" killed 200,000. Anyway, Gettysburg is really neat. People dressed up in outfits from the time of the civil war. We did not spot any confederate soldiers though. Our camera's battery died. We have no pictures of this historic site.

We arrived in Hershey, Pa at 8 pm. stayed in a hotel near Cocoa Ave and Chocolate Blvd. Saw awesome fireworks that night. The kids were looking forward to Sunday at the park. Which by the way, looks nothing like the park I visited 12 years ago.

The colonial trip - day 2 in Washington, DC

2007-06-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Rose up early in the morning to a waffle breakfast in the Courtyard in Herndon. Took the metro from the Virginia Tech station. We parked in the Kiss and Ride parking section. And we kissed and rode.

Washington is neat. Most of the museums are free. We visited the White House information center. In order to actually visit the executive mansion, we'd have to write to our congressmen or representatives, ask them to send our info to the secret service who would let us know if it would be possible and when. Fat chance they'll let me in there with my name on the no flight list.

Still, we walked around the national mall from the back of the White House (by the fenced national Christmas tree) through the Washington monument to the Lincoln one. Had a neat experience with some Vietnam vets by the memorial to their comrades. Really Neat. And of course, we stopped by the Einstein statue where we told 2 other tourists about the acoustic effects built into it. A definite must see.

We walked all the way back to the Smithsonian castle. That was tiring. I kept on trying to get a cab but Tracy would not let me. Once she gave in, we did not find one, so we walked on. Here is a few pictures of our break by the Museum of Art.

The kids did not get too bored. We saw an exhibition about the British, French, Indian war. Neat stuff. I never knew Mr. Washington had his first failure in this war. We proceeded through the gardens to the castle for a snack. And on to the Natural History museum. The kids (Tracy and I included) loved the mammals exhibition. Glad to see our taxes at work. And actually get the benefit.

And back on the Metro back to our suburbia get-away. We had no problems sleeping Saturday night.

Pictures

2007-06-24T22:25:00.000-05:00

View of the National Mall from the Lincoln Memorial

	A flower by the Smithsonian.
Who's taller, Tracy or the Washington memorial?

A colonial family adventure - the trip up there.

2007-06-24T08:59:00.000-05:00

On June 21st, we started a trip to Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Our first surprise came before we boarded Spirit Air's "el cheapo" plan. they had problems with my reservation and the guy had to go inside. Turns out my name is on a no-fly list. Good thing I used my middle initial. Spirit also announced a new $10 per checked bag charge. We had 7 bags. Ouch!!! Not so cheap anymore. That feeling was augmented when they charged $1 for pops. Got there $79 poorer but I did have a rum drink in the process.

Like Buckley always said, when you are in a hole, keep digging. As the bags dripped out onto the conveyor belt, our hopes for a nice vacation started to possess our minds. But my bag never came out and Bailey's bag got totaled. This is the second time this bag went missing. I have a feeling that my GPS triggers the TSA warning systems. As an end result, my bag always stays behind. It finally arrived in our hotel, the next day, 30 miles away from DCA in Herndon, VA.

And that the highlight of our first day.

Vista - Not - XP - Yes

2007-03-01T20:15:00.000-05:00

Oh Well,

I tried.

After 2 weeks of getting by I gave up and put back the cables. Running XP again. Why?

Two items: Visual Studio and Adobe Acrobat.

Both I need to run my business. I cannot be without a reliable compiler. And even less without the ability to generate quotes for clients reliably. Vista's Visual Studio instability was livable but not being able to send customer invoices and quotes made Vista ultimately inoperable. CutePDF which I used to replace Adobe Acrobat professional blew up with stack overflows with complex Word documents. Not a pretty site.

So there you have it. I gave it a good try. And I liked the look. But am I willing to sacrifice my business to have a nice GUI. Not.

Carlos

Vista

2007-02-22T21:02:00.000-05:00

Broke down and installed Vista Ultimate. And here is my story.

Got a new 120gb hard drive to do a fresh install. I have a series of interesting devices that I thought might interfere. I ran Vista's compatibility checker and it said something about my scanner, my scsi card, my phone software and Visual Studio. I thought, piece of cake. My hardware profile is as follows:

Gateway 9310s 1.5gb ram. Video by AvertMedia is weak for Vista standards. Sound card is a RealTek HD. Laserjet 1100, Photosmart 8150, Scanjet 5p using Adaptec 2940AU. My Cell phone is a SonyEricsson p990i. My TV Card is AvertTV tuner. But overall the config should have worked. And it did.

I installed it in less than 1 hour. Three reboots and is done... I needed a virtual iso driver and found that the folks at Daemon Tools had a good one that work. For free!!!!!! I downloaded drivers from RealTek.Tw for the sound card. Also from adaptec for my 2940 which Vista did not recognize. And also downloaded drivers for the Scanjet. Well not exactly. HP has a utility named Deskscan which does the scanning job. No prob. I'm almost there...

CutePDF worked like a charm to make PDF files. For free. My eFax print driver does not really work well but I can view the faxes.

Visual Studio installed but it kept it complained about known compatibility issues. Patched and is a go. I even tested the Cisco VPN client for one of my clients.

The real bummer was the Sony Ericsson PC Suite for Smartphones 1.2.15 which still does not work. I found a web article that described an obscure procedure to get it working. But I could not because even with this procedure, the Outlook 2007 does not support it. So I see the phone but I can't do anything with it. You can't win at everything.

So far, I have yet to go back to my XP drive. I've been doing this for a week. And I'm happy.

Now I'm running Vista Ultimate with Office 2007. Can print, scan, generate pdfs, and compile code. What else can I want?

Carlos

asterisk

2007-02-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

My friend Pablo got to me last year. He insisted I look at this software called asterisk.

You've heard of voice over ip (voip). The latest thing in telecommunications. And now, is gone open source. Some guy named Marc Spencer had a computer support company and decided to write his own PBX. He released his code to the open source community and asterisk took off.

Meanwhile, one of my visionary clients named Steven E Marcus was looking at a new phone system. With our assistance, he made a case for using voip as their primary phone lines.

And Pablo kept on pushing. He has a way with pushing.

And PC Depot got its first PBX thanks to the spaniard. And the fever expanded. In the beginning we had a server in our shed. And it answered Bellsouth lines. All the techs had extensions at home over the net. Cool we thought. We can actually transfer calls and put people on hold and all those cool things real offices have.

But we still paid Bellsouth.

This year we moved our phone services to a small company out of new jersey. We use a swiss company for long distance and an english outfit for our jacksonville and tampa incoming lines. And we are saving over $100 a month. Pays for my mobile phone.

Our pbx server is now in the computer with 100mbits of bandwidth and we talk over 2000 mins a month.

All this thanks to Steven, Marc, and Pablo.

Thanks guys, asterisk is a new business line for us.

Carlos

EMC and VMware announce VMware IPO

2007-02-09T01:27:00.000-05:00

EMC announced their plan to put 10% of VMware into the public market sometime this summer.

Further reinforces our commitment to running VMware with an open platform strategy that benefits customers and the broader IT industry. Open and equal access has been important to our partners and benefited our customers because of the full and free choice it provides.
Greatly strengthens our ability to execute on all of our promises and continue to deliver on the rich roadmap that we see for virtualization software both through our own products and through open and standards based virtual infrastructure.
Allows VMware to invest in providing you the best customer service, support and experience on a global basis
Will bring even more focus and enthusiasm and innovation to an already thriving marketplace

Invest wisely.

Disruptive technologies and sites

2007-02-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

And here are some recomendations for technologies you owe to know about. They are disruptive and they are hot. Look them up

wiki's - collaboration tools maintained by contributors - self correcting sites. some of the nice examples are www.wikipedia.com (a great encyclopedia) and www.pbwiki.com (peanut butter wiki, where you can make your own wiki) try them out
blogs - you are looking at one. anyone with an opinion can give it. (www.blogger.com is nice)
voip - get a skype account or better yet, www.gizmoproject.com or www.voipstunt.com so you can call for free
social network sites - link up with other like you. www.myspace.com if you are into that or linkedin.com for a bit older crowd.
virtual lifestyles - I cannot not comment on this, but Second Life is an alternate life (www.secondlife.com.) With real commerce and fake store fronts. check it out. Try to come out sometime.
virtual machines - and this one is more behind the scenes but hardware servers are afraid. VMWare (www.vmware.com) is at the forefront. Xen (www.xensource.com) is not far behind.

That's it for today.

Cool Gadgets

2007-02-07T08:48:00.000-05:00

Here are my current compilations of "must have" gadgets:

smart phone - with over the air email access, and sync agenda to outlook or other PIM program, internet access, maybe a music player and digital camera with video included
laptop - at least 15" intel core duo, wireless
gps in the car - so you'd never be lost again
bluetooth - in the car so you can drive and talk. if the car does not come with it, you can add one easily