Personal

In the past, whenever brought into a new engagement or job, I always felt I had to 'prove' myself because typically, people didn't know who I was or anything about my background. I have always tended to hit the ground running whenever in a new location because I tend to catch on to things pretty quickly. It is just something built into my nature.

I've always been in the mindset that you should always be approachable and never have a 'snooty' or 'I know more than you' attitude about yourself because that always comes back to haunt you. If you take 5 minutes out of your day to help someone with a problem, you sometimes end up with a new friend, or a batch of fresh cookies the next day. It can also be a life saver when you are at wits end on a problem and need to call in a favor from someone. People tend to help if you've always been open to helping them in the past. I know this might sound like "Just be a nice guy", but there is more to it than that. You can be an absolutely brilliant technical resource, but if your people skills cause people to avoid asking you for help, that can cause problems.

The same type of open environment can make for a great workplace too. I tend to thrive in an environment where I feel comfortable enough to ask a potentially "stupid newbie" question and not face the wrath of a generic "RTFM" reply. I know that if I can't figure something out, I can throw it out to our internal mailing list as a "Hey guys/girls, ever seen this?" question, and typically get a reply pretty quickly, even at 2am in the morning.

I once had a manager that said all his best techs were night owls and I've always noticed that people that are "really into computers" tend to fit this stereotype. Whenever I fire up Office Communicator late at night, I can always expect at least one other person online, if not 10. I have gotten better at not pulling all nighters when on a technology bender, but there are times when I find myself up late at night, installing a new build of an operating system or trying out some new program, or writing an article for this site.

In the past year, things have changed a bit. People know who I am because of this site, especially after I put my photo in the upper right hand corner of the homepage. It has been a bit boggling the impact this tiny little corner of the web has become for me. I also believe this site is why I became a Microsoft MVP last year, which had been a goal of mine for a long time, but something I never expected to happen so quickly.

Now, however, I am on the other side of the spectrum for "proving myself." I have to make sure I don't disappoint them by not knowing something. People have said "What, you don't know something? You're an MVP!" jokingly, and I'd much rather admit that I don't know something and tell them I have to look it up than to make up some acronym buzzword filled answer. Most people can read through those types of answers. If I ever give you a technical interview for a job position, please just say "I don't know" instead of making something up. I'm much more inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, unless every answer is "I don't know."

The point of this post? This site has changed my life in ways I never imagined. It originally started out for selfish reasons, and due to my wife pestering me to start up a blog. I needed a place to post links or solutions to problems I had figured out. As time went on, I added more sections and made it more user friendly. Soon, people were telling me that they kept bumping into my site in search engine results when looking up a solution for a problem they had and what I had posted was the fix they were looking for. I still find it pretty amazing the amount of feedback and exposure I get from the site. Now, my wife likes to remind me who recommended that I start the site. I don't think I'll ever live that one down.

Thankfully I have a wife that is into computers almost as much as I am, or else I don't think I'd be able to get away with half the things I do around the house, with my mad scientist experiments (our wireless network, our A/V setup, etc.)

Mon 06/02/08
Van Halen
Van Andel Arena

Mon 06/16/08
Robert Randolph's Revival
Frederik Meijer Gardens

Tue 07/15/08
Big Head Todd & The Monsters
Interlochen Center For The Arts

Tue 07/22/08
Foo Fighters
Van Andel Arena

Sun 07/27/08
The Black Crowes
Orbit Room

Thu 08/07/08
Los Lonely Boys (with Los Lobos)
Frederik Meijer Gardens

Fri 08/08/08
King's X (with Extreme)
Emerald Theatre

Thu 09/11/08
Johnny Winter
River City Slim's

I will be seeing the Black Crowes because that is my birthday, it is in Grand Rapids, and their latest album is a good one. Hopefully, no one will steal Rich Robinson's guitar like the last time they were in Grand Rapids in 1999. I hear he is still bitter about it.

Probably won't see Van Halen due to ticket prices and the fact that I saw them last year at Cobo Hall.
It does have the potential historic value because it is the last date of the tour and who knows what will happen with Van Halen after this.

Probably won't see King's X due to the show being in Detroit and the fact that they are the opening band which means, at best, a half hour set. King's X puts on a great show live and so does Extreme, so I am still tempted.

Probably won't see Los Lonely Boys because they are the opening band for Los Lobos. I'd much rather see a full set of Texas goodness.

I can't miss Johnny Winter because he has outlived most albinos and can still put on a good show. He also produced Muddy Waters last album, so there is a lot of history there.

Big Head Todd is a great live band and their new album is awesome, plus I love the venue, so this one is a no brainer for me.

Foo Fighters is another band that puts on a great show, but I try to avoid Enormodome(tm) shows because I like small venues way too much.

Some people go on vacations, I go to concerts for fun and shenanigans, and have done so before I could get into bars. The funny part about it all is that I didn't want to get into bars for the alcohol, but to see the acts playing there.

I couldn't see the Arc Angels in 1992 at Club Eastbrook, which would eventually become the Orbit Room, because I was only 16 years old at the time. I still wish I could have seen that show. I still listen that album quite a bit.

This will be Juliana's first Jones Soda label, which is good because Sabrina has already been on over half a dozen. All of the Top 20 pictures will be on a Jones Soda label available in stores but only one, based on votes, will be chosen as the 10k Jones Soda label.

Normally I don't ask for people to vote for contests from this site, but I will make an exception this time.

Please go and vote here for the girl looking into the train window and casting a reflection. The last name should give away which photo my wife took (Cassandra N. Tiensivu - Photo #: 554644).

Story behind the photo: Juliana was watching the trees go by on the Coopersville/Marne train, which is somewhat near our house. She was in an exceptionally crabby mood that day, so it doesn't surprise me that she was sticking her tongue out like that.

I am also a bit of a fan of Jones Soda because they are one of the only companies that uses actual cane sugar in their products, instead of corn syrup. It is the same reason Coke from Mexico tastes better in a glass bottle than anything you can buy in the stores in the USA. Ditto for Dr. Pepper from the Dublin bottling plant.

Some people are into collecting wines - I'm into truly 'classic' sodas. It is a cheaper hobby too.

This is a bit of a blast from the past but in the 90s, I liked to hack on the Linux kernel code and keep an eye on the development versions as they were released. Due to being a college student, my systems were rather cobbled together and not necessarily the fastest, so I was always looking for ways to make them run faster.

Based on a Slashdot article that mentioned an open-source code search engine, I decided to check to see how many of my 'code hacks' were still out there.

A few patches dealt with the Linux kernel TGA framebuffer, specifically on the DEC Alpha Multia, which at one point was my primary workstation. It was 64-bit before all the cool kids were doing it! I think I still have one in storage that runs the Digital Alpha version of Windows NT 4.0, and an early beta of Windows 2000 before the Alpha support was canned. Hopefully the hard drive still spins up but I suspect the power regulator on the motherboard is probably shot, which happened quite a bit on those systems.

The one patch I am most proud of made it officially into the TTY console layer of the Linux kernel in the 1.3 or 2.0 kernel era. I mention it from time to time to people, and due to how much Microsoft and other non-Linux 'stuff' I do these days, they tend to react as if I am making it up.

Thankfully, this is the proof that it really happened.

At one point I had a very temperamental Sound Blaster CD-ROM which had a custom interface card that plugged into the ISA port of my system. Due to some of the "interesting" code changes I made to the Sound Blaster CD driver, I was able to make the kernel driver about half the size and also make my CD-ROM spin up correctly 100% of the time. The standard kernel driver used to fall over when it received some of the error codes my hardware was throwing at it. Almost all of those original Sound Blaster CD-ROM drives had a defect that would eventually make them fail completely and no longer read any CD inserted into the caddy.

So, basically, I'm taking a little trip down code memory lane with this search engine.