Adam's Interweb

WordPress 2.5 / New Theme

I just finished updating this blog to use the new WordPress 2.5 engine. It’s really quite nice – everything on the admin side is much more refined that before. The upgrade process is amazingly simple – you just upload the new files, run upgrade.php, and in a minute or two (or longer if you have lots of posts) you’re ready to go. While I was doing the upgrade, I decide I would go ahead and update the theme as well. I liked the last theme, but I saw a new theme that looked a little better to me – so I just popped it in since I was already messing around with the site anyway. It is a bit more streamlined than the last one and more my style.

New Blogs

Over the last week or so, I’ve been planning out some topics that I want to blog about. I realize I haven’t been actively blogging for a while now, but part of that is because I can’t decide what I want to include on this blog. I’m always torn between putting all of my thoughts on this one blog or trying to keep them on different blogs so that each blog has a particular topic. The problem is that I would end up not posting at all. So, I have finally decided I’m going to dedicate time each week (and perhaps more often) to blogging in general and I have also decided I am creating more focused blogs going forward. At this point in time, I’m going to start maintaining three different blogs:

AdamByram.com

This blog will continue to be blog that is purely personal – more to communicate with friends and such than anything else. If I have a topic that I want to talk about that doesn’t fit into either of the two new blogs, it’ll end up here.

New Personal Finance Site

I’ll announce the name later once I finish getting things setup and get the initial content loaded, but I’m creating a new site focused on providing personal finance advice / observations for Generation Y. My generation has the opportunity to do great things, but I keep hearing (and seeing) how so many in this generation can’t (or don’t want) to manage money. To me, this is one of the most important things someone can learn. Money isn’t the key to happiness, but it’s one of those things what you need to understand and learn to use to help you achieve your dreams. So I’m hoping my new site will prove useful to people that want to start learning about personal finance, but don’t want to get bogged down in the technical details of it.

New Software Development Site

I’ll announce the URL for this once it’s up and running as well, but this will be the place that all of my software development related ideas will go. At the end of 2007, I started a new job at a software startup and I’ve had many experiences there that I’d like to blog about (as far as what works, what doesn’t, and things I’m learning about). I’ve wanted to do a blog like this for a long time, so we’ll see how it goes, but I think it’ll be fun.

I Tweet

I have also started using Twitter. I seems like a nice way to stay on top of the latest happenings, particularly in the software world. I don’t tweet non-stop or anything, but I try to tweet every now and then. I have my latest tweets in the sidebar of this blog and you’re welcome to follow me on Twitter if you’ve like – http://www.twitter.com/adambyram/.

That’s all for now – more updates to come.

I don’t normally blog about random things I see on the internet, but I ran across an article by John C. Dvorak today (The iPhone Is No Desktop) that really annoyed me enough that I have to do this. John is basically saying that it’s ridiculous that people are using the iPhone as a desktop computing platform and that drives him crazy in many ways (10 ways to be exact). I don’t disagree that the iPhone is not a “desktop replacement” in the typical sense, but what bothers me is the fact that he thinks this is important.

In the technical world, so many people still believe the “platform” is the key to everything. There are always discussions about which platform is the best – laptop vs desktop vs PDA, Windows vs OS X vs Linux, Nikon vs Canon, Ford vs Chevy – you get the point. That’s all fine and dandy and I don’t disagree that sometimes there are certain benefits to using a specific platform. But the kicker is that this is a stupid argument to begin with.

People don’t care about the platform. Even if you think you care, you probably don’t when you get right down to it. For example, when I’m using the Windows platform, I keep my current TODO list in Microsoft Outlook. Now that I also work on a Mac, I decided to move my TODO list to an online platform. Sure – I moved to a different “platform” because it made it easier to get to my TODO list from either OS, but it’s not the platform I really care about, it’s the data.

Whether my TODO list is on the web, on my desktop, on my iPhone, or on my physical notepad, the platform is of little importance to me as long as my list is there and it’s accessible when I need it. The platform only comes into the picture when it can better enable me to manipulate my data in ways that make me more efficient and effective. In reality, forget the platform and focus on the data (or on the actions driven by the data) and you’ll see that the platform being the key is a fallacy in this day and age.

Today was the first time I have ever changed the oil in my Explorer at home without help.  In the past, I always took it to Ford to have the service done – but I don’t like the Ford dealerships around here, so I wanted to do it myself.  So last time I needed to change my oil, my Dad came up and helped me change it.  His help was basically him doing the work, but me watching so I had some idea of what was going on.  I’ve been overdue for a change for a bit, so I decided to bite the bullet and just go for it today.  It really isn’t that bad – I think the worst part of the whole thing is picking the proper oil filter (there are tons of options out there).

The whole process of draining the oil is simple (just make sure you find the correct drain plug…there may be more than just the oil one and if you pick the wrong one…well…it probably wouldn’t be very pretty).  All you really do is remove the plug, let the oil drain, replace the plug, remove the filter, let remaining oil drain (if any), install the new filter, then just fill it back up with fresh oil.  It is a bit messy, but I would rather spend 30 minutes doing it myself than to spend 1-2 hours (mostly waiting) for someone else to do it – and you can save quite a bit of money depending on how cheap you want to be.  (I think my total costs are about the same as the dealer, but they could be way less if I tried and didn’t mind cheaper materials…)

Overall, the whole process is quite fun.  I think I’m going to start learning more about cars now – they don’t seem that hard to understand…there are lots of parts, but each part is pretty simple by itself.  We’ll see how it goes, but hopefully I’ll learn enough that I can start to work on my car more to fix the little issues that are popping up these days.

So, it’s been nearly 2 months since I last blogged…  I’ve had quite a few things going on in those two months, probably as much or more than when I first moved to TN.  I started remodeling my kitchen - the counter-tops will be delivered on Friday if all goes as planned, then I’ll get the sink in and things will be all good.  I also changed jobs – I went from a relatively huge public company with 55K-ish employees to a little bitty private software company.  It’s been quite a change, but it’s great – it’s exactly the type of job I was looking for and I’m enjoying the people there (although I do still miss the people at the previous employer).  Overall though, it was the right move and I have no regrets.  Anyway – I plan to start blogging a few times a week at least from now on, but we’ll see what happens.

I’ve been a loyal reader of Business 2.0 for quite a few years now.  It is one of the only magazines to which I subscribe.  I really look forward to getting it each month to see all of the new business ideas and to read the magazine’s take on various things.  Well, I just received my October copy and this is the end of the road for Business 2.0.  Apparently they never figured out how to get/keep advertisers interested in the magazine and it the magazine’s parent company decided it didn’t bring in enough cash to trouble with keeping the magazine alive.  Some of the staff are going to write for Fortune, but I just don’t think it’ll be the same.  All of the other magazines are stuffed with ads, so I may buy a 100 page magazine, but only 40 of the pages are actual content…and I’m not interested in flipping through ad after ad to find a handful of stories that interest me – so I doubt I’ll pick up a subscription to anything else to replace Business 2.0.  Oh well, it was good while it lasted.