Coding and Parenting

There was a post on slashdot about "Parenting and a career in Coding". Here is what I came up with on that subject

Leave the house and get home from work at the same time. I take the train to work, so I have to leave a little earlier. So I leave the house at 6:50am and they come and pick me up at 6pm. Our boy knows what time to get me and he looks forward to seeing me as much I as look forward to see him. The consistency is great for them. And even if you have to work afterward it's a great break that does refresh you.

If you have to work late, work from home. I know this is sometimes hard to do, but I get more done at home where others can't bother me.

Dont miss story time.  This does so much for our little boy and a great deal for me. The half hour or so that you are away from the code helps you to clear your head a little bit. And reading your little one is an amazing thing. You should never miss it.

Do something with them during blank stare time. You know that time where you are just staring at the screen and can't think or type.

Show them that computers are fun. I wrote a little IE wrapper for our boy that goes to four sites. Bob the Builder, Sesame Street, Disney and Yahooligans. We play on the Bob the Builders Site and have a great time. You would be amazed how fast they get it.

Follow your nose. If the diaper needs changed, change it, your Wife will think are the greatest man to ever walk the face of the earth, and you have done something to help take care of the little one.

Never miss the good night hug and kiss.

Never underestimate how much you can get done when they are asleep.

Birdeye View

Check out the Pigeon Kam. (Warning may caution motion sickness)

What to get the Asthmatic Geek that has everything.

Engadget just mentioned this handy dandy little USB gadget that I think I am going to have to pick up. Apparently there was a geek who saw a need and decided to remedy the situation. The situation you ask, well, it is all the dust and dirt and contaminates that make our workplace their home sweet home. So ask any self-respecting geek would do, this person created an Air Purifier.  But not just any Air Purifier, this one is USB powered. So I can even take it on the road with my laptop. humm, I better pack an extra battery.

another week, another deadline missed

Well, I am am finally over (for the most part) that flu that has been taking people down left and right. Yesterday was my first day back to work since last thursday. It's funny how it is nice to be back to work after being sick. Unfortunately being sick has caused me to miss yet another deadline. Now you would think that I won't seem like that big of a deal to me, but I really do lose sleep over this stuff.

Last night I started writing a little app that was purely for fun. Just a little something to help me monitor somethings. The thing about this app is I wanted it to just sit in the System Tray when it was minimized. I was afraid that this was going to be terrible hard to do. That is so not the case. I did a google search (which is how all of my application ideas start life) and came up with a great article on just this subject. For the most part, you just use the notifyIcon component and set some properties and you are off!

The Perils of Indexing Services and PDFs

So at work we have had this issue with only certain PDFs showing up in the search results. It had nothing to do with what directory the files where in (I tried that). It had to do with what version of Acrobat they were saved as.  So here is what I found, the PDF IFilter v5.0 which we installed to index our pdfs uses the pdf 1.4 protocol. However when you save a document as Acrobat 6.0 it uses the pdf 1.5 protocol. Unfortunately there isn't an updated version of the IFilter yet and the "current" version was last updated in 2001. So if indexing services isn't cataloging your pdfs, check what version they are.

When good Case Mods go bad

I have seen some really cool case mod (Modifications to your computer case). But I am starting to think that some people may be taking this whole things a little too far. On the other hand I think that this one is pretty cool.