December 2, 2008 - 17:56, by Dostalek, Kevin
Hello everyone! Sorry I've had a lapse in posts here lately. Mostly this was due to the Thanksgiving holiday, however, I've also been connect-challenged for the past few days. Here's the whole story, with commentary.
While traveling up to see my family in Milwaukee, my cell phone lost all knowledge of the Sprint network. No voice signal, no data signal, nothing-- doesn't even seem to know that it's actually a cell phone anymore. Funny how you come to take that little device for granted, now that I use it not only for voice calls, but also email, calendaring, pandora radio, and keeping up with the various social networks that I participate in (mostly just Facebook and Twitter).
It really hit me on Monday morning, when I was heading out the door to go to a client office, went to start my car, and realized that I had left a power inverter plugged in all through the holiday (no cranky). So after rushing to do a quick jump-start from my wifes car, I knew I was running a little bit behind. Crazy thing was, I had no idea HOW far behind, because of course the car's battery had discharged, meaning the clock said 12:01 and the radio was asking for a security code. I don't wear a watch... why? well because my cell phone always has the time! But since it had crossed timezones and been off-the-network for 4 days, it had no clue either! Anyway, I did make it there with 5 minutes to spare and had a great story to open with.
After swinging by the Sprint store afterwords, they told me since I had insurance on my phone, I could get the newer model of my phone for free (Treo 800w), but it would take 5 days for them to order it in (because they of course couldn't give me one of the ones already IN the store). So it looks like I'm gonna be "disconnected" at least through the end of the week. One thought I just had-- they said they'd "call me" when the phone was in... I wonder what number they will try?
Normally this wouldn't be a huge deal, except this week I'm in and out of the office quite a bit, so running around with no cell is a bit harder than one would expect (I have since set the clock in my car, so at least I know what time it is). Before you all start feeling too sorry for me (fat chance I know), I do have a USB Cell data thing that I can plug into my tabletPC to stay somewhat connected. That's been saving me so far (haven't missed any appointments yet), but it's pretty hard for me to imagine doing the other alternatives (printing out my calendar?).
I guess something I'm thankful for though is that all of these "things" I'm disconnected from, are actually meant to be disconnected- email, twitter, voicemail (hope I'm not missing too many of these), etc... the "cloud" is perfectly content to hold onto my stuff until I get reconnected.
So anyway, one big choice I'll have when I do get the new cell phone is keep it (it'll be a brand new Treo 800w), or finally give in to the pressures of our controller and get on board our corporate cell plan (which is AT&T, so I'd probably get an iPhone). Anyone have opinions?
And speaking of clocks- here's a very cool one:
October 26, 2008 - 11:00, by Dostalek, Kevin
Hey everyone! Thanks for visiting my newly re-launched blog now named "The Kick Board". In addition to the new styling, I'm planning on a whole new set of content that I think a wider audience will enjoy, and hopefully more engaging as well (feed me comments please).
(picture originally by Kathy Sierra on her blog)
Please note that this blog was originally an internal blog (at Ambassador Solutions) that has now been made public. Therefore I had to strip out many of the non-appropriate posts from the past as well as removing all comments.
While I'm still shaking out the publishing process for pod- and vodCasts, I will also be "mirror-posting" some of the best audio and video I find on the internet-- much of which in the past I would just email links to folks... It's not that I'm looking to "steal" content and I realize most of you could easily find them yourself on their original locations, but think of this as a pre-Kevin-filtered best-of-the-web one-stop-shop for your multimedia pleasures (or something like that).
DevLife Video
Finally, the design of this website is intended to be a dynamic view of my whiteboard (duh). As such, I'll probably be posting much more whiteboard friendly posts in the future (ie. not a ton of text, but many more sketches and stuff). To be sensitive to those pulling an RSS feed, I'll not go overboard and try to keep the text content as TEXT. The blog engine I'm using is a pretty customized version of SharePoint with the CKS:EBE extensions... the Pingback/Linkback/Trackback functionality is still in need of testing, so please give those a go! Lastly, the "bookmark" functionality (digg, stumbleupon, etc...) could use some shakedown too :)
I'm really excited to start getting some more content up here, but I would very much appreciate feedback in the form of comments to let me know what you think, and what you're interested in hearing about from me. If you want to know more about me personally, click my picture taped to the board. (and to get to the homepage, click the picture of the green house in the upper right corner).
October 17, 2008 - 02:50, by Dostalek, Kevin
Someone asked me today about the podcasts/vodcasts/etc... that I listen to (mostly in my car on the commute to work). So here's the current list, although it changes week to week:
My "Current" List:
- DotNetRocks - a must for all .net developers (generally 1 audio show a week).
- Channel9 - while not technically a "podcast", this rss feed of videos from the inside Microsoft is always interesting (averages about 10 videos a week).
- DiggNation - Kevin Rose is a web 2.0 folk hero. This show is rarely not super entertaining (generally 1 video show a week).
- RocketBoom - One of the oldest "vodcasts". While I don't catch all of these, I find them much more creative and witty than most of the other "news" shows. (daily video).
My "On-again-off-again" List:
- HanselMinutes - Scott usually has pretty good stuff on, generally the same type of content as DotNetRocks, but usually a little more cutting edge and less mainstream. (kind of sporatic... but at least 1-2 shows a month).
- GeekBrief TV - A short little daily geek news show. Kind of fun, but Cali Lewis can get on your nerves pretty easily so I only catch a handful of shows each month (daily video show).
- WebbAlert - Another short daily internet news show. Just started watching some of these. The stories arn't quite as interesting as others, but it is a way to quickly catch up on the goings on.
- Channel10 - Microsoft's version of a daily news show. Sometimes there's crossover with Channel 9 (which is pretty much all about dev, whereas C10 is just "tech" news). (generally pumps out 3-5 videos a day, way too much to actually watch, so you pick and choose).
Retired (stuff I used to listen to, but now don't anymore):
Anybody have some good ones that you listen to?
October 15, 2008 - 02:48, by Dostalek, Kevin
As I was organizing the information that I've gleaned over the last year or so especially surrounding the changing web and world around us, I noticed that I was building a little taxonomy of all the books I've read/listened to. I decided to turn this into a nice little picture and share it with everyone.
I only included books that I've actually read (so note, there are a lot of other good ones out there), and only those that somehow tangentially related to Web 2.0 "thinking". I placed them on two axis (vertical=depth, horizontal=topic), and then also drew arrows where I thought one book lead well into another.
Click on the thumbnail below to see the whole chart larger. if anyone is interested in learning more about these books or borrowing a copy, just let me know.
January 19, 2007 - 01:39, by Dostalek, Kevin
So on to the 5 things people may not know about me:
- I moved around a lot as a kid, living in Maryland, Wisconsin, Florida, Maryland again, and then Indiana. Even though I didn't come to Indiana until college, I've now lived here longer than anywhere else by far (17+ years).
- In the summers before my Junior and Senior year of high school I toured the country (actually both US and Canada) playing in a drum corps called DutchBoy. During these long 3 month tours we slept on gym floors at night, practiced all day, had shows in the evening, then long bus rides to the next town before finally getting the comfort of some sleep on another gym floor. I lost about 30 pounds during this time, and weighed only 140lbs going into college.
- I was a music major at IU Bloomington (the largest school of music in the world) for college as a percussionist. Don't you know that everyone loves a drummer?
- For the closing piece during my senior recital at IU I performed a work called Kooknite which was written by myself and a friend (who also performed with me) that was for timpani, multi-percussion, and electronic tape. It was a programatic piece which re-lived an experience we had earlier that year. The piece had certain performance stipulations such as "can only be performed in the presence of a loon". That's why to this day, my cell phone's voicemail alert is a loon-call.
- I have a standing goal to own a Carver-One and was on the waiting list last year when to my utter disapointment their US distributor fell through. So now I'll be content with a Venture One.