Musically Geeky

This month, I left UTSA after 17.5 years. It was a difficult decision, and leaving was bittersweet, but this is the best path forward for me and Margaret. I am happy to announce that I am now working at a Unicon, Inc, a professional services company that specializes in supporting learning at all levels, from K-12 to higher education. I am technically labeled a Software Developer 3, but my role will be to continue to support Identity and Access Management outcomes in all forms, just for more than the one university. [Read More]

Went the the Sherwood Forest renaissance faire over the weekend. It was the first real outing of the year since it was so nice out. We had the standard “meats on sticks”, Margaret had some mead, and Daphne and her friend enjoyed doing a little shopping at some of the booths. The only drawback was having to drive 2 hours there and back, and when we got in late Saturday afternoon we were wiped out! [Read More]

Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? In the last few years since I posted, my wife was diagnosed with a serious chronic condition, my family learned to love the cruise life, the whole world went through a pandemic, and the Cold War rides again.

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Well, I finally got around to revamping my blog. I hope to get back into the habit of posting more often. I took the opportunity to switch to another blog engine (Hugo) and also to switch my SCM from github to gitlab.

What’s been going on this last 6 years, you ask? A lot has happened. I’ve been in two bands since then, I am a grandpa for the second time, and I was promoted to a manager position leading a team at work

In case you aren’t following my band Road Home on Twitter, Facebook, or our website (you should be!), we are having a CD Release party for our first CD on April 19th. I am super stoked about this. I submitted the final project to the printer yesterday and we should have the discs in hand next week (but you can’t get one until the 19th!!). The album should also be available in the iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play music stores, and also Spotify and a few other online streaming sites. [Read More]

So I have been asked by my lovely wife to help her out with a project that she wants to do at her job. I can’t say too much about it, but it requires some custom software to be written. We sat down the other day and sketched out some initial ideas of what the software would need to do, and how the users would use the software (initially just her and a couple others, but later on it could be the entire organization). [Read More]

Ubuntu has a project that they call their “One Hundred Paper Cuts”, where people list the little minor annoyances that detract them from truly enjoying using Ubuntu. You know, the little rough edges that annoy you for about two seconds every time you rub against them. Add that up and 2 seconds a day for days or weeks or years can get you quite annoyed. Interested developers or uses can then go in and tackle these paper cuts to smooth out the tiny rough edges. [Read More]

Well, my migration from Ubuntu to Fedora on my workstation at work went pretty smoothly. There were a few hiccups (like my SATA to USB dock decided to act up at one point and I had to wait until I scrounged up another internal SATA cable to plug the old drive into the motherboard) and Fedora had some strangeness at first, but after a yum upgrade or two everything was a-ok.

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We had a great show on Friday night at the oddly named “Cocky Rooster” bar in Comfort, TX. This is a pretty cool little hole-in-the-wall bar with some really laid back and fun people. There were some regulars that remembered us from last time so that was pretty cool. I have to say, I haven’t even picked up a pair of sticks since the last gig and I was surprised at how well I played. [Read More]

Argh. Every time I use a Microsoft programming tool or library, I am first initially amazed at how slick it is and how it solves 90% of my problems for me. The problem is that the other 10% is so hidden away and obscure that it is actually harder to use if they just decided not to hide the underlying functionality. Maybe the documentation for the StringDictionary Collection is just not telling what I want to hear, or maybe I’m not understanding it. [Read More]