. : s t e a d y . org : .

Taking flight is something that I rarely advocate, however sometimes it makes good sense.  We have been burried by snow and beaten down by cold weather this winter in Maryland.  Mr. Grey has been stuck inside for weeks.  Two year old boys with lots of energy don’t deal well with being trapped inside. At first he liked the snow, but then it got too big for him.  Hell, it was too big for me too!

I have a business trip to Cary, NC this coming Monday and Tuesday.  Mrs. TKD’s family lives in Charlotte.  Friday morning around 7:30 AM, before I’d even gotten my first cup of coffee down the hatch, Mrs. TKD says, “Hey, I’ve been thinking, why don’t we go to Charlotte this weekend and I’ll take you to Cary on Monday.  Then you can catch a lift home with the rest of the boys from work on Tuesday.”  My gut reaction was not just no, but hell no.  It’s an eight hour drive to Charlotte and I hadn’t had any coffee yet.  But then I asked what the weather and found out that it was going to be in the sixties this weekend in Charlotte.  That pretty much sealed the deal. Read the rest of this entry »

I work from the house at least two days a week and I would not give that up at this point for much.  However, there are times when having the home office in the house can be a bit problematic — such as when Mr. Grey bursts into the office while I’m on a conference call.  For some time now, I’ve been wondering if it would be feasible to build an office in a shed.  It turns out, I’m not the first person to think of this and there is actually a bit of a disorganized movement in the UK centered around working from home in a shed.  I have to say that I find the concept of Shedworking highly intriguing, but I’m not sure if it would work for me.

Positives:

I certainly haven’t thought this all the way through, but it is an interesting idea.  And perhaps one worth exploring.  Maybe when we replace the dilapidated shed that is nearing 20 years old, I should double it’s size.  Of course, then it would be a barn really…Maybe I could have livestock.

It’s hard to imagine that in six months the weather will likely be 60-70F warmer than it has been over the past few weeks, but it surely will.  Mrs. TKD is hatching a plan to rent a house in Lewes, DE for a month with her dad.  They’ve found a place and we are waiting to hear back from the owner as to whether they will cut us a break on the weekly rate since we are looking at taking the place for a whole month.

I won’t be able to go for the whole month, but I plan to take two weeks at the beach and at least one weekend there too.  This is certainly something to look forward to, and I’m already getting excited.  I’m about ready to go out to the shed and start sorting through my surf fishing gear — but that would be a little premature…

On a regular basis, I stop at the local Starbucks (which happens to be in the Safeway) for an Americano on the way to the office.  Usually this is because I’ve failed to get up early enough to make coffee before leaving the house.  There are two people who work the morning shift on alternating days at this Starbucks.  One is kind of grumpy most of the time, but the other is a very cheerful woman named Karin who appears to be older than me by about 15 years or so.  She has recognized me for quite some time but recently she’s started chatting with me.

At 6:00 AM, with no coffee and an hour ahead of me in the car, I probably look pretty grim.  I have been told before that I look like I’ve got a frown on most of the time.  That’s the French blood in my make up, I believe.  At any rate, Karin always tries and is usually successful at getting me to smile.  This morning she said, “I’ve got the perfect New Years resolution for you,” and before I could respond, “you should smile more often.  You’ve got a great smile.”

Well, that did it, I was grinning from ear to ear and noticed that smiling actually lifted my mood.  So, I’m going to attempt to take Karin’s advice and smile more often.  It just might actually be good for my health.

Increasingly, I spend most of my time on the computer in a browser.  Okay, almost all of my time is in a browser, and even when it’s not, I usually wish it was.  (I’m saddled with Lotus Notes at the office, and I really would love to just have a good webmail interface in its place.)  Aside from Notes, I use Visio frequently and occasionally Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.  Of course, in my personal computing world, I need iTunes for my iPod.  I also use Picassa for my photos.

Word, Excel and Powerpoint could easily be replaced by google docs.  Easily, except for concerns about corporate security.  Visio, that’s a challenge, and the iTunes/iPod issue could not be replaced – though pandora streamed to the blackberry is an alternative.

I’ve been following the development of Chromium OS/ChromeOS since I first heard about it.  Only a year ago, I was starting to think, I really just need a computer that boots into a browser.  As this becomes a very real possibility, I’m beginning to wonder if I actually could do most of my computing with a browser-based OS?

I’m not sure if I will be able to live with cloud computing, but I’m very interested to see what happens in the space, and how it changes the way we compute.