joeware - never stop exploring... :)

My Aunt Linda sent this to me.

http://www.gabrielwhitepiano.com/

I have the Discovery Channel Storm Chasers show on for background while working on something else. I don’t purposely watch this show normally but when it happens to be on, I leave it on because it is interesting.

After two episodes in a row I started thinking, they really need to tie all of these Storm Chasers together in a network to assist each other. They all have common goals of filming tornadoes and gathering scientific info to help us understand this dangerous but surprisingly beautiful phenomena.  I visualize a GPS / Google Maps network application that all of the storm chasers log into. They all constantly upload their positioning information from GPS into the application. They have the ability to mark up the map with bridges that are out, bridges that are listed as out that aren’t, trees blocking the roads, etc. The Doppler On Wheels (DOW) trucks could mark the actual tornadoes and other important weather items on the map. All of this is constantly updated in real time so all of the storm chasers have the best info on how to get to where they need to get to and to be safe and gather the information and film footage that they are looking for.

The drivers of the vehicles get to watch this app so they can see their own position and the other marked items easily. Heck it could be running on an iPhone, I regularly use my iPhone to figure things out with Google Maps. It was immensely useful when I went to North Carolina over Thanksgiving.

It doesn’t take all of the competition out of the experience as the whole thing is still based on your ability to figure out where tornadoes may pop up and get into the best position to do something about it but I think it could make it all the more better overall and likely safer. I wouldn’t think it would be all that expensive either. On top of it, you could get make this application available to normal people and News Stations so that they could have more info on where the dangerous tornadoes are and where they seem to be going. Of course you likely could have some idiots that take their Ford Fiesta out and try to chase the storms themselves but there isn’t anything stopping them from doing that already…

  joe

Dentist appt co-pays…

But also the fact that VHDMount will not accept a drive letter with a colon for the drive letter parameter. The X number of years that I have been working on PCs you specify the drive letter as <letter>:, not <letter>.

So this

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount>vhdmount /m e:\vhd\eviltest.vhd f:

Invalid command line parameters.

Command line utility to mount a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) as a virtual disk device.

<SNIP>

having to be done like

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount>vhdmount /m e:\vhd\eviltest.vhd f

The specified Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) is being plugged in using the default Undo Disk option. Use /c to commit or /d to
discard the changes to the mounted disk.

The Virtual Hard Disk is successfully plugged in as a virtual disk device and the volumes on the disk have been successf
ully mounted.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount>

annoys me greatly… It is a positional notation parameter string. Look at it and think, oh, they put a colon in, how cute, let’s just ignore it for them because we really know what they mean…

BTW… You like the name of the VHD? There is possibly a future blog post about another possible “solution” to an annoying issue with Windows Server 2008 and newer OSes…

    joe

Charlotte, North Carolina bound tomorrow morning for the Thanksgiving festivities. If you are down there and see someone running around in a joeware hoody or t-shirt please feel free to say hi. If you have a tech position in a company that pays really well, be even more forceful. 🙂

I got the pictures below in my inbox… As well as a link to the Top Gear review (I LOVE TOP GEAR – but I don’t get it with my cable system…)

Only 20 in the world…

Reventon versus Tornado jet fighter

I get a lot of emails from people asking for help. I generally look at the domain the emails come from. Usually it is gmail or hotmail or yahoo or comcast but there are a lot of business email addresses as well. Of those sometimes I get a good chuckle because it is from someone in a company I worked for or do work for and the people have no clue of my relation with their company[1].  Very occasionally I get one that I go “Wow!! Someone from XYZ emailed me asking for help…” Some of the occasions this has happened is with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Labs (JPL) and (initially) Microsoft and the FBI and Virgin (I think it would be pretty fun to work with Richard Branson) but this last week… total 10 on the Geek Meter… got an email from an IT Admin at Lucas Film Ltd… Very cool. Of course this only means something to some people, if you say Lucas Films and someone stares blankly at you… they obviously won’t understand even when you explain it. 🙂

Of course I asked if they allowed people to work from home but alas that doesn’t seem to be the case. Working for Lucas Film would be very cool though… I could start in two weeks. Seriously. 🙂

Some will recall this photo (note: small bit of photo shopping involved) of Dean-3-PO and I (Joe-2-D2) from the presentation we gave at the Directory Experts Conference in 2006 (DEC 2006).

    joe

[1] I generally try to keep a very distinct separation between work and what I do personally though occasionally it can be useful to make that connection for people – especially when they don’t want to listen to me or they quote the “joeware me” to the “work me” and have possibly misinterpreted what “I” was saying[2]. Sometimes I am not entirely clear in my words and things can be taken one way or the other, I always reserve the right to clarify what I meant and telling me I didn’t mean what I meant generally doesn’t work well. 🙂

[2] I had someone do this to me on a conference call once (well a few times, but this was the funniest). I had a little bit of a debate with an admin in a company and he was pretty smart but mostly book smart… To rationalize something he was saying that I was saying was not quite right he quoted something I had written in my book and I responded saying, no I don’t think that is what was meant by that statement. The person responded back, no absolutely that is what was meant, absolutely no doubt. I nicely reiterated and said “No, I am really quite positive that that is not what was meant.” The guy came back pretty ticked because I was questioning his interpretation, ticked enough to jump to cussing and said, “How the <BLANK> would you know what was positively meant? Its not like you <BLANK> sat down and had <BLANK> tea with the guy this <BLANK> morning right?”… Several of the people on the call knew who I was and they started chuckling. I said, well to be honest, I drank orange juice this morning, I don’t much like tea in the morning and when I wrote that for the book, very likely I was drinking Coca-Cola because I was under a horrible deadline to get it all done quickly and I was constantly tired. Regardless, I know that I didn’t mean for it to be interpreted the way you are interpreting it. 🙂 We got along splendidly after that.