Sean Kearney: Sitecore and Stuff

Looking back at 2010 I can confidently say the biggest news I was hit with was that I am having triplets. A pair of identicals girls and a singleton girl to be exact. This is, of course, in addition to my two year old son. I always wanted four kids so I am pretty stoked!

The actual due date is April 29, 2011 but as you can imagine we are expecting them a bit earlier. The average gestational period for triplets is 33 weeks, which puts them around March 11.

Needless to say things have been changing in my world. The most recent would be the sale of a web site I owned. I hope to have some more good news as soon as next week and I'll save that for another post.

I did stumble on this video and must say it has summed up a lot of my conversations recently and I imagine how they will be for a long time.

In my last post I wrote what I planned on building for my home developer rig.

A few changes were made.

* I went with an extra hard drive and I will run RAID 0.

* I measured the compartment in my desk where I planned on putting my case and lo and behold it was too small for the Antec case I Picked out. I had to settle on a smaller box, which will probably mean more noise, but no option here.

* I went with an nVidia card as opposed to an ATI card. Too many people I talked to had problems with them.

* Swapped out the PSU for one that is supposed to be quiter.

Here is the system I ordered. If UPS stays on track I will be having a Friday geek night!

Qty.	Image	Product Description
1		COOLER MASTER Gladiator 600 RC-600-KKN1-GP Black SECC Body ; Mesh Front bezel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail Model #:RC-600-KKN1-GP Item #:N82E16811119206
1		ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Model #:P6T Deluxe V2 Item #:N82E16813131365
1		ZOTAC ZT-98GEY3P-FSR GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail Model #:ZT-98GEY3P-FSR Item #:N82E16814500079
1		COOLER MASTER RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Retail Model #:RS-700-AMBA-D3 Item #:N82E16817171037
1		Intel Core i7 920 Nehalem 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail Model #:BX80601920 Item #:N82E16819115202
1		CORSAIR XMS3 12GB (6 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model HX3X12G1600C9 G - Retail Model #:HX3X12G1600C9 G Item #:N82E16820145235
1		CORSAIR Flash Voyager 16GB Flash Drive (USB 2.0 Portable) Model CMFUSB2.0-16GB - Retail Model #:CMFUSB2.0-16GB Item #:N82E16820233042
1		SABRENT CRW-UINB 68-in-1 USB 2.0 Internal Card Reader w/ USB 2.0 Port supports SDHC/VISTA - Retail Model #:CRW-UINB Item #:N82E16820300608
2		Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM Model #:WD3000HLFS Item #:N82E16822136322
1		ASUS VK266H Black 25.5" 2ms(GTG) HDMI Widescreen LCD Monitor - Retail Model #:VK266H Item #:N82E16824236046
1		Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA Model AD-7240S-0B - OEM Model #:AD-7240S-0B Item #:N82E16827118030
1		COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail Model #:RR-UV8-XBU1-GP Item #:N82E16835103055

In honor of Windows 7, and my increasing frustration with my 4 year old DELL computer, I figured I would pony up and build myself a nice developer rig. Even though it is my home computer my typical usage is work related; Visual Studio(s), SQL Server, IIS, Virtual Machines, etc... My wife's typical usage is email and web browsing. We are not gamers at all; not even solitaire! The most graphic intense application I use would be Google Earth.

I was initially thinking RAID 0 15K rpm SAS drives with the new ASUS MB, but that bumped my cost up way too much. Plus, the performance benefit of RAID 0 doesn't outway the issue of losing one drive loses all data factor. So I decided to go with a single 300GB 10K RPM SATA drive. I don't need much in the way of disk space since all music, video, doc's, etc... are sitting on a file server (that needs to be upgraded).

The last PC I made was about 7 years ago. It was a beast of a machine with Dual SCSI CD drives and a DVD drive. Does one really need more than one optical drive these days? I don't remember the last time I needed to duplicate a disc.

Here is what my initial thoughts are. Starred rows are the upgraded components that I am not sure are worth it for my usage. This doesn't include monitors, which I desperately need, but will be holding off on.

Any comments would be appreciated. I want to get this project rolling ASAP!

Almost two years after I thought about phasing out my online moniker I have done it. I have officially moved the carknee.com domain to seankearney.com. Redirects are in place and there shouldn't be any noticable change for the few people that read this site. The Feedburner feed is unchanged and will remain unchanged for the near future. Maybe at some point I will move to rss.seankearney.com, but not yet.

This is a follow up post to "Photo Management" on how I am starting to organize my digital images. After looking around at some of my options (Picasa, Adobe products, buying an iMac, …) I have decided to take the cheap way out. Here is my current workflow, which is a work in progress.
 
I pull the images from my camera manually and dump them to a temp directory and rename the files from the standard IMG_9753.jpg to the date they were taken on. I then create new directories on my NAS for the Year\Month\[Event|Description] as in “H:\Media\Pictures\2008\11\Party”. I move the files to their new homes on the NAS and fire up Picasa. Once in Picasa I go and “Tag” the images with the people in the picture and any other pertanent info. My final step is to backup my media to Amazon S3.

Maybe I am showing my age a bit, but I have a an issue venturing to far from the old 8.3 DOS file names so I chose the format of yyyy-mm-dd#hh-mm-ss.jpg. In order to do this little task I found a decent piece of software called called AmoK Exif Sorter. The program worked so well I decided to go back and rename ALL my images going back to 2004, which is when I got my first digital camera that stored date/time in the Exif data.

Overall I use Picasa at a very high level. I simply tag, view, and upload my photos using it and that is it! Picasa provides some import and file rename functions, but they weren’t working they I would have liked. I am starting to see that the more work you put in the bigger the benefit you will get out of it though. I spent an hour tagging all the images taken of my son since August and the search capabilities of Picasa work great!

I still have some pieces of the puzzle that don’t fit so well, but this will be a good starting point. I am currently using a Linksys NSLU2 with a USB drive for my NAS. Ideally this will be upgraded to something else, I just can’t decide what yet (ReadyNas, Windows home server, etc…). I failed to mention that I manually backup my single drive NAS to RAID 1 drives on my development server in my home, but I am going to give the Microsoft SyncToy a try for this task. The Amazon S3 backup is extremely important! Every important file you own, not just images, should be backed up offsite! I came close to learning the hardway.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Update 2/15/2012:

• I've since started using a different tool to rename files: http://code.google.com/p/photoname2date/
• I've moved away from the NSLU2 and am using a proper NAS (Synology DS1511+). The synology has built in backups to S3, plus I am doing a full manual offsite backup.

I am running into a problem. I have never been much of a picture taking kind of guy... that is, until I got a dog and a son. Now I am snapping pictures like a mad man with my Canon Xsi and amassing thousands of pictures named IMG_9321.jpg. I need help!!!!

I have my photos organized in a X:\[year]\[month]\[event] folder structure, but as time goes on I am forgetting what happened when. When my cat loving friends come over, I want to show them a picture of Wilson eating the neighbors cat, but I can never find it. (joke)

I had tried Picasa in the past and it looked promising. I am tempted to get the latest version and give it another shot, but I am wondering what my other options are. I did a little looking around and then started thinking... why not get a mac? Did I really just think that?

I will surely try the free Picasa before jumping ship and spending $2k plus on a macbook pro, but that macbook may come in handy for, say, trying .net development?

What sad news. LeRoi Moore, The Dave Matthews Band saxophonist has died.

I have been a DMB fan since the mid ninetees when they first broke out and to be honest, they were all I listened to for many, MANY, years. I have slowly began to venture away from them over the last couple years, but to this day DMB rules my iPod. Being a sax player (although I haven't touched an axe in years) LeRoi was my favorite musician in the band. I have seen them in concert a few times and LeRoi's solos were always something to look forward to.

"LeRoi Moore on the saxophone"... no more. Sad.

So, in my last post title, "My life may be forever different," I shared with you that I am getting a dog. I did get the dog, and his name is Wilson. Has my life been changed, absolutely. Having Wilson has been a fun experience with its doses of pain and adjustment. But, I digress, this post isn't about Wilson and how my life has changed. This post is about how my life will surely change...

My wife and I are expecting to be parents this year.

Woo Hoo 

It is time for me to move on from my current employer. I have been with this company since 2000 (with a brief stint elsewhere) and it is really time to go. As is the case with most developers, if you don't learn new things on a daily basis your job can get pretty boring. I tried to keep myself going here since, in general, it is a great company to work for, but I know I have to go. I believe that I have reached the limit to what I can learn on my own. 

There are certain things that you can pick up much easier when you are working with a group of smart guys who like to share their knowledge. That being said, I am going to an application development company (Hedgehog Development) that specializes in .NET, SiteCore, SharePoint, and Visual Studio Team System. They have some great projects already in the works and some good stuff down the pipe as well.

This past weekend, my wife and I took a trip out to New Jersey to go to an AKC dog show and meet with a dog breeder. While, for some, this may not be an event worthy of a blog post, for me however, it is a jaw dropper! My family is one big group (3 siblings) of non animal lovers. For me to go to a dog show (out of state no less), meet a breeder, and *drum roll* put a deposit on a dog would be heresy!

My wife grew up with pets and has wanted one since day one of our relationship. I am allergic to cats, which is what she would have liked, but I am not allergic to dogs. After being married for almost 2 years and just settling into our new home I finally feel I am up to the responsibility. We shall see.

So, with the pups expected to be born this week the breeder is thinking mid-July will be when they are ready to go home. Is my life as I know it over this summer?

In case you are interested, we are getting a Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

** Update: We passed on the liter that was born. We are now waiting on a male from a litter that was born in July and we should have him in September! 

Here he is at 6 weeks