Posted by Kyle Heon
Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:23:00 GMT
It’s been quite awhile since I last posted and a lot has happened too. This past May I started getting the itch to buy a motorcycle. I convinced the wife (she was apprehensive, worried I’d get hurt). I quickly registered for New Hampshire’s Basic Rider Course ($110) and then waited (not patiently, I eagerly approached the mailbox every day only to be disappointed, until today).
In June (Father’s Day in fact) I purchased my motorcycle. Over the Memorial Day weekend I went looking at bikes, asked a bunch of questions and sat on a couple small bikes (the Kawasaki Vulcan 500 Ltd and the Yamaha V-Star 650 Custom). I then did a lot of research online and both bikes got many thumbs up for starter bikes. I was all but sold on the Kawasaki except that I wasn’t finding many aftermarket parts for but the Yamaha had slightly better aftermarket support, plus a slightly bigger engine.
I ended up going with the Yamaha for the increased engine size, slightly better aftermarket support, the shaft based drivetrain and the fact that it looked so much more bad-ass then the Kawasaki.
I took delivery a few days later. It was so cool and it had a nice little roar to it (nothing like a Harley, but this is my first bike so it sounds good to me).
Having never ridden I wasn’t sure how to even get the thing moving so I worked to get it into first and takeoff without stalling. That didn’t go so well for me until my dad showed up one Sunday morning and helped me work through it. I continued to practice my starts in the parking lot for another week or more and then on July 3rd went to take my permit test (a 20 question written exam). I passed (just barely—phew) and then that weekend my dad showed up again. He rode the bike over to an industrial area near where we live that has numerous (and empty) parking lots to practice in. After a good 1-2 hours of practice in the parking lot I felt comfortable enough to ride it home (about 2 tenths of a mile).
I continued to practice around our neighborhood, not daring to venture out into the main streets of downtown Portsmouth. It’s pretty crazy where I live so I really had to learn the hard way, right into the fire.
Last weekend my dad came down again and we went out on the open road, taking two trips to where I work (about 5 miles away). I stalled a couple times on the way there but overall did pretty good. This past week my truck has been in the shop so I rode Tuesday through Friday to work (the weather cooperated for me).
As I eluded to earlier, I got my training date(s): August 22nd-24th. This unfortunately falls right when my brothers Jack & Jill has been scheduled (they know, so I’m not spilling the beans). Because this is a non-refundable event I’m still going to go and hopefully I can shoot up to my folks to catch the tail-end of the party.
My permit runs out the end of this month so I have only a couple more weeks to ride, and more importantly only two more Thursdays that I could go in and take my riding exam. While I’m feeling really comfortable on the road and with my bike, I’m not sure I’m prepared for the road test…so I need to decide if I’m just going to wait for training to get my license (assuming I pass) and miss a month of riding time (all of August) OR do I make an attempt and go for my license?
I sadly don’t have any photos of my bike (yet) but I will work to get some shortly and post them to my Flickr Photostream but for now, you can see what my ride looks like here (mine is in black).
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags motorcycles | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Tue, 20 May 2008 23:56:00 GMT
Early in 2008 I decided to build a new, super beefy system to consolidate my old desktop PC and a small development Fedora Core server. My intention was to go 64-bit from the start so that I could load the system up with 8GB of RAM.
Due to a strange memory issue I was not able to run Windows Server setup with all 8GB of RAM in place, it was weeks before I finally discovered the problem. This system currently has 2×2GB chips in and things work, but if I add in the additional two chips, Server 2003 doesn’t get past the “Starting Windows” screen. Weird.
For the past week or so I have been playing around VMWare Server just to get a feel for how things work. I’ve created virtual appliances running Windows XP Professional, Ubuntu Server, FreeNAS, OpenFiler and also OpenSolaris 2008.05.
From what I have seen so far, VMWare Server is simply one of the coolest technologies I’ve played with in a long time. I can’t believe how simple it is to create new appliances, install the OS into it and start it up.
One of my goals with VMWare Server here is to create a really streamlined WinXP Pro install that I can save a snapshot of but start up slices for my children to play in and install whatever they want. If things go south, I just delete the appliance and start over with the fresh WinXP Pro.
My final goal with this system was to setup a redundant storage solution for my growing library of MP3’s and all my RAW photos. For this I went with a motherboard that had RAID5 onboard and bought 3 500GB 7200RPM Western Digital drives, giving me about 1TB of RAID5 storage.
I want this storage array to be as simple to use as possible and will act as the storage device for all of the appliances running plus the aforementioned music and photos.
Thus the reason I have setup appliances with FreeNAS, OpenFiler and OpenSolaris. None of which has worked out quite like I hoped.
- It looks like FreeNAS is really designed to run from a USB drive and as such I was not able to really get it working.
- OpenFiler looks really promising but the interface is very difficult to navigate and while I have figured out how to get “shares” setup through the interface I can’t figure out how to access them from another system.
- And finally, I looked at OpenSolaris specifically to leverage the incredibly awesome ZFS. The problem is, OpenSolaris is wicked slow, at least when run through VMWare. I’m hoping it’s because I’m doing something so I’ll keep exploring.
- If all else fails, I guess I’ll format the array with Server 2003 and create shares as needed. I’d imagine that will mean I’ll need to use the FAT32 file system so that non-Windows nodes can access it.
All of this exploration has been a lot of fun. The issues I ran into getting things built and installed was painful but now I know more then I did before.
Posted in Development | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:44:00 GMT
Since Canon announced the new Rebel XSi I have been seriously considering the upgrade from my now 2-3 year old Rebel XT. The XT has served me quite well and is still an awesome camera, for the price (especially now, as it’s being phased out, you can get it for pretty cheap).
The XSi offered numerous upgrades over the XT and with a recent bonus check from my employer, I felt it was not only in the cards, but worth it.
Earlier this week B&H notified me that they had stock in the new Canon model and so I started watching the local Best Buy. Friday, after work I stopped back in and patiently waited for a sales associate to free up to ask when they would be getting some. He looked it up in his computer and low and behold, they had stock. He was able to track down one—the kit, which is what I wanted (for the upgraded 18-55mm IS lens).
I sadly have not been able to really play around with it but I can say that it is a pretty cool camera and I suspect I’ll be learning all the new features it offers in the coming months. With spring/summer right around the corner, I’m hoping to get some good photos, so watch this space and my flickr space.
So, as the title suggests, my old Rebel XT is up for sale. I haven’t listed it on eBay or anything like that yet, just spreading the word quietly for right now. If you are interested, contact me using the link in the footer. Use a subject line similar to “Interested in your Rebel XT”.
I’m asking $350 for the kit, plus a few other goodies:
I also have an older 28-80mm lens that works perfectly with the Rebel XT which I acquired during my film SLR days. If you are interested in this, let me know as I’m willing to add it to the mix for a small additional amount.
I expect that shipping this bundle will probably run about $15 via UPS Ground, but we can certainly discuss total cost via email if necessary.
Posted in Photography | Tags canon, digital | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:22:00 GMT
I’m currently knee deep with a complete rewrite for one of our large e-commerce sites in .NET 2.0. Part of this rewrite has us finally getting unit tests into the solution.
For the past week I have been working on trying to get a framework in place that allows us to load suitable test data into the testing db for proper unit testing. For this system it is necessary due to all the intricate relationships between products, styles, skus, orders, order line items, etc.
I have been working on a framework similar to what Rails TDD offers, where you specify the fixtures required but continue to run into a strange issue that causes the code to run multiple times for each fixture, even though there is only one test in the fixture.
In an effort to get something in place for this week I began exploring what Team Agile (found via/from Roy Osherove’s ISerializable blog). This has been coined XtUnit.
Even though I met the min requirements of having COM+ 1.5 support (Windows XP SP2 OR Windows 2003) I was not able to get things to work. At first it turned out that I wasn’t sub-classing ExtensibleFixture but then it didn’t like the version of NUnit I had.
As it turns out the source was provided using VS.2003, compiled against NUnit 2.2.1 (2.2.x for sure, believe it was 2.2.1). I’m using NUnit 2.2.8 at this point so I not only upgraded the solution to VS.2005 but also recompiled using NUnit 2.2.8 and so far I think things are working quite well. The DataRollback attribute is working perfectly.
This will work for now in that it at least ensures that tests are atomic, not affecting other tests. It does not however help me ensure that we have appropriate test data in the system. That currently is handled via a nant script that clones the db structure from our dev db into a new local test db and then a data.sql that is run to load initial lookup data.
To make it easier for anyone struggling with the same issues I am providing the upgraded source as well as recompiled binaries for download. You can get them below.
If anyone can explain to me why when adding an attribute at the class level would cause this code to be executed multiple times (with just one test in the test fixture) I would love to hear about it in the comments.
Posted in Development | Tags agile, database, related, tdd, teamagile | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:37:00 GMT
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been engrossed in the massive tome that is titled The Name of the Wind.
It has been quite a long time since I’ve been so heavily invested in a novel, let along a fantasy novel. Between family and work I don’t often have as much time to spend reading as I would like. This book kept me coming back.
Don’t let the fact that this novel is Patrick Rothfuss’ debut novel, it is wonderfully written and keeps you coming back. I found myself stealing 5, 10, or 15 minutes whenever I could continue moving through this 662 page novel.
This is book one in a trilogy which makes waiting till April for book two to hit shelves the most depressing part.
Next up, another debut novel, this one by Scott Lynch titled The Lies of Locke Lamora. Here’s hoping it’s as good as the reviews have said it is…
Posted in Books | Tags fantasy, reviews | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:09:00 GMT
The other night after getting home from work the kids came rushing in to tell me to get my camera, that there was a bunny in the back yard. So I grabbed my camera w/my 75-300 lense and headed outside.
Sure enough, there he (not really sure if he really is a he) was sitting in the grass about 20 feet away. This little guy was really tiny, in fact the grass was taller then him when shot from a distance of 10-15 feet while laying on the ground.
Ultimately I had to approach slowly and kneel to get some good shots (due to the height of the grass). I only kept four out of the 131 I took but they all came out really good (I think). You can check them all out here.
This photo below is probably the cutest of them all.
Apparently this little guy lives under our deck. He is so small that the grass covers him almost completely, forcing me to sneak up relatively close.
Posted in Photography | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Fri, 24 Aug 2007 23:39:00 GMT
This past Sunday a bunch of us, including my son, spent the day at an air show not far from where I work (or live for that matter). It was a long tiring day but I was able to get lots of good shots. I filled 3gb of CF cards (363 photos total).
I then spent the last couple of days culling out the non-keepers and tweaking the rest. In the end I kept 81, some better then others.
Here are a few of my favorites. To view the entire set, swing over to my Flickr account.
Here the F-18 and classic Corsair do a fly by.
Here the F-16 and F-86 fly-by in what is known as the Heritage Formation.
I hope you enjoy this small glimpse and I really encourage you to swing over here to check out the rest of the photos.
Posted in Family & Friends, Photography | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:26:00 GMT
As part of a mini-vacation I took Thursday and Friday (July 5th and 6th) off to create an extra long weekend.
I’ve been saying for about 6 months now that when the Transformers movie hit the theaters that I’d be going. At first I was going to just take my son because I didn’t think my daughter would care to see it. Turns out she wanted to go too so the wife and I took them both on Thursday morning (a 9:30 showing—nice).
I went into this with pretty high expectations and I wasn’t disappointed. Typically I’m let down when I get this excited about a movie but not this time, this was a typical, blow everything up Michael Bay film. I think the team behind the transformations did an absolutely amazing job. There was only one scene in the entire film that I felt oozed “CGI” and I quickly dismissed it.
I personally feel this did my childhood favorite justice on the big screen. My daughter wanted us to go buy it on DVD, I had to explain to her (and my son) that it wasn’t on DVD yet and they were going to have to wait. I suspect it’ll be on DVD by the end of the summer, and you can bet we’ll be owning it the day it hits shelves.
This is definitely the summer blockbuster to run out and see. “We” give this one 4.5 stars.
Posted in Family & Friends, Movies | Tags transformers | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:24:00 GMT
My wife and I picked up Dave Ramsey’s best-seller The Total Money Makeover about two years ago, read through it incredibly fast and began to work on our debt snowball. The problem was that we continued to add more debt, including a new camera, HD television, replaced my workstation with a Dell XPS 17” laptop, and the biggest addition, a [used] 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan.
It wasn’t until last November that I realized we really were just going through the motions, pretending to be getting out of debt. With the arrival of the New Year, I really got focused.
Every extra bit of money we could muster up, either from selling stuff (mostly on Half.COM) or through bonuses, tax return, and gifts went to the smallest debt we had. Since the beginning of 2007, we’ve managed to cut out nearly ALL unnecessary expenses and so far have paid off nearly $9500 in debt. This includes completely paying off the laptop, my last school loan, and one of three credit cards. Right now, early projections show us being debt free by middle of 2008 but I’m pretty sure that given our current rate of progress, we’ll be able to speed that up. I’m hopeful that we’ll be debt free by March/April of 2008.
The next step after becoming debt free is to fully fund our emergency fund. Once that is done we are going to start saving for a house. After all that (probably in a couple years), I’ll be socking away a large percentage of money into retirement and starting to fund my kids college funds.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags dave, debt, ramsey, snowball | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Kyle Heon
Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:52:00 GMT
I realize that it’s been quite a long time since I last posted something here so I figured now would be a really great time to highlight that while this blog has been quite, I haven’t been doing nothing.
For the past month or so I’ve been taking lots of photos, most of them I’ve pushed up to my Flickr account. If you are family or friends, let me know because I can add you as a friend or family contact so that you can see my private assets.
A few of my favorites are shown below:
Enjoying a tasty (or two) Newcastle Brown Ale.
Exploring depth of field.
Posted in Photography | no comments | no trackbacks
