It's the little things that make me hate Solaris

It's the little differences in Solaris 10 that really make it hard for me to feel comfortable in my new production environment. So in every distro of Linux going back as far as I can remember, if you want to schedule a cronjob to run every 5 minutes you would format the crontab entry something like this:

*/5 * * * * ~/my-awesome-script.sh

But in Solaris, trying to load this into your crontab generates a syntax error. Instead, you are expected to do something like this:

0,5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45,50,55 * * * * ~/my-awesome-script.sh

Why? Because Solaris 10 is still running a cron that's older than dirt. It's the little things that are starting to make me really hate Solaris.

Reflections on "A Memory of Light", the last novel in The Wheel of Time

Yesterday I finished reading "A Memory of Light", the last book in The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and +Brandon Sanderson. 

A little over fifteen years ago +Jason Christ introduced the epic WoT series to a skinny Freshman student who had just started working together at a small University tech department. Jason carried a hefty hardback, and the characteristic cover-art of Darrell K. Sweet caught my curiosity, as I had read and loved the Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien since my mother had read to me The Hobbit as a small child. While I was a bit skeptical that any other author could come close to the same depth of character and the scope of their world and plots, I took the recommendation and dove into the first 6 novels that were available at the time. There may have been a few hundred slow pages in the middle, but overall Robert Jordan's vision well met the expectations set by the truly great first volume, "The Eye of the World".

To avoid being too spoiler-ish, for now I will refrain from jumping into a critique of specific plot points in AMoL. But I can say that it was gripping, emotional, mostly satisfying, and sometimes intentionally exhausting end to the series. Brandon Sanderson did a great job of picking up where Robert Jordan left off, and crafted a balanced, well-paced and compelling conclusion to the struggles of characters that readers have seen grown from small-country-folk into complex personalities of nearly deistic powers. The conclusion of the Last Battle between the forces of good and evil felt genuinely climactic, while allowing for a good resolution to *most* of the plot lines that had been building across thousands of pages and in our imaginations for years.

I certainly looked forward to reading this last entry in the series, but to paraphrase Robert Jordan it did not feel as much like The Ending, but it was an ending, and I hope that The Wheel of Time might someday come back around to us again.

New city, new focus

This month has been full of changes for my household.

First, I accepted and started my new job with BJC HealthCare in St. Louis, MO. My official title is "Senior Analyst", I am working on the Healthcare Informatics team at the Center for Clinical Excellence, and my primary function is Java development.

Second, my wife, Natalie, the two kids and I have moved from Chicago to St. Louis. We are currently staying with family in the area. We are happy to be closer to Natalie's family in the area, but will miss the other Bishops in northern Illinois that we leave behind.

Our condo in Chicago is (hopefully) in the final stages of selling, so Natalie and I have started the process of looking at apartments and house shopping in the neighborhoods around my new office.

At the time I am writing this, I am well into the third week at my new job, and am wrapping up my first project. It's nice to feel challenged and productive! BJC is a great organization, and the staff are very knowledgeable and professional, but maintain a flexible and friendly environment. So far the job has been great, and I feel a very good fit for me personally and professionally.

My posts on geekmode.com will likely take a turn to more enterprise development topics, and I already have some material to finish writing about some of the inherent benefits and nagging challenges of using hibernate as a data abstraction layer in Java.

So as usual, thanks for following geekmode.com, and stay tuned for more!

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean coming to the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 and Prime TF201

ASUS stated yesterday that the official Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update will be rolling out to two of the ASUS Transformer Pads over the next two days.

There are reports over at XDA that the update has been rolling out to the ASUS Transformer Pad Prime TF201 starting early this morning.

I very recently picked up the ASUS Transformer Infinity TF700, and I absolutely love it, but felt a bit snubbed that the TF300 received the Jelly Bean update before my newer model tablet. It really is a slick device, and nearly a laptop replacement with the attachable keyboard-dock. I will be very excited to get the Jelly Bean goodness of Google Now and Butter UI running on my Infinity when it rolls out tomorrow.

UPDATE: XDA is reporting that the Jelly Bean update started rolling out to TF700's this morning. I can confirm this, as I finished installing the update myself minutes ago. I will try to post my impressions of the update soon!

--
Original Press Release from: https://www.facebook.com/ASUS
Via: http://www.talkandroid.com/133753-asus-confirms-jelly-bean-for-transformer-prime-and-transformer-pad-infinity-coming-soon/

"I am the 99%", the overlooked Android fragmentation story

When most people talk about OS fragmentation on Android devices, they usually are talking about vendors who are slow to push out updates to their older devices. More rarely I've heard mentioned the less-than-technical end-users who never bother to install available updates. I've personally been affected by both: Sprint is less than stellar at making their Sense UI updates to Google releases to my last two cellphones, and I am constantly reminding my friends and family of the advantages to getting updates to their phones that are available. For the latter, I've ended up being the guy actually installing the updates for them.

But I think there is an untold story here about a growing percentage of Android enthusiasts who are literally being forced to stay behind the curve. Insert "Help, help, I'm being repressed!" quote here.

I am a techie. I am an Android geek. I am an avid CyanogenMod follower, and simply must install the latest patch, update and sometimes even follow nightly builds when they are available (and arguably stable).

I am still running Gingerbread because Sprint (and now officially CyanogenMod) do not plan to release an ICS or Jellybean update for my device. 

I would spend my hard-earned cash and a lunch break to go buy a new Android smartphone today, but I am still months away from the end of my 2-year contract with Sprint. 

I realize there are some GSM providers that contact you to a SIM card instead of a single device, and that's great for them. But Sprint is largely a CDMA provider, so that isn't an option for me and anyone else who can't simply swap a SIM into a new phone and go. Sprint is literally making it impossible for large populations of their customers to benefit from the latest that Android has to offer by refusing to provide device updates, and making it cost-prohibitive to purchase new phones before the 2-year contractual waiting period is over.

I am one of the 99% not running the latest Android OS because I am contractually obligated to stay there until the end of 2012. Doesn't that seem like a bad business model for Sprint?

Programming is not Algebra... except when it is.

Programming is not Algebra: http://andy.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/programming-is-not-algebra/
... except when it is.

I loved reading the comments/discussion that followed this post.

CyanogenMod 7.2 official release!

The official release of CyanogenMod 7.2 for Android is out!

http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/cyanogenmod-7-2

And yes, I already have it installed on my HTC EVO 4G.