Trackback – September 2006

Have been posting a LOT in the last few days (hope it continues) – good to catch-up on some posting over the Christmas break.

Kinda interesting about blogs – as well as a public forum for discussing and describing all manner of technical stuff – software, hardware – and some less interesting stuff – in general, there’s a lot of “personal” stuff on blogs.

I’m kinda treating it like a digital diary – so it’s to capture some of the happenings in my life as well as some technical bits (nerdy stuff !) from time to time.

So – I’m going to rattle off some of my happenings for the last few months – so feel free to skip, ALT-F4, or “>” to the next post or blog.

September 2006

As September was a few months ago, I had to check the calendar at home to see what events & activities had occurred.

(1) Music
Fear Factory + Devil-driver + Dry Kill Logic – a metal “feast” being held at The Palace in St. Kilda. I was soooo excited for this gig – with 2 of my favourite bands, and another that I was just getting into.

Dry Kill Logic – blew the crowd away – some great riffs from their newie (the singer said “it’s in stores tomorrow” – but me and my mates were singing every song – if you catch my drift)

Devil-driver – the old lead singer from Coal Chamber – fast, brutal and sooo heavy – never mind that most sings sounded the same – they were great !

Fear Factory – I don’t think I’ve felt more ho-hum about one of my favourite bands, sorry to say. I’ve seen them 5-6 times, and this was the most disappointing. Burton’s voice was off most of the night, and the mix was muddy & sounded dreadful – and no stage “presence” or “show”. Barely any light-show – and no props – not like previous shows. *sigh*

Interesting to note that 2 of the 3 links for the above bands are to “myspace”.

Dry Kill Logic
After recovering from that barrage (pre-arranged day-in-lieu from work), I went along to see Dry Kill Logic at a tiny pub called The Evelyn – was only about 150 people – but great atmosphere.

Kudos to my mate Andy who skipped the encore at INXS (@ The Palais) to make it across to see DKL !

They were great – good to see ’em in a small venue. And Cameron loves ’em too !
Check out their new album – Of Vengeance And Violence – brilliant.

(2) Work
Following an RDP project with Sharepoint and Office 2007, I spent a week or two learning a new product for a project in Sydney.

K2.net 2003 allows for “enterprise workflow” with a GUI driven designer, and more automation & easier integration (point-and-click) than Windows Workflow (WF) – part of .NET 3.0.

One consideration that is immediately apparent – is that WF is free – and K2 is $40,000. But more geared towards Business Analyst roles, and quicker & easier “coding” – so I’m sure you could easily save $40,000 in consultant/developer costs.

Anyway, I had to quickly pick up the in’s and out’s of the K2 IDE and environment, following many of the sample projects and tutorial applications.

Then – off to Sydney for a week. Was hard to leave Cameron & Donna – I had only had 1-2 night away from Cameron – and only 1 night away from Donna (on 2 occasions).

I threw myself into the work, and had a 60-hour timesheet at the end – with a great amount of work to show for only one week.

This included a K2 workflow, 5-6 web controls & pages, 3-4 web services for calling to K2, uploading to Sharepoint (MOSS), and auto-document generation using WordML.

Also, calls to Oracle via a web service, and sending of emails with work-list items.

Was a great project – and great for SDM to open the K2 account, and future work within Sydney. Also, great for me to meet some of the Sydney SDM’ers – nice lads.

I didn’t realise how hard it would be to be away from Donna and Cameron for so long – lucky my days were full. I did some wandering in the evenings – down to the Opera House, and Harbour Bridge – kinda strange on your own though.

Didn’t get home that Friday night till after 9 pm – so wasn’t until Saturday morning that I saw Cameron. He came into bed with us, and Donna said “who’s that ?!?”

His eyes widened, and he babbled “Dadydy !” – and jumped on me. Was great to be home.

One of the best work-weeks in years, and a loving family to come home to.

[Next up – October 2006 – stay tuned !]

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