Randy Secrist's Blog

Patti just fixed our PS3 issue and saved us about $150 to $200, time, and our save games.  The Yellow Light of Death is purportedly caused by a number of issues; all of which Sony has given very little insight into.  Sony's only official solution is to mail the thing away for 4 to 6 weeks, pay $150, and loose all data.  I'll be keeping this in mind before I purchase a PS4, or anything else large from Sony.

I had an chance this week to attend the JBoss Rules Boot Camp in San Diego.  Having written a rule engine once in my life the new information gave me a new perspective.

Another notable point is I haven't been to the beach recently, perhaps years.  I took some time on the last day to stroll over to the ocean and grabbed this picture.  Amazingly, UCSD has guest wireless out here, which I didn't even know was close to where I was until I popped open the laptop.

Over the last 4 days I learned a lot, met a lot of great people, and hope the medical software community can work together better to provide new an innovative solutions.  Time will tell ...

I wrote this graph editor years ago for a university project, and have used the algorithms and data types numerous times in my career life.  I thought it was time I post this in a public place, so I don't loose it.

Should I upgrade to MT 5 or stay here at 4?  I use postgres as by backend, and I heard support for this was dropped but suspect it might still work unofficially.

In honor of PI day, I took this screen shot of a PI algorithm coded in Java.  Maybe next year, I'll convert this to Objective C.

I've been told software doesn't run on hope; apparently neither does the economy.  Politics is the art of the possible, and seeing this, I ask - can we not somehow do better?

It has been over a year since I have pushed a blog entry to the server running in my basement. I have deferred this largely because I know that:

• No one reads my blog. This is especially true when it has been inaccessible for over a year.
• My network had grown into a complex beast, and I was loath to to work on it.  By the time I cleaned all this up, I unplugged four routers which I had no longer been using.
• Some of the info I needed to point my domain to my new IP address had been lost due to disk corruption prior to upgrading my server a few years back.

In over a year, I have been working hard, and resting and playing hard on weekends.  Over the last few months, Patti and I decided to consolidate all of our TV, internet and phone bills into a single bill. We ended up going with Comcast even though they may not have stellar customer service.  However, it does save us about $80 a month compared to what we paid before.  Some of this may disappear after the first year, but we can evaluate this decision then.  I do miss the nice DVR interface that we had with Dish Networks tho, but I'll get over it.

We recently sold our old car, and bought a bigger one for planned future family growth. After Patti got done with cleaning it, we were tempted to keep it since it looked so good!

Summer is coming and we are looking forward to the warm weather, home improvements, and spending time together as a family. Speaking of family, here we are!

While watching the coverage tonight, I ran across the following links:

Coverage of a possible threat from skynet.  I knew the election machines should have been FOSS.

Math is hard.  This is a reference to the office, but has also been a running joke at work.  Follow my links, and you might understand why.  If not, well - perhaps it was a lame joke.  BTW - I love some of the creative ytmnd's out there.

I've also known that Mr. Obama has a profile on Linked In (a popular networking website) for some time now, but tonight I decided to man up to see if he would accept my invitation to join my network.  I doubt he will, but - who knows?

Just showing my Dad how to create an entry.  He wanted me to link his blog - so hold on while I go look it up.

After a quick Google search, we located it and linked to it here.  I can't think of any other way to show him how to create an entry using Movable Type, so please disregard this entry!

Last Monday, we added a new member to our family.  The baby is a girl, weighed in at 8 lbs 15 ounces, and is 21 inches tall.  The name we have chosen for her is Autumn Elizabeth Secrist.  For the hardcore engineers out there, her initials are AES.  (Look it up!).

Check out the amazing engineering work to get all three children in the back of the car at the same time.  (Note, this is all legal as we have used boosters and car seats!).

As you can see, we are very happy to have her here.  Hopefully, we can find a way to get some sleep.