Since today is the 100 day mark since I posted Looking Forward 2008 I figure I would go over and review some of the things I have done on that list and the modifications to it.

Gaming

Gaming has been pretty light this year. I did drop my subscriptions to WoW and Tabula Rasa, I am glad I am subscription free until Age of Conan is released, which I have already pre-ordered. Hellgate: London has been taking up some time now that there is a crew for me to run around with. As for PC gaming in general, I don't think I will really be purchasing that much since most games will head to consoles first or there will be some horrible DRM(see  here) to deal with. Consoles have as well been pretty light as well so far. Rock Band is always bringing me back with the DLC content and with GTA IV released last week it my GTA OCD is back with 100% looming at the end of a dark tunnel. I'll get around to a PS3 once MGS4 is released and finally move up to Blu-ray. I still have not picked up a Wii only because it just something that I know would collect dust in between parties. I just can't see myself sitting around playing the Wii like I do with my Xbox 360. So as for the list I created earlier.

• Super Smash Bro Brawl (Wii) - Saw it, not interested unless for parties. NO BUY.
• Spore (PC) - EA's new DRM has put me off. NO BUY.
• Age Of Conan (PC)  - Seeing as a lot of LV friends are interested I have preordered it. BUY.
• Warhammer Online (PC)  - WoW Clone. NO BUY.
• Metal Gear Solid 4 (PS3) - This is the reason I am getting a PS3. BUY.
• Splinter Cell: Conviction (X360)  - Meh so far. NO BUY.
• Star War: The Force Unleashed (X360) - I loved the euphoria engine in GTA IV. BUY.
• Prototype (X360) - Delayed to next year but still a going to get it. BUY.
• Ghostbusters (X360)  - Everything so far makes me want to buy but I'm in a wait and see mode. WAIT.
• White Knight Chronicles (PS3) - Still nothing new about this but I am looking forward to it. BUY.
• Fallout 3 (PC) - Probably only one of two PC titles I will buy this year. BUY.
• Left 4 Dead (PC) - I will wait for reviews but it is still on the buy side. BUY.
• Battlefield Heroes (PC) - Its free. DOWNLOAD.

Events

Since neither of the two events have happened yet there really isn't much to say. I did move into a new home and I love it so far. Nice to have a desk again and to have some work area. It's in a decent area and the drive from and to work is great but the neighborhood is a bit noisy and the damn dog next door is a yappy little poodle. Hate poodles.

Tech

I did finally get my home network moved over to Windows Server 2008. I rebuilt my VM host machine as a 2008 AD, DNS server and virtualized with the Hyper-V from 2008 three servers; IIS7 server, SQL Server 2008, and a development machine. I still need to install Visual Studio 2008 and everything is set. I also have  Sharepoint services running but I haven't opened it out to the cloud just yet. I need to work on securing it first.

I have not tried the latest release of Ubuntu yet since I don't really have a machine right now to install it on but I hope to get to that sometime in summer.

Movies

Seen a few here and there.

• Cloverfield - Saw it and it was decent for a drama movie but not really a monster movie.
• Jumper - Didn't see, it goes to Netflix
• Diary of the Dead? - Still didn't see yet. Netflixed
• Teeth (HA) - Still have not seen this one either. Netflixed
• Vantage Point - Didn't really want to see this.
• Be Kind Rewind - Never had the time. Netflixed
• Run, Fatboy, Run - Saw this and was hilarious but just not as funny as Hot Fuzz or Shawn of the Dead.
• Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - Still on the fence about seeing this. Just seems to over the top.
• Iron Man - Amazing is all I have to say. Can't wait for Avengers and Iron Man 2.
• Speed Racer? - I'm just not sure about this one either.

As for the other movies, the more expensive things get this year the more I just want to wait for Netflix to get it. I love Netflix. Unless its a group outing I don't really plan on seeing the other movies in theaters.

SSIS always tries to validate my work almost like its validating if I should live.

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I wonder if one day SSIS will kill me when I'm not valid anymore.

Damn it I want to get Windows Server 2008 in my hands so I can finish my network.

I've been meaning to setup Sharepoint Services 3.0 in my network so I can have some central storage of documents and OneNotes. Right now though they way that I have my VM server setup its hard for me to get a reliable network while my Active Directory server is virtual. I hope that once Server 08 is released I will redo my virtual host as a AD server with VMware, then virtualize the SQL Server, Web Server and Dev server. *blarg* Hate sitting on a project and not getting close to done.

In other news thanks to Dell for the 20% discount to cameras. I've been able to purchase that Canon XTi for much less than other retailers. And I found a great deal on Craigslist for a 28-135mm Image Stabilizing lens. Its been a while since I have been out hobby shooting so I should have some nice shots up at Flickr soon enough.

/Rant On

The Macbook Air is in my opinion pointless. Why would such a debilitating machine exist. There is no way to replace the battery, especially in an emergency situation or a long flight to Syndey. No more than 2GB of RAM. Only 1 USB port and no ethernet. It seems just like it should have been called Mac Extender. All its really good for is extending the work of a desktop for a limited amount of time. 

Don't get me wrong I'm not mad at the Macbook Air I was just expecting Macbook Pros to go on to Penryn at MacWorld. From what I read that there was some issues with a temp sensor and its been pushed back. Oh well not likely that I would replace my Santa Rosa MBP anytime soon, the damn thing is too expensive to replace each year.

/Rant Off 

I once again got a chance to go to CES again and it was a decent time. Nothing really blew me away this year other then seeing a playable version of Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3. Enjoy the pictures.  

Well this will be the gobbler year.

2007 in Review

    August was my busiest month. Being in Las Vegas only 8 days of that month I was in Black Hawk(CO), Vicksburg(MS), Kansas City(MO), St Charles(MO), Los Angeles(CA), Seattle(WA), Portland(OR), and Bloomington(MN). During that month I had taken  9 flights, 1 train, 3 rental cars. Some of my favorite events happened that month, I was at PAX 07, Minnesota State Fair, and an Oregon county fair.

    I have picked up quite a few new skills this year in MSSQL05. Especially within SSIS. I also am getting very interesting in getting some SSAS done in the coming year especially now that Excel 2007 has some very interesting new functions in the world of Business Intelligence.

  More...

I was in Orlando, FL last week at a SQL Server Integration Services course taught by Brian Knight. I have to say that was probably the best technical training class I have been to in a while. I was at a general SQL Server 2005 course earlier in the year and it was fairly generic and poorly taught. I wish I could have picked up a more targetted course.

As for the SSIS course I learned so much and found so many flaws in how I was doing SSIS before. I have to go back to some of my older packages and redo some of the control flow. I also have quite a few new packages in my mind that I don't know where to begin. I'll have some new backup SSIS packages to create as well as some new automations for marketing. If you would like to read up on SSIS, Brian Knight has written a couple books for Wrox. The one he gave to us in class is the Expert SQL Server 2005 Integration Services book.

Ok so I like Visio and I like to diagram my tiny little network sometimes. Here is the latest version.

As you can see I am a heavy Microsoft user. I like it for what it does and it does what it's suppose to do.

Some notes

1. I used to install everything on one server; IIS, SQL, VS2005. But with VMware being free I decided to get one larger box and virtualize all of the servers into services into separate virtual servers.
   
2. I know that using eval beta Windows Server 2008 is silly for a "production environment" but so far Windows Server 2008 is very stable and the new interface and management module is very slick to use and easy to read.
   
3. Once Windows Server 2008 is released I'll change the VM Host from 2003 to 2008 and have AD on the VM Host as well. AD as a VM is damn silly right now.