Back before the invention of the printing press my great, great, great grandfather came to the United States from Bavaria. His name was August Kindl.
At Ellis Island the immigration officials added the 'e'...hence my family's name.
We pronounce it Kindl. Not Kind-el.
Kindl translates to "child" in Bavarian. Those who know me well will find this fitting.
Amazon recently launched their Kindle reading device. Pronounced the same way as my last name. I find that very annoying because I'm constantly thinking people are referring to me but they're not.
I bought a Kindle and have been trying it out for a week. My thoughts:
- Great concept, crappy execution.
- The reading experience is visually great. It really does read well.
- The book buying experience is fantastic. It just works.
- The page flip buttons are the 2nd worst ergonomic design in the history of electronic devices. You cannot pick the device up without accidentally flipping a page, and heaven forbid you accidentally lean on one of the buttons...you'll find yourself several chapters away from where you were with no way of getting back.
- It requires an AC adapter to charge. They should have just done the work to make it capable of charging from USB. Yes, I know it can trickle charge from USB, but only if it has some charge left. I know this because I have lost my Kindle charger. I was able to craft a new one out of an old wall wart I had lying around and a trip to Radio Shack.
I'm taking the Kindl to Hawaii for almost 2 weeks. Normally I take a stack of 5 or 6 books to Hawaii, but this time I'm forcing myself just to bring the Kindl. We'll see how it does on the beach with sand and all...
Kindle means "burn". I hope this kindl doesn't forget sunscreen and kindle his skin while on the beach reading his Kindle.
This was my first Kindle book. That's right Charlie Kindel bought a Kindle. I have to say it's getting annoying having everyone saying my name...
Here's my quick review of Halting State by Charles Stross...
The big idea is an interesting one: the future world where MMORPG gaming becomes so ubiquitous that the following happens
- Humans participate everywhere because their mobiles are powerful enough to get them in the game. Gesture based control with head's-up-displays via eyeglasses.
- The Man uses MMORPGs not only to spy on the public, but to manipulate (and train) them.
- Crimes committed in the virtual realty of a MMORPG can be serious enough to jeopardize national security, and result in murder.
As a person formerly addicted to Asheron's Crack I'm a believer that all the above will come true. Mr. Stross does a fair job of showing us what it may look like.
I found the Scottish accents distracting and was disappointed with the ending. I won't spoil it for you, but I just expected more, given how the story built up.
If you are into hard Sci-Fi, and want a slightly different perspective of what society may be in like in 10 or so years, I'd recommend Halting State.
Today, instead of being the GM for Windows Home Server, I was simply a user...
For the last two weeks my wife has been giving me the gears because the voicemail attachements from Vonage refused to play in Outlook on her computer.
It was one of those weird software problems that defied logic. All other types of attachments opened fine. I could send her an email with a .wav file attached and it would play fine. Opening her mailbox on another PC worked great. But the .wav files from Vonage refused to work on her computer.
I uninstalled Office and re-isntalled it. No joy.
"Ahhh...", I said to myself, "why am I wasting my time on this when I have this product running in my house that is supposed to save time?". Duh.
So I booted her computer from the Windows Home Server Restore CD, choose a backup from just over two weeks ago, and went and put the lights on the Christmas tree.
About 40 minutes later I went back in the Kitchen and the process was done and I exited the wizard. Her machine booted, I fired up Outlook and played one of those .wav file attachments just fine.
Talk about holiday joy! :-)
-cek
Somewhere Henk de Koning unearthed a video of me taken 10 years ago yesterday touting The Component Object model. Back then I was "the COM guy" and I had hair. Egads.
"Don blogged about a video of Gudge explaining COM. This reminded me of an old video I found while cleaning up my office. I promised Don to digitize and publish it. So, here it is. Charlie Kindel on the wonderful world of COM. recorded November 25, 1997.
Charlie 1
Charlie 2
Charlie 3
"
I like to tell people that I have forgotten more about COM than most people will ever know. I also like to remind people that "Monikers are more powerful than you think."
In 1987 I was an intern at IBM Federal Systems Division in Manassas, VA. I was working on testing the software for the AN/BQQ-5D bow-mounted spherical array sonar system for the SSN 688 Class (Los Angeles) fast attack nuclear submarines.
This was shortly after Tom Clancy had written The Hunt for Red October, one of my favorite books of all time. In fact, my "interview" for the internship was almost entirely a discussion about the book and how realistic a picture Clancy had painted of the Los Angeles's sonar system. 
I learned a lot while working at IBM. 99% of what I learned was cool facts and history about submarine warfare from the ex-Navy submariners who were working with me during our testing of the system. The other 1% I learned was the only thing that had anything to do with my future career: I learned I didn't want to work for IBM.
In any case, the experience solidified my interest in submarines and now I read just about anything I can about them.
Last night I finished Ed Offley's Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion.  Here's my take:
Not a great book. It does provide a useful history about the Scorpion tragedy, but does not do a good job of making the authors' case that the Soviets sank her with a torpedo. Too many of the points Ed uses to try to prove his theory are simply not backed with solid evidence.
For example, a key element of his theory is derived from his assertion that the US found the Scorpion's wreckage in early June 1968 with the help of the Soviets. He implies that the only way the Soviets would know where the Scorpion was is if they had something to do with sinking her. However, his only "proof" that the Soviets told the US her location was an interview in the 1980s, with a US Navy Admiral who had retired in 1963, 5 years before the incident. I can think of dozens of scenarios where an old Navy admiral could have "heard" the Soviets helped the US locate the Scorpion. For example, knowing how Navy guys love to shoot-the-*** I can imagine poker game in 1969 where this Admiral and his buddies were speculating on the demise of the Scorpion and someone said "I bet we knew where she was because the Ruskies told us!".  This Admiral later recalled the "speculation" as fact.
This is one example of several I noticed in the book that left me skeptical that there is really any proof the Soviets sank the Scorpion.
I will say, however, that Mr. Offley does make a strong case for the US knowing the Scorpion was lost before they official say she was and that they found her wreckage before they officially said they did.
So the real title of this book should be "Scorpion Down: We don't know why she sunk, but we do know the Pentagon lied about when they knew".
Someday, hopefully, the Navy records of the incident will become declassified and we'll know for sure. But for now, I'm not convinced.
Late last year I "discovered" Karl Schroeder when I read Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga. Recently he released the 2nd book of this series titled Queen of Candesce: Book Two of Virga and I finished it this weekend.
Like the first book I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like the first book, I found a few too many "convenient" plot alignments. But overall, Karl paints an amazing picture of a "world" that is extraordinarily rich and unique.
I am now eagerly awaiting "Book Three"...
Via my regular browsing of blog searches for Windows Home Server related stuff I came across this poor guy's extremely sad story of data loss.
http://adams-allegory.blogspot.com/2007/09/weve-lost-everything.html
First connection: He should have had a Windows Home Server.
Second connection: As if to make himself feel better he adds a funny video from YouTube to his post. The Windows Home Server team has a great sense of humor. (Yes, this is a tenuous connection to be sure, but work with me, ok?)
Third connection: The video in question is a commercial for the Shick/Wilkenson Quattro razor. The codename for the Windows Home Server incubation project was "Quattro".
A conspiracy? Coincidence? You decide.
Johnny Mnemonic, Neuromancer, Count Zero, Burning Chrome. All phenomenal stories. Some of my favorite reads.
The Difference Engine & Pattern Recognition: I never finished them. They just didn't resonate with me.
But I still will buy anything William Gibson writes and give it a go. I just finished his latest novel, Spook Country and here are my thoughts...
In the end, it's a great premise. I won't spoil it for you but the premise is actually pretty funny. I appreciated the subtle humor and the fact that it was exposed to me until almost the very end.
But, overall I felt the book started too slowly, developed too randomly, and then ended to quickly.
Spook Country gets 3 stars from me. A good, worthwhile read, but nowhere near the caliber of, say Neuromancer.
I like to like things somewhat off the beaten path. But when asked what my favorite movie of all time is, like almost everyone else I know who has even a smidgen of taste, I say "Blade Runner".
No need for me to wax poetic about how great it is. I mean it has been around for 25 years now, and if you don't already dig it nothing I say will change your mind.
I was playing a new XBox360 game I can't mention last night and after I finished I decided to poke around the Live Marketplace. I noticed a video from "Comic-Con" with "Blade Runner" in the title. Turned out it was a Q&A session with Ridley Scott, Sean Young, and other members of the cast & crew discussing Blade Runner: Final Cut, a 5 disc set that will be released this December.
View the trailer here.
Update: More great info on www.thedigitalbits.com.
Update: Ridley Scott interview here.
Wow! How did I miss the news of this earlier?!? The 5 disc set includes a newly cut version of the movie ("The Final Cut") with added & extended scenes, added lines, and updated special effects (but no CGI, yay!). Disc 2 includes the original US Theatrical version, the original International Theatrical version, and the Director's cut from 1993. Other discs include a 3 hour documentary with tons of alternate shots of scenes, featureless, and the rare "Work Print Version".
Amazon has the set on pre-order in DVD, HD-DVD, and Blue-Ray form. I already placed my One-Click order for the HD-DVD version!
Name dropping trivia: Darryl Hannah who plays Pris, and her sister Page, were friends with my sisters. In fact my oldest sister Amy lived with Darryl in Telluride for a while.
I just updated my Windows Home Server with
Ed Halloway's PhotoSync Beta 2.
This Add-in for Windows Home Server automatically ensures that all photos stored in a particular folder on your home server are automatically published to your Flickr account.
I have a shared folder on my home server named \\server\screensaverpics. Every time we offload photos from a camera I copy a few of the really great photos to this folder. Then all of the PCs in the house have their screensavers set to the Windows "My Pictures" screensaver pointing to \\server\screensaverpics.
Now that I have PhotoSync automatically publishing that folder to my Flickr account all those great pictures are automatically published to all of my friends and families too.
I've always been a huge fan of Robert Ludlum. I started reading his books when I was in middle school. I don't think the Bourne trilogy are his best works.
I think The Osterman Weekend was my favorite.
But with the Bourne Ultimatum coming out as a movie this week I felt I needed to go back and re-read the series. I frankly do not remember if I ever watched the first two movies or not. But I know I want to see the latest one but I do not want it to "spoil" the books. Hence I must re-read them first.
Today I finished The Bourne Supremacy. Classic Ludlum with great texture, a thick plot, and an ending that is just a bit too tidy. Good stuff though.
Now off to the used bookstore to buy The Bourne Identity. I thought I had ALL Ludlum books in my library in hard back, but I can't find Identity or Ultimatum... Hmmm...
I've been quiet on my blog because I have been waiting to get it upgraded to CS2007. Thanks to Kevin Harder's help I finally got it done. I will be tweaking the look and feel for those of you who do not use a reader, but for now this is what you get.
With this change my ancient and very crusty web server machine is offically retired. This web server is actually a VM running within Virtual Server...
Soma's post announcing Popfly got me thinking. He uses the word "evolution". I say it's a revolution.
Over 25 years ago I was part of a movement in the computer industry and didn't even realize it. I was just a kid doing things on my Apple ][ I didn't realize I had no business doing. I was a hobbyist developer.
A bit later, in college, I wrote some of the earliest freeware & shareware for Windows. I am not ashamed to say I became a complete Microsoft fanboy. By my sophomore year in college I knew I wanted to work at Microsoft. I had gotten sucked into this because of the amazing power Microsoft put into my hands with it's products (primarily Codeview and the Windows SDK) and the fantastic support they provided the "community" (CompuServe forums). They let me help them and I thought that was cool.
My first 9 years at Microsoft was spent 100% focused on 3rd party developers. In 1991 it was my job to make sure WordPerfect was successful porting to Windows. I wrote something like 200 KB articles about the Windows SDK. I was one of the cultish Microsoft Developer Relations Group evangelists. I was "the COM guy". I was in cahoots with dozens of great people who were amazingly passionate about enabling people to do great things with the platform.
And then we lost sight of the independent developer. What happened to DRG? Where was the strong community? Where where the cool products "for the little guys"?
I don't know where they went, or why we lost sight of our roots.
But I do know we have regained our commitment to that community. To you. The enthusiast. The hobbyist. The maker. The dreamer. The kid who doesn't really know that the things you are building are impossible to build.
Silverlight, Popfly, Visual Studio Express, Windows Home Server, Spaces, Expression, XNA, Robotics Studio, blogs.msdn.com, blogs.technet.com, MVPs, MIX, ... this list goes on.
BobMu gets it. Soma gets it. Scott Guthrie gets it. Dan Fernandez gets it. Dare gets it. John Montgomery. I get it. The list goes on.... It's a revolution and we're serious about it. Join us.
See my post over on the
Windows Home Server team blog announcing the availabilty of the Windows Home Server SDK!
I'm getting old and I think some of this newfangled technology stuff is beyond me. But that doesn't stop me from trying to understand (and use it). I learn by doing. I can't learn by reading.
So I started blogging mostly to learn how blogs and blogging really worked. I run 6 servers in my house so I understand how Exchange, SQL Server, Group Policy, etc.... really work.
And now I'm trying Twitter because there is either a reality-distortion-field around it, or it's for real. The only way I'll know for sure is to do it myself. Sigh.
http://twitter.com/ckindel
BTW, guess what my twitter icon is from?
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