I've had a great weekend so far, albeit a very techy one (but aren't they all). On Friday I took the plunge and ordered the new tablet PC (sorry Ian, I missed your blog comment by about 4 hours and couldn't backtrack on the order to include you on it :( - My Acer is for sale though ;) ) and that in turn brought about a lot of thinking about my workspace at home, and how I work with the technology I have in general.
I'm a product of marketing I think. I dream of offices inspired by the early Microsoft Office ad's where a smiling exec (female of course) laid on her hotel bed fixing some charts and reports on a laptop using Microsoft Office. When I think of "cool" workspaces, I'm inspired by various ads showing people gleefully hacking away on their notebooks in quiet coffee shops, sunlight streaming in through the Windows while a tall Mocha's sends pleasant whisps of steam into the air beside a deep technical book. In fact, recently I came across a company (Delicious Monster) that has actually realized the dream. They developed a cool app for Macintosh entirely in coffee shops and university cafés. I'm also deeply inspired by the digital hub concept, a single computer that does absolutely everything, from being a productivity platform to a games machine, to managing music playlists, to keeping track of email, schedules and contacts. One machine to bind them all - a modern day Tolkenian fantasy perhaps.
So, the first "first" of the weekend was the realization that with the new notebook coming, and apparently being powerful enough to do everything I need it to do, I can rearrange my office. My office was a mess before, a noisy mess at that with the numerous fans from a server, an alienware desktop, my Dell inspiron and the Acer all doing their bit to contribute to the noise, clutter and heat. With the new machine coming though all sorts of neat things can happen. Heather gets the Dell, which puts the Alienware behemoth out of commission. Also, we're not using the server any more, so this was a perfect opportunity to move it's last function (DHCP server and intrusion detection system) into the router where it belongs. So the server got disconnected. The new Tablet doesn't come with an external drive so I figured I should pick up an external burner for it, and since it only has 2 USB slots and I hate the micro hub I was using I decided to pick up a new hub while I was at. It's still a mess compared to the dream, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was
I really should get rid of those rudder pedals under the desk at some point, since I'm not doing much flight simming these days. All those cables under there can also vanish since the second first of the weekend was the realisation that now every single computing device in the house (including the XBox) is wireless. Yay, no more ethernet.
The poignant thing is though that this is the first time I think I have ever had my desk just the way I really want it to be, with lots of free space for books and reference materials. It's also the last desk arrangement I'll ever have in the UK as we're moving soon.
I also learnt a little about the XBox this weekend. I had an Xbox the day it came out - I was one of the sad geeky types that queued up at Midnight to pick the machine up, spending an obscene amount of money in the process to get a good selection of release day games for the box. Then I sold it a year or so later, when I found it wasn't being used that much.
When a bunch of friends got into playing online with XBOX live I picked up another one, about 8 months ago, and installed it in the office, where it got played to death. Then, as the desk got overly cluttered and I ran out of power points, the XBOX got shifted downstairs again, where it's not not used much at all. So, the thing I learnt is that the value of a games console, and the amount it gets used really is a factor of ergonomics. If I have it in the lounge then I won't use it; the TV is always dominated by the Disney Channel for Ethan, and when he's in bed, Heather's in the office and I don't really enjoy being apart from her. So, now I have space and power points on the desk again, the XBOX is coming back to the office, along with the two new games I bought used yesterday.
I'm resisting the urge right now though. I really have to get my demos done for the VBUG speech I'm giving at Microsoft this week, and I would like to finish the next chapter of the book today. If that all gets done, or if I at least make a big dent in the workload, I'll moving it up and going online for a few hours.
I got a couple of awesome books this weekend as well that are worth checking out if you're the enterprise development/design/architect type
Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Enterprise Integration Patterns
Biztalk Server 2004 Unleashed.
12:09:57 PM 
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