life
New job - Vizioncore
Posted by James Kahn on May 21, 2008 in life
Well, I had my last day at Clariti/S Central on Friday. Finished up with farewell drinks and a BBQ, in true Clariti style. In a couple of days I start my new job - Australia/NZ Systems Engineer for Vizioncore. Should be a lot of fun. Vizioncore have some great products for virtualised environments.
Don’t be surprised if my blog gets Vizioncored all of a sudden!
What We Want vs What We Buy
Posted by James Kahn on December 14, 2007 in life
There is an excellent blog post over at The Simple Dollar on what we actually want vs how we spend our money.
I’ve been thinking along these lines a lot recently. Go read it.
Wet Dogs
Posted by James Kahn on December 13, 2007 in life
Apparently Border Collies are meant to be the smartest dog out there. Why can’t ours figure out that when it’s raining, they can go in the carport, rather than lay in the mud! Bloody hell!
SAN Engineer Appreciation Day
Posted by James Kahn on December 4, 2007 in life
After yesterday’s Mike Patton Appreciation Day announcement over at Dan’s blog, I’ve been inspired to announce today as SAN Engineer Appreciation Day.
Today, spare a thought for the often-grumpy, always-cynical SAN Engineers. Especially if you’re a pre-sales engineer trying to drop an HBA to fit a customer’s budget.
They appreciate gifts of Fibre Channel cables and old servers.
Nokia 6120 + RoadSync: Better than BlackBerry
Posted by James Kahn on November 26, 2007 in life
When up in Cairns on a business trip, I managed to drop (read: snap in half) my company provided flip mobile phone. It was a pretty basic phone, with a couple of annoying little characteristics, such as it’s incredibly laggy interface.
Well, after showing the results of my work to my boss, a new phone landed on my desktop pretty promptly: a Nokia 6120. It’s not particularly expensive, but it is a very, very cool little phone. As well as having all the standard gee-whiz features that phones have these days, such as bluetooth, 3.5G data connectivity and music player functionality, it’s a smartphone in disguise. It runs Symbian S60.
I managed to scour the web for push email functionality for the 6120, and happened upon RoadSync. RoadSync interfaces with Microsoft’s ActiveSync, including full support for push email.
After loading it to the phone, it was less than 5 minutes to set it up. It just works, beautifully. The interface is snappy, phone attractive, and it syncs my calendar and email like a dream.
Battery life and general phone sexiness is better than Windows Mobile. And what’s best, all the BlackBerry boys in the office are jealous ;).
Full-stop-capital-letter
Posted by James Kahn on October 18, 2007 in life
I remember sitting in class when I was six years old, repeating after the teacher - full stop, capital letter. It’s a basic rule for written English.
Here’s a not so universal rule, that I learned in high school - Comma, one space. Full stop, two spaces. It doesn’t bear much relevance to handwriting, but it does on computers. Do it!
One Year in Australia Today
Posted by James Kahn on May 21, 2007 in life
I’ve been living in Brisbane for one year today. Yee-haw, I love this place!
That is all. Thanks for listening.
the perfect workout
Posted by James Kahn on May 15, 2007 in asides, fitness, life
There’s nothing like that feeling of hitting the gym and feeling strong. Every rep slots into place. You finish knowing you’ve put in your best effort. I just had it. Beautiful.
Counteract the Physical Effects of Computer Use
Posted by James Kahn on May 9, 2007 in fitness, life
If you’re anything like me, you spend hours in front of a computer at work, and then spend a bit of time in front of a computer at home as well. Any fool can tell you that this isn’t good for your posture, and wreaks havoc with any number of muscle imbalances that show themselves as inflexibilities, and often, the dreaded back injury. Not to mention that poor posture looks terrible, even if you’re physically fit.
The excellent sports training website Testosterone Nation have released a series of articles about what training you should do in the gym to counteract the effects of sitting at a computer for hours a day, and also provide some practical advice as to what you should do when you’re not at the gym.
The first article, (De)-Constructing Computer Guy, what exercises to do in the gym in place of more popular ones so that your body can correct posture imbalance, rather than exacerbate it.
The second article, (De)-Constructing Computer Guy - The Other 23 Hours, gives a series of tips we can use in the office or at home to prevent injury from all this un-natural sitting.
Back to full strength
Posted by James Kahn on April 16, 2007 in fitness, life
After my back injury in January, numerous physio appointments, training carefully and following a bit of a rehab program, I’m finally back to full strength.
Today I squatted 140kg for 10 reps - the most I’ve ever done - so I think I’ve burst through a plateau with the rehab work I did as well. It feels good to be healthy again. My current training goals are to squat 180kg for 3, and bench press 120kg for 3.
I’m staying away from deadlifts for a while yet.