Time for all of us to confess.  I know that don't do a good job of it.  Once in a while I copy a bunch of files from the hard drive on my PC to a portable USB drive.  I try to do a better job with photos so when I push them to my PC I also put them on the portable drive.  But it is easy to get out of sync.  Well, that is hardly a "backup plan".  I really need to come up with a better strategy.  Scott Hanselman had a post about this topic and it got me thinking.  

I am planning to install Vista in the next few weeks.  Vista seems to have some cool backup features built in so maybe that will help.  Once it is set up I will blog about it again to tell how well it is working.

Isn't it odd that we put a lot of thought into this for our clients and employers yet for our own data we are pretty lazy?  Good luck to us all.

The other night after the Philly.Net meeting I was talking to Peter Laudati about my new blog.  He suggested I check out Windows Live Writer (Beta).  Basically, it is a Windows application that lets you edit/save your blog posts on your PC and publish them too.  It has some pretty cool features that I am pretty sure will make my blogging easier too.

For instance, I added this picture of the Colosseum very easily (yes, I took the photo).  OK, that's no big deal.  But this made it VERY easy to adjust the appearance including the size, border, margins and add the water mark.  Plus, it was easy for me to wrap the text on the side of the picture.  I couldn't do that with my web interface.

A map of Philadelphia!

Another cool feature is that you can add maps and aerial photos in!  This is all done with Live.com. So I added this map.  I tried to do an aerial photo of my house but each time I inserted it, it changed to a picture of someone else's house!  So I guess that is why this is called Beta software.  But otherwise this is a really nice tool.

So if you are blogging, check out Windows Live Writer (Beta). 

It is official.  I am registered for Microsoft Tech Ed.  If you are planning to go, I suggest signing up fast.  Many of the hotels that offer Tech-Ed pricing are sold out.

See you in Orlando in June,

Andy

I recently got a new server, a Dell PowerEdge 2950.  Well actually, it isn't mine.  It belongs to a client so I didn't have to pay for it, but I get to play with it!!!
This baby really cranks.  Of course, I don't often get to play with fast machines like this.  Maybe to you this is no big deal but I am impressed.
Configuration:

• Processors:  2 @ Xeon 2.0 GHz - Each one is Dual Core
• Memory: 4 GB Ram
• Hard Drives: 3 300 GB Drives, SAS.
• Dual Power Supplies
• OS: Windows 2003 Server - 64 Bit.
• A bunch of other stuff!

Gary, our resident network/hardware expert, has got this thing tweaked out too.  It's all set up with RAID and a slew of partitions for stuff like data, page files, temp files, etc.  This should make it perform great. 

I am not used to the speed of this thing.  When we were formatting partitions you could get a sense of the speed.  A 128 GB partition formatted in about 10 seconds!  Note that this was NOT on the "Quick Format" setting.

I just checked the Tech-Ed 2007 site and I noticed that the session catalog is up.  I'd expect changes since Tech-Ed is not until June.  But it is nice to see what is planned so far.

Since today is the last full day of winter, it seems appropriate to blog about the ice storm we suffered through on Friday.  What a mess.  I had no idea how bad the weather was until I left my office.  Luckily, I was warned by my wife to leave early.  As soon as I got outside it was apparent that this was gonna be a bad ride home.  My usual 45-55 minute commute turned into almost 2 hours to get home.  I don't think I had ever seen so many cars on the side of the road.  Anyway, I made it home without any problems.  The snow/sleet/ice/rain continued to come down for a while.  Unfortunately, the wind was blowing in just the right direction because we had a snow drift in front of the door to the house.  It wasn't that deep but it was frozen solid!  Same problem with the back door!  Uh oh, we are stuck in the house.  So I had to climb out the front window.

The snow wasn't that deep but clearing the driveway was a huge pain because it was solid ice!

Welcome to Schwammy Says...

Well, here it is, my Blog!  I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while and I finally got around to getting it up and running.  Mostly, the problem was procrastination on my part.  Setting up the actual blog was pretty easy thanks to dasBlog. 

If A Tree Falls In The Woods And There Is No One There, Does It Make A Sound?

So what is the purpose of this blog you ask?  Good question.  I guess it is just a place for me to rant about what ever I want to.  I'll be blogging about whatever seems interesting to me at the time.  Initially, that sounded like fun until I realized the problem...who am I speaking to?  Wait.  I mean "To whom am I speaking?"  If I am gonna do this blog, I should try to be grammatically correct.  Well I don't know who is listening out there but hopefully in time there will be a crowd.