I haven't posted in a few weeks, but not because I don't have anything to write -- it's because I haven't mastered the art of dividing my time across all needs and wants.
Here are a few thoughts that hint of posts to come:
- I need to write about Strategy, Leadership, and Success, particularly in a corporate context. I have a number of frustrations to put to virtual paper, and hope to do so during May.
- I'll be finishing up my Windows 2008 upgrade in a few weeks, even though Hyper-V will not be fully released for several months. The Release Candidate will have to do for now.
- As much as I have tried to stick to one major social networking site -- LinkedIn -- it seems that a great many of my friends, colleagues and associates are very active members of FaceBook, and so I've been essentially forced to make my presence there more active to keep in touch with them. I'd have to say that the big draw is the wealth of 3rd party applications, of which my favorite is "My Heroes Ability".
- Now that the nice weather is upon us, it's time to plan more trips to the park with the kiddies... It's too easy to get caught up in work and other things, and not enjoy those years where they're still interested in speaking to me!
- HelloTxt is incredibly useful. Far more than I had imagined. I've gotten on board with this whole "status" thing on the social networks...
As reported by ComputerWorld, the latest Service Pack for Windows XP, SP3, is finally available via the MSDN and TechNet download sites.
This is only for the 32-bit version of XP, btw. Users of XP x64 will need to wait for Service Pack 3 for Windows Server 2003 in order to get an update, as the 64-bit version of XP (non-Itanium version) is based on the Windows 2003 code-base.
I would expect this to be the last major software update for the 32-bit Windows XP family, given the Windows support lifecycle, and Microsoft's focus on Vista. That said, the arrival of this service pack is not without some controversy -- especially for the people who don't like Vista.
Over the years, I've enjoyed some great daily comics. I still have several collections of The Far Side, Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, and For Better or For Worse, among others.
All of the aforementioned delight me in one way or another, but the one comic strip that has managed to fully capture the essence of family living is Baby Blues. What Dilbert did for the office, Baby Blues does for the family. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen one of the comics and thought to myself, "Wow! I thought we were the only ones dealing with that!!"
The online archives are awesome. Here is one entry for your viewing pleasure:
Marion Jones, who confessed last year to doping and was stripped of her medals, has left even more victims in her wake because of her participation in various relays.
Because of her absolutely stupid actions, and her disregard for fairness and professionalism, many, many people have been impacted. I always wonder, in these situations, of the people whose lives were altered because they failed to get any medals -- people who might have gone on to get endorsements or other sporting opportunities, but failed to do so, because someone else cheated.
What a tangled web...
Right now, I belong to a large number of social networks (more on that later). For the most part, I'm really only active on LinkedIn, but as more people connect to me on Plaxo and Facebook, my profile has been getting some action on those networks as well.
As expected, the proliferation of such networks is giving rise consolidation and centralized management tools. The one I'm looking at today is HelloTxt, which allows one to provide a status update to all (up to 16, currently) networks at one time.
The need for such tools is only going to accelerate in the near term...