The UltraTech Zone

On Friday morning, July 18th, my wife was rear-ended by a Snapple truck while she was sitting at a traffic light.  As you can see, the minivan took quite a beating from the hit. Thank God, she does not appear to be seriously injured, and none of our children accompanied her for this trip. She's still a little sore from the incident, so ...

Ah, November...  The month where we (at least in the good ol' US of A) remember to be thankful. I have a great deal to be thankful for -- so much so, that I haven't had a moment to breathe this month until this past weekend.  I've had several of these busy spurts throughout the year, but I really can't complain about them. I have a lot ...

When I wrote part 1 of the home network virtualization project, I didn't realize that I actually had an updated network diagram available. I created it last October, but never posted it -- for reasons which completely escape me right now. I suppose that I was waiting until I actually performed the upgrades at the end year before I would post ...

Although I really need to upgrade my network diagram to reflect some major changes since 2006, it is effective enough to indicate the need for server virtualization even on a small network.  I currently have 4 servers which are operational, and another which I want to bring online shortly, but I would be far better served if I put in a couple ...

So much for Autumn... Today was an amazing day for October, and we saw a mostly clear day, with temperatures up to 80 degrees.  As a result, my family and I finally got a great opportunity to put our new Sea Eagle 330 inflatable kayak to good use.  It was a bit overcast at home, but at Shepherd Lake, it was outstanding.  In fact, ...

No, not me...  My wife.  She was able to obtain some tickets, since Oprah is going to be taping a couple of shows in New York this week, and now she's planning to go with my mother, sister and a friend.  Thank goodness she didn't have to pay what these folks did! So, now, she's all giddy about going to the show.  This should ...

This summer, in addition to a vacation at Cape May with my extended family, we also went to Shepherd Lake twice (in June and August), and we had our annual church camp-out at Stokes State Forest.  All in all, we had ourselves some good times this summer. The past few times we've gone to Shepherd Lake, I've rented row boats, which has proved ...

I've been aiming to start a new hobby for some time now:  Remote Control Electric Helicopters.   In searching around for a good starter craft, I began to realize that this was a hobby that could prove to be fairly expensive. Thankfully, it turned out that a colleague of mine was already into this same hobby, and he provided a ...

June has been chock-full of fun, excitement and new challenges.  I have hardly had any chance to breathe -- as evidenced by a dearth of posts to this blog. Hopefully, this weekend I will have a chance to summarize all the excitement, but it involves lots of activities at work and at church.  Last Sunday, we had perfect weather for ...

This week is a period of transition for me.  I'm in the midst of a brief transition between employers, and also some lengthier transitions on the home network. (I really need to shore up some aspects of my home network, and provide a new network diagram.  And I have to finish up some loose ends with technology migrations that I began ...

Today, I had a whole lot of fun riding my bike with my offspring who are ages 11, 7 and 5.  My 5 year old was the last one with training wheels.  Towards the end of last summer, I thought about taking the time to try and teach him how to ride without the training wheels, but on the two occasions we tried it, he spent a lot of time doing ...

I've been meaning to write about this for a couple of months, but I've been sidetracked a number of times.  We bought a VitaMix Super 5000 -- finally -- which we've been using to make shakes, smoothies and ice cream. And juice.  BTW, if you've never used one of these high-powered blenders, then you have no idea how cool these things ...

I'm trying to decide whether this title is more reflective of this post in particular, or the subject matter itself...  Over the years, while participating in various technology forums, mailing lists and newsgroups, I have observed a frequent and disturbing phenomenon.  It generally occurs when someone makes a request for information ...

At the retail level, anyway. And I am no closer to having it installed at home than I was a month ago, when I laid out my grand plans for software upgrades.  I have been heavily involved in a lot of projects lately, both at work and at church, so time management is crucial.  Let's see what February brings! Anyway, back to ...

''Daddy, can you show me how to build a computer?'' That was the request I received today from my 11 year-old daughter.   I guess it helped that I had a whole lot of computer parts laying about, with some unfinished systems.  I've been pretty busy of late, but it's all good busy -- nothing to complain about. I still haven't ...