Paul Ballard's Weblog

Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

After just over a year of living in Incredible India, my family and I are only days away from packing everything into boxes and heading home to the United States.  It’s been a wonderful experience made even better by the great friends we’ve made.  We’re going to miss the ex-pat community as well as our native Indian friends.  Okay, we probably won’t miss the multiple daily power outages and the mosquitos but after the swelling goes down and we get used to no longer having to listen for the backup generator to kick on, all of those nuisances will seem as minor as they truly are.

I especially want to thank my teams.  Together we’ve gone from hours spent toiling day and night in a run down office in west London to hours spent toiling day and night in Bangalore.  I know it hasn’t always been fun, but it’s never been boring.  And mostly it’s been a great honor for me to work with all of you and to call you “my teams”.  I hope that you have all learned much but I want to remind you of a few things you’ve heard from me before so that you remember them after I’m gone.

1. You’re better than you think you are.  Make big promises, push yourself.  You never know what you can do until you remove your own limits. 
2. Always do the right thing.  It’s one thing to know what the right thing is, but entirely another to have the strength not to bow to pressure and actually do it.  Don’t let other people push you into doing things you know aren’t right for our systems.  Remember, it always costs less to do it right the first time.
3. Keep learning.  You’ve chosen an exciting industry to work in but it requires that you constantly learn new things.  Don’t let what you do today be the same things you did yesterday.  Your code/tests/designs should improve with every iteration, every release.

Thank you again for all your hard work and best of luck in the future. 

Paul Ballard

Well, the MVP Summit started today and I’m starting to see both blogs and pictures come out.  Sadly, this is the first one since becoming an MVP that I’ve missed.  The distance and expenses of getting to Redmond from London were just too much for me to overcome, to say nothing of the piles of work to do here at BT.  But even though I’ll miss the festivities I’m sure my MVP brethren and sistren (is that a word?) will have a great time and hopefully know that I’ll miss seeing them this year.

Last night was an excellent example of the pleasant surprises you find when moving to a new place.  I usually watch the ball drop in Times Square on Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve and often thought how great it would be to be in the crowd cheering as countdown reached 0 and the new year started.  That desire has been replaced though with what I saw last night.  Now I want to be a part of the 700,000 member crowd gathered along the Thames counting down to 0 followed by an awe inspiring near silence as we listen for the tolling of midnight by an illuminated Big Ben in the distance.  This was followed by the biggest, most impressive fireworks display I’ve ever seen, even if it was just on TV.  They launched fireworks from several floating barges, at least two moving speedboats, and directly from the London Eye.

That was New Year’s in London and next year I will be on the bank of the Thames, freezing my arse off with the rest of the Londoners to see this amazing show in person.

I am once again honored to announce that I have received a Microsoft MVP (Visual DeveloperVisual Basic) award for 2008.  Much thanks to Akim and Vicki my new MVP Leads here in the UK.

As I look back to when I made a similar announcement last year I would never have imagined the events that have lead me to where I am today.  My wife and I started 2007 on the losing end of a bitter and expensive custody battle for two children who we felt needed our help.  At the end of March, I wrapped up one of a seemingly endless stream of consulting projects, this one having me travel full-time during the week to Houston while still living in Dallas.  After fifteen years of being an independent consultant, I was ready for something new.  It was just about that time when a friend sent an email that his company was looking for people in London and New York.  I half jokingly asked my wife if she’d want to move to London, to which she fatefully said “Sure, why not”.  That one statement would lead to the end of my consulting practice and me taking a full-time job for a firm who moved my wife and me to London.

Things didn’t go well at first, the adjustment to living in London was a lot harder than I expected and things went bad quickly with the new job.  But things are much better now.  I have a new job that might be one of the most challenging positions I’ve ever had.  We finally found a place to live and managed to get moved in after more than three months of living out of suitcases.  I still miss my family and friends and also my dogs Maggie and Libby.  But since coming to Europe, I’ve been to Spain twice, I’ve driven across the whole of France, and visited Paris twice.

Looking forward to 2008 it’s tough to say what the year will have in store.  My new job is going to have me hopping, but I do have plans for getting more involved with the local developer communities.  I am looking forward to adding Italy, Greece, and maybe Prague or St. Petersburg to my list of adventures.  And I am looking forward to a trip home to see family and friends as well as my fellow MVPs at the MVP Summit in April.  All in all, I think its going to be a very good year.

My good friend and native Texan Noah Coad recently wrote a post entitled “You Know Your In Texas When” highlighting the sights and mostly tastes of Texas that stood out during his visit with family over Christmas (Noah works for Microsoft and now lives in Redmond).  Being a former Texan who transplanted himself even farther away than the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t help but make the opposite comparisons in my new home (which for those of you who didn’t notice the picture above is London, UK).

• Its December and the sun goes down around 3:30pm.
• You can’t see across the street for the thickness of the fog.
• Very few people say ”Merry Christmas”, preferring instead to say ”Happy Christmas”.
• Instead of watching NFL Football, you watch “The Great Escape” but aren’t entirely sure why.
• The local “Barbecue” joint, and I use that term generously, has a full page “vegetarian” menu
• The women are amazingly beautiful but with fewer blondes and slicone “enhancements”
• A drive of 70 miles from London to Felixstowe today left my wife and I physically and emotionally exhausted
• The vehicles are tiny, but with better headroom than 90% of all US cars.  Go figure.
• There are NO parking spots, compact or otherwise
• As opposed to a statue of a somewhat unpopular one-term president that everybody knows about, you see a statue of a hugely popular historical figure that you’ve never heard of.
• Mexican food here is baaaaaad.  How in the name of Guadalupe do you have Mexican food with no beans?
• While shopping at the local Waitrose for a Christmas ham you end up settling for a Gammon Joint which in fact turns out to be ham.
• Bluegrass music is not played here ever, I’m pretty sure there’s a law.  Country music is rare.  Dance music and R&B are everywhere.  You dream about XM Radio.
• It seems the younger population outnumbers you about 100:1.  Either London is a very young city or I’m getting very old.
• Gas (Petrol actually) is ~£1.20/l or roughly $9.00/gallon.
• Restaurant servers barely acknowledge your existence.
• You’re 4500 miles from your friends and family.

Many of you may have seen the recent game of blog tag going on called "5 Things…".  I got tagged by David Walker from Tulsa and so here are some things about me that you probaby don't already know.

1. I was born in Xenia, OH.  Weather fans may remember this as the site of the worst tornado disaster in history.  More than 30 people died, over 1100 people were injured, and over 1000 homes were destroyed by an F5 tornado on April 3 of 1974.  My family however had moved from our home there to the suburbs of Tampa, FL only 2 months before.  The high school my brother attended, the stores my father had owned, and even our house were all flattened.  Talk about dodging a bullet!
2. Along with my various Microsoft certifications, I have a few other that are considerably more interesting.  For example, I have a US Sailing Keelboat certification for up to 44' yachts and have sailed 30'-40' yachts on the Chesapeake Bay, Tampa Bay, San Diego Bay, and Lake Michigan.  Now that I live in Texas, I don't get much of a chance to sail but I still love it and dream of sailing the Caribbean when I retire (or sooner).  I also have a PADI Open Water diver certification.  I haven't done a lot of diving though, but I do have a picture of me getting an underwater kiss face-mashing from a dolphin in Cozumel.
3. I am a graduate of numerous programs from Landmark Education, including the Landmark Forum.  For those of you who haven't heard of Landmark Education, they offer an amazing educational series that opens your eyes to new possibilities for your life.  My current career as a .NET nerd is a direct result of what I learned about myself in these programs. 
4. I met my current wife Susan in a chat room on Match.com.  She mistook me for somebody else she was talking to and started up a conversation.  I read her profile where she listed one of her favorite activities was sailing.  I immediately went back to the chat screen and typed "You like sailing?  Will you marry me?"  The rest as they say, is history.
5. While I travel extensively for conferences and work, I don't like to fly.  What this means is that I have traveled on every major route that Amtrak has, from Boston to Seattle and everywhere in between.  In June of last year, I put 3500 miles on my car in less than seven days.  I live in Dallas and can be in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and even as far as Seattle and New York in a weekend.  I will admit, I have been known to exceed the highway speed limit. 

So that's it for me.  I'll tag some others when I have more time to investigate who has and has not already gotten bit.

I am honored to say that I have received the Microsoft MVP (Visual DeveloperVisual Basic) award for 2007.  I want to thank Ed Hickey, my MVP lead, for once again considering my efforts in the community worthy of recognition. 

This time last year I mentioned that I had lots of community projects planned.  Some have come to fruition, such as speaking at Tech-Ed and other conferences last year.  A few haven't, or at least not yet.  Such is the life of the working consultant I guess.  But just like last year, I do have some things planned and look forward to another great year.

Santa Claus, in the form of my beautiful wife, brought me a new Sandisk Sansa e270R for Christmas this year, and I must say that it truly rocks!

I’m a huge music fan with tastes ranging from early live recordings of Louis Armstrong to my latest favorite Panic! At the Disco’s CD ‘A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out”.  I have a decent CD collection but find that by the time I hear enough of a CD to decide to purchase it, that I am ready to move on to something else.  Hence I always seem to be looking for something new to listen to that I don’t own already.  That is why the Rhapsody music service is so great for me and why I love my new Sansa player.

Rhapsody lets me select the artists or albums I want to listen to just like any other online music store.  But the feature I use most is what they all “Channels”.  Based on their original radio station concept, you can now listen to Channels based on any number of criteria.  For example, while listening to Concrete Blonde’s “Mexican Moon”, I clicked the “Concrete Blonde Radio” button.  This queued up a playlist of Concrete Blonde songs as well as songs by several other groups who are in the same genre as Concrete Blonde.  Listening to this channel led me to discover Cowboy Junkies and another musical love affair was born.  I can also create channels from scratch by entering in 5-10 artists and letting it build the playlist with songs from those artists and others like them.  And of course if I don’t like the song that’s playing I can just skip right past it.

The Sansa Rhapsody (as denoted by the “r” in the model number) came with about 500 songs preloaded on its’ 6 Gigabyte drive.  Even better though it also came loaded with about 12 preloaded channels like “Classic Rock Vault” featuring CCR, Rolling Stones, and Boston.  Each channel contains about sixty songs with some being shared by multiple channels.  I can add and remove channels using the desktop application and when I sync up my player it will automatically sync those channels as well.  This way I can always have something new to listen to without having to buy the CD.  If I hear a song I really like, I can click the scroll wheel and add it to my personal library that way it’s always available to be played.  And all of this without ever actually buying the song which I can also do from the player.

Having read reviews and raves about the Zune, I have to say the only feature I’m at all envious of is the ability to share a song wirelessly.  But unless you happen to work at Microsoft, how likely are you to run into somebody else with a Zune on a regular basis?  The size of the Zune make it considerably less desirable as the Sansa is about as big as two Nano set on top of each other.  It has a nice clear color screen that while I probably wouldn’t watch a video on it, is more than sufficient for the music menuing system.  It also has an FM receiver with the ability to record as well as a built in voice recorder.

All-in-all, it’s a great little gizmo and a wonderful Christmas present!  Thanks Susan!!

Let’s say that against your better judgement and the urging of your closest family members you do the unthinkable and actually purchase a retail computer from HP.  Make absolutely sure that you take any driver CDs or files from hidden partitions and burn them onto 10 different CDs.  Put one in a bank deposit box, send 5 of them to your closest friends, and bury the rest in your yard!  Because if you ever lose them,  you’re going to pay!

I recently rebuilt my shiny HP MediaCenter.  I was able to find drivers for most things but the sound card was a problem.  It’s an OEM Audigy 2 ZS card.  So I did like any good nerd and went to HPs site to download the drivers.  But they weren’t there.  I then went to the ultimate Internet authority Google only to find dozens and dozens of comments from other people like me in the same situation.  The drivers are not available online.  Feeling annoyed already I decided to attempt to bridge cultural borders and call HP’s customer support.  Here is how that call went…

Me:  Hi, I’d like to get the drivers for my Media Center’s sound card.  Can you tell me where to download them?

HP:  If you’d like to order a Recovery CD, I can forward you to our parts department.

Me:  I don’t need to recover my PC, I just want to install the drivers.

HP:  It appears that your computer is out of warranty.  If you’d like, a technician can help you install the drivers but there will be a fee.

Me:  I don’t need help installing them, I just need to know where they are.

HP:  I’m sorry sir, you’ll have to order a Recovery CD or pay for a technician to help you install them.

At this point the conversation devolved into something not appropriate for publication even in a blog.  Angry but not stopped, I decided to go to my local retailer where I bought the PC and ask them if they have a copy, since they also do repair work.  They said even they would have to order the drivers.  So my last recourse, while a bit sneaky, was to take a USB key to the media center PCs they have on display and look for one with the Audigy sound card.  But alas, the new PCs don’t use the same sound card.

Why, after I’ve already purchased the hardware should I have to pay for the software to make it work?  Software I already own a legal right to use?  Why would any company intentionally hinder their customers use of their product by hiding away the drivers?  Because they can.

I recently needed to reinstall the Java Runtime environment on my desktop in order to view sites with Java Applets.  When I went to Sun’s download site, I got the familiar Windows XP information bar saying that the site was attempting to install an ActiveX control and the download wouldn’t proceed without it.

I find it rather amusing that I would need to install an ActiveX control in order to download the runtime environment who’s most common use is to avoid the need for ActiveX controls.  But maybe that’s just me.