It’s Christmas! …kind of?

Well Christmas has come and gone yet again. This year was definitely unique for me, let’s see… pregnant wife on bed rest due to a herniated disc in her back, more snow on the ground then in recent memory, no Cole family tradition of pizza and appetizers on the 24th with presents and board games afterwards, no tree up at the house or lights in the yard and what turned out to be a 60 hour marathon of emergency server support for a client.

The crazy thing is that I still had fun, got some awesome loot and feel spoiled, well almost, because of all the wonderful things I have in my life today. Christmas has always been a time of reflection for me, more so than New Year’s. I got to hang out with Lynn, Cosmo and Lynn’s family, eat some really great food (the highlight was the salt-encrusted prime rib, it was so awesome I wish I took a picture, thanks Leah) and stay warm inside while watching the snow fall. I hope everyone out there got to spend some time with their loved ones and had some well deserved rest and relaxation.

Here are some of the “geek.loot” highlights:
TomTom, SwissFlash, Keurig, Scottevest, RPSLS TShirt

Can’t wait to meet you Evie! With all the kicking around your doing on Mom I am almost certain we have created the next Olympic star soccer player.

T8DESIGN Changes Name to T8 Webware

T8DESIGN Changes Name to T8 Webware

Financial Web strategy firm introduces new name to better reflect full scope of offerings, broadened expertise

Cedar Falls, IOWA, Oct. 26, 2009 – T8DESIGN, a provider of Web development, management and hosting services for the financial industry, today announced it has changed its name to T8 Webware. The new name more accurately reflects the full range of T8’s Web services as well as the company’s overarching strategy that focuses on providing financial institutions with a holistic, constantly connected Web experience.

“T8 originally began as a design and consulting company, but as our clients and their consumers’ needs for Internet tools evolve, we have identified an opportunity to completely restructure customer experiences on the Web,” explained Wade Arnold, CEO of T8 Webware. “With sophisticated yet simple content management tools, any size financial institution can leverage its Web site as another channel to position cross-sell opportunities to its customer or member base.

“We believe that the [new] name, T8 Webware, better encompasses the comprehensive Web experiences we deliver to our customers, and also opens the door for additional functionality as we continue to grow the digital solutions we offer.”

T8 Webware provides its customers with Web sites that are custom-designed to each financial institution, never derived from a template. The company offers Web site development, hosting and design and remote backup services. FREEDOM8, its content management system, additionally enables financial institutions to effectively update and alter their Web sites’ text and images. The tool’s ease of workflow allows T8 Webware customers to maintain an active Web presence, therefore improving their online traffic and organic search results. All of the company’s Web sites are mobile optimized, offering financial institutions’ customers the instant information that they need in an easily accessible format.

About T8 Webware
T8 Webware is a strategic Web development, management and hosting firm that caters specifically to financial institutions. The company provides progressive, non-template driven Web sites to more than 150 banks and credit unions, all of which are mobile-enabled. T8 Webware’s philosophy is to help financial institutions leverage their most powerful marketing tool, their Web site, to drive new business and build an online marketing presence. Most customers experience an ROI within months because of cross sales, while Web traffic is also dramatically improved.

The company’s content management system, FREEDOM8, enables financial institutions to provide updates to their Web sites by any authorized user, from any location at any time, while enforcing FFIEC guidelines and FDIC functional compliance. The user interface reflects a word processor format, making the system easy for anyone to use. For more information, visit www.t8webware.com or call 877.884.3327.

Acer Aspire ONE: WinXP vs UNR 9.04

I had been using Windows XP on my new-ish Acer Aspire ONE netbook until recently when Ubuntu released their 9.04 Netbook Remix (UNR). Thus far Windows XP was working OK but it was slow overall and outright lethargic at times, especially during bootup, AV startup and now that I really think about it, most anytime I tried to start any sort of application for the first time. Once things were loaded they did respond decently, especially Google Chrome with its ability to put each tab into it’s own memory space, very nice indeed.

I tried out Ubuntu’s 9.04 through their “Live CD” version, aka USB stick with a bootable flash image file from here and here. Everything was much faster and all components worked out of the box as promised as my Acer was on the list of approved hardware.

I went ahead and formatted the primary drive and installed UNR 9.04 and ran into some issues with getting it installed initially, but I started over and everything went smooth the second time around. The OS is snappy to boot and responds to my every command with ease. Updates are easy to maintain, customization options are a plenty and the community has some great extras to install like these and much more.

…all seemed to be copasetic.

That was until my wireless card ceased to work without warning or error, ugh. I quickly scoured the Ubuntu forums and found I wasn’t the only one having a similar problem. I ended up getting everything stable, at least for now, by doing the following:

Installed madwifi-tools
Added the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:
blacklist ath_pci
Added the following to /etc/rc.local:
modprobe ath5k
Shutdown and Powered On.

To me this is the last big barrier to gaining widespread adaptation of Linux by the SMBs and Home Users, installation and usability ease. If the hardware is recognized by the software then why do I have to go through these extra steps to get something as basic as wireless networking to function?

Thankfully I have the troubleshooting and Linux background required to get this relatively easy workaround in place, but this would be unacceptable if Windows and say Dell put even a small fraction of it’s client base into the same situation with a new hardware/software combo they released. Do I love Windows? No. Do I realize why they still maintain a 9:1 market share vs. Mac and 98:1 market share vs. Linux? Yes. Source here.

In conclusion, do I regret moving from XP to UNR 9.04? In the immortal words of John Bender, “Not even close bud.”