Paco's Blog

The Global War on Terrorism

Today I leave for what I consider will be my last trip for closure regarding my Son's death in Iraq. My wife Maria, my daughter Monica and I will attend the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Dedication Ceremony at Fort Carson Colorado.

I will abstain from my political views in relation to what this Memorial may mean or not, but I am attending because all of my Son's brothers in arms will be there and I owe a number of them a great deal of personal gratitude.

Paquito's name will be placed in a granite slab along with dozens of other names of American service members that have fallen in the past six months.

Curiously, Paquito's autopsy report finally arrived yesterday. A portion of a note attached in the envelope that contains the official document reads something to the effect of:

WARNING: The information in the enclosed report is graphically described for complete accuracy in the physical details of the remains of SPC Francisco G. Martinez. It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you read this in the presence of people that can provide you with emotional support during this time, such as your minister, a family friend or a counselor

I read it and did not blink. I mean it, I did not shed one tear after learning the different organs that were ruptured and the vertebrae that became the final resting place of the bullet that killed him.

Yet, I wish they had that sort of warning at video arcades and some of the clothing stores that are frequented by 14-19 year old kids. You see, sometimes I visit those places and often become completely overcome by grief. I really miss my best friend.

Here is my little statement:

WARNING: War should not be resorted to unless ALL other peaceful means have been exhausted and failed.

See you all when I get back.

Here We Go Again

Man! A lot of people still don't get it, do they?

I know that this may be a can of worms that I may not want to open, but we say in Spanish: "Si es mudo explota" -- "If he is mute he would explode". I can't help but to be frustrated by the contents of some articles like the one on UK.builder.com.

Here you hear once more that developers who buy into .NET are not interested in developing or targeting other platforms other than Windows. Those who would want to have Linux then rather use PHP, Perl, etc. That is so crazy and ignorant that it doesn't make any sense! Or maybe, the people expressing those opinions are not "Real Software Engineers" -- or good business people for that matter.

It is NOT an all or nothing proposition. You can develop in Visual Studio and very well target Linux, Mac OS X and anything else that runs Mono. As much as I use the totally cool MonoDevelop (a.k.a Bad Ass IDE of the future), I still use Visual Studio .NET 2003 quite regularly. In fact, now that I have discovered the beauty of VMWare, it will be that much more comfortable to create projects in Visual Studio that are resting on a VMWare shared folder and use them instantly in the Linux host.

But make no mistake, that is just one of those rich kids whim of mine. I have, for the past two years, used a Windows box that has mapped drives to my Samba enabled Linux boxes to achieved the same effect.

One must also keep in mind the great utility of Mono's Windows incarnation. Thanks to my add-in (sorry for the shameless plug) you can use Visual Studio and test in Mono without having a Linux or Mac OS box anywhere in sight. In some cases, I very purposefully create Mono applications using handy dandy Visual Studio .NET 2003 with the intention to deploy and run in Windows boxes whose only .NET Framework runtime is the Mono for Windows SDK.

In the early 1980's IBM put out the specifications for the PC and regardless of what were their intentions back then, the world of IT has become what it is today because of all of the innovations that we later had by contributors like Compaq, Dell, HP, Apple, Toshiba and many others.

Today, being a .NET developer that only wants to use .NET in Windows would be as silly as a PC user back in 1987 who only wanted to use IBM hardware.

I say we have an extremely similar situation with the original submission from Microsoft to the ECMA of the C# language and the CLI specification. Now, in 2005, you have a great group of contributors that include Novell, Microsoft, IBM, HP and many others.

But perhaps the most striking difference from my IBM PC analogy is the role of the individual contributor. You see, I want to suggest that Open Source .NET will be much bigger -- and better for everyone -- than Microsoft .NET alone.

No really, from a business perspective, you would have to be brain damaged to create an application or system of any sort and not hope that it can run in as many platforms (meaning customers that are willing to pay) as possible!

So you mean to tell me that there is some .NET developer at the PDC or elsewhere that would not grin once he/she sees their application running on Linux or Mac OS X?

For GOD sake, GET A CLUE!!!!

You try being Developement, Ops and Product Management

Oh my God! VMWare Workstation 5 is going to dramatically change the way we use computers at MFConsulting. I may very well walk away completely or significantly reduced the number of removable hard drive caddies, KVM switches and computers dedicated exclusively to run Windows. Finally! I can now partition a new sexy computer completely for Linux.

This is so important, because being just one more server (mail server) away from completing the “Great MFConsulting Computer Upgrade of 2005”, I was still sadden by the fact that I had to keep some PCs (mainly the wife's computer) with an installation of Windows just so she could do her accounting package.

Thank you Todd Berman, Wade Berrier and Scott Dockendorf for the VMWare recommendation!

If you come from the Windows Server world and want to live a more affordable life, try Novell SLES for free, but don't do it until you get this:

I am now done replacing a Windows 2000 Server and two Red Hat 9.0 boxes with two SLES and one SUSE 9.2 Pro.

Red Hat puts out a good product, but if you want live in perfect harmony with technologies that have thrived in Windows Enterprise architectures (For all you PDC fans ;)) you should really look into SLES, Mono and Sybase ASE. Now, if we could only convince the SUSE team to give us a Yast2 version that is GTK+ based...

It's a beautifull world we're living -- Devo :p