I’m entertaining a period of greater self-reflection that feels a little indulgent since I’m generally fairly self-aware but hey, I’m going deeper. As a part of the exercise I wanted to reflect on some of goals I have put forth in the past while. Now I’m not the best list taker so these are as my tonights recollection. And I’m going to remove the general goals of continual self-improvement like: get more sleep, be a better listener..blah blah blah.

• Start my MBA – so I’ve been bored and when I’m bored I like to kick start things by signing up for more expensive years of school! This goal has been shelved for sometime in the next 5  years. While I know I’d enjoy the experience I really need to focus on the why’s because just last year I enrolled in a Ph.D program in Computer Science before collecting myself. Besides, I’ve already self-funded one graduate program and afterwards I did not give myself a raise! There will come a time when this is more aligned to the present and that just isn’t now.
• Start my startup – pulling on the bootstraps and going to town on the idea that has been baking in my head for quite a while. I’ve discussed it with folks, sought feedback from would be consumers of the niche endeavor and feel confident but I got caught up in billing time  that by the end of the day I did not want to code. This should see traction soon.
• Production Rails work – I’ve read about Rails, Rails 2, a now there is Rails 3 and while I’ve made the local blog engine and used Ruby for some administrative server work I’m missing a production rollout until…drumroll…I finally do it through some running club focused development I’m throwing on Shawn’s design with our run club. So this goal will have been met in a few weeks.
• Improve Networking and Mentoring – The world is a small place and I’ve been working to stay in touch with those I’ve had the opportunity to work with and trying to get to know those I haven’t yet. One of the benefits I’m looking for is to feel involved in the local developer communities and it has been working and I’ll keep on it. Another aspect is mentoring which has been a nice aside from the day-to-day and I do look forward to teaching at some point.
• Contribute to Open Source (kinda) – so I broke the rules a bit on this one and decided to volunteer my time on something I really enjoyed which is runningahead.com and is not open source but it is free so I figure good enough. Now this goal has been met in theory only as I haven’t given Eric the attention I planned on but he’s being patient so this goal will get checked off.
• Improve my running – this has been going well, my effort and dedication to running has grown as has my appreciation of good health as I’ve had plantar fasciitis for 6 months was close to tying the famed shin splints of 06 as the most painful and is only a year away from matching my record of longest injury with my double hernia of 07. Once the plantar heels up I feel like I’ll drop it to another level. I was keyed in for an easy Boston Qualifier at Fargo this year and drew a bad weather day for this clydesdale and overheated.
• Read more consistently – I read all the time and waste little of my day but I have a plethora of magazines and the daily paper along with my technical (print and web) content that my ‘fun’ reading collection has been largely ignored. I really did enjoy reading The Road on the Kindle this year and I read the Dan Brown book candy finally giving up my boycott to see what the fuss was about. Turned out like I thought, easy reading the doesn’t bring much in the end and yet draws you to it…much like when I watched Rambo as a child (and perhaps still).
• Write you fool write – so there is the writing of this variety which I have not taken too very well. I’m been adament about the separation of Jake and computer but lately am having a different take and plan to write more. I’m not sure what about, my first approach was to treat this as business only but really who are we kidding with the separation of concerns these days. Google will find all sides of us and present it with a nice little bow to whoever looks. If I treat this as business only it is not like the 4500 races I’ve ran won’t come up 2nd, 3rd, 4th in the google results. And trust me, I just can’t be that guy who posts code about the latest IoC framework written entirely in Scala for JSON or business advice detailing my knowledge on the devaluation of Apple because of AntennaGate (I’m keeping my iPhone4…you can’t pry it out of my kung fu grip). I will work on writing more but at the end of the day I prefer building things or dreaming of large nest eggs.

  BUT – My creative writing has been dormant and my poetry as been decimated. Once upon a time I would attend poetry slams and open mikes…now I wouldn’t perform but I’d think about the day I’d perform and if you are still here you should know that you are reading the blog of 2004 Sonoma library – Healdsburg branch – poetry champion! Those days were wonderful inspiration, being in a new place and drinking wine all the time generates a lot. So! I’m going to write some more and I may even put something on here from time to time to keep it fresh.

1. Download, back up and open: wp-settings.php in wordpad/notepad
2. Search for define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘32M’);
3. Change 32M to 64M :   define(’WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘64M’);

Source: http://calcuttaseo.com/wordpress-fix-fatal-error-allowed-memory-size-exhauste/

Life and a some weasel hacker who must be unemployed, incredibly bored and gets his kicks from taking over little read blogs like mine has kept me from blogging for a while. I’m starting to catch up by going through the blog drafts I had saved from before the lame attack.

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Three Mile Island Memories – Cringely on technology.

Bob’s blog made me wonder if I would have been a switch operator had I done the Navy Nuclear Propulsion deal back in the day. Back in the day was when I was nearing the completion of my chemistry undergrad degree and not yet diving into computer science full steam. My chemistry major coupled with my good grades were enough to solicit the Navy form letter informing me of the opportunity to enter the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program after graduation. The offer did tempt me on a few levels and I gave it some thought. First, as a normal mid-western boy growing up I had wanted to do my part and felt the weight of the cultural view (to a young boy) that serving your country was the expectation. And of course my love for all hero action films during the Sly Stallone era pushed that. Also, it had been brought to my attention that a local Minnesotan serving on the Navy in some nuclear fashion had stopped by my dad’s drinking establishment to be shown off by his father AND he was escorted by two Naval guards. So I could serve my country, get the Naval benefits, be pumped up with the super secret knowledge that required escorts! How sweet would that be?  Had the form letter included a briefcase to handcuff to my wrist I may have signed on then.

But I waited, life continued and I had the good fortune of interning at a Fortune 100 manufacturer in the Twin Cities in one of their R&D chemistry labs that have produced sticky things. My two years there taught me that the life of the chemicals and mixing them wasn’t for me, I dove into computer science as a second major, came up with other excuses such as: girlfriend, chain of command, cramped submarine quarters and here we are.

The bug bit again a few years back in 2004 as I was completing my tour of winemaking jobs I did for a year after I burned out of tech in 2003. I decided that graduate school in enology wasn’t for me and that the hemisphere traveling life of a young winemaker wouldn’t be the right fit for me and I wanted back into to tech. So I started looking into NSA and CSA jobs; something shook me again and I don’t have a closet full of bad ties to prove it!

For years I have treated blogging like learning a foreign language; something I wanted to do but never got around too. Oh sure, once a year I’d start a blog at Blogger or elsewhere. I’d put honest effort and some semblance of thought into my first post; almost as IF I knew it would be the last. And once a year I’ll also find a new Spanish podcast and relearn how to purchase a train ticket in Barcelona. Both would die a short death filling me with resentment at efforts.

I was near tears with the tragic thought that the few search results for Jacob Hackl were going to be my races (hint: scroll way, way down…maybe a little further). Then along came Brent! I found Brent one day while doing some SQL Server performance improving SAN strategy search (or something like that). Anyway, I found a post he had about something and I’ve always been a dev guy with a data bent (or vice versa) so the content and I got along fine and I added Brent to my blogroll. Brent had a series of five posts about starting a blog and it caught me at the right time and I realized I needed to get off the pot and build something. If you are struggling its an awesome place to start and cover the whys, WordPress, Plugins, Themes, and Etiquette.

And with my first attempt at blogging etiquette I would like to kindly thank Brent Ozar for the help; you done good man.