Back to work, sorta. - 2/25/2010
Well, the extended weekend at Grandma's turned to be a smashing success. There was virtually no snow on the pass, and none at all beyond it. We had lots of great fun and Heather turned our house inside out and backwards cleaning it. She got a lot done, and the house looks great! She even cleaned up the office, and put in a new shelf (compartmental style) that really sets up the place nicely.
Last post's plug for Chess.com inspired me to do another one, this time hoping to example a horrible loss, but I just lost the nerve to present it. So instead, another W for Mojo. :)
Without further ado, I present the game:
That game is certainly a satisfying one. A little less 'pretty' then the one I posted prior, but if anything it's instructive. I sent it to the Chess.com computer for analysis (a feature that rarely flatters me) and hopefully it'll find some decent areas for me to improve on. Fortunately, I'm at a spot in my chess-playing where there are a lot of those.
Last notes: Upcoming activities for the weekend include a lot of work to catch up on, and Seattle Opera's Falstaff on Sunday. Beyond that, just doing our thing. Oh... follow Mojo on Twitter at @mojoshouse.
Windows Azure, and a plug for a site I enjoy. - 2/10/2010
Recently, at work I've gotten to get on-board the cloud computing initiative, and have recently started work with Windows Azure services. For those who don't know, Windows Azure is Microsoft's new venture into the cloud computing space, allowing developers to take advantage of cloud technologies (see my Mojo at Work blog for more geeky details) without having to worry about all of the extra detail required to manage what a cloud really entails. Hosting stuff, backup stuff, system upgrades, failover and the whole deal gets managed outside of the scope of someone like myself, who just needs to write code that gets deployed 'out there.'
For someone like me, it's absolutely perfect. I'll tell you, I'm a fantastic C# programmer, but I'm not a network engineer, so abstracting that 'networking stuff', and just giving me a place to drop my code, while giving me a simple web-console, so I can create what I need when I need it, is a GOLD MINE.
I'm not sure how often I'll be able to use cloud services from a project perspective. Some projects might need to be kept 'in house' for whatever reason. Sometimes applications are so simple (this site, for instance), that putting it out in 'Azure' is really unnecessary given the costs involved. But, if you're developing a fairly heavy-hitting application, or an internal-to-your-org application whose usage patterns will be fairly spikey (for example, a Timesheet application, which gets used a LOT on Fridays for example), it seems like a perfect place to 'put the app' without having to manage a server on top of managing a simple application. Building out data centers is expensive... so putting your app out there in the world (where you can monitor your usage) is a great way to get a lot of 'tester' apps in the world.
I'm excited to get to work with this new technology... so it's making my days sorta fun right now.
A second thing I'm enjoying a lot is a new site I've found, Chess.com. For casual chess players, this site is great and completely free to play at! The talent pool is quite varied, so folks who don't play regularly (or really even know how to play) don't need to feel intimidated, but advanced players are welcome there too. The UI is VERY clean, and well done (fantastic work guys.) They have a LOT of stuff on that site... blogs and articles written by low-rated scrubs like myself, as well as Grandmasters and all that, which are usually written in a style that isn't 'chess geeky' but more open, and friendly.
I liked the site so much, that I went in for one of their 'paid' subscriptions. I got the cheapest one, which I'll upgrade very soon, because I LOVE the videos they do... they're just too cool and too well done to not support them, and the Chess Mentor is a fantastic tool! I'd just used it when I signed up for the paid account, but didn't realize that the cheap account doesn't get you access to all of the Chess Mentor stuff.
Best part, they've got this cool editor you can use to analyze your games, or even share them. Here's a game I played about a week ago, using their cool editor:
Hope you enjoyed the game... I'll post up some more nice ones. I might even be brave enough to post a game that I lose at one of these days, but it's definitely tough to want to do that. Usually, I'm so disgusted by the loss, that I don't want to share it with the world. Oh well, gotta get over that (because I suck, and lose a lot.) Anyway... take a looksee at Chess.com.
A Random Thought... - 12/8/2009
I was driving home last night, near the 124th street exit, and an older-looking Honda Civic merged in front of me. When the driver turned on his blinker, indicating the merge, I noticed the blinker was blinking decidedly faster than the average blinker on the freeway at that time. I became annoyed at this, and genuinely thought less of this random driver for his "spastic blinking." I even made a face, indicating my displeasure. Self-awareness came when I noticed the grumpy frown in my rear-view mirror.
I fear lunacy, as I'm sure anyone would, given the circumstances.