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This is the main blog for Mike McBride Online, where you can keep track of everything I'm in to in one place.
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| Friday, September 24, 2004
Convergence of technology iPodder looks like a bit of technology that might prove to be very, very useful. I installed it on my work PC and I envision using it to download audio content, like Adam Curry's daily source code, for example. I can set the program to download the RSS enclosures overnight, and add them to my WMP playlist, and then listen to them as I work during the day. You can do the same, with WMP or iTunes, or you can have it downloaded directly to an iPod or other MP3 player and take the content with you. The site even has a list of shows that are currently available using the RSS enclosures. Here's hoping that soon we'll all have a bunch of RSS-fed, "podcasts" to choose from! Update: Just listening to Dave Slusher's Evil Genius Chronicles, who described the format of guys talking about technology as "more interesting than it sounds". That's about true of his show. Using RSS, possibly BitTorrent and MP3 players, etc. may just start to spread into other types of radio shows, giving us all many new voices to listen to. There's some real potential here... Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:51 PM | 0 comments | 
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RSS Digest You remember I told you about RSS Digest the other day, right? That's the service I used to get those nice little lists of the latest posts from my other blogs on the right-hand side of the screen. Well yesterday they announced beta support for Atom feeds as well. (No permalinks, but it's on the news page from yesterday!) Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 8:53 AM | 0 comments |
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Thursday, September 23, 2004
List of lists If you read along here you know that I'm not one to recommend a lot of online resources that cost money. Let's face it, with the IT budget I'm given at work, and the salary I make from that job, I need all the free resources I can get! But you owe it to yourself to go ahead and get the Plus Edition of the Langa Letter. If you had, then, like me, you could have spent part of last night being overwhelmed by this overwhelming list of bookmarks. I could spend days exploring that site! And, as you can see on this page about the newsletter, part of the profits of the Plus edition go to very worthy causes. What more could you want? OK, that's enough of the commercial. :) Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 1:30 PM | 0 comments |
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Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Template changes I spent part of last night making some template renovations around here, if you actually come to the site to read this, you've probably noticed them already. First thing, I took out the blogrolls, except for the list of people I'm actually related to, and replaced them with a link to my subscriptions on Bloglines, called my reading list. The reasoning behind this was simple, I had a few dozen links on my blogrolls, I have 175 feeds that I'm currently subscribed to. I'm not going to try and list all 175 feeds along the side panel. Besides, I'm not doing a very good job of keeping up with the blogrolls anyway, so why not just point you to everyone I'm reading? The other change is that on top of links to my other blogs, I've also included the last 10 post's RSS headlines for both of those blogs, directly over on the side of this blog. So, instead of having to always check the link blog for possibly interesting stories, you can see the headlines of the last ten things I linked right on this page. The same holds true for the child abuse blog as well. Both of these feeds within a page were easy to do using a tool that I found on ResearchBuzz called RSS Digest. Now, I the next thing I can see is that I need to be conscious about writing better post titles for those blogs... :) Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 9:32 AM | 0 comments |
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Tuesday, September 21, 2004
A little bit early.. Since Angela is usually awake in the morning before I am, I'm pointing to this a few hours before it's official, but anyway, Happy Anniversary sweetie! Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 10:07 PM | 0 comments |
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Blogrolling Looks like, finally, blogrolling's service is back to normal. If you've been following along since Friday you know that not only was it not working very well in numerous ways, but there were no updates. (Hence the reason I said nothing about it here. There was nothing to report!) This is an update/apology, which is nice, but the true test will be whether they've learned their lesson about communicating with users the next time they have a major problem. We shall see.... Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 11:50 AM | 0 comments |
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Monday, September 20, 2004
XP SP2 installation CD Step by step instructions from Fred Langa on how to create a pre-patched XP install CD. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 6:15 PM | 0 comments |
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Interesting discussion A rather interesting piece that I came across over the weekend over at Adam Barr's blog has had me thinking quite a bit about the term IT Generalist and the "persona" created by Microsoft's marketing department. The first thing that popped into my head after reading it, and all the comments, is that some of the people leaving comments have never worked in the small business world. It's all well and good to see this "Joe" as incompetent, but understand that if Joe were the technical expert that has spent 10-20 years as a system admin, he wouldn't be working at this job. The small business he works for couldn't afford him. Second, I don't think the title IT Generalist is a good one for the person who works in accounting as their regular job, who also has to take care of the computers. I see myself as an IT Generalist, someone who's responsible not just for the desktops, but a server or two, database management, training, application support, maybe a little back-end website stuff, email, anti-virus, etc. IT Generalist is a full time job, one that does require being a "mile wide and an inch deep". There is never enough time in the day to learn everything there is to know about all of these things. The person who's main job is not in IT but who still has responsibility of the IT infrastructure should just be called "Screwed" in my book! (And I know what I'm talking about here, since that is the position my wife has in her small office!) :) On the other hand, there are plenty of things an IT Generalist could, and should, be doing to make himself a better IT person, assuming that is what he wants to be. You will never get the in-depth knowledge that someone who works as an Exchange Admin fulltime is going to get, for example, but that's no excuse not to educate yourself. Maybe you won't be a mile deep in every subject, but if you can get to a couple of feet, instead of an inch, you'll be better off in the long run. Of course, getting that deep takes time and effort. And it takes more time than you have at the office. I'm lucky, our network is small enough that I actually do have some free time during a typical day to read up on some things, and write some things here, but I also spend a lot of my free time doing that as well. Take a look at my link blog. Look at the stuff I linked to over the weekend. I read all of that, and then some. I also managed to find time to run some errands and take in a movie with my wife, watch a little football, email a couple of resumes, chat with an old friend, and install a couple of updates on my laptop this weekend, so it's not like I spend all my time reading tech blogs and tech news, but it's an important part of being a good IT Generalist, so I make time to do it. Another thing I do is keep a blog. (or two, or three. :-) ) This creates an online "peer group" where none existed before. I'm the whole IT department in the office, when I need to ask a question, where do I go? I turn to the tech blogging community. Countless times I've posted about a problem I've been having here and gotten suggestions and help from people who know more than I do about a specific subject. I also spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade, so to speak. Learn to use Google. Learn to use the MS knowledge base. Learn to leverage RSS as a way to keep good information flowing in to you. Find good tech newsletters, subscribe and read them. Find people who have more knowledge than you do and listen to them. Read what they write, ask them questions, go see them speak. Find the time to "experiment" with systems, make sure you have the room to experiment at home, with stuff that doesn't fit in your office network. Most of all, have fun with this stuff. Yes it's a job, but if you truly enjoy learning, then doing all this extra stuff seems a lot less like work, and that will keep you motivated to do it day in and day out. Digg this | Post to del.icio.us| FaceBook | Stumble Upon| Google Bookmark| 10:48 AM | 0 comments |
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