My father, who I’ve written about and who has commented here several times, finally started his own blog called Hal 9000 . He’s using Google’s new service, which I guess means there is no RSS feed. I can’t find a link to any syndication feed on the site. Of course, since it took him a week to email me the address, maybe he’s looking to duck my criticism? 😄

Seriously, my Dad has been a *HUGE* influence on my career (though he always thought I switched jobs too often – I say I was just looking for the right place which I finally found @ MSFT). He’s been around UNIX and C since the start. From Dad’s first post:

I’ve been around computing for a long time! My first job after getting my doctorate was at Bell Labs. In the Spring 1971 I installed my first Unix system – with Ken Thompson help. Because my thesis delt with compiler theory I was interested in C from the beginning – static routines was my suggestion.

Over the years I’ve worked on air traffice controls systems, case and office tools, handwriting recognition algorithms, to name a few. I am one of the authors of the Systems Engineering CMM.

Currently, I teach OO Programming, and OO Analysis & Design at Johns Hopkins University (part-time engineering school)

My current interests include Security & Enterprise Architectures for a large gov’t agency; designing Service Orient Architectures; and software development tools.

Just yesterday, I ran into a TechEd attendee who worked at Bell Labs back in the day who recognized my last name. A friend of mine who’s an architect evangelist for MSFT also recognized my name from his days at Bell Labs. Sure is a small world.

Dad has also commented on Clemens lightweight transactions post and discussed modeling. I can’t wait to see his reaction to Visual Studio 2005 Architect Edition’s modeling tools.

I added a link to Hal 9000 in my navigation links section. At this rate, will I need a family blog roll?

Not only in my blog back in action, but my gracious host Tom has started a blog of his own. Since he hosts DevHawk for me, I added him to both my blog roll and to my navigation links.

Tom’s first post (and the theme of his blog in general) is about the role of consultants and programmers in the future. He draws a nice parallel comparing how those roles are changing to how the chaufer role changed during the 20th century.

So DevHawk is back in business, and more importantly it is now the featured blog on MSDN Architecture Center! I’ve spun up a home away from home on the MSDN blogging server for the Architecture Center to pull from. That way, I can crosspost architecture related content from here, but still be able to rant about hockey, gay marriage, programming and whatever the hell else I want over here.

It’s been a busy week. I was on .NET Rocks, we published JOURNAL and I seem to have stirred up some discussion with my endangered middle-tier post.

But then I was silenced by a floppy disk.

My friend Tom, who hosts DevHawk and TechieWife for me, is on a contract job out-of-state and couldn’t remotely diagnose why the web server that hosts this blog wouldn’t reboot after a power-outage. Turns out there was a floppy in the drive and go figure, the server tried to boot from the floppy. So I’ve been offline all week. Still, I have to give Tom props as

1. He hosts me for free
2. I have admin access to the machine
3. He’s down to try new things

Being on .NET Rocks last week reminded my a little of my old college DJ days. I’ve got an idea I’d like to play around, but I’d need a media server. That’s where #3 above comes into play. I ask Tom and I receive. No idea what I’m going to do with it yet, but now I have a media server to play with. Thanks, Tom…You Rock!

Good pal Tony Goodhew just started blogging this past Sunday. He’s already posted 15 times. Even though he’s a Product Manager in the developer division and has been involved in J#, he hasn’t posted much on technology yet but he sure has several opinions on the NFL.