Marius Lardizabal – IT Consulting

Today I’ve made another faithful decision. I’ve decided to reformat my new Dell Inspiron 1525 and install Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 and man oh man I am pumped.

I’ve been contemplating on moving to linux for quite sometime now but because I got inspired on how receptive one major client of mine to open-source that I just had to start migrating now.

I’m still installing, I’ll post again about the results of my experiment.

If this proves successful I may have to consider moving our other laptops and desktops as well.

Till then…

PS If you like to try it out as well but are afraid to install anything on your machine, the Ubuntu CD comes with Live-CD, which allows the OS to run on your system without installing anything and you can experience Ubuntu first hand no-strings attached.

After some self-debate I’ve decided to take the plunge and uninstalled MS Office from all our laptops and workstations at home.

We’ve switched to OpenOffice and I am so happy.

On top of that I’ve managed to make all our e-mails, tasks, calendars and notes accessible on any laptop and PC around the house actually anywhere we go as long as there is net access.

Thanks to Firefox, Google (Gmail, Notes, Calendar and Docs), Thunderbird and Lightning.

The only other thing I need to sort out is how to centrally share our contacts and address book. Originally we had a readonly PST file that was located in a shared folder. If one machine had it opened all the rest had to wait for it to be released.

So far the only viable option I can think of that is free is Plexo but I haven’t decided yet.

If you are interested in how I did it, it’s quite simple really, all I had to do was signup an account with Google and used that account on all our laptops and workstations. When one machine created an entry into the calendar it synced with Google Calendar which in turn synced the other machines.

Google notes on the other hand just required an add-on to Firefox, which is our preferred browser anyway.

As for the e-mail, instead of using POP3 I’ve decided to use IMAP at least that way mails are left at the servers and any machine can read them.

I will for sure donate more to the cause, long live OPEN SOURCE, long live GOOGLE!!!

This past week I’ve been trying to run a couple of batch commands via ASP.Net they run perfectly fine on my box but when it was released to IIS 6.0 Windows 2003 server it never worked.

So I made a couple of experiments and lot of googling and ended up with the following:

My original code was

ProcessStartInfo p = new ProcessStartInfo("C:\blahblah.cmd');
Process proc = Process.Start(p);
proc.WaitForExit(5000); //wait for 5 secs then exit
proc.Close();

My new code became

ProcessStartInfo p = new ProcessStartInfo("cmd.exe");
p.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
p.RedirectStandardInput = true;
p.RedirectStandardError = true;

Process proc = Process.Start(p);
StreamReader reader = File.OpenText("C:\blahblah.cmd');
StreamWriter writer = proc.StandardInput;
while(reader.Peek() != -1)
{
   writer.WriteLine(reader.ReadLine());
}
writer.Close();
reader.Close();
proc.Close();

And it worked like a charm.

Thanks to Brendan Tompkins for the idea check his solution here,

Recently I had a lengthily discussion with a good friend of mine about the number of products and services that Microsoft is currently offering.

I mean what exactly does Microsoft intend to do?

The more we look at it the more it seems that Microsoft is playing catchup rather than being in the lead.

Its frustrating as a consultant to continuously be on the lookout for Microsoft technologies, I mean most of my customers complain why do they have to upgrade every three years or so when the current system they have is very much working.

I haven’t heard any company I’ve worked with migrate to Windows Vista. Come to think of it a major auto-maker company that I know of is still using Windows 2000 and classic ASP. And have no plans of upgrading to Windows 2003. Imagine that?!

And here comes Microsoft again stating they will release another server OS after Windows 2003.

I guess part of the reluctance for upgrading was the increased hardware requirements. If Microsoft had the common sense to actually improve the system that ran on the old crappy hardwares then my clients would consider the upgrade.

But then again Microsoft has the money to do whatever it likes, so I wouldn’t be surpirsed if they don’t give a damn if their customers start leaving them.

Contrary to popular belief ASP or should I say Classic ASP is still pretty much alive.

Why, you ask?

The answer is simple, most companies work with the unofficial mantra “if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it”. A lot of them may have even started their online presence using Classic ASP. So for them they may have already invested so much.

Even if ASP.Net is much faster and more efficient, the cost of migrating and acquiring sufficient hardware to make it at par may often be unjustifiable. I personally know one big automaker that is still using Windows 2000 and ASP as their backened. You’d think given their financial muscle they’d grab anything fancy everytime it becomes available.

I know some of the hitech junkies out there would beg to differ but think about it, a lot of these companies are not software makers, so it should be obvious that their main focus is on their core products and/or services.

So remember, before you look down on Classic ASP thinking it is obsolete, think again. You’d be shocked to know that there is a significant number of companies out there that still use it. And if you play your cards right you may be able to tap onto that niche market since most IT folks prefer brand new hitech stuff most of the time.

For so long I wanted to have a website where I could publish my thoughts about my field of work. As well as provide some insight for existing clients as well as prospective clients about what I’m doing and where I am involved as far as IT is concerned.

Don’t get me wrong, as a bonified geek I had my own website since 1998. Back then mixing personal stuff with business was kinda cool, I mean it made the site complete, ok to be honest there wasn’t anything exciting with my personal life until late 2001 so having the techie stuff mixed in was somewhat a blessing hehehe.

As I followed my career path to the four continents, my network grew. Work related stuff kinda overshadowed my personal life. I mean me and Maan were far far away, the only way our friends and family could read about us was through our website. But since it was cluttered with endless IT jargon it was a pain for the normal folks to read.

Well, finally with the grace of God, I am now able to separate my business stuff from my personal ones.

Welcome to my business site. I am looking forward in working with you.