An example of delighting customers
April 9th, 2010
Netflix is amazingly good in a lot of ways. Add this one to the list:
Netflix could have sent me Back to The Future and made me wait 3 to 5 days for it to arrive, but instead they sent an additional disc from my queue to make up for the shipping delay. They didn’t have to do this and I wouldn’t have complained. But they did and I think it’s a nice touch that deserves recognition.
Cloning VirtualBox images (or how I save hours a day when testing software)
April 1st, 2010
First things first. If you’re testing software and you’re not using some sort of virtualization solution, stop reading this and go install one. My product of choice is VirtualBox. It’s free (as in no cost and most of it is open source), user friendly, runs on an Ubuntu host computer and I’m familiar with it.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of testing of the Ubuntu One desktop software and I need to be able to quickly get various versions of Ubuntu up and running. Below I outline how I do that on an Ubuntu host computer. My steps assume that you’re familiar with VirtualBox enough that you know how to setup a virtual machine (VM) already.
Create a master image
The master image is the one we’ll use to clone test images off of. By doing this we can worry about keeping our master image up-to-date and configured the way we need it and then simply clone that image when we have to test.
- Create a new VM in VirtualBox and install the OS (see Lifehacker’s guide if you’re not sure how to do this)
- After restarting the VM when the install is done, install all the latest updates on the master image and restart
- Install the VirtualBox Guest Additions (allows nice integration with the host computer)
- Shutdown the master image
Periodically you’ll want to make sure your master image has all the latest updates, so just boot it up, install the updates and then shut it down.
Clone the master image
Now we’re ready to start testing some software. Instead of using the master image we created above, we’re going to clone that image. This should take less than 5 minutes start to finish.
- In a terminal session do the following:
cd ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks VBoxManage clonehd master_image.vdi test_image.vdi --format VDI
- In VirtualBox, create a new VM by clicking the New button
- Go through each screen selecting the appropriate values and clicking the Next button until you get to the Virtual Hard Disk part
- Select the Use existing hard disk radio button
- Click on the folder icon next to the pull down menu listing existing VDI files
- Click the Add button
- Select the image you created (should be in ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks) to add it to the list of available hard disks
- Click on the image you just added and then click the Select button
- Click the Next button
- Click the Finish button
You now have a brand new VM to use for testing. Once you test with this image and decide its usefulness is over you can delete the virtual disk image (VDI) file in ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks, repeat step 1 above to create a new cloned image, and then edit your cloned VM in VirtualBox to use the new clone image. In other words, you don’t have to setup a new VM (steps 2-10) every time you want to use another VDI if you don’t want to.
Quote from EC: “You don’t have a cane but you’re still a pain.”
February 10th, 2010
This one came as EC let his sister know what he thought of her – Dr. Seuss style.
How I Lost 35 Pounds in 5 Months
January 16th, 2010
It’s January. It’s time to set goals. Many will have “Lose X lbs.” on their list so I thought I’d share how I lost quite a bit of weight recently. The secret of my success (yes, like Michael J. Fox) is – drumroll please – eating a solid diet of acai berries! Just kidding. I don’t know what acai berries are other than they appeared in banner ads all across the web in 2009. Acai berries might be magical but my weight loss tips are not. My weight loss came mostly as a result of discipline, which meant stopping bad habits and replacing them with good ones. The following list contains some of the practices, tools, and guidelines I followed while dropping a little over 16% of my body weight over the past five months.
1. Change eating habits before exercise habits
Many will join the local gym and exercise like crazy as they try to achieve their weight loss goal. If this is your plan, stop right now. Get your diet in order before you dive heavy into exercise. If you start with exercise, you’ll likely be hungrier, which means eating too many calories and too many of the wrong calories. Form good eating habits first, lose some pounds in the process, and then move on to exercise (see #6).
2. Aim for a realistic, healthy and sustainable goal
You may think you want to lose 50 pounds in two months, but I can say it won’t be realistic, healthy or sustainable. Simple online tools to help you determine the weight range you should be in and how many calories you should eat each day include:
These tools don’t take into account all the variables. They also don’t take into account things like body fat targets, waist size reduction, and overall fitness. Use the outputs as guidelines and a place to start rather than the answer to questions of your ideal weight and calorie needs. The idea is to set healthy goals that you can achieve and keep up over the long run.
3. Cut carbs drastically at the start
This one is likely to irritate some folks but I’ve found it helps kick start weight loss. Follow the first 2-week phase of the Atkins or South Beach diet. You’ll ween your body off carbs and most processed foods. Think of it as a smoker quitting smoking cold turkey. You’ll likely feel sugar withdrawals and swear that you’re dying but after about a week you’ll condition your body to be satisfied with more nutritious food. After the two weeks, start to add healthy carbs back into your diet, but limit starchy foods like regular pasta, white rice, and white breads. Whole grains are the suggested replacement. Just be careful not to fall for the marketing use of the term “whole grain” prominently featured on many food labels these days. You’ll need to checkout the ingredients to be sure it’s the real deal and not chock full of garbage in addition to whole grains.
4. Track what you eat religiously
I used DailyBurn to track my meals each day. Doing this made me conscience of what I was eating on a daily basis. 
It showed how many calories, carbs, fat, protein, etc. I was taking in. Make what you eat in your face even after you’ve stuffed your face. You’ll find it changes your eating habits almost immediately.
5. Drink at least 64 oz. of water per day
This is good to do in general but especially important when you’re trying to lose weight. Our bodies need H2O. Drinking lots of water can also help control your appetite.
6. Develop a sustainable exercise routine slowly
My secret weapons to sustaining an exercise routine. Sled dogs.
Being overly ambitious at the start of a big goal or project is common. When it comes to losing weight this (too often) means a killer exercise routine that inevitably burns out quick with zero positive results. Once you’ve established better eating habits (see #1) then start to establish a sustainable exercise routine. This means finding what works best for you. Can you only afford 30 minutes a day a few days a week? Find exercises that allow you to get a good workout in that amount of time. Only join a gym if you are going to go on a regular basis. Most people will not go to a gym if it’s an inconvenience. My wife goes to the gym regularly and I think it works for her because going to the gym is an enjoyable break away from the kids. I don’t care for the gym. It’s a hassle and exercise machines are boring to me. So I go on long brisk walks instead. That works for me. Find something that works for you, start slowly and ramp it up gradually.
7. Tell others about your goal
If you tell people your goal then you’re more likely to stick to it. I was encouraged and teased relentlessly for announcing my goal and progress on various social networks once a week. I would remind myself of the goal and give an update on my latest weigh in. I found my friends’ and family’s feedback helped me to stay disciplined.
None of the points above are ground breaking. There is no silver bullet. It’s hard work but does get easier as time goes by and new good habits replace the old bad ones. I hope it helps someone out as they strive to drop some pounds and develop a healthier lifestyle. If nothing else, I’ve now got this post for friends to shove in my face if I ever gain back the pounds I lost. That’s what I call motivation! 
My Top 21-100 Movies for The First 10 Years of 2000
January 11th, 2010
Here is a continuation of my previous list of top movies. The rankings after 40 become kind of pointless, but I did it anyway. I didn’t comment on these movies like the top 20. It’s too time consuming. If there are questions I get in the comments here or elsewhere, I’ll be sure to share my thoughts. Also, there are a lot of movies I haven’t seen. If you see a movie not on this list or the previous one that you think I should have on here, please leave the name in the comments. Chances are I never saw it. Maybe that was intentional, maybe not.
A side note: One cool thing I was able to do for this list was write a small Python script to get all the movie info via the Netflix API. Everything was auto-generated. I provided my ranked list and the script did the rest. Click on an image for the Netflix page for that flick. For each item in the list, you can also add the disc to your Netflix queue with the link under the title, see the Netflix users’ rating, and know if it’s available on Blu-ray as of the publish date of this post.