Brian Pozar

Nikon D7000

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:25:00 -0700

If you want to get serious about photography, grab the best bang-for-the-buck digital SLR out there at the moment. The Nikon DSLR D7000. Comprehensive reviews here http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond7000/ and here http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7000.htm

Recommendation: Buy a Nikon D7000 if you are into photography.

Fitness

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:59:00 -0800

If you want to get fit, http://www.reddit.com/r/fitness is your one-stop shop for a ton of knowledge and motivation. Make sure to read the FAQ listed on the right side of the page and check in once a day to see what new topics are being discussed. It really helps to keep you going.

Recommendation: Get moving and use Reddit’s Fitness sub-reddit to reach your goals.

The Personal MBA

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:57:00 -0800

At the moment I have a BS in Business Administration with plans to one day get my MBA. In the mean time, I read. One book that is hot right now, and that I highly recommend, is The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. I’ll leave it to you to find a summary and reviews but if you are interested in business topics, Josh’s books bring together a ton of information into a no-nonsense compendium.

Recommendation: Buy and read The Personal MBA for a good business primer and a reminder of some things you may have forgotten.

Mobile Business Intelligence

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:49:29 -0800

My company has used a BI app called Q4bis for several years. It is great for slicing and dicing cubes in a web browser but I’m looking now to put mobile BI in the palms of my senior executives.

It turns out that MicroStrategy, a long-time player in the BI field, has apps for Apple and Blackberry devices. What’s more, they have apparently for quite some time been offering permanent demos of their software with certain user and processor limitations.

I’m busy getting this thing configured and integrating it with our Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS) OLAP cubes. Yes! I don’t have to rewrite our cubes to make this work!

I wish more companies would follow MicroStrategy’s sales plan. If it turns out that we fully adopt this platform and the popularity of mobile BI takes off in the company (hence we need more speed), MicroStrategy will be assured of a sale and it will be easy for me to convince the CEO and CFO of the benefit.

This video explains why numbers have the shapes that they do.

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:50:00 -0700

This video explains why numbers have the shapes that they do.

Online Backups

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:35:00 -0700

As a father, my photos and videos of my daughter are some of my most valued possessions. As an IT person, I am intimately aware of how often hard drives crash. At work, I have designed comprehensive disaster recovery plans and backup systems. Yet, for my personal computing uses, I have always been lazy about backups. Not anymore; preserving my family memories is just too important.

I did buy an external hard drive a few months ago but a fire, flood, or theft would wipe out both the computer and external drive. So I have been looking into online backup solutions to supplement the external hard drive.

I narrowed down my choices at first to services called SugarSync, Box.net, Dropbox, Carbonite, and Mozy.

By my calculations, I need approximately 500GB of storage to backup everything I don’t want to lose. I do not have 500GB of photos and home movies but since I am doing this, I might as well include my MP3 collection and documents.

SugarSync is the highest rated service and I can see why. It brings the most features in one package. You can backup, sync, access, and share your files easily. It is really a full blown cloud-storage solution rather than simply a backup service. Unfortunately, for $5 a month, I can only backup 30GB. They charge $40 a month for 500GB, which is more than I want to spend. $500 a year is a lot, especially considering the possibility that I might not ever need to restore my files from the online service.

Box.net looks to be a great business solution for file sharing and collaboration. In fact, I am going to have the person in my department responsible for our Salesforce.com installation look into integrating Box.net so we can get away from Salesforce’s low storage quotas. Unfortunately, $10 a month only gets me 10GB of storage. So that option is out.

I have used Dropbox for awhile now, it is great for synchronizing files back and forth between work and home. It keeps me from having to use a flash drive or FTP to move my work back and forth (I don’t lug a laptop around). But I can only get 50GB for $10 a month or 100GB for $20 a month. This also is not a great backup solution because it only backs up the files in one folder on your computer. But I highly recommend getting the free account which gives you 2GB. You can access the files with your iPhone too.

Mozy and Carbonite are very similar services with nearly identical pricing. $5 a month gets unlimited storage. I’m sure Carbonite is a fine solution but I get the feeling that Carbonite is focusing more on its business solution than on its consumer product just by looking at the two websites. I simply wasn’t as impressed as I was with the next service, Mozy.

Mozy lets you configure bandwidth and CPU utilization limits and also backs up to your external hard-drive for you. $5 a month for unlimited storage at Mozy as well. This service seems like the best option for a cost-effective online backup. Mozy is owned by EMC, a major player in the enterprise storage market.

* Tip for Mozy. Make sure you change the “Videos” backup set by right-clicking on it and removing the 50MB limitation or any large videos you have will not be backed up. Carbonite has similar defaults that are annoying but understandable.

Recommendation:

For online backups, use Mozy
For synchronizing files between multiple computers, use Dropbox
If money is no object, look into SugarSync.

iGoogle

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 17:01:00 -0700

Okay, this is a simple item that many people know about but I’m just doing this to get my feet wet. I have a feeling I’m going to post simple things for a while and then get more advanced; I just don’t want to leave anybody out in the lurch. If you want a good homepage, make sure to click iGoogle on the top right of the Google.com and set that as your browser’s home page. You can customize it with lots of great “gadgets.” But you’ll need a google account if you don’t have one already. Sign up for one and get a free Gmail account at the same time. If you don’t use Gmail, its time to make the move. Not only is it easy to use but their spam-filtering is superb.

Instructions for changing your homepage:

Google Chrome - Wrench icon > Options > Basics

Firefox - Tools > Options > General

Internet Explorer - Tools > Internet Options > General

Recommendation:

Use Gmail instead of Hotmail, Yahoo, or anything else for your personal email. It blows the competition away and has virtually no spam.
Use iGoogle for your home page. Although Yahoo and MSN aren’t terrible if you want to stick with them.

Introducing my new blog... again

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:18:00 -0700

Greetings,

My name is Brian Pozar and this marks something like the sixth time that I have attempted to create a blog. Maybe Tumblr, which thus far seems very cool, will finally provide enough impetus to keep me going beyond the first 2-3 posts. If I can get into a habit of regular posting, that would be a huge milestone (if you are reading this a year from now, you’ll know if I succeeded or failed. WordPress, MovableType, and Blogger never quite made it easy enough for me to blog with same minimal amount of effort that Facebook and Twitter demand. Hopefully,Tumblr will make life that easy.

A bit of background on myself. I live in the Central Valley of California with my lovely wife and delightful daughter. I’m the Director of IT for a $120MM manufacturing company. I am a former Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), former Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), and I have my BS in Business Administration; soon to begin work on my MBA. I’m also a private pilot and love my motorcycle and guitars.

The purpose of my blog is to share things that I find to be of considerable significance in either life, information technology, or other areas of interest. My hope is that similar-minded people will find me, learn from what knowledge I have, as limited as it may be, and perhaps teach me something as well.

What I promise to try to avoid is mindless dribble and current events despite how much I enjoy funny videos and political upheavel. The blogosphere is filled with commentators; my goal is to provide information that has long-term meaningfulness. As such, I will be providing recommendations at the bottom of each blog post. The recommendations will in some way be a result of my experience or research that you can benefit from and circumvent having to do it on your own. If you have ever thought to yourself, “why didn’t somebody tell me that?!” Well, that’s what I’ll be trying to do.

Recommendation:

This brings me to my first piece of advice for anybody involved in web development or marketing. Bookmark the following site and add its RSS feed to your iGoogle home page: http://www.smashingmagazine.com. One of their excellent articles led to my rediscovery of Tumblr today