Saturday, December 31, 2011

New Year’s Eve

The mild weather in Rochester continues. It looks like this might be the last nice day. The Rochester area is under a winter weather advisory.

I plan to play a round of golf before meeting some friends for early dinner. After dinner it is off the to the REC Center to work the Ice Hawks hockey game.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

December Super Bonus Golf!

Rochester, MN is having remarkably warm weather for the end of December. Oak Summit Golf course has been open since Christmas day! I was able to get out yesterday and play 18. It was a little windy, but you can’t complain if you are golfing in December!

Monday, December 26, 2011

South Padre Island

I made my annual trip from Alamo, TX over to S. Padre Island this morning. It was cloudy and cool day in the Rio Grande Valley. I stopped at South Padre Island Golf Club hoping to sneak in a quick round of golf before I headed back to Alamo. No luck today. Over an hour wait and the play time was 4.5 hours.

After making a quick stop at Surfs Up for some T-shirts, I headed north to see the beach. The road was closed at Beach Access Point 6, so I made a stop. The north west wind was cold so I threw on the light weight winter coat and trekked down the beach for a few hundred yards. No sign of the red tide and the beach was very clean.

Next stop - Pirates Landing. It wasn’t very busy today so I was able to get in and out in less than an hour. Due to the weather little to not activity on the pier today. As always the food was great and the portions were large.

Once back to Alamo, I headed to The Practice Tee to hit a bucket of balls. By the time I got to the range the skies had cleared.

Great day of vacation!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas!

 

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas!

Friday, December 23, 2011

Cold and Windy in the Rio Grande Valley

There won’t be  many outdoor activities today. The high today will be 50 and the wind is blowing. Compared to MN it’s nice – for the Valley it’s cold.

Yesterday was a very nice day. I went to the Practice Tee driving range and later in the day hit the pool and hot tub.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Played The Back 9 at Tierra Del Sol

It was cloudy and cool this morning in the Valley. Tierra Del Sol was running an event so we went off the back. The difference in the front and back makes you think that you are on two different golf courses. The back 9 winds through a housing development where the front 9 is fairly wide open. I ended the day playing bogie golf.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Disable TCP Auto-Tuning to Solve Slow Network

I’ve had mixed results with this tweak. Before disabling this option, be sure to do some performance testing. From my experience it depends on the network card.  The following article gives a good description of the parameter and the steps to change it.

Disable TCP Auto-Tuning

Windows 7 Performance Tweaks

Here are the current tweaks I’m running on my Lenovo W520 with an OCZ SSD.

UAC is set to off.

Set power plan to maximum performance.

Set folder options so that Windows opens folder in a new process.

Windows Features Turned Off

  • Remote Differential Compression
  • Tablet PC components
  • Games

Services Disabled

  • Computer Browser (Other computers on my network fulfill this role)
  • Superfetch
  • Disk Defragmenter (Only on computers without traditional drives)
  • Tablet PC Input Service

Registry Changes

Disable Low Disk Space Notification Alert

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and set NoLowDiskSpaceChecks to 1. If it doesn’t exist create a new DWORD 32 bit key.

Windows 7 TRIM command validation for SSD

  • Open elevated command prompt
  • fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
  • This needs to return 0 of TRIM is enabled
  • Ensure disk defrag is turned off on the SSD drive
  • Check registry at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters", and  if "EnablePrefetcher" & "EnableSuperfetch" was 0 it meant TRIM be working

Less Wind Today–Better Golf Score

My friends and I went back to Tierra Del Sol this morning. The wind was very calm as we started our round of golf. I was 2 over after 4 – tremendous improvement from the day before. I ran into some trouble coming in on the last holes. Luckily the rain held off as we finished.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Windy Day = Bad Golf Score

I went out with a couple of friends today and played the front 9 on Tierra Del Sol. The winds were gusting nearly 40 mph which resulted in a couple of bad holes. Hopefully tomorrow will be less windy.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Back on the Golf Range Today

 

It’s been 3 weeks since I’ve been able to swing a golf club. It was great to get out in some warm weather and hit a bucket of balls. Considering it was a 3 week break, I was happy with my swing. Heading to the course tomorrow near McAllen, TX.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Reinventing the Technology of Human Accomplishment

One of my peers sent me a link to a very thought provoking video on adapting management to the 21st century by Gary Hamel. The video is approximately 15 minutes in length.

http://www.managementexchange.com/video/gary-hamel-reinventing-technology-human-accomplishment

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

3D Printer

This is possibly one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in quite some time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw

Monday, September 26, 2011

Excellent Video on West Texas

 

I received this link from a friend of mine. Amazing photos set to music.

 

http://player.vimeo.com/video/22132017?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0