Meden Family Updates

I don't have a complete plan yet, but mark my words (with a search engine) I will get my site to rank on Google! Jeff Meden is the link, and this is where it goes. I need to get that link on as many google-visible pages as possible. If you want to help, just give me a shout out on your blogspace or twitter or wherever!

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Well after a few hours of tedious next button clicking, I have finally updated all of the software that runs this site. It's made relatively simple by the host, Godaddy, since they maintain the operating system (Linux). I upgraded s9y and Gallery2 to the latest revision, transitioned their backed over to mysql 5 and PHP 5, migrated the entire virtual host to Godaddy's "enhanced Linux" area, and double checked all the plugins for consistency with the operating system. Aside from the lackluster PHP performance that Godaddy offers (since the server my site is on also hosts about 3000 other pages) I really have to say it's been a smooth process to keep the web site up to date, at least from a software perspective.

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Having not updated my web page in like a year, it seems strange to just jump right back in. Oh well, here goes. In the intervening year, I have gotten married, bought my own house (same location, just completely mine now) and got to be part of the wonderful weddings of four other couples. I have gotten farther into amateur photography and carpentry (more info on that to come) and all in all I am looking back on a pretty good year. Here's hoping 2010 goes well for everyone!

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Averel and I went to Sao Paulo, Brasil! The pictures Averel took are here: Averel's Brasil Pics

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Dog crazy, to be exact. Yes, we have been wanting to find the perfect little brother for Myra our wonder-beagle, and on October 12 we brought home a bouncing baby boy beagle! Some pictures are available of him here: click this link

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Well not a lot has been going on, besides dog walks and work trips. There is a new gallery software running on meden.us, and you can check it out at this link. Also, for your viewing pleasure, I have a sloganizer set up to deliver various quips about how great my beagle Myra is. Behold!

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Well it finally happened, we fell in love with a dog at the humane society, and just had to give her a good home. Her name is Myra and she is a 9 month old beagle. She has been a fantastic dog, she has lots of energy and such a sweet personality. There are some pics of her in the gallery section, take a look here!

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I have been busy! Not so busy that I had no time to write a few blog entries, but things come up-- you know? So far this year I have traveled to Port St Joe, FL on a week long vacation to the sunny white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. After that, I was dispatched to Bentonville, AR to visit the headquarters of Wal*Mart, and assist with programming some of their equipment monitoring programs. Since then, I also spent a weekend in Chicago, IL to see the sights and take advantage of the MegaBus super-low-fares on their new bus line. It was $9.25 round trip! Of course, I have also been spending time with my wonderful girlfriend, and working on my not-so-wonderful house. Hopefully some pictures of all these happenings will be on the gallery page soon, as my camera has been very busy this year with about 1500 pics logged! Stay tuned for more sporadic updates!

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This is another question that comes up a lot in casual conversation, especially from people who don't live in central Ohio. Saying I live in Columbus is about as accurate as saying I grew up in Cleveland (when in actuality I am from a suburb on the far east side, not even in the same county as Cleveland). Truth be told, my current residence is Hilliard, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus on the west edge of Franklin County. Yes, it seems I am destined to live a suburban life. So, what's up with that?

Almost 4 years ago, I was still in school, and facing a dilemma: keep renting and throwing money away, or buy a place of my own and have a real home. The stars aligned, and I found a friend who was interested in the same goal, and we both had some money to toss in. After about 2 months of searching, we had decided that a place on the edge of town would be both inexpensive and comfortable. Further searching led us to Hilliard, a growing community with still reasonable housing prices. After much searching we found the perfect place; enough space for four people to live comfortably, a large garage and a nice back yard, all in a quiet neighborhood.

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It's no secret that I take a lot of pictures. Ever since I inherited a Kodak instamatic 126 camera from my grandfather when I was 12, I have had an interest in photography. That little bugger took square pictures, and had a disposable flash that stuck on top. I later upgraded to a more typical 35mm camera, and shot through many rolls of film as my childhood progressed. When the digital camera revolution swept the world, I wasted no time in upgrading. My current camera is a Canon PowerShot S2 IS, which has taken over 700 pictures in the 5 weeks that i've had it.

So where do all those pictures go? Their first stop is my poorly organized computer, which is home to over 3GB of still photos from my various cameras. Once there, I resize the good ones and find an appropriate distribution mechanism. For the ones worth sharing, they head to a web gallery of some form. In the past, I have had several avenues of distribution including my own hosted web server, and various free online gallery tools. Currently, I am working with the Coppermine gallery automation software which has really sped up the turnaround time to getting pictures posted. Hopefully, all my good pictures will soon be available there. The URL is http://meden.us/coppermine/index.php, so check it out and tell me what you think!

Also, for what it's worth I am not a 'gun nut', despite what it may seem. I enjoy sport shooting, and taking pictures, so this is the natural intersection. Don't worry, when not in use my pistols spend their time locked up and tucked away, they aren't casually sitting around my house being used to open beer bottles or turn off the TV.

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I get this question all the time, and rarely do I have a good answer. Well, here goes my first meaningful blog post. I work at Liebert, which is technically just a division of Emerson Network Power. Liebert produces and supports large scale, high precision, critical infrastructure power and cooling equipment. This means, simply put, we make air conditioners and power supplies for things like large computer rooms, medical equipment, sensitive storage rooms, or high availability equipment like television/radio broadcasting. The scope is actually quite broad, from small UPS units that power desktop computers all the way to huge multi-megawatt power systems that run thousands of computers, and air conditioners from ceiling mounted closet-coolers to huge multi-unit configurations that span hundreds of thousands of square feet.

So who do I work for? We have a group within Liebert dedicated to Site Monitoring, which is the practice of keeping tabs on all of the critical equipment and taking various corrective actions when bad things start to happen. This can mean anything from safely shutting down computers before the power goes out, to immediately generating a service call when an air conditioner is failing, or waking the network admin up at night to tell him someone left the server room door ajar and his web server is about to overheat. The Monitoring group is responsible for a wide variety of products that integrate with the entire Liebert line and third party products as well.

Okay, my job? I am an application engineer, meaning I work with customers or prospective customers on understanding exactly what they can get out of our products. Then, when something doesn't go according to spec, I have to step in again and figure out why and how it can be corrected. This often involves a lot of head spinning as I relate information from the customers to the product engineers and back again. Most of what I do is software related, drawing from my long background as a computer geek. Often though, it requires me stretching myself into whatever particular discipline the situation calls for, as our customer's needs can be incredibly diverse.

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This is me and my first entry. Yayyyyy

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