In the News

Do you live in the Brain Belt?

I’ve heard it called Silicon Prarie before, but I hadn’t heard of the Brain Belt. Back when I worked in Green Bay WI, we used to call it the Silicon Tundra. They of coarse are all just made up names to talk about the tech boom that is happening in the midwest.

Just in Des Moines, we have some pretty impressive tech companies. My current employer LightEdge Solutions is head quartered here. We’re the first company to tie Microsoft’s OCS messaging system to a Broadsoft VoIP platform for hosted consumption.

Its hard to really put into words how proud of my wife I am. She has given me a gift that I can never thank her enough for, a handsome baby boy. Nolan James Patterson was born on September 18th at 9:47PM. Weighing in a 7lbs and 1oz and a whopping 20 inches long. Ok, maybe not that whopping, but still a decent height to him.

So, as a good father, I promise to raise my son to learn all the important things. Things such as:

As I was checking in today on the latest tech news, I found out that Twitter has announced that they are building their own data center.

Death to the fail whale they are calling it. Maybe so, but what really got me was this.

Twitter will have full control over network and systems configuration, with a much larger footprint in a building designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs.

If you follow me on twitter (@usrlocal) or facebook you probably already know this little bit of news. But here it is anyway…

My wife and I are please to announce that we will be expanding our family this year. We’re expecting our first towards the end of September. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited about it.

I’ve already stated my main 5 goals for 2010. But this morning I realized that I have developed a very bad habit since getting my iPhone a few years back. This is kind of related to goal #1 of work less. But I think it needs to be separated out on its one.

My iPhone serves several functions for me in the morning. Its my alarm, weather station and unfortunately, its my email client. Yup, one of the first things I do in the morning is check my email. Am I getting called by our 24/7 NOC? If there was something wrong, they would call! So why in the world am I checking first thing in the morning. I don’t need to know that right away. There are more important things to do like eat breakfast, take the dog for a walk, etc. Unless I have an early morning meeting (not recommended for programmers and admins), email just doesn’t need to be in the mix until I get into the office. At the very least it can wait until I have some Cherrios in my belly.