Technology Bytes

Allright…

The Semi-Annual HAAUG Swap Meet happens this Saturday, January 15th. A warning to computer investors and Day Traders: don’t get too excited – that’s HAAUG as in the Houston Area Apple Users Group and not a meet-up for people who invest in pork belly futures. Oldish and newish gear alike will adorn a number of dealer tables set up throughout the venue. So whether you’re looking for an old copy of Clarisworks or hoping to find a newly abandoned iPad, this is the meetup for you. Registration is required if you wish to secure a table for your own wares, but if you’re only on the prowl for good deals, simply show up unannounced. The event takes place from nine to noon at the Bellaire Civic Center, located at 7008 South Rice Boulevard in beautiful Bellaire, Texas. Hit www.haaug.org for details and directions.

If you *do* want to trade some pork bellies but you’re not in a position to go Trading Places with someone sitting on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, you have to head no farther than the Computer Investors Special Interest Group that meets this Friday at ten in the morning at the HAL-PC Headquarters. The Houston Area League of PC Users is located at 4543 Post Oak Place just inside the 610 Loop near San Felipe.

Now, a person who makes their money the hard way, from the hoof up, isn’t always the type to trust their trading data to the cloud. If you’re the kind person who likes their data right where they can get at it – on a CD hidden in your mattress – then you may want to attend Saturday’s Beginning Access Special Interest Group to learn how to make the break from flat files and develop a relationship with the psuedo-relational database management system from Microsoft known as Access. The group meets from noon until 1:30, with the intent to teach people how to use Microsoft Access. Hit the HAL-PC site at www.hal-pc.org then surf to the SIG Calendar for a full list of the group’s meetings, workshops and events.

If you *do* have your head in the clouds, but would like to get your feet in a data center, you can join the *HCC* group next Thursday, January 20th, for a tour of the Quasar Data Center located at 1001 Texas Avenue in downtown Houston. Attendees will get to see a fully operational data center that weathered Hurricane Ike without ever rolling to backups. Quasar manages two Tier 1 Points of Presence on the Internet, NTT and Cogent, so be very careful not to trip over anything while on the HCC tour. Incidentally, that’s HCC as in Houston Cloud Computing, adding yet another interpretation of this well-known initialism.

The group currently houses their site at www.meetup.com / Houston – Cloud – Computing. Head that way to sign up for the tour and to check out what else the group is up to, as they explore Internet technologies and offer free training on technologies like Citrix and Terminal Services. If you didn’t catch the URL, don’t worry: just head over to the Geek Radio site for a full transcipt of tonight’s amazingly brief BarretTime. Which leads us to…

That’s it for the fastest four one one of twenty eleven and that’s that for BarretTime.