I have been offering open source software on www.MowYourLawn.com for over 8 years now.  I love open source software (oss) and have benefited from it greatly in many ways.  The unfortunate part about oss is that it is hard to find time to dedicate to making it better on a regular basis.  I find myself [...]

Well, I did it.  I determined that purchasing an Apple Macbook Pro was the approach I should take to meet my personal/business computing needs at my workstation.  What drove me to this decision?  Well, I just can’t stand it when an OS screws me over without giving me recourse.  That was the case a few [...]

We have a new baby BOY in the Bartell family!  His name is Wyatt Andrew Bartell and is the 5th and final child we are expecting :-)
Stats:
Weight: 9lbs 14.4 oz
Born: Thursday December 10th, 6:56pm
… hmm… that’s all I can remember for stats.  But really, what else matters! ;-)
Mom and baby are both healthy.  Wyatt is [...]

I had the cool honor of being interviewed for the ENDPGM portion of the IBMSystemsMag trade rag.

You can find the article here.  I learned the hard way that you should wear contacts when doingn a 1/2 marathon (I was too cheap to buy some – never again! :-), you can see my mole-ish eyes peering [...]

Here’s a story for your Thursday morning.  So I never actually graduated from high school.  My senior year I decided I was tired of being treated like a kid and decided I would try my hand at college a year early (in Minnesota high school students can do PSEO “Post SEcondary Options” if they want [...]

So I have reached my $1000 incremental fund raising mark.  If the video didn’t load below you can see the YouTube video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y16CJ4yX16c
To donate money and feed starving kids please head over to http://firstgiving.com/aaronbartell

I am running the Rock ‘n’ Roll Chicago marathon.  I can’t hardly believe it.  I have been training for about 2 months now and have 1 month to go.  After many years of pursuing things for my own benefit, I am finding that leaves a guy empty and I am now finding that life is [...]

…for my wife to be prego with our fifth (5th) child.  Yes, you heard that right, number 5 – we can conceive with the best of them.  We finally found out what is going on and it turns out we know some Catholics and that is enough to make the wife a “fertile mertil”.  Of [...]

Yep, you read that right. I ventured into uncharted territories writing a training course and loved every minute of it – well, most of it anyway. Writing a training course is like writing 60 articles on the same subject in a fraction of the time.
The training course is titled “XML Web Services for [...]

I work from home and when I have no conferences to speak at or trade shows to attend I “let myself go”.  This might be synonymous to a woman not taking a curling iron with her camping.  For me it means I *try* to grow a beard.  I just came accross this picture again on [...]