April 2007 Archives

Though the dilbertian factor is low at my current job (the measurement of stress level based on number of hung up dilbert strips), i sure got a kick out of todays comic.

As an aside, googling for some fodder to link to, i came across the dilbert principle.

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing.

While resizing of a disk in a virtual machine may be easy, booting to an ISO cd might sound trivial but if you've never done it before you might be scratching your head like i was. Turns out when connecting via the VirtualCenter, on boot there are things fired off that have to do with HA and DRS that make the gui pause a bit and not show the inital step of the VMWare bios boot screen. If you connect directly to the ESX server with the gui, it doesn't do this and you can get into bios very easily. That one threw me for a loop for sure.

We said goodbye to the foster pup, Rocky, this weekend. You've found yourself a good home i think.

I've found myself a new favorite drink this weekend. The Gnarly Head Old Vine Zinfadel is a surprising find. Usually i just choose a few random bottles at a time, along with the old standby of Colorado Brewed Lovelyness, but this time - BAM, i was loving it from the first sip.

I didn't know a whole heck of a lot about the different grapes they make wine with, but according to the all knowing Wikipedia, zin has the highest alcohol percentage. Nifty.

Having 9TB at my fingertips makes one feel powerful. I can only imagine what the thumper feels like (the sun x4500).

I've been installing a Coraid ATA over ethernet device for a large slow long term storage solution and am mildly pleased. I'm not quite doing backflips about it yet but we'll see.

Posting just because i can.

So hot.

In the last 6 months i've been deploying a new virtualized environment in VMWare for Solaris 10 x86 and Windows 2003. I've found that doing snapshots cause the Solaris machines to lock up their network adapters and loose connectivity. Not a good thing. The most recent patch release on 3/29 includes a fix for it in the patch bundle ESX-6431040. Very cool - have not had a problem since i've patched all the host's.

i can't resist posting the current foster, Rocky. This is a foster failure waiting to happen.

Widespread Panic's spring tour is well underway now, and after the two night stint close by in Kansas City i'm addicted to downloading the live sets from the multiple torrent sites out there. (links: bt.etree.org anddigitalpanic.org)

I've started keeping track of the new songs they are playing with help from the amazing EverydayCompanion.

3/23/07 Woodlands, TX
Smoking Factory

3/24/07 Grand Prairie TX
Shoes on Tight

3/27/07 Kansas CIty
Angels on High

4/3/2007 Richmond
Flicker

4/4/2007 Baltimore
Tell The Truth into Submission

Seems that there are a few software developers out there that don't realize just because we might have to use a phone that runs windows that our desktops don't...!

Attempting to find a decent text editor for the new Motorola Q has been difficult as everyone i've found that was recommended only offers downloads as an EXE and dropping the exe file itself onto the device does nothing for you.

Solution! I've found there is a an OSX app called File Juicer that attempts to extract the EXE and pull out files contained within it. Seemed to worked perfect for Osymo's Text Editor

We've recently thrown our aging Treo 650's in the trash bin at work this week and picked up the fragile-looking Motorola Q. I'm still looking for the control-alt-delete button by the way.

Aside from the occasional lock up it seems to be working pretty sweet. Biggest problem is how to sync up with my beloved powerbook. I've used MissingSync in the past with lukewarm luck so i was hesitant to get back into it. And not to my surprise it's still a pretty buggy and hard to use product. Funny aside, looking at their forums it's full of people bitching about the product and customer service "unwilling" to help. Come on people, admit that there really isn't any other alternative and suck it up.

I had zero luck getting bluetooth working, but i DID eventually get USB to sync up and it's humming pretty perfect right now. Biggest thing you have to configure is by default there is a setting turned on that makes it not communicate correctly.

On the Q, Start -> Settings -> Connections -> USB to PC. Uncheck the option that reads "Enable Advanced Network Functionality" Now you should be able to get OSX to see the Q. Found on the forums here

I have recently decided that I gain entirely too much good information from random blogs across the internet battling the problems I come across every day as a system administrator. It is about time I gave a little back. Brace your selves.