Daylight savings time
Microsoft waits way too long
Admins get sore ass
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Information about joeware mixed with wild and crazy opinions...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592834,00.html
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Ever since Alan Shepard became the first American in space in 1961, NASA has controlled our mission in space. It became a sacred place, untouchable, a museum open only to select government employees. Fewer than 500 people have reached space since Shepard; Branson plans to double that number in Galactic’s first year. NASA’s idea of progress is to return to the moon, nearly a half-century later. Last year the agency spent nearly $5 billion sending highly trained astronauts to the ISS, largely to ferry supplies and fix the AC and other sputtering plumbing. The new generation of entrepreneurs is betting it can do what NASA does–only better and cheaper, with cushier seats and cool views for paying customers.
Far from fighting these space invaders, NASA is pushing such ideas as FedEx–like service to lunar outposts, private fueling stations in orbit and space tourism. “We’re entering a renaissance period of space exploration,” NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in January. Like the Renaissance, he said, wealthy entrepreneurs will–in fact, must–take the lead in commercializing technology.
Many NASA critics take it further. The agency’s role, they say, should be to explore the far reaches of the universe by roving robot, leaving Earth’s orbit and the moon to the private sector. “We’re in this transition zone, where the Lewis and Clark role of NASA has been done on the human side,” says space activist and rabble rouser Rick Tumlinson, founder of Orbital Outfitters. “Now it’s time for the settlers and shopkeepers to move in.”
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…both Iraq (with the exception of Baghdad) and Afghanistan and probably Iran and India would all be bombed into rubble…
Driving around Michigan today I got backed up by our famous Michigan road crews in the middle of an intersection. They blocked it for about 5-6 cycles of the light so I am thinking, cool, probably doing a good job, I don’t mind waiting. Don’t rush quality. They leave and I drive into the intersection and the asphalt is thrown all over the place and actually made it into a few of the potholes, nothing patted down to make it solid, etc etc etc. Someone dropping a bomb from 25,000 feet or sending a missile from miles and miles away appears to be more accurate than these guys actually standing in the holes they are trying to fill….
Sigh. Love Michigan roads and Michigan road crews. When are the roads the smoothest? When they ice over…
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx
Some key features of Virtual PC 2007 include:
Support for x64 Windows as a host operating system
Support for hardware virtualization support
Support for Windows Vista as a guest and host operating system
Support for PXE network booting of virtual machines
Support for the use of full screen virtual machines on multi-monitor systems (VM still stays on just one monitor though)
Unfortunately they used the same filename for the x86 and x64 downloads so if you download both, watch for that. Also try not to notice misspellings and formatting errors on the download page… ;o)
joe
So you have been thinking about updating your computers for the DST changes this year… Did you remember to update your Windows Mobile devices?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/daylightsaving/default.mspx
It is official. I am registered for the Directory Experts Conference 2007… As an attendee only, I am not speaking. Well I will speak about the same as always, in the halls and during the various social engagements, etc. But not standing up at the front of a room trying to sound intelligent. As of right now I should be at the Red Rock as of Saturday afternoon April 21 and leaving the afternoon of Thursday April 26.
DEC is a great get together of some very intelligent and interesting folks. I definitely find it to be quite thought provoking. My friend Eric is presenting this year and I have to say I can’t wait to see what he presents. There look to be some other interesting sessions as well. However, to be completely honest, while DEC has lots of interesting presentations, I always find the between-session banter and social engagements to be the most interesting. No fixed agenda, people just talking about whatever is important to them. I much prefer that “few on few” banter to stomping back and forth in front of a bunch of people trying to keep my thoughts straight, avoiding swearing, and yapping about this that or the other thing while the audience is just sitting there watching. If the past is any indication, lots of other folks also like the ad hoc chat sessions that spring up around me as well.
Of course Stuart Kwan (of the Ottawa Kwan Clan) will be at DEC as well, he is a permanent fixture of DEC. Stuart is always great to sit down and speak with. He is one of the most approachable managers at Microsoft, loves talking to people. He even appears to listen to my rants. 🙂
There is a LongHorn workshop on Sunday before the main conference. If you haven’t played with LongHorn yet, here is a chance to do so on someone else’s hardware so you don’t have to worry about cleaning up afterward. 😉
I have been running more and more power hungry virtuals and finally had to load up some SQL Servers (I don’t like SQL Server the app[1]). This called to attention that I needed to use more than my older hardware for running virtuals so I ordered the materials to make Super Fast Virtual Mofo…. SFVM. I figured I should stick to the whole Fast Mofo naming scheme.
New hardware includes
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Quad Core 2.66Ghz (yep, jumping back to Intel at the moment)
8GB DDR2800 G.SKILL RAM.
12 x 500GB 7200 RPM WD500 Disk Drives (SATA 3.GB/s)
LSI Logic SATA II PCI-X Controller Card – 8 Disk supporting RAIDs 0/1/5/10/50
ASUS P5WDG2-WS PRO MoBo (Someone convinced me that this would be the best Mobo for this config… I am skeptical of ASUS from previous experiences but will try)
Tagan TG800 800 Watt Power Supply
Sapphire Radeon x1050 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card
All wrapped up in a Lian Li PC-V2100BPlus II Black Aluminum Server Computer Case. (12 x 3.5 internal bays to start with)
I thought hard about using SCSI but the costs didn’t appeal to me, this was already far more than I normally ever consider spending. Plus having the spinning disk was very important because I wanted to more quickly be able to “enable” different environments versus unpacking and recovering them from DVDs. Free from financial constraints I would have put in 20 of the largest capacity 15k SCSI disks I could find (12 in the internal 3.5’s, another 8 in 6 of the External 5.25’s with 3/4 adapters).
I would like to use MSFT virtualization but I don’t believe they have a x64 solution yet and plus when it comes down to perf, MSFT just can’t seem to keep up with VMWARE. Once I have this new machine completed I will move all of my current virtuals running on my old virtual hosts and on two of the newer machines reconfigure the disk layout and probably add some upgrades and then spin them back up as virtual hosts. There are three other really old physical machines that I will be shutting down and packing away which will be nice as it will free up some room. It will mean I no longer have any Dell desktops running in my house which is quite a change as I ran Dell for a long long time, I think it has been 10 years since I started running my first Dell Desktop. I still have one Dell laptop left but I am getting closer and closer to ending its life as well. On second thought, I may keep one of them and just rebuild it entirely as FreeBSD. We’ll see how it goes.
Of course I received the hardware from NewEgg in jigg time. The UPS man wasn’t thrilled, a ton of boxes and he had to haul it to my back door because I refused to shovel my front porch after all of the snow we have gotten lately.
Thoughts???
The case is HUGE…. Positively HUGE…. I opened it up and thought about moving into it as a second bedroom. That big…. Plus Lian Li cases…. most gorgeous cases out there that I have seen. I have two of them, one for my media center and now this server case. Jumping ahead, even with the all of these drives and everything else in it, it is quieter than several of my other PCs. It has foam applied to the sides to deaden the sound.
Power Supply… Excellent quality throughout. After this, I will buy no other power supplies other than Tagan.
The Intel Chip…. I opened the box and it was huge as well… oh wait, no that is the chip cooler and fan… Looks like something out of a sci-fi novel. Completely different way to attach it to the motherboard from what I have seen previously. Also no pins, just contacts.
MY one complaint at the moment is that 3 of the hard drives are bad. Well not completely bad, but bad enough that they are causing issues. If one of them is accessed by the onboard intel RAID it takes about 5 minutes to enumerate the drive. If one of them is accessed by the LSI RAID card it takes a while to load the BIOS but then it reports the drive is bad. Regardless of where I connect them they show as bad in the slots… So I take those as bad drives. Very annoying.
joe
[1] I won’t explain it other than I am an infrastructure guy and I don’t believe SQL Server should be in the infrastructure. Its fine for business apps though.
Creationists defeated in Kansas school vote on science teaching
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2013263,00.html
Comment: This is what happens when people too busy getting real work done start paying attention again.
New presidential series aims to end the $1-coin curse
Comment: I hate coins… Though I have some of the earlier $1 coins in case they become valuable some time. Don’t ever see myself using them to buy things. I think the government is going to lose on this bid too. $1 seems to be about the point that most people start considering cash real money. You will constantly find coins in seat cushions and people won’t care, but people start leaving dollar bills in the cushions and they will give a shit. All my change goes into boxes and countertops, etc every night and occasionally I throw it all in a giant plastic coke bottle “bank” which really needs to be empties as it is splitting at the seems now. What a pain though.
Sign Up for Gmail, No Invite Needed
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Sign_Up_for_Gmail_No_Invitations_Needed/551-79132-643.html
Comment: Not that it was so tough to get an invite, at one point I think I was getting 3-4 invites sent to me a day. I expect at this point pretty much anyone who wanted a gmail account has it. I have one around here somewhere…. [looks around, now where did I put that thing…]
Gameworld: Microsoft defends “Crackdown” path to “Halo 3”
Comment: Buy crackdown and get into Halo 3 beta… hmmm… Almost worth it, Halo is about one of the only games I like to play. Actually like is a bit weak, Halo is like Xbox crack.
Has Open-Source Lost its Halo?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129072-c,opensource/article.html
Comment: Err… well yeah. Companies aren’t solely in business to make people’s live’s better. Embracing OSS means they see some angle to make money off of it. How can people not get this? I see nothing odd if that angle is to kill competing companys’ software offerings.
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