The scary thing about the current California wildfires is that the containment on the big ones is 20% or less. So hot, so dry, and the winds coming in the wrong way. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, especially if the energy transmission emergency continues. If folks have to stay inside because of smoke they’ll run their air conditioning, which makes life even worse. UW-Madison Space Science & Engineering wildfire coverage Google Maps mashup of the fires
Twelve Essential Photographic Rules – – PopPhotoSeptember 2007 Apple Matters | 10 Things Every Programmer Should Know For Their First Job Nikon Small World – Gallery Cool images. Unfortunately nothing in a format for desktop use… Howard Lindzon » Craigslist Meets WallStreet…Classic Oracle licensing, support pose VMware virtualization hurdle Oracle VMware licensing is probably the single most annoying thing right now in my VMware implementations. The fact of the matter is that some of the people I work with are seriously considering PostgreSQL or MySQL as the fix. Download free CSS templates – Free CSS Templates 41 Reasons Why Your Blog Probably Sucks | Performancing.com Improve Your Photos in 60 Seconds Stuck In Customs » HDR Tutorial – Featuring HDR …
Details of Firefox 3.0’s visual updates have emerged. I have mixed feelings about their plans to create OS-specific interfaces. As a techie I think what they are doing is cool. However, as a system administrator that supports multiple platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) I have some concerns. Beyond being a good web browser, the big reason I like Firefox is that it is basically the same on every platform. Web applications can be tested once, and documentation can be written once (especially if it has screen shots). If the look changes I am going to have to maintain separate documentation for each, or rely on the user to translate the documentation (bad idea). If the feature set diverges …
Patching your systems isn’t the same as having vision. Knowing when your software needs an update is a symptom of reading the Secunia RSS feed. Sometimes upgrading software is a symptom of a vision, but even then usually not. It’s usually the result of a support issue, reactive instead of proactive. I asked Google to define ‘vision’ and m+w zander put it well: “An element of leadership that outlines where the organization should go and what it should become; focuses on strategic advantages, inspiration to deliver those advantages consistently, and clarity as a decision-making criterion.” Being hacker-free is good, but not a strategic advantage since everybody else is doing it, too.
Interesting article over at Server Specs about how certification doesn’t pay anymore. She asks a question at the end about computer science education, and its relevance to IT jobs. “Are today’s college courses relevant to the technologies actually used in today’s data center?” My response: yes and no. Yes, in that my CS education taught me the fundamentals of programming, program design, APIs, and operating systems. My solid understanding of operating system concepts has served me well. I understand how an OS makes scheduling decisions, allocates resources, and interacts with applications much better than many of my peers. I also understand programming language concepts very well, too, which helps a lot when dealing with my developer brethren. No, in that …
Tuning and Optimizing RHEL for Oracle 9i and 10g Databases (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 4, 3, 2.1 – redhat, x86-64) National Do Not Call Registry If you registered your phone number for do not call lists it will expire after 5 years. I just reregistered my numbers.
I wish VMware would hurry up and release VI 3.5[0]. It’s getting hard to figure out what information has been released to the public and what I only know because of my NDA status[1]. I say this as I put a presentation on VMware together. It’s easy for me to forget that to others the basics of virtualization are new and exciting. It’s been my reality for nearly four years.[2] [0] Within reason, as I’d rather it be stable. 🙂 [1] Not that things like NDAs have stopped some other bloggers. [2] Virtual reality? 🙂
iPhone Nextbus When I was in San Francisco for VMworld I was using the MUNI Next Bus site a lot from my iPhone. The fact that there is a custom interface for the iPhone now is sweet. Seth’s Blog: Teaching your customers a lesson Dead on. Why do people act like the slightest deviation from the norm sets a precedent? It doesn’t. Why? Because we’re not in third grade anymore. Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins SQL joins make my brain hurt. Inco iPhone-specific sysadmin tools. Unfortunately only for Mac OS X for now. Software Is Hard Excellent piece. Software is hard.
“Hey,” I say, knocking on a programmer’s office door. “You have a second?” “What? I’m in the middle of something.” “Me, too. Another production outage, in fact. I’ve been helping some folks figure out why we’re having database connection problems. All their database connections are being used up. Turns out it’s the web application you rolled out last week. Did you get my email yesterday?” “Yeah.” “So did you have any thoughts on it?” “The DBAs just need to increase the number of database connections allowed.” “Well, that’s what they did to work around this. Does your web application really need 300 open connections to the database?” “It opens what it needs,” he says in a snotty tone of voice. …
I just upgraded to WordPress 2.3. While I was still at 2.2.3 I went through each plugin, upgrading each one as needed[0], and then used Subversion to upgrade WordPress (svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3). Works great. Seems a lot faster now, too. I’m not quite sure how I’ll use tagging separately from categories yet, but I’m sure a reason will present itself sometime soon. [0] I only use four plugins, so this was easy. FeedBurner FeedSmith, Google XML Sitemaps, Popularity Contest, and Share This.