General Rambling

Well, I got my request in to go to VMworld, and it’s half-approved already. Let’s see what happens. 🙂 I’m really looking forward to going to VMworld, for the first time ever. Last year I ended up speaking about virtualization at LOPSA’s Phoenix Sysadmin Days instead of going to VMworld. I could have done both, but it would have entailed a drive from Phoenix to LA overnight. Too much stress. Speaking of LOPSA, they extended the cheap signup period for LOPSA’s New Jersey Sysadmin Days until tomorrow (7/18). Cool. It also looks like American Airlines is having a fall sale to all sorts of tropical places, 9/2 to 12/11/2007. Hmmm. Now only if VMworld was in Bermuda… Nah, I’m looking …

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Spending time = using some of your finite amount of time to do something. Investing time = using some of your finite amount of time to reduce the need to spend time doing something in the future.

I have five Pownce invites. Anybody want one? The local Pownce client uses the Adobe Integrated Runtime and appears to be completely brain dead. Like, nothing in it works, can’t click on links, can’t reply, won’t sit in the system tray, and it also won’t automatically sign me in. In the immortal words of Maddox, “Terrible. F.” Looks like it’s the browser for me. But don’t let that scare you off! 🙂

I’ve been having a miserable time with iTunes on Microsoft Windows Vista. I’ve posted about my trouble with it before, with it crashing and locking up. I still don’t have a fix for that, but I do have a fix for video not playing, thanks to the folks over at the CNet forums. If you have Vista and iTunes, and you cannot play videos, TV shows, or movies try moving the video file to a drive that isn’t your system drive. For me, that fixes the problem.

Saw Ratatouille today. Good movie. Pixar has outdone themselves (again) in the shading and textures, especially the night street scenes. If you see the movie notice the stones on the sidewalk. Beautiful. There is also a great lesson in how the characters handle the food critic. That’s all I’ll say to avoid any sort of spoiler.

Just remembered: last night at The Police concert the mostly-intoxicated lady behind us told Susannah: “You’re very patriotic! You’ve got a red shirt and a blue skirt, and, um, well, I guess you’re white.” Heh.

“Poor FrictionPlane,” Susannah said at the end of the concert. “Big shoes to fill.” “You mean FictionPlane,” I replied. Her slip spoke volumes about our opinions of the opening band. The Police were in Saint Paul last night, and it was a great concert. Their opening band was FictionPlane, who are still a little rough around the edges, sounding like a cross between ColdPlay and The Police. Not surprising, given that the front man for FictionPlane is Joe Sumner, Sting’s son. There was no mention of that whatsoever, though. The crowd seemed to really like them. I didn’t think they were bad, just that they could have stopped jumping from the stacks on to stage after the second leap… It …

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Stephen O’Grady’s post, “Kill Your Television,” struck a serious chord in me. My family had a cabin (“the lake” in Minnesota parlance) that was fairly primitive. It wasn’t really a cabin, but a trailer and a shed and a bunkhouse and an outhouse. The shower was a black 55 gallon drum, which would heat in the sun. Running water? Sure, it ran when you pumped it. No electricity, either. Back at home, my parents would kick my brother and I out of the house here and there. “It’s a beautiful day, go outside,” they’d say. My friend Matt and I would get on our bicycles and ride for miles and miles around the Saint Paul area. Our stated goal one …

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At work we’ll often eat lunch as a group around the conference table in the middle of the office. It has a projector and a Mac attached to it, so inevitably we’ll start roaming around YouTube for something to watch. Yesterday we stumbled into a bunch of crazy acoustic guitar playing. Edgar Cruz playing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody:” Andy Mckee playing Toto’s “Africa:” Wow.