The Wisconsin DMV sent me my gift a day early: And it was a present — I needed replacement plates but hadn’t ordered them yet. I’m glad I didn’t! I often joke that I haven’t come up with an original solution to anything in years, thanks to all the other sysadmins out there who share their solutions, knowledge, and time in order to make the world better. Thank you all for everything you do!
Apple iPad: $670 Wyse PocketCloud RDP/View Client: $14.99 One flight worth of GoGoWireless: $12.95 Posting on my blog via an RDP connection to my work desktop across a VPN from 30,000 feet: priceless. I’m on my way to Gestalt IT’s Seattle Tech Field Day. I’m excited, for a lot of reasons. It’s an honor to be invited, nominated by some of the other delegates. I’ve spent little time in Seattle, and while I won’t have a lot of extra free time this trip it’ll be better than last time I was there. I’ll get to hang out at a bunch of high-tech places, and best yet, do so with a bunch of high-tech folks that, frankly, I’ve only read about. …
Photo courtesy Maitri, background on the Dell from Vladstudio.
I’m taking an off-topic break for a moment to express my delight in popular culture, for a change. Those of you watching HBO’s Treme saw something this week that is summarized quite nicely by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, in their “Treme Explained” post: Antoine and Desiree barbecuing on a parade route illustrates an aspect of Mardi Gras that’s poorly understood by outsiders: The beads ‘n’ boobs “Girls Gone Wild” version of the holiday that Delmond briefly experiences elsewhere in the episode is largely confined to the French Quarter and almost exclusively perpetrated by drunken tourists, not that there’s anything wrong with that. For most local participants in the Carnival parade experience in New Orleans, the setting more resembles a family …
Test My ISP is a new program from the FCC to measure the speeds people are getting from their ISPs: Together, the FCC and Samknows are setting out to provide US consumers with reliable and accurate statistics of their broadband connections. If you are interested in using one of our units to measure your home broadband connection, then please sign up below. You will get to play a part in changing the face of the American broadband industry and you also get a free high-speed wireless router! I think it’s great they’re doing something like this. My AT&T DSL connection never goes 6 Mbps, which is what I’m paying for (and want). However, it probably won’t be hard for the …
Holy crap, server pricing has come down a lot in the last month! Four weeks ago a Dell R810 with 256 GB of RAM, dual Intel 6550 8-core CPUs, and the standard complement of drives, warranties, etc. was almost $28,000. A couple weeks ago the AMD-based Dell R815 was released, featuring the AMD 8- and 12-core CPUs. A similar configuration to the R810 above comes to almost $17,000, and that’s with more cores in the host than the Intel. Now the Dell R810, same configuration, is a little over $18,000. I’ve not been a big fan of AMD’s technology in the past, because of caching bugs, OS incompatibilities, general BS, etc. However, for what they just saved me by keeping …
Me: “I wonder when Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will actually get released.” Coworker: “What is ‘exactly one month after it would have helped you solve a problem’?”
I’ve been reading the comments on Gizmodo’s “How Apple Lost the Next iPhone.” I have a few observations in response to a few of the types of comments. “I can’t believe someone like Gray Powell would have a prototype phone out in the wild.” I can. It makes perfect sense for the guy who writes the baseband controller firmware to have one out for personal testing. When there’s a problem he can dump logs, etc. while it’s happening. There is sometimes no substitute for being able to see a problem in action, and having the guy eat his own dog food is a great way to do that. I, as an iPhone user, appreciate this level of testing. “I can’t …
With the VMworld 2010 call for papers out there I’ve been thinking about judging submissions to conferences. I’ve been fortunate enough to have helped judge papers for a couple of conferences, and it’s been pretty educational for me. I’ve seen a lot of good submissions, but also a lot of rough ones, too. I’ve kept some notes about what I’m thinking when I judge a presentation and I thought maybe it would be helpful to others. 1. If your presentation is just whipped together please say so, up front. Ideally you’d have spent some quality time with your presentation and submitted it in an excellent, finished state, but we all know how deadlines sneak up on us. It’s just that …
Undoubtably you’ve seen the news about Google ending their censoring in mainland China: Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Personally, I love this solution, as it’s an elegant exploitation of the politics of China. 1. Remember that Hong Kong was turned over to China in 1997. According to Wikipedia, “The Basic Law [of Hong Kong] stipulates that Hong Kong shall enjoy a ‘high degree of autonomy’ in all matters except foreign relations and military defence.” This …