I tried to fill out the form for the free 128 Meg SD card from Palm today. Since I have less than perfect vision and Palmone decided (like everyone else I know) to make the serial number microscopic I was unable to pull the info I needed for the free card. Lets face it, I don’t need the card. I already have a 512 meg SD card. Dam, I gave away a 128 meg card to Jayson already. It is the principle of the matter that I want Palmone to pay (even if it is a little bit) for putting only 32megs on their top of the line phone and got burned for doing it.
scott
Great Product Just Got Better
I use (sometimes) The Missing Sync 4.x from Mark/Space. It is a palm sync utility for the Mac. I say I sometimes use it because I have some minor issues with syncing my PDA data to Entourage. The Missing Sync is actually a fantastic product. They just released a new version that now supports its own Avantogo Conduit. I can almost seamlessly sync between my Thinkpad and my Mac Mini. The only issue I have now is the category data from Entourage getting into outlook and vice versa.
I may start using my Treo with Entourage as my main source for mail and contacts and drop outlook all together. Of course I say that allot, but I haven’t cut the cord yet. Dam outlook. you love to hate it. And recently I have truly hated it.
All I can say is that Mark/Space is a company that gets me buying Mac hardware. Why? Because I know innovative people like these will write software that lets me use most of what I use on my PC, like my Palm Treo! And no I don’t work for these guys. I just like software that does exactly what it is supposed to without major problems.
Can’t Get Enough Bandwith
I just finished the paperwork on getting our office more bandwidth. We currently have 1 T-1 (and its redundant shadow twin). That amount of bandwidth is just not cutting it. We are maxing out our circuit several times a day. With the price drop on bandwidth we just ordered a 4.5 megabit link and are going to drop our redundant pair of T-1’s. Since we don’t have a call center in our office anymore we don’t need the extra redundancy, and the 4.5 meg link is actually cheaper than the 2 redundant T-1’s we currently have.
Save money and triple our bandwidth, that was worth the trade off in redundancy. Since there is such a lag in order time to delivery we won’t see this bandwidth for several weeks. I estimate it up and running by May 1. Sounds like a long time, but it is worth the wait.
VMWare Server
We just bought our first (of many I hope) license of VMware GSX server. We also just picked up a nice Dell Poweredge 2650 off of eBay to run it on. We are plugging it into an existing SCSI disk array we had. We are bumping the ram to 4gig and with the existing dual Xeon 2.8ghz processors should make this a nice little server. VMware suggests 3-5 virtual machines per physical box depending on its configuration. I figure I can get more if I have several virtual machines that need to be always up, but are not always worked on. I already have a list of a bunch of projects that can be virtual machines, vs buying a physical server. We already built a Biztalk 2004 Server and SQL server to go along with it in GSX virtual machines using the demo copy we had. Once this new server is built we will port them over. Since it is just copying a few files it is trivial to move the VM’s to a new server.
I am also itching to try out the beta of VMware Workstation 5.0. I downloaded the beta but have not had a chance to try it yet. it looks like there is a bunch of new features. The more I use this software, the more I think it is the wave of the future for an environment such as ours. I can cut down the number of servers I have and save money doing so. Allot of my dev and QA servers are old, and will slowly need replacing. Putting them into VM’s makes sense. I see a ton of other applications for the software. This is our first foray into VM’s for server use. If successful I hope to do more with it.
Back To Work
It was my first day back since I got sick. I ended up leaving early (3ish) since I was still very tired. The bright side is I made it through the day! I am resting now (sort of). hopefully I will be at 100% tomorrow since I have a full day planned that I cannot really bail out of if I start feeling bad.
I Feel Old
I feel a bit older today than I normally do. One of my best friends from college just had a baby. I am not sure what makes me feel older the fact that friends my age are now having kids or that I will be 31 next month? My congrats to Sean and Kelly. Also a hello to little Scott C. According to recent readings he will not have any problems being the only Scott in his classes when he grows up.
Sean and Kelly are lucky. FAO does not have in stock the big dog stuffed animal I was going to get. Dam FAO. Now I have to wait till my sister has another kid to piss someone off with the dam big dog, but it won’t be so fun to give it to her. She is starting to think she wants the really big one for the next kid:(
Where In The World Is Scott?
Many of you may have thought I died. If you saw me on Thursday that is probably what you thought was going on! I am not dead. I felt like I was going to die, but it was just the flue. I am feeling better now. I am still really tired, but I am awake and not lying in bed feeling like I was run over by a truck (i figured that getting run over by a truck had to feel as bad or worse than how I was feeling yesterday. I may be wrong on that, sorry).
I have no idea what happened. I was feeling fine on Thursday morning and then within 5 minutes I went from feeling fine to feeling like I was going to die. I guess my cold turned into the flu. Who knows. I just don’t know how I made it home. Thanks to Jayson, Cari, & Danny for making sure I made it home alive. Thanks to the unnamed cabbie who had to put up with my puking in the back of his cab. To my defense we had a garbage bag and made no mess. I am a well prepared sick person.
Also I would like to thank Gretchen for the chicken sandwich. Fast food never tasted so good. Also a very special thanks to Pierre for keeping me company. Sorry that I couldn’t play with you more buddy, but I felt like crap. Thanks for not crapping though:) Oh, Pierre is a dog if anyone was just a bit confused.
I slept today during the day so now it is late and I am not tired. I am going to take some more Tylenol PM and hopefully sleep the entire night. I have watched a ton of TV today, and I felt like getting a bit of writing in before I collapse to sleep. I don’t understand how I can be so tired and not sleepy.
I will take the day off to take it easy. My dad keeps telling me not to rush back into my routine or else I will get sick again. That happened last year and I don’t want it to happen again. More tomorrow…
Birthday Gifts
My niece’s birthday is next week. I have no idea what to get her. It’s not that she is a girl. It is that she is 2. What do you get a 2 year old? I don’t have any ideas. My sister is no help. She keeps coming up with things that she needs approval on that will be “special”. That was great for a first birthday since Morgan didn’t remember opening gifts. This year is different. I need for her to have something to open on her birthday. My brother in law doesn’t think she needs anything. So he was no help either. So far I will get barbie’s first roller blades (inline skates, excuse me roller blade inc.). My sister also might want me to get a wooden cash register toy. I still have time so hopefully this will get sorted out.
Also this month I need to get a gift for my cousin Merric. he is turning 11 or something. Man I am getting old. I cannot remember how old he will be. Dam family that I care about and have to get gifts for:)
In a Haze
I have been in a cold medicine induced haze all day today. Kai, Danny, & Jayson were having lots of fun regarding my state of awareness. It is kind of weird when you don’t really feel your feet. I knew I was in for a day when I couldn’t read the screen of my PDA on the train. I wanted to leave early but I ended up staying a few minutes late. Time just flies by.
I am going to try and get to bed early. I hope that happens.
Dam Broken Tech
My Lexar Jump drive secure broke the other day. it is physically in perfect condition. I just cannot copy anything to it. It may have been my fault, but if it was they didn’t design these things very well. While backing everything up off of the drive I moved the Lexar secure software off the drive. I then tried to format the secure and public partitions on the drive. Windows for some reason didn’t finish the format. I kept getting an error. I tried it on my mac and it seemed to work. that was until I tried to copy the secure software back onto the drive. I then get a cannot write error.
As of now, the drive is totally useless to me. At this point I would settle for just using it as a USB key chain and forget the secure part of it. But I cannot even get that working.
My silent protest to this damaged device is to pull it from my list of favorite gear. Take that Lexar!