Do I have an imposing personality? I never thought so, but something someone said to me has got me thinking. It was not said in a bad way or anything. It was actually part of a conversation I was having with a friend, and it came up. I always say that I am very quiet if I don’t know you, and if I do know you I won’t shut up! I guess that can be said for my personal life and part of my professional one. When I do start to think about how I handle things in the work environment, my friend may have a point.
More Great Mac Tools
While working on something today (i honestly can’t remember what), I got side tracked. I am so happy I did. I have been slowly playing with the unix shell and ports for my mac. Today I found a bunch of cool (and free) tools that make life and my job much easier. I am so loving the power of this Powerbook!
First I found Xutils‘ RDP Menu program. it lets me launch multiple windows remote desktop connections at a time. Microsoft should make that work out of the box, but at least 3rd party developers are doing it.
Rawr-jour is a cool utility that lets you browse all the Rendezvous Bonjour networking. it is really cool. If found it really easy to mount volumes on other mac’s.
The 2 products listed above are by far my favorite of the bunch, but I also found 2 SSH & Telnet connection managers that both seem really cool. Saves my lazy ass from typing in all those switch and firewall host names when I want to connect to them. I also found a random password generator, but I honestly think the one I have on my XP machine is much better. The difference is the mac one I have was free and I actually paid for the Windows based password generator.
Freevo Version 4.0
I have been using Snapstream’s Beyond TV 3 for almost a year now. I have spoken before of how great a product it is. They just announced Beyond TV 4.0. Having no need for over the air HDTV tuning I bought the upgrade anyway. Truth be told I wanted to check out the Divix encoding option on the new version.
For a few months I have been pondering turning my custom built celeron pc into a media center box. I have been using Beyond TV as a PVR on my good HP box. I had been too lazy to reconfigure the setup. The announcement of the new version of Beyond TV got me thinking, upgrade. I did some research on decent PCI video cards that are compatible with my TV Tuner USB device. The computer I was going to use as the DVR has a built in video card that is not compatible, and since it is such a small PC it didn’t have an AGP slot. I found a good PNY card at Compusa for the unit. I also upgraded the 160gig drive in the computer to a bigger 250gig. I performed the hardware upgrade and checked that the gear worked. then I installed windows from scratch. All I put on the machine the latest windows updates, the USB IR drivers, the video capture card drivers, remote, and Beyond TV. I did some heavy rearranging of my living room and moved the computer to my entertainment center. I rigged it up to my computer using the computers built in VGA port (nice).
There were a few minor issues, but all in all the upgrade went well. I am running some test recordings now to verify the system works correctly, but so far it looks good. This setup actually fixed an issue I had with my old computer not working with the resolution of the HDTV I have. The new video card plugged into the VGA slot (vs the RCA slot on the old setup) fits the screen perfectly. What is weird is the resolution the computer is at is not the native resolution of the TV but it works, so I won’t complain.
Once I am happy with my new setup I can blow away the HP computer and rebuild it to use as a general workstation. I use my Powerbook as my main computer but I always need a Windows box around for something.
Now I am off to clean up all the dust and dirt I created and unearthed with all my moving of stuff around my living room.
Spooks Series 4
Spooks (MI-5 in the US) has completed its series 4 (season in the US). Thanks to the joys of the internet I was able to watch the entire series while living in the US even though it has not been broadcast here yet. The 10th and final episode was crazy. I for one can’t wait to see what happens to everyone next year. Isn’t that what good TV is about? Keeping you wanting more? I still haven’t found an american show as good as this in the genre.
Since I was able to get all the episodes so quick I now have to wait until the end of 2006 for more. Let the waiting begin…
Poker Wednesday Again
We actually got together to play poker again today. I fared better than I did last week. I still didn’t win, but I was back to my old self. I had $40 on the table and came away with $38.50. Not bad when only 2 other people out of 8 walked away with anything. And only one of them had a profit. It was a John taking everyones money night. I was down for a while and happy that I came back in the end. If people would play hands I stayed in on in the end I would have had a profit. I had 2 (count them 2) full houses near the end and no takers even after I tried to slow play them. I won’t complain about losing a buck fifty. To me that is a wash.
I personally don’t like the style of play that went on. Everyone seems to bully people out of the game before the flop. John does it, and since he is effective at it everyone seems to emulate it. With 2 cards you have nothing, don’t bet $3 and before the flop and then bet nothing after it. It makes you look like a dick. That is just my opinion.
Overall it was a decent night. Hopefully we can play again before December!
Mac Sync
So I am kind of ticked at Mark/Space. Not for a bad product, or support or anything. For releasing a product that solves all my problems but not announcing it until it is out. A little heads up on the new Missing Sync 5.0 would have been nice. it would have saved me the $149 I spent on Daylite and then have to go out and buy the upgrade for the Missing Sync. Daylite is a great product, but the integration the Missing sync now gives me with the Address & iCal apps make it hard not to use them. I can get invites again without having to manually add them. I get all the fields from Address book that I couldn’t before. And the biggest advantage is that calendar categories move back and forth with iCal now. Daylite was a bit limiting on allot of those features, but it had the best task lists, and ability to assign or associate people, projects, etc to tasks and appointments. The question is are those nice advanced features worth not having basic features like what Address book and iCal can now give me with the Missing Sync? Honestly I don’t know, but I am once again using the Mac PIM apps and the new Missing Sync 5.0. Will I get fed up with them in a few weeks and switch back to Daylite? Maybe.
But for now I am happy with what I am using. Now if only Marketcircle could integrate better with the Missing Sync and have iCalander support for invites. The best of both worlds would be nice.
Chop Sticks
I went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant last night (thanks Zagats for 2 nice options, we chose the less crowded of the 2). I Kristen attempted to show me how to use chop sticks. I had it working for a little bit, but I still suck at it. If my dad has been unsuccessful for 2 decades to show me, does that make me a lost cause?
After dinner we hit a nearby bar. Ended up meeting a bunch of Kristen’s friends from school. They seemed cool. We drank. Fun had by all. It was a nice end to the work week. If only I would stop coughing. I don’t know what my problem is, but for the past week I have had sinus issues, then this weird cough. I don’t feel sick, yet I cough.
Poker Loss
Yesterday at Brian’s request I got a last minute game of hold-um setup. We did it at my place. We had a good turn out. I think 8 showed by the time we were done. I lost $40. I have never lost when we don’t play tourniment. I broke even, or won but never flat out lost all my money I played with. It felt weird. it was also weird not being able to leave in shame since it was my apartment. It wasn’t that bad actually, but I would have liked to play a bit more.
We all want to get together more regularly, but who knows who will take it upon themselves to schedule it. Even with the loss I had a good time.
Best Way To Send A Large File?
Do you know the best way to send a large file? Lets say a gig or bigger for argument sake? The answer may surprise you. Someone once told me they heard a CEO of a big bandwidth company ask that question. The answer wasn’t some whizzing technology. It was sneakernet. Don’t get the reference? Take the file and walk it wherever you need it to go. Part of our operations tasks is couriering around drives with updated data between offices. It is cheaper to do that then send over the internet a 100 gigs of data. I sometimes find it funny we do it, but it makes sense. With many servers of the same hardware configuration we can also build servers and send the drives to their intended location and plug them into a different shell. Old idea, but it never ceases to amaze me how simple and effective it can be.
Crazy the things you think about when your mind isn’t preoccupied with something!
ESX Server?
I have praised VMWare’s products for some time on this blog. As things look now, I will continue to do so. I have used their workstation product for almost 2 years. I have used GSX server for about a year. Now comes ESX server. It looks awesome. I have a project that requires allot of new hardware to be built. ESX server looks like an good alternative to server sprawl. Instead of building dozens of servers, the same solution done virtually can be done with a few (not many) ESX servers. The cost benefit is real. I ran some figures over the weekend and it can save us a nice amount of money by going virtual. Then there are the saving space, and energy issues. And the flexibility we get by having a virtual setup. I am really excited about what we can do.
I have been trying out ESX on a test box we setup (reminds me I have a VM building right now that probably needs some click next help). The install was quick. I now have to read the dozen or so white papers spread across my desk (my computer desktop and physical desk). This software solves problems I didn’t even think about until I got to reading about the solutions. Multi vlan support is nice, as well as NIC teaming. I have allot of reading and testing to do in the short amount of time I have until we have to deploy the solution. I don’t think have been this excited about a technology since Call Manager. More info as I play (i mean test).
Technorati Tags: virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, vmware, VMware ESX Server