Last night I enjoyed the 1st of a two night Wilco visit at the 9:30 club in DC. John Doe was the opener. Both nights were sold out and it was truly a great show. I was fortunate enough to win a pair tickets from the local Annapolis radio station 103.1 WRNR a month or so ago. The setlist was great..a lot of songs I know and love and a bunch I hadn't heard. My favorite of course is "A shot in the arm".
If your familiar with the band "X" whom John Doe fronted, then seeing him outside of X obviously was a cool experience. He has a new album out. My fav of the night though was New World.
So thats it.. Wilco, John Doe...good stuff. I'm to lazy tonight to post links. You'll have to do your own research. ahh what the hell.
Wilco
John Doe
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Exciting, New...Not really.
What a week...
Work has been a chore. We had a server bomb out on us and it's finally back to normal for the most part. These things should NOT take this long. Working with the vendor to reinstall apps has taken up the majority of my time. My new issue of Storage Mag came and the last article was another anti-RAID rant. I've read several articles now on the demise or re-engineering of RAID. And..I have to agree. High end storage units these days should just work without all the timely configuring of storage for different types of applications. Someone needs to jump on the bandwagon and start a change of events.
Oh..and I had another "I hate Microsoft" moment today. If Microsoft would conform to some sort of open standard, lives would be easier. I'm an avid user of OpenOffice..the free alternative to Microsoft Office. It's really all you need if you don't feel like giving Bill Gates your money. And it's FREE. Did I say FREE!! OpenOffice may not have all the bells and whistles of MS Office but..think about it...do you really need all the bells and whistles?? How many of you really use all the bells and whistles?..ugh. I wasn't able to open a Word 2007 doc and it really bothered me. OpenOffice is working on this and hopefully will have something in a release soon.
The United States Navy shot down a satellite about a hundred and fifty miles from Earth. I won't post any links but this has been a fairly talked about event mainly because the US appears to be showing off and critics think it's going to be the start of a new race for space so other countries can shoot objects out of the sky as well..
Obama is beating Hillary by ..well, alot. Wake up Hillary, get with the program..you need to start digging up dirt on Obama, get a personality that people can relate to.
If your going to drive to work after an ice storm...wipe your friggin car off!!! I cannot stand being stuck behind someone and the next thing I know is that I have ice bombs coming at me at 60mph. What the hell??? Wipe your car off...it only takes a few minutes you lazy shite's.
My wife has been sick with a cold...she hasn't coughed up a lung yet..I think she may have SARS..just kidding honey.
Well enjoy your weekend. Stay warm.
Work has been a chore. We had a server bomb out on us and it's finally back to normal for the most part. These things should NOT take this long. Working with the vendor to reinstall apps has taken up the majority of my time. My new issue of Storage Mag came and the last article was another anti-RAID rant. I've read several articles now on the demise or re-engineering of RAID. And..I have to agree. High end storage units these days should just work without all the timely configuring of storage for different types of applications. Someone needs to jump on the bandwagon and start a change of events.
Oh..and I had another "I hate Microsoft" moment today. If Microsoft would conform to some sort of open standard, lives would be easier. I'm an avid user of OpenOffice..the free alternative to Microsoft Office. It's really all you need if you don't feel like giving Bill Gates your money. And it's FREE. Did I say FREE!! OpenOffice may not have all the bells and whistles of MS Office but..think about it...do you really need all the bells and whistles?? How many of you really use all the bells and whistles?..ugh. I wasn't able to open a Word 2007 doc and it really bothered me. OpenOffice is working on this and hopefully will have something in a release soon.
The United States Navy shot down a satellite about a hundred and fifty miles from Earth. I won't post any links but this has been a fairly talked about event mainly because the US appears to be showing off and critics think it's going to be the start of a new race for space so other countries can shoot objects out of the sky as well..
Obama is beating Hillary by ..well, alot. Wake up Hillary, get with the program..you need to start digging up dirt on Obama, get a personality that people can relate to.
If your going to drive to work after an ice storm...wipe your friggin car off!!! I cannot stand being stuck behind someone and the next thing I know is that I have ice bombs coming at me at 60mph. What the hell??? Wipe your car off...it only takes a few minutes you lazy shite's.
My wife has been sick with a cold...she hasn't coughed up a lung yet..I think she may have SARS..just kidding honey.
Well enjoy your weekend. Stay warm.
Monday, February 18, 2008
San Diego bound???
I'm a bit frustrated. This afternoon, like countless others, I was trying to purchase tickets to one of Eddie Vedder's solo shows. He's playing a few dates on the West Coast. The servers hosting the site kept crashing and timing out. This isn't the first time this has happened. It took about an hour of patiently trying when I finally got through. Here is how it "went down".
-finally got logged in.
-selected the show I wanted.
-put in my CC info.
-hit sumbit
-server crashed.
NOW...the transaction is pending in my account but I haven't received a confirmation email and the purchase has yet to show up in my profile. So...I'll patiently wait. I sent the Ten Club an email asking if I got tix or not. We'll see.
For all future pre-sale purchases, I suggest this to the fan club.
- Clustered Apache web servers
- Clustered db servers
- More bandwidth
- Multiple paths to the Internet.
- Chris
-finally got logged in.
-selected the show I wanted.
-put in my CC info.
-hit sumbit
-server crashed.
NOW...the transaction is pending in my account but I haven't received a confirmation email and the purchase has yet to show up in my profile. So...I'll patiently wait. I sent the Ten Club an email asking if I got tix or not. We'll see.
For all future pre-sale purchases, I suggest this to the fan club.
- Clustered Apache web servers
- Clustered db servers
- More bandwidth
- Multiple paths to the Internet.
- Chris
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Rachael Ray - thank You
This may be a lame post...however, in my attempt to stay in for Valentines Day, I decided to cook. I can only cook a few things well..probably the same few things all guys can cook well...Spaghetti, Lasagna..anything pasta, It's just easy. Noodles..water..sauce..not to hard to ruin.
I decided to get brave, and take the past one step further. Let's skip to pre 2/14...For Christmas I was given a Rachael Ray cookbook with lots O' delicious stuff. I've never even seen the damn show and she's pretty hot. Taking the recipes on is the challenge. One in particular jumped out and I'll post it below. Fast forward to Valentines day, I'm at the grocery store gathering my artillery, all items were accounted for and so I got home and began. Prep work is always the tough part and typically takes the longest. And if your like me, I've got food everywhere..and it took longer to clean everything up but..it turned out really good and I had some leftovers today for lunch. The recipe was for Crab and Corn Chowda-Mac. Absolutely delicious and my wife loved it. A little spicy and next time I may try substituting the cayenne for some Old Bay. Enjoy.
-Chris
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Work and more work.
The weekend cutover went well. All networking changes and additions are running smoothly and downtime as promised was kept to a minimum.
On another note, one of my servers crashed. I called Dell and they are shipping me a new drive. However, impatience set in and I found myself at Best Buy purchasing two new drives. I installed them and built a new RAID 1 set. 0 was configured previously. I'll spend a better part of today preparing the rest of the box. Oh where oh where is my VMware ???
Also, one of our db tables became corrupt, so I had to restore and import from a backup. Thats always fun especially when I'm not the dba.
The SAN is running great. Exchange doesn't appear to have any issues and my snapshots are working as expected. Hopefully I can schedule some time to move additional items over to it soon.
On another note, one of my servers crashed. I called Dell and they are shipping me a new drive. However, impatience set in and I found myself at Best Buy purchasing two new drives. I installed them and built a new RAID 1 set. 0 was configured previously. I'll spend a better part of today preparing the rest of the box. Oh where oh where is my VMware ???
Also, one of our db tables became corrupt, so I had to restore and import from a backup. Thats always fun especially when I'm not the dba.
The SAN is running great. Exchange doesn't appear to have any issues and my snapshots are working as expected. Hopefully I can schedule some time to move additional items over to it soon.
Icey Roads=Mayhem
So I left work yesterday at about 4:30...I made it a few miles up the road and that's when the sea of red flickering lights began to appear on the horizon. What I thought may have been a small holdup turned into 2+ hours of sitting in traffic. It wasn't pleasant. The local radio station out of Annapolis was trying to help. Radio really has a lot of control over your mood when your stuck in a car for so long.
I was hungry and tired. The call came in, so I turned around as soon as I could and managed to meet a friend for dinner. The ride home easy, no traffic at last.
-----
Well the polls are in and is Hillary a poor sport?
I was hungry and tired. The call came in, so I turned around as soon as I could and managed to meet a friend for dinner. The ride home easy, no traffic at last.
-----
Well the polls are in and is Hillary a poor sport?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Cars and Stuff
Good Morning..
The coffee is good. It's just the little guy and I this morning. Some of the cartoons on Sunday morning are psychedelic... no wonder kids are glued to the tv... I gotta give it to the creators though. The shows are put together really well. All I had was Captain Chesapeake.
I took the kids to the MotorTrend auto show at the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday. We had to take the Bat Route to get in, but we made it. There were 3-4 levels of cars..the 1st floor was mainly your domestic/commercial type vehicles and then the 2nd-3rd floors were the exotics. I promised my daughter some sort of vehicle on big wheels and I was starting to lose hope until we got up to those floors. I'm going to try and post some pictures. I'm not really into cars but they are cool to look at when they are all together.
The coffee is good. It's just the little guy and I this morning. Some of the cartoons on Sunday morning are psychedelic... no wonder kids are glued to the tv... I gotta give it to the creators though. The shows are put together really well. All I had was Captain Chesapeake.
I took the kids to the MotorTrend auto show at the Baltimore Convention Center on Saturday. We had to take the Bat Route to get in, but we made it. There were 3-4 levels of cars..the 1st floor was mainly your domestic/commercial type vehicles and then the 2nd-3rd floors were the exotics. I promised my daughter some sort of vehicle on big wheels and I was starting to lose hope until we got up to those floors. I'm going to try and post some pictures. I'm not really into cars but they are cool to look at when they are all together.
Tonight is an all nighter at work...I could possibly lose my job if stuff doesn't go well (not really) but I have much trust in our faithful vendor, Infosys Networks.
Happy Sunday.
- Chris
Happy Sunday.
- Chris
Friday, February 8, 2008
Exchange Update
It finally finished.. I was seriously getting worried. We've only got 300 or so users..I can't imagine what 1000+ would be like. Anyhow...something else I can add to my talents.."check".
-Chris
-Chris
Thursday, February 7, 2008
And now it's late
This is exactly what happens anytime you think your going to do something easy. It either takes forever...or well I don't know at this point..it hasn't failed yet.
I'm in the process of moving my Exchange databases over to the SAN. It's one storage group with several Mailbox stores. I'm waiting on the last one to complete. It's only 40 or so gigs. I can see the db files on the SAN drives...but Exchange seems to be taking a long time to wrap things up...I'm seeing errors in the event log but I'm guessing they are just because the store is offline and db/log files are being moved around. I'll wait a bit longer. The little move database clock is going bonkers..it doesn't even know what's happening. Ahh... but the coffee is starting to kick in.
What else happened today at work? I have another big cutover Sunday evening..were going to be load balancing our different Internet paths out to our ISP. This is possible via the use of a product called Fatpipe (seriously).
I'm in the process of moving my Exchange databases over to the SAN. It's one storage group with several Mailbox stores. I'm waiting on the last one to complete. It's only 40 or so gigs. I can see the db files on the SAN drives...but Exchange seems to be taking a long time to wrap things up...I'm seeing errors in the event log but I'm guessing they are just because the store is offline and db/log files are being moved around. I'll wait a bit longer. The little move database clock is going bonkers..it doesn't even know what's happening. Ahh... but the coffee is starting to kick in.
What else happened today at work? I have another big cutover Sunday evening..were going to be load balancing our different Internet paths out to our ISP. This is possible via the use of a product called Fatpipe (seriously).
It's Morning
The new Jack Johnson cd is good. He is definitely becoming a better songwriter. I recommend it..It's easily Jack and you know the voice - which hasn't changed..but musically, it sounds like he is experimenting a bit more...which gives you a different sounding album. I hope the new album means a summer tour.
Here is some news in 60 seconds or less...
- Tornadoes
- Iraq
- Election 2008
- Wondering why your favorite shows aren't on tv??
- Apple
Oh, and I created a MySpace page..
FreeGarble
Here is some news in 60 seconds or less...
- Tornadoes
- Iraq
- Election 2008
- Wondering why your favorite shows aren't on tv??
- Apple
Oh, and I created a MySpace page..
FreeGarble
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Today was ..uhh
A long day..
I worked from home today..and also had to take my son to his belated 9 month appt..he will be 10months in a few days...He got a shot as expected and he let out this scream..now if you don't have kids and are only use to screams from horror movies...a baby's scream is unlike any other. Believe me..I expected it to last a while..but, to my surprise just a few seconds. He's a trooper and in excellent health. He didn't take a nap today - that I know of, so after his bath, I laid him down to bed. We'll see if he makes it through the night.
I managed to get some stuff done today...tomorrow night I plan on moving our Exchange databases to our new EqualLogic SAN.. In a geeky kind of way, I'm excited about it. The storage that we purchased should work well for us...PS300, PS400 and the new PS3700x. The plan is to keep the PS300 and PS3700x at our HQ location which with RAID 50 gives me about 10TB of storage..and the PS400 at our DR location for some replication and backups.. Keep in mind we only have about 2TB total in use today. So Ive been planning for that. We also installed some new switches to connect it all.
MySpace has a new member..yep, I thought in my quest for an online presence, I should do what is necessary..so. We'll see. I'm not sure if I can incorporate this blog into that. I definitely don't want to have to manage two. Either way, I've determined this will be the primary.
The days fly by quick..I don't know where they go sometimes.
I worked from home today..and also had to take my son to his belated 9 month appt..he will be 10months in a few days...He got a shot as expected and he let out this scream..now if you don't have kids and are only use to screams from horror movies...a baby's scream is unlike any other. Believe me..I expected it to last a while..but, to my surprise just a few seconds. He's a trooper and in excellent health. He didn't take a nap today - that I know of, so after his bath, I laid him down to bed. We'll see if he makes it through the night.
I managed to get some stuff done today...tomorrow night I plan on moving our Exchange databases to our new EqualLogic SAN.. In a geeky kind of way, I'm excited about it. The storage that we purchased should work well for us...PS300, PS400 and the new PS3700x. The plan is to keep the PS300 and PS3700x at our HQ location which with RAID 50 gives me about 10TB of storage..and the PS400 at our DR location for some replication and backups.. Keep in mind we only have about 2TB total in use today. So Ive been planning for that. We also installed some new switches to connect it all.
MySpace has a new member..yep, I thought in my quest for an online presence, I should do what is necessary..so. We'll see. I'm not sure if I can incorporate this blog into that. I definitely don't want to have to manage two. Either way, I've determined this will be the primary.
The days fly by quick..I don't know where they go sometimes.
Announcements!!!
yay..
"Pearl Jam has officially confirmed they will perform at the 2008 Bonnaroo Music Festival. The 4-day music festival will be held on June 12-15th in Manchester, Tennessee. Tickets go on sale February 16th at 12:00pm EDT, through bonnaroo.com.
Pearl Jam, Metallica, Jack Johnson, Kanye West, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, My Morning Jacket, Willie Nelson, Phil Lesh & Friends, B.B King, Sigur Ros, The Raconteurs, and Death Cab For Cutie are among the confirmed acts for the festival. A full line-up and more information about the festival can be found at bonnaroo.com." - PearlJam.com
-----------------
Happy Birthday Bob Marley!
-----------------
Firefox is my favorite browser.
Perhaps I'm too lazy to really want to use IE but Firefox has become my new friend. So much...that I even ordered....drum roll..a Firefox mouse pad..big spender!! But wait it gets better.
Firefox makes it so easy to find things...not to mention the numerous add-ins that are available to customize your browser. So far I think this on is my favorite - PicLens. Check it out.
PicLens
It's like I have an iPhone "like" Matrix world of images at my fingertips. I just can't get enough of it.
-Chris
Firefox makes it so easy to find things...not to mention the numerous add-ins that are available to customize your browser. So far I think this on is my favorite - PicLens. Check it out.
PicLens
It's like I have an iPhone "like" Matrix world of images at my fingertips. I just can't get enough of it.
-Chris
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Wait - Post Number 2
I guess I could tell you about my day ...is it interesting? Probably not. It started with the alarm..@ 6:15..
- slid out of bed at 6:30...
- looked for the dogs.. my wife put them in the crates this morning..they get crazy in the mornings..We have a Britney and a Drent.
- Ate breakfast - Cookie Crisp..left 1/3 of a bowl for someone...drank the daily Whey supp. (I've been trying to work out...as Ferg says.."Work on my fitness"
- Showered, dressed..ironed
- Woke the little guy up - dressed, kissed wifey g-bye, took little guy to daycare.
- Stopped at Wawa - I like their Egg White, turkey Sausage sandwiches..coffee $2.10 not bad.
- Got to work at 8:30..walked into a STAT meeting...basically a team developed to troubleshoot problems when there is an outage...10am or so..STAT was done..problemO fixed.
- Vendor was onsite, were putting in a 10mb ethernet connection to our DR site..did a site survey..
- emails...lunch for free today - Panera box lunch..not too shabby.
- 1:30 - 3pm - working on my EqualLogic SAN config..reading, creating volumes..good stuff. It's been a learning process.
- 3-4:30 - emails...various stuff...configuring my new laptop..now I'm dependent on it.
- Left work, picked the little guy up...dinner out, bought some more Whey - I ran out this morning.
- Playtime with little guy..put him to bed..watched American Idol with wifey..
- Surfed the web for a bit...started this thing...ideas. Off to bed for real this time.
- Chris
- slid out of bed at 6:30...
- looked for the dogs.. my wife put them in the crates this morning..they get crazy in the mornings..We have a Britney and a Drent.
- Ate breakfast - Cookie Crisp..left 1/3 of a bowl for someone...drank the daily Whey supp. (I've been trying to work out...as Ferg says.."Work on my fitness"
- Showered, dressed..ironed
- Woke the little guy up - dressed, kissed wifey g-bye, took little guy to daycare.
- Stopped at Wawa - I like their Egg White, turkey Sausage sandwiches..coffee $2.10 not bad.
- Got to work at 8:30..walked into a STAT meeting...basically a team developed to troubleshoot problems when there is an outage...10am or so..STAT was done..problemO fixed.
- Vendor was onsite, were putting in a 10mb ethernet connection to our DR site..did a site survey..
- emails...lunch for free today - Panera box lunch..not too shabby.
- 1:30 - 3pm - working on my EqualLogic SAN config..reading, creating volumes..good stuff. It's been a learning process.
- 3-4:30 - emails...various stuff...configuring my new laptop..now I'm dependent on it.
- Left work, picked the little guy up...dinner out, bought some more Whey - I ran out this morning.
- Playtime with little guy..put him to bed..watched American Idol with wifey..
- Surfed the web for a bit...started this thing...ideas. Off to bed for real this time.
- Chris
Numero Uno
Well - It's late, I started my Blog..my wife doesn't know what I'm going to blog about and I don't know either. So here it is....the first blog. It's garble because it's random..which I suppose is a good thing?? Perhaps no different than any other blog..I'm not sure since I really don't read any others.
gnight.
gnight.
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