Welp.

Life is busy. But good. As a matter of fact, this beer to my right is good as well. And that makes me think about things in general. I catch myself complaining about things far less concerning and when I do..I think about some other schmoe who really has worries. It puts things back into perspective and gets me - on the right track.

Spent a few good days in the woods last weekend. Wifey and I got away for a few days so some solitude alone together was well spent. I was also able to flip a mountain bike, bruising myself up a bit due to some bmx antics or really a random act of stupidity. None the less, it was a flip worth taking as I suddenly realized I'm not 13 anymore. Actually...several of the downhills I took were pretty damn impressive. However, all that really sticks out is me toppling over myself. Smores, fire, deer and the eerie sound of nothingness..try it sometime.

I have a 18month old son and a 13yr old daughter. Wifey is prego and were expecting another in April. We find out boy parts or girl parts next week. It's tough though going from 18month old mindset to a 13yr old "do your homework, the world doesn't revolve around" you type of dad. Times are tricky but keeps you on your toes.

The Jeep and I became one yesterday. A trip to Frederick to visit some friends contributed to more raucous in the woods on a hill side. Until my battery gave way and the Jeep had to be put in neutral and pushed downhill. Explaining this to my wife was not entertaining. Luckily my buddies wife was able to give us a jump..and off we went back up that hill. Life is stupid sometimes.

401k going down...down....down

I asked a friend what he's doing with his 401k right now. He said.."pretending like I don't have one.". Well, I asked a financial adviser at work what his thoughts were during this financial meltdown. And here they are. Perhaps it will help you out.

"The dramatic declines we’ve experienced are similar to what happened following the 9/11 attacks and granted it will take much longer for the market to recover this time around, but this volatility really has no impact on anyone with a time horizon of greater than 10 years.

The best strategy right now is to ride out the storm because you never sell out of panic or fear, only out of need and at present you only have a paper loss. If you were to proceed with a sale then you effectively are accepting the loss where if you hold on to it then you are likely to recoup those losses in the long-term because we know that 20-30 years from now the markets will be significantly higher."

Finally

We are finally up and running with VI3 Enterprise. Yesterday I was able to establish our 4 node ESX cluster and actually get a template or two ready for VM deployments. It's going to make life so much easier.

We wound up with (4) Dell Poweredge 1950s, 32gb ram, (2) Quad Core Procs, (2)2.5 SAS drives, and six ethernet interfaces.

The plan is to virtualize..well everything we can, about 30 servers or so.

The backend storage consists of an EqualLogic PS300, 3700x connected with dual Cisco 3750s tied into our Catalyst 4507r.

It sounds geeky, and it is..but it's very cool. Just because.

The fun begins.