Facebook took me over

No updates since May, that'll happen when you switch to Facebook!  

Posted by 42 [General] ( November 12, 2008 05:15 PM ) Permalink

Retro computing

I’ve been working on my retro computer collection now for a few years - most notably the Commodore line.  I’ve so far collected the standard kit:

VIC-20 with various RAM cartridges and tape drive
C-64 with both tape and disk drives plus a 1200bps modem
Amiga 500 with no upgrades (still back in NZ)
Amiga 600

Nows time to look for the lesser known models, C16, +4 etc etc

The plan is to "modernise" each machine by connecting them to the Network, not sure how yet :) 

Posted by 42 [General] ( May 14, 2008 04:51 PM ) Permalink

CEC 2007 Day 3

 

 

 

CEC2007 is about to finish up, waiting for Don to take the stage for the closing session.  More to come, but here's a quick pic from the party last night.  4000+ people at the Palms :)
 

 

 

 

Posted by 42 [General] ( October 10, 2007 01:39 PM ) Permalink

CEC 2007 Day 2

Day two plan, after the general sessions:

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM	Paris Hotel Versailles Room 1 & 2	SYS9444 PCI Express, 10 GbE and InfiniBand	Ron Emerick
2:15 PM - 3:15 PM	Bally's Hotel Skyview East 6	SVC9447 Utilizing ITIL v3 Best Practices to Successfully Manage Complex Customer Environments	Sabri Hammad; Dan Jolly
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM	Bally's Hotel Skyview East 2	SFT3632 Microsoft and Sun Expanded Alliance: How Customers Benefit	Matthew Wolf
4:45 PM - 5:45 PM	Paris Hotel Champagne Room 3 & 4	LUM3276 The Sun Streaming System

 

Posted by 42 [General] ( October 09, 2007 11:58 AM ) Permalink

CEC Day 1 images

First couple of images from Day 0 and 1 of the CEC.  Need to find better imaging software now.

Posted by 42 [General] ( October 08, 2007 09:48 PM ) Permalink

CEC day 1

Sun's CEC (Customer Engineer Conference) 2007 kicked off today in Las Vegas, the general session is still in progress and lots of great content being presented so I'm looking forward to some of the breakout sessions later.  Even though today is the first full day, we took some time yesterday to ensure we started with a bang!

Posted by 42 [General] ( October 08, 2007 01:04 PM ) Permalink

CEC 2007 - What happens in Vegas, won't stay there

Just finishing up packing for the CEC, have all important toys (laptop, camera, hub) and my event schedule sorted, lots of interesting subjects this year, 'specially around DarkStar (our gaming platform) and our Microsoft partnership.

 Early start though, 5am @ IHOP for breakfast with some work mates before the flight.

 

Posted by 42 [General] ( October 06, 2007 11:43 PM ) Permalink

Impressed by Japan in the RWC

Japan impressed me with a last minute (actually almost 5 minute) push at the end of their game against Fiji the other day during their Pool B match.  I saw some real heart put into rugby that I have not seen for some time.  I recommend to anyone interested to try and catch the match, even if it is for the last 10 minutes...  Fiji must have been worried!

Unfortunately for Japan it was not enough to win the game (31-35) but they certainly won some respect.

Posted by 42 [General] ( September 14, 2007 11:52 AM ) Permalink

Rugby World cup off to a great start, if a little soft

Wow, what a start to the world cup!  France got a spanking in front of a home crowd at the opening match of the cup to underdogs Argentina.  To be honest, considering how wet (soft/not really 'rugby') the actual opening show was I'm not amazed the French and their supporters weren't rialled up, ready to win - it was good to see Lomu out there though!

The tables will turn, France will pick it back up as they do (I still remember the pain of the 1999 world cup when they whipped up on the All Blacks, sending them home before a second chance at the cup!), though they're going to find it hard being in the same pool as Ireland - that's where my money is!

Posted by 42 [General] ( September 10, 2007 12:26 AM ) Permalink

Temperature probes part 2

Finally got my temperature device up and running, currently pulling temps from outside, in my basement and at the back of my rack.   Planning to add one last sensor to my attic and I'll be set from a collection perspective.  Next would be to take the data I'm generating and create some real-time graphs, thinking about gdgraph with either PHP or perl.

Posted by 42 [General] ( August 09, 2007 01:41 PM ) Permalink

DC Temperature measurement done right

Being part of Sun's Managed Operations group, keeping an eye customers computing environment during the current heat waves is extremely important.  I can not rely on generic temperature readings from a Datacenter provider as they only probe on request or never get deep into a customer rack.  So for the last 5 years I've been using a simple kit that incorporates DS1820 sensors spread out across my customer racks, all communicating via a serial interface and a simple perl proggie.  The sensors can be run up to at least 200 feet from the monitoring server and run over low voltage wire - which means I can (and do) use a standard network patching system to locate my probes anywhere I can run a network cable.

Using this method rather than pulling the internal CPU or system temperature readings to determine a given environments cooling performance gives me some major advantages:

• System agnostic monitoring, no need to have a custom SNMP poller, MIBs or scripts based on a hardware or OS type (we manage more mixed windows, linux, storage, solaris and network heterogeneous environments than single technology customers)
• Ability to measure air temperature BEFORE passing through a given computer's cooling system and if needed calculate a delta to highlight cooling inefficiencies.

We've used data collected from these probes to match fluctuations in temperature to hardware failures and developed a predictive/proactive monitoring solution for our customers (as well as given some good data to hold a given DC provider to their contracted environment SLA's).  We've even been able to pinpoint hot spots, that when targeted with a Sun Galaxy (X4100's and  X4200's) hardware we managed to reduce the average air temperature by around 10F while doubling processing power.

All great stuff for work and now I'm going to set one up at home and see if I can pump the results realtime to my blog.

Posted by 42 [General] ( July 10, 2007 05:02 PM ) Permalink

Summer Math

It's warm here :)  nearly 40C!  So I worked a little math: 

   +      = 

Posted by 42 [General] ( July 09, 2007 04:44 PM ) Permalink

My favorite server, the Sun Fire X4500 now listed on the Windows Catalogue

The beast that is the Sun Fire X4500 is now listed on the Windows Server Catalog as designed for Windows Server 2003 (32 and 64-bit).

 

Posted by 42 [General] ( February 01, 2007 03:29 PM ) Permalink

Tagged?

I always loved playing tag and bullrush as a kid, but when  Jon Greaves tagged in the blog world it brought back memories of bloody noses, broken limbs and crying girls (remember we're talking ages 5 through 10 (ok, 15) and some people just didn't like getting tagged over and over again).

So, I guess that means finding 5 somewhat interesting things about myself?

Fire and Formaldehyde
While I've been working with computers all my life, my first REAL job was working for an undertaker (um, yes, in all parts of the business).  In fact, all my life I REALLY wanted to be a fireman (family tradition) and these 'computers and things' I now call my life simply filled the gap while I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting...  Maybe Sun needs a fire marshal here? :)

Redneck too?
Like Jon, I have Redneck tenancies, I drive a Dodge Charger and actually enjoy visiting West Virginia!

Maiden!
I am a massive 80's metal fan (should this be above?) with an Iron Maiden addiction, which includes having met all the band members several times over and flying all over the place and world to see them every year, once even on a 'Bruce Air', where lead singer Bruce Dickinson fly us return to Reykjavik, Iceland for a concert.

Retro
The first computer I owned was a Commodore VIC20 and I spent a majority of the late 80's and early 90's in the BBS scene, in fact made some good (relative to a teen) money from writing shareware - (un?)fortunately my programming 'talent' stopped there, but I still enjoy the old days with a stack of Retro systems, and starting to restore classic arcade machines.

Sports
Soccer and Rugby I understand, American football still alludes me BUT I'll try and play any sport.

Ok, now I'm on the lookout for fellow bloggers, be warned....

Posted by 42 [General] ( February 01, 2007 02:51 PM ) Permalink

VGSR

After 2 years of searching we finally found a shepherd we're going to try and adopt. We have a pretty 6yr girl, Sheba, for the next 48 hours to see if she's going to fit in with the family... so far so good!

You can find out more about the Virginia German Shepherd Rescue (and the other dogs looking for homes) at "VGSR"

Now just set the Tivo for Caesar Milan and we're set.

Posted by 42 [General] ( January 14, 2007 09:02 PM ) Permalink