The S Word Blog: A mostly 100% sort-of-semi-technical blog by Thin Guy. Mostly.

Here's a quick video I made showing the different supported OS choices available only with Sun VDI 3.  I mention "supported" because you can make any OS VirtualBox supports into a VDI solution, but we officially support XP, Vista, Win2KPro, Ubuntu, and OpenSolaris.  "Supported" means you can place a service call if something is not operating as advertised.  Note the "Full PC" experience of the boot and shut down for each OS.   I'll be cleaning this up a bit by making it shorter and adding some tunes (server was right next to me while filming so I removed the original audio track).

Due my blog being stale I've gotten a few inquiries as whether or not I'm still with Sun.  Since you're reading this, the answer is yes.  It's not that I don't have a lot to talk about, I just have been doing it in much shorter bursts.

♫ I feel happy. I feel happy. ♫

If you're tired of doing the VNC route to remotely display an apple desktop, check out AquaConnect!  AquaConnect brings an RDP Server to OS X Server.  This means you can use our Sun Ray Windows Connector to display a Leopard desktop on your Sun Ray and couple it with hot desking and stateless goodness!.  Here's a couple of shots of Sun Ray and AquaConnect from MacWorld

(Photo's courtesy of Chris Kawalek)

Welcome to Fabulous Frozen Las Vegas!

And a few more from my camera phone as the weather unfolded throughout the day.

Sometimes you think you know what beauty is.

And then sometimes you add a new definition.  

Beauty:  When at the sound of a school bell you see young mentally challenged boy dash fifty yards in an awkward gait into the waiting arms of his mother and you can feel the love in their embrace across the distance of a parking lot.

We'll be meeting tonight at the Yard House about 7:30 PM.  Nothing too formal, just drinks, appetizers, and some good conversation.   The Yard House is located in the Town Square, cab drivers should know how to get there.   (Don't attempt to walk it like folks from last year as things in Vegas are farther than they appear)

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Kids have school off tomorrow for Nevada Day, so today was costume day.  No face makeup allowed according to the school district though, so not as fun as they will be tomorrow.  I prefer cute to scary anyways.

Here's Laney as a Scary Fairy

Mags as a Ghost Bride

Cami as a Pretty Witch

And Bellamy as her favorite thing in the whole world.  A strawberry!

Cute!

We are planning another desktop dinner during CEC.  If you are coming to CEC and are a desktop person (or a fan of Sun Ray, SGD, Sun VDI, or this blog), leave me a comment or send me some mail (first.last@sun.com).  I'll post the location and final time and date when we get final word.  We are trying to narrow it down to Monday or Tuesday night.  Looking forward to see my virtual desktop friends once again from across the globe.  #goodtimes

This has been a heated election.  Both the right and left, including their respective media outlets of choice, have done their best to get the average voter spun up, angry even.  Inspiring people is good, making them get angry is bad.  I've found myself getting angry a lot lately, what's more I haven't made up my mind as to who I'm voting for.  Yes folks, I'm undecided. 

Today however, I learned to relax about it all.  I won't let blogs, or snarky twitter comments upset me.  Nor will I make comments that are bound to upset others (I know I have upset a few friends).  I'll do my best not to watch any political pundits on the news.  What I will watch is how much each candidate shows their humanity in the next few weeks.  And what made me relax?  This video showing both McCain and Obama and their human side.  They both made me laugh.  I think I laughed more at Obama not being able to keep a straight face after his jokes than anything else.  But again, most importantly it reminded me that 1) these two are human and 2) they are proud Americans.

Sure they had (extremely talented and funny) speech writers, but I do hope they meant every word.  I do believe that every little thing is gonna be alright.

More details and download links over on the Think Thin Blog.

Thanks to my friends at Dataman for capturing this pic at a recent tradeshow.

Bellamy starts school today, a little more than a week after she turned 3 years old.  This is a picture of me saying goodbye as we have a bit (read "a lot") of separation anxiety even when I leave the room, so we felt it best for Mom to take her alone.   Bellamy is entering the program for kids with Autism in the Clark County School District.  She'll be going from 9 AM until 3 PM, 5 days a week.  My wife talked to the mother of a child that went through the program and now he's a "typical" kid (by standardized tests) that is actually in my 7 year old daughters class.  You'd never guess that when he started the program he was diagnosed with Autism and had zero speech.  We will also continue with the private occupational, behavioral, and speech therapies that we've been doing since about March.  She's going to be one busy 3 year old.

We are hopeful, excited, and scared all at the same time.  We've seen great progress over the last 6 month, and can't wait to see how she will grow.  Maybe in a couple years you'll be reading this blog and the topic will be about coaching her soccer team and how she scored her first goal.  Fingers crossed!

That's were you'll find me if you happen to be attending VMWorld.  I'm easy to spot as I think only Joost is taller than me, and I've got far more hair.  Sure, it's receding, but it's still there.  Mostly.

In my last entry, "CL" posted a comment wanting more to see more examples of Windows media redirection.  Here's another video showing a variety of clips.  Talking heads, animation,  a couple of VC-1 live streams.  Enjoy.  Still have the dog barking at the tripod problem, so I apologize for some of the shaky parts.  Take a Dramamine if you get queasy.  If you want to watch this in a bit better quality, follow this link and click on the "watch in high quality" link once you get into YouTube (right under the "Views" number).

I've decided to do a series of small videos showing the new features of our forthcoming Sun Ray Server Software 4.1.  The first video will feature our Multimedia enhancements.  I had a nice setup for the first shoot, only to find my dog really hates the tripod.  Second attempt, with the tripod in the garage and the camcorder in my hands is less than optimal quality but you get the idea.  Cut the video a little short as my dog decided to start barking at other dogs in the neighborhood halfway through the windows demo.  It's not often I get a quiet house with 5 daughters so I'll have to accept this cut for now.  :)  Oh yeah, don't watch this YouTube Video from a Sun Ray as Flash support is next up on the drawing board.

Less than a week after getting my wife an iPhone 3G, it was stolen.  Here's what I've learned.  Neither AT&T nor Apple care that your phone was stolen.  AT&T will not black list the IMEI or SIM, meaning that whoever stole the phone can go right down to AT&T and get the phone switched over to their account with ZERO questions asked.

Apple will not black list the serial number and will allow it to be registered with iTunes, just by plugging it into the computer.

Even if you deactivate your phone service, the iPhone (either model) basically becomes a fully functional iPod Touch.

Condoning theft is a strong accusation, but it would be simple for either AT&T or Apple to brick the phone.   Furthermore they refuse to offer insurance on the iPhone (far more expensive phones are insurable) which begs the question why?  I'll tell you why, because AT&T get a new customer with the stolen phone locked into a two year contract, the theft victim has to continue paying for two years with no option but to pay full market price ($499 USD) to replace their phone AND get locked into another two year contract.  Luckily you can drop the 3G data plan at will, and luckily we still have her old Motorola RAZR.  Otherwise, we'd be out of luck and spending at least $150 USD on the most basic of phones.

The rotten cherry on top of this crap cake story is that I bought the phone with my Corporate American Express Card since that's the card I have on file with AT&T to pay my bill with.  American Express offers a great service called Buyers Protection that covers you from damage or theft in the first 90 days.  It's complimentary service available on every American Express Card...EXCEPT the Corporate Card.  Nice.

I've given both Apple and AT&T a lot of my hard earned money and they flat out don't care.  I honestly think "iPhone Theft" is viewed as another revenue stream for them.

What the hell NBC?  Hasn't our language been butchered enough?  It's not even like you were saving characters.  Are 3rd graders editing NBC web pages?  Thx 4 da LOL tho!

An hour and a quarter later, they fix it. 

via Kevin Chu

Boring conference call?  Make "YearBook" photos of yourself from the 1950's to 2000 on Yearbook Yourself.  Just remember to hit mute as you'll be laughing.

Customized Sun Rays always look so cool.  I wonder if we should offer this as an option.  Some cool colors, your logo, etc.  Rumor has it there are even Sun Rays out there in Raven Black.

Mother nature put on a really impressive show this evening.  The photos (well the photographer really) just don't capture how beautiful these cloud formations were.