Cullen Landrum

Awesome neighbor

After Thanksgiving the family and I went to Keystone for a little skiing and hanging out.  We got about 10 inches of snow in Keystone and it also snowed in Denver.  I-70, the main highway through the mountains, was closed for some time and extremely crowded on Sunday.  We tried to drive home but sat on the highway and didn't move for 30 minutes so we decided to stay an extra night and come home early (5:00) Monday morning.  

Now for the part about my neighbor.  When we got home our driveway and sidewalk had been shovelled.  What an awesome suprise.  I found out that my neighbors 15 year old son cleared the snow without being asked or anything.  He's a great kid.

Posted at 10:06AM Dec 01, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[0]

OpenSSO and the Fedlet

I have many customers that ask what Sun means by a "fedlet". 

Daniel Raskin does a great job of explaining a "fedlet" in this video - http://www.screencast.com/users/Raskindp/folders/sid/media/fe17635a-d6af-47af-ba75-27b7bed13002

He has other videos at the same site. 

Posted at 09:14PM Aug 20, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Software  |  Comments[0]

SOA TCO Calculator

Just found this cool tool for calculating TCO for SOA.  It compares Sun's offering with Oracle's.  

url - http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/javacaps/logic.jsp

Great stuff.

Posted at 09:04PM Aug 20, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Software  |  Comments[0]

Hackfest 2008

I just got back from my annual golf outing with the "guys" - 24 of us.  This year was the 10th anniversary of Hackfest so we went all out and ventured to Coeur d'Alene Idaho.  It was awesome.  108 holes in 5 days - some good some not so much.  But overall played well. 

The resort course was incredible.  One of the best manicurred courses I have ever seen. I played it 4 times and loved every round.  The island green (#14) was very hard.  I only hit the green one time. I have played TPC Sawgrass and #14 at the resort course is WAY harder that #17 at TPC.  Both are island greens but you have to take a boat (named Putter) to the #14 green.  So when you are standing on the tee box all you see is water.  The green is big but when you are standing there it looks very small.

We also played the Circling Raven course.  Which was also great. But very different.  Much more of a links style course. 

If you are looking for a great place to get away check out Coeur d'Alene.

Also - the hotel spa is awesome. Shower with 19 heads for $25 is the best money I have ever spent. 

Posted at 12:48PM Jul 20, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[0]

OpenSolaris and VirtualBox

Sun is participating in a trade show at the end of the month for one of our customers.  As a part of the show I am setting up a Sun Fire x4600 (8 - dual core AMD machine).  I loaded OpenSolaris as the host operating system.  Extremely easy to install and setup.  It took about 2 hours (including download time) and everything was up and running.  This is the first time root isn't a user account so it was fun playing with that. 

I then downloaded VirtualBox which took no time at all. Did I mention that OpenSolaris found my network and configured everything for me?  (Way cool). Once VirtualBox was installed I created two images.  One for Linux (Fedora) and one for Windows (Vista).  Fedora install was very simple and much like OpenSolaris.  Then I went to install Vista.  What a pain!!! Crashed my entire system three times during the installation.  But I finally got it installed.  Still can't get internet access to work but I have some time before the show to figure that out.

The main takeaway from my experience here is the ease of implementation and use of OpenSolaris and VirtualBox.  What a great combination!!!

Next step is to add Sun Ray into the mix.  Should be fun.

Interesting note - the download for OpenSolaris was about 700mb while the download for Fedora was almost 4 gb.  It took forever to download Fedora and my network kept timing out.  Not sure what is all in the Fedora download.

Posted at 08:57AM Jun 16, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Sun  |  Comments[1]

Greatest Father's day

Yesterday was a great Father's Day.  My wife and kids surprised me with a wonderful idea.  They made a tee time for Sunday morning.  We went to the golf course and had breakfast - the best breakfast is always at the club house.

Then my 11 year old son and I played the front nine.  He is really starting to get the golf bug.  Loves to play and is developing a great swing.  He really got a thrill when I chipped in from about 30 yards for an Eagle on a par 5.  Couldn't believe it went in.  Great time.

My almost 13 (B-Day is tomorrow) year old son and  I played the back nine. He hasn't played as much but after the first couple of holes he really started hitting the ball well.  I had another chance for a chip-in eagle on the back but the ball rolled over the hole and just missed. He is an extremely intelligent kid and loved the idea of using math and geometry to figure out how far to hit the ball.  Once I explained the concept of swing plane and angles of club during a swing he really understood how to swing the club.  Great time.

It was awesome to spend a couple of hours alone with each of my sons. BTW - ended up shooting 84 which is about right for me on that course.


Also played 18 on Saturday - shot 80. - My wife is the greatest.

Posted at 08:36AM Jun 16, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[0]

OpenSolaris and MySQL

Today I was at a customer site where we were trying to get MySQL installed on a OpenSolaris VMware image.  First we tried to install using pkgadd with a pkg we downloaded from MySQL.  The install failed and didn't create the tables in the mysql workspace that are needed.  We tried to install them but gave up.  We then tried to install the tar version download.  Still no go.  Finally we found this blog -http://blogs.sun.com/nealix/entry/samp_solaris_apache_2_mysql - that solved the problem.  

Before we found this blog the customer and I went to lunch.  He was talking about how much he liked a feature in Ubuntu for downloading and installing packages.  Once we found this he was very excited.  He really liked the way pkg-get checks to make sure the package isn't already installed and automatically installs dependent packages. 

Cool stuff.

 

Posted at 10:10PM Apr 09, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Great book - Guns, Germs and Steel

Just finished a great book.  It really opened my eyes to different ways of looking at the world both current and past.  Be warned this is not a quick read and I found myself re-reading a lot of paragraphs to understand what the author, Jared Diamond, was saying.  

More details about the book at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
 

Posted at 02:49PM Mar 10, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[1]

Patton Museum

Last week I had to travel to Louisville Kentucky for meetings.  I had never been to Kentucky so it was great to see something new.  Before the flight I was talking with one of the other passengers and he gave me some great advise.  He said that if I had the time I should check out the Patton Museum at Fort Knox.  I never knew there was a Patton museum much less that it was at Fort Knox. As it turns out the meetings ended on time and I had a few hours before my return flight so I took the advise and went to the museum.

The museum was totally awesome.  There is probably every tank ever made in the museum.  It was incredible to see how tanks have changed over the years.  Not only are there American tanks there are also tanks from other countries such as Germany, Russia, and Japan.  German tanks are huge and impressive.

If you are a tank, history buff, Patton fan or just someone that likes to learn I would recommend visiting the museum.  Check it out at http://www.generalpatton.org/

Well worth the visit. 

 

Posted at 09:25AM Feb 20, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[3]

Cool new movie viewing experience

This past weekend my wife and I had "date night" - no kids.  We decided to try a new movie theater in our area.  The interesting thing about the theater - they don't cater to kids.  There is a full bar with a limited menu in the lobby.  Also, popcorn and soda are included in your ticket price.  When I first heard about this I thought - "Yeah but the sizes are probably really small". They are medium size and you get refills.  Another really cool feature is VIP setting (cost $2 extra per person) where there is a waiter and bigger more comfortable seats.  

 It was very strange to be in movie theater and not have any "kids" putting their feet on the backs of seats, talking, all the other things you have to deal with at a regular theater. 

 BTW - we went to see "Charlie Wilson's War".  Good flick.  Makes you think about our current situation in Iraq. Are we doomed to repeat history?

 

Posted at 10:10PM Feb 11, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[1]

VMWare Fusion and Host-only

I was struggling with changing the network setting for vmnet1 (Host Only) within Fusion.  A fellow Sun person (Jeffery Tye) had posted the following instructions.  

They worked great

Cullen

Open a terminal window on your Mac.

cd ~
cd /Library/Application\ Support/VMware\ Fusion/
cp locations locations.orig

sudo rm locations
sudo ./vmware-config-net.pl
sudo ./boot.sh --restart
ifconfig -a
sudo vi locations

(note: VNET_8  is NAT subnet
           VNET_1 is HOSTONLY subnet)

sudo ./vmware-config-net.pl
sudo ./boot.sh --restart

ifconfig -a

cp locations locations.save

Posted at 01:24PM Jan 09, 2008 by Cullen Landrum in Mac  |  Comments[2]

Project Linus

If you are looking for a non-profit organization to donate to or volunteer check out Project Linus.  A friend of mine was featured on MSNBC about the work she has done with Project Linus.  It is an amazing story of people making a difference. 

Posted at 09:05PM Dec 05, 2007 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Marriott at IAH

If you ever have an early flight out of Houston International Airport (IAH) I suggest you stay at the Marriott in the airport. Last Friday, I had a 6:00 AM flight back to Denver so we decided to use some Marriott points and stay at the airport.  What a great decision!!! There is an underground tram that takes you from the hotel to the terminals.  It took about 10 minutes and I was at security.



 

Posted at 09:06PM Nov 27, 2007 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Best 6-6 season

It is amazing that CU went 6-6 (4-4 in Big 12) and it feels like they had a great year.  Some very close games and of course beating both NU and OU in the same year is always awesome.  Kinda like the good old days of the Big 8.  

For the NU game it was a very cold and snowy game but worth it to see CU step up and play the way they did.  Also worth getting on a 6:00 AM flight to make it to the game in time. 

GO BUFFS!!!!!!!
 

Posted at 09:00PM Nov 27, 2007 by Cullen Landrum in CU Football  |  Comments[0]

First Entry

Welcome to my blog. I have finally joined the ranks of Sun employees and created a blog. I hope you will find my entries informative and entertaining. As a little background - I have been at Sun for 8 years (when Sun acquired Forte Software in 1999) as a Systems Engineer.

I will probably blog on a host of topics to include - Sun in general, Sun Software, Lacrosse (I coach my sons lacrosse team), skiing, University of Colorado football (major fan - go Buffs), cool things about my new Mac (I can't believe I am becoming a Mac fan but I am - in a big way) and anything else that crosses my mind.

Thanks - more to follow

Posted at 08:44PM Nov 14, 2007 by Cullen Landrum in Personal  |  Comments[1]