I like watching movies; they are either entertaining to spend time to watch or just a good method to kill time.  I just watched the movie: War of the Worlds several days ago and I have to say that this movie is the most boring and stupid piece I have ever watched.  There is not a good story line to begin with; other than some dramatic scenes of what people might do in the middle of a major crisis, there is really not much of interest to watch.  Too bad I wasnt able to hop to another theathre to watch other worth while watching movies since the entire theathre was packed with people and guards. :-(  I ended up sitting tight in my seat and speechlessly finished the movie.

Just couple hours after finishing the last session of the yearly held CEC, I am logged on to my Hotspot in Borders just at the corner of Union Square in San Francisco to kill some of my time. (Ya.. I was in Starbucks just couple minutes ago, but they close at 11pm so I had to change my location.)  While I was replying my emails I had a funny thought of how I was used to adopt to the new technologies which changed the way I work and the way I utilize the Internet. 

I can honestly say that it's the end of the world for me if the Internet dies one day. (luckily it wont ever happen)  The adoption of computing changes I've adopted seemed somewhat transparent to me, but the end result is drastic and critical.  I remember my professor used to say that we [human] are best at adopting to environmental changes, and we are always trying to change for the good.  In looking at the speed of adopting to the change in computing globally, in the near term I am expecting to see another cultural change when utility computing is driving the way everybody computes.

http://www.sun.com/solutions/landing/infrastructure/grid.xml

Well... Borders has just closed so I am going back to my hotel and get ready for tomorrow's full day of conference~~~

 

Be proactive!  Fix the known problems before it gets you!  Find out how you can bring your proactive activities for your servers to a new level!  Please go to http://www.sun.com/service/connectedservices/

After 2 1/2 years of abusive driving I've already put 53,000 miles to my poor car: 2002 BMW 325i. It's not the long distance driving that resulted in this ultra high-mileage, but it was the extensive driving between Sun offices and clients in the greater Los Angeles area. (Ok... fine.. from LA to San Diego too) I gotta admit that the handling of a BMW's is remarkable, no wonder it's marketed as the Ultimate Driving machine - there is no doubt to that. On the other hand, this car is costly! (well.. at least to me) My monthly payments, car insurance, break/fix cost (since the warranty has just expired), and the ever climbing of the gasoline price all adds up! Farewell, my dear (poor) BMW. If anyone knows, please let me know which car has the handling as good as BMW's.. because after being spoiled by my bmw, all other cars are like toys to me! :-(

I was on the phone today with a friend of mine who has been a sys admin for about 6 years. Perhaps it's a boring job for him since he has started complaining on just about everything he encounters at work lately. "Is it the people, the env, or just wanting to see a change?" I asked. (having to know him for quite a while I was patiently listening ... well.. sort of) "Well... I've lost my faith and pride for being a sys admin, afterall, the "O-mighty-glory days" is long gone." After x amount of minutes in digging to find out the root-cause of his aggravation, I realized he is not being "valued" to keep the systems up. Instead, he is viewed "valuable" only when he has fixed a major problem in an outage. (so he said..) Perhaps it's the culture of the company's "preserved" since the Internet boom eras; (which I've experienced before) however, I've seen others' with a totally different view. "How about looking over the Preventive tools that my company offers? Perhaps you can better your situation by presenting the data to your managements on how performing proactive work can help bring the uptime of your systems' up?" There are tools like NetConnect, Configuration Services Tracker, Patch Manager, Explorer, and etc to assist in keeping the systems' availability accounted for and much more! Better yet, there are "GRAPHS" and data to prove your point! (those are the favorites among the managements) The great tools are out there and I was glad to help my poor friend out with virutually doing nothing. :-) At times I wonder how soon the companies out there will change from being "reactive" to "proactive". Is it an unchangeable trend that people are used to? Is it the culture? I really wonder...

Wow~ this is my very first weblog, and I am very excited! Hopefully I will be committed in writing on a regular basis. (unlike my "regular" workout routine I've promised myself for New Year's resolution... ugh.. it's almost October now.) Anyway, stay tuned! --tony