Leroy KelleyUS Software, Systems Engineer |
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Thursday Sep 10, 2009
OT: Camaro 2010
A warning this is an off topic post. But you probably figured it out by now. This weekend I traveled and required the need of an rental car. So I decided to trade up at the Avis counter for a new Camaro. Yes, Avis has a locked on renting the Camaro. They also include the "SS" as an option. I finally choose the black non-"SS" version. Figuring that yellow or red would make me way too visible. The "SS" would unleash my inner child that would make me more visible. The car itself is quite nice. Fit and finish are great. I thought I would never drive a Camaro. It was just not me. But the Camaro is quite me with one note. More on that later. It has a great 6-speed transmission with paddle shifters. Yes, not a manual in the rental fleet. Paddles were fun. Exhaust well not as raspy as a v-8 was quite nice. Additional feature. Visibility. This car attracts all kinds of attention. In 3 days, I was stopped by 5 people who wanted to talk about the car. I was followed and cruised by numerous cars taking a good look. If you love the Camaro, then the only questionable feature will not be a problem. Visibility out of the rear windows. But this comes with the design of the Camaro and cars like it. You learn to cope. May the new GM continue to produce winners like the CTS and Camaro. Go GM !!! The biggest problem will be getting folks to give them another chance. Posted at 07:50PM Sep 10, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[1]
Sunday Aug 30, 2009
FIOS, DNSmasq and DD-WRT
Moved to the wonderful world of FIOS this week. It is so nice to be speeding along at 25mbs and not have to share the pipe with my neighbors. Not that I am the hater type. But downloading CD's and DVD's for work is so much nicer now. Plus for the next 6 months I am saving like 90 dollars a month. Sweet. DNSMasq is the best thing since sliced bread for home networks and more. I have been having trouble with my DNS server recently. Every OS upgrade breaks it. Tired of messing with compatibility issues. I started DNSMasq since it was already installed. I now am serving up internal addresses once again. DD-WRT. Well it has so much promise. During an upgrade of my Linksys WRT310n router I managed to brick it. Do not ask. But their is this proceedure called 30/30/30. Basically hold the reset switch for 30 secs w/power applied. While holding the reset switch. Pull the plug for 30 secs. Then for the final 30 seconds plug the power back in while holding the reset switch. It managed to reset the OS back to a fresh copy. Nice. Posted at 05:05PM Aug 30, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Tuesday Jun 09, 2009
Father convinces Daughter to let him drive
Toke the car in for servicing yesterday and got a great chuckle. Their was a father and daughter waiting for "her" car to be brought up from the service area. Dad was convincing her to let him drive the car. She did not have a problem. But it became clear that he really wanted to drive. Turns out he gave his baby to his baby (daughter) recently and was really missing the car. Amusing but says a lot about how a generation really felt about the freedoms driving gave them. Posted at 11:19AM Jun 09, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Thursday May 07, 2009
Star Trek successfully reboots !
In a totally non related Sun moment, went to see the new Star Trek Zero. Not sure how they will handle the next Star Trek movie moniker.Maybe Star Trek 0.1. Any way the movie totally rocks and successfully sets up a future for fans (both young and old) to see new adventures. Either on the big screen or a series. Brilliant way to .... no spoilers here.... Posted at 10:39PM May 07, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Thursday Apr 16, 2009
Ben's Chili Bowl - Why so long
Well I have been in the DC area for 24 years. Ouch. I finally made the trip to Ben's Chili Bowl in DC for lunch today. Great chili, sausage and fries. Something you must do at least once in life. It reminds me of the Varsity in Atlanta(food wise). The decor is in class by itself. Which actually makes the place it is. I highly recommend a visit if you are in the DC area. Just not too often. Time for cardio :) Posted at 04:57PM Apr 16, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[1]
Sunday Apr 12, 2009
Southwest gets it right with Open Seating v2.0
Well I have never been a Southwest airlines fan. Most of that came from first impressions back in the late 90's/00's of sitting on the floor at the gate just to receive a good spot in order to get a decent seat on the plane. Well I flew with them last week. I must say that Southwest is not sitting still. They have improved the "open seating" process so you can still get a great seat with out sitting on the floor. Checking in at home allows you to get a spot in line without busting your butt to get to the airport before anyone else. Business travelers that can pay more then the lowest available price can also push themselves to the beginning of the the line by paying a few extra bucks more. Kudos to Southwest for continuing to improve themselves in an industry that has lost its way. Posted at 07:57PM Apr 12, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0] Healthcare costs can be improved ...
I spent the past week being probed for my yearly physical. In the process I noticed there are certain aspects to the healthcare system that should and can be improved. This particular visit included a stop to the Doctors office and a visit to the lab for blood tests. Remember when the Doc did your blood tests. Well that has been outsourced and not very well. Part 1. Went to Doctor for the first appoint that day. I learned over the years that any afternoon appointments are tragically delayed. I have waited up to an 1 hour after being assigned a waiting room. So this visit was good although I still waited 11 minutes for the first appointment of the day in which I arrived 15 minutes early. So my first pet peeve and improvement area. Why does it take 3 people to check me in. Oh the endless mounds of paper they have to manage. Why do I need to fill out the same paperwork each year. Tablet PC's were supposed to solve this. Why do I carry a medical card with a mag strip on it. Same for my license. Can't someone solve this issue ? Sun could save money by issuing a paper card each year. The embedded technology is not used from what I can tell. But if it were, I would not have to fill out paper work every time I visit to Doctor. The staff in the office could actually do more productive things instead of copying my card and managing my paperwork. They would not have to check to see which treatments my provider will reimburse them for. Part II. The Doctors office visit would be the easiest part of the morning. Less then 45 minutes and I was out of there. Now on to "Blood Corporation" for the blood tests. I should have known better when I saw the line outside the door. I went the desk and signed myself in. Now the wait starts. Literally 50 minutes go by and I get called to the desk. Yes I am in. No, I now need to fill out more paper work. Yes, it takes 45 minutes to process paperwork for a 5 minute blood test. Once the paperwork is done it still takes another 20 minutes to get the actual test. What went wrong. One person is managing the check in process. She is generating literally 6 pages of paperwork and yes copying my medical card one more time. Why not use a bar code reader ? Their computer system does not even know I have been there before. Although the lady who takes my blood recognizes me. Must be my stunning personality :) A lot of people worry that any healthcare reform will take a toll on medical care. I argue that the process can be improved while keeping the same level of care. That is why Sun has been working with the NHIN and others team to improve communication across healthcare entities. I hope it takes hold before the next physical. Posted at 07:51PM Apr 12, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[2] VDI 3 - Bad as in 70's badddd !
Well after two weeks of travel and layoffs I thought I would spend the weekend relaxing. Which for me this seems to be a little time with the Shuttle team and VDI. VDI is a way cool and under promoted virtualization technology that can run Windows, Linux and Solaris guests. Clients can access via Sun Ray thin client, SGD and RDP clients. VDI 3 is part Sun Ray, MySQL (profile management), Solaris, VirtualBox and Open Storage (think OpenSolaris). By the way it is totally badd. These distinct components are integrated so well beyond anything Sun has done in a long time. All components are installed by one command. The open storage server is a separate install of OpenSolaris by the way. It works flawlessly. Administration is via browser and so easy to use. No instructions needed. I had not figured out how VirtualBox could be used other than the developer module so tossed around these days. But Virtual Box fits so well in this solution. One might question xVMServer's existence but it fits well running headless servers vs. desktop virtualization. VDI 3 integrates with your existing enterprise LDAP or Active Directory solution for authentication. No coding needed. Just configure and go. Best yet, each user can be provisioned multiple desktops for use. Once the user authenticates they can choose which desktop to access. VDI gives you the ability to toss other virtualization technologies to the curb for no doubt a better cost model. VDI 3 will let you use VMWare's VDI solution too. Flexible... Posted at 07:28PM Apr 12, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Thursday Apr 02, 2009
Update on Atom Powered Sun Ray Server
I have been asked why not OpenSolaris for my Atom powered Sun Ray. Well the customer requirements a few weeks back were different. Now I have wiped the drive and deployed OpenSolaris + Sun Ray server together. Works well. I recommend following the instructions on the Sun Ray wiki. They work perfectly. Posted at 09:55AM Apr 02, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Tuesday Mar 24, 2009
Sun Ray, Green Screen and VNC
I have a client that is exploring thin client technologies. They want to update their desktop technology. But they do not have the resources to rewrite their existing client. An existing Green Screen client that runs perfectly in a terminal window. Except the terminal clients on RHEL block certain function keys. Certain keys are intercepted by the terminal application for menu operations and are not passed to the green screen client. I had an light bulb idea. Why not use VNC to connect to the client to see how well that would work. It works like a charm. All the function keys get sent through. One exception was the F8 key. Luckily VNC will let you remap that key to some other combination. So now we have a solution that protects the customers investment while letting them move to current display technology. Posted at 10:04PM Mar 24, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Monday Mar 09, 2009
The bear comes out of hibernation...
Ok I whole heartedly admit that I did the bear plus workout this winter. I hibernated. Worse yet I did not bulk up before hibernation. I actually slept and ate at the same time. I now have to work off the pounds I put on. At least to did not get close to my original poundage. I actually got good cardio in this evening. DC seems to be enjoying a bit a spring time. It was refreshing to get outside again. No worries. No recession. Just me and nature. Yes. Posted at 06:28PM Mar 09, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Wednesday Mar 04, 2009
Atom powered Sun Ray Server
Some times you do crazy things in life. I had the opportunity to purchase a Intel Atom 330 powered nettop computer for $140.00. Since I already had a spare sata drive and dvd drive the cost was attractive. The box has 2 cores with hyper-threading enabled. It speeds along at 1.6 ghz. Yep it is a barn burner with all fours threads showing up as 4 "cpus". So now the question was what can this baby do. I have a customer Sun Ray gig next week. So I decided to replicate the install process. Surely not the hardware. So the little atom is running RHEL 5.3, Sun Ray Server 4.1 and the Sun Ray Windows Connector. It is like the Prius of the Sun Ray servers out there. It is handling a couple of desktops. Only using 828 mb of the 2GB of maximum ram the box will take. Yet it is only using 65 watts of power. To be sure, I will not be transcoding video with this baby. But for a lightweight environment with a handful of users the Atom is doing quite well. Granted the Atom is not going to handle a 700 user call center alone but it makes you think. Posted at 08:39PM Mar 04, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[1]
Monday Feb 09, 2009
Punx Phil and weather predication accuracy !
Now I know what you are thinking, why would I base any weather forecast based a furry creature that has been sleeping for months. Well I do not. But it is fun anyhow. I will never travel to Pa. and wait for Phil to wake up, be blinded by the sun and see his shadow. But Phil has the perfect out. His predication was, we would see 6 more weeks of winter. He did not say whether is would be 6 more weeks of hell or fun in the sun. In DC it is expected to be 60 plus degrees this week. In mid-February we should be freezing. I am definitely not complaining. There is plenty of time for the weather to go bad. Come to think of it maybe it all heat being generated inside the beltway debating the stimulus bill. No what was I thinking :) Posted at 05:53PM Feb 09, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Tuesday Jan 27, 2009
Found time !!!
Well it is a snowy day here in Washington. The ice storm is on its way. The shelves no doubt will be empty by the time I go to the store. Well the TP and Milk will be gone. My meeting got cancelled today. Which means I now have 6 hours I did not have to work my todo list. You got to love found time. Posted at 09:21AM Jan 27, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0]
Wednesday Jan 21, 2009
Inauguration Bliss
Well, I spent Tuesday at my first inauguration. What a day. So many people. Sharing experiences. It was great seeing Barrack sworn in. Seeing Barrack, MIchelle and the girls in the "beast limo" was way cool. Kudos to the new first family. My morning started early. It was a 5am morning. Got up. Checked the news. They were reporting the metro stations had lines back to exit with people trying to park their cars. So I got my butt in gear and got going. Got to the metro station at 6:30am. The lines were horrible because everyone was waiting for garage #1. Luckily I knew about garage #2 which had no wait. My second kudos goes to Washington's Metro. They had their stuff together. Lots of employees at the Shady Grove station. They even relaxed the rules when there were long lines. Like letting people through the turnstiles with out needing a ticket to board a train. Kudos. They even upgraded the chime system when the doors close. It has been that long since riding metro. The system does not usually go where I am going. The bad, you still do not want to be caught in the doors. Although similar to elevator doors, these are merciless. Groups of teenagers forced to save one of their own that was straggling behind. Got to the metro center station at 7:30 am. Not bad. Now I am worrying about having 7 hours to wait. Here is where it gets interesting. There were two security checkpoints. One with a line moving briskly and the other stalled. After waiting 45 minutes in the slow line I move to the brisk line. Here they are are processing tons of people and just performing pat downs. So I get through this line in 10 minutes. I think this is too good to be true. Yes it was. My seating area cannot be accessed from this entrance. So I need to exit and re-enter through the slow entrance. Back out I go. Well long story short. I spent the next 4 hours of my life in the a line that was 2 blocks long. I was in the first 50 feet of the line. This line had metal detectors and people had to remove their electronics. It felt as though this line was being choked for security reasons. It gets interesting when you spend 4 hours back to chest to back with people you do not know. When the line moved, we moved as one. Literally. The whole crowd would move 6 inches whenever they let 5 people through the line. The crowd swayed as one when Aretha sang. Not out of choice because we had to. Someone started and we moved together. Kind of uniting in a way. In fact the last 45 minutes in line I do not think I stood on my own. I had a young lady behind me go to sleep on my shoulders. Third kudos. TSA, I will never let anyone say bad things about you ever again. You are a model of uniformness and efficiency. Fourth kudos. Plenty of restrooms on the parade route. Cannot speak about the mall but Penn avenue was great. The parade was great though I snuck out after Barrack and Michelle went by. The aluminum seats had finally taken their toll. It was 5 pm. Time to go. All in all a great day, even with security and the cold. Something everyone should do once in their lives. Posted at 08:11PM Jan 21, 2009 by leroyk in Personal | Comments[0] |
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