Posts by J. Cook
287 posts • joined Monday 16th July 2007 16:35 GMT
Re: A quid a day
Putting leftovers in the freezer and re-heating also works.
I have a (probably bad) habit of 'one-pot' meals based on the boxes of macaroni and cheese with various bits thrown in- usually mushrooms, olives, broccoli, and some form of meat thrown in for protein. I package up lunch-sized portions, and freeze whatever I'm not going to eat in a couple days. Do this with a couple different recipes, and one can get a nice mix of food for lunches and dinners for the week out of a couple days cooking.
Posted in Ten ancestors of the netbook
Re: Zenith Minisport
Ah, yes. I had one of those waaay back when I was going to school to learn my trade. It was awesome for taking notes on, and playing games behind the instructor's back when I was bored.
Alas, mine died a very untimely accidental death from screen breakage.
Oh hey...
Looks like I ought to resurrect my account over there.
Ah, EMCC...
EMC- We like to charge lots of money.
In their defence, their data domain kit is pretty awesome in regards to backup and VTL. But it's not much of a defense, really.
Re: Badly Designed Server = Server running Windows
He's implied that it's ESXi- I don't know of any other OS that will cough a purple screen of death when it panics.
And Eadon, you need to put down the crack pipe. Or maybe start playing around with a server 2008 R2 box- done up properly (i.e. on solid hardware, and using signed drivers or even built in drivers) the OS is pretty damned reliable at this point, on the same level as your beloved linux. Admittedly, in the four years I've been admin of our ESX stack, I've seen the hypervisor purple screen on me exactly once. The fault? a perfect storm of a flaky NIC driver (HA HA! Linux has them too!) and a bad packet on the 10 GbE connection causing NFS to go down like a Clinton intern, which took the hypervisor and all the machines running on the box down with it. (On a side note, if you are running ESX/ESXi 4.x and using the Intel 10GbE network cards, get thee to VMware's site and install the updated drivers- that will fix this issue.)
Troll icon, because hey- If I'm a gonna troll, might as well go whole hog.
iLO, DRAC, and Managed PDUs, oh my.
While all of our dell servers have a drac built on them*, we don't use them at all. What we do use is a managed PDU/KVM combination that Raritan makes- while the units we have are quite pricey (the controller itself is something like 16 grand retail for starters!) it's definitely worth it when you have a server that's shagged itself and needs a kicking.
* IIRC, they are standard on all poweredge servers at this point. I could be wrong, though.
Re: Dell OEM and other hit last weekend - was it this?
@wondermouse: It's entirely possible that MS may have nuked the OEM key that Dell uses on their pre-loaded image. I seem to recall Dell doing that for their XP image, at least.
Re: Gahhhh, when will people learn kettle style IEC leads are different to others?
*awards Frankee Llonnygog an internets*
You sir, owe me a new keyboard.
Well played. Call me suckered. :D
RE: Nature's Miracle
Sweet Crom YES, although I imagine there's a story about the pissed off goat in the clubhouse.
There's a reason why the pet supply stores sell it by the gallon.
Re: They gave him how much?
You may have noticed that the previous shenanigans were in Oregon, and this was in Florida and New York, on the opposite side of the country. That probably enabled him to cover his track long enough to get this scam started and running before it collapsed.
A small amount of blame could in theory be attached to lack of due diligence on the part of the investors.
Posted in EMC2 is now EMC II, too
Everything More Costly Too...
I'll certainly concede that point, although I remain pretty bloody impressed at how well their data domain boxes handle deduplication and compression as a backup storage appliance.
My experience with ESX 4 and 5.0...
DRS and HA are definitely features worth having. With both turned on, if a host freezes up (which in our environment manifests itself as the VMs on the host going comatose) I can kick the host, wait for vCenter to notice the failure, (usuall a minute or two at most) and resurrect the stricken VMs elsewhere without having to migrate the hosts elsewhere. Our environment is small enough that distributed virtual switches aren't needed, so I've not had a change to play with it. (We do have a host profile set up to auto-configure the 10 Gbe cards with our specific configuration and add the NFS datastores) Admittedly, configuring the vCenter system is a bit of a pain, but it's not something that's done day in, day out.
Performance-wise, I've not noticed any problems with running vCenter on a virtualised server for our environment (15 hosts and ~200 VMs, and we've started implementing VDI with about 200 seats)
I'm looking forward to see what 5.1 does to our environment- we are starting that migration this month.
While we are bashing Windows 8's UI...
I'd like to have a word or two* with whoever thought that 1280*720 was "too low" of a resolution for Metro- I have my HTPC hooked up to a 720p native projector which does quite nicely for 99.9% of the stuff I push to it. (that .1% is the few metro apps I've played with, after setting the HTPC's resolution to 1080p and coping with the projector scaling the quality off the resulting image)
Seriously Microshaft- the difference between 768 and 720 is all of 48 pixels. Your shiny new UI wastes more then that in empty space.
*And by words meaning "my steel toed boots in their nether regions, repeatedly"
Intel and Broadcom...
We use the Intel X520-2 10 GbE cards in our production VMware cluster- with a few minor issues they've performed excellently*.
The servers be buy have a bank of four Broadcom BCM5709 copper 1Gb ports- For the large part, they also just work without a lot of tinkering, except if you are in windows and using NIC teaming- then you get to play 'match the protocol' with the switch they plug into, but even them it's not much more then stepping through a wizard and building the teaming adapter.
* We've had a few quirks with NFS connections dropping at random on these nodes- we suspect it's a driver issue or possibly something else, but we've been unable to really pin it down yet.
Re: obviously the rules of engagement
So that's what chex mix and cola smell like. And now, I need a new keyboard.
@moiety
"Fuck them. Fuck every single patent troll. With something pointy; plugged into the mains; and bred from a particularly convoluted cactus.
EDIT: (because I can): Also; apply it with a cordless hammer drill. And cover everything with tabasco."
But tell us how you really feel... (also, swap the tabasco sauce with jelly made from ghost chilies)
Re: It Must Be User Error.
@jr424242: No, Apple. He's driving it wrong.
Mines the one with the faux turtleneck.
Re: I'm interesting
@phuzz: (in regards to the various types of fecal matter)
.... I did not need to know that.
*reaches for the brane bleach*
Apple? And HP?!?!?!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!!! *cough* *HACK* WHEEZE*
Well played, well played.
@ Alpha Tony...
Obligatory XKCD link: http://xkcd.com/467/
*golf claps*
I do believe that counts as an "own goal" ?
A stupid question regarding SFP+ modules...
Are the switches particular about the manufacturer of the SFP/SFP+ modules? I know this sounds really stupid, but the people I've asked have always told me "buy the SFP modules from the same company that made the switch".
As far as converged networks are concerned, that term is usually reserved for things like running Fibre Channel and 10 GB Ethernet over the same optical fiber (using a converged NIC, FCoE, and a switch that can either handle the FC traffic or split it out to a fibre channel switch.
Posted in Solar undercuts coal in New Mexico
Re: This is the future - maybe the beginning of the end for steal and aluminium
"There are efforts already to create roof tiles that are in fact solar modules. What's holding us back in creating windows and pavements that are in fact electricity modules or thermal collectors?"
a fair amount of politics, the expense of installing such systems in a typical house, and the efficiencies of the currently available technology. Solar power is readily available here in Arizona, but it still takes subsidies and special programs from the local utilities to get people to install it in their homes.
"There are efforts already to create roof tiles that are in fact solar modules. What's holding us back in creating windows and pavements that are in fact electricity modules or thermal collectors?"
Well, the fact that the ones that exist are either fragile, far too expansive to build en masse, or not efficient enough to make any real savings.
Ugh.
Ah, the memories of going out to a 'remote site' housed in a construction office trailer to look at a dead system, popping the case cover open only to find the entire interior coated liberally in mouse droppings.
We did have one machine come in that was so absolutely coated in cigarette tar and smoke that the entire machine was a lost cause. The owner of it had a fit that the extended warranty company wouldn't cover it's repair/replacement either.
Re: Hmm?
"...the one question I have is - other than making me into a jump-to-it slave-boy, what is this thing actually for?"
After one gets past the novelty factor, having the ability to have a heads up display might be useful in a number of situations, and you did mention earlier:
"As someone else noted, I'd imagine that it's real use would be in situations. Medical personnel needing scans, pictures (which could be advanced to A&E ahead of them) or access to assistance on-the-spot whilst keeping hands free."
Another use I can think of would be as a way of having repair manuals and other technical documentation handy when one either doesn't have the space for a bulky chunk of dead tree, or where said dead tree would get damaged by grease, oils, chemicals, etc. Having the ability to hold up a part, have the camera on the device take a picture of it and apply some sort of image matching algorithm to pull up specs or information might be useful as well.
Re: Ghost In The Shell...
Heh- I have a number of pictures like that in my non-work archive from the various conventions I've attended.
I occasionally miss my Mini-9...
Seems the drive controller on mine went bonkers to the point where it will eat whatever SSD gets installed on it. it won't boot from the SD card (hardware design limitation) and booting from USB was... painful.
So I lug around my dilapidated and ancient D600, which despite it's age and the fact that just about everything except the processor and the wireless card have been replaced on it still manages to chug along without a complaint.
Might look seriously at a chromebook though, if I can squeeze the turnip hard enough.
Re: 1TB? no problem!
What, a monsterous 10kVA rig that really wants it's own dedicated 20A circuit?
We have a small number of Dell MD3000 shelves at work- they do a phased spin up for the same reason- power draw.
re: Anon in regards to space for programs...
"Users will consume whatever space you give them."
THIS, So very very much. This is known as Parkinson's Law of Data
We gave our mail users two servers with 500 GB mail spool space each at the last upgrade- the old kit was a single server with 400 GB total.
I've been fighting a (losing) battle the past three weeks with the new servers running out of space. The new servers are maybe 18 months in service?
Re: Small car please
> Of course real super-men ride a bike - I've got 21gears and wear lycra in public ;-)
*dies laughing* Ah the smell of fizzy soda through the nasal cavities.
Re: I've seen...
Drobo's web site says 47 pounds (~21 kg) without drives or packaging.
There's a reason why I have in our test lab at work a handful of unused 'universal' rack mount rails left over from a UPS deployment we did a while ago for that reason- a couple of the servers we have lost their rails a while ago, so this is the only way to keep them installed without the fronts ripping themselves out. :)
On an unrelated note, scary is seeing a refrigerator-sized core router (with about a mil or two worth of line cards installed in it) being held to the rack by four screws instead of the 8-10 that it preferred. :)
Heat? Bah!
I live (and work) in Arizona- Right now it's a mildly chilly 23. However, when summer hits, it'll be upwards of 46. But to use the old joke, "it's a dry heat".
Wait, wut?
"The share price is currently $27.84 - down from a high of $45 earlier this year."
I think the author meant:
"The share price is currently $27.84 - down from the IPO of $45 earlier this year."
Mine's the one with Confederate currency as the lining.
Re: Ah
@snowlight: I'm assuming that the 'landing zone" of the tests was the bin they were destined for, to reduce the time needed for the post-mortum area cleanup?
a while ago* I was given the task of tossing a bunch of non-functional CRTs into the local skip. Those things can take one hell of a beating- I never got any of the tubes to blow.
* before all the enviromental laws went into effect forbidding such things.
Re: I don't know about Blighty, but here in the colonies...
@Steward: Citation, please?
Posted in BOFH: Hasta la Vista... luser
Re: You do IT for a living? ... Could you ....
@ Rick Giles: I reckon it's a Virtual machine that's configured to run in full screen on the machine's console, thereby giving the impression that it's the real OS that on the system.
Posted in What's new in Windows Server 2012
Re: Ahh
But tell us how you really feel, trevor! :)
I would love powershell more if the documentation for it was a bit better, but that's an old, old complaint. I've managed to get by using copious amounts of google and a couple 3rd party add-ons for making powershell do what I want it to do in regards to AD and Exchange management.
Beer, because I'll need one after today.
Yes; businesses and freelancers who want to be legit...
Something about businesses deciding it's worth paying the ~$2,000 USD then paying thrice that, plus damages, plus the negative PR about finding out they were pirating it...
Re: To be, or not to be, an infomercial
I was the same way about Cisco's UCS platform... until we actually got a change to work with a demo chassis for a month. We managed to build our own ESX cluster with 90% of the performance of the UCS box for about 30% of the cost- the rest of that money went to other deserving projects, like beefing up the SAN and other fun things.
Apparently, it's a bug in the stock Android dialer...
One of the original reporting folks posted an update:
http://dylanreeve.posterous.com/remote-ussd-attack-its-not-just-samsung
He also states a good work around if you can't get a patched dialer is to install a different one to force the phone to prompt with an action. :)
Jumping bins...
One point of matter- water does not compress. There's your upwards force. :)
I recall participating in an amusing experiment involving muratic acid, aluminum foil, and a 2 liter bottle. the bang was pretty loud, and the cloud of aerosolized acid was amusing to boot. :D
Hmmm...
Looks like a bout of meta-trolling, perhaps?
<----- Anon does this waaaay better than me. :D
Posted in Build a bonkers home cinema
Re: Kaleidescape
+many on the '30K for 42 TB'- It might be possible if they are all consumer rated drives, but you don't want those in a RAID (and most vendors won't honor the warranty if you do!)
IIRC, my company just dropped something like 80-100K on a new dual head filer with about 40 TB of storage, and it takes up about half a standard 42U rack.
Re: You don't really need your own business card
THIS. SO VERY MUCH.
My employer hosted an industry-specific conference last year, and I got spammed by just about every single vendor that had either been invited, or paid to be part of it. How? they got my info from the folks running the conference. *sigh*
I was at least able to match a few faces with names of the vendors I do interact with, and learned a few very useful tidbits on the side. Sadly, the 'technical' track of that conference didn't really have a whole lot of technical content in it. :(
*dies laughing*
THank you, Mrs. Stob- I needed that rather badly.
*wanders off to make popcorn for the flamewars in the comments*
Re: LTO compatability?
Unfortunately, some do. I have a stack of LTO-1 tapes on my desk waiting for one of the remaining two LTO3 drives to be availible for me to 'borrow' so I can read the data on them and write them back to something that our shiny new LTO-5 vault will read. There's also the issue of personnel changes- said tapes were sent off site before I started working there, so bog only knows what I'll find on them.
Some of the off-site media storage companies also offer media migration as a service- I toured the facilities of one of the better known ones in the US, and they had a nice 'working museum' of older drives for such a purpose.
A few facts and clarifications...
1: In the US, where this has all taken place, it's perfectly legal to build a firearm with no serial number, no registration, etc. on the federal level. At the state level, there may be laws and/or restrictions. (Frankly, that's a can of worms I'd rather not open- I'll be here all day otherwise) Haveblue just can't sell it to anyone, or make them for sale- he's breaking federal law at that point. (There are machine shops that skirt this edge rather frequently- google "80% receivers" and be educated.)
2. The lower receiver of an AR-15 holds the fire control group (parts for the trigger, sear, and safety), the magazine well and the parts for the magazine catch and hold-open lever. It's under relatively low pressure with the exception of a few key areas, and can be made out of plastic or wood without a lot of hassle.
3. The upper receiver is the portion that contains the bolt assembly (bolt, bolt carrier, and firing pin) and the barrel. This assembly is exposed to the high pressures of a fired cartridge, and frankly, anyone making one out of plastic I'd rather not be around when they test fire it. The upper receivers are also, at the federal level, unregulated. I can buy them via mail order from any number of companies as long as I comply with the state laws. ( See point one regarding that can of worms) The bolt is not required to be serialized in the US, and most are not. Same with barrels.
Facebook is not a photo hosting site...
... Unless you don't mind them resizing the pictures to meet their standards, discarding the original source, and doing bog-only-knows what to/with the meta data. One of my friends lost their originals from a hard drive crash- the facebook copies are the only copies he will ever have. He's a bit wiser now. (I know, no backups, yadda yadda.) However, your average Bob is not going to bother with keeping multiple redundant copies of their stuff (at least intentionally) or anything massively complicated or something that needs regular maintenance. I will admit that I dread moving web hosts, largely due to the 4+ GB of photos that I have hosted and the lack or portability with the meta data on said pictures. (long story, don't ask)
Re: good job
"That minecraft isn't in HD or else we would be killing of an entire generation"
Then I probably shouldn't tell you about the spoutcraft client, or about the whole range of HD mods for minecraft. :)
Mines the one made out of diamonds with tons of TNT in the pockets.
