Holiday Weekend Re-Cap May 30, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : geek , add a commentHere is a bullet point summary of what I did this past weekend
* Saw The DaVinci Code
* Attended a Symphony / Fireworks event at Ft. Sam Houston
* Cleaned the house
* Worked in the yard (mowed the grass, trimmed the trees, etc.)
* Miniture golf @ the Castle
* Ice Cream at Marble Slab
It was a good weekend.
New WordPress Theme May 23, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : work, geek , 1 comment so farAs you can probably tell, my blog got a face lift. I am trying out a new theme. So far I like it, we will have to see if my readership boosts to a total of 4 readers or if I will lose the existing two that I have (hi Darrell). It’s worth noting that I originally saw this theme in use by the Evil Zen Scientist and I liked it.
I hope to have final word today or tomorrow as to whether or not I will be visiting Novell, INC. next week. When Martin (aka the Evil Zen Scientist) was visiting with us last week, we toyed around with the idea of me and two of my colleagues hopping up to Provo to visit the Super Lab. In addition to all of the fun Identity Management work I do with Novell software, I am also the person who rolled out ZENworks Linux Management (ZLM for short) for our internal systems. All and all, I am happy with the product. It is very powerful and it fits nicely into our architecture allowing us to manage multipe systems through one interface. This, in turn, cuts down on the overall administrative overhead of server management.
(more…)
linux software raid post May 9, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : geek , add a commentI read this post on Dirk’s blog. I thought it was pretty good and it deserved a link. The information presented is geared towards debian admins, but the concepts are universally applicable.
MacBook Pro
Posted by Phillip in : geek , add a commentThis is my first post from my new, shiny MacBook Pro. I have the 15.4-inch 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo. Apparently the place from which my employer ordered it decided to toss in a hefty RAM upgrade.
What can I say? The laptop is awesome. I love Macs. I did note some gotchas that I hadn’t really planned for though:
* Cisco VPN Client - I had to download (well dbo actually downloaded it for me) the latest version of the Cisco VPN Client since the other Darwin releases do not work on the Intel platform.
* iTerm - I use iTerm quite a bit for my actual daily work. I like it because it offers nice features like tabbed console windows and being able to send the keyboard input to all tabs in a window (handy if you are doing the same thing on a lot of boxes that you are already logged into).
* Fink - I use Fink quite a bit also. At first I had an issue where my sources.list was incorrectly configured, listing repositories for 10.2 mirrors and not 10.4. That was easy enough to correct. My only issue now is that nothing will really compile. I can still install most of the packages by just installing the binaries, but I am going to have to get this source compile issue figured out.
* Migration - Since I don’t have a firewire -to- firewire cable, I am unable to use the migration tool. This was fine since I just copied my documents and work-related stuff using scp and Apple’s network sharing services. I am, however, going to have to find a more sane way to move my iTunes music (~40GB) and my movies.
All and all, I love this mac. I have had no real issues *yet*. I suppose only time will tell.
a new toy…errr tool! May 2, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : geek , add a commentI have decided to make this post about how much I love my job. Here is one of the reasons:
This is a picture of what my [employers] new laptop will look like. As a few of you know, I own a Mac Powerbook G4. Mine is one of the older models — an 800 MHz with 1 GB of RAM. I upgraded the hard drive to an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive when the old one failed last year. All in all, I would have to say that my Powerbook has been good to me. I have been really chomping at the bit to pick up one of these Intel based Macs and now I am fortunate enough to have the company for which I work purchase one for my work. As a Linux SysAdmin / Engineer, I find working on a Mac quite comfortable. I enjoy the practicallity of the *nix backend and functionallity and power of the command-line while also taking advantage of prettiness of the GUI.
For the last couple of weeks, my Powerbook has been suffering from what I call “cataclysmic hardware related anomalies”. In short, I think my motherboard is crapping out. I was very close to actually purchasing a MacBook for myself, but I am happy that benevolent my benevolent employer is willing to ensure that I have all of the tools neccessary to complete my job in an efficient manner.
Published (well, sorta…) May 1, 2006
Posted by Phillip in : sysadmin, work , add a commentI recently submitted a HOWTO article to Novell CoolSolutions(TM). Here is the link. I was pretty excited about it, especially since I found out that every time you submit an article or tip, you get points. These points can then be redeemed for cool prizes!
I have yet to decide what I want, but I am quite certain I don’t want the T-Shirt.
At any rate, I was excited about the entire thing. It turns out not many people have made the Remote Loader actually function on a Debain Linux server. For those of you who don’t know, the Remote Loader is an application layer service that serves as an interface between your connected system, in this case a comma-delimited text file, and Novell Identity Manager. I could probably ramble on about how cool all of this technology is, but I think I might need to do a little work today, so until I have some time, OUT!.