Sheep Guarding Llama

My new HP Compaq 6735b laptop arrived this morning!  I can’t believe that I ordered it in the middle of the afternoon yesterday and that it is already here before noon.  This is awesome.  I am so impressed.  I bought it through Softmart.  They rock.  This is a really nice laptop.  It is the best AMD-based laptop that HP offers.  Dual core Turion 64 X2 2.2GHz processor, 4G RAM, 500GB drive, 802.11n, BlueTooth, 1280×800 glossy bright screen, DVD burner, etc.  Great unit at a great price with the all out 3 year commercial warranty.  Only way to go.  The unit shipped installed with Windows XP Pro and came with copies of Vista 32 and Vista 64 as well but the really nice thing is that it comes with a coupon to get Windows 7 Business when it releases on October 22nd.  So I am just going to use the unit with Windows XP installed until I get my copy of 7 for this machine.  I already have Windows 7 running on my main desktop and have been using it for quite some time now and Dominica just recently switched to it for her laptop as well and she really likes it too.  So we are going to be completely migrated from XP and Vista to 7 before November!

We ordered a copy of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth on BluRay today.  It is the final three episodes of the entire series made years after the series was completed.  There were eight original seasons and then Back to Earth was done as a short mini-series.  We are very excited to have more RD to watch again after all of these years.  We haven’t seen a new one in so long.

My day was spent mostly getting my laptop working.  Tons of software and configurations to get set up even just to use it for the next few weeks.  I will need to rebuild it again with 7 once we return from Texas.  Until I do the rebuild the system can only see 2.5GB of its 4GB of RAM so I am really looking forward to getting a 64bit OS installed.

Dominica did a Linux server build project today.  She built a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 AMD64 server running on Xen and then installed and configured OpenFire which is an instant messaging XMPP server.  It is great to have OpenFire back up and running again.  We had OpenFire working as a part of the Zimbra installation that we have been using for the last several years but the Zimbra version of OpenFire was extremely limited compared to the real thing and we really missed the functionality.  It was a really good project for Dominica as well.

Sorry, it was a technology heavy day at the Miller household.

My latest article, The Agony and the Ecstasy of RAID, was published by Datamation today.  I am very happy that this one got posted because it is very similar to another article that they ran the day that I submitted this one and I had a feeling that they would not run this one because of the other one.  But they ran it and it is both one of the headlines today and I also have my picture on Datamation’s front page.  Awesome!

Wow am I ever behind now.  Totally, completely behind.  My desktop has been having serious connectivity problems and it is really impacting my ability to get anything done.

Today is my first day really working with Rackspace Email.  We did the migration yesterday and today I am getting used to it and making the transition to this being the center of my life’s communications.  Today I got it hooked up to sync to my BlackBerry which is really awesome.  I have not had this feature previously so having my calendar, contacts and tasks sync from my webmail to my mobile device in addition to my email itself is totally rocking.  I’m not sure that I would pay more for this feature but having it included is a total win.  I’m sure that I will find myself becoming completely addicted to this.

Liesl slept in really late this morning.  She and Dominica did not get up until at least eight thirty which is two hours later than Liesl normally sleeps.  She must have done some serious growing last night to need so much rest.  I am sure that Dominica is loving the chance to sleep in.

I found out today that Rackspace is moving their JungleDisk product into the commercial server backup space.  That should be very exciting.  I will be checking that out soon especially as they are going to support Linux systems and not only Windows and Mac.

I finally got the chance to order my new HP laptop today.  I have a lot of travel stuff coming up really soon and it is really important that I have an awesome laptop that will allow me to really work remotely.  I can’t keep working from my old one for the type of work that I need to do and the amount of it that I need to do.  So I sucked it up and ordered a $1,000 laptop plus a nice docking station to make using it at my desk even easier (moving me up to four screens now at my desk once it arrives!)  I really need to have it by this weekend so I asked them to put a rush on it.  I am hopeful that I will have it before dad comes to visit this weekend because he is getting my old laptop and we are not in a position to be down a laptop in the interim.

No sooner do I get caught up with SGL then I completely fall behind again.  Argh.  Just can’t seem to stay on top of it recently.  Just way too much work going on around here.

Liesl had a really tough night night.  She was up at twelve thirty this morning!  Dominica got up with her and sat with her in the nursery until one thirty.  The she brought Liesl to bed with us.  Dominica then went to bed and I stayed up with Liesl for another hour until two thirty in the morning.  At two thirty Liesl finally fell asleep.

By this point I was completely awake and was not about to fall back asleep again anytime soon.  There is always more than enough work to do so I just headed on down to the basement and got to work.  A very early day but at least it was a real opportunity to be really productive.

This morning I decided that with me being up so early there was lots of time for preparation and planning so I did some email research and testing all morning and by a quarter until eight this morning I managed to migrate the first email domain over to Rackspace hosted email!  A very productive morning indeed.  That was a lot of stress hanging over my head that I was able to just get out of the way.

Today is Dominica and my six year wedding anniversary.  We decided that with all of the stuff that we have going on right now that we weren’t going to do anything for our anniversary this year.  We decided that we would go out for breakfast to Panera Bread this morning.  We haven’t been there in a really long time so it was a nice treat.  We got the spinach and artichoke suffles and the cinnamon crunch bagels that we love so much.

While we were out at Panera we had the laptop with us and tried out the wireless there to test the Hamachi VPN client that I have been setting up recently but have not had a chance to really test.  Hamachi worked really well in the initial test which is very encouraging.  I am excited to get to start using it now.

As we were leaving Panera, Dominica went to get into the car and managed to hit herself in the forehead with the car day really hard.  I looked up just in time to see her reel back from the impact.  She had clipped herself hard with the top corner of the car door right in the very center of her forehead.  She got into the car holding her head in her hands clearly in pain.  She hits herself with things like this pretty regularly so it is difficult to get really alarmed.  You kind of take it all in stride.

When Dominica pulled her hands away there was a pretty surprising amount of blood to be found.  She had an inch long cut that was bleeding a bit.  Nothing to be alarmed about but a lot more than we had anticipated.  She had no idea that she was bleeding and was thinking about bruising, not bleeding.

We had been planning on doing some shopping while we were out this morning but those plans changed in a hurry.  So we just drove back to the house so that Dominica could dress her wounds and relax.

At noon we had a common snapping turtle come right up to our front door and hang out there for a while.  That was rather a surprise.  According to one of the neighbours we have a rather heavy snapping turtle population here.  At one point the neighbour’s cat actually walked right up and didn’t realize that the turtle was there and really scared herself as she practically stepped on the turtle!

Dominica took a nap this afternoon and Liesl came down to the basement and hung out with me.  We managed to get a lot of time together today which was really nice.

For dinner we ordered in Italian for dinner.  We didn’t feel like going out (again) today and just wanted to stay in and relax.  We are working hard to save money right now with the upcoming trip to Disney World in November and the move to Texas in December.  We really need as much money as we can get to get us through all of the upheaval.

For the first time since I returned from my trip to Germany, SGL is now up to date again.  It is really tough catching up once you call behind at all.  The last few days have been a major push to get SGL back up to date.  Once I am up to date it is pretty easy to keep it that way.  Once things get a little bit old it starts becoming very challenging to figure out what happened when and all of the details start to get really fuzzy really quickly.

I was up early hanging out with Liesl.  Dominica wanted breakfast this morning so I went out at seven to the Maple Ave Deli around the corner.  I got there and they were closed.  Seems like being closed at seven thirty on a Saturday morning would cut pretty heavily into their breakfast business.  So no delicious egg and cheese on croissant sandwiches for us today.  Fail.

Off to work in the basement at eight this morning.  Deployments for Bahrain like I often do on Saturday mornings.  That was several hours of work plus some other miscellaneous management tasks that needed my attention.

Mid-morning Dominica kicked off the installation of Windows 7 Business 64bit on her laptop.  That went pretty smoothly and she was up and running on Windows 7 in no time.  Her laptop was running much more smoothly, we both felt, with 7 rather than Vista.  It is not a fair comparison, however, as one was 64bit and one was 32bit.

Around lunch time today I decided to get a trial of Rackspace Email to see how that worked.  I pointed SGL’s email domain to Rackspace and contacted them for my two week free trial.  I have been running email on a self-hosted Zimbra system for the last several years.  I have to say, Zimbra has been awesome.  Best email system that I have ever used.  Everyone just loved using it.  The web interface is still years ahead of the competition and constantly improving and it has a lot of really advanced features that no one else has yet.  It is far and away the most usable web interface for email that I have ever seen.  It makes systems like Outlook Web Access look positively archaic.

I managed to knock off of work a little bit after noon.  Then I spent the rest of the day hanging out in the living room with Liesl!  We had a really good day just spending time together.  This is how Saturdays are supposed to be.

I slept in late this morning and didn’t start work until almost eight.  Today ended up being one of the slowest days that I can remember at work.  I have no idea what happened to make it so incredibly slow.  I guess a number of development and release cycles just all hit their low ebb today and left me with almost nothing to do.  It was awesome.  The day just flew by.

Dominica and I tried to go out to Charlie Brown’s today for lunch as we have coupons for their all you can eat lunch salad bar.  Liesl was not cooperative, though, she skipped her morning nap and took a really long nap right during lunch time so we were unable to go anywhere.  So we are going to try tomorrow instead.  So we just had a late lunch at the house.

I am getting a new laptop, yay!  It has been forever since I got a new laptop.  My current laptop, which Dominica uses almost constantly up in the living room, is an older HP Compaq unit with a 1024×768 display running Windows XP.  It was the first generation of AMD Turion 64bit latops.  A great unit.  It just keeps chugging along doing its job without complaining at all.  Quite the workhorse. It has seen a lot of abuse and just keeps going.  Not a single problem with it.  Even now it feels rather new except for the fact that it is all so outdated.  I mean serious, only a single core?  I think that it might be from around late 2004 but I am not really sure anymore.  It is the nx6125.  That laptop really solidified my faith in HP laptops.  I’ve never seen anyone’s laptop last so long and perform so well.  If it had a bit more memory I would be loathe to give it up but with a total of 768MB it is really not powerful enough for me to use for anything serious.

When I was in Germany I took Dominica’s laptop instead of my own because I needed some of the power and features that just are not available for mine.  Hers is dual core and has 3GB (we bought 4GB but need to get a memory stick replaced) and has a higher resolution monitor while being slightly smaller and lighter.  Much better for working remotely.  So getting a laptop more like hers will make a lot of sense for me, especially with all of the traveling that we are going to be doing in the near future.  Austin, Houston and Dallas all this month and then ten days in Orlando next month and then Houston for Christmas!  I need a mobile platform that really performs.

So tonight I spent some time getting Dominica’s laptop all cleaned off and prepped so that tomorrow morning she can do a Windows 7 install on it.  We have a copy of Windows 7 Business 64bit now and she has been eager to get off of Vista.  I still had a lot of my Germany pictures on that laptop so I got the last of them (mostly just pictures from the Botanical Gardens in Osnabruck) edited and posted up to Flickr.  The gardens are not too exciting for people looking to see what my trip or Germany is like but I do think that I got a nice “photo map” of the gardens for people interested in it and I do think that I pulled off a few decent shots there including one or two shots of yellow flowers and one abstract pink tree that I am really happy with.  The day was incredibly overcast with no fear of rain giving me some wonderful mid-afternoon light in the high latitudes for shooting flowers.

Speaking of Germany, Katie sent me a link from the BBC today talking about the Varusschlacht (the Battle of Teutoburg Forest) and the Kalkriese site that I was over in Germany to see for the anniversary.  Strangely the BBC ran the article two weeks after the actual anniversary and never included the date.

I have to work at eight in the morning tomorrow so the plan is that I will get up and get to work right away and Dominica will spend the morning installing Windows 7 on her laptop.