Open enrollment for health plans starts at my day job soon. Now that I have a child, I’m looking at the HSA (Health Savings Account) combined with a HDHP (high-deductible health plan) with a high deductible versus the PPO (traditional) health plan option again, and with a few changes that have been made in the HSA plan over the last few years, it looks quite appealing. I’m not seeing any real downsides, but though I’d ask for opinion from my friends on the good ‘ol interweb. ;)
I recently tried installing both OpenSolaris and Nexenta Core Platform on a Dell PowerEdge 2850 with a DRAC4 card. The installation process goes fine, but when rebooting into the installed OS the kernel goes into a loop of trying to reset an ATA device (‘Bus Reset’ errors — if I have a chance, I’ll repeat the process and get the exact errors.) I finally just disabled virtual media (go into the DRAC setup menu by hitting Ctrl-D on bootup, hit page-down, and use the ‘E’ option to turn it off), and after doing that, it worked just fine.
Annoying error (it’s odd that the installer works fine, but then the actual OS doesn’t; possibly because there’s no CD ‘inserted’?), but at least it’s not too hard to work around.
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about cheap colocation in Minneapolis via my old post here, where I was soliciting people to help fill my rack at ipHouse. Unfortunately, I no longer offer colocation services, but I have updated the post with the providers I am currently using and recommend.
This brings to mind another thing I’ve been thinking about doing for awhile. I’ve always had trouble finding definitive information about the quality of colocation providers, including information about their bandwidth providers, “real” costs (ie – cost per megabit/terabyte, cost for IP addresses, cost for power), etc. I’ve been debating putting up a review-style site where users can submit their opinions of providers, including pricing, which would then be aggregated into a searchable archive. Is this something that would be interesting to you? If so, please comment.. if there seems to be interest, I will try to put something together “real soon now”. ;)
Wow, that was fast! As I mentioned yesterday, Citrix has open sourced the server-side components of XenServer. It came in the form of Xen Cloud Platform. As I expected, they open-sourced xapi, but not the client or the Windows components.
In any case, I will update once I play with it.. but this is great!
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Update: Another post on the xen.org blog details the release of the xapi toolstack. Sounds pretty much the same as the version included in XenServer.. only thing I don’t recall being available in the XenServer version is the Java applet for console feature, and the Javascript XenAPI client – I’m guessing those were added to allow users to get console access without needing the Windows client. Nice!
I’ve been eying ZFS for quite some time. I love the concepts of the filesystem, but am still not a huge fan of Solaris/OpenSolaris (I miss my apt-get, and am just used to the many Linux/GNU-isms.) I may actually have to give it a closer look (most likely via Nexenta, which is essentially Ubuntu with the OpenSolaris kernel) now that it supports in-line, block-level deduplication. If it works as well as it theoretically should, I will likely convert my home file server and BackupPC nodes over to it. For BackupPC this could be a huge win — instead of having to use large numbers of hard links, we could just let the underlying storage take care of it. I will be interested in seeing how compression mixes with dedupe also — it’d be great to be able to turn off compression at the BackupPC level too.
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Look forward to being able to play with this!
Well, I didn’t see this one coming. It appears that Citrix is about to open-source XenServer. There are few details so far, but I’d expect that what they are open-sourcing are the server-side components — IE, their management framework for Xen. I’d be surprised if they open-sourced their .Net XenServer client, but by open sourcing the server side of the stack, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other clients pop up. (The client apparently is purely API-based — IE, it doesn’t have any special access to xapi that other API consumers wouldn’t have.) I’d love to see a OS-independent client pop up. ;)
In any case, I’m glad to see this, and look forward to playing with the bits!
A few months back, I purchased a server on eBay. I contacted the seller multiple times asking for shipment status, and after receiving tracking numbers that were obviously false, after about a month I opened a dispute with PayPal. That finally prompted the seller to ship the server; however, it was missing two hard drives and two heat sinks that were supposed to be included. At that point, I re-opened the PayPal dispute, but only requested $189.96 (the value of the missing components) instead of the full amount.
So, I’ve decided it’s finally time to buy a real tripod. I’ve read (and advocated for) Thom Hogan’s page on how to buy a tripod, but with the new baby, my budget is rather limited right now, so $1000 was too much to spend. I also wanted a tilt column on it, to make it easier to get better versions of pictures like this:
The tilt column violates Thom’s guidelines, but I wanted it. ;)
Here’s what I ended up with, all from our good friend eBay, and include shipping:
Open-box Gitzo G2220 “Explorer” (Aluminum): $219.94
Cheap Giottos mini-ballhead: $39.99
Cheap Arca Swiss-compatible clamp: $29.97
Kirk L-Plate for the Nikon D200: $72.95
Kirk plate for the Nikon 70-200 F2.8: $40
..for a grand total of $402.85.
Here’s what the tripod ended up looking like:
..close-up of the camera with the L-Plate in the clamp:
..since the tripod isn’t exactly stable with the column fully extended, here’s what I use for counterweight:
What do you think? I think I did fairly well for the price. Only component I’ll probably replace soonish is the ball-head — it works, but I have to crank on it too tight for stability with a heavy lens. I’m watching for an inexpensive used ball-head on eBay already. ;)
Continuing the tradition started here..
Work tasks
- An hour and a half of conference calls with vendors
- An hour and a half of meetings which are unrelated to the conference calls
- Continue researching VM thin provisioning and configuration management frameworks
- Continue to work on a storage evaluation framework to compare overall cost/performance of multiple vendor’s arrays
Get Citrix licenses for workload management and StorageLink for XenServer, start to play with them
Home tasks (no changes here)
- Map out and install outlets (electrical and data) in the framed portion of the basement
- Draw up plans to finish framing the basement, and get a list of materials required together
- Help Tiff keep working on the baby’s room
via @weierd.. airlines blow. “Let’s smash a guitar, then refuse to pay for it!”. I’m glad I never fly United. Not that any of the airlines I *do* fly would be better, but hey, it was United in this case. ;)
I’m starting to actually make todo lists for myself, and figure that since there really isn’t anything private or confidential, might as well post them to bore you all, and maybe even get some constructive feedback on one some of the work I’m planning to do. ;) We’ll see how it goes!
Work tasks
- Continue researching VM thin provisioning and configuration management frameworks
- Continue to work on a storage evaluation framework to compare overall cost/performance of multiple vendor’s arrays
- Continue working on pricing for our own XSLT transformation cluster
- Get Citrix licenses for workload management and StorageLink for XenServer, start to play with them
Home tasks
- Map out and install outlets (electrical and data) in the framed portion of the basement
- Draw up plans to finish framing the basement, and get a list of materials required together
- Help Tiff keep working on the baby’s room
Pretty much a zero percent chance that all of this will get done today, but heck, it’s worth a shot. ;)
This weekend, I ran into my three-ring binder full of 35mm film and slides from our wedding and honeymoon. I was surprised that I had a sense of nostalgia for the “old days” of photography with film. Back before digital cameras existed (and before I could afford one after they existed), there was a small thrill every time I’d bring a roll of film into the lab for processing, and a big thrill when I picked up the order and got to see how my hard work turned out. In my later years of 35mm, my dad introduced me to a real lab — Color Unlimited in Minneapolis. The lab was amazing — their prices were quite reasonable, their film processing was amazing (for years, I had been dealing with scratched film from labs like Proex which were not visible on 4×6 prints, but were quite obvious when scanning to a high-res image), and the people were the best in the business. They were more than willing to offer advice to improve my photographic skills, and to just chat about the art in general.
I’m sad to see that they have now gone out of business.. I guess it’s kind of inevitable with the “digital revolution” that the old-school film shops are going to go under. The best replacement I’ve found is photo.net, where you can ask for critiques and such, but it’s just not the same.
I love digital photography, but have started to realize how much of what got me interested in photography in the beginning is just no longer relevant. My kids will probably never have the experience of developing their own film in a darkroom, of rolling bulk film into 35mm cartridges, or even having to figure out what speed film to load to get the best use out of the film.
Rest in peace, 35mm photography!
As I mentioned in my previous post, I discussed how to get networking working under Debian Lenny on the new Nehalem systems at SoftLayer. However, it seems like there are lots of users who want to get Virtuozzo on RHEL/CentOS running on these boxes. A guy named Shikhir got ahold of me via a Web Hosting Talk thread, and was able to provide me with a system to build on, and some motivation to get it done for him. I was able to build Intel’s driver RPM and get it working for Virtuozzo.
I recently had the opportunity to set up a few Nehalem based servers at SoftLayer to replace some older hardware that we were using.. and these servers /rock/. The servers have the E5520 CPU’s, and kick the snot out of the E5430’s that they replaced. We were able to actually able to replace 6 dual-5430’s with 4 dual-5520’s, and lower our costs significantly (by about 25%) — which is nice!
However, I did run into one problem while installing Debian Lenny (5.0) on these systems. The problem is that the on-board Intel Gig-E adapters (PCI ID 8086:10c9) are not supported in the 2.6.26 kernel which Lenny ships with – d’oh! If you are not planning on using Xen on your system, you could install the 2.6.29 kernel from Unstable; however, in my case, I wanted to use Xen, and there is no Xen dom0 support in 2.6.29. I was able to overcome this by re-building Debian’s 2.6.26 kernel (rev 2.6.26-13) with the most recent version of the igb drivers from Intel’s web site.
If you have a similar server and don’t want to go through the same pain I did, read more for directions on how to do this!
Take a close look at this receipt:
We are in Texas right now.. we stayed at a resort in League City, which had this restaurant (The Harbour Club Restaurant & Bar) in it. I’d give it top reviews for the quality and taste of the food, but the service was.. interesting. I was charged (only $1, but still) for “the rocks” for a Bailey’s on the rocks, where the ice in the water, cokes, and the other drink I ordered was free. The liquor was also quite expensive in general, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. Another member of our party had a $14.13 bill (including 21% mandatory gratuity since we were a party of 10), and when she paid with a $20 bill, she only received $5 in change back. In any case, the food was spectacular, there were just some.. oddities.. in the pricing!
In my last post, I detailed the New York City portion of our trip. Once we were done in the city, we got our rental car out of it’s happy parking spot (no, it wasn’t broken into or anything silly like that), and got on the road to Niagara Falls. For details on the trip, read more!
Tiff and I haven taken an anniversary trip every summer since we were married in 2003. In 2007, we took a trip to New York City and Niagara Falls. Our initial inspiration was that Laura Osnes, who’s mother attends our church, had won the part of Sandy in the Broadway production of Grease, and we figured we’d go see her in action. We decided that while we were in the area, we might as well take in a few more shows, then drive up to Niagara Falls for a few days. If you are interested in seeing some photos from the trip, read more!
To the sales person trying to sell me, well, anything:
I am a tough sell. I will ask hard questions. I will not take anything you tell me at face value, you will have to prove it to me. If I think your product sucks, I will tell you that, and tell you why. If I don’t see the value you add, I will tell you that, and tell you why. If I think your product is great, I probably won’t tell you, because that would make it harder to get a good price.
If you can sell me, however, your job is mostly done – I will sell it up the chain.
Yes, I’ve heard lots of sales pitches lately. A lot of the products have been lame. A few have been cool.
In my previous post, I discussed how to get automatic procmail integration working with Plesk, to let you set up procmailrc rules to sort mail into folders. At the end of the post, I mentioned that it would be nice to figure out how to get Plesk’s version of Ingo set up to generate the rules for us automatically. Well, turns out it’s pretty easy! Once you set up procmail (as described in my previous post), and make the changes after the break to your Ingo config, any filters that users define via Plesk’s Horde/Imp/Ingo implementation will become server-side rules automatically. It’s surprisingly easy, and extremely versatile! The one downside is that if you edit the procmailrc files by hand, and then save rules in Ingo, your changes will be overwritten.
For many years now, I’ve been maintaining a separate mail server, web server, and shell server. I’m getting busy these days, and just don’t have the time to dedicate to this maintenance. About a year and a half ago, I purchased a 30-domain Plesk license, which I am using for all the sites I host for friends and family, but I haven’t cut my own sites over to it yet. I’m finally getting to the point where I want to stop having to worry about all the VM’s, and thinking about moving my sites and e-mail over to Plesk. The one big downside for me is that Plesk, by default, does not support server-side mail sorting or filtering. I am on about 50 different mailing lists, etc, and really don’t want to have to deal with sorting out that e-mail by hand. So, I did a bit of searching, and found that there are ways of getting Plesk to use Procmail – here are a few blog posts that discuss the subject:
http://www.russwittmann.com/2007/07/14/server-side-mail-filtering-using-qmailprocmail-under-plesk/
http://rackerhacker.com/2007/11/27/sort-e-mail-in-plesk-with-procmail/
In my case, I am not using Plesk’s built-in spam filtering (instead, I’m fronting it with Maia Mailguard – if you are curious on how to get that working, comment, and I’ll write a post on it someday), so the spam part of this really doesn’t apply for me.. but the posts do describe how to get procmail working. The one big downside is that it isn’t done automatically — any time the account is updated via Plesk, the .qmail file will be overwritten, and you will need to edit it by hand to get things working again. One of the posts suggests making it immutable, but, well, that’s a pain in the rear too. ;)
I wrote a quick script that will run through this setup for you, and then set up Plesk’s event handlers to call this script after an account is created or updated. My system is Plesk 9.0.0 on Debian 64-bit, using Postfix as the MTA — even though it’s Postfix, Plesk calls a virtual mail delivery agent that still uses the .qmail files. If you are interested in how this works, read more!
Finally! Sonic opened the location right by my house in Savage, MN a week ago. Tiff and I were planning on trying it out on Saturday, but it was way too busy – cars lined up past the Walgreens. Sunday afternoon, we stopped by and got a stall in about 15 minutes – not bad! I also swung by solo on Monday afternoon to try it out; got through the drive through in about 10 minutes.
Oh, yeah, and the #1 reason to go to Sonic: same menu, whenever they are open!! That’s right – in the mood for a burger at 6am? No problem! Hankering for a breakfast burrito at 11pm? They got you covered.
I’d recommend trying it out if you get a chance.
In any case, in the style of the Weier Rating System(tm), here goes..
Must Have
——————–
Mozzarella Sticks (Piping hot, perfectly fried, yum!)
Cranberry Limeaid
Cranberry Fruit Slush
Very Good
——————–
Bacon Cheeseburger TOASTER Sandwich
Good
——————–
SuperSonic Breakfast Burrito
Chili Cheese Fries
Chili Cheese Tots
Take It Or Leave It
——————–
Tots with Pepperjack Cheese (Cheese was rather flavorless)
Cherry Limeaid (Too sweet)
Probably Not
——————–