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Regardless of the size of your virtualization project, you’ll learn how to maximize uptime and performance of mission critical applications, while eliminating hidden costs that can decrease virtualization ROI upwards of 50%.

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Well, today that day has finally arrived. I noticed yesterday that DI has an iPhone app that allows you to stream their premium channels over 3G. I was listening today for about an hour while out running some errands with Caitlin. I only lost the signal once for about 5 sec while driving in some hills, the app does a great job of buffering and keeping the music going. The quality is great and with ~1hr of streaming it only used 25Mb of data according to the built in meter (I’ll have to double check with ATT’s meter).

One of the greatest things about the app is that if it does cut out for any reason it can determine that it’s at the end of a stream and gracefully fades out so that there aren’t any jarring cuts in or out. Every streaming app should copy this.

Then if you find a RSS feed that you’d like to add to ReadPath, drag the link below to your bookmark bar.

Add To ReadPath

Then when you’re on a page that you want to subscribe to, press the bookmarklet and it will have ReadPath subscribe you to the feed.

Oh, I changed the name of the blog as well. Not as worried about having my real name on the web anymore.

One of the difficulties with VMware is that their acronyms can be very difficult to wade through. ESXi is what they refer to as a hypervisor. This essentially is a very cut down operating system that is designed to only run other Virtual Machines. There are some requirements to running ESXi, I had to go through 3-4 servers before I found one that the installer had all of the drivers. I finally got it to run a server I had picked up from Penguin Computing (2x dual core Opteron with 4Gb mem and 250Gb hard drive).

Once I found a server that worked, the system installed quickly. The next problem was that you need to download the vSphere client to administer the server which is windows only (there are command line clients for other operating systems, but I wasn’t ready for that yet). I didn’t have a windows box laying around (all linux and mac), so I had to launch a WinXP VM in workstation on my linux desktop to administer my ESXi server. Amazingly everything worked great.

The next issue that I ran into was that I already had a large number of VMs created that I was using on workstation, but I couldn’t see how to get them on to the ESXi server. In the vSphere client there are clear instructions on how to create a new VM or download an appliance, but not how to import an existing VM. It turns out that VMware has a very simple way of doing this using the VMware Converter. This product works as a switchboard allowing you to convert or move VMs from one place to another, a really handy tool.

Overall ESXi is a great tool for running a whole bunch of server VMs. VMware offers a huge number of management products in the vSphere product line for managing load and moving VMs in a datacenter. But if you just need to run a few VMs on a single server I would definitely recommend looking at ESXi.

We also decided to go with the wifi only model, which is cheaper, but most of our book reading is at home where there is total coverage. If we’re out and about we read on the iPhone and then sync back to the kindle to continue reading at home.

Hopefully this latest version will arrive before the next round of books that we’ve been waiting for. I’m waiting for The Evolutionary Void and we’re very happy that MockingJay will also be released in a kindle version.

I was happy to hear that Bezos was focusing on creating the best book reader instead of chasing yet another tablet.

I had originally placed a few types of ads on these pages, just so that I could try them out somewhere other than at the day job. But now that I’ve got ReadPath cranking there really isn’t any need to experiment here any longer.

I’m fairly happy with this new theme, but you might continue to see some changes as I customize things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

Apparently DirecTv and Tivo have made up after some earlier issues and are planning on releasing a new receiver in 2010, but who knows when that will be. Might have to start scrambling for an alternate content source fast since you can’t watch the first two episodes of Big Love and then just stop. Withdrawal like that can have serious health issues.

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Next, it’s milk time.

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I’m attempting to post from the iPhone while I watch caitlin, we’ll see how it turns out.

I don’t really want to use compact fluorescent light bulbs everywhere, although the new LED lights look great. I’d rather be able to have a great home lighting setup with more light bulbs than you can count and leave it on all day. I want to be able to have my garage datacenter with 5 full racks of servers humming along all day and not have to worry what the power bill will be or the impact on the environment.

I’d really like to have the core of my home electrical system be a pluggable switching system where many different types of energy generation and storage systems could be plugged into. Something that would allow for remote monitoring and charting of energy generation and usage and handle balancing swings between energy sources. The local Frys outlet is now selling solar panels and wind turbines which I’d love to be able to try out and play with. Or to be able to experiment with different types of energy storage solutions.

Everyone has come to the realization that there isn’t going to be a silver bullet when it comes to getting off of oil and coal. Energy independence is going to be built off of hundreds of technologies and we’ve got to lower the cost of trying out new ones.

What I found interesting is that douglas’s character, who is supposed to be a wealthy businessman from San francisco is living in the filoli house which is a historic house/park. We’ve often taken family there when they’ve visited to see the amazing gardens.

On Nov 11th at 4:58pm, my daughter Caitlin Joy McCormick was born. She arrived a bit earlier than we had planned, but healthy and happy, which is what really matters.

Scalzi has created a universe a bit into the future where humans have moved out into the Galaxy and found that it’s a very crowded place. All of the books have quite a bit of action, but also some plain good old sci-fi. My idea of good sci-fi is when it’s used to test out new ideas and the story is a dry run to see how they would work. The best sci-fi has a good story to go with the good ideas.

I also love his sense of humor, think Heinlein’s Starship Troopers with a touch of Monty Python satire. The book “The Android’s Dream” deals with the interplanetary fallout of a disgruntled diplomat killing a visiting alien ambassador with his flatulence. For the first bit of the book you’ll be wondering where this could possibly be going, but the second half is well worth your patience.