October 1st, 2007 Yvo
Well I did something this weekend that I haven’t done in almost 4 years…. and that is build a computer. It all started last week when a colleague at work offered an incredible deal on 4x 500GB enterprise class hard drives for only $120. It was the kind of don’t ask where they came from type offer. My plan: to use an old computer in my closet and get FreeNAS installed. On Thursday night I bought a PCI based SATA controller at Fry’s with 2 ports on it as the motherboard already had two and this is where my crazyness started. The cheapo card would bring FreeNAS, a FreeBSD based NAS solution, to a screeching halt. At this point I had 3 options:
1. Get SATA to PATA converters so two of my drives are seen as PATA drives ($50)
2. Attempt to find a decent PCI 32bit / 33Mhz card ($180)
3. Use my current PC as NAS and build a new computer as its 4 years old and needs replacing ($500)
You can only imagine what I did. I chose #3. My PC was getting 4 years old and I definitely noticed when I tried to play the first computer game in a year about 3 months ago on it (Command & Conquer 3). Not a good thing for a computer nerd. Plus the idea is that this PC will last me at least another 4 years. I thought the craziness ended there until I went to Costco and saw a Samsung 216BW on display for $259.99. Somehow that ended up in my giant cart.
Thank god Christmas is still 2 months away so I can recover from this :-).
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September 8th, 2007 Yvo
This was part of Bill Maher’s new rules tonight on his show Real Time on HBO.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
Bill’s reply:
“doubt for lack of a better word is good. it suites human nature. doubt is what makes you care for. doubt is what makes you open to change.” - Bill Maher
Oh so true.
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September 8th, 2007 Yvo
Last Monday (August 27th) I started my new job at Classmates.com coming on board as a sys admin there. I liked working at McGraw-Hill but realized that there is no way up for me unless I want to move out of state to places like Columbus, Ohio or Heightstown, New Jersey. Doesn’t sound very appealing to me. My new job has a whopping 7 minute commute, down from an average 45-50 minute commute. My car will probably be very happy with me. The job does come with a bump in pay and a very healthy benefits package. My last act at my old job was getting in touch with my, then, previous employer (now previous to my previous job) and getting a line of communication started for them to host; kind of ironic.
The way I figure, if I’m going to be switching jobs I better switch up, however I also need to stay on board somewhere for 4-5 years, I just couldn’t see myself doing that at McGraw-Hill unless I wanted to move up north.
Yvo
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September 6th, 2007 Yvo
By no means am I financial analyst or economist, the only background I have is setting new records in fake stocks in my economics class when I was in high school (everyone started out with 75,000 in “fake money” and I ended the quarter with over 2 million in cash). I always find it funny when I see stories regarding the slight decline of Apple stock like this, this or this story. Yesterday Steve decided to cut $200 off of the 2 month old iPhone. Nothing very typical regarding cell phones (The Moto RAZR was introduced at $400, and you can now get buy one get one free offer on a much later and less buggier revision), Apple users got upset (ugh… some people just don’t understand that there is always this type of risk when you buy technology) and the stock dipped.
I’d rather own Apple stock then say… Dell stock… Here is a nice 5 yr comparison with Apple’s stock splitting once in Feb 05 and Dell’s stock being splitless the entire time:
I think yesterday’s dip and today’s dip can partially be explained by the iPhone cut but I also think its the rich people getting richer by selling at a high point and re-entering the market (buying back) at a lower point 24-48 hours later.
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July 31st, 2007 Yvo
I jumped on the iPhone band wagon thanks to Cam. Apple gave her a free iPhone and she gave it to me with the promise that I’ll cover some of her laptop that she is planning to buy in the next 6 months. I think thats a fair trade.
So now I’m looking forward (sarcasm) to two giant bills, one from Sprint for cancelling and another from Cing… err at&t for joining.
The phone itself is great, yet lacks a few features that I hope they will add over the next few months. I mean if they are trying to combine three devices into one, at least do a job… right? The phone app is remarkably stable, but Safari and the iPod app… they need some tweakin’.
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June 13th, 2007 Yvo
The last few weeks have really been, in the short and long term, life altering. A lot has happened in my personal life that it really makes you take a few steps back and reanalyze everything.
1. Last month I had chest pains for a good week. This resulted me into going to the doctor on a Friday who then had me see a cardiologist immediately. While they don’t know exactly what is going on, what I do know is that I have a good sized hole in my heart and that my right chamber (which is usually 20-30% smaller then your left chamber) is as large as my left chamber. I may have some permanent damage as stress at this point causes my pains to immediately return.
2. Cam and I broke up this past Saturday, we mutually parted ways. She packed some of her things that night, left the key she had on the kitchen counter and left. On Sunday I packed up all her things and a lot of things we purchased together. On Monday she text messaged me while I was at a restaurant with colleagues and we agreed that she would come on Thursday at 4pm to pick up the boxes and various items around the boxes. Apparently this wasn’t acceptable. I came home on Monday night around 10:30 to find my condo ransacked. She took almost every single item we purchased together with the exception of the bed, dinner table and bed; basically items too big to move. However she also took things that were mine. On top of that she conveniently stopped communicating. So I am now in the process of attempting to get my things back. Today I hired an attorney and things look like they might be okay in the long run.
3. Due to number 2, the trip to Holland has been altered a little. However I am still going next week Friday and I am coming back sometime in July. I’ll be sure to have plenty of fun.
What I did notice is that throughout all this I have had a wonderful support system. Not only have my parents and basically my immediate family been there but people from Cam’s work and my work have completely been there for me. It feels good to know that people are there for you when things like this happened. The general consensus is that what Cam did on Monday night is unacceptable. Hopefully she is smart enough to come around and avoid litigation but at this point it seems she wants exactly that.
So *thats* what has been going on lately. No fun and games at all.
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May 12th, 2007 Yvo
Yup! Starting Jan 08 talking on your cell without a hands free device becomes a big no no in WA and in July 08 texting joins the ban. Hopefully it’ll catch on as fast as click it or ticket, but I guess we will all have to wait and see.
Source: http://www.komotv.com/news/7470007.html
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April 30th, 2007 Yvo
On digg.com:
Business 2.0 Magazine identifies popular job categories in which wages are growing the fastest.
read more | digg story
Interesting, I have no idea where they got $49,100 for Technical Support Specialist (nice word for TSR, just like if you are unemployed you are an independent consultant). When I was going through the TSR circuit about a year ago since I graduated high school I didn’t even come close to that number (more like 30 - 40% below). We either have too many TSR positions in the area or there is a general practice of paying the manager 2-3x the wage of a TSR (not that they deserve it). You’d wonder if the turn around on that position would lower if they actually got paid $49,100.
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April 20th, 2007 Yvo
Using Zabbix now since beginning of October 2006 . I get quite a few hits from Google off of it including from places that raise my curiosity. In any case, I added 20 new machines and suddenly the machine got boggled down due to the amount of IO writes being made to the MySQL database. After the jump (Click on Continue Reading) are the settings that I came up with and now my loads are back to the 1.00 - 1.10 range and the queue is always empty.
Hopefully sometime in the future I’ll post some other tweaks I made, especially regarding the monitoring of processes. I don’t appreciate getting false positives thus I’ve tweaked a number of default settings in order to bring this number down to maybe a handful a month.
Read the rest of this entry »
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April 16th, 2007 Yvo
in Holland while I am there in June - July will be an Opel Astra. Kind of reminds me of the Honda Fit & Nissan Versa:
Just replace the german white plates with dutch yellow plates (plus different color) and thats the car I’ll be driving.
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