Rocking our x64 Server 2008 machines in our Active Directory class, last night as we attempted to do labs on the FSMO (flexible single master operation) roles we got some classic blue screens of death during replication between servers. Mike, Tom, and I where the only ones fortunate to get ours on camera, there where several others that got it too.
Mike’s
Tom’s
And mine.
Last week fed up with having cramped space on my desk I got the funding for a desk mounted dual monitor mount.
After rewiring my entire workspace and moving some things around, I finally got it to where its just perfect. You can check out pictures the entire project from start to finish on my flickr here. The mount itself is from monoprice.com(link) and fully setup its well worth the money. Completely metal with some clips to hold cables to the monitors. But the biggest selling point on it was the price. Sadly though during the process of everything my lamp took a fatal blow and is no longer working. Not too mention trying to get all my cables redone was a pain and took the longest, but here is a shot of the completed workings down there.
Over break I was fortunate enough to recieve a netbook for Christmas. I spent most of the time messing around with it, but as soon as I got it I had to remove the included os which was windows xp, and put windows 7 professional x86 on it. Then experiemented with dual booting some other operating systems. Post below was my venture into my first hackintosh experience. But reading my daily fill of lifehacker I saw a post on Jolicloud a linux distribution designed specifically for netbooks. Its similar in nature to the ubuntu netbook remix in the way it functions and handles packages. Variety in packages is enormus, there are pre-built packages for different web apps that I’ve never even herd of. My only thing I had a gripe with was having to uninstall the standard wireless manager on jolicloud and replace it with one that my campus recommended(wicd) and the only one that had directions on how to add encryption algorithms.
Another thing is I’m getting into virtual machines on my desktop and with my current classes like (LUX205) and what perfect opportunity to install the same distro at home, but we are using a old version of fedora core 9 at class, but I have core 12 at home. But I didn’t stop there, I had a couple of other distributions I wanted to try out such as crunchbang and linux mint.
My windows 7 machine playing host to a full screen fedora 12 on my other monitor.
Installing OSXx86 on my acer aspire d250 netbook went pretty smooth.
Getting things to work correctly like the wireless may prove more difficult.
Now that I have time from class after exams are done, I can finally update this. My last set of classes where a bit difficult so It needed my full attention. So from classes to studying its done for the year. So now my attention turns to things like, oh say call of duty.
But I am looking forward to my next set of classes: Active Directory, Wireless Networking, and Linux. Another thing that I got turned on to is google wave. I’ve been wanting to do a collab-type project for a while and getting together with students on a class wave would be nice to see what will happen.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Finales
This week a couple of my favorite series wrapped up for the season and left me hanging. First off Burn Notice (created by: Matt Nix) was a total blowout the season finale was epic to say the least, Just as when Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) is about to lose touch with his on again off again love interest Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) she is kidnapped by a IRA extremist and Michael stages a full frontal assault with is best friend Sam (Bruce Campbell) to rescue her from the grasp of the man that has been hunting her down ever since she left Ireland. By far one of the best finales thus far, and I hope that it comes back strong in January.
In Plain Sight was another big finale that wrapped up on Sunday, that left us with a huge cliff hanger ending. Now I’m not a huge fan of cliff hanger endings but it leaves something to be desired for the next season. Being that it was just a couple of days ago, I’m not going to recap it just yet.
Honorable mention for Law & Order: Criminal Intent, while I’m sorta fan of the new season the finale was just what I came to expect from CI. In this sorta gritty, dual angle version of the class Law & Order which I’m no longer a fan of, there are usually no happy endings and in this was just exactly what happened. Again with the above having the season wrapping up on Sunday I’m not going to recap it.
Premieres
Psych was amazing, a total blast of excitement and laughter. I love the duo of Shawn and Gus (James Roday & Dulé Hill), I have to say there has been practically no downtime of content with this series start to finish every episode has been awesome. This season started out with Shawn taking Gus to Canada for what was supposed to be a romantic get away with his new love from the end of Season 3. But is derailed when he clashes wits with an international art thief.
Adam Richman is a man of many talents and on Man Vs Food’s premier on Wednesday last week was huge. He took on the Four Horsemen burger something I’m sure would completely destroy my intestines. It looked tasty but the look on Adams face when he finished it was priceless in the fact that told me I would probably never eat that burger not even if someone paid me.
So my current TV watching schedule now after a couple of series have ended:
Monday: No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain 10PM Travel Channel
Tuesday: Warehouse 13 9PM SyFy, The Cleaner 10PM A&E
Wednesday: Leverage 9PM TNT, Dark Blue 10PM TNT, Man Vs Food 10PM Travel Channel
Thursday: Royal Pains 10PM USA
Friday: Eureka 9PM SyFy, Mental 9PM Fox, Psych 10PM USA
Unfortunately I don’t have a Tivo or a DVR so I watch what I can watch on TV then catch the rest on Hulu.
Its starting to feel like that time where you just feel like you don’t want to do anything, but you also have mixed feelings about knowing that you are in fact not doing anything. I’m slowing down on the stay up all nights fit meetings in where I can and work days. For the better part of my summer break it was working on project then trying to fit in some time to play a game or two, then get up and go back to work on another project then rinse repeat. Now getting back into the normal groove of things for when class starts back up, class then work then if I have time games.
I must say this first week in August has been quite wild, apocalyptic rain storms followed up by Sahara quality heat waves and rain forest humidity. I picked a lousy week to slow down, where the sometime cool summer nights where a lot more comfortable than the hot summer days. But thanks to modern conveniences central A/C has made bearable.
Another thing I must comment on is that trying to live a west coast life in a east coast time zone is right about crazy. WoW has been fun, I raid with a bunch of awesome people from all over, but the times from when I signed up almost 10 months ago are starting to wear on me. I would like nothing more but to continue with my current group of friends into the endgame content, but sadly I cannot. College, work, and personal health are factors that I cannot ignore when it comes to personal entertainment.
Officially I’ve given up pop and after dinner snacking in an attempt to lose weight. If I do snack on something its most likely jello now, as before when you where a kid at a family get together there would most always be jello. At least thats how it was when I was a kid, and like before I have started to like my varities and combinations of jello. As much as it pains me to say it I cannot wait to get back into class, to get my education for now done, and get out of this forsaken state.
I was looking over some of the bloggospheres comments of the warehouse 13 and it was a pretty big success from what I read. I did stumble upon a few blogs dedicated to what the owner was watching or had recently watched. From time to time I’ve posted a couple paragraphs here and there on a show or series that I found interested but I think it would be pretty sweet to do a feature once in a while about some of the shows I like to watch or have watched and miss. So watch for this new section soon.
One thing I’d like to touch on before getting back to work is that re branding is the new thing to do it seems, brands are getting updated or just getting rid of one of the ones I thought was funny was Sci-fi going to Syfy the phonetic of the previous brand which just goes to show the simplification is still taking over and is showing no signs of slowing down in today’s market.
-Dave out
Back to basic template, you know what that means. A better even new design is coming, going to get off my duffer and actuallly design my first wp theme for my site or at least attempt to.
I hope everyone has a good and safe 4th of July.
