June 2008 Archives
My google-fu seems to be broken right now, so I'll ask the interweb in general, with the hopes that some kind soul from VMWare will be able to help me out. I'm looking for a way to mount a VMWare ESX (VI 3.5 in particular) VMDK disk file on a local system. This used to be available with the vmware-mount.pl script, but it seems this is no longer (search for vmware-mount).
Currently the round-trip time to correct simple bugs in the ESX virtual machines I'm in charge of setting up and sending to a QA cycle is in the magnitude of hours due to having to upload an image to the ESX server (which has a somehow stupendously slow VMFS filesystem for storage, but that's another issue), fixing the bug, re-cleaning up the image (removing bash_history, etc), re-downloading the image back to my workstation, zipping it up, and sending it to QA.
Being able to mount the vmdk on my local system, edit it, and then upload that to QA would make my life (and my bosses) far easier than it is now.
Does anyone have any idea how to do this, or what the channel to get a bug into the VMware guys' ears are?
TIA
Update: Looks like my question to the forums got some answers.... look good, will have to try those tomorrow.
In this week's heat wave I am really wondering what all the hype about this "summer" thing is? I can't sleep at night because it's boiling hot, when I do wake up my allergies almost immediately start bugging me, and heaven help me if I go outside at all.... if I take my crappy and ineffective allergy meds and do make it outside I'm immediately alit upon by about 30 blood sucking mosquitoes, meaning that when I go back inside to hide with the air conditioning and fans (which only do so much against the 32+ heat) I'm itchy and my arms and legs look like I have some sort of horrible rash.
If I hide from the mosquitoes and heat by going for a drive in the car with the windows down, then it's just like having someone blow hot air on my face instead of the non-moving hot air in the house.
Bah, humbug.
Just a quickie before bed... sorry haven't written, not much going on, work goes, life goes, etc. Kittens keep getting cuter!
More after the jump....
So the babies hit the 2 week old mark, here's the latest batch of pictures:
This weekend my (short) travels led me to the local NCIX computer store, where I picked up, among some other toys, a new case for the MythTV PVR system I have. Seems that the wife didn't appreciate the old computer case with whining fans and cables strewn about sitting in the middle of the living room, so we agreed that a case upgrade wouldn't suck.
I picked the Silvertone LC17 case, not out of any great length of research, but it was big but not too big, and available in store. The case itself isn't very small, which turned out to be a good thing I think, and is basically a slimmed down normal case size oriented to sit on it's side, just like any other piece of your stereo or AV system.
My PVR isn't the slimmest beast in the world either, 2 hard drives, a CDROM, a video card, and a capture card, along with a standard size ATX motherboard means that when you jam it all in together there's lots of wires and components to jam around. I eliminated the CDROM as it's never used, and that helped a bit, but it was still a tight fit at the end (I'm not an expert cable-hider though :)
In the end other than the video card config bitching because the PCI address of the video card had changed, it all went together fine. The case ended up a bit bigger than my receiver, which meant I had to move the shelf in the TV stand around, and juggle the DVD player to fit it all in, not to mention having to cram a bunch of cables behind the case to get the case as far back on the shelf as possible (it's still hanging half off it's front feet).
In the end it's not a lot quieter (probably due to the two case fans in there, plus a more-uber CPU fan than is maybe needed), but it is a heck of a lot more tidy and better looking in the TV stand than my old desktop case sitting on the floor!
While today's utter hell had nothing to do directly with the 6 hours of training in a small stuffy room with a guy talking really loud so one other guy at the other end of a conference call could hear, it certainly didn't help. The painful migraine that started early noon-ish and continued until about the time I got home at 7 was the main hell, though the short snooze on the train (helped along by a handful of super strength Tylenol I'm sure) helped. I've still got a bit of it hiding in the back of my head still.
Holy rain batman! when I got home I had to practically swim home from the train station! I'm glad it was decent this morning when I went on my run (yay me). I'm going to go for the mon/wed/fri run and just waking up the same time tues/wed and shifting my hours back. That's the current idea anyway.
I was excited about the Apple WWDC keynote today, where they announced (finally) the 3G iPhone, available (early July) in a bunch of countries, including here (through Rogers, another plus for me) and you no longer have to pay $700 for it, but it's a far more reasonable $199 (8Gig version) or $299 (16Gig version). I'm not 100% sure if I'll get one yet, that will be decided by the data plans that Rogers comes up with. Their current offering of 25mb for $97/month (and no doubt crazy expensive overage fees) just isn't going to cut it. I have a 16Gig iPod Touch already and I'm fairly happy with it, but if I can get rid of my phone, combine it with my iPod and get always on internet through it.... suddenly that looks really attractive (again, with decent data rates).
The online description of the keynote sounded fairly boring though, I have to agree with Paul Thurrotte's assessment, at least based on what I read. And reading through a live keynote blog and going "this sounds kinda boring" is saying a lot, especially for an Apple keynote.
A lot of the things they highlight are pretty lame too..... contact search is worth a mention at a keynote?!? Ditto with the now non-completely-stupid-and-sucky fix of the headphone jack now not needing special headphones to work?!? Demoing medical imaging software?!? I'm sure that now iPhone is "business friendly" this applies a bit, but the attendees are no doubt not caring much about this. Lifehacker has another set of thoughts that fairly mirror mine.
Course, it all means nothing until things actually show up here on (I presume) July 11 or so.
Looking forward to an early night and lots of sleep tonight. Kitten pics posted soon!
So after working for 1-3 years (depending on if you count mergers and acquisitions) and my previous job, I put in my notice and resigned, starting the next segment of the ArcterLife. I'm now an employee of Layer 7 as a "OS Developer". L7 does interesting things with XML firewalls and gateways, and it is definitely something different and definitely something interesting.
The saddest part is leaving the guys at my last job. The best thing about working there (and I'm not alone in saying this) is the people. B and L were awesome and kept me sane (and I hope I did a bit of the same for them), the girls from marketing and finance were great, not only for not filing multiple complaints against me and the guys for.... well, being ourselves, but being fun to hang out with and bring an aspect outside the geek lives of boys. Everyone else as well, H and boss-J, were great to work with. I also appreciate those that I talked about this. It was a very hard decision, especially the prospect of leaving people you spend 8+ hours a day with!
In the end though, I decided to move on. Today was the first day of work, and it definitely came out in the "not-awful" category. At my previous job I was stuffed at a desk in between two other people, had no phone, and no computer my first day there. This was totally different.... well, kinda. No phone still, no desk (only an empty area with a large collection of desk chairs in it), but I did have a nice desktop computer to work with. I actually had to carry a spare desk through the office with the new boss to get a place to work until the nice cubical desk setup is brought in and setup by the building people. Not bad considering.
As with most new jobs, the first day (actually probably the first few at least) will be spent setting up, getting used to things, finding the URLs for the company mail/wiki/bugtracker/etc, getting mail and IM setup, configuring my workstation just so, and so on. This isn't to say I haven't been thrown into the fray a bit already of course! The new boss man keeps on mentioning things and following up with something like
"... and that'll be yours now." or
"... you'll own that part of the system." and
"... that part I'm getting to hand off to you."
I'm only mildly petrified of course ;)
The new format of work means that (for now anyway) my hours are shifted a bit. Instead of getting on the 6am train in and the 4pm train out, it'll be the 7:30 in and the 5:30 out, meaning I get back home at around 7pm, but on the other hand get to wake up a glorious 1.5 hours later than normal. In a fit of "go-getter-ness" I am even going to be going out running in the mornings to take advantage of a body that's used to getting up at 5:15am!
That's the theory anyway.
So, that's what's new. In the giant timeline of Alan this will be marked with a small note that says something like "June 2008, resigns from job for only the second time ever and starts working at Layer 7". Sadly the historical and archaeological value of this will probably go mostly unnoticed by everyone but me.
"Its windows so you have to use the stupid clicky thing."
-- Jim regarding software maintenance
"You smell like blood, sweat, and mom's tears"
-- J of her Dad (kidding of course)
