Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Funeral Playlist
An idle thought tonight led me to compile a list of songs I'd like to have played at my funeral. I realize I've got quite a bit of up tempo stuff here, but I'd prefer a racous ceremony at any rate. Speaking of, if you people bring up any superstitious humbug after I'm gone I'll, well, I'll be dead so it's not like I could do anything but still. Consider yourself threatened.
1. "God Willing" Dropkick Murphys
2. "One Last Drink" Enter the Haggis
3. "Broad Majestic Shannon" The Pogues
4. "Canon in D Major" Johann Pachelbel
5. "Alium Spem" Thomas Tallis*
6. "You're My Home" Billy Joel
7. "Rusty Old American Dream" David Wilcox
8. "Happy" Goldfinger**
9. "A Boat Like Gideon Brown" Great Big Sea
10. "Gravel Walks/Mountain Road/Boys of Bluehill/Harvest Home" These are hornpipes and reels, so none of them take very long. Get a good piper or whistler to play 'em live.
* Not all of it, obviously
** Although the inclusion of the lyrics "I just want to feel alive" is a bit trite.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Network
I really have to redo some of my networking. 90% is waiting on locational problem and another 9% is going to have to wait for me to have some spare cash (and with my car slowly dying, that's a ways off).
Problems with my network as is:
1. Wires are run all over the damn place.
This is a problem generated by living the apartment lifestyle. I really want to run the R6 cables through the walls but I can't do so even a little bit. First off, this is ugly. But this also leads to a real problem in that my segments are laid down more for physical constraints then for what's actually good for the network. Instead of a central switch with segments running to every box in the house, I've got at least two more switches then I properly need. Combine all this with the fact that I have at least one dog who likes to chew cables and we have a recipe for disaster whereby we can loose half the house at once.
1. Wires are run all over the damn place.
This is a problem generated by living the apartment lifestyle. I really want to run the R6 cables through the walls but I can't do so even a little bit. First off, this is ugly. But this also leads to a real problem in that my segments are laid down more for physical constraints then for what's actually good for the network. Instead of a central switch with segments running to every box in the house, I've got at least two more switches then I properly need. Combine all this with the fact that I have at least one dog who likes to chew cables and we have a recipe for disaster whereby we can loose half the house at once.
Solution: Buy a house, run some cable. Build a server closet.
Projected cost: What do houses cost these days?
There's probably more I'm forgetting so this post may get updated as I go along.
2. Fuck this connection is slow.
Related to issue #1, some of my network is running 100mbs rather then gigabit. Mind you, most of the devices on those segments can't run gigabit anyway, but at least one can (the wife's computer) and it get's the shaft just for being upstairs.
Solution: See Problem #1
Projected cost: As above + cable costs and an new switch.
3. Fuck this connection is slow, again.
Different issue, I'm seriously itching to upgrade my connection speed. Downloading isn't a huge issue at this point, but the 1mbps upload speed is starting to constrain. I operate an FTP server out of the house, and I'm logged into at least one machine via RDP most of the time. It would be nice to bump that sucker up to 5-20mbps instead. Fiber isn't available in my area, and I'm already at the top tier of cable, so this is another locational problem.
Solution: See problem #1 again.
Projected cost: As above but something like $30-40 more a month.
4. Bard does too much.
This is a bit of a reversal on my part, as Bard (my main server) was originally built to do everything. He still has two main roles: he acts as my NAS provider and as my virtualization host. The longer I go the more I realize that I'd like these roles to be split off from one another. As the host for all my VMs, Bard acts often as a test bed for new tools and ideas I want to play with, which is not the most stable role in the world. As the NAS, he really ought to be as stable as a rock.
Solution: Split the NAS duties off to a dedicated device, rebuild Bard as a dedicated VM Host.
Projected cost: ~$250 for driveless NAS box.
5. No linux
At the moment, I'm running a completely windows house. This isn't completely a problem, as I'm getting good at the windows environment, but to increase my marketability, I really ought to learn linux as well.
Solution: I'm going to rebuild my main desktop as an ubuntu machine and hopefully get a couple of VMs up as well.
Projected cost: Free.
There's probably more I'm forgetting so this post may get updated as I go along.
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