Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Home Desktop Upgrade 2010

by

I shouldn’t really call it an upgrade per se but I managed to find some time yesterday (vacation day) to rebuild my home desktop personal computer with Windows 7 (64bit) replacing my Windows Vista (64bit) installation.

I backed up all my files to an old server I had setup running Openfiler, it’s amazing how much space all those home movies and pictures take up. I reformatted my primary hard drive and ran through the installation. It took longer than I expected but I later found out that I had left the floppy drive enabled in the BIOS (there was no floppy drive in the desktop) and that may have had something to-do with the longer than customary installation time I experienced.

Now I’m left with re-installing all the different applications that I use from time to time. When I was younger I didn’t mind this task so much because it generally translated into a significant increase in speed and performance of the desktop (at least for a while). These days though I find myself not having the same excitement I once had in the past. I guess I’m getting old and grumpy…

While I’m rambling on let me say that Ubuntu (specifically release 10.1) is really becoming a strong alternative desktop operating system. While it still took some messing, the installation of some basic tools such as the Java Runtime Engine, Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash was much improved over previous releases. I was very impressed with the performance as well.

So my question for folks… what if anything are you using at home to store your home movies and pictures? Are you using an old PC running some open source solution? Did you go out and purchase an all-in-one solution?

I  just started using an old IBM xSeries 345 with 1GB of RAM and ~ 300 GB of disk space across 6 drives. I’m concerned that my electric bill is going to go threw the roof next month if I run this thing 24×7 as my media storage server. It might be cheaper for me to just purchase a Drobo or something along those lines from an kWh  perspective not to mention the space. cooling and noise issues created by running and IBM xSeries 345 in your basement. I had accidentally forgotten to connect both power supplies when I first turned it on. The beast sounded like a jet engine running full blast until I connected the second power supply and the fans slowed down to their normal operating speed.

Cheers!

Philadelphia Flyers in the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals

by

Our father who art in Philly. Hockey be thy name. Thy will be done. The cup will be won. On ice, as well as in the stands. Give us this day our hockey sticks. And forgive us our penalties, as we forgive those who cross-check against us, Lead us not into elimination. But deliver us to victory. In the name of the fans,…Lord Stanley, and in the name of the Flyers. Amen.

I realize the “prayer” above has been around for quite some time and adopted over time and it wasn’t written by me.

Good luck to the Philadelphia Flyers!

Game 1: Flyers at Blackhawks, Saturday, May 29, 8:00 p.m. (NBC)
Game 2: Flyers at Blackhawks, Monday, May 31, 8:00 p.m. (NBC)
Game 3: Blackhawks at Flyers, Wednesday, June 2, 8:00 p.m. (Versus)
Game 4: Blackhawks at Flyers, Friday, June 4, 8:00 p.m. (Versus)
Game 5: Flyers at Blackhawks, Sunday, June 6, 8:00 p.m. (NBC)*
Game 6: Blackhawks at Flyers, Wednesday, June 9, 8:00 p.m. (NBC)*
Game 7: Flyers at Blackhawks, Friday, June 11, 8:00 p.m. (NBC)*

What was the first computer you ever used?

by

I had a little nostalgia on Saturday when Google placed a copy of the game Pac-Man on their homepage. I grew up playing Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man so it brought back a whole lot of memories. I have very fond memories of the Atari 2600, it was an amazing piece of technology for it’s time. I can probably attribute the Atari 2600 as one of the initial catalysts for my interest in Technology and Computer Science. I remember games like Pitfall, Adventure, Pac-Man, Q*bert and Frogger.

I also remember wasting away hour upon hour playing Head-to-Head Football. I can remember playing against my dad and god father on many an occasion.  It really wasn’t until I was introduced to the Commodore PET that I really became excited in technology. I can remember spending hours typing in hundreds of lines of QBASIC code, the introduction of the tape drive allowed users to load and save programs to tape. I was able to convince my parents to buy me a Commodore 64 which was my first personal computer.

What was the first computer that you ever used or owned?

Cheers!

Is it time for an upgrade to my web host?

by

I’m truly amazed at how fast the time flies. I’ve been blogging for 2 1/2 years now and it’s been a very exciting adventure. It all started back in October 2007 when I created an account on Blogger. In July 2008 I decided to branch out by purchasing my own domain name. At the same time I converted from Blogger to WordPress, hosting it on a Go Daddy shared web hosting account.  At the time Go Daddy was a convenient one stop shopping purchase, for both domains and web hosting.

I’m now coming up on the renewal for Go Daddy and I’m considering upgrading to a virtual private server (VPS).

Why? In my role with my current employer I work with hundreds (almost thousands) of servers, both virtual and physical. It’s always been a little depressing to know what’s possible from a real server and then settling for what I can personally afford with this being a hobby. In addition to my wanting more control over the environment I’ve seen a significant growth in traffic to both my blog and the discussion forums which are hosted on the account.

Over the past 6 months the traffic to my blog is peaking daily at around 1,000 page loads which is pretty decent in my opinion for the amount of material I have posted and the narrow focus of that material. The traffic to the discussion forums have really started to ramp up over the past seven months.

As both of those endeavors have grown I’ve noticed the response time of the site go up. I’m the first to recognize that while some of the reason is the traffic a large portion is also the number of features I’ve added to the site over the past 2 years.  Thankfully the little bit of advertising I’ve been running has helped defray the current hosting costs (thanks for the support!). With that in mind I’m considering stepping up to a VPS solution in order to provide a significant performance boost and provide a platform for future projects.

Anyone have any recommendations on VPS web hosting? I’m probably looking at a budget of  $30-$50/monthly, let’s not forget it’s just a hobby and I have no intention of giving up my day job! (I’m told my grammar is terrible and I need to spend more time proof reading).

I was considering RimuHosting based on a blog post from Colin McNamara, not directly related but anyone with that name must be smart ;).

Cheers!

Recent Posts

Categories

SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL