So I was listening to the radio the other day (it's a rare thing I do) and I heard that Guns and Roses has FINALLY released their new album Chinese Democracy...to say this album has been a long time coming is an understatement. The last time Guns 'n Roses released an album was back in 1991 with Use your Illusions I and II (I mean there was the Spaghetti Incident, but since most of that music came from Charles Manson, I'm just not gonna count it.) So I was 11 years old the last time they release an album...in case you hadn't figured it out yet, I'm 29 now...wow!
In reality it speaks volumes to the star power of Axel Rose and Guns 'N Roses in general that they could wait 18 years to release their next album and it almost feels like they haven't left the scene at all. Granted the whole band has changed, and I'm not really even sure Slash is in the band anymore, but still...amazing.
I'm currently listening to the album, and it's not that bad really. Kind of feels a bit like old G 'n R...maybe a little more subdued, but still Axel's voice is freakin' amazing and whoever is playing guitar (if it's not Slash) is also just sick!
Anyway, so yes a very cool new album from GNR (finally.) In other news I'm coming up on my one year anniversary at my job...that's pretty exciting. I worked at my last job for 2 years, but I can say this, I'm way happier at this anniversary then I was at my 1 year at Sri Trang...way happier...you can even ask my wife, and she will agree.
Ok, off to spend some QT with the wife before trying to get to bed early to start this short week off right.
~C
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Wednesday rantings
So here we are again, another Wednesday done and Bones about to come on TV...seems like this is optimal blog time for me.
Anyway, life has been good recently, very busy (as you can tell from my lack of blogging), but still very good. I have been doing more and more with servers at work, and Hyper-V is really taking off, and we're doing more and more with it and it's been a really great learning experience.
In other news I finally gave in to my wife and joined the world of Social Networking via Facebook. I'm listed as Charlie Hall, so if you really want to check me out, go for it...who knows I may even add you as a friend.
Oh yeah, so I finally got my hands on the new Dell Precision M6400 today...this laptop is amazing, it's large (it has a full numeric keypad in addition to the keyboard.) It is really cool though. You can really tell Dell is now moving towards the more "sleek and sexy" style that they started with their XPS systems. It's nice to see it finally moving to their enterprise stuff though. I've installed Vista Business on it, so I'll let you know how it turns out, hopefully well since it's now my main work laptop.
Ok, that's about it, more later on.
~C
Anyway, life has been good recently, very busy (as you can tell from my lack of blogging), but still very good. I have been doing more and more with servers at work, and Hyper-V is really taking off, and we're doing more and more with it and it's been a really great learning experience.
In other news I finally gave in to my wife and joined the world of Social Networking via Facebook. I'm listed as Charlie Hall, so if you really want to check me out, go for it...who knows I may even add you as a friend.
Oh yeah, so I finally got my hands on the new Dell Precision M6400 today...this laptop is amazing, it's large (it has a full numeric keypad in addition to the keyboard.) It is really cool though. You can really tell Dell is now moving towards the more "sleek and sexy" style that they started with their XPS systems. It's nice to see it finally moving to their enterprise stuff though. I've installed Vista Business on it, so I'll let you know how it turns out, hopefully well since it's now my main work laptop.
Ok, that's about it, more later on.
~C
Monday, November 10, 2008
Post Election thoughts and Hyper-V
So the election ended (actually ended about 9pm EST once Ohio went Obama.) But we do have a new president and he is a Democrat. For better or worse, I'm not really sure and I will not use this blog as a political soap box.
I am sad for one of my buddies who has done a vast amount of work for the McCain campaign and was promised a job in the White House if McCain would have won, which he didn't so my buddy was pretty torn up about it.
He came down Wednesday and we went to the NIN concert together and I'm thinking that was good for him. I mean, angry, hate filled music, along with the most amazing light show you've ever seen in your life...always does a body good. The show was amazing, like nothing I've ever seen before as far as lights go. I would describe it for you, but I don't think the written word can even do the show justice...you just have to experience it for yourself, it was that good.
Anyway, so the NIN show ruled, and I'm glad the election is over and it was a clean election (unless you live in District 5 in Virginia which still has a contested race.) On to matters related to work....
We have been using the new Virtual Machine technology from Microsoft called Hyper-V. If you haven't seen this technology yet, it's really cool stuff. Basically it has all the parts of VMWare but way easier to use. There are some draw-backs to Hyper-V that I've discovered. The biggest one being that Trend Micro Office Scan(our anti-virus and firewall software) doesn't play nice with Hyper-V at all. From what I've been able to tell, it seems that Office Scan's firewall will only recognize physical NIC's and not the virtual NIC (which is what Hyper-V uses for network communication.) This causes a huge problem because the default policy for Trend for any network card, is to plug up all firewall holes, and not let anything in, or out. So then you run into problems where you can't connect to the VM's you just created and the VM's themselves won't even start. Kind of annoying, but I think I have a workaround that will allow us to have Trend installed on the machine and still use Hyper-V.
I have had some good luck with VM's to this point though. We have some of our various services (Virus Scanning and CAD licensing) being hosted on VM's now and they seem to be running with out a hitch *knock on wood*
Ok, that's about it from me for now. More later on.
~C
I am sad for one of my buddies who has done a vast amount of work for the McCain campaign and was promised a job in the White House if McCain would have won, which he didn't so my buddy was pretty torn up about it.
He came down Wednesday and we went to the NIN concert together and I'm thinking that was good for him. I mean, angry, hate filled music, along with the most amazing light show you've ever seen in your life...always does a body good. The show was amazing, like nothing I've ever seen before as far as lights go. I would describe it for you, but I don't think the written word can even do the show justice...you just have to experience it for yourself, it was that good.
Anyway, so the NIN show ruled, and I'm glad the election is over and it was a clean election (unless you live in District 5 in Virginia which still has a contested race.) On to matters related to work....
We have been using the new Virtual Machine technology from Microsoft called Hyper-V. If you haven't seen this technology yet, it's really cool stuff. Basically it has all the parts of VMWare but way easier to use. There are some draw-backs to Hyper-V that I've discovered. The biggest one being that Trend Micro Office Scan(our anti-virus and firewall software) doesn't play nice with Hyper-V at all. From what I've been able to tell, it seems that Office Scan's firewall will only recognize physical NIC's and not the virtual NIC (which is what Hyper-V uses for network communication.) This causes a huge problem because the default policy for Trend for any network card, is to plug up all firewall holes, and not let anything in, or out. So then you run into problems where you can't connect to the VM's you just created and the VM's themselves won't even start. Kind of annoying, but I think I have a workaround that will allow us to have Trend installed on the machine and still use Hyper-V.
I have had some good luck with VM's to this point though. We have some of our various services (Virus Scanning and CAD licensing) being hosted on VM's now and they seem to be running with out a hitch *knock on wood*
Ok, that's about it from me for now. More later on.
~C
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election Night
After a full year of going back and forth, all the political ad's all the talks, debates, and yes even all the smear ads (both sides did it, don't even try and say your side didn't do it.) It's all come down to this, election night.
One of my buddies works on Capital Hill (for the republican side) so this election (along with the last few) has special meaning to me. It's always been fun to debate with my buddy and have good spirited political conversations.
Who will win, I have no idea. I know who I voted for and hopefully I did vote for the next president of the US, but until all the votes are counted and the opponent concedes election night will continue.
My only hope for the US election is that it doesn't digress into the mud slinging, chad counting, nightmare that was the 2000 election...as long as both parties choose to take the high road and when it looks like it's the end just give up the race and start the healing process...the US has larger problems that we need to deal with.
Ok, that's it for my political rant, time for more interesting things...games and concerts!
I did score Fallout 3 the day it came and all I have to say is...WOW...the game is amazing...it's freaking huge, but it's great so far. I haven't gotten very far in the game (mostly due to a very wrong turn at the beginning of the game) but I'm starting to figure things out and do what I need to do to win, so I'll let you know how it turns out.
The other really exciting thing is that I got a new video card for my PC. It's an ASUS NVIDIA GForce 8600 GT...it's a pretty sweet little card, with 512 MB of on board DDR3 RAM(!) I fired up Fallout 3 the night I got it (the night before I got my video card) and it detected only medium graphics settings, but I popped the new video card in, fired up Fallout 3 and it detected high video settings :) It's a great card and I'm looking forward to being able to use it for a long while.
So yeah, Fallout 3 does rock but I really haven't gotten to spend much time playing it...why you may ask...what could keep you away from a game that will definitely be nominated for game of the year? One word...work...yes that's right that four letter word that we all know. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, I really do, but it's just been crazy busy for the past few weeks. I really don't know what happened, weather the whole world decided that they really did want IT, or my project load just suddenly all came to a head, but whatever it is, it's just been crazy. I'm getting to do lots of fun stuff. We've started to do more with virtulizatiton with Microsoft Hyper-V, and it's really cool. It is much more simplistic than VMWare, but I have noticed some draw backs, and this could be because I haven't messed with it enough, but I'll let you know as I get to play with this more.
So yeah, let's see, Election, games, work, oh yeah, music...always fun. Tomorrow night is the Nine Inch Nails concert here in c'ville and my buddy from DC is coming down and we're going to go to the concert...it should be rocking.
That's NIN live this year...just a taste of what we'll get to see tomorrow night. There's supposed to be an opening group too which will be Health. This should be a good time. I'm only working a half day tomorrow and then taking all of Thursday off to recover from the concert!
Well, I think that's about it for me. Off to watch the political drabble that is all of the election night specials...we'll see who walks away with the "W"
~C
One of my buddies works on Capital Hill (for the republican side) so this election (along with the last few) has special meaning to me. It's always been fun to debate with my buddy and have good spirited political conversations.
Who will win, I have no idea. I know who I voted for and hopefully I did vote for the next president of the US, but until all the votes are counted and the opponent concedes election night will continue.
My only hope for the US election is that it doesn't digress into the mud slinging, chad counting, nightmare that was the 2000 election...as long as both parties choose to take the high road and when it looks like it's the end just give up the race and start the healing process...the US has larger problems that we need to deal with.
Ok, that's it for my political rant, time for more interesting things...games and concerts!
I did score Fallout 3 the day it came and all I have to say is...WOW...the game is amazing...it's freaking huge, but it's great so far. I haven't gotten very far in the game (mostly due to a very wrong turn at the beginning of the game) but I'm starting to figure things out and do what I need to do to win, so I'll let you know how it turns out.
The other really exciting thing is that I got a new video card for my PC. It's an ASUS NVIDIA GForce 8600 GT...it's a pretty sweet little card, with 512 MB of on board DDR3 RAM(!) I fired up Fallout 3 the night I got it (the night before I got my video card) and it detected only medium graphics settings, but I popped the new video card in, fired up Fallout 3 and it detected high video settings :) It's a great card and I'm looking forward to being able to use it for a long while.
So yeah, Fallout 3 does rock but I really haven't gotten to spend much time playing it...why you may ask...what could keep you away from a game that will definitely be nominated for game of the year? One word...work...yes that's right that four letter word that we all know. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, I really do, but it's just been crazy busy for the past few weeks. I really don't know what happened, weather the whole world decided that they really did want IT, or my project load just suddenly all came to a head, but whatever it is, it's just been crazy. I'm getting to do lots of fun stuff. We've started to do more with virtulizatiton with Microsoft Hyper-V, and it's really cool. It is much more simplistic than VMWare, but I have noticed some draw backs, and this could be because I haven't messed with it enough, but I'll let you know as I get to play with this more.
So yeah, let's see, Election, games, work, oh yeah, music...always fun. Tomorrow night is the Nine Inch Nails concert here in c'ville and my buddy from DC is coming down and we're going to go to the concert...it should be rocking.
That's NIN live this year...just a taste of what we'll get to see tomorrow night. There's supposed to be an opening group too which will be Health. This should be a good time. I'm only working a half day tomorrow and then taking all of Thursday off to recover from the concert!
Well, I think that's about it for me. Off to watch the political drabble that is all of the election night specials...we'll see who walks away with the "W"
~C
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