T Minus 12
Another weekend of decorating and preparing for Christmas has ended and one of my favorite seasons of the Christian calendar is here. During this advent season I have been doing a Bible study about rediscovering Christmas. It has been an incredibly fun read, and I have learned a great deal. For the first Christmas in several years I am truly excited about this holiday and hope that everyone I know has a great time this December as we gather with friends and family.
Praise the Lord! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!
Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! - Psalm 150
It’s virtually LANDesk
Friday marked a major turning point in our LANDesk project. It is phase 1 of a three phase project to secure our LANDesk environment. Phase One was to move our LANDesk core off of a single physical box and place it on an ESX cluster as a virtual machine. In what has the be the single largest stresser of the last few months, it ended up taking about 10 minutes for the switch over. Seven of the 10 minutes was figuring out how to deactivate the old core, calling LANDesk, and activating the new core. Overall it was a great end to a very stressful week.
After the switch over we did about thirty minutes of testing and it looks like the VM core is actually going to be a great solution for us. We are just shy of 3000 nodes and expect towards the end of spring semester to be closer to 5000, and the VM did great over the weekend. As the work week gets ramped up we'll be keeping a close eye on the system and begin work on the next two phases. Phase 2 is getting service pack 2 for LDMS 9 installed. This is a major upgrade and hopefully a major step forward. Phase 3 is a more realtime backup/failsafe solution for the LDMS database. Over the next few weeks LANDesk should become one of our most stable and dependable systems.
This is also a somewhat sad project for me as it is the last major LANDesk project on my radar. Once all three phases of this are complete, the handing of the reigns to Sundiata should be as well. I am so ready to start another project but I really have put a lot of time and effort into this one. It is hard to get my mind off of it and onto the next thing. I am excited about the next project though and hope to have some more information in the next couple months.
I have been waiting for an app that really makes the camera on my iPhone fun and it has finally arrived. Instagram (Get it on iTunes) is a fun app that really makes sharing on social networks a breeze. You just shoot, add a title and select which sites you want to upload to, all in a very polished and simple interface. On top of it's ease of use, it also has several really cool vintage camera filters.
I am a little dissapointed there isn't a WordPress connector, but no reality wordpress isn't really designed to be used for small photo uploads. It does however connect directly to:
- Flickr
- Tumbler
- Foursquare
I am not really a huge fan of all of these social networks and one of the big reason is time. I don't have time to upload my information to twitter, facebook, flicker, etc. With Instagram I just shoot, and upload directly to all three, just one, or a combination of them instantly.
As an added bonus, Instagram is itself a social network that links all the Instagram users. You can set it up to follow who you want and get a feed of your friends' photos when you load it up. If you do end up getting it, feel free to add me, jwallom, to your friends list. And the beautiful thing about this app is that it is free!
Morals and Politics
As I have gotten older I have become more convinced that everyone is wrong when it comes to politics, including myself. This does very little to keep us from talking like we know what is best, and how party of candidate X is just plain wrong. This weekend however there a was a large movement in Washington that really gave me some hope. An estimated quarter of a million people gathered to basically say "calm down, we are going to be ok." Tomorrow is election day and no matter who you vote for, and please tell me you are voting, we are still one nation and we will survive.
And now to the heated topic. Anyone can weigh in on this topic, but I am really looking for folks who have a strong belief in a religious morality. Throughout my lifetime I have been taught about the separation of church and state. I have also done a lot of historical research into human history, especially after the rise of Christianity. Combine this with current governments in the world and for me it paints a very clear picture of why there should be and is a separation of church and state, but what is far less clear is where the separation should be. Every time I hear the political conversation fo toward the topic of abortion for instance, I feel a barrier has been crossed. On a personal level, a religious level, I am against abortion, but I also feel that that is a moral choice and not something I am comfortable letting government control.
Government should never force morality through law because morality is different for every person, religious or not. Government should be a collection of people who work for the common good of the people, but not the religious, or morality of some of the people. It is my opinion that we should vote for people with similar moralities to govern and not people to govern with similar moralities. I feel the church and government can both reach more people and grow stronger apart than together.
I wanted so bad to have this discussion with my soon to be cousin April yesterday, but it was not the time or place. Since I wasn't able to last night, I am going to open it up here for anyone who would like to weigh in. Again, I hope everyone who can will get out tomorrow and vote. It is our right, our obligation. You cannot be free will without making choices.
The Land of the Brave(s)
Many of you know I am not a huge baseball fan these days, but growing up baseball was the only sport I followed. The Atlanta Braves were the team above all other teams, even though they could barely scrape up a winning season on the best years. My family would swing by KFC on the way to the game, get the cheapest tickets in Fulton County Stadium's nosebleed section, and watch Dale Murphy, Raphael Belliard, Chipper Jones, Charlie Lebrant, and all of the other great players that have come through the organization. While the players, mascot and stadium may have changed, one thing that has been a constant is Bobby Cox.
This afternoon Cox will lead the Braves for his final regular season game, against what has become one of best teams in baseball. Under his management the Braves went from one of the worst teams in baseball, to one of the all time greatest teams. For over a decade he led the Braves to the post season almost every year, and at 1:35pm today he will do everything he can to take the Braves back for one final run at the World Series. Even for this former baseball fan, I will be watching the greatest manager in the game in his final regular season game. Go Braves!
Minecraft!
So James Fries talked me into playing Minecraft and I have to say that I now want to hurt him. I am addicted. If it wasn't for work I would probably have spent all day playing this today. Here is what I made in about 20 Minutes yesterday.
Play Time
Some years back I made the choice to quit playing video games. They were a distraction to life and I really wasn't enjoying the time I spent playing them. Over the lasst couple years however, I have started to get back into gaming, but as anyone who plays with tell you, very casually. During the time I quit, I let my home computers fade away and die to the point that all I have at home is a work issued Mac laptop. My iPhone takes up 90% of my computing at home, so I really don't need anything else.
Lone Pine Mall
I usually try to keep the latest and greatest apps I find off of here because that would just turn this thing into an Apple App Store Awesome App Guide. I really download a lot of apps and I know no one really wants to know what the free app of the day is. I am sure there are sites that do much better job of that than I could. iFlux is an exception though. It is rare for a useless toy app to really catch my attention, but even harder for it to make me fall in love with it. This is an app that now has a permanent spot on my home screen. The last app to do that was Pandora.
So what is iFlux? Well it is a flux capacitor for your iOS devices. Not only that, if you have a GPS equipped device, the flux capacitor will activate at 88mph and generate the 1.21 gigawatts of power needed to travers the 4th dimension. Ok, so 88mph is a bit over the limit, so it has the ability to set activation at any speed. And if you turn your device into landscape, you get the time control circuits as well. Overall this app really does nothing at all, but brings back one of the greatest movie franchises in an incredibly well designed app.
This is a Universal app and can be found here (app store link) for $0.99. Now I just need an iPad and a dash mount.
Ethnicity in Atlanta
Making the rounds this week in the online news is a really awesome series of maps made from the 2000 census data. These maps show the top 40 US cities and their ethnic makeup. Check out Atlanta. It is pretty crazy how the line at Ponce is almost a perfect divide. It also amazed me how evenly distributed Clayton County was. I know it has changed a lot in ten years though. Check out all of the cities on his flickr page.
Polamalu is the Man
One of the most explosive and impressive football players to ever play the game. If there were an I in team, it would be him. If there were two I's in team, it would be him and Ward. Go Dawgs!