After a frustrating time during the snow when my hard disk in my thinkpad crashed big style I have successfully moved to an ubuntu build with a vmware for those windows based applications I need to use and demo. That week started with snow thus no access to the office, but with the beauty of spare technology I was able to swap the duff drive with the one from my original Macbook that is not being used being only 80GB 
With my Macbook Pro I connected back to the office and downloaded the VPN software, whilst downloading the standard build in VMware format and the Ubuntu Karmic Koala 64bit. Within a day I was back up running with the exception of some quirks with the vpn build needed for access to work, but this was only a minor issue as I could still connect via the vmware image.
It was interesting when I rang IBM support to get the old drive sorted on warranty. Basically they wouldn’t except a linux disk test error message stating exactly how many bad sectors I had, instead they insisted that I download a Dr PC window version tester to test the disk that only reported a vague disk error message. This proved a challenge as I had to borrow a windows PC to burn the bootable CD to test the disk, great fun, what if I didn’t have access to a window PC. When I rang back with the error code the agent was only interested that I had a disk error message to satisfy his requirements to send out a new disk. This turned up the following Tuesday so it was a good job I had that spare otherwise with the snow I would have to use the Macbook…
Lets hope this disk can last more than 8 months…….
So 45 days have passed since starting the new role, so its 45 elapsed days and only 26 working days due to weekends, holiday and bank holidays. Having a blast so far with learning loads of new products not just Beehive, but lots of familiar concepts and architectures due to JEE. Have spent some time build and demoing the product whilst learning on the job in terms of the capabilities of Beehive.
Looking forward to the start of the new quarter which looks like it will be very busy with lots of interesting leads coming in now for the product. Likely to be a trip to Netherlands soon and then we shall see where else I need to go. One thing I have noticed that I have been so busy that my blog and twitter entries have tailed off a lot, but hopefully I will address that soon.
It is good to see that Mac’s have been embraced by the Oracle population as a business tool although its not standard issue. As with other companies it is creeping in as an alternative. Wondering if I should try the Linux desktop at some stage but this will need me to run a VMWare client image for some demos especially the Outlook integration. Nice to see a large number of iPhone in use and the option to use either IMAP or push IMAP service on it. Enjoying using the Blackberry 8900 as a busy device especially with its huge battery life. I will see what Apple do with the WWDC event in a week or so with the iPhone, might be worth upgrading if battery life is better.
I have loads of training materials to get through over the next month and need to look at what other training materials I want to do in the coming year. My training schedule has been something like this:
- Induction to Oracle
- Product and Development Training on Beehive
- Sales Training
- Red Stack Training (Beehive related products only)
Look at development tools as well to gain an understanding of the art of the possible going forward. Other areas will be related to portals and other E2.0 products including ECM, RM and IRM.
I will post a similar update in a month or two….
now that I have been in IT for a while ok over 20years I have just decided to build a PC server for me to play with some software. I spent some time researching options and did originally start by looking at just buying a configured/customised desktop. This was proving a bit of a challenge as I really wanted a box that could hold 8 plus GB of RAM but didn’t want to pay server prices.
After a look around I decided on a bunch of component to build my own server/desktop. This is what I have decided to get and before anyone hassles me I have gone for RAM and horsepower at this stage as it will be for running test environments and not for photos or video or something like that.
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66GHz Socket 775 1333FSB 4MB L2 Cache Processor
- Innovision 3D Geforce 7200GS 256MB DDR2 DVI PCI-E Graphics Card
- Samsung TS-H653B 20X Black SATA DVD±RW Dual Layer Bare Drive
- ASUS P5QL iP43 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard
- Casecom Piano Black Mid Tower Case with Blue LED Strip
- Arctic Power 700W PSU – With PCI-E, 4x SATA, 20+4, ATX12V, 8pin +12V Connectors
- Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 XMS2 Memory CL5 2.1V X 2
- Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
It should be here in about a week and thats when the fun starts. Once it is built I will do some tests and see how it performs. The initial plan will be to install Linux server current looking at Oracle Ent Linux or Ubuntu. Will also run either Oracle VM server or VMWare Server. Will also add some more disk drives once I have it running.
Today was a bad Ubuntu day. I have been using Ubunut for about two weeks or so on my two work laptops and most stuff is fine as long as it is installed. At IBM some people have collaborated on various layers for Ubunutu to get the standard applications installed and running so I can do my day job without hinderance. In the main all of these work fine but as soon as I want to do something different I then start to run into trouble.
My current issue is I cannot get my Canon USB printer that is connected to a Airport Express to be recognised by Ubuntu. So you may say so what, this is not a normal configuration, but I have to disagree, often people find ways to improve their productivity by improvsing and using what is at hand to get the job done. I have used this setup for a couple of years at least without issue on three Windows XP and two Mac OSX devices, so now you may see why I am getting fustrated with the ubuntu setup. I am a techie and have been for 20 plus years, but as this is my day to day laptop and it is something straight forward that I am trying to do so this doesn’t give me confidence when asking others to try linux based desktops. All of the people I know that are using Linux are techies, there is the main problem. If we want to get this to the masses then we have to get rid of these userability issues. I am not giving up on my Ubuntu desktop I will continue to work at getting a usable system, but I will have a reliance on my windows partitions for the short to medium term and VMWare for other demo type scenarios. If I had a choice of OS then it would be MAC OSX everytime as it provides me with an end user ready UX, second choice is currently windows for ease of use, with ubuntu bring up the rear. I suspect that once I have Ubuntu running all the things I need then we should be moving it to second position.
I shall wait for my colleagues to hassle me, but I can ignore these as they are techies and often do not see it from the end user perspective.
