Well, the T1 is finally up and running. Man am I relieved. Can’t wait to give Wildblue the big boot out the door. In the past several weeks, we have had more outages than I can possibly count. It reminds me of the early days of cable modems.

Anyway, now I can finally get the rest of my engineering team connected to my lab. Yippee!!!

The latest report from Byte and Switch has me scratching my head. Now I’ve heard everything. Proponents of FC are looking to talk FC protocol over Ethernet to compete with the likes of iSCSI.

Now, the last time I looked, iSCSI was facing difficulty entering the data center due to the existing investment in FC. So, what makes these guys think that FC can go the other way? And for that matter, how will FCoE integrate with their legacy FC infrastructure?

At some point, folks need to understand that storage is less about protocols and more about infrastructure and latencies. And I don’t know how this helps out either. Am I missing something? Feel free to chime in, regardless of which side you find yourself.

For those those looking for a lower overhead alternative to iSCSI, please consider ATA over Ethernet (AoE) before taking this one too far.

Technorati Tags: FC, Ethernet, Storage, Fibre Channel

I heard a song come on the radio this weekend and it got me thinkin’ about how rap has changed over the years. And I’m not rap-kinda-guy at all. I’m a rocker. I’ve posted on my musical tastes in the past. Having said that, I found myself singing a song I hadn’t heard in over 20 years.  It was “A Fly Girl” by the Boogie Boys:

[Romeo JD]
A fly girl is a girl who wants you to see
Her name her game and her ability
2 gold teeth and cold cash money
The guys are on her strap she tends to act funny
She’s got Gazelle and a b-bag too
Fly girl, I wanna be with you
You’re not the prettiest thing girl, but that’s okay
Your painted-on jeans make you fresh anyway
You wear much gold like it ain’t no thing
You’ve got a name chain and the name is Ray
Your father is a doctor, a lawyer or a king (girl)
Take me in your car, let’s go for a swing
One day you’re gonna be at the top of the world
And I’ma be on your back fly girl
{gi-girl}

[Chorus, {}=during above line]
A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
{A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy girl}
A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
{A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy girl}{girl-GIRL, girl-GIRL}

[Boogie Knight]
My name is Boogie Knight and yes I’m a Capricorn
I like the fly girls who know that they’re on
To my experience the girls who please
Are Geminis, Scorpio, and yes Pisces
I’m not pregidous but I’ll tell you right now
I don’t like the girl who eats the Puppy Chow
I don’t like the girl with mud in her toes
and feet that smell like anything goes
Dirty nails are what I hate most
But the gold fingernails are high post
I like pretty hair but I also know
Girls look fly in Kangols
I must say this if you like it or not
I can’t stand fluorescent socks
But let me shut up in our bow bow world
My name is Boogie Knight and I’ve got a fly girl

girl-GIRL, girl-GIRL girl-GIRL, girl-GIRL
girl-GIRL, girl-GIRL girl-GIRL, girl-GIRL
A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy girl
A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy girl

[Boogie Knight]
Fits the truth I’ll tell no lies
Yes men we dream and fantasize
Of both sandy brown hair and light brown eyes
A golden-brown tan, big juicy thighs
Jeans so tight, you seem so bright
You’re the most aloof thing I’ve seen all night
Like a breeze on the scene you’re just too cool
Your skin real soft and silky smooth
The voluptuous curves that sway when you walk
You entice me girl just by the way you talk

A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
{A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy [fades down]}
A fly girl a fly girl a fly girl a fly girl
{A flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy [fades down]}

[Romeo JD]
Well I’m Rome JD and I have learned
Fly girl is a name that you must earn
Fly girl’s a girl who speak their mind
Some sneaky some freaky some mean some kind
Cold crush waves, fly Gherri curl
Gold watch, gold ring, and a neck full of pearls
Real slim waist, a made-up face
Head turns, eyes burn when she comes in the place
Perfume from France, put you in a trance
Fly enough to mingle, to fly dance
High-stakers, big money makers
Some fly girls are cold heart breakers
Bank accounts of unbelievable amounts
Very picky bout how their name’s pronounced
Designer purse, leather mini skirt
Not a speck of dirt, can’t help but flirt
She’ll make you choke like you inhale smoke
She gave you a number, it was dial-a-joke
You got a real nice voice, you’ll be her choice
Till another man comes in a fly Rolls-Royce
The guys get jealous, how can you blame us?
You live a lifestyle of the rich and famous
To play your roll guys lose control
Picturin’ you as a center fold
From the Rome JD, cest-la-vie
Each and every one a y’all too much for me
Could it be your style or the way you smile
That puts you on the top of the pile?
Queen of the Nile, o sweet child
Fly girl you drive me wild (you drive me wild)

[Chorus]

[various pitched samples of 'girl' & 'a fly girl']

So, does this constitute Classic Rap (C-RAP) for short???

So, have you been frustrated by the merger of Blogger and Google? I know I have. Despite the fact that I’ve been hosting my site via Wordpress for a while now, I still maintain my Blogger account for the purpose of depositing comments with my signature details and avatar. However, this has become fairly cumbersome until today.

As the merge of Google and Blogger progressed, the end result was a push by Google to force people to create a Google account for the purpose of Email, Blogging, Online Payments, Calendaring, etc. Sounds like a pretty neat idea, until you think about it

In practice, Google has not simplified life. They’ve made it more difficult. Unless you’re willing to give up your little personalized comments signature, you’ve basically been forced to logout of Gmail in order to leave a comment. Let’s face it, we can all do this. But what a royal pain it is after a while.

Let me show you what I’m talking about. After all, a picture’s worth a thousand words, right?

Username based on Gmail login

Login signature based on my Blogger account

This may be a little too subtle for some of you, so I’ll spell it out. I tend to leave comments as “mike y” as opposed to “Mike”. And my mike y comments include my URL and my avatar.

Anyway, the way I solved this was with the use of Google Notifier for Mac. Now, this slick little application only works with one Gmail account at a time. And I have four of them. Three of them I use pretty regularly. Two of them I live/die by on a daily basis. And you can’t simply create a copy of the application for each account. Well, you could; but it wouldn’t work very well. You’d end up with one icon for all of your accounts. Hmm… how useful could that be?

Nope you’ve got to make some tweaks. But they’re pretty easy to make. First, you’ll need to right click on the application to Show the Contents of the Package.

Once you do this, you’ll see a bunch of files and directories as you would expect to work with, as opposed to just the application. Now you’re ready to begin making some edits.

The first file you’ll need to edit is Info.plist. You need to edit CFBundleIdentifier key to reflect that it’s for a different account, in my case it’s Wildernessvoice.

After you save your changes to this file, you’ll need to go into Resources=>English.lproj folders. Inside the English.lproj folder you’ll find MainMenu.nib. Go ahead and double click on it. This should open up within the Interface Builder tool inside Mac OS X. Once inside, you’ll want to look for the Instance titled BothMenu and double click it. This will show you the actual menu items that will be displayed when you click on the notifier icon. And if you’re lucky, the Cocoa-Menus box will also be open. You’ll want to grab one of the “Item” objects and drag it over to the drop down menu that should be showing. Drag the object and insert it under the Quit All Google Notifers menu item. Then double click on the new entry and rename it. In my case I renamed it with my email address.

Once the changes are made, save and exit. That’s it. You’re done. You can do this for each Google account you have. If there’s enough interest, I’ll dive in and find a way to solve this for you Windows users. But then again, maybe I can get some of you to make the switch

Okay, here’s a techy post that some of you might appreciate a little. I stole this from another site, but most of it is strangely applicable to folks/things I know.

1. There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works.
2. Real programmers don’t work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it’s because they were up all night.
3. Real programmers don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
4. Java keeps your hand tied. VC++ gives you enough rope to hang yourself. (Note to EE and Robin, this is not coffee. Java, in this case, is a programming language )
5. A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.
6. Why doesn’t DOS ever say ‘EXCELLENT command or filename!’
7. WARNING: Keyboard Not Attached. Press F10 to Continue.
8. Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.
9. Scandisk is now checking your hard disk. You can start praying.
10. Hit any user to continue.
11. Error reading FAT record. Try the SKINNY one? (Y/N)
12. Enter any 11-digit prime number to continue…
13. Bad Command or File Name. Good try, though.
14. Want to make your computer go really fast? Throw it out a window.
15. If you can’t beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.
16. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.