January 2009
1 post
Server naming standards?
spiderman
mifuno
timeaxe
rhineheart
trinity
zira
cornelius
ursus
zaius
caesar
These are the names of the firewalls (well, with -01 and -02 designators because, ya’know, the firewalls be clustered) in the giant financial services firm where I work [on contract]. I had this notion that career technologists stopped naming servers after dwarves, blade runners, and pixies as soon as the I.T....
July 2008
2 posts
Sell me yer 2G iPhone or I'm waiting for Android
I broke the LCD on my aging Nokia 6681 this weekend. (Seems like that sort of thing always happens when I’m enduring non-existent coverage in the mountains / islands / scrub country.) Given the timing (it’s almost like I planned the “failure” of my Nokia), grabbing a 3G iPhone seemed like the best possible plan. Alas, iPhone Elvis done left Seattle on Friday. I need a new...
June 2008
5 posts
Get some firefox →
Oh, if I only had a nickel for every absurd world record. 19km of somersaulting? World’s leading exporter of asbestos? (Quebec). Add this to the list: Firefox is targeting the world record for __software downloads__ in a single day. The main getfirefox.com link seems unresponsive, as does this spreadfirefox.com link. Looks like they’ve been Slashdo, err, Firefoxed.
Anyway, download...
4 tags
Outcome? Failure.
Until Sunday, we had a pair of Bewick’s Wrens and their five babies living in a nest box in our back yard. The only down-note of Father’s day: the discovery that all of the young birds had died within the last day. I haven’t seen the adults since Friday. I’m very disappointed. Bewick’s Wrens have huge personality for such little animals. It’s all in the tail....
7 tags
Seattle scales
Back (a few hours ago) from the Google Scalability Conference. Most of my colleagues no-showed, but Brandon delivered. Highlights included Swapnil Patil’s talk on GIGA+ massively scalable directories for shared file systems (billions of files). PDF here (a bit out of date compared to the updated version we received at the conference, but certainly good enough). This quote describes some of...
5 tags
Google conf on scalability
I had the kids this AM. Now running to catch up with the Google Scalability conference at the W Hotel in Seattle. Bus should put me there in time for the 11:15 breakouts, but I’m most interested in the after-lunch sessions. More later.