niflheim

I’ve been using VMWare for a while.  Let’s start with why I do that.

1) Some of my newer computers are dramatically more powerful and energy efficient (all around) than my older systems.  It’s simpler/cheaper/saner to virtualize many/most/all of the older machines and run them on a single physical server.  Consolidating their respective functions onto a single server would take weeks or more of my time, so this was the way to go.

2) Being able to “pack up” an entire server and “take it with me” to different servers (or laptops) makes my life and my work a lot easier.

So I decided to try Sun’s xVM VirtualBox today.  It’s leaner/meaner/maybefaster and “Open Source”, and it supports a better set of host operating systems than VMWare Server itself, so I was actually looking forward to it.

Right up until 30 seconds into it when I encountered an apparent limitation, in the form of not supporting 64 bit guests.  I found this on a forum post, wherein We Freeloading Community are informed that the team is demand driven and focused on the needs of paying customers and that this isn’t one of them.

Sad to think that the paying customers don’t need 64 bit guests.  It made me wonder what they’re virtualizing, really.

Old and/or “small, dedicated, low-load” systems, a’la my #1 above?

Presumably they aren’t pre-provisioning servers for scale-out, because the first thing they’d want then are 64 bit systems, and their Demand would Drive support for this seemingly wild and exotic feature.

Oh well.  Back to VMWare.  A real shame, too, as I was looking forward to moving some of my VMs to the Macbook Pro.

I guess I need to buy VMWare’s Mac product, now.  Their paying customers apparently need the same things I do.

I’m just typing out loud.  Battlestar Galactica stuff, ignore freely.  I want to come back and look at what I was thinking next year, when the series ends.  This is very much spoilery, so if you watch BSG and haven’t caught up, or don’t want my speculation to ruin the show for you, stop reading now.

Thought #1: Ron Moore claims that “The Final Cylon” is not any of the people who appear in the “Last Supper” picture.  Only three of the four we already know are pictured, however.  So, if Ron is playing semantic games, the final-unknown-cylon could in fact be present in the picture while the “final cylon” in this case would be the one we do know who was absent from the shoot.

Thought #2: D’Anna/Three claims that only four of the “Final Five” are with the human fleet.  The obvious has already been beaten to death (fifth is dead and Three knows it; fifth is with the Cylons; Three is lying; fifth is not with either fleet), but the “How would she know?” and “Is that good writing?” questions trump most things (including the possibility of her lying).

So, Adamas (even the dead ones) and Roslin would be poor writing.  Unless “Thought #1″ is correct (and I believe it is incorrect), they and also Starbuck/Gaius are out (and too obvious and thus boring writing).  Ellen (although interesting) would undermine a whole lot of good writing.  Everyone obviously interesting is either in the picture, with the human fleet or certainly not “hungering for redemption”.

I was babbling to Laurie about all this, and how the only available bigger “reveals” for the final cylon are universally stupid or contradict “what we know”.  And what do you know, but she managed to identify the one presumably-dead person that fits, that blew my entire mind and is all kinds of interesting: Socrata Thrace, Kara’s mother.  Leoben knows far too much about Socrata, and considers Kara far too important, for her to be just another meaningless human.

All the other theories I’ve read are stupid, so I’m sticking to this one.

Besides, Asimov already did the “Robot Waiting in the Moon for Humanity’s Return” bit, so here’s hoping BSG doesn’t decide to rip him off in this fashion.

Thought #3: Either “that ain’t Earth”or, even if it is, it isn’t the final destination.  Easy enough to explain why: Roslin isn’t dead yet.  I’m unclear as to why we haven’t given her another shot o’ cure-all miracle baby blood (Maybe “God, what were we thinking when we wrote that stupid plot twist?”).  Of course, Socrata’s mother died of a “wasting disease” and has certainly “lead” humanity to “Earth”, so keep Thought #2 in mind, huh huh huh.

Thought #4: “AND THEY HAVE A PLAN”…  Yes, and?  I guess it’s the cylons-behind-the-cylons who have The Plan?  I hope that gets resolved, because…

Thought #5: …you do not under any circumstance forgive and embrace the machines who exterminated many billions of your people, reducing your entire civilization to nothing.  I assume the non-rebel Cylons will be positioned to take the punishment/justice for this, but this aspect of the storyline, like so much that involves Lee, is farcical, even if it was or will be demonstrated to have been a form of “payback”.

That’s plenty for now.  Socrata!!!

Well, do they?

It must be that time of year.

People with whom I have lost contact (in some cases for 10-20 years) have been reaching out to me recently.  I’m absolutely rotten at maintaining “long distance” relationships these days unless they involve some form of IM/chat/email, but I do seem able to “resume the thread” right away.

My well-deserved reputation as an antisocial hermit be damned: sometimes it just feels good to hear from the people who mattered.

And that’s all Forrest has to say about that.

The market was kind to me last week so we embraced our iTool iLives and iBought iPhones.

I had been waiting for the SDK release, and holding out for GPS (”Late this year” according to “My Sources” who are nameless, faceless and possibly clueless) and 3G (more on that) and “Version 2.0 Hardware”, but service through my Blackberry has been so damnably frustrating lately and overpriced all along that I took the first good opportunity and jumped.

So, a few things:

• SDK, SDK, SDK. The first truly great PDA. Please for the love of your stock valuation let us develop apps for this thing without your updates bricking the device. This is the “mobile platform” we’ve been wanting for years. Let us use it.
• AT&T buying Cingular failed to correct the problem of the Edge network (or at least the Edge network here) being absolute garbage. No idea why I was holding out for 3G, as it is unavailable here and they have yet to seem able to reliably deliver more archaic services.
• My Belkin router’s (there’s a mistake I won’t make twice) funny little feature of randomly rendering wifi-to-wan service inoperable for no reason whatsoever does not play well with the iPhone, which seems to lack the capacity to recognize a busted wifi connection.
• I still hate cameras on phones. It’s not (only) that I prefer my bulkier Nikon (I do), but that so far every phone-camera I have used is junk. I guess I need a point-and-shoot if I’m not carrying the “real camera”.
• Great iPod! I think I may come to appreciate the video capabilities while travelling.
• SDK, SDK, SDK. And SDK.
• I wonder if I would rather read ebooks on this than Amazon’s Kindle (which is almost but not quite really nice)?
• The email client frequently refuses to display emails because they are in “some format” that it feels unable to comprehend. May as well brick the device, really. This is the #2 reason I have considered going back to my Blackberry.
• Touch-screen keyboard. The large version is nice, the small version less nice. Apparent inability to switch between them on demand is violently frustrating, and this is the #1 reason I have considered a return to the Blackberry.
• It needs a stylus and handwriting recognition. Fingerprints/smudges get out of control. Or maybe I’m just a greasy iPig.
• Some apps can kick sideways. Some cannot. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but (no offense) that’s the market Apple likes, so it would be grand if we could have some consistency in this area. One would think the “system” applications, at least, would all support this.
• Flash. WMV. Flash. …Flash. You know, I still use lynx for browsing the web, but this is a glaring failure. I continue hoping I am only having a momentary bout of iBraindamage and it is all my fault somehow, but it looks like this really is a major “worm in the Apple” mistake.

Call quality is good. I’m enjoying using the device, but whether I continue to do so apparently depends entirely upon Apple’s attitude toward third party software, which it seems I will need in order to accomplish the sort of things I need to accomplish.

If you are one of the few strange people who were wondering: yes, Sun made an offer to retain me as part of the MySQL team.  Yes, I accepted.

I like some things (a lot); I dislike some other things (a lot).  We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not sure how I will adapt to a large corporation, nor how a large corporation will adapt to me (not at all, I suspect).  I think I have too much entrepreneur in me to fall in love with them as an employer, but who knows.  They seem to be a generous corporation, at least compared to other large USA-based corporations, and regardless of motivation they are exploring some interesting avenues.

Change Is Stability, I’ve heard, so here’s to change.

I love that phrase. “Harvested out of compliance.”

“What happened in this case was that there were some animals that were harvested out of compliance,” he said.

They also like to use “non-ambulatory” (”Can’t Walk”).  Another choice word.

Putting aside the problems of our mechanized meat manufacturing factory farms (mmmff! cow down!), this sort of safe, sanitized, scientific language sucks the vitality right out of the everything.  That’s the point, of course, but it’s damned dangerous.

Just as any concept pushed to its logical extreme becomes absurd, once we reduce everything to its most basic components we remove all value, all meaning, all life.  Precisely the sort of mental devaluation mass murderers perform on their victims, or in any of a number of other atrocious, horrific things our species has done to itself, directly or indirectly.

I wish a news agency would discuss a “terrorist bombing” in terms of “harvesting out of compliance”.

Looks like I will be at the MySQL Conference and Expo again this year. I try to attend as many sessions as possible, but I always end up meetin’-n-greetin’ and I’m sure this year will be no different.

So if I owe you a beer, or more importantly if you owe me a beer, you know where I’ll be.

Of course and as always, if you are interested in joining the MySQL Support Team you can drop me an email or catch me on Freenode or trip me as I walk by and we can meet up at the conference and discuss the subject!

Some friends, former customers/partners of mine from “previous lives”, family members and community folks have asked me what will happen to MySQL-the-product after MySQL-the-company is fully acquired by and integrated into Sun Microsystems.

Well, I don’t know! Those decisions are not mine to make. Read more »

As some few noticed, I have been hoping to redesign my various websites but have simply been overwhelmed with personal and professional responsibilities and have finally given up on that idea and installed a blog. I am sure to continue tweaking it for years, but here we go.

I retain the front page quotes for kicks:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“Everyone is convicted in the court of public opinion.”
–Dean Ellis