Just to prove I’m a good little Irish boy, or rather a decendant of an Irishman, I’ve got a picture of my pint of Guiness.
What more could you ask for in the world!
Archive for March, 2008
I’ve been quite a busy boy lately.
While at work one day, a colleague point out that if we were using
Freebsd instead of linux (particularly Redhat / Centos) life would be
much easier. I took this comment to heart and followed the path to the
“dark side”, so to speak. Reading through various articles on the Linux
vs BSD “argument” or “rivalry” was quite interesting. The differences
in the licensing between BSD and GPL also became apparent to me, along
with how Mac OSX can be based on BSD code and not have to pay or
contribute to the BSD project.
Enter the world of BSD licensing. In my (somewhat limited) view of how
it operates, you can basically take the BSD licensed code, copy it,
develop a paid for commercial system on it, and not be obligated in any
way to put anything back into the original project you based your stuff
on. GPL fan boys despise this obviously. The GPL approach is complete
open source, with any commercial system developed from the code
returning something back the original project it is based on. Hence any
commercialized linux product normally is sold “free” with support
bundled in. Very interesting to say the least.
Which licensing system is the best? I guess your political views could
influence your decision, or even your intense dislike of Microsoft…
who knows.
Another interesting point I’ve come across recently, in my reading of articles tracked down through google etc.
There are many people out in the IT industry that have this really
stubborn view (in my opinion) that their system / software of choice
can do everything. It scares me to think that some of these people
influence purchasing and design decisions.
I work on the principal of the right tool for the right job.
You wouldn’t use a jack hammer to put a nail in the wall would you? Or
a better analogy, you wouldn’t use a spanner to put a screw into wood?
As the end of the day, the right tool for the right job.
So I’ve been playing around with Freebsd 7 and ubuntu server. Freebsd takes me back to the old days before rpm’s and debian packages became widely used. Compile everything from source 
I must admit, I really had no idea how to use BSD… hehe. I looked up some tutorials and now have a basic idea how to install applications etc. My idea is to run some mysql benchmarks and compare them to the ubuntu server, and Centos 5. Be interesting to see what happens.
From a work point of view, I’m currently expanding and existing cluster, and building a new one in the UK, along with all the other crap I deall with. So I’m really busy at the moment.
Later.
Couple of interesting things going on for me at the moment.
Been to the doctor a couple times recently, my left ear has been completely blocked with wax for some reason. Can hear almost next to nothing out of it. But it seems to be coming right with the ear drops I’ve been given. Still annoys me thought. Never take your hearing for granted.
On top of that, I went for a couple blood tests. I must admit it is strange going to the doc, and he knows nothing about you. No medical history etc.
So the blood test allowed him to get a better idea of whats going on inside me :p
Looking at the results he found some abnormailties with the part of the blood tests that check your liver function…..
Nothing major, but something should be done about it.
The abnormalities normally occur when you eat too much meat. I have meat for lunch and dinner everyday. So apparently thats far to much.
So I’m now a part-time vegetarian. Cut down the number of meals I eat with meat to about 5 ot 6 a week. Not bad considering it was about 14 – 16 times a week.
The Asian food markets near where I work have got quite a few vegetarian dishes, plus you can get vegetarian stuff in the super market.
All in all, I’d say it’s actually not bad at all. Vegetarian food in general is really tasty and pretty healthy. There is a bit of a lack for choice. Everything has freeking meat in it now days :p
Vege Sushi and curries are my friend :p
Other than my bodily functions :p, I’ve been pretty busy at work. We got a whole load of new sites, and I’ve now been busily buying new servers to the existing cluster, and purchasing new ones for a cluster in the UK. I may end up going over to the UK to set them up, which would be cool.
The cost of labor over there is really high. Something like $400 an hour for on hands… yikes. Twice the price of the US.
So I spent about $60 000 in the last couple days :p
Thats all for today.