The light at the end of the tunnel is approaching. I’m getting my Xen project off the ground this week and I expect to migrate Conrey.org shortly. This site will be unavailable for a short time this weekend for this change to occur easily. Look to see you back here soon! Thanks goes out to Internet Solver here in Des Moines for giving my new server a home.
-Theron
Now that they’ve announced it, here I go!
It’s good to hear that the guys from LugRadio are coming over to host their annual LugRadio Live! event here in the states. It’s been happening for a few years in the UK, but this will be their first show in the US. It’s going to be held in San Francisco, CA the weekend of the 22nd of March 08 at the DNA Lounge.
To add to this madness I talked with Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge at LinuxWorld while I was out there, and scheming for a way to get to LRL, I thought that Dice might want to be a sponsor (Thus upping my odds of being able to go). I floated the idea to Aq, and he kicked the idea around with the rest of the presenters. I’m looking forward to getting back out west, and getting to participate with a LugRadio Live would be a really good time. More news to come.
It’s taken longer than I thought, however I’m getting the project server brought online next week. More to follow. Thanks to internet solver for helping with getting this project off the ground.
Tonight I was one of three presenters at the Central Iowa Linux users group to discuss virtualization. I’ve been an off and on attendee, but I thought the timing of my return from VMworld, my xen hosting project, and my work at Dice would lend itself to a good discussion about Virtualization and what linux users can do in order to get started with it today.
Most of my discussion was on what to use, how to use, and where to go for help, however, it was interesting to see the discussion turn to security. It’s always interesting when people cross that line to really start thinking about all of the implications that having a server as a file implies. It was a great discussion, I got some great questions, and I look forward to having more time to discuss the hows and whys of virtualization with a more technical audience.
After the meeting we all went down to Raccoon River Brewing company. I wasn’t sure I was up to going but I’m glad I did. I worked out the details of getting my server in over at Internet Solver, and I had a chance to talk with Dave Coy, the head brewer at RR. He was there late into the evening, and we hashed out some of the details of my next post…………
It feels like I was just here in San Francisco. I have been looking forward to this event all year. One of the most revolutionary software companies in business today, VMware, makes this VMworld, their main event. Labs, classes, talks, panels. crappy convention food, everything this year was big. And to top it off they threw a party, and trust me, VMware knows how to throw a party.
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I talked about a project I was working on at the last LUG meeting to get some services of mine moved out of my house and into a “real” datacenter. My thought was to lock down my home network, and have a server at a CoLo facility or in a datacenter to host my mail, web, subversion, and associated services I use on the road. This project quickly changed as I realized the cost of putting a server in a data rack somewhere. So in order to facilitate my own desire to get this stuff moved over, and not wanting to pay a alot of money for a whole server that will sit idle most of the time, I decided to start my own Community Xen hosting project.
The guys at xen-hosting.org have a great template layed out and I’m excited to get this into action soon!
First trip out the door as a Dice employee and I’m off to LinuxWorld. Not to shabby. I wish I could report that LinuxWorld this year was a screaming success, but I can’t. Novell was there in full force, and I sat through a couple of great talks about Linux on the desktop, one in particular that stood out was a discussion about a large car manufacturing company in Europe (name escapes me at the moment) given by Guy Lunardi, the lead product manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. Good information all around. What most impressed me is the hours and hours of samba/PAM/openldap hacking that I did at Rain and Hail boiled down into a button click with SLED. Whee.
Security is a wonderful thing. I didn’t bring my conrey.org login information with me to VMworld, so I’ve got one big update, summing up the whole experience:
Monday, I got up early today and after picking up Andy, got out to the airport. Everything went well getting to the airport, and the flight out was uneventful. We linked up with another attendee flying in from Des Moines, and I offered to get give him a lift rather than having to get a taxi in LA. After landing, getting out luggage, and getting our rental, (and dropping off our hitchhiker) we headed off to get some food. We ended up going to a great Vietnamese restaurant, and I ordered a good meal. I stopped by a Chinese bakery afterwards not knowing what we were doing the next day for breakfast. Andy had never been to a Dim-Sum restaurant and after seeing a one that looked good, figured that we’d be back in the neighborhood.
Tomorrow, Andy M. and myself are headed out to Los Angeles for VMworld. I’ve visited the TSA website, and am still boggled by the illusion of security at airports. I really don’t care for air travel anymore. I used to love flying, but the TSA has made my my last few trips a pain. Not this bad, but uncomfortable to say the least. I had to explain that not having windows on my computer wasn’t a national security risk (and that was when I was carrying a US army contractor ID), and that some people do travel with more than 2 laptops. I can avoid that at least this trip however, thanks to this work VM I’ve got ready to go. This will be my first VMworld event, and getting there aside, I’m looking forward to it. More to follow.
In the process of upgrading my mysql installation I deleted (whoops) my conrey.org database. Luckily for me I’ve been backing up (irregularly) my database and the only post lost was my “podcast listening habits” post and my “honey amber ale” post. I’ll recreate it and post it again soon.