With the first 3-day holiday weekend of the year, I managed to make as much of a dent in the jeep project as I could. What became obvious, though, is that the old beast ain’t givin’ up its secrets willingly.
Not that this is a surprise, of course. I mean, it’s been severely mistreated for the past several decades. Left out in the fields, burdened with obnoxious and atrocious tow bars and roll bars, left to rust for years on end. It’s no wonder it wouldn’t know how to react to a little TLC. Read the rest of this entry »
So, I went and picked up the Jeep a couple of days ago. It’s actually in even better condition than I thought it would be. We actually got the engine running!
A day earlier, my Service and Repair manual came in the mail, so obviously it’s helping engender quite a bit of excitement. Read the rest of this entry »
Lately I’ve been craving a project that can get my creative juices going, something that doesn’t involve computers, networks, or pretty much anything overly software-oriented. In fact, I need something that’s going to take my mind off of anything remotely related to that stuff, take me out of the work mindset.
Ever since I was a kid I wanted to rebuild/restore a car. The problem? As a Navy brat we never lived anywhere long enough to actually start a project with the reasonable expectation of finishing.
The other problem? I know next-to-nothing about cars. Seriously. I’m a total noob.
I do, however, have a total thirst to learn; I’m a sponge. In fact, I’ve spent several hours reading about restoring cars (especially old Jeeps). Anything I can get my hands (or web browsers) on, I’m there. Any advice I’m given, I’m taking. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night I watched an episode of Undercover Boss, the one where the CEO of Baja Fresh went out and made a fool of himself on the front line of his restaurant chain. That’s what is supposed to happen, though, as we’ve seen the formulaic show policy of thoroughly embarrassing corporate CEOs. This time, though, the show had the unusual effect of actually making me never want to go to a Baja Fresh restaurant ever again. Read the rest of this entry »
I need to write to describe my increasing displeasure with Continental’s merger with United as it relates to declining customer experience. For years I have promoted Continental’s exemplary customer service and stellar commitment to rewarding loyalty, and have deliberately shifted all of my business to Continental. In 3 of the past 4 years I have achieved Silver or Gold Elite, and so I have come to expect a certain exchange of value with Continental: you treat me well, I use your service.
During the course of the transition this treatment has declined to the point where on my last flight I was livid.
Today is the day that Apple has mandated that the iCal calendaring system be “updated” to the MobileMe service, if you happen to subscribe that is. After waiting as long as I could I did the “upgrade” yesterday, spending nearly 3 hours trying to get some semblance of a working calendar. In the end, I just shut the damn thing off.
CNN published a pretty well-balanced article on some of the medical experts’ opinions about going through the radiation-spewing Backscatter machine at the airports. Her informal, unscientific survey seemed to indicate that some would, some wouldn’t, and each had their reasons based primarily over the amount of radiation released.
Just got through reading an interesting and well-written piece by Steve Inskeep, co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition.” In the piece he laments James O’Keefe’s sand-bagging of Vivienne Schiller and compares the “faux” story with the “real” stories of the Muslim Brotherhood that he and others were currently reporting simultaneously.
It was a well-written piece, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that Mr. Inskeep was missing a much larger picture and, as a result, does deserve to be examined within a broader scale.
In short, Mr. Inskeep, I respectfully disagree with your selective scorekeeping.
Last week, I had a very interesting email conversation with Chris Mellor, storage writer for The Register. As a trade press reporter, Chris has been trying to distill some of the technologies of FCoE for his readers and one of his articles prompted me to write to him and offer some corrections and clarification.
At first I thought that Chris’ article might have simply been a matter of laziness or FUD, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions about his motives – and I’m glad that I didn’t. In a very thorough email outlining where he got his information I can not only fathom how he came to understand things the way he did, but also empathize with his frustration as a result.
While it may seem like I’ve been taking a hiatus from blogging for a while, the truth is that I’ve been working on a number of writing projects related to FCoE. As I mentioned on a recent Infosmack podcast there have been a lot of developments coming out this month and, understandably, there are a lot of people who are trying to figure out what it all means. In the process, there are some people who are trying to talk about FCoE but are muddying the waters horribly.
The main misunderstanding revolves around FCoE standards, because by and large most people have no real clue how they work and what they mean. My goal is to help clear up some of that confusion and give a baseline understanding of standards as they apply to FCoE. Read the rest of this entry »
Just a short post today to promote the Infosmack podcast that I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate. I’ve been a fan of the podcast for a while and when Greg Knierieman asked me to join I was honored and excited. Along with Greg and Marc Farley from 3Par, I was invited along with Doug Hazelman from Veeam.
We talked about Doug’s work with Veeam, my recent transition to Cisco, FCoE and standards, the ethics of blogging and Greg even got me to reveal my scars with karaoke (the title of the podcast contains “Thunder” for a reason, let’s just leave at that until you hear the podcast).
All in all, a really good podcast and a hell of a lot of fun to do.
Scott Lowe, a highly respected technical blogger, wrote a really good, short piece on “Blogging for the Right Reasons.” His sentiments echoed my own when people asked me about providing advice for job seekers when it came to blogging. Like Scott, I believe that if you are blogging solely to get hired, you are blogging for all the wrong reasons. I say this despite the seemingly contradictory fact that I recently got hired in no small part due to my blogging. Read the rest of this entry »
I watched the WWDC feeds and paid close attention to the claims that were made by Jobs/Apple and felt that, despite the technological magic that Apple produces, it couldn’t outshine the deep-seated emotional anger that my intelligence was being insulted, blatantly and deliberately. The “reality distortion field” didn’t work for me, not this time. Read the rest of this entry »
We have LAN admins. We have Server admins. We have Storage admins. Each with its own culture and methods of doing things. Perhaps the biggest issue surrounding convergence is the need to converge people’s skillsets. I propose that teams that are going to be working together start seeing themselves as a joint SLAM (Storage and Local Area Management) admin, part of an overall SLAM team. Read the rest of this entry »
Recently I went to a technical conference and, as was to be expected, found myself subjected to the classic “Death By Powerpoint.” I found myself getting frustrated and insulted by the lack of respect the presenters – and by extension, their presentations – showed their audience. There are a lot of places on the Intarwebs that can give you directions on how to create presentations, but there aren’t a lot that will explain why it works the way it does. Allow me to provide a brief insight as to some of those “whys.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by J Michel Metz 
