Piratefish Site Moved, Version 4.6 is out!
Okay, so it's been a while since any updates here, so there's plenty to talk about. I could rant on about the little things, like my slow conversion to Mac, how much I love my iPad, how mad I am at Tic Tac's dropping the peppermint flavor for the new Freshmint flavor, and sneaking it into stores everywhere. It still amazes me how many times people have to pull the "New Coke" stunt just to try and revive their sales. It's either that, or the owner died and his son wants to pay off his new Ferrari. I hope they bring back the original peppermint flavor soon - I really miss it. Freshmint reminds me of what mints taste like when I'm done puking and want to try and kill the puke flavor that toothbrushing can't reach in the back of my throat, so I eat a mint, and it tastes like Freshmint Tic Tacs. But I digress.
For starters, version 4.6 of the Piratefish is out - for those of you who've been wondering if Ubuntu will EVER update their copy of the MailScanner software, well, it doesn't matter - we have an alternative to their poorly managed update system, and it's documented in the latest version, available to all previous owners of the guide. This solves a major problem folks had been having with mail looping on their fish.
Next: The New Website. The Piratefish site has grown over the years, starting from FrontPage, then going to Dreamweaver, and now finally to WordPress. WordPress, for those not familiar, is a CMS (Content Management System) that handles all the time-consuming website stuff like formatting, graphics, looks, Etc. with a nice point and click web-based management interface. Combining this with a blog-like approach to content, it's now easier than ever to update the site, document new releases, Etc. After spending some time with it, I'm convinced that it's the best way to go when it comes to building websites now - the plugins and widgets make customizing a snap, and the template options are quite nice too. There's still a learning curve for anyone managing it, but there's a lot of power available, even for a guy like me.
On the conversion to Mac front, I had a recent pleasant experience moving the wife's PC into a Parallels Virtual Machine - her old machine was starting to show some stress on the north bridge, plus it had a habit of overheating as it was breathing too much dust. Running the Parallels Migration Tool on it left the machine packing up a copy of itself for 3.5 hours, but the end result was a 100gb file on the machine which I then moved to the Mac. Parallels booted the VM instantly (it was on an AMD system too) and other than loading up some drivers to get the integration to work, it was a piece of cake. Definitely a well rounded tool there.
On a more or less different front than the usual list of rants, I recently completed the Cisco Troubleshoot class. If you're a serious Cisco admin, this class might be worthless do you, but for those of us who've moved on from Cisco and haven't quite kept up with all the little tips and tricks for debugging within IOS, this class can provide you with some excellent growth for your Cisco grey matter.
Speaking grey matter, I'm feeling nauseated once again. Better find something to eat soon that's not Freshmints - otherwise I'll be tasting them again in a very bad way that no amount of burritos could solve. Even the Santiago's Burritos that the boss got us at work the other day were better - and when they say they're "hot green chile" - you'd better believe it. I got one of them and darn near added new holes into my throat. Even the consultant from India who sits next to me had a hard time with his burrito, and he had a medium heat one - this from guys who use ghost chile's as elephant repellent on their fences and in-laws.
As for other headaches, my biggest one now is what to do with all the leftover stuff I have from upgrading two computers to Macs in my house - I mean, I've got two rack-mount servers without jobs, and I've also got a Packeteer Traffic Shaper sitting in my office gathering dust, and I've converted my Acer Aspire Revo into a low power server by adding an external Toshiba 1TB eSATA disk drive. One thing about these eSATA drives - seems that the cables can be somewhat sensitive to direction in some cases - in mine, the Toshiba drive had this nasty curve on the case, which forced me to shave some of the excess plastic off my only eSATA cable. The speed difference is great though with it - beats the pants off USB drives. I figure a trip to the Mile High Flea Market with all my stuff is probably in my future.
For starters, version 4.6 of the Piratefish is out - for those of you who've been wondering if Ubuntu will EVER update their copy of the MailScanner software, well, it doesn't matter - we have an alternative to their poorly managed update system, and it's documented in the latest version, available to all previous owners of the guide. This solves a major problem folks had been having with mail looping on their fish.
Next: The New Website. The Piratefish site has grown over the years, starting from FrontPage, then going to Dreamweaver, and now finally to WordPress. WordPress, for those not familiar, is a CMS (Content Management System) that handles all the time-consuming website stuff like formatting, graphics, looks, Etc. with a nice point and click web-based management interface. Combining this with a blog-like approach to content, it's now easier than ever to update the site, document new releases, Etc. After spending some time with it, I'm convinced that it's the best way to go when it comes to building websites now - the plugins and widgets make customizing a snap, and the template options are quite nice too. There's still a learning curve for anyone managing it, but there's a lot of power available, even for a guy like me.
On the conversion to Mac front, I had a recent pleasant experience moving the wife's PC into a Parallels Virtual Machine - her old machine was starting to show some stress on the north bridge, plus it had a habit of overheating as it was breathing too much dust. Running the Parallels Migration Tool on it left the machine packing up a copy of itself for 3.5 hours, but the end result was a 100gb file on the machine which I then moved to the Mac. Parallels booted the VM instantly (it was on an AMD system too) and other than loading up some drivers to get the integration to work, it was a piece of cake. Definitely a well rounded tool there.
On a more or less different front than the usual list of rants, I recently completed the Cisco Troubleshoot class. If you're a serious Cisco admin, this class might be worthless do you, but for those of us who've moved on from Cisco and haven't quite kept up with all the little tips and tricks for debugging within IOS, this class can provide you with some excellent growth for your Cisco grey matter.
Speaking grey matter, I'm feeling nauseated once again. Better find something to eat soon that's not Freshmints - otherwise I'll be tasting them again in a very bad way that no amount of burritos could solve. Even the Santiago's Burritos that the boss got us at work the other day were better - and when they say they're "hot green chile" - you'd better believe it. I got one of them and darn near added new holes into my throat. Even the consultant from India who sits next to me had a hard time with his burrito, and he had a medium heat one - this from guys who use ghost chile's as elephant repellent on their fences and in-laws.
As for other headaches, my biggest one now is what to do with all the leftover stuff I have from upgrading two computers to Macs in my house - I mean, I've got two rack-mount servers without jobs, and I've also got a Packeteer Traffic Shaper sitting in my office gathering dust, and I've converted my Acer Aspire Revo into a low power server by adding an external Toshiba 1TB eSATA disk drive. One thing about these eSATA drives - seems that the cables can be somewhat sensitive to direction in some cases - in mine, the Toshiba drive had this nasty curve on the case, which forced me to shave some of the excess plastic off my only eSATA cable. The speed difference is great though with it - beats the pants off USB drives. I figure a trip to the Mile High Flea Market with all my stuff is probably in my future.
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