mimicit

Where did I go? Good question.  I know it’s been a few years since my last post. I probably have no readers left /sniff, but I am ready to make a go of it once again!

I have a new job, and a new life. I am now a Unified Communications Engineer, Cisco Centric and ready to kick some enterprise level ass.

Don’t worry though, I have not forgotten my Opensource roots. My years of Linux hacking and Windows mashing have served me well. I have done done some pretty impressive installs with Cisco Unified Communications Manager and all that that entails. I have some pretty good skills when it comes to route/switch and load balancing, yup I am F5 certified as well. Hey but don’t worry, I still use Asterisk at home, and I have even used Asterisk as an SBE with CUCM, so all is good.

I work for one of the largest Cisco partners in the world now, and I enjoy a lavish lifestyle. Well, not so much, but I do enjoy all the toys I get to play with!

On a personal front, I have a little boy. He is awesome of course like his dad. I have another one ready to download any day now, so my life should get x2 times more interesting shortly.

I hope to have enough time to keep dropping the science (RIP MCA), stay tuned for more!

-D

I am going to try and avoid a group of clever analogies here and just state my points nice and clear.

People are scared of change, they do not like to be wrong, and they tend to avoid conflict.

For the most part, we are creatures of habit. This is for good reason. Just like other animals, we seek the comfort of the known. It prevents nasty mishaps like getting eaten or squashed because we failed to recognize something not so nice, with large teeth.

Windows is well known.

Trying to get an office full of people to switch to an open source “alternative” to their application of choice is not something I look forward to.  I was naive in the past, and tried to slosh enough of my enthusiasm around to cover their apprehension . This merely allows the user a focal point for their animosity, instead of Openoffice, it’s now the systems administrator.

Sure I would love to have all Linux desktops, but this is the real world.

Putting Linux on a home users PC is tough for me as well.

Maybe it’s just me here, but, I tend not use use xwindows at all for Linux.  Linux is my “serving” environment, so its all coding and commandline madness. So far, none of the ways I use Linux require me to have a desktop,  so I just don’t bother. Sure I have some full blown installations, but, I don’t use them everyday, why would I? Probably the same mentality that would keep me from ever running a Windows webserver. A…Windows..Server, wow crazy.

Dropping Windows from my life doesn’t make much sense either. Imagine the hilarity if I had to try and fix user issues with windows, with a complete lack of skill in the environment. Windows has its place, as does Linux. Windows is for users, Linux is for admins. I didn’t make the mess, I just deal with it.

So in a nuttshell, Linux and Windows both have thier place in my life, for better or for worse. Both have thier strengths, and picking one over the other is not something that seems feesable.

What’s new at .pro? Every licenced professional can get easily a pro-domain direct at the second level of .pro like yourcompany.pro or yourname.pro.And: .pro becomes cheaper.

The pro-domains are an exclusive domain. All licensed and credentialed professionals and professional entities are eligible since September 8 to register pro-domains.

read more | digg story

-It’s always exciting to see new realestate openup. I would advise your professional clients to take advantage of this and get thier domains out there. I haven’t quite figured out how to monitize this, same with .me, but I am sure somebody will trip over the solution.

I stumbled across this little nugget in the Asterisk docs, and I thought other people might find it usefull as well.

I remember buying one of these for my dad for his POTS line a while back (heh, 10 years) , from Radioshack of course. The idea is simple, a tone played down the line makes the autodialers believe your line has been disconnected.

This functionality has been built into Asterisk, here is the dial plan code:

[incomimg]
exten => s,1,Zapateller(nocallerid)
exten => s,n,Playback(enter-ext-of-person)

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/asterisk/bluewave-telecom-hosted-asterisk-solution.asp

Thats a great post and offers real insight, although a bit dated by ‘net standards, on one aspect of the Asterisk revolution that has failed to bring to the table a real player.

Asterisk is fairly painless to to get up and running, and with a little time and effort, to tweak out for a decent size deployment.

If your looking for clustering and imaging over VM’s using say, vmware (my weapon of choice) after the template is mapped out, custom kernel built and its screaming, your a step or two away.

Now rolling that into a slick interface with monitoring and fall back for the images is going to take a bit of doing. A single install with preconceived images that covers these bases, man, thats the ticket.

Now if you can imagine multiple ‘blade servers with this config, being deployed with PXE install, and you begin to see the advantage. Scalable, redundancy, and ease of deployment, you can’t ask for much more then that.

I think I feel a side project brewing :>

Doug

The people in the Asterisk Doc project have published a book via OReilly, and it’s pretty damn good.

I am absorbing it now, and I’ll post some feedback in a bit.

You can find it here: http://www.asteriskdocs.org/

Doug

One thing I have not found is a decent open source IRC message client.

This site, http://www.mibbit.com/

is a great interface, and support most platforms, not a client really, but its a decent stop gap when I need it.

Doug

Sometimes you store volatile chemicals next to your server room.

Sometimes those said chemicals explode, and melt the server room.

oy

Check it out Here

I am always of the mindset, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But with technology there is a trade off, and that sacrifice is compatibility.

So you waited and waited to upgrade your blog, only to find out that your database is completely different then the newer version that you want to use.

For WordPress the solution is rather simple:

First grab a plugin that allows the older version to output to a format the newer version can import, in this case a xml file.

The plugin to do this is located here

Follow the directions for install , then export from your old blog, import to your new one.

Took me a few hours to figure this out, hopefully this post will help you compress that time a bit.

Doug

Yup, it’s really happening, and below is the official email. The vids getting pounded right now, but there is a link.

> SPORE Launch Date Announced – Watch the teaser!

Get ready, Earth creatures. Check out the annoucement video to find
out when Spore will be in stores!>>
http://fun.ea.com/cgi-bin24/DM/y/eiei0N3dOZ0EVQ0BlNw0ER

> A Message From Will Wright

Hi, I’m Will Wright and I’m working on a new game called Spore(TM).
You’ve heard of it? Oh, that’s right, you signed up to get the
Official Spore Newsletter. According to my notes, we haven’t sent a
single newsletter out. Maybe that’s why I’ve been hearing from so many
fans wanting some new information on Spore.

While we finish up the game over the next few months, we’ll be sharing
more information with you and other fans. As a newsletter subscriber,
you’ll be among the first to get new Spore information, screenshots,
videos and other cool features from the Spore team. Check out our
launch date teaser, and of course you can visit Spore.com for updates
anytime.

Thanks again. You’ll hear from us soon.

Will Wright