Some say that people buy Ferrari’s to be seen in them. While that might be true in some case, my guess is that the majority buy would the 458 Italia for what’s inside as well as out. Beauty is only skin deep but this bella has it all. Amazing looks and amazing stats to match. The Ferrari 458 Italia is powered by a 4.5 Liter V8 that delivers 570HP and hurls the car from 0-60MPH in only 3.4 seconds. Top speed is 202MPH and it red lines at 9,000 RPM. Perfect exhaust tuning is the cherry on top. From the videos I’ve watched (I’ve only seen one is person but my neighbor has one on order so hopefully I can bum a ride when it comes in) the red line is high and the car gets happier the higher you go. Anyone used to driving a BMW M or other high HP car can surely relate. The happy zone doesn’t even start until 5,500 – 6,000 RPM’s and it gets even happier between 7,000 – 8,500 (or scary if you’re not paying enough attention).

Check it out..

Voting Democrat:
If caring about people carries a liberal label (say that fast 3 times) then I’m a liberal at heart. My ENT (ear, nose and throat doctor) started lecturing me about “those damn people who drain our economy” and how they need to “get off their asses” and “get off welfare”. Well the closet Republican in me agreed but the caring liberal didn’t care to hear that. I reminded him that he’s wealthy (not all docs are but I know he is) and that he lives in a prestigious neighborhood, comes from a good family and was probably force fed tons of opportunity as a young man. In contrast and since he mentioned “those” people, let’s look as someone who was less fortunate. Sure I could run through the million reasons why but frankly I’m too tired. We can start with money though. Unless you are a truly “special” person (and I don’t mean Olympics), it would be nearly impossible to break that cycle of poverty and lack of education without someone caring enough to lend a serious hand. If your parents are uneducated, you likely are too. If your parents have no morals, you will probably follow suit and so on. Kids are clay and we all know that. So again I could go on and on but I’m tired.

Point is, without social services we could have entire communities similar to those in India where masses are born with nothing, grow up with nothing, grow old with nothing and die with nothing. The circle of life at it’s finest ? Not so much for them I suppose. And BTW when I say “nothing”, that specifically includes opportunity. In all fairness I’m not suggesting that my doctor is an uncaring person, because I believe he is. He was a Vietnam Vet and performed over 800 face and neck surgeries in just one year in Vietnam which makes me grovel at his feet. But for some reason he doesn’t care about the unfortunates (not the bums) he was referring to. 

Closet Republican:
This one is easy… money.

I’ve got plenty of republican friends who vote straight republican party line for the wallet and nothing else. No regard for anything other than their own personal or business finances. As much as I hate to admin it, I like that too. Tax cuts for the rich make sense to me since they typically create jobs. Letting Wall Street execs rape people I disagree with. Zap their nuts with a taser all day long as far as I’m concerned but that’s an entirely different issue anyway. So if I create jobs and contribute to the economy, why not get some extra benefit from that aside from my paycheck? Cutting my taxes would allow me to hire more people, which in turn helps others, which makes me a liberal again.

Doh! Now I’m totally confused.

My definition of cloud computing is quite simple… It’s groups of servers working in tandem to provide a redundant, scalable and elastic platform which you can use to offer services via a web browser. There are plenty of people who would disagree with my definition but I don’t care because I’m one of those 100 people that I mentioned earlier. Now let me break it down in a bit more detail.

We’ll start with “groups of servers working together in tandem”…

When I say groups I don’t mean two, but rather cabinets full of rackmount servers. Lets say for example we have 1 cabinet with say 36 dual proc, quad core Dell PowerEdge servers with 32Gb or ram each. Let’s also say that we have a SAN w/16 TB of disk space. You can build a really nice cloud with that setup BTW. Since the current cloud hosting standard (and I use the term standard loosely) is based on how many instances you can squeeze out of a single server, let’s assume that number is 16 (although it could be considerably higher or lower depending on client requirements I would). I’ve arrived at that number by taking the 2 processors that I have on a single server, multiplying that by the 4 cores per processor and then multiplying that times 2, which gives 16. BTW I’m using very rough numbers and I’m leaving a lot of things out because this is intended to give you an example of how it works. So, we are left with 16 instances that can run on a single server. Based on that math if we multiply 16 instances by the 36 servers that we have in the cabinet, you have the capacity to provide 576 instances and. Since all clients are different and some require greater resources than others, you can rest assured that you will not have 576 identical instances running on this cloud. It’s more likely that you will have say 100 clients using the equivalent of 2 instances. Maybe 50 clients using the equivalent of 4 instances. Probably even some single clients using all of the resources of a single server and then of course at the bottom of the revenue-generating totem pole you have the guys who only want the least expensive option and they will get the tiniest slivers of available. Anyway you’d never want to sell all 576 instances on the server because then you would leave no room for clients to burst for additional CPU or memory requirements. I’m not going into the software and operating system side of this but let’s make the assumption that your server instances can be either Linux or Windows based. Now that we have the technical details out of the way, let’s move on to the basic concepts of server instances and how they’re created and moved around backed up and restored.

On to the “redundant” part of my definition that I mentioned earlier…
The coolest thing for me about cloud computing is that everything is virtualized and therefore virtual. I know that sounds dumb but bear with me as it requires further explanation. The hardest thing for most people to get past when they try to grapple with the concept of cloud computing is the fact that your server instance doesn’t physically exist, yet it looks feels and acts exactly like a physical server. When you reboot it you can access the BIOS just like a physical server. You can slam off the power to it just like a physical server. It can get hacked into oblivion just like a physical server. It can be backed up and restored just like a physical server (but that process is way better in the cloud).

Another great thing about this is the ease and speed of deployment. If you need 50 servers in 5 minutes, you can have 50 servers in 5 minutes. If you want to configure 1 server perfectly and then launch another similarly configured server, you can convert your server into a template and then spin up another instance based on that template. If your cloud is built properly you will most likely not use local storage. When I say local storage I am referring to the physical hard drives that typically live within the physical server that your particular website happens to live on. The reason it’s best to not do that is that you lose redundancy across the cloud. If you have an attached storage device and all of your server instances live on that device, physical servers simply connect to that storage device, grab the instances that they need and then they spin those puppies up. What this means for the average user is that if your instances are running on a particular server and that server happens to fail, your data is still intact because it lives elsewhere. And if the cloud is configured properly, available servers that have adequate amount of free resources will be notified automatically that a physical server failed and it will redirect other physical servers to lend a hand and spin up any instances that were left hanging. This is the auto healing feature of cloud computing has so many people sitting at the edge of their seat. Also if you have all of your data stored in one location it’s much easier to back that up and again if the cloud was built properly, you would have redundant storage or at least a storage device with lots of redundancy built into the chassis.

Now that we’ve learned how instances spin up and how they can be moved around, now let’s talk for a moment about how they are backed up and restored…
Unlike traditional backup systems that connect to your server, analyze the data that has to be moved and then they download the data either on a file by file basis or a block by block basis, cloud computing typically uses what is referred to as snapshots. Snapshots are essentially the equivalent of a photograph of your instance and its state at the moment that snapshot was taken. Snapshots are instantaneous, easy to archive and are fully functioning replicas of your server instances. The key thing to remember about that is the “fully functioning” part. What that means is that they don’t have to be restored, they just have to be booted up. There are people out there who would say “yeah that might be true but they have to be moved from the storage array back to the.. wait a minute, you said everything lives on the storage server, nevermind”. In a nutshell this essentially eliminates the need for time-consuming and often problematic server restores from backup devices. If your cloud is configured properly, you should be able to set snapshots to occur on a recurring monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly basis if needed. You can then select the number of instances that you want to retain and you just created a vast library of backups that you can access if needed. Another great thing about snapshots is that they are 1 ginormous file which makes them easy to move around and securely upload to an off-site location or even to your corporate headquarters for extra safe keeping. Of course, they should be encrypted because they could contain sensitive data.

Now let’s talk about the “scalable” & “elastic” part of my definition…
Scalability is quite easy with cloud computing because it’s typically something that you can do on-the-fly and from a web-based control panel. Unlike expanding the disk space on a dedicated server which requires taking the server down, transferring the data, swapping the drive, etc. Cloud Computing allows you to resize the drive from within the control panel in real-time. Depending on how the cloud is configured it might require a reboot but I would take that any day to double my disk space. Same thing with memory (RAM) because that is something that can be adjusted at the user level through a control panel and you can typically expand up to the available resources on the particular server node where your instances happen to live. But let’s take it a step further and make an assumption that for some reason you feel you need 24GB of RAM for your environment. It’s very unlikely that the physical server your instances would be living on would have 24 GB of available memory for you to utilize. However with a few clicks of a mouse on the control panel your instances could be transferred to a server node that has no other clients on it and just happens to have 32 GB of RAM. So yes it is very possible for a single server instance to have 24 or more GB of RAM. The only limitation that I’m aware of is the amount of physical RAM installed on the server node that your instance happens to live on in that particular moment. But again since all of your data lives on a separate storage device, it’s easy enough for the controllers to instruct a server node that has 32 gigs of RAM to spin up your instances thus providing you with this ridiculous amount of memory that you might need. CPU scaling works the same way so there’s no need for me to go into the gory details again. Bandwidth is a non-issue because most respectable providers have an over abundance of available bandwidth to provide to you.

I could literally go on all day about cloud computing because I am completely fascinated by the possibilities. Clients love it for the ease-of-use and power that it gives them over their environments. Providers love it because of the economies of scale and centralized management. As the clouds of the world mature, I believe that power users will begin to let their guard down and start dropping dedicated servers in droves to hop on the cloud. As long as you don’t take a significant performance hit by moving your application to cloud, the benefits of being on a properly configured cloud are astronomically lopsided when compared to a typical dedicated server environment.

Cloud computing has evolved past bleeding edge and some would say even passed cutting edge but like any emerging technology, there will be pain aplenty. You can mitigate your exposure by easing into it and testing the waters rather than taking your website to turns $1 million per month and yanking it from your perfectly stable dedicated servers and tossing it on the cloud. Rather I would recommend that you incrementally migrate your environment or better yet, build out a virtual development environment that mimics your current production environment. Since cloud instances can be purchased by the hour or by the month, the cost to do this is relatively low. Point is you can build a full-blown development environment that would cost you thousands and take potentially weeks to deploy, probably within a couple of hours while you sip on a latte in your home office. You could stress test this environment until you develop a level of confidence that would allow you to migrate into the cloud without sacrificing your peace of mind.

Thanks for reading this and I really do hope this was helpful.

Some people say Dallas “has no soul”, or that it’s “plastic fantastic”, but I say it’s a great place to live if you travel a lot. One thing I noticed right off the bat was that most women were blond, fake that is. Not that it’s a bad thing and I suppose if I were a woman with mousy brown hair or started to prematurely gray, I would consider hitting the peroxide bottle too. In fact the first joke I remember hearing in Dallas was.. What’s black and blond and black and blond and black and blond? A blond doing cartwheels.

Enough of that, on to the important stuff. Life here is actually pretty good. We have an over abundance of (deep breath) restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, clothing stores, liquor stores, car dealerships, bank after bank after bank after bank after bank after bank, tons of pawn shops, a bazillion car repair places, too many movies theaters, (3d, reg, drive-in, independent, etc..) at least a couple hundred sushi bars, tons of strip clubs, parks, lakes, walking and biking trails, way too many doggie day care centers, lot’s of airports, auto race tracks, sports teams, horse racing, massive arts community, the grassy knoll and way more Churches than you could ever imagine or want to see in one place. You could start your Sunday morning in a Baptist Church, walk to a Lutheran, Church, mosey on down to the Synagogue, skip over a block to the Mosque, drop by the Hindu temple on your way to the Vihara (Buddhist monastery) and wrap up at the 3rd Church of Christ Scientist (whatever that means) all within about one square mile. I’m not joking about that.. they don’t call this the bible belt for nothing and the lord giveth mightily to those willing to venture into the lucrative (and tax free) business of Religion.

Dallas is a great place for the workforce and for business. Texas has as massive economy, great airports, highways and rail systems so goods flow easily in and out. Tech is big here as well since space, bandwidth and electricity are plentiful and cheap. Dell is right down the highway, we have EDS, American Airlines and lots of other big Companies that call Dallas home.

Personally Dallas is a bit drab when it comes to things to do. Sure restaurants, movies, museums and the like are fun but if you want to get away for the weekend, you have to either get on a plane or drive at least (3) hours in any direction (but West) to find anything that does not resemble Dallas. It’s also hotter than hell in the Summer and it gets pretty cold in the winter. We had a full month a few years ago when the temp was over 100 degrees everyday with no rain. We’ve had (2) bouts of snow already this Winter and just saw 12.5″ which is a new record. In fact it was below freezing for at least (5) nights in a row. We can’t really complain though because having lived in NY, I know all too well how mild our Winters are in comparison.

One of my favorite things about Dallas is that I know my way around and I know lots of people. Even in a city of Millions, I find myself bumping into a friend or acquaintance at the market or movies or museum, etc. It’s also a great place to go for long walks if you have a dog (or even if you don’t) although I’m amazed at how may people prefer to sit on the couch when it’s nice outside. I’m not qualified to comment on traffic since I live less than 1mi from my office. That’s by design but I do know that any freeway here can and will become a parking lot at least once during a typical day (weekends included).

So there you have it. Dallas is a fairly new city, it’s mostly clean, fairly safe, nice roads for the most part, great to travel in and out of and most of all it’s economically stable with somewhat mild temperatures. I would have to give it a solid 7 out of 10.

Till next time ~ John

So anyway I told the guy “no you can’t have $0.25 cents” and he said “thanks allot asshole”. I said “what did you say” and he said “you’re a racist”. So for him the difference between a racist and a non racist is only $0.25? Anyway I suggested he attempt to procure gainful employment (AKA get a f*cking job) and he said “I have one”. Then I said “so why are you asking me for $0.25 cents” and he said “because I didn’t get paid today.. mother fucker”. I literally busted out laughing which I’m sure he didn’t appreciate.

Now this is the truth but I don’t care if that guy was white as a ghost and dressed in a Armani suit, I still would have said the same thing. So he walked off with his middle finger in the air and I laughed my way back to the car but when I got in the car I started thinking about the much larger issue. About his life and what made him hate me the way he did. I’m pretty sure he didn’t hate me over $0.25 cents, so it had to be something else. Then it occurred to me that I really didn’t care because I try not to generalize and am pretty sure that guy didn’t represent anyone but himself, and that he was just another dumbass. It was sad to see him so bent out of shape over $0.25 cents and ready to get into a fist fight because he assumed I hated all black people when he appeared to hate all white people.

So where does that leave us? Who knows and who cares.. I voted to Obama but agree with tax cuts for the rich (because they create jobs). I’m liberal but I believe in people taking responsibility for themselves and I support the death penalty. I’m tolerant but think we should lower the boom on people who milk the system from wall street execs to food stamp abusers. I’m a non believer but respect religion and feel that it has a valid place in society.

We all have a long way to go..

Yes I have a point and it is simply that I’m an official UFC fan now. The heavyweight bout was entertaining as well between Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir and this was the first time I’ve dolled out $55 for a PPV UFC event. DirecTV loves me because I buy all the boxing PPV events and now they love me even more. My initial thoughts on UFC were the same as John McCain that it was one step above street thugs and was way too wild, brutal and a near death experience for anyone willing to step into the octagon. But after watching the Ultimate Fighter program this season and learning about the sport, it was apparent to me these are not guys they round up off the street (with the execption of Kimbo Slice) who struggle to even spell UFC. They train hard, the techniques are very complex and the sport itself is totally legit. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to see it as an Olympic sport one day.

So congratulations Dana White, you earned another fan! Boxing can be so unpredictable, so many fights turn out to be stinkers, judging is crooked as ever and the match making is often times just plain bad. UFC is more exciting, more dynamic, more explosive and frankly more fun to watch. I’m still a devoted boxing fan and will take Pacquiao vs Mayweather over the Lesnar vs Mir rubber match any day. But look out boxing, you have some real competition now and the time has come to make better match ups, get rid of crooked judges and earn my respect again.

Ka Boom!

In no particular order here they are.

Don Verplank – Las vegas
Don and I were really best buddies at High School in Las Vegas during the late 70′s. It’s funny how songs take you back and there are a few that I can’t hear without thinking of a person, place or thing from that time. For Don it’s “Hold the Line” by Toto and “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen. We would sit in my car smoking weed and screaming along with the radio. Our purpose in life was to A) chase girls and B) have fun (hopefully while chasing girls). We did pretty well for ourselves and managed to stay out of trouble because we were into having fun and hung around nice, cool people who didn’t judge us and weren’t trouble makers themselves.

We did some crazy stuff like hike to the top of a desert mountain with (2) joints and a lighter as our only supplies. That’s right, we brought pot but no water. We also hiked pretty deeply into abandoned silver mines for fun and almost never had a spare flashlight or batteries. We would play air guitar at parties for friends and would put on a serious show. I’m talking about jumping up and down, head banging, windmill right arms and all. Funny thing was we didn’t give a crap who was watching or what they thought, we were just (2) friends having a blast and enjoying ourselves. One year it snowed (6) inches in Vegas and we were driving on a (4) lane road and I just looked over at him, cranked the wheel all the way to the left and smashed on the brakes (there were no cars around) and we spun like an Indy car for at least 12 circles and a quarter mile until we slid to a stop on that snowy road. Once we took my car into a mud soaked field and did donuts for about (15) minutes until the car was 100% covered in mud and we finally got stuck. We had to hike around (in the mud) looking for a plank to put under the wheel and about an hour later we finally got unstuck. We went to a desert party that got busted by the cops as they came in with multiple helicopters and had also setup up a roadblock on the only road back to Vegas. We were the first car out and as we tore down the highway we quickly became first car to reach the road block, with no less than (200) cars behind us. Well the cops searched every car starting from the last one which meant we were in for a long wait. Nearly (2) hours had passed by the time they got to us and they were past ready to go home themselves. The cop shined his light inside the cabin of the car and we had forgotten to hide the pipe that dangled from the sun shade. He asked if it was ours and in two part harmony we both blurted out “nooooooo”. He laughed, took our pipe and sent us on our way. Good thing he didn’t check under the floor mats.

Fred Lane – Houston
Fred was a good friend that I made while living in Houston. Living at the same apartment complex made it easy for us to hang out in the evenings and since I played guitar and he played keyboards (he could tear up the Maple Leaf Rag) we had plenty to entertain ourselves with. Fred had a job working as a bartender at a strip club and while I never really got into that scene (it was too hard for me to pretend that I didn’t know that the stripper really only wanted my money) I enjoyed visiting him at work from time to time. Fred was a quick friend because he moved away but we became very close and shared a ton of fun times during that probably (6) month friendship. Mostly evolving around his stripper friends and playing music.

Chaz Moreland – Las Vegas
Chaz was a blast and we hit it off right away because he was funny as hell and I appreciated a good sense of humor, especially if I had to hang out with that person. Seems like all Chaz and I did was get dressed up and go to parties. That probably sounded gay but trust me, we were not. What I meant was that we would wear nice clothes, fix our hair, chow down on breath mints and anything else we could do to gain favor with the ladies. We were both dorks (sort of) so we needed all the help we could get. Also his car was an AMC something. It was like a Pacer station wagon but with a broken AC, saggy headliner and rusty side panels. That car sucked so hard that we actually had to turn on the heat during the day time, in the Summer, in Las Vegas to keep the car from overheating. It even had dual AC units, they were called windows, one on the left and one on the right. Imagine pulling duct tape off the hood off a black car during August in the middle of the desert. That’s what it felt like pulling your nut sack off your thighs when you got out of that POS. We still had fun and that car took us to the promise land on more than one occasion. I sure wonder what he is up to now.

Hank Townsend – Houston
My surfing buddy and a great singer too. This was in Houston and we would go surfing in Galveston which is quite hard to do. The water is murky, the waves are flat and if you’re lucky you might get to ride (1) good wave every (30) minutes. We usually went during the Winter because the swell was bigger (not by much) but anything helped. One night we drove to Galveston so we could wake up at the crack of dawn (AKA feeding time for the sharks) and get the best waves. Let me preface this by saying that I really dislike lions. Any animal that will start eating you before you die has front row seating on my shit list and the lion sits front and center. So we decide to sleep on the seawall because the car is too small and right at dawn I feel something poking my face.  When I opened my eyes I literally thought I was dreaming because a full grown lion was sniffing my face. Some dumbass had a full grown lion on a leash walking down the seawall of a public beach and he let it size me up while I lay sleeping. My initial reaction was bowel busting panic followed by a 300bpm mini heart attack. I’m talking the kind of shock when your legs gets separated from your torso but you feel no pain because you’re in that kind of shock. As I started to regain my senses, the dumbass pulled the lion off my face and started strolling down the seawall like it was no big deal. That was a rough morning. This might sound odd but the water would get so cold that we would drink as much hot chocolate as we could stand and chase that with a few glasses of water. The purpose was to make yourself have to pee.. a bunch. We wore full body wetsuits with booties and yes we pee’d in our wetsuits to stay warm. Sure it might sound disgusting (OK, actually it is) but everyone did it and you knew when someone was letting go because you would hear that familiar moan of ecstasy echo across the water. Hank and I would play music all the time as he was a guitarist as well as a talented singer. We both shared an affinity for Journey and he could actually sing that stuff pretty well. Hank had a great family and I think he went on to UNT and I would assume he has done well for himself.

It would be easy to go on and on but enough for now. If you guys see this, look me up.

Now back to the iPhone issue:
My wife has a 3G and I have a 3GS, she needed the 3.0 update so she could copy, paste and a few other cool new features. She uses a Sony Vaio and I use a MacBook Pro so everything works differently when you have an issue. So I connected her iPhone to her notebook, started up iTunes, clicked the update button and watched in awe as it took a digital dump. Not only did it render the phone useless, iTunes could not see the phone at all. I tried reinstalling iTunes, rebooting the PC, restarting the iPhone, reinstalling the USB drivers, tried two different USB cables, used msconfig to stop all services except for ituneshelper and qtask and nothing. Having tried everything I knew and after scouring Google for answers I quickly realized it was going to be a long day and that I was NOT the only person suffering from the dreaded 1604 error.

This left me with no alternative but to call AT&T because I assumed that Apple would be unreachable only (2) days after the release of a new iPhone and iPhone O/S.

611 is the number you call from your cel to get AT&T support so I called and started navigating the prompts until I heard “for Apple iPhone support press 1″. Then I took a deep breath, settled back into my chair, took a sip of water, closed my eyes and reluctantly pressed 1. To my amazement within a single ring I was greeted by a friendly voice who appeared to speak English as a first language. He was friendly, calm, helpful and determined to resolve my issue quickly. We ended up doing basic troubleshooting and he quickly understood that I had a clue and had done everything correctly up until this point. He eventually confessed that Apple had no resolution for this error but said there was a work around and all I had to do was restore the iPhone on a different computer  and my Mac happened to be in my lap at the time. He stayed on the line as I did a quick restore and then plugged the phone back into the PC so it could sync again. It worked flawlessly and I was grateful but sure wish that tip had been in the FAQ on apple.com. It does say “try a different computer” but it doesn’t say “restore to factory settings on another computer and then sync to your normal computer” which would have been clear enough for me to figure it out without calling in. Either way my blood was starting to boil as I navigated the voice mail prompts but it quickly cooled off when this Apple rep (yes he worked for Apple, not AT&T) took charge and led me to the promise land.

Way to go Apple for excellent customer service and thanks again for not forcing me to speak with four different people who all call me Mr. John.

1. Instant stress release
Just imagine, you’re about to go postal and the office dog walks in with a huge smile, doesn’t judge you and even better, doesn’t have anything stupid say. All they want is a quick pat on the head and to be acknowledged.

2. An excuse to get outside for a few minutes
It’s therapeutic to take a good dog for a walk. I’m talking about the kind of good dog that doesn’t pull your arm out of the socket or bark at everything that moves. It’s good to clear the mind and people rarely “go for a walk” anyway so this will at least break the monotony.

3. No strings attached
You don’t have to commit to grab a beer later or act like your interested in what they have to say because they have nothing to say. It’s a mutual relationship with no strings attached and if it happens to be someone else’s dog, that might even be better for you because it’s truly a relationship of convenience. You both get what you want and you’re on your way. Rest assured that dog will not show up at your house one evening with a dozen roses in it’s paw.