the stinkin’ blog

I came across this article that describes a secure Nagios setup. Lot’s of good detail in a well thought out entry.

Enjoy.

I just cannot seem to get into a groove when it comes to postings. Everything is so scattered these days. Being pulled in multiple directions at work, doing more with the kids and trying to play with all the toys make for difficulty in making time to post.

I think more than “busy-ness” I am unable to find a good tool that allows me to update a little to twitter, keep a journal to wordpress and still allow flexibility for other things. Hmmm…TOO MUCH Web 2.0 in my life!!!!

This week I have started a new position with Canonical and am at VMWorld 2008 being held at the Sands Expo Convention Center in Las Vegas. I am surprised to see that there are over 14,000 attendees to this conference this year and all of the known and unknown names in virtualization are here.

VMWare does appear to put on a good show although when I arrived in Las Vegas and went to registration Monday the lines were quite long and organization appeared to be lax at best. After a few hours the lines died down and all was good, but they did not handle the resource usage well for a virtualization company.

I have found a number of very interesting vendors here this week. The most interesting one is BlueBear. In addition to their slick titles like “Benevolent Director” and “404 User Not Found”, they have a very slick product code-named “Kodiak” that is not only a pleasant interface, but a usable pleasant interface. Built on Adobe Air, Kodiak represents your virtual network in a very usable map that allows the user to see the near real-time status of their virtual environment. The coolest part, it is going to be using a open source license. Others like Elastra are interesting in their model even if they have a bit of trouble in explaining exactly what they have to offer. I had done a bit of research on Trigence and was pleased with what I saw. They seem to be similar to Virtuozzo where they use containment virtualization to abstract the application from the OS.

Overall, VMWorld 2008 appears to be a great success for VMWare and the vendors attending. The attendees are smart, interested in what is being offered and forthcoming with information. In the coming weeks, I will try to highlight more about my trip.

I started a new job on Monday. I am now employed by Canonical USA, Inc. Canonical is the commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu and is run by Mark Shuttleworth.

I am a ISV Manager responsible for recruiting ISV partners to utilize Ubuntu. Currently Canonical has a number of ISV’s utilizing Ubuntu for one purpose or another as well as a number of partners that support Ubuntu with their products.

This is a truly exciting opportunity for me to make a real difference and help drive the success of not only Ubuntu, but also Canonical.

Well, my time has come once again to be gainfully employed. So much for the free life.

I am off to VMWorld on Monday (15 Sept) to work with Canonical and then off to SFO for some meetings with Sun on Friday. If anyone is going to be around and wants to hook up, let me know.

I’m staying at Treasure Island…woo hoo.

JP

I continue to be amazed at the ease of use of Ubuntu. Of course, the changes made to support new hardware in the Linux kernel helps, but this project was too simple.

I had purchased a simple little Logitech notebook camera a few months back and recently upgraded my laptop to Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04). I simply went to download Skype, chose Ubuntu 7.04+ then right clicked on it with Nautilus and installed it via Gdebi Package Installer. Gdebi suggested 3 other packages to install with it and after logging into Skype it simply WORKED. No tweaking, no fiddling, no manually installing other packages. IT JUST WORKED.

Now if you only knew my Skype ID you could skype me. I guess you will have to ask nicely.

Freaking RIM. They are pissing me off. Acting as if they are a monopoly or something in preventing me from using my phone the way I want to use it.

I am trying to get my Blackberry 8310 to allow me to use DUN via bluetooth to provide an easy way to gain access where I only have a cell signal. Proving to not be an easy task.

I have used this link and it was a good start, but this link has MUCH more detail. Unfortunately the kapsi.fi link has nothing about Blackberry, but some good tips for discovery. And finally, this link helped with Ubuntu, but led me to find that my Blackberry is not supporting DUN?

Not sure why, but my Blackberry does not have DUN working. It seems that others have DUN on their 8310 so I am wondering why mine shows nothing! Argh.

More digging.

Now that hurricane season is about to peak we are seeing a bit of activity. Currently we have FAY which is now coming over Cuba and into the Florida Straits (as of 18 Aug 0900 ET-1400Z). What fun. Fay isn’t expected to do too much harm although in the current forecast track we will get the brunt of it since the right-forward quadrant usually holds the worse weather.

There are a number of areas in the eastern Atlantic that forecasters are monitoring and the water temperatures at the National Data Buoy Center are in the mid-80’s. Nice temps for hurricanes.

As for FAY…the winds are on the increase and the pressure is on the decrease at the Sand Key Station. The buoys are fun to watch. I saw the highest wave height ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico by a buoy when Ivan came by and hit west of Pensacola in 2004 - somewhere in the neighborhood of 45′.

Weather - it is SO much fun.

UPDATE - they put a “floater” over an area (94L) of disturbed weather in the Atlantic. Fay seems to be a bit ragged after going ashore in Cuba. Two main areas of convection - one hitting the Bahamas and the other still over Cuba. Circulation looks to still be moving N-NW. Have to see how much FAY is able to re-organize in the time over the Florida Straits today.

JP

I always have a list of things to do. I think we all do. The problem for me is the fact that I am so inconsistent in organizing these thoughts. I keep saying I will stay organized, but I put that on my list and that list “get’s lost”.

So…how to do that? I need an app that will help me organize. Is it a specific product or a rudimentary php app? Hmmm.

Let’s add that to my list.