Virtual server fun
I finally got round to building my lab servers in my office.
It’s certainly different using Microsoft Virtual Server and System Center Virtual Management Manager.
I’m scratching around for a 64 bit, Hyper-V capable server now.
Twitter, Twhirl, Adobe Air and uninstall
I installed twhirl a couple of months ago. Today it stopped working telling me that Adobe Air was broken.
There is nothing on Vista to let me uninstall, repair or otherwise tinker with Air and its applications. I found this timely blog post on uninstall:
http://blog.flashmech.net/2008/05/this-is-how-you-uninstall-adobe-air/
Quoted from his email, here’s how you uninstall Adobe AIR if it does not appear in the Add/Remove Programs control panel:
Download the latest installer and then pass it the “-uninstall” flag from the command line, like so:
AdobeAIRInstaller.exe –uninstall
Worked like a champ.
Vonage
We switched over our phone providers when we moved.
Here’s how it looks so far:
Utah:
Local – Qwest – $45 per month
LD/Intl – AT&T – $75 per month
DSL – Covad – $130 per monthWashington:
DSL – Covad – $130 per month
VOIP – Vonage – $30 per month
Most of our phone service was international to the UK – we made very few local or long distance calls. Now with Vonage we’re getting those as part of our plan.
The other big saving is in killing the local service. I got Covad with naked DSL (also known as a dry line) – so there’s no dial tone on the phone – just data.
Wireless
The wireless network is re-configured and running.
Finally I got the wireless network, IPsec and wi-fi security configured to let authorised laptops be part of the private backbone. No more uploading photos to the NAS server only when docked!
I had to swap out the old wireless router – an old Netgear – it would randomly drop DHCP offer packets from the backbone to the bridged wireless network. Even the online docs from Netgear say it’s problematic.
I upgraded to a new 802.11n router – works perfectly and gives great throughput.
The old Netgear is now the guest, non-backbone access network. Wireless access for guests and family without letting them loose on the backbone.
ITIL v3 Diploma
It’s ITIL reading time again.
Following on from the ITIL v2 Managers Certificate I am now working on the next step for the ITIL v3 equivalent.
It’s been difficult finding the details – but what is now clear is that the route to the ITIL v3 Diploma is via the v3 Manager Bridge training.
To that end I’m off to sunny Brisbane in July (in the middle of the Queensland winter) to sit a 4.5 day Manager Bridge course and then a multiple-choice exam. The pass score for the exam is something like 80% – so I’m reading the ITIL v3 books – yes all five of them.
Spam, Spam, Spam – a follow-up
It’s nice to have google eat the spam instead of me.
Before the move I switched the MX to use hosted google mail – I saw an immediate drop in spam handled by spamassassin.
The flip side is that my hosted google mail shows about 2000 spam being caught for my emails every day.
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