Apple AirPort Extreme with GigE

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It’s funny — the other day at work, I was talking to another Apple fan and we were discussing how dumb it is that the AirPort Extreme supported 802.11a, b, g, and even n but lacked gigabit ethernet.  I was really wanting to get one, because I’ve been looking for a decent wireless router that would support both 802.11a as well as 802.11g (and the 802.11n is a big bonus!)  But I didn’t want to get one that only had 10/100Mbps on the wired ethernet – it just seems kinda sub-standard nowadays, even if I don’t need the full gigabit speed (Especially since at work, we’ve been talking a lot about 10Gbps ethernet…)  My reasoning is that I stream content from my Media Center PC to the Xbox 360 over the wireless and have heard that 802.11a is better for that since it has less interference. 

I’ve been somewhat satisfied with my current Netgear RangeMax WPN824, but had software issues with the newer v2.0.15 firmware — once I reverted to the older 2.0.11 firmware, it hasn’t been so bad.  I’ve just had bad luck with wireless routers – I’ve owned a few Linksys and this Netgear - all have had issues locking up…to the point where all devices connected (wired or wireless) no longer have internet connectivity.  Once you pull the power on the router and restart it, everything comes back again. 

With today’s iMac announcement, it appears that they silently upgraded the AirPort Extreme to include gigabit ethernet.  I have mine on order…

[tags]apple, airport, wireless, router, gigabit, ethernet, imac, netgear, wpn824, rangemax[/tags]

Bodies: The Exhibition

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This past weekend, Rebecca and I went to one of the malls in Durham, The Streets at Southpoint. While there, we went to BODIES: The Exhibition. What is it? Their website describes it as:

BODIES…The Exhibition

Celebrate the wonder of the human form in the World Premier
of BODIES … The Exhibition—a phenomenal look at the phenomena
we call the human body.

With educational relevance for all ages, this exhibition
of real human specimens immerses visitors in the complexities
of the human body, telling us the amazing story of ourselves
with reverence and understanding.

Apparently they go all over the U.S. If you get an opportunity to check it out, I highly recommend it. I found the exhibits to be amazing! Prior to going, I thought it would be kind of disgusting, but they were just presented in such a perfect way. It was very educational!

[tags]bodies, exhibition, human body, human[/tags]

Data ONTAP DSM 3.1 posted to NOW

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Data ONTAP(R) DSM 3.1 for Windows(R) MPIO has been posted to the NetApp NOW website. Last week, we finalized the product and it is now available for download. This release includes the following new features:

  • New load balance policies that offer multiple active paths to a LUN (also known as active/active policies). The new policies are: Round Robin, which uses all optimized paths, and Round Robin with Subset, which enables you to specify the combination of active and passive paths used.
    The Round Robin and Round Robin with Subset load balance policies work only with storage systems running Data ONTAP 7.2.2 and higher that use the single_image cfmode setting.
  • Support for Microsoft clusters (also known as MSCS) on Windows 2000 Server. This configuration supports only the active/passive Auto Assigned load balance policy.
  • Coexistence with the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator 2.03 and higher on the same Windows host. You cannot, however, access the same LUN using both iSCSI and FCP.

Download: NetApp on the Web (NOW, requires license key)

[tags]netapp, mpio, multipathing, dsm, fcp[/tags]

Oddities

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Speaking of the blog, you may notice that there are a few oddities…for instance, even though this post is posted under the “Blog” category, it doesn’t show up under the title.  I’m working on resolving that issue.  The problem lies in that I always run the “bleeding edge” version of WordPress (currently 2.3-alpha) and it’s having compatibility issues with my current theme engine (k2).  I haven’t had much time to devote to that – pretty low on my priority list, but it will get fixed…

[tags]wordpress, k2, categories[/tags]

Quick downtime

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Yesterday, you may have noticed that the blog was down.  I recently switched hosting providers and had to move the data over.  As it turns out, everything appears to be fully functional again.  The backup from the previous hosting provider was a bit over a gigabyte – that included my IMAP mail as well as the entire site.  I was able to move my mail back over without losing anything and the MySQL databases also imported successfully.  All in all – a very smooth move.

Great Apple Service!

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When I bought my MacBook Pro over a year ago, I also got AppleCare – it came highly recommended.  Well, after a year of just dealing with the high-pitched buzzing sound, I decided to send it off for repair.  I scheduled an appointment with the local Genius Bar, walked in, and they took care of the rest.  I also had a problem where the battery wasn’t lasting more than 45 minutes, so they said they’d take care of that too.  They received the machine on Tuesday, had the new Main Logic Board (MLB) ordered, received and replaced by Thursday and it made it here today.

I must say – I’m impressed with the level of service!  This is my second Apple laptop, but that was the first time I actually had to take it in for service – and it was a very easy and quick process!

[tags]apple, applecare, service, mlb, genius bar, buzzing[/tags]

jbctech.com worth $19K

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My friend RBChallenger from Lightning-Alley.com informed me that jbctech.com is worth around $19K on the LeapFish Domain appraisal site. Well…I don’t know about that, but I can tell you this: if anyone offered half that much for the domain, I’d be a fool not to accept!  Here’s some other interesting ones:

Microsoft.com — $132.6M
Yahoo.com — $1.5B
MSN.com — $1.8B
Google.com — $898.5M
Netapp.com — $5.3M
IBM.com — $283.1M

[tags]domain, appraisal, leapfish[/tags]

Has it been that long??

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Well, everyone – I apologize. It’s funny – since I moved to North Carolina, I’ve had a hard time keeping in touch with people. When I do get time to catch up, they always mention the blog – and there I go not updating it. I’ve been so incredibly busy lately at work that I haven’t had much time to update this. As a matter of fact, I was showing someone something on the site the other day and it didn’t even work. So, today I went through and fixed all of the little quirks that the site had. Everything seems to be functional again – and I finally got a chance to moderate the 44 pending messages for review (most of which were spam, of course). However, it’s good to note that Akismet once again saved the day – my total count is now up to over 48,800 messages caught as spam by that thing. That’s incredible!

I’ll try not to take so long in between posts this time… :)

WinHEC 2007

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I am currently at this year’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles, CA.  I arrived here yesterday and have had a chance to check out the Expo Hall, attend the keynote presentations by Bill Gates and Craig Mundie, as well as attend a few of the technical break-out sessions. 

It’s been very exciting – it’s awesome to see what all of the leaders in the industry are working on.  As far as storage – there’s plenty talk about Solid State Disks (SSDs) and Hybrid Disks, which are quite impressive.  I’ve still got a couple full days of technical sessions to check out, but here’s some press articles from WinHEC:

Gates to Tout First 100 Days of Vista at WinHEC
New Windows Home Server Hardware and Software Partners
Microsoft Announces Windows Rally Technologies
Vista Sales Near 40 Million, Gates Says At WinHEC
PLX Technology shows off USB Duet-enbled UMPCs
Fujitsu UMPC concept resurfaces at WinHEC, this time with specs

[tags]winhec, windows, conference, winhec2007, microsoft, umpc, ssd, lacc, losangeles[/tags]

NetApp RTP Softball

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Well, after a couple months of not blogging anything, I figured it’s about time to make another attempt. :) I’ve been extremely busy at work lately working on our next multipathing product for Windows. But, in my copious free time, I joined the NetApp RTP softball team. On Monday, we had our first game. We played a team called WMD and ended up losing 20-13. It was one of those games where one inning decided it all….they got the bases loaded and just kept hitting over and over and we weren’t able to stop them. It’s all for fun – and I had a blast.

Here’s the schedule:

Town of Cary – Coed C TB/MC Schedule

[tags]cary, softball, netapp, rtp, north carolina, coed[/tags]