The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays. Some of my favorite things include fireworks, picnics, hangout with family and friends, and enjoying being outside playing games, riding my bike, or reading a book. This year I took the family to Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster, Pennsylvania a few days ago. We had a great time with all the rides, shows, and water park. We left the park to have a picnic lunch before returning to enjoy the park some more.
I am planning on grilling ribs, hotdogs and corn on the cob for dinner. Tonight I will line the sidewalk with sparklers to have a little fun for the kids. I’m sure the kids will have have fun writing thing in the air with sparklers too. We will watch the fireworks from the front yard since there is a park near by, and maybe have some of the fudge we picked up a Dutch Wonderland with iced tea or lemonade.
New Job creative sign with clouds as the background
Today is my last day with my current employer and working for a fantastic client here in Delaware. I made a lot of new friends in IT and on the production floor. Some of them I will stay in contact with on Facebook or Google Chat, others I will see in the area. But now it’s time for me to move on, to take care of my family’s needs. Sadly the new job will not include Linux work, but there are high profile projects which are scheduled to begin shortly after my start date.
My notebook running Linux Mint 11 and my fart bank
During my two year stay, I really appreciate the client giving me a wide latitude to develop my Linux skills. When I first arrived in 2009, my cube was filled with twelve PCs all running Windows XP or Vista. Shortly afterwards I installed Ubuntu 9.04 to learn how to use Linux in a production environment. Soon, I was running two Linux boxes; one as a personal file server with Samba and NFS, the other as a VM host for multiple Windows XP machines in multiple non-trusting domains.
By the time I left, I had four Linux PCs (one as a Linux Mint 11 notebook with a Windows 7 x64 VM, my original Ubuntu file server, a new Ubuntu 11.04 x64 file server with an external RAID 5 1.3TB disk box running Samba and NFS, plus a Linux Mint 11 PC running a Windows XP VM in the other domain for Active Directory support). I’ve also deployed Ubuntu 11.04 to my manager’s Dell M4500 notebook, Linux Mint 11 to a colleagues’ notebook, and started training another colleague, on using Ubuntu 11.04 with NFS and Samba.
I also had the chance to deploy RHEL 6 workstation as a host with a disk box for off-site archive, and a introduction to ESX for creating new Windows Server VMs.
I wish all the best to previous employer, my manager, my colleagues (local and other sites through out the U.S.), and to all the people I supported at the Delaware locations. I will miss working with you, and hope to see you soon!
I removed the old 320GB HDD and installed the new 500GB drive, installed Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (came with my PC) and then installed Ubuntu 11.04 x64 onto a second partition. This time I made the Ubuntu partition larger for all the VMs I had on the old system. I used the Vantec device and copied all my data files for all my account in Ubuntu and Windows 7 to the new HDD. I’ve used the Vantec device at work many times, and to me it was worth $20.00.
The old 320 HDD is locked away in-case I ever need it again. Maybe I will install it into a external eSATA device for quick backups or recovery for PCs that I work on in my spare time.
I am please with the performance of the drive, but happier that I don’t receive messages from the OS telling me I’m out of space again.
Summer officially starts on the American East Coast at 1:16PM, and I’m looking forward to it this year. I plan on spending more time with family and friends and enjoying the outdoors. My brother asked me to help install a swing set for the kids (returning the favor from a few years ago), grilling steaks, veggies, hotdogs, and bicycling in the morning and evening.
I am also taking a week off from work this summer to spend time with my children. We’ll make a few stop at Rita’s, maybe catch a movie, and hopefully catch a Wilmington Blue Rocks game too. Who knows, maybe I’ll surprise the kids this year and take them to the beach for the day.
On a final note, my office (man cave) will be complete this year! I’m still working on a few ideas, but I will have a wall mount for a future LED monitor, and a work area for working on PCs. I was originally going to move the Linksys E4200 router to my office, but I changed my mind. I will run a CAT 6 cable from the router to my office and connect it to a Linksys SE2800 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet switch. I could get away with a 5 port switch, but there may be a time when I need a 6th port for something.
Last week I received a Facebook message from a friend asking for PC assistance. Over the last 2 years, they have seen my PC running Ubuntu 10.x and heard me talk about how stable and secure my PC is. When Ken’s hard drive failed a short while ago, he ordered a new hard drive from Dell (it was cheaper through Dell than other retailers here) and installed Windows XP Home Edition. Unfortunately Ken was not able to install the drivers for his PC. Ken brought his PC over to my place, and we talked about Linux while I installed the missing drivers and SP3 for Windows XP.
I had my work computer (Dell Latitude E6400) which runs Linux Mint 10 at home. The Dell PC and my Sager PC were booted and I gave a demonstration of each OS. After about 30 minutes, Ken wanted to run Linux Mint 10 on his Dell Inspiron1525. So I used my Linux Mint 10 USB stick to verify this PC would run Linux without problems for Ken. Everything worked except for the Dell wireless NIC. Linux Mint 10 was unable to detect the card, and since I was running out of time and didn’t want to configure it manually, I shutdown the PC and booted from my newly made Ubuntu 11.04 x32 and x64 ISO USB stick.
Ken’s PC is several years old so I tried the 32-bit version. For once I was pleasantly surprise with Ubuntu 11.04. Unity worked, and it wanted to install the proprietary drivers for the Dell wireless NIC. So I started the installation as a dual boot system and went back to some house work. I installed all third party codecs and drivers from the initial installation screen.
Afterwards I gave Ken a quick tutorial on how to use Ubuntu 11.04. Although I am not a big fan of the Unity interface, I think this might be a great introduction to new Linux users.
So far I’ve nothing but happiness from Ken about Ubuntu 11.04. He is using Facebook and has access to his e-mail. I wish I could have installed a client that would allow Ken to use his iPod Touch to connect to his iTunes store. If anyone knows of an application that will give Ken this ability in Ubuntu without using Wine, I would like to try it out.
Drahusz 