good buddies and beer

a blog by Ryan Pollock

Friday, August 24, 2007

Virtualization

Somehow this week I started checking out virtualization software. Virutalization software lets you run multiple OS's simultaneously as if they were each running on a single machine. There are many ways to do this and a number of software packages that allow it. I looked at Xen, Qemu, and VMware. I actually ran virutal machines using Qemu and VMware but not Xen. This technology is really interesting and I think its going to take off in the future. You can see evidence of this by its adoption in the form of virtual private servers at hosting companies like RimuHosting and the fantastic IPO that VMware had. Now seems like a good time to learn more about this stuff, especially with the way VMware has been hiring.

VMware has opened up a few of its software products as free downloads. I tried out VMware Player which lets you run virtual machines on your computer but not create them. To get the virtual machine images you can download them from VMware's catalog, download other 3rd party pre-built images, or "roll your own". I grabbed a preinstalled version of Fedora 7 and tried it out. It works really well. The only catch is that for it to work smoothely you really need to install a set of tools from VMware, but they are only available in the paid for versions. I downloaded a trial version of their VMware workstation and used that to get the tools. The tools make things like mouse movement and sharing files between the two systems easier. Right now I haven't done too much else with it besides install, but I look forward to checking out more of the features later.

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Sammy's Party Recap

Last weekend was Sammy's triennial birthday bash. I, unfortunately, only made it to the last night of this festivity but I can tell you that it was a kick-ass throwdown. Tons of people came, there was plenty of booze and food, and the setting was absolutely perfect.

I took off early Saturday afternoon from Boston in Ian's V-dub. I was a little spaced out from working till 10:30 the night before and then going in to work that morning again. By the time we were flying up I89 at 100mph my head was clear and I was smiling. God bless radar detectors. Ian and I made it up to the party in great time and you couldn't ask for a nicer day!

When we got to the party everyone was already in the midst of it. There was bocce and beer pong going on in the upper field, with a contingent down at the watering hole swimming. I couldn't believe how perfect everything was. Sammy had rented a great house in rural VT with plenty of room for drunken revelers and all the amenities we would need. There was a keg on ice and a fully stocked bar. Sammy even flew in Mike Hogan from Streamline to partake in the party and play a set. More on that later

Sammy thought up the idea of competing for King and Queen of the party and so we had lots of scored competitions. Since I got there late the first one that I saw in entirety was the 2 minute speeches. These could either be prepared remarks or random topics drawn from a hat. There were some good ones and some terrible ones, all accompanied by much jeering from the crowd. I think Alvarez won the competition with an excellent speech about the topics "Batman vs. Superman" and "The Cuban Missle Crisis". Sammy's mother also gave a great speech, and despite much posturing that it was not her intention, scored many points toward Queen of the Party. My side was hurting from laughing so hard after all the speeches were done.

From there the party took its normal course until dusk when Mike Hogan started playing. He played some Streamline classics and was totally rockin! I think he started to catch on to the vibe of the party somewhere halfway through and started just fooling around in an amazingly musical and poetic way. Some featured songs were Freebird (to please the audience), Scotty Doesn't Know (Eurotrip + some improv from Mikey), and a total improv song about me, Farrell, and Aucter. My only regret about the party is that I do not have a recording of Mikey playing because he was fucking awesome.

The rest of the party I was really drunk so I'm not even going to try to string it into any kind of a timeline. Here are a few things that happened:

  • Midnight Swimming. I'm not sure what time we actually went but we went swimming in the watering hole, naked. I jumped off the ledge and it was cold but oh so refreshing. Thor Hushovd passed out in the bushes (I bet he has poison ivy) and supposedly Liz fell down on some rocks. I have only vague memories of all of this but I do know that the whole thing reeked of awesome.

  • Boxed Wine Stands. This did not work at all. It was actually bag of wine stands and just chugs and the wine got all over everything. I spilled wine on one of Sammy's friends (SORRY!).

  • Bobbing for Beer. After the keg was gone we dumped a bunch of beer bottles in the trash can and I decided that the best way to get them out of the icey water was by bobbing for them. I came up soaked to my shoulders with a beer clenched in my teeth. Kronik also participated in this truly American passtime.

Me right after bobbing for a beer.

Over all this was a kickass time and a great job organizing it by Sammy. I had so much fun catching up with people, cutting loose, and enjoying VT. I was there at the party for less than 24 hours but is seemed like forever.

Edit: Added the picture of me bobbing for beers

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Monday, August 06, 2007

del.icio.us

Because I am a Web 2.0 whore, I set up a del.icio.us account. Del.icio.us is a site that has community bookmark lists. Its got some tagging features and users and whatever other features you'd expect from a respectable web 2.0 site (like facebook integration). What sucked me in was the firefox plugin that lets you easily tag sites as you surf. I'm not really sure if its going to kick ass or suck but I always run across random shit on the internet and most of the time I don't feel like bookmarking it in firefox. Its funny how I have a high standard for storing bookmarks there, but whatever. Another thing I've been using for bookmarks is the Firefox plugin Foxmarks. It lets you synch your firefox bookmarks between different computers.

I think I'm just going to put random sites that I think are funny or useful on this del.icio.us thing. I'll see if I can get a "latest bookmarks" sort of linking thing going on this page.

Also: JK where are the comments on JK math?

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