Jan
11
Productivity
So in the past week I’ve been wicked productive, finished a few VMware Accreditations and got a bunch of work done on the web servers. The VMware training wasn’t bad, a little dry and some of it I ended up skipping and just taking the tests but I did learn some new stuff haha. I do like all the new vSphere offerings and the whole cloud mentality, even if some business find it to be very different from what they are used to since certain departments or lines of business in the company only own VM’s and not the underlying hardware all the time. I also like the new VDI offerings. VDI and remote connections have come a long way from the days of a burning green terminal connected to a mainframe. With the new protocols VMware is using now even video and other multimedia can be played back with little to no issue.
In other news, I’ve been working hard on the new Discount Pulls online catalog and quoting system so we can try and step up sales as well as working on another side project with a couple friends. Discount Pulls is looking great, I decided to use an existing open source e-Commerce solution called osCommerce. It’s quite a nice commerce engine that can be easily modified and tailored to your needs. I’ve done a bit of customization to it so it looks and works how we will need it since sales will not be directly processed through the site. I also found a nice site with some free templates that could be used with the site and picked a nice one out to use till it is worth revamping the looks of the site. Can’t wait to get it fully operational but that could still be a couple weeks away, tho I am about ready to build out the product database for the site.
So I spent the New Years holiday in Disney World with Amanda. That was just awesome. The parks were more then packed, some setting records for highest attendance to date but this didn’t stop us from having a great time on rides, shows and of course the Disney fireworks. Those fireworks were insane, and just beyond awesome. Anyway, I’ll let the picture do the talking about the trip, they new Disney: New Years 2010 album will be up in the photography section in the coming days. Would have had it up sooner but takes a while to work with over 400 pictures to build a nice gallery that really shows the trip and has a flow that follows our movements through the parks.
Lastly before I go, I would like to simply say that the RX-8 (who is hence forth named Zooey) is a blast to drive without power steering. Why no power steering you may ask, well lets just say that the Electric Power Steering harness may at times be susceptible to moisture damage and or corrosion. This has caused the rack to shutoff due to a perceived short in the harness so now I must go over the harness and test for shorts and clean all the connectors and seal them with di-electric gels. That being said, I still do like the feel of the raw un-adultered steering, well except when I’m sitting still then it can be a bit of a pain in the butt haha. I’ll update when I get it sorted out, may also post up a “how-to” on the forum side of the site.