Binary Brew

So, when we goto Port Discovery, they have this exhibit called “WOW - Wonders of Water”. This exhibit has a really neat feature where they have a low pressure water flow and varying lengths of PVC pipe, elbows, tee’s, etc. Its a blast every time we go in there. So I decided to build one for the kids, here it is:

I sketched out a rough diagram of what I wanted and took the kids to Home Depot to pick up the parts. About an hour later we returned with all the supplies needed to build our own “Backyard Splash Park!” I built the frame with 1″ PVC and the connections for the kids to play with are built out of 1/2″ PVC. I purchased a pond pump from Lowes to feed the water and “Tada!” we have a self contained re-circulating “Backyard Splash Park!” The best part about this contraption is that we aren’t wasting tons water in the back yard, the kids can just play with the water from the pool.

We spent 4 days in lovely New Bern, NC, Fairfield Harbour actually. Its a great little secluded time share resort with lots of elderly people. The weather was perfect, about 70 degrees with a slight breeze each day. We ventured to the beach on Sunday, but the wind was blowing at a steady 20mph so it made the day rather chilly and sandy but we still had fun. The highlight of this trip was “Barnacle Bob’s Boat Rental”

We rented a pontoon from this company and had a blast tooling around the Neuse River and Trent River. We tried fishing a bit but had no luck, the houses on the river, more like mansions we neat to look at, we also saw several Osprey’s protecting their nests.

Retrurning the Pontoon.

This was a great trip, the day on the water ended with late lunch and Morgan’s Tavern and Grill, where I had the best Cheese Steak I have ever tasted. If you are ever in New Bern, I suggest you try out this place. The food and service are superb and the prices are very reasonable.

Morgan’s Tavern and Grill

Our yearly vacation to New Bern is always great. Its relaxing and exhausting at the same time. This year we brought our bikes and the trailer so we were able to explore more. I was hoping to actually catch some fish this year, but nothing seemed to like our Night Crawlers this year, so maybe next time.

So, if you are looking for a nice place to vacation with the family that is close to a beach, close to a river with lots of fun and relativly inexpensive things to do, I suggest heading to New Bern, NC. Btw, its also the birth place of Pepsi!

I just installed a Thumper, a Sun x4500 last week. Aside from the hours it took to install from a virtual CD using the iLOM interface, it took about 30 minutes to configure 32TB of usable storage in a RAID2Z configuration with 4 parity groups. In that thirty minutes I was also able to build a filesystem from the pool with 5TB reserved and exported for NFS use and compression enabled.

There are several blogs out there that I referred to when configuring this beast and that helped immensely in planning the deployment of this box. Next week, after my vacation, I plan on installing SAMBA/CIFS and seeing if I can make this 48k$ 48TB Raw ( thats 1$ a GB ) out perform the several NetApps that we use. I have trunked the 4 copper GB interfaces using dladm and LACP so we should be able to see some incredible performance out of this machine.

How do I do it? Well. I blog with my blackberry. Public transportation in DC sucks.

Hmm… let me see how I feel next week and I will post about my new job at XM Radio.

If a doctor from Pakistan says its true then it is right???

10 scientific reasons to have sex

Emailed by Dr. Azfar Hussain from Karachi, Pakistan

1. Scientific tests find that when women make love, they produce double amounts of the hormone estrogen, which make hair shiny and skin smooth.

2. Gentle, relaxed lovemaking reduces your chances of suffering dermatitis, skin rashes and blemishes. The sweat produced cleanses the pores and makes your skin glow.

3. Lovemaking can burn up those calories you piled on during that romantic dinner.

4. Sex is one of the safest sports you can take up. It stretches and tones up just about every muscles in the body. It’s more enjoyable than swimming 20 laps and you don’t need special sneakers!

5. Sex is an instant cure for mild depression. It releases the body endorphin into the bloodstream, producing a sense of euphoria and leaving you with a feeling of well-being.

6. The more sex you have, the more you will be offered. The sexually active body gives off greater quantities of chemicals called pheromones. These subtle sex perfumes drive the opposite sex crazy!

7. Sex is the safest tranquillizer in the world. It is 10 times more effective than Valium.

8. Kissing each day will keep the dentist away. Kissing encourages saliva to wash food from the teeth and lowers the level of the acid that causes decay, preventing plaque build-up.

9. Sex actually relieves headaches. A lovemaking session can release the tension that restricts blood vessels in the brain.

10. A lot of lovemaking can unblock a stuffy nose. Sex is a natural antihistamine. It can help combat asthma and hay fever.

Wow.  We had a great dinner at the Lebanese Taverna tonight in Tysons.  Great food, we had the BABA GHANNOUGE, FATTEH BLAHMEH and SHAWARMA. If you have not eaten there before, I highly recommend it, if you like middle eastern cuisine. We saw “We Own the Night“, good movie. It was a good story and kept you interested all the way through. Plus it has a good opening with Eva Mendez. So sorry Devon, I know you wanted to see George Clooney tonight.

Oh and I got my orientation package from XM today, but for some reason only have of it was for me.  I think HR at XM had some sort of mix-up.   Oh well, I’ll call on Monday and find out what the story is.

Our TV died two days ago, so I headed over to Best Buy to get a new one. I decided on a Sony Bravia 32″ LCD.  Its HD ready and I am impressed with the quality of the “On-Air” HD local channels. The only problem is now I have an HD TV but I have nothing that can take advantage of the quality other than my local channels.  A new HD Tivo is like 300, so I wont be getting that anytime soon and an HD DVD player is like 300 also. I discovered that if I connect the MacBook Pro to the VGA port on the back, I get a really nice picture when watching HD QT videos, but watching a DVD doesn’t really add any clarity. I’m afraid that this TV is the beginning on my eventual home theater. 32″ TV is much bigger than I expected.  I am used to watching on our 26″ CRT.  32″ is a great size for watching movies.  Its a wide screen and our old BOSE system sounds great (thanks dad for the donation) though I am tempted to buy the new BOSE all in one system with the 4way surround speakers. Well, regardless, I am happy with the purchase. Watching Discovery Channel DVDs are far more impressive on this TV than any we have had in the past.  If anyone is looking for a new TV and wants a flat screen LCD, I recommend the Sony Bravia 32″ its only 700 at Best Buy.

Jesse Jackson thinks that the XM/Sirius Merger will among other things, “eliminate opportunities for minorities to have a partnership in media ownership”.  There are many reasons to want to oppose the XM/Sirius merger, claiming that it will eliminate opportunities for minorities is not a reason. I personally think most minorities would find his argument offensive.  Jesse Jackson seems to be saying that if the government doesn’t step in and stop the merger, that minorities wont be innovative or successful enough on their own to compete with the new monopoly. I can think of two minorities right of the top of my head that are successful in the media world.  Dick Parsons, (CEO of Time Warner) and Nate Davis (President of XM).  XM and Sirius are not out to destroy minorities, they are trying to make money.  You make money by providing a great service and if XM and Sirius believe that they can provide a better service as one company, then I think they should go for it.  This would be a monopoly in the Satellite broadcasting space for cars and portable devices, but DirectTV, DISH, CellPhone, Shoutcast, iPod, and various other mediums, including AM, FM and HD radio that consumers can choose from. I think it is appropriate for the government to provide some oversight on the deal to ensure that the companies are interested in doing whats best for the consumer. In the end, this deal is about trying to make more money for Sirius and XM and providing a better experience for the consumer.  It has nothing to do with trying to screw minorities.
Just look at the executive leadership at XM: 

  Nate Davis, President and Interim CEO
 From Radio Ink Article:Jackson continued, “I urge this commission to view this proposed transaction — as it is currently structured — not in the public interest. It will eliminate diversity of content and meaningful opportunities for minority partnership in media ownership. This cannot happen. This commission must uphold the statutes and regulations that promote content diversity and opportunities for media ownership by minorities.”