Supreme Intergalactic Oneness

Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] ( listen)) is a German language expression (Zeit means "time," and Geist roughly translates to "spirit") referring to "the spirit of the times" and/or "the spirit of the age." The word Zeitgeist is used to describe the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).

I have recently watched the Zeitgeist movie http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ and I have been left thinking; do I feel inspired or out right petrified...

While I was raised a noncommittal Catholic, I always marveled a the absurdity of the story's told in the Bible. I do believe in the teaching and practice of good will towards your fellow man. But I know giving money to a church for the opportunity to have this message preached to me is redundant...

You know if you are doing the wrong thing, if you feel ashamed or guilty about your actions, you are probably doing the wrong thing. If you need to go to church every Sunday as an excuse to learn what you already know, you are a slave to ignorance.

While I do not think the people going to church are bad people, the institution they populate is feeding on their ignorance.

Watching the Zeitgeist movie has only made me realise this further. The comparison between the Egyptian sun god Horus and Jesus Christ just made laugh at the ludicrousness.

In relation to the monetary system, I would like to see the Venus Project mentioned through-out the documentary, if only because it is alarmingly similar to the Star Trek Universe....

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Do yourself a big favour and watch the Zeitgeist movie. It makes great dinner conversation...

Excuse to fail

Today I muse at the thought of having a day off from the gym to laze around and eat what ever I want. Sounds to me like scheduling myself in to fail.

I have a deal with myself that I can eat McDonald's on trips to Sydney. Lately I have made many trips to Sydney... Coincidence? Perhaps not. But just try to stop me...

I really enjoy Pavel Tsatsouline's method and ideology for training to a stronger body. His way of thinking is not to give yourself an excuse to fail. Which works for me. My mates Nathan and Jones have unwillingly been dragged into his workout style and they really enjoy the punishment, as far as I can tell... Though they seem to be missing more and more sessions... :-)

No planned days off for me. Things happen in the natural course of your life that steer you off track from your training, so why plan to stray from your goals...?

What an odd thing to blog about. Load of shit if you ask me. I'll be at the gym if you need me.

Below is a picture of my mate Jones after just 3 minutes... in MS Paint. JONES YOU BEAST!

Transformers Poo: Cries of the colon

Giant robot balls. These are part of the obscene absurdity at climax of the Transformers 2 movie. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, someone says “scrotum” - just in case you thought they weren’t going to make a silly point of them.

The original movie only took its self half seriously; the sequel dons a big red nose, floppy clown shoes, a novelty flower and squirts farting robots in your eyes...

If you’re going to make it this stupid, bring in the Dino-bots!

Stupid movie! Don’t waste your time...

Virtually inconceivable

I’ll admit I’m on the VMWare bandwagon. I love the idea of moving a whole system to another device with the click of a button, being able to setup a server to run a single process. My mate Chris would immediately have had a coronary reading that last part. He is of the mind that we greatly underestimate the power of a single Virtual Machine and the hardware underpinning the whole infrastructure… and I agree with him.

I’m starting to see an awful trend with virtual machines. 1 virtual machine (VM) to run one process. I know not every infrastructure is the same and sometimes there is a very real need for this “1 for 1” setup. But I still see it unnecessarily used quite often. At a former company I worked for, they where actually using a VM running Windows Server STD 2003 to execute batch files… (if Chris is reading this, he has had an aneurism and is now dead) 

Now get this… When the ESX box powered up, it launched 9 other similar VM’s running similar configurations to execute similar tasks. I’m not joking. Seems like an awfully expensive way to run batch files. I of course remedied this as soon as I could, much to the delight of the CEO, followed by the despair of the CEO, realising they now owned several redundant copies of Server 2003 they had spent the company’s money on. 

Granted that is a rare and extreme case. But I’ve seen setups where the file and print servers are separate VMs for no good reason. For God’s sake throw some application services on there too, because the bloody things are idling. I refuse to hear arguments of “room for growth” in this type of scenario. We all know the physical infrastructure is only an investment for 3-5 years and the physical infrastructure is a moot point considering how easy it is to move hosts between environments. 

Ramble, ramble, ramble… 

In essence I am seeing ESX boxes running too many unnecessary hosts. It actually reminds me of the Windows Services tab, only a lot more expensive. Instead of Windows Server hosting a service to perform a task, ESX hosts a VM that runs Server 2003 that hosts a service that runs a task… Make sense to you? Me either… 

With all these out-of-the-box plug and play virtual appliances, where by you can have a functional Linux server up and running nearly as quickly as you can download it. I see a change in the need to run Windows Server in a VM all together. In the future could the need to run Windows Server (or any base OS other then ESX) just be a legacy issue? I’m asking, not telling… 

Enough of my rants… For now…

4x4

To all 4x4 drivers.

Burn in hell.

That is all.

iPhone

At last I have joined the magical world of the iPhone. Where the possibilities are endless (provided you don't want to Bluetooth or MMS)

I arrived at the office to find a sleek black box on my desk. "AT LAST!" I thought with glee. I quickly unwrapped the rather simple packaging, crammed in the SIM and... Nothing. Being an IT person and failing to be-able to intuitively operate an Apple product is most embarrassing... Alas, I picked up the manual and skipped to the "Getting Started" section.

iTunes! Curses! This was the key to unlocking my iPhone misery. Not wanting to install iTunes at the office I would have to wait until I got home...

...8 anxious hours later I arrived at home, downloaded iTunes and signed up. I was confronted with the usual questionnaire... Username: This & Password: That... Wait a moment... Credit Card... Curses! I groaned at need to insert these details in order continue. Screw it! Next, next, next and I was in.

App Store. Great
iTunes. Great
Touch Screen. Great (novelty is still yet to wear off)
iBeer. Great

Now what? Can you expect something to exceed your expectations?

It's good, it works and I enjoying checking the footy scores on weekends when I am out and about... But what else is there?

I don't regret getting an iPhone, but I do get a feeling I am missing something... Something important... If you know what this might be, be sure to call me on my Blackberry.

Over and ouddy

Not married yet...

Getting pelted with paintballs, vomiting for 10 hours straight, receiving lashings from a cranky bride... These are the things I have endured over the last few days. My so called friends (fiends) gave me a wonderful buck's.

All for getting married...

I'm feeling pretty good about the big day, though I know I'll be a nervous, stuttering, sweaty palmed little boy cometh the hour.

All this for love? It hardly scratched me. Bring it on!

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same -Oscar Wilde