Flew in to Texas this afternoon (plane landed about 2:30pm Central / 3:30pm EST) and after finding may way out of the terminal I made my way to the bus for the rental car where I ended up getting a Dodge Caliber with a GPS system as my rental. First impression is that it is a decent car but not something I would want to own as I feel very cramped in it. I found my way to the hotel, TownePlace Suites, without to much of an issue. I say without much of an issue because it took me a little while to understand what the GPS (a Garmin Nuvi) was saying, mainly because every time I had to use an on or off ramp from a major highway (by the way Dallas and Las Colinas seems to be nothing but concrete and asphalt!) it sounded like it was saying to take the “sledge road” and that confused me, but luckily I could tell by the map what it wanted. After finding the hotel and getting checked in I decided I had better find my way to the class location so I would at least have an idea of how to get there in the morning. Turns out it’s not very difficult to get there but the main road is closed due to construction, of course, so I have to take a detour that puts me back out on the main road (Walnut Hill) about 15 yards from the driveway to the class location. Thankfully I have the GPS though because it was able to re-route and find a way back to the class location, and seeing as it is pretty straight forward I won’t need to use the GPS in the morning. After finding the class I then decided to go have dinner at a Sushi restaurant that Chuck recommended from when he was down here called The Blue Fish (this location), and I have to say it was very good! After dinner I came back to the hotel to relax and prepare for class, I have a feeling this is going to be a long week.
Category Archives: Ed
Daddy, the Easter Bunny was here
Happy Easter!
Kylie woke me up this morning at about 7am, she came in to my room and quietly called me while standing next to my bed. When I stirred and moved over she climbed up and said “Daddy, the Easter Bunny was here. 
Can we go and look?” So we got up and went and had a look, and she was right the Easter Bunny had come. On her little table were two baskets of goodies, and not just limited to candy, though she had plenty of that too. She also got two books: Harry the Dirty Dog (which was one of Daddy’s favorites when he was a kid) and The Giving Tree, which is a classic. Additionally Kylie also got some new socks and 3 garden stone painting kits. All in all it was a good morning. Sadly though our day was cut short because Daddy had to leave to fly to Texas for a week of training. 🙁
My Kindle’s Here
My Kindle arrived today, so when I got home from work i spent a few minutes opening and preparing it. The case I bought with it (M-Edge) also arrived, so I immediately placed the Kindle in it. I have to say I really like the way the kindle fits in this case and am happy I got it. After reading through the welcome letter that is preloaded on the device I configured it to connect to my wireless router so it can get a wireless network connection and then I ran a manual sync to pull down all the books I had been previously reading on my Blackberry. Once the sync was done I pulled up the book I am currently reading, The Count of Monte Cristo (free for the Kindle), and was delighted to see it sync to the farthest page I had already read to. I found the default text size to be good for me and so I didn’t need to make any changes to begin reading. The text is clear and crisp, and the controls for turning the page are at the perfect position for easily pressing with my thumb. When the page is turned the new text flashes on to the screen promptly and is just as quick as physically turning a page on a real book. All in all I think I am going to enjoy having this. Now I just need to work on replacing my physical books and then getting rid of those. While I like having the books I would much rather have less stuff around the house. I think this was a good purchase after all, and with any luck I will start finding time to read more again now that I can quickly and easily get new books.
Gettin’ a Kindle
I finally broke down and bought a Kindle today. After wanting one for over a year and spending the last week talking myself out of it on a daily basis, I finally bought one. On one hand I am happy that I have it coming and on the other I already feel bad for spending the money on myself. However, I have been doing very well with paying down debt and I rarely ever buy anything for myself, so I feel it is justified. I am really looking forward to it getting here and hope that this will also motivate me to find more time to relax and read as well. I know I am looking forward to reading the books that I have been reading via the Kindle App on my Blackberry on a larger screen when I am at home and not having to be in front of my computer to do that. The only other thing I need to do now is resist the urge to immediately go purchase all the books that are out that I want to read.
Plymouth Ice Festival 2011
Today Kylie, Melissa and I ventured out to Plymouth to take in the ice show. The annual ice festival seemed smaller this year compared to memories of past years, but it was still neat to go and see. Despite it being very cold this year we all enjoyed it. It was Kylie’s first time going so she was very impressed with all the ice sculptures and enjoyed seeing them being carved out as we watched. Hopefully we can go again next year and it won’t be so cold. Here is a picture of Kylie all bundled up at the event (the rest of her from this day are in her album here) and as you can see she was really enjoying herself. All the pictures of the ice sculptures can be found in the gallery here.
All Wheels Are A Go
Well that wasn’t too bad, the 4 wheel selector switched has been replaced and they even did it for less than the quote, a dollar less but still less. Surprisingly I was only at the dealership for about 40 minutes, I think I am happier about the speed of getting in and out than I am about the lower cost. Though I looked at the receipt and wish I had the tools, knowledge and ability to perform some of these repairs myself as the part was only $28. That would have saved me some money, but then again maybe not considering I would have had to have the tools and such as well. Oh well, it’s fixed now and functioning properly and that is what is really important.
The Cost of Ownership
Called the dealership today and got a quote to repair the switch for the four wheel drive, as it turns out they can’t replace just the knob but instead need to replace the entire switch. They gave me a quote of $97.40 for parts, labor and tax and they are estimating it will take 30 minutes to an hour to do the repair. The part needs to be ordered because they don’t have it on hand so I made an appointment for next Monday seeing as I don’t have work then. I guess next Monday I will be spending around an hour at the dealership and be $100 poorer when I leave. Such is the cost of owning a vehicle I guess.
There Goes The Four Wheel Drive
It was bound to happen eventually, especially in the winter. The switch that controls the four wheel drive on my truck finally stopped working tonight. When I purchased the truck over a year ago (my how time flies) the knob on the switch was already broke. It could slide out of the console and I could see that the plastic stem that connected to the switch mechanism was broke, but it could still be used to engage the four wheel drive. Tonight it stopped properly activating and deactivating though. I was able to put the truck in four wheel high tonight, which I needed to drive home down 94 (thanks for doing such a fine job of snow removal on the highways MDOT) but when I got back home I could only drop it into Auto-four wheel, not back to two wheel. I guess I will need to call the dealership on Monday and find out how much it will cost to replace it, hopefully we don’t get to much snow before I get it fixed.
Weekend in Frankenmuth
This weekend Melissa and I did something we have never really done before, we simply went away for the weekend. Sure we have gone places before; back to NY for a wedding, and Melissa tagged along once on a work trip to PA, but we have never just gotten away. This weekend, however, we had the opportunity to get away and so we took it. We didn’t really go far, only about 90 minutes from home up north to Frankenmuth to walk around and visit the shops and then head over to Bronner’s. We had both been to Bronner’s a number of times before, but I had never actually been to Frankenmuth, I’ve driven threw it, but never actually stopped in and walked around. Considering we were able to get a really good deal on a hotel room at the SpringHill Suites, we decided to go up for the weekend. We spent, literally, the entire day Saturday just walking around all the little shops along Main Street and the River Place shops, we even had lunch at the Bavarian Inn, but I did not have chicken. It was real nice and I think I would like to go back up when the weather is a little nicer to see what it looks like thawed out and to take one of the riverboat rides. Also I wouldn’t mind going up and seeing the inside of the Frankenmuth Brewery, apparently they don’t open until noon on Sunday and we had to go to Bronner’s. It would also be great to be able to someday purchase one of the beautiful Grandfather Clock’s from the Frankenmuth Clock Company. I think the best part of the weekend though, was just simply getting away from all the hustle and bustle that has been going on recently with work and the holidays fast approaching. Hopefully we will be able to get away again some other time.
Renaming Volume Groups
I’m anticipating a project coming up at work that will hopefully allow me to rearrange some file systems on my TSM server and improve some performance. However, one of the things I want to do as part of this project is to rename some volume groups on the housing AIX server so they make a little more sense in the overall scheme of things. Problem is I was not positive as to how this should be done, so I needed to do some research. I found the commands that I will need to use to implement and make the changes, in theory:
First I need to know what volume groups are on the system, this can be found using the lsvg command:
# lsvg
rootvg
vg04
raweagantsm02
raweagantsm01
raweaganarch
Next I need to know which disks are in each volume group, this can be found using the lspv command (truncated output):
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a vg04 active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Next I will need to offline the volume group that I want to rename using the varyoffvg command:
#varyoffvg vg04
Now we need to export the volume group so we can later import it with the new name. To export a volume group use the exportvg command:
#exportvg vg04
Now an lspv would show all disks previously associated with the exported volume as having no volume group:
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a None active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Now I can import the old volume group with the new name using the importvg -y command (the -y <volume_group_name> tells the system what to name the new volume group, if this is omitted the system will automatically generate a new one):
#importvg -y raweagantsm03 hdiskpower0 (or any other disk that was part of the volume group)
Now an lsvg should show the new volume group:
# lsvg
rootvg
raweagantsm03
raweagantsm02
raweagantsm01
raweaganarch
Additionally an lspv will show the disk now being part of the new volume group:
#lspv hdisk0 00cdfe5b0855e5f5 rootvg active hdiskpower0 00cdfe5b448b684a raweagantsm03 active hdiskpower13 00cdfe5bd1d8fdd5 raweagantsm02 active hdiskpower92 00cdfe5b4494c652 raweagantsm01 active hdiskpower96 00cdfe5b448dddcf raweaganarch active
Hopefully this works the way I think it should. I have spoken with my local AIX guru and told him my plans and everything seems to check out. Once the new disk comes in for the rest of the project I’ll work on implementing the above.