Seeing as I test (QA) hypervisors (ESX, XenServer, Hyper-V) for a living, I built my own massive server and decided I would run the open source counterpart (Xen.org) and get building guest OSes of my choice.

I've been using linux since about 1991 (I believe slackware was my first install) and decided to install Debian 5.0 (Lenny) and then install Xen server with Xfce4. To keep it light but useful.

Let's just say after about 4 days of changes to /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and various other wild goose chases, I did something I've never done with linux before. I GAVE UP. It pissed me off to no end as bridging wouldn't work. Then when I fixed that, the vncclient would not display the guest OS. I fixed that, then the console was getting screwed up. I could have written a new linux distibution before I got this friggin thing working. In fact I remember while working for a "large" company, I "came across" a Dec Workstation 3000 and bet myself I could get some variant of linux working on it. After a week of dedication, I had yellow-dog linux working and turned it into a router. Hey, they were going to throw it out and at that time I was unmarried, so free time wasn't an issue. You get the point... You can throw days at configuration issues.

The solution: CentOS 5.3.

I know, I know. Many people get this to work fine. Yeah, find me one! It doesn't work. Can't get there from here, trust me. And I love Debian. It's by far the best linux variant.

I digress... Anyway, the CentOS install went like this.
Boot with CD, select install and get started.
Configure network... Check
Configure hostname and such... Check
Select virtualization package... Check

Reboot.

Then this magical thing happened... It just worked.
No messing with /etc/network/interfaces
No messing with /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp

So if you are going down this path and are determined to get Debian Lenny working (well) with Xen and Xfce4, send me your config files. I'll try it again.
If you just want to get rolling, use CentOS 5.3. Sometimes easier is just better.

Jay

I have not posted to the "I bought a crappy house" journal in a while as I'm at about a 96% completion rate and have COMPLETELY stalled. I do, however, love coffee and thought I would share this with you:

Recently, a good friend of mine left his Quality Assurance testing position for self employment in a completely unrelated field; Coffee!!

Anyone that knows Tom, clearly understands why he will succeed. Trust me when I say: No rock will be left un-turned. It just will not happen...

With that being said, I'm on my second order of incredible coffee from his new roasting company Fat Boy Coffee in New Mexico. Yeah, he left this crappy new england weather for equally weird weather in New Mexico, but I'm still very jealous.

My most recent pound of coffee was the Sumatra and it was just divine, I must say. My wife and I just absolutely ripped through this one. I would describe it as bold and soft all at the same time. Our favorite so far by the smallest of margins.

Anyway, we've just run out of the Sumatra and today I delved into our latest offering: "Guatemalan". This coffee (bean) was not as oily as the Sumatra, but just as good. Here are the results AFTER the feline acoustic torture machine has finished:


One of my sticking points with Tom has been his coffee bag selection. The coffee is fantastic and well worth any amount of work, but the bags are, shall we say, "deployment challenged"? It could also be that I am a complete and utter moron(the most likely case), but for now, let's blame the bags.

Here is the right way to open one of Tom's bags...

First cut off the portion of the bag that is ABOVE the PTT. PTT is short for the technical wording of Pliable Tab Thingy. Just so you know..


DO NOT CUT BELOW the PTT!! This would be Bad.

Once you've lopped off the top 1/2 inch or so, you may or may not be where you need to be. I find that about half the time, cutting as close to the PTT as possible, will result in a fully opened bag. Sometimes, however, the melded area extends below the PTT and you have to do some "recreational self surgery" (sounds like a good hobby).

If that happens, DO NOT TRY THE POTATO CHIP BAG METHOD. You know when you pinch the bag on both sides and forcefully pry the bag open? These bags have no concept of this operation and this method will result in vertical tearing and the grand escape (YEE-HAW!) of numerous coffee beans to whichever destination gravity determines is best for these little brown escapees.

Now, carefully insert a knife into the highest portion of the joined sides:


Usually there is a yawning spot from the original cut.. If you can find it, start there. Insert your knife into that area and while exposing the sharp end of the knife towards your face, pull the knife up and in the direction of the seam. Continue this operation until you have all of the sides open:


Here is how a "successful" opening should look:


Because I am also a quality assurance tester (like Tom's former occupation), here is the Potato chip opening method and the result:

Looks like a flower in bloom, eh? I would go ahead and NOT recommend this method.

So there you have it... Successful deployment and fabulous coffee!!

Enjoy.. Thanks Tom... I'm getting nervous as my coffee cup is almost empty and I'm at work.

So the builder of these houses decided that a front to back living room would be a great thing. When writing this, I'll admit, it doesn't sound all that bad, but when you hear how it's designed, you'll begin to understand our plight.

It's a 12'x 24' rectangle.
Back wall is 12' and has a french door in the middle. Leaving about 3 feet on either side to use.
Side wall (exterior side) has 2 windows and a fireplace. Again, not much usable space.
Front wall (12') has 2 windows leaving yet another 5 feet of non-contiguous space.
Side wall (interior side) has 2 door openings. One is 3' and the other is 6'.

We've spent countless hours trying to figure out how to arrange some form of a couch, loveseat and chairs in the room, that we've practically given up. We've had many a friend or relative tell us they could do it, only to find themselves in the room saying "I see what you mean, hmmmm".

So finally, after many arrangements with our furniture shapes made from painters tape and newspaper, we found a reasonable setup. NO LOVESEAT!! I have no idea why I wanted one, but that was the monkey wrench in the gears. I guess years of marketing lead me to believe that we must have a loveseat. I'm going contrarian here.




Here you can see our lovely Sofa from Jordans funiture. We put this on the long interior wall facing the fireplace. Next we added 2 chairs. One is a recliner and the other is just stationary with an ottoman.



Here is the room before completion:


And after with some furniture:


Hey, I may actually finish this house.

So the task(s) this past week are to finish the boy's bedrooms.

I went to lumber liquidators (http://www.lumberliquidators.com/home.jsp) to check out some flooring for the boy's rooms. I decided upon a floor made of Brazilian Walnut.

If you remember from baby girls room, I used an exotic wood called Anjelum. As nice as that wood turned out to be, I have to admit, this stuff is an even higher level.

It's just gorgeous to look at and installs a touch easier. Here are some pictures












This floor has a lot mor character where the other floor was very much the same color throughout. Fortunately, I am getting better at hardwood flooring installation and the proof is here.

So, if you've been following my work, you know how hard I've been working at this. To be honest, it feels like it moves so slow at times, but going back and looking at the pictures, I'm reminded that it was once far worse than it is right now.

Before..



After..




I'm going to dedicate an entire sectoin to before and after, but for now, this will have to do.

Building and entire data infrastructure for the future. Currently, like anyone I know, I have data everywhere (multiple PC's, laptops and portable devices) and I am sick of this. So what to do? Since I am moving into a house that we are renovating, now is the perfect time to implement a new setup.

First is data storage. I need a good size start, BUT, and this is a BIG but, I need room to grow. I'm looking into creating a mass storage device capable of growning to more than 10Tb. Problem is I'm on a budget and every solution I see is geared around business. The home stuff is decent, but you only get a single disk and some crappy backup solution... I'll pass.

It look like I'll build a SATA JBOD in a 1U rack like this:
http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/sata-port-multiplier-encl-rack-mount.htm

Then, I'll proceed to fill it with disks as needed. I then have to connect it to something. I'm thinking about using this new standard called micro-atx. These PC's are tiny, consume almost no power and can be customized to include a bunch of different hardware types. If I can get a SATA controller for multiple SATA sets in one, I'll do it.

Next is the kitchen PC. We want something that is clean, nice to look at and have the ability to hide it.

So far, I'm thinking a 15" touch screen monitor hooked up to a micro-atx box. No hard disk only booting from flash (up to 4gb). From there all the storage will be on the SATA JBOD. I'll customize a UI with desktop X from Stardock (www.stardock.com) with a left pane hideaway menu. Have shortcuts to a recipe application, phone book, mp3 player, URL shortcuts, etc. The rest of the operating system is there as well, but this is for more common kitchen stuff.

Also required is a rechargeable wireless keyboard mouse combination.

I have to try to do all of this for under 3k.

Keep posted as this will eventually be an amazing setup that many people will definitely want (including me).

More to come..

Even though it would have cost about 4000 dollars more to have someone install the floor, once you've ventured into grouting the tile, you will definitely understand why they get paid that much.

Grouting sucks, just no two ways about it. Even if you are good at it (which I am not), it just sucks. The only thing I could compare this to is recreational self surgery. Why would you want to do that?

Anyhow... The grout is in. If I thought my hands were sore before, that was NOTHING! I cannot even close them without grimacing. I'm not talking about picking something up, or pointing... No, I'm talking about NOT MOVING my hands in ANYWAY. This is like hyper-arthritis. I'm lying there in bed on my side, just praying that I don't bump my hands against the PILLOW! Oh my word!!!

400 square feet of tile are down (and grouted). The good news... It's fucking over!
The bad news... I have this lovely grout haze on all of the tiles. I know what your saying... If I did my homework, I'd have averted this as it's well known about.

I did do my homework, but they don't tell you that you only have about 20 minutes to get the haze off. I waited to what was about an hour. Yeah, don't do that.

Now I have to wait 10 days for the grout to "cure" so I can use some nasty solvent on the floor and not destroy the grout. If only I had more money, I could have yelled at some poor installer with hands he / she can barely use.

Wow am I whining!

Advice... Do install the floor yourself, it's very gratifying. Do NOT install the grout. It's just pure pain.. Pay someone else.

Anyhow, here are a couple of pictures...

This has to be the hardest I have ever worked in my life.  8 Hours in the office and then 12 hours everynight at the house.  Yeah, that's 4 for sleeping / showering / driving between locations.

This must be what a gang beating feels like.  Every part of my body hurts and aches.  I can barely close my hands.  It's like having cement gloves on.  Big useless paws.  Good for scratching all of the mosquito bites I got INSIDE my house.  Stupid window without screen.  How do they know?  Talk about efficiency.

Anyway, enough of my whining.  On with the pictures.

The grout is not installed yet.  I am DREADING that part.


View into the hallway from the Kitchen.


View to the side entrance.


Entrance to the family room (one of 3 tool storage rooms)


Main entry way again with view to basement.


Vent by main door and side entrance to dining room.


Side entrance to family room and in front of the stairway.


Eat in kitchen area.


Another vent.  Took these to show off my cutting ability.  The tile
to the left of the vent... Yeah, that's the 4th one I cut.  Broke 2 and 
didn't like one that was kinda crappy.


Final view (I'm in the side entry way).

It doesn't look that big, but that's 400 square feet of porcelain tile.  Holy crap, I can't believe I finshed that.

It took 1 day to lay 90 % of the tile.  Took another entire day to lay another 8% and yet one more day to lay the final 2% of the tiles.  Why?  I laid out the easy stuff first.  Then the next day made all of the easiest cuts.  The last day was fixing stuff I didn't like, cutting some very intricate tiles and butting them up to the aluminum borders in each of the entry ways.  You don't realize how many openings there are in a kitchen until you have to spend 2 hours cutting each one in.   Hello, I have 8.  EIGHT!!!

Tonight is grout time.  I get to take this beautiful installation and smear brown goo all over it.  Eyyyeeee.  Can't wait.  I'd actually rather a root canal.  Nah, actually I'd rather grout.

Let's see how the agony goes tonight...

Later.

I hired a plasterer!  

I'll pretty much attempt to any job I can, but I knew right from the start that I wanted NO part of plastering.  Plastering is an art.  This is an art that I don't possess.  I can't make all those nice swirl marks, but someone else can.

Now that I've made this great decision, time to get me a plasterer.  I have a couple of names from people, let me give that a try.

NO one is calling me back.  I actually got a hold of one guy and he asked if he could call me back.  Sure..  He didn't call back.  I called him again and now he was annoyed and told me he was going to call me back later.  Thanks, but that isn't going to work for me.   You're done.

Finally I asked my lawyer / real-estate agent if he knew of someone.  I called him and got an appointment right away.

This was a week ago, so the job is all finished now and it looks very good.  I definitely made the right decision.

I'll post some pictures of the completed work later.

I haven't written in a couple of weeks as I've been working like mad on the house.  I took a week's vacation off to work on the house.  It was the worst vacation I have EVER had.  20 hour days, all kinds of chemicals to breathe and just plain tiredness.  On a couple of the days, I worked until 3:30 am.  When I'm working and I KNOW it's late, I won't allow myself to even look at the clock until I'm finished what I hoped to finish.  Then I take a look at the time and DAMN!!! It's going to be sunny soon.  

When your working on a project and you're up really late... seeing the sun is just plain evil.  I could see that haze of the upcoming sun around 4 am (after my shower).  Fortunately, it's just me at the house, so I can pull out the sleeping bag and pillow and crash on the floor for a couple of hours.  The basement is finished, so don't worry, it's not like I'm sleeping on the cement floor (all though that's what it feels like).

So in the past 2 weeks, what have I done?

1. Finished putting up a combination of greenboard (becuase I had one sheet left), 1/2 inch blue board (for the ceiling in Jacob's room), 1/2 inch drywall (for the closets) and 3/8 inch drywall to go over the plastered closet walls that make up half of Jacob's room.

I'm going over the other walls with new drywall because the old walls were part of a rediculously large closet that has the plaster swirls all over it (as they were closet walls).  To the left of the door in the picture below is where I installed the 3/8 inch drywall.  The closet to the right of the door opening is the 1/2 inch drywall.



 Below is a picture of the 1/2 blueboard on the ceiling.  My good friend Geis ('gice') came over to help me with this as hanging blue board on the ceiling can be difficult to do on your own (but anyone that knows me would attest that I would try).  So.. Thanks Geis!




This was all actually pretty easy to do.  Once you learn how to cut the drywall and of course use the tape measure, this is all pretty easy.  Here's how I would get a piece ready.  Generally, I would lift one of the sheets onto the saw horses, smack the corners of the sheet into another part of the wall that I had already finished (causing a nice big dent).  Once I got the piece onto the saw horses, I would attempt to "score" (which is just cutting the drywall by pressing a razor knife along the line you wish to cut) a straight line into the drywall.  The problem is I can draw the straight line just fine, but cutting along the line with a razor knife is like writing left handed (in case you hadn't guessed, I'm NOT left handed).  My first cuts looked more like a heart monitor than a flat line...  Needless to say, we got better as we went along.

It took about 4 days to finish all of the drywall.   (about 3 days longer than I figured).  It's all of the cuts in the closets that took forever.  Well that and the fact that I am a crazy perfectionist about stuff like this which is just going to be hidden with plaster anyway.