Dugie’s Pensieve

Last week more or less marks the 12th anniversary that Windows 95 was shrink-wrapped and released to the world.  Old timers might even remember the cleverly formatted ‘DMF’ floppy disks used before CD-Roms were mainstream. (For some perspective, the DVD format was announced ~ 1 month later, and NT 4.0 only ~10 months after that)

Strangely enough, one of my favourite scotches was probably coming out of the still and into casks at about the same time that 95 launched:  Glenfiddich 12 years

I’m sure if you look hard enough, you can find traces of both of them around.  Hopefully (but not always) you’ll only find the latter in a VM.

Anyway, I’ll be celebrating tonight with a wee dram, and reflecting on how far we’ve come in 12 years.

…Let’s not go overboard though because a bottle of Glenlivet aged 21 Years, would take us back to MS-DOS 3.2 with support for 3.5″ 720 kB floppies — not sure I’m ready to reflect that far :)

Microsoft have just published the Core Infrastructure Optimization Assessment.  It’s a 5 page survey to outline/scorecard if your business unit is a, Basic “We Fight Fires” or a Dynamic “We’re a Strategic Asset”.

Take the quiz if for some reason you’re not sure where you fit.

Anyway, two questions I thought were interesting are below:

• Is this organization actively pursuing server consolidation with virtualization?
• Is this organization using virtualization to dynamically move workloads from server to server based on resource needs or business rules?

It could be VMotion, or it could be Quick Migration?!  I’d be very  interested to see the results of the survey (if they are published)

It’s now September and the start of Spring - So what better time I guess for an update to my Challenges, Goals and Resolutions for 2007.:

• Personal, Family and Lifestyle; Summary: B+
  • Books.  I’m re-reading some old favorites, at the moment it isIssac Asimov.  Still reading roughly ~1 novel a month.  I tried reading more eBooks, but this failed dismally on my KJam.
  • Audiobooks.  A good friend of mine, Lisa has recommended I try audio books.  I’m skeptical, but will give it a go. 
  • Newspapers:  Strangely enough the only news[pick-up-and-hold]paper I’m reading (and enjoying) is the Financial Review.  I’ve stopped reading the Couriermail and Australian newspapers, and instead read them on-line.  There is something about the format and content of the daily papers that bugs me.  Occasionally I’ll go and buy the weekend paper , but often regret it :)
  • Bike trips. Still getting our more than I was, but still not as often as I like. A change in circumstances/annual leave*, means my trip to Ballina will have to be ‘rethunk’.
  • Listen to more music and more podcasts.  Going better, but still not good.  Listening to more podcasts, but more music is still failing.
  • Still enjoying regular Picnics, BBQs and ‘walks in parks’.  Now that I’m taking more photos, I’ve started a flickr page, and post the better pics there.
  • The ban on Live TV still easy, no problems there at all.
• Community and Blogging; Summary: B-
• Blogging:  Going ok, not blogging as much original contents as I would like, but this will change once products release.
• Meet more people; Going great!  Caught up with lots of fabulous people at TechED Au and NZ.   Those with bikes get a special mention.  Hello to Archer, Dave, Eric, ‘Monty’, Nick and Sam.
• ‘Wardy Community Dinner’.  Still haven’t made it to a Wardy dinner, but went to the Wardy Picnic and had a great time.
• Virtualization; Summary: B+
• Spending more time talking and listening to others about Virtualization.  A lot has changed, and yet it hasn’t.  This deserves another post.
• The new blog finally kicked off.  Progress on the wiki on WindowsVirtualization.com has stalled for the time being.  
• Career Goals; Summary: B-
• Well this is a big change.  I’m no longer in my old role, or with my old company.  Nothing sinister or ugly.  Simply, I had reached a time in my life, where I wasn’t that person anymore.  I needed not only a new challenge, but a very different challenge.
• My current project is a Virtual Sandbox for a ‘few hundred developers’.  (Yup, can’t get more different than that)  Still working out all the details, but now I focus more on the “What if we” rather than a “how do we” questions in life.  Different and challenging.  Early stages, so we’ll see what happens.

So I’m pretty happy with progress so far this year.  I’m going camping in a couple of weeks, and plan to use it as an excuse to get on the bike and take some more photos.  Of course there will the opportunity for a few good scotches (when I get there).  It will be great!