January 2009

Dear Client,

Last year closes and another one begins. And I for one will be glad to see 2008 gone, not only from a national and world economy perspective, but for professional and personal reasons as well. I look forward to 2009 with hope that things will get better for our clients and as a result, ourselves.

The most obvious news for this month will be the changing of administrations in Washington. We will have a president that for the first time actually understands what the Internet is, and more importantly, what it represents as a value to our country and the world. I also understand Mr. Obama is a Blackberry enthusiast. This is going to be a hard habit for him to break as they are not designed to be a secure form of communication. I believe there are support groups he can attend for help with that. :)

Otherwise December has been a quiet month for us. I’ve been investigating virtualization software. This software emulates a PC. So instead of buying hardware when you need a new computer, you tell the virtualization software to create a new ‘computer’ for you. Then you install the software you want on this virtual computer. It even has the ability to import an existing machine into a virtual box.

Why is this better?

We have upwards of a dozen servers here and the task of maintaining each of them with current hardware and software is a non-trivial task. Having most, if not all, of them on one physical machine and sharing a common virtual hardware configuration would simplify keeping them up to date. The net result is we could combine 6 to 8 servers into one physical computer. I’m playing with the computer I bought to run this on, and it is really fast. To learn more about virtualization, visit www.vmware.com. They aren’t the only ones to do this, but certainly have a good handle on it.

The garden we planted this last fall didn’t do very well. We have resident rabbits in the neighborhood and they took care of the seedlings coming up, no problem. The little buggers have eaten the dried grass in the lawn in previous seasons, so their culinary taste must be improving. J Looks like I’ll need to put some kind of fence around the garden area. Now is the time (here anyway) to start tomato seedlings indoors. Otherwise they won’t be bearing long enough before the punishing summer heat shuts them down.

One thing that was a pleasant surprise from last summer’s garden were the pickles we made from the cucumbers. Very nice! I’m thinking of trying the traditional dill ‘crock method’ this coming season.

Best wishes to all of you in the coming year!

Best wishes!

Sincerely,

Ben Conner