System i Addict

I found a little service that I think is neat. I do PC support for some people around where I live and have also taken some pretty heavy tech calls and always think there is a moment when the person on the other end thinks they need to let me go because they are not paying for it. It get uncomfortable I think. So I found this and am going to try using it for those people who like to call and get free support at a hours of the day and for the one who think they should pay and then we can really get into the meat of the matter.

Link to Call David

How much would you pay to talk to someone like me. Ken please do not ask me to pay you. That is not going to happen.

Hello, for the new people in the back of the room my name is David Vasta. I am here to tell you all about me and why your company would benefit from hiring me. I am a veteran of the IT Data Center. I have focused my efforts on the following platforms:

IBM System i - i5/OS
UNIX - General
Linux - Administration
Windows Server
MacOSX - All Aspects

You will notice that at the top of my blog I have a link to tell you more about me and my experience. I urge you to take a look at it and contact me if you think you have the right position for me. I would like to become an IT Manager and feel like now is the time to make that move. I am very prepared for the position and would dedicate myself 100% to you and your organization to increase performance and up-time, decrease costs, and make sure the data and the data center can scale along with your business.

So I was doing my normal reading for the week and found out through The iSeries Blog that Vision Solutions has started a blog. They only have one post by Alan Arnold.

The first post is about HA and Banking when in fact I think it should have been about the Elephant that is still in the room, I would like them to address the following questions and I am still waiting for that interview Peter that was promised some 6 months ago.

1 - Why did Vision purchase two very profitable, very successful HA companies?

2 - What did Vision say to the owners of those two companies that would make them sell? How much does it cost to do a deal with the devil?

3 - When should we expect to see some kind of clarity on how you all are going to handle the products and support? I think we all know my stance. iTera and Lakeview both had support that on a scale from 1 to 10 was off that chart. They delivered support while Vision may have rated a 5 or 6. While I am known to beat up on Vision I think that is a pretty fair rating.

4 - With IBM now in the HA game and in my opinion working to make HA apart of the OS in effect placing a check mate to your check….what do you do now to position yourself so that customer spend the extra money for a solution you have that may in fact become irrelevant?

So with that said I am still going to try to work a few contacts I have and move in for an interview.

5 - One last question….What response do you have for harrassing former iTera employees to the point of exhaustion and mental break down so that they quit vs. offering them a heatlhy severance package? You did in fact purchase the company and should have the ethical fiber to terminate people while at the same time offering them a way to transition to other jobs.

I think that should do it for now…..

As a side note. I posted to the blog before I posted here and they have pulled my welcome comments from the blog already. I guess you know where you stand when you ask the hard questions no one seems to have the right answer for. They have the comments on now that “ Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them.” This is of course new since I made my post.

You have to watch this. It’s required watching if you come here.

Neat. I never got to learn how to use one of these. It’s pretty cool..

VR Slide Ruler

So while I stuggle with a few people I support making a little scratch on the side who run Vista, and now Don Reisinger from CNet says what some of you out there are thinking…..what is Microsoft going to do with Vista?

Not only that but, I got my first taste of the new Office for Windows at college and man it’s just a mess. Nothing is where you think it should be. To say it easy to use would be like saying root canals are fun a exciting. It’s just more poo on more poo. Eventually you have to pick up a shovel and get rid of it. While I am trying not to bash Microsoft I do think they have lost sight of what is impportant…read on and tell me what you think?

CNET - Why Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself

Link to something I found today and kind of made me stop for a while and think…..Semper Fi!

You get bored at sea so you do things like this to entertain yourself. It’s like a hobby only more expensive. Hoo-Yah to my fellow sailors. You guys do the Jobs sorry assed liberals and socialist won’t do and I love each and everyone of you for it. Hats off to all the Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen.

I was doing a little looking around Google.com and found something that is neat. The trend for desktops in the world is going down for Windows and up for Ubuntu and MacOSX

Link to Data

So not one to pass up a good moment and especially when Linus is saying. While I think Linus is a “smart dude” I think sometime he lacks tact.

“Solaris is apparently a buggy piece of crap.”   HERE TOO!

So while I don’t know what the the hell Linus is really talking about?

While in the Navy I saw some pretty neat stuff. I can share most of it with you and some of it I don’t share because you’ll never beleive me or it will scare yo so bad you will want to rock in the corner until your mommy comes home to hold you.

I always enjoyed the technology and the jets doing fly bys on the the ships. I don’t have any footage of it since they never “planned it” but I did find some today that I thought I would share.

So with that said seems like IBM is doing a little give away to create a little BUZZ and foster some new ideas. They are now offering Office tools for free. Will they replace Office from Microsoft? Are they up to speed with Office? Can they hold up to the test of power users? What is going on? IBM joins the OpenOffice.com project and now releases some Office tools that are included in Lotus Notes 8?

I am going to download them and put them up aginst Microsoft Office and see if they have what it takes to not get uninstalled……

If you could work abroad where would you go?

What country and why?

Have you looked into what it takes to move there and work?

Why have you not gone there and worked? What has stopped you?

Also if you have I want to know how scary it was to move to another country, learn the launguage and such.

Right now I would like to work in Japan, and for the obvious reasons above I am still in this wondering mode.

-David

I have done everything I can to give to the FreeBSD project. I encourage you to just give a little because it all helps!

UPDATE FROM FREEBSD:

Fundraising Update

Last year this time, we had raised just under $9000 in donations. This year, so far, we have raised over $143,000! We are over 50% of our way to our goal of raising $250,000. How are we going to accomplish this? We have taken some big steps towards increasing our fundraising efforts. Some of these include,

• Adding a new board member. This has increased the number of people actively approaching companies to make large contributions.
• Approaching companies who use FreeBSD, asking for donations.
• Beginning our fundraising efforts at the start of the year, rather than waiting until the last quarter.
• Investigating other services for allowing us to accept credit cards world-wide. We will be adding one of these services soon.
• Adding support for monthly payment options soon.
• Working with an advertising company to help create marketing material for promoting the foundation and project.

We’re also appealing to you, FreeBSD developers and users, to help us with our fundraising efforts. We’d like to ask you to spread the word about FreeBSD and the foundation. By supporting the foundation, directly helps the project and community. Please help us by spreading the word to your peers and employers. We can’t do this without your help!

It’s hard for me and in some cases Todd to find a place we like. I am not picky but I want to work. When I say work I don’t want to be spending over 50% of my day being apart of Adult Day Care. To many places I have worked, been, and visited seem to have a real poor mentality and would rather handicap their employees and treat them all like children, allowing them to run a muck and not doing much along the lines of good for the company.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I broke down over the weekend and purchased a used Motorola Q. It’s the Verizon model and it’s silver. Not black like so many of the pictures are. I picked up used on Craig’s List. I love that site.
Let’s go over some details. It’s smaller than a Blackberry but no by much. I say that and the new smaller Blackberry’s are out but I like the size of the Q. The previous owner did purchase the extended battery which I think is great. It’s about 1/2 thinner with that original battery on it but I like the weight of it. I don’t forget it’s in my pocket.

It runs Windows Smartphone and has a MiniSD slot.

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I was trying to come up with something catchy. I think I did it.

So if you have been keeping up with Apple this week you would have seen that they released a few new iPod products for us all to drool over and consume. I think the new iPod Touch is nice and is what mot people are looking for just put a little more room in there please. I would like the iPod Touch with 160GB hard drive so I can take everything with me when I head out and have a place to store my files when I am shooting.

So Apple also dropped the price of the iPhone and when they did a few early adopters were kind of upset so Apple released a letter explaining that people like my Brother get a $100 Apple Store credit, which I would use for the next version of MacOSX, to go shopping with. How cool is that?

Link to Story

Ending months of rumors, Hewlett-Packard appears to have released its first mass-market PC with pre-installed Linux. Specifically, the company will soon be selling RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) Desktop 5 on its HP dx2250 PC to Australian customers.

HP, long a staunch Linux supporter both on the desktop and the server, had never offered a pre-loaded desktop Linux. There have, however, been many rumors in recent months that HP was on the verge of announcing a business Linux desktop with SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 10 SP 1, Ubuntu 7.04, or RHEL Desktop 5, or its delayed desktop Linux brother, Red Hat Global Desktop.

I spend almost 5 years in the Navy. I was on a Salvage ship for the first 2 and I know how important a Subs Screw can be. If you know what it looks like then you know what it sounds like. Then you can make your own. I am not going to post the links because I don’t need any problems and I don’t think it ethical either. I took a screen shot of the photo that Microsoft is sharing that was taken from a plane not a satelite like we all were told to think. The screw is as clear as the rest of the photo and is pretty interesting too.

We need to get better control of the images Google and Microsoft are putting up on the web. I have been on that Pier and I know a good bit about that base. All you need is someone like me with the knowledge of the area to explain what everything is and someone with bad intentions, it just spells trouble. Shame on Microsoft for posting it to. You all know better. Google Earth View?

Goolge Earth View…..not as bad I guess. You can still see it but not like on the MS site. We all thought it was funny we got the nice photo of the new sub in China. Now the Navy is not laughing so hard. China is of course our biggest Naval threat right now. The Russian can’t keep anything running but the Red Navy is building up for some reason? Our Navy is the worlds finest Navy and they are keeping a close eye on China.