A story about exceptional service

Recently I found myself constrained by the puny 200GB of my Mac Book Pro and I bought a [500GB Seagate drive][3] to replace it (a fast 7200 rpm one). The Macbook Pro has no easy access for the drive so you have to resort to dismantling the case to access it. This put me off... » read more

Sysadmin: SQL server performance madness

I’ve just lost 2 days going completely bananas over a performance issue that I could not explain. I’ve got this [Dell R300][1] rack server that runs Windows Server 2008 that I dedicate to running IIS and SQL Server 2008, mostly for development purposes. ![Dell PowerEdge R300 Rack servers][dellr300] In my [previous blog entry][2], I was... » read more

Technical ebooks: some publishers don’t get it

I like buying technical books. Unfortunately, here in Hong Kong, we have less choice: there are not that many technical bookstores that cater for English-language books and the selection is rather limited. So whenever a book isn’t available here, I buy it online as a PDF. It’s cheaper, saves postage and I can keep them... » read more

Sysadmin: file and folder synchronisation

Over the years I’ve struggled to keep my folder data synchronised between my various desktop and laptops. Here I present the tools I’ve tried and what I’ve finally settled on as possibly the ultimate answer to the problem of synchronising files and folders across multiple computers: * [rsync](#rsync) * [unison](#unison) * [WinSCP](#winscp) * [General Backup... » read more

Sysadmin: Macbook Pro, after the honeymoon

I’ve been using the MacBook Pro I introduced in my [previous blog entry][0] for a few weeks now. Between love and frustration I hang… Here is a review of our relationship so far. ##The Great## ###Hardware delight### Whether running OS/X or Windows 2008 I’ve got no major complaint about the performance of the machine. It’s... » read more

“Apple’s OS Edge Is a Threat to Microsoft”. Really?

Business Week has a recent article where the author foresee the demise of Windows in favour of Apple’s OS. Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking I was reading one of these overenthusiastic 1925 popular-science article promising us that within just a few years we would all use our own flying car to get to work.... » read more

SysAdmin: When your computer becomes forgetful

Sometimes your computer crashes without reason. It happens at any time, for no particular reason. Other times you’re trying to install a new OS on a brand new PC and at some point, it fails, reboot itself or just hangs. A couple years ago I had this really depressing experience with a brand new system... » read more

Software: Cheap Microsoft Licenses

I’m not particularly pro -Microsoft but I’m not against it either. I love Linux, got my [RHCE][1] (Red Hat Certified Engineer) a bit more than a year ago and I love Open Source, Linux and all things [GNU][2]. The only thing I really dislike about Microsoft is its marketing, its pricing, its [Genuine (Dis)Advantage][3] that... » read more

All sites won’t work with IE7

technology01.pngI installed a beta of IE7 last week and was quite pleased at the new interface and tabbed browsing, which has been available to Opera and Mozilla used and many other browsers for years. However, looking good and being slick and more standard-compliant hasn't been enough to keep it on my machines.