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

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

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