pmooney.net

Category Misc

Back to normality (or sorts) now.  Some points:

• No matter how many boxes you have for the move, it is not enough.  ergo, you have more sh1t then you think.  Even inviting friends and family over for a "fecking off" party the week before didn't help reduce the amount of alcohol to pack.
• Landing from Admin2008 and Boston, and packing / moving without sleep, was a bad idea
• No matter how many times you warn people that you are unavailable for a week at least, they still wonder why you don't respond to them.  I blame myself for being too available for too long.  I'm back to work in another week.
• For the first time ever, I got sky tv.  Lots of channels... nothing on any of them
• The broadband service from sky looks shite, so I went with Virgin cable
• Both sky guy and virgin guy turned up on time, at the same time with everything they needed
• Watching the virgin broadband installation guy trying to bluff me that the broadband wasn't working yet, but "would in a few minutes" after registration was entertaining, especially since he didn't realise that he never connected the cable modem to the router.  Easily fixed.  Why bother trying to lie to a customer?  I fixed it after he left.
• Replacing the drive in the macbook was simple
• Many people from many places, wish you well when you are least expecting it, and it meant a lot
• In total, I received seven emails from people asking why I moved to Belfast.  There are better people to answer this then me, but in short, I have been coming up here for 12 years or so now, and never... ever.... felt anything but welcome.  Great city.  If you only have a press lead idea of Northern Ireland from a few years ago, I would urge you to visit and happily recommend this as a place to see.  After you realise its a great place, you owe me a beer.
• I was made watch Gladiators tonight.  Pure piss on a stick
• I feel quite at home here already
• ILUG is approaching.. rapidly, and I will start working on stuff from that in a day or two.  That being said, Eileen et al have it well in hand.
• Bruce Elgort recorded a podcast with me today.. kindof...  Would be funny if it ever was published (Matt White will get this joke).

Posted by Paul Mooney At 22:43:33 Location | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Mac

All done.  And remarkably easily I may say.  Process was:

• Run a time machine backup to my external drive
• Run another copy backup to my terastation
• Make sure the Mac is fully charged
• Unplug and replace the drive
• Reinstall Leopard
• I chose not to restore applications from time machine (I know this is an old windows hang-up of mine - but I will feel better if I started afresh)
• Reinstall applications
• Restore data from time machine

And breath again....
 Replacing the disk took minutes.  Replacing the software took a lot longer, as I knew it would.  Upgrading the speed of the disk was my main goal.  I know that Turtle posted some great stuff on drive replacement on his Mac as he wanted extra storage.  I don't need as much as him, but I wanted a 7200Rpm disk.  Notes 8.5 beta on this Mac is much faster now, and that would be the main disk hog, aside from VMware when its needed.  So, in line with all my recent experience with Macs, this was painless, and for those on Tiger still - buy Leopard for the Time Machine alone - damn it's fantastic.

Posted by Paul Mooney At 09:27:30 Location | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Misc

While on leave and happily ignoring emails (its very strange, but will blog why later in the week), I'm about to start upgrading the hard drive in my macbook to a 200GB 7200 SATA drive.  If it goes well, expect a "Success" post in a few hours or possibly tomorrow.  I will install everything from fresh, so will take my time.
If there is no post in 2 days - send out a search party.  Using these instructions.

Posted by Paul Mooney At 15:37:29 Location | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Misc

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Category Misc

IMG00153.jpg
Originally uploaded by pmooneynet

Taken at Admin2008, although Bill has a better picture

Posted by Paul Mooney At 23:57:07 Location | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Misc

Im moving from here to here over the next two weeks.  Before ILUG gets too mad nearer the date, I have booked 2 weeks leave to get things done.  For at least a week or so of that, I don't expect to have my laptop on at all.  See you on the other side...
P.

Posted by Paul Mooney At 14:09:08 Location | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Admin2008

Parked in Shannon airport at the moment, waiting for my last hop home, thinking it may be a good time to put some thoughts down on virtual paper on the event just passed.  The admin2008 was a very paced and deep presentation, with focused sessions that most definitely kept the delegates happy.  I'm not sure on the tally of total attendees but I did hear it was around the 900 mark, which is up on previous years.  The hotel and venue/facilities are excellent, with plenty for people to do when they are in Boston.  Some highlights:

• Presenting with Francie Tanner.  One of the only presenters that can keep me on track and put up with / control my occasional tangent rants during  a session.  Excellent as always girl.
• Presenting a session on Domino on Disk.  This session is related to Domino / Notes and how it deals with disk utilisation, and getting the most from it.  A lot of delegates at the event were using SANs, but very few of them know if the LUN allocation / arrays are dedicated to their Domino data.  From verbal feedback, people got some good knowledge from this session.  The best part was asking Victor Toal to hang about and give his opinions on this (as I felt that since this session is based on experience, another person not afraid of the microphone may be a good thing).  It came to the point that he was talking so much that he just said screwit and stayed on stage with me.  
• Presenting a bof on social networking tools with Chris Miller and Andy Peditisch.  Interesting to see that very few people are deep into social tools in the marketplace, and the common questions they ask "what is this for me and how will it affect my business".  45 minutes was NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH for this bog - with Miller there, we could of spent a full day.
• Working on the beat the geeks session with all the speakers.  This is an open Q&A session held each evening.  On the second night, I got to sit with Suzanne Minessan and discuss Connections 2.0.  It was great to listen to her and feel the collective passion for the connections product.  Interesting times ahead for this as specific parts of that tool start to hit maturity.  Still, to me from a business perspective, the killer app in Connections is activities, and with 2.0 you can take them offline and replicate when connected... very  cool.
• Working with the admin conference team, who go out of their way to help you out and make sure that the speakers are ok.  A lot of work goes into speaking at conferences, but from ILUG I am only too aware on how much work goes into organising them (note to self, we are to ensure we get copies of photos of a certain organiser dressed as an oompa loompah *cough* Susie *cough*).
• Learning more about foundations server.  This is a cheap line but I was so impressed I ordered one for myself!
• Meeting great people and great friends.  Funny saying goodbye to them whilst we are all meeting again at ilug in 5 weeks

Posted by Paul Mooney At 06:35:10 Location | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)