I've been working hosting my cvs server in a virtual machine inside my development machine. Not an ideal situation but I make sure files for the virtual machine resides in a separate hard disk.
This works reasonablly good until now when I started working on this ultrasound project. The ultra sound card I'm working on crashes a lot and can only be reset by shuting down the computer. That means a lot of turning on and off the guest OS in the virtual machine.
The good thing is, I'm putting my old server back online. The bad thing is I had to move the guest OS back to the old server. Last time it took me a couple of hours to move a guest OS from one host to another.
To my delight, I saw a pair of "Import Appliance" and "Export Appliance" items under the "File". This new feature packages a guest machine in an "Appliance" that can be distributed.
We were on our way to a record dry May. That was, until two days ago. The lawn was so dry on the memorials day, I acknowledged my defeat and decided to water my plants, knowing that rain was in the forecast. I hosed the water directly down at the root of my rose bush. Five seconds, ten, thirty, ... I never saw the water seeping out from under the mulch. The soil soaked up all the water like it's a sponge.
...
"Don't you want to bring a rain coat with you?" Asked Mom as we were getting in the driveway into the car. Before I could answer, a few huge rain drops hit my face and within seconds, it was a downpour. From the car to the garage was a ten feet dash, but I was nearly soaked. Daughter's rain coat was not in the garage. "Surely she's not going to run in the rain. Beside, when I was driving back home, the darkness of the cloud was to the north." So thought I, and dashed back in the car and pulled ourselves out of the drive way.
The first thing I noticed in the morning was that gutter was overflowing. It was raining heavily. "Maybe this will get me out of the race." I regretted signing up for the race when I realize I'm starting to have difficulty keeping up with my six yo daughter. Lately we had been running the half mile races from the high school to the town library. I was out of breath at the end of the race while she still had quite some stream left, despite that she just had a half hour swimming lesson. The Corporate Challenge is a race seven time longer in distance. Am I really able to make a three and half mile run? I had never been a good runner. "If it keeps raining like this, I shall use it as an excuse to get out of the race." As I drove to work in the morning. Then the weather improved dramatically as the day progresses. No one was talking about skipping the race. I'd go get my gear, I left work at four. As I drove north in Five Mile Line Road, I saw the sky to the north was darkened by heavy cloud.
The news that was coming out from the radio wasn't too bad at the beginning: "Areas near the lake shore are experiencing rainfall." Atlantic Avenue was not exactly near the lake shore. But hey, the racing site was still quite a few more miles further south. Then came the worrisome news: A flood warning was issued for the entire county for the evening. Reality finally hit me. I started to imaging how it would be like riding in the bus back to the lot where the cars would be parked, with everyone else, all soaked from racing in the cold rain. "Team No. 2!" My daughter proudly proclaimed in her bigger than normal big voice, pointing at the number on her T-shirt, as we were waiting in the line boarding the bus. Everyone laughed. "I'm surely not going to let her race in the rain." I thought.
It took me quit some trouble locating our tent. Several
people was in the tent when I got there.
"Are you going to race with your daddy?"
"Yes!"
A was slapped on her chest. There was no way out now.
The good thing is, the rain had been in remission ever
since we arrive at the parking lot where we boarded the
commuter bus. "Let's go!" daughter dragged me towards
the starting line. She was not interested in the small
talk, or the adult food.
The starting are was packed. Everyone was anxiously waiting for the race to start. It's getting darker and darker. Then it comes the inevitable. When the race finally entered the running mode, everyone was thoroughly soaked. "I can't open my eyes!" Daughter complains as she ran.
No sooner than we passed the starting line, than I was in trouble. I felt a cramping sensation at the left leg. "Please, not now!" At the same time, pain was creeping up in my lower left abdominal. "I ate only some cheese and a couple of cookies." I thought: "An a cup of water! Can drink water before exercise upset my stomach?" My daughter was getting used to the rain and getting into better condition. She was running a kind of awkward way: She's not flexing her leg joints. But she seemed to be enjoying it and had been talkative. "Are we close to the finished line yet?" People laughed.
Under the two mile mark was a big clock and the time was announced by a loud speaker. We had been running in a steady pace. Twice had she thought she saw the end line, only to find the racing kept stretching out. "We're not going to win the race, right?" Reality finally got her! "But that's OK! You don't have to win every time!" School sure prepared her to accept defeat well. "That's good, right?" Said her when I told her we just passed the half.
"Twenty-nine fifty-eight, twenty-nine fifty-nine, thirty". We clear the two mile point at the thirty minute sharp. Her pace are noticeably slowing and she's been quiet for a few minutes. "The finishing line is right around that corner!" Now it's my turn to pretend. Two corner later. We reached to the second water station. This time, she accepted a cup of water. "We can have a little rest while having some water." I told her. She finally realized that not everyone around her was running. "I'm not rested enough yet!" That was the repeated theme throughout the last mile. Many tricks I resorted to: "We don't want to be the last either, right?" "There'll be much fun stuff [than the water puddle] ahead." "The thunder's going get us!" "We don't want to miss the ice cream." (A bad one, as it turned out ice cream was not in the menu)...
28/05: Correcting Wrong
02/02: Amazing Grace
It's been nearly five years since the passing away of Ronald Reagan.
18/01: Windows 7 Problems
- Trying to run a program from a removable drive freezes the "Windows Explore" window where it is being lunched from, or the command window if trying to run inside one.
Attention Nucleus CMS users.
In the upcoming Internet Explore 8 (beta) that will be part of Windows 7, the content in the edit window may not be the latest version of you blog entry. It displays whatever in the cache. Only after you press the "Compatibility View" button, IE8 will load the latest version from the server.
Of couse, if one accidentally pressed that button while editing, all the unsaved work willed lost.
17/01: Windows 7
I got the new Seagate Barracuda hard drive from newegg. To my relieve, it is made in Malaysia and the firmware version is D35 instead of one with firmware version D15.
The first thing I did to the drive is to use it to test drive Windows 7. First impression: Windows 7 is not sluggish as Windows Vista does.
And finally, Microsoft got rid of the pop up windows that asks user's confirmation so too very often in Vista.
It looks like all in all, Windows 7 to Windows Vista is like Windows XP to Windows 95. It will come without a great fan fair. But since it fixed a lot of mistake in its predecessor (Wow, I spelled predecessor right the first try), it will win wide acceptance and a great success in the market place.
Watch out Linux!
11/01: Don't Mess Down These
"Don't Mess Up These!" a pause... "Don't Mess Down These!" (01-11-2009)
