BobMartens.net - Latest Comments

Re: A Change of Mind

Bob Martens — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:39:09 -0000

All good points. Now there is no good time to do any maintenance because people are going to be using the service sometime ... somewhere.

Really wish we had fiber-to-the-home.

Re: A Change of Mind

Perry Lund — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:31:50 -0000

Good article Bob. Thanks for the heads up and link.

I agree from a couple points of view. First, our ISP here in Oskaloosa (which is a fiber to the home service - not to rub it in), is very good about notifications of service maintenance which happens between 2 and 4 am in the morning. Second, as a hubby of a technology coordinator at a public school, it seems there is never a reasonable time to do maintenance tasks. As service become those its in use 24 x 7, things get hairy. To be honest, doing service from midnight to 6 am is not much fun either.

Good stuff.

Re: Double Dev

Bob Martens — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:53:43 -0000

We got a third host and we've started getting even longer ... some things just happen.

Re: Double Dev

Bob Martens — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:53:24 -0000

Ideally I'd have this setup:

Desktop Mac at work (college)

iPad for going between

Desktop Mac at home
11" MacBook Air for traveling

That's a lot of hardware and the Air is probably redundant for me since I try to leave everything at home when I travel. If I had unlimited monies ...

Re: Double Dev

Curtis McHale — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:35:51 -0000

I know I've been contemplating a Mac Mini and an air so that I can have a machine plugged in at my desk and have a light portable. Keeping my current MBP at my desk plugged in so much has killed the battery, despite using Watts to cycle it.

Re: Double Dev

marcusds — Tue, 15 May 2012 01:35:15 -0000

I thought you were going to shorten the length of the podcast? Who has time to listen to something that long?

Re: Postgres.app

Bob Martens — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:11:24 -0000

That sounds about right from my estimation.

I like the move to make tools simpler to install and easier to use. This is a great example of just that.

Re: Postgres.app

iieblog — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:08:34 -0000

Sweet. Thanks for sharing. 100% easier then rolling by hand, 50% easier then brew install for sure too.

Re: Ag Reality

Bob Martens — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:26:39 -0000

Actually, it is worse then that. Adding regulations does nothing but entrench "Big Agriculture" because they are the only ones who can afford compliance. This is seen OVER AND OVER AND OVER again in other industries. Big Business will gladly support regulations that they can comply with in order to kill competition.

No one seems to understand that.

Re: Ag Reality

Bob Martens — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:25:23 -0000

The other issue is that it doesn't matter that the rules weren't "meant" to apply, what matters is that the rules were there. It's head-in-the-sand stupid to state something like that to just brush off the problems people were having with the new rules.

Add that to the example she gave of accidents ... a 56 year-old who died when getting run over by a tractor on his parent's farm. The rules wouldn't have applied in any way to that accident, so do we need to raise the age to 57 in order to make sure it doesn't happen to another 56 year-old!?

Accidents happen. They do, and they are tragic. Bad things happen in this world. They do, and they are tragic. Adding more and more rules in order to "save the children" more often than note causes more harm than good.

Re: Ag Reality

Jeffery Clark — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:13:56 -0000

"The rules were never meant to apply to children working on their own families' farms, as some critics claimed."

Just who does this woman think runs most of the farms in this country? What's next, not letting children mow the lawn because the blade could chop off something?

Re: Building Products

Bob Martens — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:04:41 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Building Products

Justin Searls — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:00:24 -0000

Bob, there's a shoddy screencast of it on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/38321427

Re: Filling Up

Bob Martens — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:19:47 -0000

I use no RAID at the moment on the box because, at the moment, it is not housing anything that I do not have copies for already. However, my rebuilt box will run RAIDZ or RAIDZ-2 for single or double disk parity in the case of a failure.

I've looked at the Synology stuff, it looks good.

I go with consumer-grade disks because they are cheaper, and the whole point of parity is that you can use cheaper, faster-failing stuff and they can fail without losing data. If I was really worried about more than a disk or two failing at a time or needed super-high-speed capabilities, I would be looking elsewhere.

A Cavier Black 1 TB drive is around $140 at the moment where the 2 TB version is about $215 a disk. The extra $100 on the 2 TB drive might be worth it for the 5 year warranty and speed considerations, but for what I am doing at home, the price just can't be justified if I can get two disks for the price of one (thus, parity in that case).

I hope that answers. I'll try and outline my specs soon.

Re: Filling Up

NateBeran — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:38:28 -0000

Couple of questions: What raid level do you use on your FreeNAS? Based on the price per disk you mention you're using desktop grade disks? What brand disks?

I've been thinking about our storage at our home. We still have plenty of space and more expansion but I've been thinking of switching to another brand NAS (Synology). Just having a hard time convincing myself to go with anything other than Enterprise disks...

Maybe you could add your FreeNAS specs to your My Setup article? Please?

Re: IT as a Partnership

Bob Martens — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:58:33 -0000

I like that even better. Perfect.

Re: IT as a Partnership

NateBeran — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:56:01 -0000

I think the partnership should be even deeper than that. Why do we think of IT as its own division or department in an organization? IT *IS* the organization. Without technology, most organizations wouldn't be able to exist today. Each and every department or division should think of IT as part of their group. We're partners in helping them do their job.

Our task is to enable them to do their jobs at their level. We're not supposed to be dictating from on high how they will use technology to do their jobs. We can provide solutions as long as they provide us with a chance to be involved in the discussion and decisions.

Re: Upcoming Apple Hardware

Bob Martens — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:04:09 -0000

It would be a perceived hole for a little bit, and I also hope they keep around the 13" Pro, but give it the 13" Air's screen. That is the one glaring weakness with the 13" Pro at the moment.

Re: Upcoming Apple Hardware

Thetrashcollector — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:09:00 -0000

I truly hope they don't get rid of the amazingly popular 13" MacBook Pro. I'm looking to get me one when my 2008 BlackBook gives out. I do love the Air, but I need cheaper storage. And with the previously-popular MacBook gone, I'd personally doubt the 13" Pro will be gone too. The 13" Air isn't as universal of a machine as the Pro is & leaving students with the Air as their only 13" option wouldn't be good business.

Re: Gizmodo on the iPad

Bob Martens — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:25:26 -0000

So you want a company to lose money with the products they sell? You want them to bend space and time in order to provide technology that is not currently available?

That is what I see them asking for. Losing money doesn't make better products, losing money gives you half-baked products to pump the ecosystem and then incentivize companies to abandon their older products so that they can sell you a newer, lower-priced model and eek out a little bit more money from you. That doesn't make a good product.

I'm not sure what people are expecting: half-baked Android tablets that there is no decent software for? We have enough of those on the market already. ;-)

Re: Gizmodo on the iPad

Chris N — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:22:52 -0000

I agree with them.. while the ipad is still great, the new one is not something revolutionary, just an incremental half assed update, ipad 2s?. While I do understand apple's business model, and why they make these decisions, it is just hard when the company that is sell proclaimed to be revolutionizing technology is purposely not, because it is not fiscally ideal. RUN ON SENTENCES!

Re: New Opterons Aim Low

Bob Martens — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:26:26 -0000

They need to keep pushing lower. ARM is eating both Intel's and AMD's lunch as far as mobile is concerned and unless they can push further than even Atom had gotten they are going to be pushed out in the end.

Lower power is a good thing. Lower power with more cores and comparable performance is better.

Re: New Opterons Aim Low

Jeffery Clark — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:12:33 -0000

I also like this. Right now, Intel does have the edge on the high-powered (gaming) CPUs, but, AMD has reached into the low-powered market with these server chips and their new integrated cpu/graphics deals. My laptop with an Intel core just sucks power, even when doing "normal" things. Even with a 12-cell battery I can only expect 3-4 hours of life, unless I turn down everything and throttle speed to the unbearable setting (as in 20 seconds to launch firefox).

Re: Reinventing Education

Bob Martens — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:30:32 -0000

Missing the forest for the trees that is.

Really, just have them use TextEdit and be happy. ;-)

Re: Reinventing Education

Perry Lund — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:00:16 -0000

This is part of and a step forward to the future of education. My wife's public school is moving to a 1:1 program in the fall. In a meeting yesterday afternoon, a 20 minute argument ensured about whether to require students to use iWork or MS Office on the MacBooks they are getting. How sad and short sighted our teachers are in this regard.