Yep, been some time…
A lot has changed since I last blogged. I’ve left the financial department and moved to networks and systems. This, methinks, is the place for me. Work is a lot of fun these days, it’s very good! I’m doing some very geeky things, I’ve been doing a lot with virtualization both in VMware and XenServer, I’ve been spending time with enterprise storage and backup solutions and absorbing everything I can from the crew I work with every day. No day is predictable and I’ve yet to see boredom. You can’t ask for more in a gig 
I’m beginning a project which is both going to benefit me personally (because I like to know things) and professionally, MySQL server administration. In short, there’s a need for somebody to have advanced skills with MySQL and potentially other SQL servers in the future. I volunteered to be that guy. I’m about to dive into beginner MySQL and progress into backups, tuning, database replication and high availability (HA). I’m pretty psyched! This is pretty much how I felt when I decided that I wanted to do something other than Windows and I jumped (both feet) into Linux. I’ve got 5 books on hand, I’m beginning with the MySQL Administrator’s Bible and moving on to others from there. Since I have no (NONE!) experience with MySQL or any database, I think it’ll be a bit of a slow start and will hopefully speed up in time…
I’ll be banging on this as much as possible over the Christmas break this year and we’ll go from there. I should have no problem building test servers as needed (XenServer is making deploying a Linux VM trivial) and I’m sure I can grab some large collections of test data from existing MySQL databases on campus. I should have more than I need for the project
In other news… The linuxneophyte.com site is still on hiatus and will probably remain that way forever. Umm, I guess retired is a better description than hiatus. I’m thinking that if I blog at all, it’ll be here. One ring to rule them all so to speak. I’m not focusing on any single OS, Windows, Linux, Mac… Use the right tool for the job… If anyone is interested, my primary machine these days is a MacBook. For day-to-day use, I don’t think there’s a better hardware/OS combo. It’s simple enough to run Windows in a VM if you need it, you can install a whole collection of command line tools to get real work done and I don’t care who you are, you have to admit, Apple makes pretty hardware.
…and now, bed.
Before I go, here’s something a little cool, it turns out that one of the authors of the administrator’s bible (Sheeri K. Cabral) earned her education @ Brandeis. Kind of slick that I’ll be taking skills she’s handing me and employing them @ the same Uni.
Sheeri, if you see this in a Google alert, /me says hi!
M
So I joined up to beta test Windows 7, more for the fun and distraction of it than anything. I downloaded both the 32 and 64 bit ISOs and burned em’ to DVD for installation. Below is a basic walkthrough of the installer and a fix for a problem that occurs on my test hardware (Dell Optiplex 740)
7′s install is as straight forward as Vista’s. You choose your language, time and currency format and your keyboard layout and then accept the license. Next you choose your install type (I chose custom, not upgrade). Following that, you select your destination partition (I’m installing on a dual boot system and I created the partition in advance) and let it go. The installer copies the files to the hard disk and reboots the machine for the first time.
This is where the fun begins! The machine boots and you get the fancy Windows particle animation, some notifications of reg and system updates, a message reading that Windows is completing the installation and then… a black screen with just a hint of color in the top row of pixels. The installer is still working as indicated by DVD and hard disk drive access. Eventually, the machine will reboot again and attempt to load Windows, you’ll be left at the same black screen.
The problem is that there’s a driver update required for the video chipset to work properly, here’s how I got into Windows in order to install the update.
Note: I was able to get higher resolutions working as long as I didn’t select 1280×1024. Since that’s what I (and the OS) wanted, I went for the updated driver.
That’s all folks, start installing your apps and see what works 
Amusing video… http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1886349
… and other than that, I’ve got nothing else to say at the moment
![IE[6|8]](http://matthewsnell.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/awesome1.jpg "IE[6|8]")