Updates
It’s 2:21am and I’m waiting for another OS to complete installation. It’s fun working with old technology and seeing how they still work, after nearly 6 years! How often do you see motherboards and video cards and harddisks failing in 1 - 2 years nowadays? Good old AMD K6-III 450MHz (that is 0.45GHz for those of you who’ve forgotten the good old days or only knows the days of 1.x/2.x/3.x GHz) still runs Windows 2000 fairly well. And a PCChips M598 motherboard… still working after 6 years I say again! Talk about PCChips being a bad brand. I for one can’t find fault now.
Well, much has transpired over the last 2 months. Not in chronological order, here are the bits and pieces from my fragmented memory…
1. Datacentre Migration to Equinix
Postponed once, but it still happened eventually. Really gotta thank Alvin and Keen for their great help. Without them, it would probably have taken me 6 hours to do what we did in 3. Was great fun installing rails on a leased-out 2U (our first time) and learning all the little bits and pieces about server racks. Equinix is a really nice setup. Wonder when ConceptLane will be able to finally get our own rack with a half-decent network… firstly, gotta work hard and get more colocation/leased server clients!
My Belkin F1DE101G KVM-over-IP didn’t seem to work at first, despite trying on 3 different servers. It would show the BIOS screen, but once the Linux OS commenced booting up, the KVM would lose all video. Initially I had the fear that I would be so unlucky to have a piece of damaged equipment even before it went operational… but after a few tweaks and trial and error attempts, I finally found the cause. The KVM-over-IP had a limited set of video modes which it would work with, so I had to manually configure the servers to enter VGA mode and into a resolution which the KVM was compatible with. Viola! The power of the Internet, Google and SSH. 
As of today, the backbone has also been finally reached its original intended configuration, so no more round-the-globe routing for local data packets. I’m just hoping the latency could improve just a little bit more. Now I’ve got to worry about international bandwidth… cause that is very limited indeed.
2. Business
Well, things seem to be picking up a little, but again, it’s all light over the horizon. Hope all the opportunities can turn concrete very soon… it’s time I stopped working like a madman while drawing a cleaner’s pay. Yes, a cleaner’s pay. Whoever’s reading this and got associates/clients/friends who need IT-related services, get in touch with me now!
3. Country Crap
I’ve just cancelled this section because it deserves a post of its own, which I will write once I finish off with this. For those who know that I absolutely adore bitching and slamming the ruling party, don’t worry, it’ll come. It’s just sitting in a Notepad window that I can easily access anytime using Alt-TAB.
4. Reyanne
Yes, my baby girl is coming to 11 months now. Time flies. It really really does. Everyday is a really fun day when you have a kid whom you planned to have and when you can see so much of yourself in. She’s qan excellent crawler, and with a really cute air about her as she pik-piaks her way around the house. Absolute bundle of joy she is. I’ll find some time to touch up a few clips and images of her sometime soon. She’s starting to stand, sometimes with supporting structures, sometimes on her own, and starting to mimick words we say as well (started about 2 months back). Some of the words I’ve heard her say include “Melody”, “Cat”, “Tai Yang” (sun in Chinese), and most importantly, “Daddy”! Once in the morning, I started playing with her on the bed just as she woke up, and she was so happy that she looked at me when I paused, pointed her finger at my nose, and went “Dah-dy” twice. Considering I’ve always asked her to call me “Papa”, this was a complete surprise! You cannot imagine my thrill and delight. Her sleeping form is such a joy to watch as well… sigh. It’ll all soon be over, and she’ll be annoying my socks off I bet. ;p But it’s an annoyance i’m prepared to put up with, and something I probably will have a good laugh about in time to come.
Planning a second kid I hear you wonder aloud? Probably… another year or so to decide I guess. I think a 3-year gap is just about right, seeing how my sister and I turned out. I’ve also got to weigh the financial aspects of things, so yeah, we’ll see how things go. My chauvinistic side is hoping for a boy, so hope Mother Nature will grant me some favours when it’s time to “work hard”. :p
Ok, this has gotten awfully long. And the damn OS is still “finalising” and saving settings. Maybe a K6-III wasn’t such a good idea after all… hah.
Think I’ll bitch about the Ruling Party tomorrow.