happiness at work and play
For a while now I have advocated some open source software over it's proprietary equivalents - for some clients a simple change away from MS Office can be a saving of over a million dollars per year (every year!) in licensing costs. I tell people that if they are that keen to get rid of their money, switch to Open Office and donate the money to a charity or use it to make their business greener. And while adoption was slow initially, the economic downturn has placed saving money high on the to do list for many CIOs and the uptake of cheaper open source products has come into vogue.
Why are you telling me all this? I hear you ask. well I still (and probably always will) need a windows environment for my work. after struggling with the capricious and bedevilling nature of VMWare's supposed support for Linux such that I could have this environment in a hermetically sealed virtual world, I eventually threw up my hands. Threw up! and tried out VirtualBox instead. And I have discovered a virtual nirvana where things work the way I had dreamed they should without hacking around at code and watching your servers ability to run virtual machines break each time you upgrade the OS. This issue is not trivial, it's like upgrading your kitchen to make cooking food easier and faster only to find out that all of your appliances now have the wrong power plugs.
domino designer 8.5 on ubuntu
The upshoot, I have now finally transitioned completely to Ubuntu 9.04 and can perform testing and run the few remaining windows development programs (which result in my bills getting paid) seamlessly in a virtual windows environment.
Words cannot describe adequately the dewy eyed, lip trembling happiness that I feel when I'm working with this OS all the time. It's super quick, shinier, stable and can be set up to do just about anything I can think of for free. Also it's sooooo nice to only have to go into windows land when absolutely necessary and when I do it's in the full knowledge that I will soon escape. It's like going back to that shitty sharehouse you used to live in when you first moved out of home where the cupboards never quite shut, when the fridge kicked in all the lights in the house dimmed and occasionally the fuse box tripped for no reason you could determine and you were left sitting in the dark wondering where the torch is.
Now when I'm discussing open source with customers they can see that I'm not just talking it up, I actually operate this way out of preference. I can avoid the "so how come you use windows?" question, which while I had valid reasons for it, weakened my argument considerably and left me to reply through grinding teeth: "yeah, please don't remind me".
In other news, the weather made a big jump towards summer and to celebrate I bought a barbeque. Of course my presumptuous actions has angered the mercurial gods and precipitated such conditions as to make it almost impossible to actually use the bbq. Nevertheless I am undeterred and so far I have barbequed in gale force winds (twice) and the driving rain. Imagine if you will a solitary figure before a glowing alter of cookery, rain slewing from a heavy raincoat, teeth locked before the wind in a mad grin, holding defiantly aloft a set of metal tongs toward the angry flashing skies while the air fills will peals of victorious laughter. This could be me. Aahh, the bbq hood - enabling deranged men the world over. Good times.
Why are you telling me all this? I hear you ask. well I still (and probably always will) need a windows environment for my work. after struggling with the capricious and bedevilling nature of VMWare's supposed support for Linux such that I could have this environment in a hermetically sealed virtual world, I eventually threw up my hands. Threw up! and tried out VirtualBox instead. And I have discovered a virtual nirvana where things work the way I had dreamed they should without hacking around at code and watching your servers ability to run virtual machines break each time you upgrade the OS. This issue is not trivial, it's like upgrading your kitchen to make cooking food easier and faster only to find out that all of your appliances now have the wrong power plugs.
domino designer 8.5 on ubuntu
The upshoot, I have now finally transitioned completely to Ubuntu 9.04 and can perform testing and run the few remaining windows development programs (which result in my bills getting paid) seamlessly in a virtual windows environment.
Words cannot describe adequately the dewy eyed, lip trembling happiness that I feel when I'm working with this OS all the time. It's super quick, shinier, stable and can be set up to do just about anything I can think of for free. Also it's sooooo nice to only have to go into windows land when absolutely necessary and when I do it's in the full knowledge that I will soon escape. It's like going back to that shitty sharehouse you used to live in when you first moved out of home where the cupboards never quite shut, when the fridge kicked in all the lights in the house dimmed and occasionally the fuse box tripped for no reason you could determine and you were left sitting in the dark wondering where the torch is.
Now when I'm discussing open source with customers they can see that I'm not just talking it up, I actually operate this way out of preference. I can avoid the "so how come you use windows?" question, which while I had valid reasons for it, weakened my argument considerably and left me to reply through grinding teeth: "yeah, please don't remind me".
In other news, the weather made a big jump towards summer and to celebrate I bought a barbeque. Of course my presumptuous actions has angered the mercurial gods and precipitated such conditions as to make it almost impossible to actually use the bbq. Nevertheless I am undeterred and so far I have barbequed in gale force winds (twice) and the driving rain. Imagine if you will a solitary figure before a glowing alter of cookery, rain slewing from a heavy raincoat, teeth locked before the wind in a mad grin, holding defiantly aloft a set of metal tongs toward the angry flashing skies while the air fills will peals of victorious laughter. This could be me. Aahh, the bbq hood - enabling deranged men the world over. Good times.