Hope you all had a scary good time! I watched some old thriller on Turner Classic Movies. Dogs really don’t dig halloween and ours dislikes the noise, kids, and unusual sounds. Otherwise, enjoy the interlude.

The team got a lot accomplished compared to where we were last week at this time. If you do project management, you all know its like writing software. It evolves even as much as you want it discrete. But like Caro at IBM told me once “project management is managing process and people”. I’ve given a lot of thought to that description over the years and I think Caro was one smart project manager at IBM. She had the process and the people down.

Now, the bags are packed and checked. I have a day left of meetings and then hopefully some relaxing time at the hotel this evening working a bit, eating, and leaving for the Chennai airport around 8pm.

It’ll be good to get home. I get home tomorrow at noon (yikes). That means I spend a day in the netherworld of ultimate jet lag and sleep it off that night starting at about 8pm hopefully. If I can sleep through that night, the next day is not so bad. My clock is still messed up here though. I wake up at 3am fully charged and ready to go. Not so good.

Tomorrow, I depart Chennai. I wish I could have done more here on the weekend but I battled with laziness and sloth and ended up going to the world’s second longest beach one day here only. Oh well, there are more trips. I’ll be glad to get home after the marathon flying and over 10k miles logged. I don’t know that I’ll blog again on this side of the world but this trip was good for me at a work level and an interaction level with the India team.

See everyone on the flipside unless I get all charged up in Singapore on Thursday morning. I’m on a redeye flight so hopefully I’ll be tired enough to sleep on the longer flight.

See ya!

I’ll be here another week and will bow out of regular work stuff next Friday and enjoy a day or two away from work and resting. Getting older means jet lag takes longer to deal with I guess and after that I’m flying back to Singapore for a day and night and then leaving the next morning for home.

I feel very fortunate to have what I have. I was able to transition to a role that I designed myself at my company with the blessings of management from the CEO down. That felt really good. I like working on Linux and managing and evangelizing our Linux products and platforms.

On to Chennai tonite for the final fling at hours of timezone differences.

There are things I need to bring for a 15 hour flight tomorrow. I need books. I will probably pack 2 books and get through 1.5 of them. I need my 80g Rockbox’ed Ipod which gives me 13 hours and 40g of music without the crappy ipod interface. I need my HP Ipaq which does games, notes, etc. The Ipaq works very nicely on airplanes since its not a phone and just a PocketPC.

We were talking about how to sleep on the plane and this is something I have issues with but I have an answer. Someone at work suggested benadryl but that causes bad ju ju with high blood pressure meds. Instead I partake of the Heineken medication. Three beers and I’m done and I sleep. Its a gentle way of relaxing, becoming one with the flight, and finally easing into the hour-eating restless winked out state.

So finally, the time is coming and I’ll be in wondrous Singapore staying here for a night. Then its on to Chennai and I’ll be staying here. Both are very nice. I have little time in Singapore and more time to explore, tour, and play in Chennai. But I’ll be above sea level at the Raintree definitely. Its one of the places that create wonder with the noisy nights in Chennai. I’ll be drinking a beer too. A Kingfisher in India and Tiger in Singapore.

I’m there long enough to send postcards this time but truth be told I’m gonna be busy. This is no holiday away. This is about needs and approaches and requirements. And I’m good for all those things.

The place we are going in Thailand is 4 hours away from Bangkok so its a 12 hour train ride or a 2 hour flight. Another little evolutionary bump. Then we fly out of Bangkok and on to Chennai and have to be back to catch the return trip to Japan. Round and round we go

Now we have it just about done. Airlines are booked but alas I have not heard back from Offbeat Guides as of yet. Perhaps its for the best because this trip is definitely not guided. Its more of re-inventing every small travel wrinkle as we go. If Offbeat Guides had a section for Offbeat Guides that were Seriously Unplanned that would be the best for Todd and I.

Luckily where we work is very supportive of travel and they encourage us to go invent itineraries. This is gonna be fun and I don’t think we really need a guide. Chaos cannot be guided or it would no longer be chaos.

I’m also leaving this Monday for India and Singapore for 2 weeks. I have weekends in India. May do a day tour. Wish me well and as a friend at Visa used to tell me, to “travel wisely”.

Now I’m happy to say that this player has reached a great point in its development and I’d like to say thanks to those that fly with the Songbird.

If you are out looking for something new to try; give Songbird a try. If you want virtualization for cheaper, try out Virtualbox definitely. It seems to work and is cheaper around memory and use than VMware Player.

Prologue and Past…

A friend, Theo, still calls on occasion. Theo is a Physical Anthropologist I worked with at a few places. We shared hotel rooms, dug up human remains outside of Redding, walked an electrical transmission line outside of Reno, hiked a long one out of Barstow. He is one of the few from “the day” that still calls or emails. This time he dropped me an email from a Starbuck’s or something outside of some place in some state, USA. We are both gracefully aging and he has been having questions about his passing days. We only see each other every few years. But we remember…

That’s a good thing ™. Its my perception as one ages that its damned hard to make friends. I used to make friends at work often; but I’ve had a few things which have caused my grief doing that. Now I would rather be cordial; be a colleague; do the work. Being a friend at work is risky. I seem to always lose them one way or another.

Theo, thanks for the email from somewhere, USA. I love ya, man. No one knows “dem bonez” like you do. I know you’re evolving and changing; finding the new horizon. I can have a case of suds in the fridge at a moment’s notice. Take care.

Anomie is a sociological term from back when. I like its meaning overall. It bridges a few gaps. I always felt that sociologists were kinda funny kids on the block back when I did anthropology. We used to joke that they were “almost enlightened”. But psychologists were unworthy. I still feel that way for some reason. Perhaps because they always felt that they had some magic answers and they only did the observation for an hour a week. After all, anthropologists study behaviors for years and often admit to still not knowing nearly enough. This is human and cultural behavior folks. How can you sum up another culture in an hour a week?

Sincerely Moving Away from Center

I find myself these days getting some kind of wanderlust. I drift off sometimes to find a reality that I once had. Advancing years? I still feel in command of my senses (for the most part). No, I think its some mental wanderlust. I still connect to Alexander Supertramp and still see that magical bus and wonder at his life and places. Darn that Sean Penn anyways. He had to do that movie. He left me scarred.

Now I am moving off the center beam. I remember when I went into my wild. For me, it was those days of wandering deserts, mountains, hills. I could have stayed there for those years and more. Anthropology was such a mistress folks. Demanding, sometimes demented; but always very possessive and needing more.

And I miss it sometimes very much and other times even more. But I miss it in a way of not wanting to go back. I like what I have now; in fact would say I love it. But its the secret life of my own conscience that drags me around its hurricane force winds.

Linux on the Corners of the World

Back to my travel to Chennai. I like India folks. I told a colleague that India and Linux are a lot alike. Both seem unfinished, promising, rich, and tapestried. They both have potential and like most human conditions some flaws. Software is never finished and my feeling about India is its not finished either. And that’s a wondrous thing. Its mold is still be shaped and I think the people know it. So off I go soon.

Wish me well and safe travels. I wonder why Dave and his Offbeat Guides guys won’t invite me. I’m a good traveler guys. I like adventure. Gimme a try. I want to be a Offbeat travel guy. I’m going to Singapore and India soon. I have 3 days of a weekend to go poke around in dusty corners.

But Jeremy mentioned in the comment that I should give VirtualBox a try. So I did. In all fairness, I have VirtualBox with XP SP3 and VMware 2.5 Player with Server 2003. In my completely unofficial test; VirtualBox beats the pants off VMware Player. Both have a seamless or unity mode feature; but VirtualBox seems to actually want to run on my Thinkpad T43 with 1.5g of memory while VMware Player seems to struggle.

I think VMware has tried to do too much with too much bloat. it just feels all syrupy slow and loaded with a unity mode which really makes it not useful. My advice, VMware, is to lose the menu thing on top which lets you find menus or whatever. Instead try the lower in fuel VirtualBox method and just let us launch from the Windows Taskbar. Secondly, take a look at the memory use here.

All that being said, I’m still a VMWare Server and ESXi afficianado. Server must be the 1.0.x release though. The 2.0 server seems awkward and all webified. ESXi just rocks but Linux desktoppers need a VI client.

I’d say for lightweight desktop virtualization, it does not get much better than VirtualBox.