Parallels is a very nice way to run more than one operating system at once on any Intel based Mac. You do need a fair amount of memory to be able to run it comfortably. Still, going to an after-market retailer for the extra memory is well worth the investment. This is especially true for web developers who have to test against multiple versions of multiple browsers. Or simply the bane of my existence: Internet Explorer.

I have a couple of virtual machines that run Windows XP Professional. One has IE6 installed while the other has IE7. This helps ensure that my markup, JavaScript and styling does work for the browsers that we are targeting. Apparently, our target users haven't converted to Mac OS X or at least upgraded to Firefox. It's a shame really...

A nice thing with Parallels is that the host computer has a relatively stable address that is accessible to the guests OS. You still have to figure out what it is though. It's not really hard, but I would rather remember a name than an IP address.

Apple's Bonjour networking helps a lot. It uses a technique called Multicast DNS (mDNS) to resolve host names that aren't defined in a formal DNS server. You don't even need a DHCP server to get this to work. All Macs have a name. My MacBook Pro is called Defiant. mDNS host names lives in the .local top level domain. So, to get to the HTTP web server on Defiant, I can point my browser to http://defiant.local/ and get a web page.

Microsoft doesn't quite support mDNS. Well, they don't support Apple's implementation of mDNS to be precise. Apple does provide a download of Bonjour for Windows which fills that gap. Installing it is as easy as downloading the file and running an installation wizard. You don't even have to reboot (which is a rarity under Windows). At that point, I am also able to open up IE in a virtual machine and point it to http://defiant.local/ to retrieve the same web page. No more guessing at IP addresses for me.

I bought my brand new 15" 2.4GHz MacBook Pro the Wednesday following it's release. I had saved up the money, I was ready to buy. So I showed up at the Broomfield Apple store with my Sun badge in one hand and a credit card in the other and walked out with my new laptop. I transferred my settings and application from my PowerBook G4 and haven't looked back since.

It turns out to be an amazing machine. It's so fast that I no longer have time to read an RSS feed entry when compiling code. I did have performance issues when running Windows XP under Parallels, but those were quickly resolved by upgrading the memory to 4GB. The display is sharp and extremely bright. I usually end up dimming it a bit so it is easier to read and match my external display.

It's really nice to have a few hours of battery time. I usually end up with about 3 hours of battery life without having to turn too many things off. This allows me to bring the laptop to serial meetings or enjoy a full evening of Sci-Fi channel and RSS reading without having to carry the power brick.

Apple finally released the new MacBook Pros. This is something that I have waited for since Intel announced the Santa Rosa platform. It is exciting to read the MacRumors thread on the subject. This looks like a solid upgrade to me. Even more exciting is that I should get my hands on one on Thursday. My trusty PowerBook G4 is still going strong. I just need to do more faster than I used to.

I am still trying to decide between the 15" and the 17" versions. The 15" has an LED illuminated display. It is free or mercury and appears to be brighter than the display on the previous iteration. The 17" LCD has a higher resolution and more screen real-estate. I do connect an external monitor at home and at work. I guess that I still have a couple days to decide. Either way, I should be able to buy the stock model from the Apple store and upgrade the memory later. It's usually cheaper to buy the memory from an OEM rather than from Apple. Better yet, it doesn't void the warranty.

A good news is that I do get to use the Sun Employee discount to make this purchase. This will help offset the bulk of the sales tax and allow me to add a few accessories to it.

Well, I should try to finish up the thread before going to bed.

A friend just graduated from College this weekend. We are very proud of her and her accomplishment. This is a giant step in her young life.

It's been 10 years since I graduated from college. A lot has happened in those 10 years. Not just in terms or career or technology, but mainly in terms of life in general. I went from being a nerdy single guy in Montreal to being a geeky married guy in Denver. From living with my mother to sharing a house with four roommates (at one point) to owning my own house.

It certainly seem that I have made a lot of progress. It's still early in my life. There's (hopefully) a lot more that will happen. We are still waiting to receive our adoption referral and are considering starting a concurrent adoption. We are talking about buying a bigger house since our house would just burst apart with 2 kids. And even that isn't that far out on the journey. Looking ahead I can see where my mother and my grandmothers are in their life.

There's a good reason why they call it a Commencement Exercise. It seemed like it was the end of an era back then (and it was). But it is also just the beginning of a much bigger journey. My friend is just taking her first steps in the post-graduation life. She seems to have it pretty much together with a job lined up and a man that she is very much in love with. I wish her the best of luck!

There we go for round 2. The snow has started here in Thornton, and it is already starting to accumulate out there.

It's hard to see as thumbnails, but you can see the snow falling down on both pictures. It's certainly more evident on the second one.

So I guess that I'll stay dry and warm today and spend some quality time with a shovel tomorrow.

Be safe driving home tonight!

I started using StatCounter to keep statistics against this blog. I did like to see how many people were coming in and how they got here. It's certainly interesting to see how the traffic is affected by different actions I take (such as posting a comment on a different blog.)

The downside is that I had no way of knowing how many people were hitting my feed. You see, StatCounter works by adding a small snippet of Javascript to the HTML page. The different feed readers do not see the layout of the blog, so they never get to load the Javascript. Hence, no statistics for me.

That's where FeedBurner comes in. FeedBurner retrieves the feed from my blog and massage it. Users are sent to the FeedBurner site to retrieve the feed. Each request is tracked, and statistics are generated. You can even add some cool little things to the feed itself. As a result, I'll be able to see how many people subscribe to my feed and get a better idea of who is visiting my blog.

You have nothing to change if you already subscribe to the feed. I have setup my web server to redirect requests for the old feed over to the new one.

I have been a Textdrive customer for a few months now. Textdrive's shared hosting plans are pretty good, they always provided me with good support and have a strong user community that helps and supports each others.

The only issue is that as a shared hosting service, there are some limitations to what I could do. Their main focus was on supporting LAMP and Ruby on Rails applications, so Java applications were pretty much out of the question. Same with Camping applications (unless the Camping gem was already installed on your server.) Sure, Textdrive would have installed the gem if I asked. My issue is that I had to ask ;) . Another issue is that you cannot have root access on the server (for very good reasons...).

My solution was to get a Virtual Private Server from SliceHost. In many way, I still share a server with an unknown number of users. We all share the same hardware and internet connection. Each slice has it's own kernel, memory space and slices of CPU time. These are guaranteed and managed so that no one can take over the actual server. I even get to have root access without impacting anyone else.

It took less than 5 minutes to have a slice built and configured after putting in my order. SliceHost has a web console where I can go and restart the server or even rebuild it if I mess up too badly :). The console even provides me with usage information so I can see how close I am to reaching my usage limits.

The only downside is that SliceHost doesn't provide DNS management services. TextDrive's service was fine, but it didn't allow me to add non-TextDrive systems to my domain. I finally found ZoneEdit. With ZoneEdit, you can manage up to 5 different DNS zones for free. You still need to register your domain with a separate registrar (I used Dynamic Network Services as my registrar).

The end result is that you can now visit my latest mapping mashup, which uses Camping for its web framework.

I was playing around Google Docs and Spreadsheets looking at the different features available. I did notice that the publish tab had a "Post to Blog" button. I decided to give it a try, and you are seeing the result of that attempt.

My first impression of Google Docs is positive. The UI is responsive under Firefox (on Mac OS X of course). I can see underlines under the words that I misspelled. Formatting is available, so I can bold and italicize to my heart's content. This is almost as nice as working with ecto.

The Google Docs UI itself is full of Ajax goodness. It shouldn't be surprising though since this is a Google application.

Well, time to hit the "Post to Blog" button and see what happens.

[Update: The document posted to my blog without problems. I am a little bummed that I couldn't assign a category to it though. It's gotta be a beta :) ]

[Update 2: I did republish my entry from Google Docs. I ended up with a duplicate entry, which isn't too surprising. It was very easy to open the entry in ecto and edit it. No big problem really... It's certainly a good way to post when away.]

Mollie's sister is getting married in August, and we are planning to drive up to Seattle with the rest of Mollie's family a few days before the wedding. It's going to be a 2 day drive from Grand Junction, so we were looking for ways for the passengers to be entertained. We were considering buying a portable DVD player when I realized that we could easily use my PowerBook to play DVDs. I already had a power inverter, so we don't have to worry about keeping the laptop charged.

Mollie, one of her friends and I had to go over to Glenwood Springs over the weekend, so we took the opportunity to test the setup out. Before leaving, I plugged everything in, turned the volume as high as it could go and let the passengers get comfortable. We did discover pretty quickly that we didn't have a good place for the PowerBook, so Mollie and her friend took turns holding it. The PB also had a hard time competing with the road noise.

So I came up with the following lesson learned:

• We need to find something to hold the powerbook as we drive.
• We need a way to pipe the sound to the car's sound system. This way, it will be much easier to compete with the road noise (although it may be a little distracting for the driver...). Headphones may also help.

The end result was positive. I think that once we resolve these two issues that we will be ready for the drive to Seattle. The ladies were entertained and I was able to go a little bit faster that I could have had otherwise ;).

Mollie and I had agreed that we would wait to turn my home office into the guest bedroom/nursery to be until we reached the DTC milestone in the adoption. Now that we have, it was time for her to get started on transforming the room.

Of course, the first step was to get me out of there into what was then the guest bedroom. We took time planning how the office would look, what paint to put on the walls, how to arrange the furniture. We emptied the room, made a mess of the rest of the house and started applying primer on Friday. By Saturday, the room was painted (that's after spending a lot of time running around town and going to the CCAI picnic). On Sunday, we started moving furniture.

Of course, we quickly realized that my original plan wouldn't quite work. My desk was bigger than I thought it would be. As a result, the positioning of the furniture changed. Once the furniture was in place, it was time to reassemble the computers and network. That alone took a few hours since I made an effort to organize the cabling so it wouldn't turn into another rat's nest.

I think that the end result was well worth the effort. The last thing to do is to hang the frames back on the walls and organize my library so I can find my books again.