In 2007 a friend and I both started moving out equipment to rack mount setups. We each had our own reasons, but the common reasons were saving space, organization, and it is kinda nice to say you have a rack in your house. When I was looking for a rack/cabinet I found someone a couple hours away that had a lightly used 45U fully enclosed cabinet for sale. The cabinet came with sides, doors, caster base, two shelves, four-fan unit for the top, and a $350 price tag. A few days after picking up the cabinet I spoke with him again and we made a deal that resulted in me having an entire car full (trunk full and front and back seats full to the ceiling) of equipment. I recreated an album containing the older pictures of the cabinet, and how things were organized, which can be viewed in the Rack Project album.

After moving to Atlanta I was able to acquire even more rack mount equipment and fill in some of the gaps I had to leave empty in the beginning. The details of what is in the cabinet can be read on my Gear page, but here is a parent list.

• Linksys WRT54G 4-Port 10/100 54mb Wireless Router
• Canon CanoScan 8400F
• brother HL Series HL-2070N Laser Printer,
• 4U, Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Desktop
• 5U, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ File Server
• 1U, Intel Pentium III, 850mhz Endian Firewall/Router
• 1U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.4ghz IBM x305 Servers (x4)
• 1U, Tripp Lite HTR07-1U UPS (x2)
• 1U, Dell PowerConnect 5012 Gigabit Switch
• 1U, Cisco Catalyst 2900 XL 24 port Switch
• 1U, CAT5e 24 port Patch Panel
• 1U, Rack Writer
• 2U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.6C Linux Desktop

I am currently not using the Cisco switch, the 2U desktop, or any of the x305 1Us on a regular basis. With the monitor and 5.1 audio connected to the same power source I am pulling 515 watts right now, which does raise the power bill, but not to an outrageous amount.

I am opening up time to start doing a little consulting so I have taken some time to organize the work space and make it a better work environment. The following pictures are of my home office that were taken on March 2nd, Home Office album is on PicasaWeb.

I haven’t tried it yet, but this recipe is probably going to give you the real Swiss fondue experience. The fondue I had in Zurich had white wine in it, which was different from other fondue I have had, but sooooo good.

1/2 lb Emnenthaler Cheese (shredded)
1/2 lb Gruyeye (shredded)
1 clove Garlic
2 cups Dry White Wine
1 tbs Lemon Juice
2 tbs Flour
3 tbs Kirsch
1/4 tsp White Pepper
Nutmeg and/or Paprika to taste

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove – add clove to pot or disgard
Heat up the White Wine & Lemon Juice – should be hot but do not boil
Reduce heat to low and slowly add cheese while stirring
Slowly add remainder of ingredients while stirring
If fondue is too loose add more cheese
If fondue is too stiff add more wine

I have felt like a jerk not being able communicate with a lot of the people I have to talk to, co-workers are of course excluded from that since they all speak English. A lot of stores seem to be closed on Sunday, and they are of course different from stores in the U.S. The food is good, I have had Italian, Swiss-American, Swiss, and some German food and have enjoyed them all. The Swiss-American burger could have been better, but it was of course “American” food in another country. Food is pretty expensive. I have been paying 20-30 CHF for a meal, which is about $17-$25. Not horrible, but when that $25 is fries, a coke, and bratwurst it is a bit expensive.

I am pretty sure I am going to put in the effort to relocate to Zurich even with the downsides, I feel there is more opportunity for travel, career advancement, personal growth, and excitement here than in CA or NY and certainly more than Atlanta.

You are more than welcome to browse through all of the photos taken during the trip along with some of my favorites displayed below.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://peterjmanis.com$1 [R=301,L]

Apparently Wordpress couldn’t handle that correctly because I made a small change to my permalinks. I have since updated it to

RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ http://peterjmanis.com$1/$2$3/ [R=301,L]

Everything should now redirect properly.

1. Improve Django and Python skills
2. Work on a startup
3. Improve eating habits
4. Lose 40 lbs
5. Create an Android application
6. Drink more water
7. Eliminate all debt
8. Start dating again
9. Create a solution log
10. Move up in Google
11. Travel internationally

1. Improve Django and Python skills
2. Work on a startup
3. Improve eating habits
4. Lose 40 lbs
5. Create an Android application
6. Drink more water
7. Eliminate all debt
8. Start dating again
9. Create a solution log
10. Move up in Google
11. Travel internationally

I have already started all of these so we will see how they work out.

People also went nuts over the whole Janet Jackson breast incident, and that was a quick flash that was handled by her as a mistake (covering up quickly). There are people who are not going to handle a picture of a woman breast feeding as it was intended, a non-sexual photograph. I happen to know someone who is in the petition, a girl who just had a baby in 2008, she also happens to be one of the most argumentative women I have ever met in my life and would find any excuse to justify her being on that petition.

It isn’t that there is anything really wrong with the photographs (other than the 4yr old breast feeding), personally I think nude photos should be more accepted in our society, but that just isn’t going to happen. I don’t know that Facebook is the place for photos of women breast feeding and I hope that Facebook continues to remove the photos.

The Atlanta Circuit City stores are closing and I was able to pick up a Canon EOS Rebel XS for $449.99, which is a really good deal (except that as I check Newegg right now it is the same price but they have free shipping and I had to pay tax at CC).

Many don’t know that I used to have a great interest in photography, but never had the spare resources to buy a nice camera. I am hoping to use this opportunity to learn how to properly use the camera and take some fantastic photos. My trip in February is going to be a great opportunity, but I need to learn before I leave so I can reduce the number of poor photos.

If the LHS slice is in extended form, then the RHS must have just as many items as the number of items in the LHS slice.

Book meme:

- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

via both Leah Culver and Eric Florenzano’s blogs

Sentence from Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition by Alex Martelli

Thursday morning I started having these weird stomach spasm type things, it sorta feels like when you are starving and your stomach feels like it is eating itself. They went away by the time I arrived at work. The next morning I woke up with it being worse and back pain, which I have gotten a few times so I thought it might have just been related to that. The day continued and I didn’t feel better so I went home around 1:30. Saturday morning I woke up and still felt bad and after my manager mentioned appendicitis on Friday I decided to look up the symptoms. I was having enough symptoms that I felt it could have been appendicitis so I went into the emergency room. The page I found about appendicitis had said you would feel some paid to the right of your naval, which I was experiencing, but when I pushed in the general area of the appendix it never hurt. After talking to the doctor he was like “well your appendix is down here and your pain is on the center and right side of your stomach”. Better safe than sorry. I had eaten not long before going in so I could not have further tests done, but the blood and urinalysis came back fine and he feels it is something with my gallbladder.

The real crappy thing is I am in pain, I feel like I need to go into work since I will be gone next week and I can’t get a doctors appointment until Friday afternoon. Friday night I am leaving to go up to Virginia and pack up my mom’s house. So I am going to be feeling like crap and having to move a lot of stuff. Oh well that’s life.

The integration with Google mail, calendar, and contacts is so great, I never have to worry about getting stuff synced anymore it just does it. When I update a contact I know that will be updated on the other end. Maps and street view integration is sweet, and it came at good timing because Saturday I had to find my way to a hospital, but that’s a story for another time. Until the image is cached street view is somewhat slow, you tap on an arrow and it has to load that image, but once loaded you can jump back and forth pretty quickly.

The one thing I wish it had was a virtual keyboard. I never had an iPhone to experience a totally virtual keyboard environment, but HTC devices in the past had a virtual keyboard and a physical keyboard. It is just annoying to have to pull out the keyboard for everything. The exception to “everything” is dialing a number that is touchscreen.

If you can get the chance to play with one I encourage you to use it for a little bit. I cancelled my AT&T contract today because I love this phone so much. I had service issues too, but the phone is what really made me leave AT&T.