Wait…. you said you “had” a blast with it.  Using Android as my main mobile device ended with IOS 5.  It has the features I wanted in the iPhone, besides all that hacking on Android, left the device less than reliable.   So ,my blog lives on… here’s to 2011, and the start of 2012..

I love the chemistry between my mac and iphone, I loved that the iPhone and the flashyness of it.  But I wasn’t a huge fan of iOS, nor was I a fan of Apple’s direction of the iPhone.  (Don’t get me wrong, the hardware the iPhone4 is made is nothing but brilliant)

Here is a couple reason the iPhone was losing it’s zeal to me:

• Apple’s lock down  - you buy the phone, but we’ll make sure you don’t break it (this is great for some one who just wants a phone)
• iOS != OSX – iOS is nothing like OSX
• Iphone is really just a phone, with cool apps, I don’t believe it appeals to engineers, hackers.

Now bring on Android.   I purchased a Samsung Captivate.   The quality of the phone is good, after holding an iPhone, you’ll think that Samsung could have done better, but it’s something you get used to. (i.e. I like the heavy feel, the glass on the iPhone, etc, the Samsung Captivate (from the Galaxy S family) is very light and very thin, which appeals to some people)

Going from iOS to Android is actually a tough transition.

First off  - you have

• a dashboard
• widgets
• application
• tons of customization
• flexibity
• multitasking

Doesn’t the above sound like OSX when you first moved to it.

What have I done with my Android device:

• Applied a custom ROM
• Themed it
• Hacked the kernel source, applied new kernels
• over clocked/under clocked

I’ve had fun with my Android device, but one question posed to me by a friend was, is Android ready for the business user?   And that’s a great question to ask, a lot of people are buying up iPhone’s, most of the people are business savy that need the “smart” phone features, they need to occasional GPS use, then NEED email access and sms, I would even go as far as some need the forward facing camera for video conferencing.

To answer that, I do believe Android is ready for the business user.  There are a lot of devices that provide what a user needs, from the black berry led notification, to phones with forward facing cameras.

Last thoughts, the iPhone is a sweet phone, awesome hardware, great support, even the OS is good.  But if you want to open up your phone, control it, and not rely on a company to choose what you can and can’t do, then maybe your more of a Android user.

Mac Journal was included in the latest bundle. It’s “shocking” a journaling software that might just allow me to post more blog posts.. so I am testing it out, yes, atypical for a mac fan.

So I recently found the All Mail folder on my gmail account, it had a crazy 30+ thousand messages.  Here is the quick fix! 

I’m going to link this to macosxhints.

I admit it, I have an iPhone, and I love it, but I hate the ear buds that come with it.   So the other day I was talking to the great Shane Lowry and he had mentioned that he picked up some z.buds.   I was in the market really for a new blue tooth head set since I have been doing a lot of driving, I have been using the Apple ear buds with the built-in mic, and they have been at best “ok”.    So going on the advice of Shane, and a 35% coupon, I picked up the z.buds.  I’ve had them officially 2 days, they are noise canceling and the sound out of them is A-W-E-S-O-M-E, don’t go spending $99 on the Bose earbuds, when you can get a better sound, with a mic, for much less. 

ZAGG

I got fed up and decided to try something, I would delete the Envelope Index file. The file was around 30mb in size, not huge, but decent size.
When I started mail.app back up, it had to understandably rebuild each of the mailboxes I have configured. When it finished, it is now only 10mb in size, you think there might have been some corruption?

Know what you want to monitor.
I create most of my plug-ins in bash scripts and perl scripts. (other languages supported, those are just what I use)
Know your exit codes.
Your plug-in output should be helpful and informative.

Exit codes are simple, and key to your plug-in success.

0 – OK
1 – WARN
2 – CRITICAL
3 – UKNOWN

Now those look family don’t they, they are the states or status of a service. i.e. my disk space is in OK state because I have 120GB free space.

here is a sample code snippet:

if [ $space -ge $CRITCAL ] ; then
echo "DISK SPACE CRITICAL - 90% disk space used [10GB free on /]"
exit 2;
fi

Need Nagios/Monitoring consulting? Maybe I can help, I am currently working on, as project lead, one of the biggest Nagios installs, for a Wal-Mart and Novell.

Assume knowledge = 0, start from there.. 

-Mohammed Shakir Ali

Boil the Ocean

The phrase “”Boil The Ocean” describes an attempt at something that is way too ambitious, effectively impossible. The first time I heard the term was several years ago from an IBM developer. I thought it was an IBM-ism but I’ve been hearing it more and more outside of IBM.  When asked by a reporter what to do about U-boat sinkings during World War I, Will Rogers is said to have responded: “Boil the ocean”. “But how would you do that?” the reporter continued. Without a beat Rogers replied, “I’m just the idea man here. Get someone else to work out the details.”

http://www.comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf

Hard stop in xx

I could open up a term, and  type ssh -N -p 22 -c 3des jhigley@XXX.dnsalias.com -L 6667:XXX.dnsalias.com:6667 each time I wanted to open up an ssh tunnel for IRC, but instead I open up STM and it auto connects each of my tunnels for me. 

 You can get it here.