By mike
If you end up using VMware’s VI Client to connect to multiple vCenter servers or ESX/ESXi hosts, you might find yourself a little annoyed at how many saved connections show up when you go to launch a new connection. This becomes ever more annoying when you’re connecting to multiple servers named somewhat the same as the client will start auto-completing your selections. This has reached it’s pain point this week as we transition to similarly-named vCenter servers and I keep fat-fingering what I’m typing.
If you want to clear that saved connections dialog, it’s a simple registry edit in XP. Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VMware\VMWare Infrastructure Client\Preferences\RecentConnections
and simply delete the connections you don’t want (DO NOT delete the entire key, just the connections in that reg key). Enjoy your clutter-free VI Client…
By mike
Last weekend I got sucked into one of the most interesting and cool features of Picasa, Google’s Mac and PC application for organizing photos: facial recognition. Last year, my father began scanning all of the thousands of family photos that he has stored using a slide/negative scanner and a flatbed scanner for prints. I ended up coming home last Christmas after a family visit with 40+gig of digital imagery – and that’s roughly 1/3 of what he thinks he has left to digitize!
As soon as I got home, I simply dumped the collection into my Picasa albums folder and let the software crank through it. But only a few days ago did I stumble upon the facial recognition features of Picasa – and it opened up an totally unexpected world of family history for me. You see, in sorting through all of the faces and tagging them with names either from my already-imported contacts list or by adding new ones on the fly, I’ve begun to gain a deeper understanding of my family history. I’ve always known the basics, such as my grandparents and some aunts and uncles here and there. But putting names to the faces of people like my father’s aunt, sitting down to dinner dressed to the nines in the 1930’s with her dapper husband Jack, has just brought a whole new level of appreciation to where I’ve come from and how deep my roots – and my own growing family’s roots – are and will continue to be for generations to come. And yes, that’s my father leaning out of the back of that 1960’s Beetle, not me. Something about the apple falling somewhere in close proximity to the tree…
By mike
To coin a phrase from Lifehacker.com, you can choose to completely nuke Google Buzz from your account. Looking at the screenshots via this PCWorld article, I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent FTC complaint filed against Google for the way that the “don’t be evil” search giant handled the rollout of Buzz?
Google has updated Gmail to include a “Buzz” tab, where you can prevent the public from seeing your followers list, remove the Buzz inbox from Gmail, and, as the nuclear option, completely kill your Buzz account
That last link, with the warning sign and red text, completely removes Buzz from your Google Profile, according to its wording. A commenter notes that it might also kill your Google Profile entirely, so be cautious if that’s something you want to keep around.
I’m blocked from Gmail at work and can’t bring up the full desktop version from my iPhone, so I guess I’ll have to wait to do this until later this eve. But there is that note about deleting your Google Profile that will be interesting to watch. I find it interesting that Google is taking a course of action here that will not just bring you back to where you started before Buzz, but actually to a lower level of end-user engagement by deleting profiles. If anything, this privacy debacle has made me take a good look at what I use my Google account for besides email, if not thinking about pulling my personal email from Google entirely – with the full support from my lovely wife who noted that it’s not like I haven’t changed my address a bunch of times recently. 
UPDATE: Yup, it works as advertised from what I can tell. No more Buzz and no more Google Profile.
By mike
You’ve got to wonder how badly you foobered up your product release when the Electronic Frontier Foundation has this to say about Buzz:
If you’re going to use Google Buzz, we recommend that you opt-out during profile creation. If you have already created a profile, change it to private immediately. Then go through the suggested list, and edit it as appropriate before making it public again. PC World has a helpful privacy checklist to help users understand the privacy implications of Google Buzz options.
How many people are going to want to read through such checklists and really tweak their profile/settings in order to actually take advantage of Buzz while maintaining some semblance of privacy? I just turned it off and removed anything I could find related to Buzz in my profile. If anything, it made me take a closer look at how open my profile was on Google.
Fail, Google. Really really really huge fail.
By mike
Didn’t realize that Google Buzz gets turned on with some really, really huge privacy-nuking options. WTF, Google?
From the Silicon Valley Insider:
A Google spokesperson asked us to phrase this claim differently. Like this: “In other words, after you create your profile in Buzz, if you don’t edit any of the default settings, someone could visit your profile and see the people you email and chat with most (provided you didn’t edit this list during profile creation).”
I guess I could take some time to figure out how to protect myself, but instead I’ll be sitting it out for now with a tech tip from Consumerist:
You can go into Buzz and selectively follow/unfollow certain people to avoid this kind of incident, but the best evasive maneuver is to scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click “Turn off Buzz.”
Wow… just wow, Google.
By mike
I already have a Facebook account, Google. ’sides, your iPhone web app seems to suck by not even loading…
By mike
So I’ve been restoring some Windows servers from NetApp snapshots today, specifically single hard disks that had been having problems (long story involving Windows problems, etc). I found this pretty easy to do once I got the syntax down – basically, all I was looking to do was to restore the C: of a server, but keep it’s D: intact – that way I’d keep the most recent data, in this case some SQL files, but could roll back to a point where the Windows OS was a little less hosed up. Mostly for my own quick reference in the future, this is how I cranked a bunch of these out.
Read more »
By mike
…when I flipped the page over on my desk calendar this morning and noticed that the January 31st Virtualization Tip of the Day from the fine folks at PrintedOwl.com has this to say:
It’s a best practice to keep the number of COS software installations to a minimum. Here’s a case that’s justified for some environments to ensure graceful host shutdowns. Mike at motogobi has done some leg work & put up a procedure: http://www.motogobi.com/2008/11/13/setting-up-powerchute-network-shutdown-in-vmware-esx-35/
I’m flattered 
By mike
Just a nice walk with Thatcher to start the year.
By mike
Although they didn’t compare an ix-series Bimmer, did they? via Jalopnik
If you end up using VMware’s VI Client to connect to multiple vCenter servers or ESX/ESXi hosts, you might find yourself a little annoyed at how many saved connections show up when you go to launch a new connection. This becomes ever more annoying when you’re connecting to multiple servers named somewhat the same as the client will start auto-completing your selections. This has reached it’s pain point this week as we transition to similarly-named vCenter servers and I keep fat-fingering what I’m typing.
