thecave.com : Kirby Turner Weblog

Sunday, December 28, 2003

A lot has happened since my last posting. As usual my life has been very busy. I took a sick day from work on December 22 to snowboard during the day and watch the Lord of the Rings. Three years in a row. I'm sure Melanie is glad the movie was only a trilogy.

For my birthday and Christmas Melanie gave me a couple of new Xbox games, Tony Hawk's Underground and Project Gotham Racing 2. Both rock! THUG's story mode is very addicting and PGR2 is much better than I expected. And I really like the Xbox Live support in PGR2.

Melanie and I spent the holidays with her family. Lots of food and good cheer. And tons of presents. The Davis's really get into the gift giving thing during the holidays.

And lastly, Melanie and I are staying in NYC for the New Years. We are hosting a small wine tasting event Wednesday night and ringing in the New Years with some friends.

posted by Kirby | December 28 03:33 PM | comments (3)

Monday, December 15, 2003

Attention @thecave.com E-mail Users

Attention @thecave.com E-mail Users: There was a serious problem with the SmarterMail today that forced my new hosting provider to reset the passwords of all the e-mail accounts. I have reset the password to the value provided in the e-mail I sent out last week. If for some reason you do not know your password please reach out to me by e-mail or phone and I will get you going again.

I apologize for the outage this afternoon. The timing could not have been worse. Less than one week with the new provider and already one serious problem. Hopefully this will not be a sign of things to come. And in defense of the new hosting provider, the support staff reacted quickly to the problem and helped ensure no loss of e-mails.

Again, sorry for the problem and please let me know if you have any other problems.

posted by Kirby | December 15 11:10 PM | comments (4)

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

thecave.com is moving

thecave.com is moving to a new hosting provider tonight. I anticipate problems such as posting a blogment and e-mail users will need to check both servers over the next few days. I will work on resolving any and all problems as they come up over the next couple of days. I apologize in advice for any inconvenience.

posted by Kirby | December 10 10:50 PM | comments (3)

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

VMWare vs VirtualPC: A 5 Minute Review

Over the last year I have been using VMWare to host multiple guest operating systems on my laptop. This has made me a much more efficient developer as I can have clean copies of multiple environment to build and test my applications. It also gives me a safe way to evaluate beta software without fear of hosing my host operating system.

Microsoft has recently released Virtual PC 2004, a product that is similar to VMWare. For grins I decided to give it a whirl. What I first noticed was that VPC is not supported by Microsoft on host operating systems other than Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. However it ran for me without a problem under Windows Server 2003. I found the user interface to be more amateurish compared to VMWare, and the UI is less intuitive. For example to mount an ISO file you must drag and drop the ISO file onto the CD disc icon in the status bar of the Virtual PC window.

There were no surprises in setting up a new guest OS. However, it seems RAM is the only configuration item available during the setup of a new virtual machine. I did not see settings for controlling network access. VMWare definitely shines in this area. I found it interesting that formatting the new partition within the virtual hard was a slow process using VPC. VMWare can format the virtual partition in a snap. Installation of the new guest OS seemed slower under VPC than VMWare as well.

As for running the guest operating system I have not noticed any major differences between the two products aside from the better VMWare UI shell. After my 5 minute review of the Virtual PC I have to say I still prefer VMWare. VMWare appears more professional and is easier to use for someone like me. I will need more time with VPC before I decide if it is an appropriate replacement to VMWare for my needs. And since I don't have the time it will be VMWare for me for a while.

posted by Kirby | December 9 03:20 PM | comments (1)