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[geek] VMware: why is it addictive?
Nov. 23rd, 2009 02:33 pmVMware really fascinates me. It makes one machine into the home of a bunch of different machines. It lets you pretend on a deep level.
This is my sixth week at my new job. I like the product I support the more I play with it. It makes things that I'd always thought of as manual tasks into scripts. It knows I'm a command-line kinda guy but another guy doing my job may be a GUI-head, but both of us have the same work ahead of us. It deals with so much so smoothly.
At the heart of my training is beating up four virtual servers with my company's product. Beating up may be the wrong term, because I'm applying patches and dropping off other files. I can build a new server and then tell it the hard drive won't remember future changes. Then I can run some elaborate experiment that hoses the operating system, kill the power, start it up again and see no evidence of my sins. It's like Groundhog Day.
I can build a 64-bit and 32-bit version of the same computer and see how each handles a problem. I can build an ancient machine to solve a compatibility problem. I can double the size of a hard drive by typing a line.
Ever read In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan? It has a place called The Forgotten Works, a giant junk yard from another era. There is a sign over the front arch which says something like "Be careful in there -- you might get lost". I can see myself getting a little too deep into these machines, building and knocking down, losing time.
I applied for a job on EMC's Cloud project over a year ago, had a first interview but got nowhere beyond that. I don't know whether working there would have ruined my present fascination.
Has this happened to you? I have an old free account, so I can't set up a survey. I'd just like to get responses.
This is my sixth week at my new job. I like the product I support the more I play with it. It makes things that I'd always thought of as manual tasks into scripts. It knows I'm a command-line kinda guy but another guy doing my job may be a GUI-head, but both of us have the same work ahead of us. It deals with so much so smoothly.
At the heart of my training is beating up four virtual servers with my company's product. Beating up may be the wrong term, because I'm applying patches and dropping off other files. I can build a new server and then tell it the hard drive won't remember future changes. Then I can run some elaborate experiment that hoses the operating system, kill the power, start it up again and see no evidence of my sins. It's like Groundhog Day.
I can build a 64-bit and 32-bit version of the same computer and see how each handles a problem. I can build an ancient machine to solve a compatibility problem. I can double the size of a hard drive by typing a line.
Ever read In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan? It has a place called The Forgotten Works, a giant junk yard from another era. There is a sign over the front arch which says something like "Be careful in there -- you might get lost". I can see myself getting a little too deep into these machines, building and knocking down, losing time.
I applied for a job on EMC's Cloud project over a year ago, had a first interview but got nowhere beyond that. I don't know whether working there would have ruined my present fascination.
Has this happened to you? I have an old free account, so I can't set up a survey. I'd just like to get responses.
