Google sent me these coupon codes to share with family and friends. If you have a business and you are looking to advertise on Google AdWords here is a $100 US to start with.

Note: Only one code can be used per account. And they will expire on Jan 31 2013

77QJF-EU4KJ-49TU $100 Credit

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7M9CV-YQH6D-FA3K $100 Credit

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CEYFV-C3JJR-VJT9 $100 Credit

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C7M7C-AN9CC-WXKH $100 Credit

D4V7X-9WYRU-KJDM $100 Credit

7M7Y4-MCWAX-7FXW $100 Credit

4FT73-D7H97-E97P $100 Credit

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9M6DM-N7PLL-746F $100 Credit

34ANT-DNULD-NRT7 $100 Credit

9CQTR-9VTEM-GEYK $100 Credit

If you don’t know how to use these codes go to :

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1703648

Time to time as system engineers we need to decommission and re-purpose servers for deploying new applications or some other reasons. To do this usually we discard the old local HDD’s by either drilling holes on them or degaussing. 

In some cases the data stored on the local HDDs are not sensetive so we “scrubb” these HDDs for re-deployment. It is a painful process to do manually. But I came across with this Sun BluePrints dated June 2000. It is a handy work of Rob Snevely. 

It is titled “Scrubbing Disks Using the Solaris™ Operating Environment Format Program”  

Here is the script that automates this process:


#!/bin/sh
#
# Copyright (c) 2000 by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
# All rights reserved.
#
# WARNING: This script will destroy all data on the disk.
# USE AT YOUR OWN RISK
#
# scrubdisks.sh
# A shell script to scrub disks using a disk-list and a format
command file
case $# in
0) echo "need more args\n Usage: $0 disklistfile log_dir
formatcmdfile" 1>&2; exit 2 ;;
1) echo "need more args\n Usage: $0 disklistfile log_dir
formatcmdfile" 1>&2; exit 2 ;;
2) echo "need more args\n Usage: $0 disklistfile log_dir
formatcmdfile" 1>&2; exit 2 ;;
esac
# Define the Disk List file
DISKLIST=$1
# Define where the logfiles directory is
LOGDIR=$2
# Define the location of the format command file
FMTCMD=$3
#
# Make the log directory
mkdir -p $LOGDIR
#
# Iterate through the disk list
for DISKS in ‘cat $DISKLIST‘
do
# Run the format command and check the exit status
# to see if it worked correctly
if format -f $FMTCMD -l $LOGDIR/formatlog.$DISKS $DISKS; then
echo "format of disk $DISKS completed" >> /opt/FORMATSCRIPTS/
passedanalyze
else
echo "format of disk $DISKS failed" >> /opt/FORMATSCRIPTS/
failedanalyze
exit 2
fi
done

photo thanks to (_TomTom_) 

Your brain isn’t wired for quick-switching tasks, but it’s what you want to do to avoid work you don’t love. A multi-task researcher suggests assigning 15-minute minimums to your frequent click-overs, like email, to force yourself into making real decisions about work.

Clifford Nass, author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, tells the video interviewer at GigaOM what we already know—that many times, checking email is more about getting away for a few minutes than actually expecting a great, informative, day-changing email to show up. But that email checking can run roughshod over your best intentions to get actual work done. via (Lifehacker)

via (GigaOM)

Today Amazon Web Services have announced that now you can get a small EC2 instance for $0.02 for Linux and $0.03 for Windows both on 32 & 64 Bit. 

I think this is cheap enough that you can move your VPS Web servers to the “Cloud”

Thanks to @lberto for this cute pix 

We are excited to announce the immediate availability of Micro instances for Amazon EC2, a new, low cost instance type designed for lower throughput applications and web sites.

Micro instances provide 613 MB of memory and support 32-bit and 64-bit platforms on both Linux and Windows. Micro instance pricing for On-Demand instances starts at $0.02 per hour for Linux and $0.03 per hour for Windows.

Customers have asked us for a lower priced instance type that could satisfy the needs of their less demanding applications. Micro instances are optimized for applications that require lower throughput, but which still may consume significant compute cycles periodically. Micro instances provide a small amount of consistent CPU resources, and also allow you to burst CPU capacity when additional cycles are available.

Micro instances are available immediately in all regions, and we invite you to go and try one out for yourself today! Learn more about Amazon EC2’s new Micro instances at aws.amazon.com/ec2.

Sincerely,

The Amazon EC2 Team

Christmas is here in September :-) 

It all started with Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash Letter. After defending his position on why Adobe Flash will not be supported on Apple iDevices, Steve pointed towards the HTML5 technology to build rich internet applications. 

Soon after this turned into HTML5 tallent show / browser war for the name of HTML5. Apple released a gallery of cool HTML5 apps with only Safari support. 

But now Google out did the Apple’s HTML5 Apps (IMHO) with new Chrome Experiment called The Wilderness Downtown made by Arcade Fire.

I think HTML5 has a lot of great use cases and most importantly it can bring the rich internet experience coupled with some better security futures to Enterprise Environments. Cutting cost on application deployment, version management and also unified development platform.

It may very well be that HTML5 might do what Flash could not in enterprise level application development. 

my $0.02

~ Aydin 

Had too much coffee at tonight’s play. At 12:55AM I’m testing the new futures of Solaris 10 U8 (Solaris 10 2010/09). LOL #iamgeek

via @adrianmw75 Intel CEO: “We need antivirus, can someone buy me McAfee?” Few hours later: “Done.” “Great, which version?” “Version … ?”

A leaked internal email to Solaris Engineers at Oracle indicates NO MORE Open Solaris or nightly builds :-( 

All of Oracle’s efforts on binary distributions of Solaris technology will be focused on Solaris 11. We will not release any other binary distributions, such as nightly or bi-weekly builds of Solaris binaries, or an OpenSolaris 2010.05 or later distribution. We will determine a simple, cost-effective means of getting enterprise users of prior OpenSolaris binary releases to migrate to S11 Express.

Please read Ben Rockwood’s take on this over at Cuddle Tech 

~Aydin

My HTC Evo 4G still on its way! 

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner talks about the growth of LinkedIn at Fortune Brainstorm in July 2010

Having fun shooting at the range w/ Magnum .500