The Guy in the Glass

Inspiration, , , ,

One of my favourite poems is “The Guy in the Glass” by Dale Wimbrow. It was once recited to me by an old friend at 5 AM in the morning, a day I remember I felt really low and unhappy. Realizing what the poem stood for, I have recited it everyday to remind myself that even when people may constantly judge you for who you are and what you’ve done, it is your own self-perception that matters the most in the end. This poem is also known as “The Man in the Mirror”.

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

– Dale Wimbrow, The Guy in the Glass

My New Japan Travel Website – Japanigans

Travel, Websites, ,

I decided to start a mini website concerning my travel to Japan at the end of this month. I am calling it Japanigans, as I will surely be causing a bit of trouble while I’m overseas. I’m traveling with two other close friends of mine, both of which have never been to see the other side of the world before. The new site is only a day old, and I’m presently writing down all the information I have gathered so far. Check it out and let me know what you think.

FreeBSD 7.2 amd64, VMWare ESXI 4.0 and DirectAdmin

Technology, , , , , , , , ,

I recently acquired a new Dell R610 server for my web hosting clients. Here’s how I set it up under ESXI 4.0 and configured it for the best performance.

Specifications of the Dell R610

  • 2x Intel Xeon E5530 Quad Core 2.4 GHZ
  • DDR3 24 GB at 1 GHZ
  • 6x 146GB SAS 10K RPM in RAID 6. I chose redundancy over performance (RAID 10). With the PERC 6i controller, there is very little penalty in performance when it comes to RAID 6.
  • Redundant power supplies; hot swappable drives

Initial Setup and Configuration of the Server

  1. Enable Virtualization support in the R610 BIOS. By default, it is disabled, and must be enabled for ESXI 4.0 to function properly.
  2. Install VMWare ESXI 4.0 onto the SD card. The SD card is quite reliable and is only needed to boot the ESXI kernel into memory.
  3. Once installation is complete, go ahead and create your FreeBSD 7.2 virtual machine. I gave my server 16 GB of RAM, 4 cores and about 450 GB of hard drive space.

FreeBSD Installation

Installing FreeBSD 7.2 amd64 is easy. Here is what my mounts look like:

  • / – 1024 MB
  • SWAP – 4096 MB
  • /var – 10 GB
  • /tmp – 2GB
  • /usr – the remainder, 432 GB here

FreeBSD Updating

Before we move on to installing open-vm-tools and DirectAdmin, I want to do some basic updates to the core system. I won’t be installing any of the web services (Exim, Apache, MySQL, etc.) because DirectAdmin takes care of all that for me.

  • Update ports via CVSup. This will take a bit of time the first time you run it.
  • freebsd-update fetch / install. This installs the latest security patches and keeps your FreeBSD installation up to date.
  • Install wget: make install clean -C /usr/ports/ftp/wget/. I am installing this now because I don’t want DirectAdmin to install its own version.
  • Add WITHOUT_X11=yes in /etc/rc.conf to prevent X11 stuff from installing. This is a server, not a desktop!

FreeBSD Configuration for VMWare ESXI 4.0

Install Open VM Tools:

# make install clean -C /usr/ports/emulators/open-vm-tools-nox11

An error message will appear when trying to install fusefs-kmod:

===> fusefs-kmod-0.3.9.p1.20080208_05 requires the userland sources to be installed. Set SRC_BASE if it is not in /usr/src. *** Error Code 1

The quick fix for this is as follows (source):

csup -g -L2 -h cvsup.freebsd.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile

This will pull down all the userland sources and allow fusefs-kmod to compile correctly. Once the synchronization has been finished, you can go ahead and resume the installation of Open VM Tools (just type “make install clean” again).

Modify rc.conf so it loads the Open-VM-Tools:

vmware_guest_vmmemctl_enable="YES"
vmware_guestd_enable="YES"

Install DirectAdmin

Installing DirectAdmin is easy, just follow their instructions. You’re done.

Travel Plans for 2010

Travel, , , , , ,

This year, I plan to travel to the following destinations, if time and money permits.

April: Las Vegas. I don’t know what it is about this place, but it attracts me like a magnet. This year, it’ll be for my brother’s 21st birthday. Of course, my buddies are joining in the fun too. I don’t plan on gambling much; I much rather check out some of the fine cuisine and go back to my favourite steak house, Les Artistes du Steak in the Paris hotel.

May: Japan. It’s been my lifelong dream to visit this country, and I think this year the time will be right. I’m actually flying for free, thanks to the Aeroplan I have been collecting for the past 2 years.

Soon: A few days in New York are also planned, but no dates specified. It’ll most likely be a road trip on a weekend, thinking of at least 3 nights minimum.

Summer: My friends and I are also planning to hit up Wildwood for some sun. We’re going to do a road trip and get into as much trouble as we can along the way. 🙂

The Mastermind Group: What Is It and Why You Need It

Business, Inspiration, ,

If there’s one thing I strongly recommend people to be part of, it’s a Mastermind Group. Besides the fact that being part of a mastermind group makes it sound very evil and cunning, it should be part of everyone’s life who is in pursuit of wealth and success. Napoleon Hill mentioned the importance of a mastermind group in his book Think and Grow Rich.

Mastermind groups exist to bring people that have the same goals together, and to encourage them to work towards a common goal. They are not just for making money or for business! You can have dentists, artists, musicians, parents and singles (just to name a few) get-together on a weekly basis to discuss issues relating to their field or lives.

The groups can be anywhere from two members up to a dozen or more. The important thing here is who is part of the group: it is quality over quantity. You can’t just bring random people into your group and expect everyone to click. Bringing in friends, while it may sound like a greatidea at first, may not always work out in the end. A mastermind group is not a friendship group. Sure, you can be friends and be part of the same team, but the purpose of the group should be apparent from the beginning before you bring people in. You must all work towards a common goal, and only bring in people that realize the potential of being in such a group.

This website is the result of weekly gatherings and discussions taken place with a mastermind group. The group had a common goal: to bring thatmoneysite.com online for the world to see, and educate people on everything money. The creators of this site shared a vision and a passion, not to mention compatibility to work together.

In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be detailing more about mastermind groups, including steps and resources to help you build a solid team.