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By admin, January 13, 2011 10:25 pm

多謝兩位師兄今天來切磋﹐天公造美﹐原來還擔心會下雨﹐但到了3點竟然陽光普照﹐讓我們一共享受了3小時的Happy Tennis。

高手原來表面是完全看不出來的﹐直至上了場才知道今天遇到了兩位above 4.0高手中的高手。

一個power serve+top spin打兩邊﹐底線穩的無懈可擊﹐有頭腦又有plan﹐今天是我第一次比人打到連底線都要叫救命。原來還以為底線還可以﹐慚愧﹐見識了什麼是真正的底線抽擊才知道自己的渺小﹐哈哈。。。要改進和學習的東西實在太多了。

另一個也是打了二十多年的高手﹐電腳+平擊大斜角﹐他們兩個派左無數個蛋比我﹐記憶中好像只贏了他們各一個game﹐而且還要是他們自己多unforce error。有幾個game自己的開球還不錯﹐有角度也有速度﹐但還是給對手輕易的一個短球+nice angle﹐then game over。真的拗晒頭都沒方法可以打贏他們。

今天的學到的重點是速度+spin﹐第一次感受到什麼是新式的powerful top spin打法﹐還有就是他們兩位的下盤極之穩定﹐foot work almost perfect﹐打波其實真的靠對腳﹐腳到進攻就成功了一半﹐正如開球好一樣。

我的其中最大的缺點就是下盤不穩﹐foot work almost none﹐改了好多次﹐比當初已經進步了些﹐但離他們的水平實在相差太遠﹐還需繼續努力。

希望下次有機會再和你們學習。

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By admin, January 8, 2011 10:50 pm

這兩天住所附近的商場在做Top Gear Car Show﹐所有的展品都沒有欄杆阻擋﹐是可以用手觸摸的﹐正想接近SLS时﹐突然看見有一頑童拼命用手拍打SLS車頭﹐而且哼哼有聲﹐看樣子SLS肯定是刮花了。保安叔叔面色大驚﹐忙說“小朋友﹐這不是玩具﹐請別拍打車”﹐OMG﹗

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By admin, December 28, 2010 2:07 pm

I didn’t know this could happen until last night. I restarted VMware vCenter server after installing Microsoft patches for Windows Serve 2008 R2. Then used vSphere client to connect to vCenter, suddenly it started to pop up with error, also found vCenter Server Service has stopped or crashed to be precious and error logs showed Event 1000 ID, luckily I found this is to do with vCenter port conflicts. I was also able to confirm this by another user’s post in VMware community who’s having the same port conflicting problem with PRTG and ESX 4.

As usual, my memory needs to rewind and back to the point where I installed PRTG Network Monitor 4 days ago, by trial and error, I stopped the PRTG Server and Probe Services, then I was able to restart vCenter server again and login with vSphere client. Finally, I was also able to restart PRTG server without any problem, PRTG somehow was able to bind itself dynamically to another port which vCenter couldn’t.

In additional, I did try to change the port for PRTG and its Probe services, but after restarting the server, somehow PRTG is still conflicting with vCenter’s port (I don’t know which port, but PRTG is using a range of ports above 23560)

The solution is quite simple but a bit troublesome, as it’s a matter of precedence, I just need to start vCenter Server service before starting the PRTG services MANUALLY every time after restarting the server.

If you know how to change the service start dependence or any proper way to solve this, please do let me know, as somehow I still couldn’t figure out the permanent solution for this port conflict problem, thanks!

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By admin, December 27, 2010 9:09 pm

中午吃飯的時候在餐廳外偶遇一輛罕見的黃色F430﹐還是運動版的車輪。Nice!

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By admin, December 23, 2010 1:11 pm

Dell has a new “Build-in OS” called System Service (USC) that you can simple update firmware and deploy different OS using the simple GUI. I like it a lot for OS deployment as it indeed saved me a lot of time in finding different drivers, but until recently, I found the specific USC module that is the Platform (Firmware) update feature isn’t very stable and may cause various system problems.

The following is what I’ve encountered:

I press F10 during boot time and enter USC and select Platform Update for firmware update process, configure IP for USC and then next connect to ftp.us.dell.com to check a list of update firmware, after 5 minutes, as usual, USC found a list of outdated firmware (about 15 of them) and asked me if I would like to continue to update those. Great! then click apply, “Please Wait” is what I get on screen and wait, and wait and wait, I waited for more than 2 hours and definitely sensed some kind of strangeness as my last update using USC for BIOS and IDRAC only took 15 mins.

Immediately I called Dell Pro-Support regarding this issue, they suggested me to wait and they ensure me everything should be ok, as even bad thing happens, I can still use Firmware Roll Back under USC, and if a particular firmware download process isn’t completed then the update won’t carry on.

O.K., then I went to sleep, after 12 hours, I checked the server, it is still showing the annoying “Please Wait”, NOTE there is NO WAY for me to know the status of the update progress as it won’t tell me which module/firmware it has finished downloading or completed the upgrade process for a particular firmware.

I have no choice but to reboot the server, luckily, the server (OS is Windows Server 2008 R2) came back ok, and I checked the firmware information in OpenManage, NOTHING HAS BEEN UPDATED, and worst some of the sensors in OpenManage are gone such as temperature/voltage/fan, etc. Right away I KNEW iDRAC Must Have Been Damaged during the firmware update under USC, so I connected to R610 iDRAC and indeed found all of the sensors showing reading errors. Huh???

Then I thought by updating the iDRAC firmware may help, so I tried to update iDRAC6 to latest 1.5.4 using the standard windows firmware file, immediately error shows “This update package is not compatible with your system configuration”, thank you very much!

After searching Google with no solution found, I suddenly thought of a way to update it by downloading the raw iDRAC6 firmware update file and using iDRAC’s own update feature from Remote Access > Update and I have successfully updated it! Yeah! Then I reboot the server, and checked OpenMange again, thank god, everything is back to normal this time!

Finally, I simply go back to the traditional way of updating firmware on Poweredge which I have been doing for the past 10+ years, that is download the firmware one by one and update my Poweredge R610 BIOS/Network/Raid etc one by one.

So my conclusion is:

1. Platform Update utility under USC is NOT A MATURED PRODUCT!

2. Probably USC FTP process hanged, network issue, but USC won’t alert at all, just showing “Please Wait” that really DOESN’T HELP AT ALL!

3. You NEED TO UPDATE iDRAC first (probably using the above method) before using USC, as USC uses iDRAC to facilitate the rest firmware upgrade process. I remembered ont time USC warned me it will upgrade iDRAC first before anything else, but it didn’t warm me this time.

Dell please correct this bug ASAP in USC Platform Update, at least show us the update process bar or some useful detail information!

If you want to read about my first disappointment regarding firmware update, please refer to Do not update firmware/BIOS from within ESX console.

Update:

Just received an update from Virtualization Buster, which is the proper way to update firmware using an USB method via F10 Unified Server Configuration (USC).

Updating Dell R-Series aka 11-th Generation Servers via USB and Repository Manager

http://www.virtualizationbuster.com/?p=1301

Finally, since there is no way to attach an USB via iDRAC6, so if you need to update Driver thru USC, you can use Dell Repository Manager, export the drivers to an ISO. (Tips from Dell Pro-Support)

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By admin, December 20, 2010 12:31 pm

Saw these two piece of useful information on Veeam’s forum today, mostly contributed by Tom:

Block Size Optimization

In the job properties, on the “Backup Destination” if you hit “Advanced” and then select the “Storage” tab with V5 you can now select to optimize for Local disk, LAN target, and WAN target. What this is really doing is setting the “block size” of the VBK. Previous version of Veeam always used 1MB blocks, which is now the equivalent of the “Local disk” option. LAN target uses 512KB blocks, and WAN target uses 256KB blocks. The smaller blocks sizes typically mean that incrementals are smaller and thus less data is transferred over the LAN or WAN at the cost of some CPU. Because we push our backups across sites we always use the WAN target settings.

Reversed Incremental or Synthetic Full

As a general rule, reverse incrementals are going to use the least amount of space on disk, but the most amount on tape, while the reverse is true of forward incrementals, they will use more disk space, but significantly less tape space. The only exception might be if you have a fairly small retention period.

Assume you have a 100GB full backup with 10GB of changes a day, here’s how the space would break down assuming 4 weeks retention:

Reverse Incremental:
Disk — 100GB Full + 280GB (10GB/day * 28 days) of reverse incrementals = 380GB
Tape — 100GB VBK copied to tape every day * 28 days = 2.8TB

Forward Incremental w/Synthetic Full:
Disk — 400GB (100GB Full * 1 per week) + 240GB (10GB/day incrementals * 24 days) = 640GB
Tape — Same as disk, since you simply copy the full or incremental to tape every day = 640GB

So, the Forward Incremental/Synthetic option in this scenario would use ~70% more disk space, but less than 25% of the tape space. If you’re planning to keep only a short period of disks on retention and use tape for long term storage then forward incrementals will save space, but that’s about the only scenario where it will save space. For the best space savings with on disk retention, reverse incremental are the way to go, but at the cost of a large amount of tape space.

 

Personally I prefer reversed incremental because my main strategy is to get a full working backup to tape every night without the need to merge increments when in an emergency need to get my files back from tape.

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By admin, December 19, 2010 7:38 pm

價值愈千萬港元的英國超級跑車ASTON MARTIN ONE-77，雖然未知香港可以獲得的配額究竟有幾多，但可以肯定是在全球77台限額中，已經有60台成功售出，只餘下17台配額而已。與此同時，廠方亦已為這台限量超跑新貴展開亞洲巡迴展，日本東京站已於日前結束，緊接會是新加坡和台灣等地，至於擁有大量超跑的香港亦會在當中之列，不過仍有待代理公布才可作實。

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By admin, December 17, 2010 9:53 pm

一個源于70年代跨時代的偉大汽車設計﹐難以抵禦的誘惑線條加上自己實在太喜愛林寶的Countach了﹐所以任何一期拿它來做封面的汽車雜誌都不能放過﹗

碰巧的是近期有幾本汽車雜誌都不約而同地拿Countach搞主題﹐當然把我給樂壞了。 

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By admin, December 17, 2010 3:29 pm

早在今年8月的時候就已經收了Ferrari 410 Superamerica銀色和黑色的兩個版本(之後還先後出過褐色和金黃色的版本)。

但其實心裡最很想收藏的還是這款棗紅色的版本﹐因為實在太喜歡它的外型了(類似250的經典系列)﹐加上這華麗的顏色﹐誘惑簡直無法抵擋。

但正如所有的Super Elite系列一樣﹐它們的標價真的太昂貴了﹐而且大多數Super Elite系列的車模性價比都不太高。但凡事還是有例外的﹐我曾經詳細比較過所有Super Elite系列的出品﹐直至現今﹐質量最高的車模只有3款﹕ Ferrari F430 Scuderia, FXX 和這款棗紅色的410 Superamerica (排名不分先後)。現在聽說Hotweels即將擱置Super Elite系列﹐因為多年來的銷情不是太過理想。另一方面聽說Hotweels會大力提昇Elite系列的品質﹐這個傳聞可以從最近大獲好憑而且熱賣的599XX身上看得出一點跡象。

話歸正題﹐為了Super Elite的它﹐前陣子﹐我曾好一度徘徊國外的拍賣網站﹐但最後還是因為勝出價錢再加上運費太高而放棄了繼續下標。

黃天不負有心人﹐今天無意間打開了一間本地車模店的網頁﹐看到了它竟然在做聖誕節大特價﹐而且是所有的Elite/Super Elite系列都有半價﹐哇﹗激動﹗這太好了﹗馬上(真的是馬上)跑去選購﹐到達的時候﹐發現很多熱門的Elite/Super Elite已經給人買走﹐幸虧它還在﹐哈哈﹗仔細觀摩下﹐沒發現什麼問題﹐就乖乖奉獻上了銀子。

這款Super Elite的車模真沒什麼可以挑剔的﹐完美無瑕的棗紅色金屬油漆﹐全車極多的蝕刻片﹐加上Hotweels Elite系列出名的精緻內飾﹐看得我是愛不釋手。

最後不知是否同是法拉利兄弟﹐ 410 Superamerica的側面實在太像250 California了﹐所有下一個目標是那款最近出的紅色250 California。

1/18 Hotwheels Super Elite Ferrari 410 Superamerica

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By admin, December 14, 2010 9:29 pm

多謝六叔同Will和我今天爆左好多板﹐平時最弱的開波今日竟然發揮到﹐靠它拿了不少分﹐總結就是絕對不能懶﹐由拋球﹑彎腰﹑weight transfer到擊球﹐樣樣都不能懶﹐還有就是上次師兄提醒我拋球是要拋去左邊一些﹐才能做出大角度和多些Spin﹔加上Wolf兄在星期日示範了如何運用前臂去包球而產生更加多的旋轉和向前沖的力量﹐這些都增加了今日的發球的穩定性和力量。

但平日最有信心的正手底線抽擊則在正式開波後就頻頻失效﹐Rally時底線抽擊還好地地﹐不關節奏﹑不關球速度﹐到底是為什麼﹐拉拍到收拍做足晒﹐可是就是沒威力和頻頻落網﹐我現在也想不清楚﹐可能還是因為自己走的不夠快﹐打波靠對腳也就是這個道理了。

最後嘗試了Will的新YY Ezone球拍﹐YY 的ISO Metric果然確名不虛傳﹐跟之前試過的一系列YY一樣﹐真的很SPIN和容易控制尤其是上網和Approach Shot﹐而且手感極好﹗

以後有機會一定要再請教一下用YY的師兄們﹐問問他們多些關於YY的意見﹐開始越來越喜歡YY了﹐因為始終想找一個POG的代替品。(POG已經是一個近25年歷史的爺爺了﹐但實在太喜歡它的手感了)