Sierra de Guara is a mountain range in northeastern Spain. Most of it is included within a natural park... and it really worths a visit. These mountains are full of canyons and gorges and actually are one of the best places in Spain for canyoning. I am not so brave for that I am not a friend of hanging ropes although I feel kind of attracted by jumping into deep pools in a river. Anyway I don
Our resort Trails
Sunday 9.5.2010 day 207Our resort TrailsWhen I work up there was a light covering of snow on the ground it looked very pretty. It is so quiet out her making it very relaxing. We were going to try there breakfasts here as we had a two for one voucher but my friend is not feeling so well and sleep in. I could not wait so made my own bfast. Although it is very warn in our lodge it is quite cold out t
Ottawas Tulip Festival and Montreal
Monday 10.5.2010 day 208Ottawarsquos Tulip Festival and MontrealToday we drove to Canadianrsquos capital city Ottawa it is only about an hour from our lodge we had a look at the Tulip festival. It is the largest Tulip festival in the world from a gift of international friendship given 6 decades ago in 1945 Princess Juliana of Netherlands gave Ottawa 100000 tulip bulbs. The gift was in appreci
Ottawa Valley
Tuesday 11.5.2010 day 209Ottawa ValleySunrise here is about 5am at this time of the year and it is very nice to see the sun come up and shine on the lake in the morning. Samuel D Champlain was French explore navigator and map maker who explored much of Eastern Canada. In 1613 while exploring the Ottawa River he needed to bypass the rapids in the river. To do this he portaged through a chain of la
The Adventure that Wasnt Supposed to Be
It started reasonably enough. Theres a cool waterfall near Santa Rita a small town near Copan and you would really like to see it he said to me. We will walk in the water some. It is a fairly easy hike. But I nearly wrecked my knees at the national park near Gracias I said because of all the climbing and descending. This is nothing like that he said. I was convinced. Tomorrow we woul
Farm visit
Wednesday 12.5.2010 day 210Farm visitToday we went to the local library and printed out our travel claim forms and photocopied our recepts and checked our emails.Then in the afternoon we went on a farm tour of a local dairy farm that has over 200 head of cows. On the way there we saw a few ground hogs. They all live in a 400 ft barn were they have room to lie down or stand up. They are milked twi
Ollantaytambo and other Peru tongue twisters
We are In Aguas Calientes the town below Machu Picchu waiting for a late train tonight. We got up at 430 to see the sun rise over Machu Picchu so its a long day...but a truly spectacular one. Machu Pichu is huge and so well preserved it is amazing that it was lost in the jungle for hundreds of years before being discovered in 1911. We arrived in Peru on Tuesday and spent the fir
Day 69
After breakfast I chilled at the hostel ahead of my sandboarding trip at 3pm. I was on Facebook when I noticed that Louis and Ben the guys I'd seen in Rio and Bariloche were also in San Pedro De Atacama so around midday I headed towards their hostel after getting in contact with them. As I walked past an internet caf I spotted the two of them in there as well as Leila the girl who was ori
The winds of Portugal
So we arrived back safely in Seville after Fes and jumped in the car to head for Salema our next stop in Portugal. Salema was... a disappointment to say the least. The accommodation we booked turned out to be a huge letdown. Not only was the woman we had to deal Fatima a nightmare we called her an hour before we were to arrive only to be told to call her in a half hour at which time she tol
Miatas in Moab
Greetings from Miatas in Moab. Itrsquos been a fun time so far. Last number I heard I expect to hear a final total at tonightrsquos dinner is somewhere around 280 Miatas zooming around the red rocks of Moab.A young guy in the campground asked me what was going on as I drove out yesterday afternoon. There are Miatas everywhere you turn.I went on a run up Utah 128 along the Colorado River w
BLOG 10ish
Hey everyone did i scare you with that last entry do you think i have gone mad I havent heard back so figure i must have freaked you out. send me a message let me know what is going on out there how is life in the other world I head to Lima LA and Vancouver starting at 6pm Sunday til the equivalent of 4pm Monday and could use some info. Had any other volcanos I should know about Hav
Snart dax att ka hem
Hej igenNu r jag tillbaks efter par veckor icke skrivande har inte haft en sekund ver s fr skylla p det. Hr r allt kalas som det har varit hela min vistelse p Ireland. Min nedrking fr hemresan har brjat och mina tankar r redan i Lund med allt som vntar dr innan sommar lovet vntar. Jag avslutade fr tv veckorsedan min praktik p St Josephs Ward som var en kirurgis avdelning med
June 09 PERU Cusco Sacred Valley Taray Pisac Moray Maras Ollantaytambo
While in Cusco I enrolled in Amuata Spanish School. Made many friends there and also studied at their minischool in the Sacred Valley. Just 15 of us stayed for a week in the beautiful village of Taray near Pisac. Apart from school we went to see the Inca system of lsquocircular crop testingrsquo at Moray and also the Salt Mines of Maras. Went down to Ollantaytambo the best surviving e
a little more from Guilin
some additional pictures i wasn't able to upload the panoramas properly...but you can still view them. They'll just look small.
When you run an item across the scanner at the grocery store what are you voting for
A fun Friday night for Alysson the other longterm volunteer and I included ice cream popcorn and a movie We watched Food Inc a documentary about the U.S. food system. But more than that it touches on so many issues that affect the U.S. and the world health manipulation in the government immigration human rights workers rights disparity between rich and poor the interconnectedness
July 09 PERU The Manu Amazon trip
he Amazon rain forest is the largest tropical forest on Earth covering about 7 million square Km 1.7 billion sq acres. I went to Manu National Park 3.7 million sq acres the most biologically diverse region of the Amazon. The region has over 1000 species of birds more than 200 species of mammals 13 species of monkey a great variety of butterflies and 15000 species of flowering plants
May Holiday Yangshuo
May 1 afternoon May 4 eveningDAY 1We were shown to our room in the new building the new Outside Inn so the rooms and facilities were awesome Alex one of the hotel guarddogs assisted in showing us to our room. He is an adorable 7month old sausage dog. After we got some food into our stomachs we headed out on foot to the Yulong River. We had to walk across someone's rice paddie
Don’t Try This at Home
Five weeks, five shows, four states and a few thousand frequent flyer miles have come and gone since Sherry posted the trade show teaser, and we made it back to the office safely … for the most part. Our only major casualty: The Dell PowerEdge 1950 server chassis we used for the Server Challenge will never serve again.
After being disassembled and speed-assembled by more than 300 people over 800 times at ad:tech, Interop and Web 2.0 Expo SF, the hardware was worn and torn quite a bit. With a few replacement pieces, some elbow grease and a little bit of luck, the box “survived” the torture — meaning that it still generally looked like a server when we were done with it. When it comes to whether or not the survival extended beyond the server’s appearance to its functionality, you can judge for yourself:
In all honesty, the server wasn’t doing much serving before we stole it from the warehouse – a point made clear by the absence of processors. The chassis was set to be recycled, so before it passed on into the great data center in the sky, we gave it one last hurrah as the featured server in the Server Challenge. For a device that typically lives behind locked doors and thick walls, this was quite a way to say goodbye.
Its fate is a cautionary tale to those of you looking to train for your next chance to compete in The Planet Server Challenge. If your server works and you want it to keep working, don’t try this at home. 
While the idea to offer conference attendees the ability to reassemble a few parts of a dead server didn’t seem like a groundbreaking idea, the results suggest otherwise. At all of the Server Challenge’s appearances, we heard praises for the activity and gratitude for the opportunity to engage. Even if attendees lose the collateral they received at our booth, they’ll have their YouTube videos and pictures from our booth that remind them that when they think about servers, they should think about The Planet.
In addition to the excitement of the competition, having the server in our booth also started some great conversations. One of my favorite questions from the show floors was whether we did this very often in day-to-day operations. The answer is a resounding “No.” As you can see by the video above, when you start factoring people into the equation, you run the risk of breaking things.
When it comes time to provision a new server for a customer, we have an automated provisioning (AP) system that will select the available server in our fleet that meets or exceeds the orders specs so the order can be processed as quickly as possible. In general, our DC technicians never have to touch a new customer’s server, and when they do, it’s usually just a matter of adding a hard drive or a stick of RAM. The AP system does the heavy lifting so a new order can brought online quicker and will be less likely to suffer a build-related failure.
As you’ve heard from Duke and Stephen recently, we have a few projects in the pipeline to continue our push toward automation. We’ll do our best to update you with all the good news as it becomes available, so stay tuned.
-Kevin
P.S. The Server Challenge winners at ad:tech and Interop graciously let us record videos with them, and we’ve uploaded them to our YouTube channel. Check out Katie’s presentation of the ASUS Eee PC to ad:tech winner Robert Murkofsky and Nick Foster’s incredible winning build at Interop.
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