The Twitter Diaries: April 24-May 15, 2011

@ruperthowe Didn’t get to keep it. #
…and just to wrap it all up with a bow: New Videos: The Gregg Performance Series #
@smithnigelw <wince> Sorry about the wait, glad you finally got it! #DTrace #
@ryancnelson Do we have a location (we may have quite a bit of beer in Joyent fridges – haven’t looked lately) #
I just checked into Italian Wine Tasting & Pairing with Bertolli on Ustream. Come watch and chat with me here  #
leaving out the region I know best (Lombardia) but I also like Abruzzi wines  #
love Prosecco, and it goes with everything  #
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo seems to be becoming known in the US, seen it in wine shops & groceries ( #
No, said the old man, I’m waiting for this jerk to get up and do the right thing.  #
Italians live closer to the seasons than Americans do #
Old-Fashioned Italian Baby Names #
I’ll bet Prosecco and mango juice would make a good brunch drink. Must try that… #
Whoa. L can see smoke from a possible major fire on Folsom st #
…which explains the helicopters that have been hovering for a while #
Small things make me happy dept: new planters from Ikea  #


@DEVOPS_BORAT But it’s one helluva laptop. #
Well, at least I have proof that my kid can afford a keg of beer. I’ll take that as a good sign. #
thinking I’ll have to buy the LoTR blu-ray in June, tho that will require me to buy a blu-ray player… Need more Viggo in my life! #
@greenisus oh damn, that’s @LusciousPear ? Was semi-consciously wondering who that new face in my stream was. #
I wanted this to be played when Oracle bought Sun, but, alas, did not have occasion to indulge my theatrical instincts  #



.@Paypal apparently is not prepared for he fact that SOMETIMES PEOPLE MOVE TO A NEW COUNTRY #
Dear @paypal I JUST SELECTED to log in to the US site and speak English. This is not the time to force Italian upon me. #
@NomdeB Thanks – now I finally know what a fascinator is. #
my 24-hour allergy med has worn off after only 15 hours. Shoule I now take a 12-hr med? #
@edsai Yes, you need to stop that #
@JoyceSolano make your own, with fresh blood orange juice. Heaven! #
@trine sorry I missed that conversation #
@trine oh, wait your last night = my tonight, I did catch some of that #
@trine videoblogging turned into a major part of my career. I’m grateful for the many who helped and taught me along the way. #
@befreax I see it’s got good company. 😉 #dtrace #nodejs #win #
Woke up from a nightmare that might make a good conspiracy thriller movie, but was no fun to live through. #
he said that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death – (NB I don’t think that applies to all Muslims) #
@rattay That’s what YOU say. #puppy #FB #
@bklein34 Mike’s nice too, but reserved. #Bears #
It’s okay to not like things – Digg  #

@pelegri check Amazon – due in June #
stocked the fridge with Guiness for tonight. That’s appropriate, right? #
@riccardo_iommi Today Cinco de Mayo is celebrated in this part of the world. 😉 #
http://bit.ly/lA3Sv0 three videos by @brendangregg about mpstat #
at Joyent 6 mos, in that time I’ve touched (one way or another) >50 pieces of video, adding up to ~30 hours of final edits. LOTS more to do. #
@elijahwright aww, thanks. But I did >400 pieces of video for Snorcle – lots of catching up to do! #
RT @hudsonette: New Paul Simon — The Afterlife |  via @youtube – gonna have to buy this one #

#
Nice evening out with old and new friends, eating German food and drinking Czech beer to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. All-American! #
It may be crass to use cash to impress a girl than to wine, dine and gift her — but it’s arguably not any less moral. #
2nd time this wk email purporting to be from a friend stranded with no money. New wave of email account hacks?Yahoo.com & Yahoo.ca emails #
Added new ads to my personal blog (baby needs new shoes!), home now features amusing juxtaposition of beauty products and tech training #
@Schlomo You’ve been hoarding? #
@sintaxi you can thank @italylogue , Portlander who introduced me to it #jsconf #
@LusciousPear I have a friend who knows them well and recommended I apply there (back when I was looking). #
everybody loves me, baby, what’s the matter with you?Won’tcha tell me what did I do to offend you? #

music to spice up your Friday working hours: Rodrigo y Gabriela FTW! PotC4 (no, this is not Hans Zimmer alone) #

@flexrex Wasn’t a woman who wrote that. 😉 I found it a very interesting cross-cultural piece. Don’t currently have a strong opinion else #
@italylogue we have sunshine, but I still need a pick me up… #
@edsai tell them you’re that guy with black hair and purple shirts, not the other way around. #
First exposure to Katamari Damacy and all can say is – huh? #
It’s Saturday. I wish my body would learn to sleep in. #
@chrismevans But apparently they still got their chicks for free. #
@vdotw @nonstick @lskrocki I’ll be making strawberry and/or kiwi caipirinhas for tonight’s guests. #
We donated a 60million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure? #
8 (!) years ago: Farewell to Buffy #
“I wish you could have been facing Dr. Tim as we singers were… I have never seen a human being so giving and focused” #
@ditucci Congratulations! #
A vane Osama bin Laden shown in new videos – excuse me, CBS? He was on top of a building indicating wind direction? #

#
@SniperWulfzen Cool, looking forward. #
I guess the Sun-Oracle blog migration is happening #
So much for non-drowsy medication. #
@NickKristof Lord, spare me your Believers. #
My mother’s day indulgence (but I”ll do it other days, too): hot bath and home-mode sugar scrub. Catch is, I now have to clean the tub. #


First attempt at a strawberry Caipirinha. Not bad. #
@bubbva Good luck. At least it sounds as if it will clear up on its own. #
dammit, San Francisco, be warmer! #
@edsai Our cutest booth bunny 😉 #interop #joyent #
fingers crossed for Ross #
@NomdeB @riccardo_iommi it’s good news – job interview. #
Reminder-Joyent Webinar w/ KDDI Cloud as a Business with @jasonh on 5/17/11 at 10:00AM (PST). Learn more and sign up http://bit.ly/lE3gsQ #
@sh1mmer As director of training, I am very interested in your idea of pirate classes. Curriculum will be forthcoming? #
enjoying watching @maddow get her snark on at the GOP’s expense. It does not take a village, it takes a Boehner. Schadenfreude is fun. #
@alecmuffett Well said, sir. #
@alecmuffett V’ir yvxrq fbzr bs uvf rffnlf, ohg ur’f n ovg bs n juvare ba Gjvggre #
@sogrady wolcome back #
@edsai Ah, this is your fault for getting married during conference season. 😉 #
RT @Schlomo: My new endeavor is a sponsor of http://bit.ly/dviYaA You going to be there? – No, but probably some folks I know will be. #
quick experiment: cleaned up YouTube’s machine-generated captions to create good (English) subtitles – vmstat: Scope  #

Very proud of my daughter. The fruit really doesn’t fall far from the tree. 😉 #
RT @sintaxi: motherfuck! both Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player are restricted to the United States. – Dying from not-surprise. #
YouTube – WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN – Special Edition Recut  #

@rob_ellis umm… why? #
Feeling schizophrenic. And so am I. #
Well played, Dr Seelig – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart #
You’re gay, driver’s license denied – in Italy #
Its amazing how well society can work when you trust to common sense and civility instead of legislating everything #
52% of Silicon Valley start-ups launched by immigrants, many highly educated products of Stanford, Berkeley, others  #
Um thanks but I really don’t want to be the mayor…  #


@NomdeB @vdotw the also boughts are, um, unusual #
Well, apparently I am not going to get much done today. All systems decidedly NOT go. #
Hoisted a glass to a dear departed. Now I’m all maudlin. #
@GodlessAtheist It’s his heaven, not theirs. #athiesm #islam #
@jeffreytaylor He’d have a very good point. #
Some cultural practices such as genital mutilation or foot-binding or bride-burning are too brutish to defer to. #
Gingrich raised Lutheran, became Southern Baptist when he entered politics, converted to Catholic – call that faith?  #
@NomdeB Now there’s something a person can truly believe in. #
Ikea furniture doesn’t love me anymore. I have multiple injuries, and for the first time had to take something apart because I screwed it up #
@pborenstein No, but I managed. Had to. #
@jeffreytaylor Glad to be there for you #
saw them perform in Brisbane – too fun! – Jambezi, Australian Marimba Dance Band #

my own video of Jambezi #
going to have to switch to actual mouse and use it right handed – trackpad RSI is left hand #
@jscarp yes, when I remember to look at it #
@italylogue meet @cachafla , a colleague. He wants to know where to eat in Portland. What was the name of that Thai? #
@italylogue Dammit, now *I* want to come to Portland again! 😉 #
Who decided that showing slides and hearing a voice online is an effective way to learn? Personally, I learn from PEOPLE. With faces. #
Intel Cloud Builder Webinar featuring Joyent’s Bryan Cantrill on 5/19 at 11:00AM (PST). Learn more and sign up here  #
I call BS: who is Social Media Holdings and how can they claim copyright on a school orchestra playing (I think) Elgar?  #

YouTube apparently accepts dubious copyright claims from this mysterious entity – anyone know more? http://bit.ly/kAhbS3 #

And high schooler playing trombone disputed by the Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society. Official notification from YouTube. WTF? #
This may include content that is owned or administered by these UMPG Publishing Another school event. Classy, folks. #
@webmink Thanks, may do. I’m testing the YouTube dispute process, just because I’m stubborn. #
I’m tellin’ yo ass, yo – you blow! #
RT @ClusterTech: JOYENT & CLUSTERTECH ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC ALLIANCE #
@vdotw @nonstick Although the photographed models used in HR training are often unintentionally hilarious… #
okay, that’s enough Ikea pounding and screwing for a while… #
@urbanturbanguy I’m pretty boring, really – my social life is mostly eating out or inviting friends in. #SanFrancisco #
@thepartycow Nah, not attracted to blonds. #
feeling homesick for Mussoorie #
@bubbva you’re on! #
RT @HumanityCritic: RT @Jason_Pollock: Wanna feel old? If they remade Back to the Future now, they would be traveling back to 1981. – AAGGHH #
Small living space = think 3x about buying stuff I won’t use often. A hand blender wd make baking easier, but I only bake ~every 2 months. #
Home improvements: minor ikea hack to create a tall dresser from 2 short ones #


@NomdeB Cool, will watch it. Tenzing’s son Gautam is in Bhadwaj’s latest, 7 Khoon Maaf, from a Ruskin Bond story. All in the family. #
@edsai Whatever that was, you apparently inhaled it #
@StopBeck Oh, Glenny. There are so many places that metaphor could go… #
@hemantmehta Italians worry about Friday the 17th. Hmm, I lived 17 years in Italy… #
@NomdeB lant time I tried to speak Hindi, problem seemed to be that my accent was far better than my vocab, so people wd chatter away… #
Umm… does Adobe not support Acrobat on the Mac anymore? Can’t find a try or even a buy. #
@fitzage I don’t see a Mac version on that page #
@fitzage cs5? #
@fitzage I need to trial Acrobat standard, not pro #
@pborenstein @fitzage So it would cost me 450 to Adobe to work around a dumb limitation in Confluence. Gah. #
apparently wasted 5 in the Mac app store on a pdf tool which does not even have standard cut-and-paste capability #
@RossellaLaeng you might want to follow FiatUSAhttp://twitter.com/#!/fiatusa #
@flexrex A bit more than that, thanks. We may have a solution… #
@tpenta No block, just a (probably bogus) copyright notice. I want to know whose rights are being infringed. Arranger? How cd they tell? #
@tpenta That’s a possibility, but at that poor sound quality, how cd they know? YouTube notice gives NO detail. #
I love to dance, but not to the kind of music they play in clubs… Dr Hook -You Make My Pants Want To Get Up And Dance  #

@ORCL_Infrared looking forward to seeing some Snorcle peeps there! #Dtrace #Solaris #
@anildash Yes! #binladenporntitles #
Friday afternoon, time to rock: LOS LONELY BOYS { SENORITA }  #

@jeffreytaylor Sweetie, you are going to Paris! Think of original brie, and cassis aperitifs. #
@jeffreytaylor I’d be right there with you… #
@jeffreytaylor When you get back you have to try the foie gras at Osha Thai – excellent. If you’re not sick of foie gras by then. #
Evening snack was toasted bread with Major Grey chutney and aged gouda. Just finishing off a half glass of zin to wash it down. #
I guess I’m allowed to brag now (and I’m gonna do it anyway): my daughter starts work on Monday… at Apple! #
@pborenstein yes, but on that score, a flight attendant job would have been more useful! #
I come from a short line of religious skeptics: The Hundred Years’ War #
@jeffreytaylor damn you and your biz class. No more showers at LHR for the plebs, that I can find. #
#
@ebertchicago OMG they got Aishwarya Rai’s name wrong #
Habemus Papam – com’e’? Qualcuno l’ha gia’ visto? Mi sa’ che mi piacera’. #
Ok, that’s the first time I’ve seen an online clothing store where the models walk around. It’s a bit unnerving. myhabit.com #
Apparently there’s some mass athletic activity going on in SF today. I prefer less crowded forms of exercise. #
@NomdeB yes but the captioned seemed to think Rai is her first name! #
Traffic is a mess bc of Bay to Breakers, and weather about to get nasty. Good day to stay home. #
@postsecret it’s been that time for a long time. Are you marrying her or buying her? #
.@RickWarren What about the know it all theories in various sacred texts? All far less modest in scope than Freud, Marx or Darwin. #

New Videos: The Gregg Performance Series

Working for Joyent, I continue to create lots of technical video (~32 hours of edited material to date). Most recent examples, here, are the start of a series I’m doing with Brendan Gregg (author of the DTrace book). In the course of his research to make these videos, Brendan even made some surprising discoveries about tools that everyone thought they knew all about.

Above: Brendan Gregg discusses vmstat, a performance tool used in Solaris-based operating systems, including Solaris 10, SmartOS, IllumOS, that shows the health of the entire system. Part 2 covers all the fields in detail. Part 3 talks about how vmstat works in Joyent’s SmartOS.

^ Brendan talks about the 1, 5 and 15 minute load averages as reported by tools such as uptime and prstat, and then explains in details how they work on Solaris-based Operating Systems including SmartOS, and reveals why they aren’t really 1, 5 and 15 minute averages.

Below: Brendan discusses the key fields of mpstat, another performance tool used in Solaris-based operating systems, including Solaris 10, SmartOS, Illumos, to shows the health of the CPUs on multi-processor systems. Part 2 covers all the fields in detail. Part 3 is a deeper dive into the fields using other tools.

 

The Twitter Diaries: April 6-24, 2011

God made us a different color for a reason and should be honored by not marrying outside of the race that God picked”  #
@jlb13 I assume they are being ironic, but maybe not… #sigh #
the art of transforming nothing into something. Every good thing that has happened to me can be traced back to that #
@PeterKretzman Telecom Italia repeated ad nauseam You can get help on the Internet! when I was in the queue for support for broken DSL. #
This time 6 years ago: Gardening: In Italy, a Mans Home is His Orto #
an article I wrote 5+ years ago. I wish I felt any differently now about Italy’s future –  #
You’re ugly, and you’re not nice.  #
Had a much-needed weekend of mostly offline downtime. And I’m almost over the cough from hell. So… ready to face a new week. Almost. #
restored a video I had somehow lost of Barcelona’s Parc Guell (stills by Ross)  #
My first online video, made in 2004, and how I did it (wasn’t easy in those days!)  #
RT @davewiner: An open letter to the brilliant young people who read my blog, about health insurance.  – Listen to him. #
The DTrace book
is officially released on Amazon today. don’t know why the long ship time, we’re asking. #
Now who’s going to be first to review this item? 😉 http://amzn.to/eg4LTT #
@sevanjaniyan good question, let me get after @brendangregg about that. Last I heard, it’s in his hands. #
@lindseyfowler Thanks! I’m told that est ship date will shrink when it reaches the warehouse, is there a way to know when that will be? #
@jasonh That would be very cool. On a plane I would actually be bored enough to use them. #
@templedf it’s not easy no switch after 30 years of Qwerty, but does soom to have reduced/eliminated my RSI #
@rosannecash Kristofferson? Thanks. Nice to see a name I love (that sadly we don’t see very often) flash by in my tweet stream. #
@rosannecash I sang The Pilgrim for an 8th grade choir audition. Startled the teacher – but I got in. #
A bizarre political correctness tied the tongues of those who would normally rally to defend women’s rights.  #
Very excited that I will be able to attend next week’s concert of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus! http://bit.ly/guxoCB #
RT @feliciaday: @jake_freeland @joyent provides our website hosting and they rock! – I didn’t even know that   #
like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of vacuous crap #
RT @AngryBlackLady: Jesus Take the Wheel – Thanks, I needed a LOL this evening! #
I tend take people at their own valuation. If you say you’re awesome, I’ll believe you, until absolutely forced to think otherwise… #
…which I guess means I’m out there on some spectrum or other. But it also means that i genuinely like most people who like themselves. #
RT @riccardo_iommi: @DeirdreS i’m quite handsome!!! 🙂 – Ah, well, for that you’ll have to supply a better photo. 😉 #
@LusciousPear I thought that was going to be a Rocky Horror reference #
the once-heretical question of whether education is worth the exorbitant price has started to be re-examined. #
.@NomdeB Substance does not matter; image is all. #
@NomdeB college is too expensive these days to use as additional growing up time. I wondered about the value during my own BA. Now… #
I so enjoy watching a job done well. #
@PeterKretzman SAGE Program #
First experiment with running Webex concurrent with UStream (plus filming). Tiring doing this solo, but it’s effective. #
@lskrocki Thanks., I’ll settle for a stiff drink when it’s over! #
@dangillmor a real ninja would take out the lot and get the upgrade? 😉 #6 #
Does any human emotion burn like the sense of injustice suffered? #
@FrankConniff is it possible to disassemble Bachmann with a hex wrench? #
.@bsousapt Other emotions can be more intense, but injustice has its own bitter flavor. Even monkeys have a sense of injustice, it runs deep #
@fitzage Of course. #
RT @sh1mmer: Reps. 35 x 20lb each arm. – videotaping @brendangregg all day is probably equivalent for arm exercise. He’s a pacer. #
@urbanturbanguy There’s a much older version starring Dudley Moore #
@urbanturbanguy I’ve seen ads. It looks disturbing #
@brendangregg has been teaching for ~7 hours now. He doesn’t show any sign of stopping. #
.@tpenta I did know, and even if I hadn’t, I would certainly have figured it out today. 9 hours in the classroom and he wasn’t even winded. #
@tpenta …whereas I, after following him with the camera all day, am exhausted. But we proved a few theories and did some good – worth it. #
#
Worst time sink in working life is reformatting between docs, wiki, slides… But people ignore anything not in THEIR preferred format. #
@pborenstein Ah, but it is ALL YOUR FAULT. Even if you didn’t mean to. See how that works? No, neither do I. #
@StopBeck 100 years ago, pink was for boys and considered too strong for girls, who got baby blue. Saw that at the Smithsonian. #
Why is it sometimes (but not always) necessary to cut&paste from Google docs via TextEdit and/or Word to get text into Confluence? Stupid. #
Dear universe: I LOATHE PowerPoint, and all its ilk. That is all. #
Be nice, girl. You have to pay a price, girl. They like to give advice, girl. Don’t think about it twice, girl. It’s time to get to work! #
Feeling lazy and relaxed but, alas, I have work to do. #
Not to put too fine a point on it: I fucking HATE PowerPoint. #
Word to the wise: when you don’t know something, making shit up is not an acceptable solution. #
@thinguy I wince, empathize, and admire. Good luck! #
RT @Hymyilla_: Berlusconi just unlocked the Processo Breve badge on @foursquare! – He’s a swarm all by himself. Of cockroaches. #
Dear Google Docs Revision History: I love you, will you marry me? #
Time to remind myself that I confuse and irritate some real Americans – because I look like one, but I’m not. <sigh> http://bit.ly/dg0HCc #
I had some cultural misunderstandings with my American colleagues. I didnt realize at the time what was going on… #
.@NomdeB re cultural misunderstandings w colleagues blog discussion ensued. The lighter side #
.@pelegri Love to hear it. Gets more complicated w cultural diffs in the family. Daughter is Italian, wants an Italian mamma. *So* not me. #
Laughing at the ironies of life. #
Teh mad language skillz – I haz dem. #
I have spent 20 hours this week wrestling with formatting issues in Confluence and PowerPoint. This is not a good use of my time. #
@confluence 3.3.3 Most irritating right now: if I cut/paste text containing a link, even within a page, link format is lost – becomes text. #
.@camanpour Making public racism and complete ignorance socially acceptable? #TeaParty #ThisWeek #
@italylogue Buffalo milk is preferred in India due to high fat content #
I hate shopping for clothing, and I’m not good at it. Need help with this girl stuff. #
Oh, was that the #teaparty? In SF, they’re outnumbered by the cops sent to protect them. Would have stayed to heckle them, but wanted a beer #
Amazon lists sweaters as casual, timeless, contemporary, and juniors. I have no idea what any of that means. #
@NomdeB Business casual, NOT middle-aged (but not teen either), comfortable, don’t have to iron, medium warm for the Sat Francisco summer #
@u_m Umm… time lto leave again? #lies #
@bubbva I’m not sure Ayn Rand qualifies as philosophy. #fb #
@MrSimonTaylor Here: speaking Italian #iwantanappforthat #
When pricked by rankling injustice, pettiness, and other absurd behavior, I should strive to remember: none of them tops my mother. #
a large part of the anti-abortion community is also anti-contraception #
@nonstick Or eles they keep fit running after their 19 kids #
Last week really sucked, and I’ve barely been out of the house in a month except to go to work. I need to NOT sit at home tonight. Ideas? #
@sevanjaniyan taxes thet (ugh) clothes shopping. Whcih I hate, but my wardrobe is in such a state #
Hmm, Maria Muldaur at Biscuits & Blues tonight. That sounds like just the ticket. #
@sevanjaniyan if all I ever needed to wear was t-shirts, true. But I’m in marketing – can’t always dress like an engineer 😉 #
taxes done! #
Shopping for clothes. Hate it. Nothing looks like me. #
Shopping exhausts me. Taking a food break. #
Even with a nice (and unexpected) tax refund on the way, I’m just bad at spending money. #
@vdotw I’d love that! So bad at girly stuff. Plus my shape has changed and I’m not used to dressing the new me. #
@kbucketusa @milouness Starting with getting the spelling of Gandhi wrong. 😉 #
@Myrna_SF @geevall I have to, tho – my standbys are in shreds, almost #
Dinner last night w friends of friend – great food, even better company (international)& conversation, too much wine (hence awake at 4 am). #
@ryah Getting the impression you don’t sleep much. Not that that’s a bad thing. And what’s this about a banjo…? #
Being awake at 4 am is not so bad when dinner conv provided so much food for reflection. I’ve missed non-American perspective in my life. #
@davidpaulyoung Exactly. I still love wine, but it doesn’t love me back. Don’t have this problem with bourbon. #
Also, dreamed I was on a business trip and had to share a room with Worf the Klingon. Which would be fine, unless he snores. #
Does @Smugmug to FB just not worked? Tried Chrome and Firefox, login looks fine, but actually sharing a photo does not. #
@davidpaulyoung I look forward to doing so. #
automatically trusting others sometimes without due cause can be beneficial #
.@ebertchicago What a beautiful Freudian slip (if it is): only 12 wanted Pain as the nominee #
5 years ago: The Papal Funeral Bash #
4 years ago: Shut Up or Go Home No Culture Likes a Kibitzer #
Rereading LotR for 1st time in years & finding it a hard slog. Girls don’t have any fun in Tolkein’s Middle Earth. Jackson’s a bit more. #
@jonasthaler Heh. I actually remember parts of it verbatim, read it so many times when it was almost the only fantasy in town (w Narnia) #
some new questions about Italian Slang and Swearwords – can anyone help?  #
@cpj1 Thanks for buying! Can’t quite see – what’s the other book? #DTrace DTrace book
#
@hridaybala Many thanks for buying the DTrace book
! Looking forward to hearing what you think (abount the DTrace book). #dtrace #
Italian gays fight for full parental rights for both parents (in Italian) – via @Niki1601#
@ryancnelson Well, geez, you could have got Leffe blond at Costco. 😉 #
@ryancnelson they used a knife to do what to it? #
@antitheistangie He probably has an intern screen his incoming tweets #
Was headed out for dinner when my bldg fire alarm went. Hope it’s not actually a fire, grabbed my passport in case. #
Came home after good food and good conversation, no fire. Was <2 blocks away so probably would have noticed if there actually was one. #
@notmatt Yup. What single item would be the largest PITA to replace at short notice? #
I start to do an expense report (do them rarely these days), system immediately goes into maintenance. The universe is conspiring against me #
Only 4 of the DTrace book left in stock–order soon (more on the way). #
@ManishChaks @dangillmor I thought the whole point of these events was to get the journos drunk. Been doing it wrong all this time #
Make me go through a reg process then tell me Page level restrictions have been applied that limit access to this page? Classy, Oracle. #
@billblum I’m imagining a #dtrace script that invokes a bunch of singing knights #
Dear Confluence: I’m writing technical courseware. It should not be possible for me to lose 90 of a (long) page by pasting in sample code. #
@lskrocki Nope. Thanks, but I did try. #
I am actually in a gym working out. Don’t faint with shock. #
@NomdeB Mostly just working off a bad mood. #
It stops being a matter of fairness and starts being a matter of wanting whats best for ourselves. #
@izs Does she advertise vodka? #
If you happen to be in Kansas City next weekend, go have a great time for a good cause!  #
My essential political/philosophical conviction is belief/faith/trust that human society still has upside potential #
@Myrna_SF just a stadning bike in the gym, nothing too exciting #
@sogrady Outrage is a sport like any other. If you exercise those muscles daily, you’ll soon find yourself in form. Look at Glenn Beck. #
Love browsing colleagues’ shared iTunes libraries. Almost as insightful as being able to see their bookshelves at home, in some cases more. #
Looks like Amazon sold out available stock of the DTrace book and has had to reorder. Coulda toldja 😉 #
@bklein34 is it harder to kick someone out of a virtual room than a real one? #
@rosannecash poplar fluff? That stuff is horrible #
.@codebleep Planned outage for no.de, sorry the wording doesn’t actually say that. #
@ryancnelson Used to hear a Thai band do Eo ya Think I’m Sexy as 20-min closing number every night at 2 am at a hotel in Bangkok #winning #
.@ryancnelson …because everyone in the hotel could hear it #
@izs I suggest you duck fast when you do that. #
@AngryBlackLady But, hey, white billionaires… we’ve been trained all our lives to think Big White Daddy knows best. #
@sh1mmer Much better! #
@Dx_Martha yes I feel very lucky to live here. And somewhat broke #
A couple together for 60 years: Ken and Charlie. #
Fringe benefit of being one of relatively few women at this concert: no wait for the bathroom. #
It’s a wee bit intimidating to have 3 choral conductors analyzing one’s voice. Do you sing? You sound like a mezzo… #
Thanks to the #SFGMC for a deeply moving, satisfying, and beautiful concert. Congrats to conductor Tim Seelig and the whole chorus! #
I enjoy hearing talented people discuss their work, even in areas I know very little about. #
From last night’s SFGMC concert with Tim Seelig – Musical Risotto  via @youtube #

From last night’s SFGMC concert with Tim Seelig – SFGMC – Angels #

Did not get to record, but was deeply moved by A Hundred Thousand Stars from the opera For a Look or a Touch (Heggie/Scheer) #
Starting the day with a (routine) visit to Dr Bert always puts a smile on my face. http://bit.ly/hy0cng #
@willbldrco Better yet, Dr Bert is a he #
OSUG Leaders: to receive a review copy of the #DTrace book for your group, send your name+ shipping info + phone#: usergroups@informit.com #
@jeffreytaylor Glad to be of help, sorry for the shaky camera work. #
YouTube – SFGMC – The Wizard of Oz #

YouTube – #SFGMC – The Awakening #

@jeffreytaylor Damn, I wanted to meet Ethan Pope but forgot to look for him in the crowd after. I love watching him. #
YouTube – Tale of Two Cities from SFGMC’s Words Spring 2011 Concert  #

Thank you, Hulk: your post [on “Eat, Pray, Love”] was undoubtedly more enlightening than book or movie, saved me gouging my eyes out #
11:59 on Friday night and I’m done in. Helluva week. Thanks to the #sfgmc for the good stuff. #
sex, lies and instant messenger by @alecmuffett – Where NOT to say I want to nibble you. #more questions (and some answers) on Italian Surnames: The Funny, Surprising, and Just Plain Weird #
@jasonh Hmm, I know who one of those WoW couples is, I think. Have you spotted – there’s another unusual relationship pattern @joyent #
@brendangregg and I spent 4 hours last night alone in a room, making video…. about vmstat. Yes, you’ll get to see it, at shorter length. #
.@kebesays I think we’re all better off with openness. We see over and over again in private and public life that secrets are unhealthy. #
@jasonh I used to live near the town of San Pellegrino #
RELIGION is ubiquitous but it is not universal. That is a conundrum for people trying to explain it. #
@hudsonette saw Patti Lupone in that in 1989, have yet to see Sutton Foster #
At the Night Market with @leslie_lum and @Myrna_SF – Leslie got us VIP access – line down the block! #
Of course I had to try spam musubi! Yum. Haven’t had Spam ™ in years.  #


Beet ice cream with Guiness chocolate cake and fudge sauce  #


An Italian comic becomes an American film. YouTube – Dylan Dog : Dead of Night #


YouTube isuggesting the weirdest tags for this video – everything from Communism to religion to self-defense. Wonder what they base that on #

The Twitter Diaries: Mar 20 – Apr 6, 2011

Even tho my profile states that I work for Joyent, FB keeps showing me ads titled Work at Oracle? #FAIL #
The Twitter Diaries: Mar 5-20, 2011 #
But not in a Disney way  #

@edsai that may be taking hard-core geek too far #node #fedramp #csa #
@edsai That, we all need tattooed on our foreheads #
in Italy anything thats worthy of interest or comment has a bit of mommy in the mix #
Would like breathing to be a little easier right now #
@reiger best of all possible worlds. Even better when you can do it just walking. 😉 #
@reiger nice! #
@zaps l’unico politico italian che mi manca – la Bonino. Forse anche Rosy Bindi #la7 #linfedele #
@jamescmcpherson Congratulations to all! #fb #
Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine | Video on TED.com  #

Ross is playing music that I would ordinarily sing along to, but I have no voice. Frustrating. Maybe not for her. #
The DTrace book is off the press! Final copies will soon be shipping from the publisher’s warehouse, mostly to Amazon #
rose from my sickbed to come to the Joyent office, was missing my peeps #
RT @avareltech: @DeirdreS will the book be available on safari? — already is! #
Sometimes the most valuable thing I can do is get people in a room and let /them/ talk. Especially when I have no voice. #
More sleep and less cough would be very welcome… starting 6 hours ago #
(only the Italians would consider food a strategic resource, but thats another story)  #
@ryah I’ve been up all night coughing. I’m not sure which of us had a worse time. #
@ryah Thanks. Just tell me it’ll be over soon? #
Just saw a hawk being mobbed by crows outside my window… in San Francisco #
@trine Diesel is a surname in German, no? In Anglo cultures, at least, it’s not unusual to use a surname in the family as a given name. #
@trine I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. 😉 #
@MartinDBA DTrace videos #
.@lskrocki Revolutionary then still is now. Which is both amazing and sad. #
RT @notmatt: In six months, I expect I’ll post something just like this from @ryancnelson – Amen, +3 months #
@standaloneSA Isaac Rozenfeld of Sun/Oracle would be awesome for this #sysadmin #lopsa #
@WinnieWongSF What on earth are you up to over there? #
@ryah The power of the tweet is yours #
Showered, changed into a fresh t-shirt… and got back into bed. If only I could sleep! #
@sh1mmer Why would anyone pay money to buy dead-trees wikipedia? Makes no sense at all #
Twelfth Night – THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY  #

#1 inBooks > Computers & Internet > Operating Systems > Solaris DTrace book #

Top ten lists on several ways of being Best Places to Live for Expatriates – Italy not on any   #
Suggestions to stop a tickling wet cough so I can sleep? Tried mucinex dm, tea, hot lemon & honey (w & w/out bourbon), syrup, drops… #
@bubbva there’s no lack of humidity in Sf right now, esp since I’m barely using heating #
As we get more education we get more confidence and income, women are saying, she finally had the guts to walk out.  #
Let’s see if any of this new crop of medicines can tame tho cough enough for me to sleep #
.@timminchin That takes real guts in her situation – she has a good chance of being killed for that interview. #
@vdotw @edsai too late to get it tonight, I took dextromethorphan. Mix with acetiminophen w codeine left over from surgery? #
@deirdresm I don’t think she has a choice, unless she can find visas and a way to supprot herself and 6 siblings in some other country… #
s@trine Good luck, my dears. Thinking of you. #
Argh! Why am I not in New York?  #
RT @JessicaGottlieb: My Childhood Bullies Apologized to Me on FB 20 Years Later – careful, that’s not always sincere #
Sometimes the apologetic ex bully is just a scam artist ready to make you the victim, as ever. Or just plain batshit crazy. #
As I expected, doc says it’s just a really bad cold. But he’s giving me the good stuff. #
@MrSimonTaylor What if they just move the Y they’ve got? #
@anildash is that home made pizza? Sounds like the kind of awesome I would like to try #
the doctor told me to eat lots of non-dairy protein. Fortunately, I was planning to do exactly that. #
@deirdresm dairy causese mucus, whcih I already have too much of #
@GodlessAtheist Eww, eww, get it off me! #
Finally got a fair amount of sleep, I’m always surprised by how good that feels. Think I’ll do it some more. #
RT @nodejsconfit: http://nodejsconf.it the first italian conference about #nodejs #webdebs /cc @joyent @jsconfit #
We’re long past point of diminishing returns on awareness, days, ribbons for various causes. I don’t care what color you’re wearing or why #
.@johnnysunshine Spot on! Even non-believers are not entirely rational. We believe that thinking good thoughts somehow magically helps. #
Not even if Jesus Christ himself… Italian Idiom and Sayings #
.@elizadushku My photos of beautiful graffitit on trains in Italy and walls #slightlyobsessed #
RT @sogrady: @jasonh: give me analytics and i’ll pay – true dat. Tho you can do a lot with bit.ly #
Those who recommended codeine cough syrup were right – very effective. I’m tempted to sleep through the weekend. Probably shourd. #
the comments say far more than the article: Sex and the Long-Term Relationship – NYTimes.com  #
the state of my life 4 years ago: Light at the End of the Tunnel #
and one year ago: Gallery: Tech Days 2010 Hyderabad #
@WinnieWongSF Yup. I can deal – happily – with change. It’s stasis that kills my soul. #
Dave Pacheco’s Blog Example: HTTP request latency and garbage collection #
Friendly Atheist Prayer: It’s Almost Like Doing Something #
@webmink @lskrocki I love goats, but they are tricksy beasts, and you have to be way smarter than they are. Harder than you might think. #
@rob_ellis Giving way to hipsters and suits? Remember our mascot! #
.@acarvin How many of the deniers are women? #
it should be possible to know a great deal about me by analyzing who I follow & retweet. Is anyone doing this kind of analysis? #
.@zephoria IPuzzled by the slut shaming that flourishes among schoolkids. Why is teen culture so vicious and unforgiving (and hypcritical)? #
Amazon: WTF?!? Customers who have purchased or rated Sondheim’s Putting It Together might like Sarah Palin’s Alaska… Uh, no. Really NO. #
Why, yes, I am up at 430 am hacking up a lung, thank you for asking. #
@webmink dying from not-surprise 😉 #
@gedamore thanks’ I’m trying to! #
.@hridaybala Even experts will find the DTrace book useful – it’s 1100 pages of mostly new invention, bound to be something they don’t know #
Oh, shit, our mascot got loose: @BronxZooHBadger #
Hmm, even the White House camera person bumps and shakes from time to time. And the President is a lot easier to film than most of my stars #
The world needs more singing in public.  #

@sogrady Officially, Amazon doesn’t let you re-download music you’ve lost any more than Apple does. So far they’ve been kind to me, but… #
@NickKristof I happily paid for it a few years ago, was surprised when they stopped charging. Now I’ll have to see if I run into the limit. #
RT @KatieS: I wonder what the @honeybadger thinks of @BronxZoosCobra? – drat, there’s another one? #
Amazon says the Kindle edition is available now: DTrace book
#
RT @marczak: dtrace, I love you. – Aww #
@hridaybala Cool, thanks! #dtrace #
@konobi Dunno, but it’s affecting SF as well. #
@LusciousPear Better that it’s an ex, no? #headdesk #
@arclight Bed Spencer & Terrence Hill? You’re either Italian… or Indian. #
@neo_indian I initially read nuns and wickets…. #
@neo_indian Oh, I know. If I had any way to watch it here< I would. #
Not allowed to take pictures in the historic mills bldg because it’s a historic landmark and people go after places like this. Huh? #
Browsing at Walgreens, I realize there’s a genre missing in romance novels: Hot Tech – My Sexy Geek. Someone could make millions. #
RT @Annarella: @DeirdreS My Sexy Vampire Sysadm and My Wolfish Dba 😉 – That’s more like a reality show! #
My kid accuses me of being a terrible mother, but one of my failings is needing a definition of a good one. !Italian Mamma for Dummies? #
@sriramnrn Heh. My parents cheated – I was in boarding school from age 14, never came home again #
@bcantrill You hiring or looking? 😉 #
@rioter In case any of these are helpful. And of course there’s the book. #
whoever pointed out this new weather site, thanks! I like it – WeatherSpark | Interactive Weather Charts #
.@jlb13 Science fiction writers could see technology wd zoom ahead, but found culture hard to reimagine. Maybe Heinlein was the exception. #
@jlb13 It’s even funnier to read early Spinrad where characters living in 20nn are using hip 60s slang #
5 years ago today we buried my Aunt Rosie. She left a huge hole in many lives, and we gave her the send-off to prove it  #
I believe sleep is finally on the way. For which I am deeply, deeply grateful to the pharmaceutical industry. #
Real life will overtake a cynical national health-care debate. #
Illumos in the Cloud: What is Joyent Up to? – umm, yes, I wrote that #
@dexterous Thanks, will get that fixed. Too many fingers in the pie – I wrote most of the article, but not that bit #
I’m told that this is a 21-day cold & I’m lucky it hasn’t turned into pneumonia. Maybe that means I’ll be able to stop coughing & sleep soon #
@ryancnelson You need to move it into that corner conference room that’s always too cold #
@jlb13 (Eyebeam) #


.@ebertchicago If he really had the courage of his convictions, he would go burn Korans in Afghanistan. #
1 year ago I arrived from Colorado and moved into this apartment is San Francisco, with the help of @jeffreytaylor Still happy to be here! #
RT @jamescmcpherson: Is there any point in keeping 3.5 floppy disks these days? #fb – I’m using them as drink coasters – geek chic! #
I come from a family of drama queens (myself included). It gets very tiring. #
RT @NomdeB: Thinking that in honor of cricket & India, must watch Lagaan (2001) http://bit.ly/dJxuq6 🙂 – Good idea! #
@mamash Plus – they sing and dance! #
Intel Cloud Builders – Joyent #
DTrace book on its way to Amazon, those who ordered fm Informit get it this week. Kindle & other e-versions avail NOW #
RT @hudsonette: Hmm. I miss Walter Cronkite, too. – Yes, tho I hated him reporting the Vitenam casualties every night. Dad coulda been one #
@quasi42 I thought that date a bit optimistic, US Amazon says Apr 11. Informit orders arrive this week, though. #
RT @hudsonette: @DeirdreS oh, glad he wasn’t! Yes, those were scary news broadcasts. – Scary times. #
@heckenpenner83 Got book? 😉 #dtrace #freebsd #
.@hudsonette Not sure if this is really scary or just hilarious. The US combines the most advanced tech with the most backward superstition. #
.@hudsonette I have long feared that the powers that be want a crap education system so they can have a mass of gullible sheep as voters #
@binarycrusader Oh, is that what that’s about? Hmm… #
@jitterted good point #
@Cdash @shawnferry I’ve heard you two described as a pair of alpha dogs. 😉 #
My gut says the GOP Path to Prosperity is just that: the wealthy of the GOP will benefit, the rest of us will be thoroughly screwed. #
Once you enter the democratic political arena on a religious platform, your beliefs are up for legitimate attack #
RT @melanierenzulli: Anyone have the MLB At Bat app? Can you stream the games on your tv? Wondering if it’s worth 15…. @ryancnelson ? #
@Cdash Heh. Guess. #
Mirroring Facebooks Culture in a New Corporate Campus – NYTimes.com  – will be sad but interesting to see results #
It has to come to life… bit by bit, Putting it together  – Is other words: it’s showtime, folks! #

TechTalkTO: James Duncan on Node.js on Vimeo  #

TechTalkTO: James Duncan on Node.js from FreshBooks on Vimeo.

illumos in the Cloud: What is Joyent Up to?

For years – decades, even – Sun Microsystems held some of the world’s greatest engineering talent fast in its cozy embrace. Then, as so often happens, acquisition unleashed a storm of change. A year later, a good deal of Sun’s top talent has moved on, including some well-known names from Solaris engineering. I’m sure this tech diaspora will benefit the industry as a whole, as Sun talent spreads far and wide.

For three years at Sun, I worked closely with top Solaris engineers. Many became friends, so I have kept in touch with those who left, and kept an eye on where they went. A number of the best and brightest settled at a cloud computing company out of San Francisco, called Joyent.

Bryan Cantrill, Jerry Jelinek, Brendan Gregg (with whom I worked very closely on the DTrace book), and several other members of Sun’s FISHworks team made the move to Joyent in late 2010. In addition, Joyent had brought on Ryan Dahl (the creator of Node.js, a hot new technology the world was beginning to hear about), Isaac Schlueter and more recently, Tom Hughes-Croucher (author of the upcoming Node.js book for O’Reilly). Putting all these elements together, it was clear that Joyent must be up to something very interesting; I had to become a Joyeur myself to find out exactly what was going on in the company!

We should first spend a few words to answer the question: What exactly is cloud computing? As Steve Gillmor said when asked at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in 2008: to developers, cloud computing means being able to implement ideas at a very early stage, without having to concern themselves about future scaling up. This applies to start-ups and enterprises as well – companies too want a place to implement and deploy their applications or games quickly and flexibly with confidence they can scale rapidly if needed.

A good cloud hosting company provides the just-right amount of computing infrastructure, exactly when you need it. This includes “bursting” CPU capacity, so that your Facebook game doesn’t fall over when it suddenly goes viral, making you a victim of your own success. A good cloud hosting company has monitoring tools that can tell the difference between a short-term surge in traffic and a longer-term need to scale up capacity. Launched in early 2004 as one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, Joyent was the platform of choice for many popular web startups, including Twitter, WordPress and more. Over time, Joyent’s public cloud service became hugely popular with casual/social game studios, retail and ecommerce companies and many social networking applications. While the public face of Joyent has been a cloud computing service much like Amazon’s (but a lot faster), at heart Joyent is a software company.

I was already familiar with Joyent as one of the most innovative users of OpenSolaris: Ben Rockwood was a frequent conference speaker on OpenSolaris and related topics, and was active in the OpenSolaris community. Joyent was also one of the biggest contributors to OpenSolaris patches and is now a supporter of Illumos.

Based on Illumos, Joyent has created its own operating system, SmartOS, optimized for cloud computing. Why make a cloud kernel based on Illumos? From the cloud operator’s perspective, the advantages are obvious:

Maximize resource usage

  • Illumos virtualization (zones and Crossbow network virtualization) lets a cloud hosting provider put more customers on the physical server (each in their own SmartMachine), while still giving all of them phenomenal performance. Joyent’s servers typically run at 70% CPU capacity, against an industry standard of around 30%.
  • Creation and startup of additional zones – in other words, adding new paying customers – is nearly instantaneous.
  • 100% of RAM is allocated to SmartMachines or repurposed for SmartCache as an ARC-cache layer between application and disk.

Maximize performance

  • No hardware emulation means the machine runs much faster; SmartOS is the hypervisor.
  • In cloud computing, latency is everything. ZFS with ARC dramatically improves disk performance, reducing a major source of slowdowns.
  • 3X more transactions per second compared to Amazon EC2 of similar size and cost.

Know what’s going on

  • Users of Solaris, Illumos, Mac OS X and FreeBSD know that DTrace gives you an unprecedented view throughout the software stack. But all that power comes at a price: using DTrace effectively requires expertise. The Joyent team is now harnessing the power of DTrace in a more user-friendly form with cloud analytics, which will be available to Joyent customers via a GUI and an API.

Companies who want to take advantage of the benefits of the cloud – variable costs, flexible resource usage, and affordability – are choosing Joyent for the efficiency it offers compared to legacy cloud systems. Thank you, Illumos, for giving us much better utilization and faster performance, and hence lower costs to customers.

The power of SmartOS is now available to another kind of Joyent customer: the Service Providers (telcos, ISPs, datacenter operators) who are using Joyent’s cloud software to deliver cloud services to their customers. With the cloud market expected to grow from 30-55% in coming years, it’s no wonder that so many existing providers want to get into the cloud business too. And Joyent is making this very, very easy to do.

Led by VP of Engineering Bryan Cantrill, Joyent’s very talented engineering team has rolled up years of cloud computing experience into a powerful yet easy to use software package, SmartDataCenter 6. This is the fruit of a major engineering effort around multi-tenancy operation in the cloud, including enhancements to OS-level virtualization, DTrace and ZFS. These technologies – powerful and revolutionary as they are – are only the foundation of a cloud operating system. Using Node.js – a Joyent framework for high-throughput, evented-oriented systems – Joyent has built orchestration and management software that turns these foundational OS technologies into a revolutionary cloud offering.

I’m excited to be here at Joyent, working with amazing people on wonderful things. If you’re a current Joyent customer, or a prospect interested in learning more, please drop me a line or go to Joyent.com or JoyentCloud.com to learn more. I’mDeirdre@joyent.com.

originally published in Sun System News

Deirdré Straughan on Italy, India, the Internet, the world, and now Australia