Father's Journal: Mother's Day Appreciation

Dear Son,

It's been over a year since your Dad's last post.  Our LORD has been faithful and blessed our family in many ways, especially your physical and intellectual growth.  From crawling on your tummy to running around the house, from screaming/crying to responding/expressing yourself in words, you manage to amaze us every day.  You could recognize places, faces, even commercials and theme songs on TV.

And you always need your Mom to be your sleeping buddy.  Even though I've tried hard to give you company, most of the time you would still call "Mommy!" to come to your aid to give you that peace of mind to finally fall asleep.  Did I mention the blows you deal at your Mom every night?  Kick in the face, head blow in the tummy...the list goes on and on.  Yet because Mom loves you so much, she's enduring all these so you could have good night sleep.  (Dad, on the other hand, tried many times to be your sleeping buddy, but my snores managed to *always* wake you up in the middle of the night...and you could imagine the rest of the story...)

Son, maybe one day in the future you are at a fight with your Mom, and you would think that your Mom doesn't love you for whatever reason.  Dad wants you to remember that it's simply not true.  Remember and picture what I've told you above, and that's just a glimpse of all the love and sacrifice she pours out for you every day.

Today, Dad and Mom learned that, as illustrated in Ruth 2 by Pastor Bruce, God would bless those who honor their parents (which is also the 5th Commandment).  We are learning to honor your Grandpas and Grandmas more according to His Words.  Would you follow in our footsteps?

In Christ, your earthly father,

Dad

PDF Split and Merge

I had an urgent need to remove a couple pages out of a PDF and then need to insert a couple page to replace what I removed. Instead of spending hundreds to get Adobe Acrobat, "PDF Split and Merge" worked like a charm! Check this out if you ever have a need to split a PDF to smaller segments or need to combine multiple PDFs into one:

http://www.pdfsam.org/

Cheers!

Tech journal on converting NT and 2000 machines from physical to virtual in vSphere

I've been working on converting all legacy development workstations from physical to virtual for enhanced security and administration. Here are some notes to self:

1. NT4 and Windows Server 2000 networking would not work until AFTER VMware Tools is installed.

2. NT4 would require manual installation of network driver. Here's the link to the KB article from VMware.

3. As a reminder, Windows Server 2000 already has Terminal Service available, but must be installed via Add/Remove Programs->Change Windows Components.

Cheers!

A current list of port numbers

This may be pretty useful for fellow Network Administrators in IT:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

Cheers!

My vSphere 4 Virtual Hardware Upgrade Notes...

Borrowed and learned a lot from Scott Lowe's post at: http://blog.scottlowe.org/2009/06/01/vsphere-virtual-machine-upgrade-process/

After analyzing and summarizing Scott's post and the comments that follow, here's my procedure (main steps are directly taken from Scott's post):

1. On the VM, open up Command Prompt, and type "netsh interface ip dump > c:\ipconfig.txt" to record the IP configuration of the guest operating system in c:\ipconfig.txt.
   
2. Upgrade VMware Tools in the guest operating system if it has not already been done.
   
3. After the guest operating system reboots and is back up again, first take a snapshot. For SQL Server/Exchange Server, the "Quiesce guest file system" option is recommended. Then shutdown the guest operating system. You can do this by right-clicking on the virtual machine and selecting Power > Shutdown Guest.
4. Upgrade the virtual machine hardware by right-clicking the virtual machine and selecting Upgrade Virtual Hardware.
5. In the virtual machine properties, add a new network adapter of the type VMXNET3 and attach it to the same port group/dvPort group as the first network adapter.
6. Remove the first/original network adapter.
7. Click OK to commit the changes you’ve made to the virtual machine.
8. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted, log in and recreate the network configuration you recorded for the guest back in step 1. Per Dave O. in Scott's original post, "Since Windows will most likely see the new NIC as “Local Area Connection 2” (or something similar) you have to modify the above text file and change the NIC name to match the new NIC’s name. Or change the new NIC’s name on the host to match what’s in the file above. Either way works. " Open Command Prompt and type "netsh –f c:\ipconfig.txt" to re-import the network configuration to the new vmxnet 3 adapter.
   
9. Power on the virtual machine. When the guest operating system is fully booted up, log in.
10. Create a new system environment variable named DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES and set the value to 1.
11. Launch Device Manager and from the View menu select Show Hidden Devices.
12. Remove the drivers for the old network adapter and old SCSI adapter. Close Device Manager and you’re done!

Thanks a lot for Scott Lowe's post and Dave O.'s comment. Hopefully this combine version would give myself and fellow admins a reference point should this becomes necessary

Father's Journal: A little accident, a big lesson

Dear Son,

Yesterday, we went to "yum cha" with you and your grandma after church. We were amazed by your "friendliness" shown toward total strangers: waving arms, smiling, laughing, and saying a whole bunch of things that Mom and I would probably never understand (BTW, we recorded some...see if you could explain to us what those mean once you get older). Weather was gorgeous but a bit windy, and we planned to go to park with you after a little shopping.

While I was pushing you in your stroller in Ross, all of a sudden, your Mom screamed! When I took a look, I was stunned for a moment: you vomited your entire lunch plus the additional bottle of milk out, all over your clothes! Despite the mess and stinks, I've checked and made sure you didn't have a fever, then began the mission to find out the cause. It turned out, by the grace of our Lord, that you attempted to swallow a piece of clothing and ended up trigger you to vomit it out along with everything you ate and drink earlier. Your Mom and I have been very careful not to allow you to reach/grab anything, and yet, this tiny piece of cloth somehow ended up in your hands, then your mouth, and finally backed on your clothes. Had you actually swallowed it "successfully", we would probably keep scratching our heads trying to figure out why you got sick all of a sudden...it's all by God's mercy. Praise the Lord!

Because of your situation, we terminated all plans and immediately brought you home for a warm bath and get changed into a new set of clothes. Your Mom was a little sad because she's been wanting to bring you to the park, but it's either bad weather or busy schedule that didn't allow us to do so. But God's hand was at work. We ran a quick errand after settling you down with grandma, and it became fiercely windy all of a sudden. We did go to the park that we intended, and you know what? The surrounding was (and still is) under construction. The wind brought some dirt in our faces, and we literally ran back to our car to escape from the "muddy wind". Can't imagine if we actually brought you here and if we would be able to cover you up in time. It's another proof that God's plan is way better than our plans. That's why Jesus taught us to pray like this:

"¹⁰Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven."

May we all learn to treasure God's will as it's way better than anything we could possibly come up with!

In Christ w/ Love, Your Dad

Father’s Journal: My Son’s first “Ba Ba”

Dear Son,

February 26, 2010 at 7:15 AM, when I was beside your crib trying to lift you up, I whispered to you ‘Say “Ba Ba”!’, just as I did for countless times before. Only this time, I could clearly hear that you actually said “Ba Ba” back to me!!! I was so overjoyed that I literally jumped up and down, and within minutes, I’ve brought you to your Mom and told her the good news. And since then, I’ve been hearing you saying “Ba Ba” every day, and you probably would not know how sweet this phrase is until you yourself become a father someday…

As you’ve grown from “baby” to “toddler”, it’s about time to recollect what a wonderful and miraculous journey Mom and I have shared with you prior to your birth…

December 13, 2009 at around 7:00 AM, your Mom woke me up and told me there’s something wrong. After a brief discussion, we’ve called the OB (Mom’s doctor) and was asked to head to the emergency room ASAP. Little did we know that this trip marked the beginning of a 12-week journey with you, our precious son…

The OB confirmed that Mom's water broke and would need to be immediately hospitalized until she gave birth. There’s a 50% that you would be born within 48 hours; 49.99% within 14 days; a very remote chance that the membrane would seal up and the pregnancy could continue.

You were only 26 weeks and 5 days old. At that stage, many major organs including brain, lungs and intestines were not fully developed. If you were indeed born this early, you would likely be admitted into Newborn ICU at birth for at least 8 - 10 weeks, with tons of complications/surgeries as we’ve seen in some of your buddies in NICU later on.

By His Grace, the hospital has sent many specialists our way to keep us informed on the entire situation and the caring provided from the nurse team was top notch. All doctors and nurses alike were very helpful and sensitive to address our concerns.

I’ve requested your Christian uncles and aunties from our church to pray for us, but my feelings were so complicated that I really didn't know how to use words to describe. I’ve decided to humble myself and lay down all my worries in prayers, and trusted that you and your Mom’s lives are all in the hands of Our Father in heaven, and that He would use this journey to mold us into better children of His. God has proven His faithfulness and love over and over again in this journey…

In Christ w/ Love, Your Dad