MySQL victory

I have MySQL up and running, and accessible from other computers. (Yay for me!) The problem was in the configuration file, and the bind address for the server. I had to change the bind address to the address of the server and not leave it at 127.0.0.1. I had done this on the previous configuration but failed to record it in my notes. (I keep a paper journal of changes to systems. Very handy, even if it is 3000-year-old technology.)

Experiments with Xen on //delwood have been disappointing. For some reason, Xen thinks that the processor is capable of paravirtualization but not full virtualization. (Is it possible that this is a kernel issue?) Beyond that, Xen will not create virtual machines. It gets stuck and complains "the configuration uses an unsupported protocol", or something to that effect.

VMware seems promising. I can use the vmx-manager program to create virtual machines and I should be able to download and install VMware Player to run them. I was successful at creating the machine. I was successful at downloading the RPM file. I was even successful at reconfiguring YAST to recognize an additional repository for RPM files! Yet the VMware RPM file seems to not install the player. It seems to have created a ".bundle" file in the /var/cache/vmware directory and done nothing else. Blah!

Tonight I attended the BaltoMSDN meeting. The presentation was about test-driven development in Windows and Visual Studio with Re-sharper and Rhino Mock Objects. Interesting packages, and I can see how they improve the development effort in Visual Studio. Yet still, you have to write a lot of code, and it looks... yukky.

I talked with several recruiters today. All have permanent positions in the defense/intel community. Some will sponsor me for a clearance. These are good opportunities. And yet... my gut tells me that they are not for me. Most are going to be a difficult commute, and probably only by car. With the price of gasoline going up again (and I expect it to reach into the $4/gal range) I want to avoid driving. Beside the commute (which will be difficult) and expensive, the jobs will be with large organizations, probably with lots of rules. I really want shorter contracts (anywhere from three months down to four days) and smaller organizations. More blah!