As I wrapped up the migration from vSphere 4.0 to 4.1, I had one host that for the life of me wouldn’t upgrade. It kept giving me the following error: Host cannot download files from VMware vCenter Update Manager patch store.   Check the network connectivity and firewall setup, and check esxupdate logs for details. I can see the ESX host just fine. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The firewall ports look exactly the same as the other 6 hosts in this particular cluster.

I’ve been out of college now for more than a decade and have worked for only a handful of companies. For a lot of people my generation, I’m probably seen as a dinosaur by not changing jobs every year once my stock options were vested. But seeing as I’ve had a chance to move up in companies and produce multiple products, I have a different appreciation for product lifespan and code rot.

How do you come up with a good time estimate? If you are a typical employee, there is a good chance that your job revolves not around day to day mundane tasks. There may be some of that, but there is a good chance that it revolves around completing projects. Yes, project oriented work is challenging and rewarding, but often done very poorly. Not that your work is bad, its the management of the project that we suck at.

On July 4th, I completed one of my goals for 2011. The 3rd 5K was in the bag! This is a race that I had been fairly familiar with in the past. Years ago, the wife and I ran the 8K race with my Dad. We were living in Wisconsin at the time and had trained and felt pretty good about surviving the run. What we didn’t plan for was the humidity.

My 2nd official 5K of the year was the Dam to Dam 5K. One of the largest in the US with 2800 runners. This goes hand in hand with the largest 20K that my wife ran. Race day was warm and a bit humid with the starting temp nearing 80 at the 9:45 start. Add in the 80%+ humidity and well, you have a day of suck ahead of you.