Well sorry, but I get a pile of junk mail every week on my doormat through my post and in my papers - and the senders have had to pay both to print AND send that...
Not only that, they get a special "bulk" rate, thats about half of what we pay to send snail mail. So odd's are the same model might apply to email - our email's would cost a penny each, the spammer's about a half cent each.
OdessaOffice.com This guy lives in rural washington, and had the same problem. This is his complete step-by-step how to on how he did it, including modem brands & models, problems he had while setting it up, how he overcame obstacles, etc. Very very good read and I would think it'd be your first stop for rolling your own.
Actually, the Linksys signal booster isn't exspensive at all, Newegg lists it at only $85.00.
it only works on their 802.11b stuff, which is what the poster porbably has. Also, I have a friend who uses it, and get's access now to his garage (about 70 feet away) even though the WAP + signal booster lies in his basement. So it sounds like a good solution, one I'm using when my mother-in-law moves into the building we live in, so I can give her some cheap broadband.
Real bigass customers probably have DVDs with oogles of good codes or key generation servers in-house.
Your sort of right. Any decent sized corporation (with over 5 pcs) and also the biggest warez'ed version of XP is the Corporate edition, which doesn't feature any hardware activation at all. It behaves just like Win2k in the respect that you put in the CD-Key, and thats it. There's no activating required.
I don't know if I'd totally agree with that. Trucking Companies already have what they need, Qualcomm OmniTracs - an all-in-one solution offering 2way text communication, email, vehicle tracking, trailer tracking, and load info. And they've had it for quite awhile. Every large scale company uses it, as well as most smaller fleets. It's essential, and cuts down on all the "let's call our dispatcher" downtime. I know, I used to drive truck. These systems utilize satellite communcation which, while not perfect, would be much better then truckstop hotspots for all but the smallest fleets.
To be honest, there aren't many truckstops east of Pa, and the ones there fill up fast. Not to mention certain drivers, like me, only stopped at truckstops to fuel, using wayside rests to shut down for my break.
And don't forget there's a lot of places where drivers go where there isnt a local truckstop nearby. I would sure hate delivering a load and driving for 200 miles to hit a hotspot and find out my next load. I quite liked being out in BFE and still having a link to HQ right by my side.
I had one of those pager watches Slashdot had an article about in early 2000. All I remember from it's (short) time on my arm is that it took 3 watch batteries, which died after 30-60days requiring a new set. It was bulky, and it didnt work very well. In fact, the only thing I did like is it would synch it's time to wherever I went to, which I really liked.
I'm afraid that the battery life in the MS watch will be dismal at best, especially processing video and audio.
I like watches that aren't obtrusive, and have a battery time of over a year using ONE thin battery.
I dunno about you guys, but I stick with my old watch.
Sure, it may look a tad corny now, but with it being open ended and allowing people to develop their own worlds I think I may be an early adopter of this stuff. I'd really dig a whole snow-crash-ish house, and who ever builds the first "Black Sun" will be instantly cool with the other geeks using this setup.
I don't see if they charge for the service or not, but if they don't I imagine a lot of people will check this out.
I can't wait for someone to build a slashdot world and I can slap the shit out of CmdrTaco myself:p
I agree with you there. I've tried to get into HD for over 3 years now, but they are so picky.
And they can afford to, what with the awesome benefits you get. Buddy of mine worked there, for his (I think) 10th year anniversary HD basically said "Pick any bike, with any options, and it's yours, pro bono"
That's one hell of a 10 year anniversary present, and puts my titanium desk clock I received to shame
Why not build a PC into your stereo? That's exactly the route I'm taking. A Mini-ITX motherboard for 100-200$ (Builtin everything), an old stereo to test it on from the Goodwill, a few other pieces and you have an all in one multi-media box. In fact, Im setting it up with a wireless NIC and will be able to use my IPAQ to control BrowseAMP to change mp3s anywhere in the house. Add to that an IR controller and the IR stuff for Winamp and it's an all-in-one solution for a lot less then one of these.
Now, granted, it's not going to handle everything you throw at it, it's only an 800 to 933Mhz Via CPU, but it's all I need. They had a similar case like this on The Screensavers 2 days ago, and the case alone is 200$. Thats the price for everything in my setup, including the stereo. It's nothing special, as it's a test to see if ti works, but hell, I got the idea here at slashdot from another poster.
You have no choice but to use a credit card if your going to sell something on Ebay. They started forcing people to attach a credit card number to their account as a means of reducing the amount of fraudulent accounts people would set up to scam other Ebay users out of money.
You don't have to submit the ole CC to buy something, only to sell.
That's true, but it would be close to impossible to get enough power to those machines in a rack. Where I was, just using 1u Proliants it was real tough to get them all to fit in one rack. We had to rewire everything. And, AFAIK, the blade servers have a big box that supplies power to the entire rack, so you don't have to have 1 circuit for each blade, whereas you would need to do that if you tried to cluster these guys.
At least to us professional truck drivers. We use OmniTracs and virtually almost every fleet owner does the same. It does much more then positioning tracking, allowing us 2way communications and email anywhere in the world, but it does the same thing.
It's a love-hate relationship. On one hand you hate it because they know where you are at all times, at other times I love it, as the computer guesstimates when I'm going to get somewhere and dispatches me a new load before I even deliver this one.
It's not very accurate (sometimes it tracks me 250 miles away from where I am) and a tree, bridge, or other obstruction will render it inoperable for a good minute or 2 whilst it attempts to find the satellite, but overall it's not to bad.
I haven't used one in real life, but the ElectrovayaPowerPad 160 may be what your looking for. It's a slim pad that goes underneath your laptop and offers up to 16hours run time. It's not a laptop battery replacement, it's an addon. Looks like you can charge both the laptop and the powerpad at the same time in under 6 hours. A product brief (fun PDA so I havent read it) is here.
Every been to Chicago? Probably not. With the inner city El and the suburban Metra to the even more outlying Amtrak Chicago has got to be the best city in terms of commute friendliness. You can commute to Chicago in under an hour and a half anywhere from Terra Haute, indiana to Milwaukee, Wi. Thats saying something. it's a 2 hour drive from Milwaukee to Chicago in good traffic. Any time you hit Chicago after 6am your looking for a lot of waiting time, even if you work on the outskirts.
Up until I was laid off, I lived in Wisconsin and commuted to downtown Chicago everyday - less then a 2.5 hour round trip. And only 150$/month to - cheaper for sure then driving, what with gas being 1.50$/gallon and parking downtown 20-25$/day.
My Ex-Company is a stock market, and we run on all Windows 2000. Root passwords? Hell, when Code Red hit we were up 36 hours straight fixing the over 2000 servers all running windows.
So all it takes is a script kiddie with some time on his hands, in a lot of the cases heh
Since the IT crunch I have taken to driving a semi, I'll (soon be) out 2 weeks and home 2 days for now. While theres plenty of Inet access in truckstops (A lot offer truckers FREE broadband in a "Multi Media Center") theres times I'll be in the middle of nowhere and would like a lil something to keep me company. Granted, I'll have satellite email in the truck, thats where it stops. I was kicking around an idea of getting starband installed at my house (since the EULA says it has to be stationary, and installed professionally), rip it down, and jury rig it in my truck. I was even thinking of maybe getting a digital compass and basicstamp and doing a little hackjob to make it try to align itself when I was on the road.
I didn't have a CDL license, they do it all. Let me give a run down of the training.
They sent me to Green Bay, WI. Initial training was 11 days, non paid. But they pay for your hotel, transporation to and from training, and give you 2 meal tickets a day. So 100-200$ is all you need for that. Then there was an additional 5 days of advanced training at $250/week, then if you go to be a specialized driver, like me, I took another week in NC learning on hauling glass @ $350/week. Then you team up with a driver and do teams for 2-4 weeks @ $500/week (Time varies depending on how bad they need you and how well the other thinks you do)
You have to pay for the CDL tests (round 100$) plus give the carrier 150$ for training (The pay the rest of the 3500$ class)its more to hold your seat then anything else, but non-refundable.
So I went in with a regular license and 3 weeks later had a CDL and was driving a semi. It's a lot cooler then I had imagined too. So much free time, and it's a simple job, so the gears tick better when you put your mind to something. Instead of coding all day, coming home and crashing for 5 hours only to get up and do it all again, I feel awake when I come home.
I'm in (well was) the same boat you were in. I used to do all the systems and application managment on one of the largest Windows 2000 datacenters int he country, over 2300 servers. I've written articles for Hewlett-Packard newsletters about OpenView, written a few articles for Windows 2000 magazine, even see me in a book or 2 here.
Six months ago recession hit me. I lost a 65k/year job (Not to bad for Illinois) and the reserves started to go.
What did I do? Well, after an exhaustive search I found and settled on (quite happily I must admit) Semi Truck driving cross country. The company I work for pays for all the training, gets me my CDL, and sends me out in a truck. Pay is low for the first year (no more then 36k or so) but within a few years you go up to 60-70k/year plus.
Thing I dig about it, I only work 2 weeks a month. 2 weeks in a row mind you, but I have 2 weeks off. And Im getting paid for it. It's not as abnormal as I thought either, normal job stuff. Drive 8 hours, etc. Only thing is sleeping on the road thats odd.
And on the upside I get to work on my OWN projects now. I'm working on a free game for fun, and talk about war driving. How about over 2000 sites on a trip from Illinois to Oregon and back. Hell, if anything it's sweet for geeks. A lot of toys I get to bring with me on runs. Plus I do IT stuff on the side.
I used to work 15 hours a day. 3 hour round trip commute, plus 12 hours in the shop. Now I'm not so stressed, the money is good and you meet a lot of cool people.
So give it a shot. I went through Schneider Trucking but I see ads for a lot of other companies that do the same thing. And yes, they hire ANYONE. Literally anyone. During training I was with 5 other IT pro's, one with a MIS. There was a college professor, and a housewife too.
Where I used to work, Townsend Analytics we have a product called RealTick, which (if you pay for it) does come with its own API you can use to alter the software and bend it to your needs. Its made for serious daytraders though, so unless you have the desire to trade and the money for the account don't bother. We tend to be "cutting edge" with online trading, I.E. our software is usually a little buggy, but it will always have the newest features. In fact it's considered the Coca-Cola of the trading industry, being one of the most widly recognized names. Give it a look see. And if you do call up and order, tell em Chucakles said go to hell. They know who I am;)
What I'd love to see if this merger goes through is the HP midlevel servers phased out and the Compaq ones come more into play. The Proliant series of rack-mount servers are stable and is rock steady, cheaper, and offers more options then a comparable HP. Then, merge TopTools into Compaq Insight manager, add some tweaks for NNM and OVO as well as a few other HP software tools and bundle it all together. They couldnt lose. You'd have arguably the best x86 server hardware with the best software management tools from one company.
Have you taken a look at Compaq hardware lately? Nothing compares to it serverwise, 2U servers with redundant PSU's, redundant fans and even redundant memory boards, HP cant come close.
Were I used to work (An all-windows shop) we used Adaptec RAID cards in all our "tower" based servers. Even the lower priced models (AAA-131U2) always performed without a hitch and we never had any problems with them at all. AMI's RAID controllers are real nice and all, but for the price it just wasn't worth it. The Adaptec solutions performed just as well and at a lower cost. You'd do good to check em out.
Now the 3200 RAID Controllers int he Compaq's, thats another diffrent story altogether. We had roughly 2000 servers, operating 24/7 @ 67 degrees F. Two times a year we had a site shutdown. Every single time we had to bring everything back up we would have anywhere from 3-5 Compaq array controllers die. But never once did the low-buck Adaptecs crap out on us.
The makers of this new spaceship believe there is a huge untapped market of would-be space tourists - ordinary people willing to pay for the holiday of a lifetime.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't consider anyone able to pay $100,000 for 3 minutes of weightlessness normal.
But I must admit, it's a cool idea and brings us 1 step closer to a trip to the moon costing as much as a flight from New York to London. But hell, even the cost of that flight is out of my price range.
Where I used to work we had way over 3000 servers (something like 2974 or so to be exact).
We are an ECN for the stock market and process information, we also have 2 other sister corps that we run servers for too.
What we did was name our server by
So for example our NY PDC belonging to the "XYZ Company" was called
XYZNY62PDC01
Now it looks like a complicated name, but if you tell people how to decipher it it is actually pretty simple and easy to know what and where the servers are.
Yes, it was a pain in the ass to begin with, but once people understood the naming convention, there was no problems at all - and in fact made it easier for us. We no longer had to see a server called GRYFFIN and wonder what the hell it did, before we actually logged in and had to look.
That at the bottom of the Dartek page for the iMass they have a banner which says "Attention Slashdot readers: Receive an instant rebate off the iMass of your choice"?
The exact link to the pic is here. Odd eh? Talk about targeted advertsing
Slashdot Mirror
It's much more entertaining to keep refreshing the page and watch the user count rise
Please register or login. There are 10 registered and 1173 anonymous users currently online. Current bandwidth usage: 2777.75 kbit/s
Well sorry, but I get a pile of junk mail every week on my doormat through my post and in my papers - and the senders have had to pay both to print AND send that...
Not only that, they get a special "bulk" rate, thats about half of what we pay to send snail mail. So odd's are the same model might apply to email - our email's would cost a penny each, the spammer's about a half cent each.
OdessaOffice.com
This guy lives in rural washington, and had the same problem. This is his complete step-by-step how to on how he did it, including modem brands & models, problems he had while setting it up, how he overcame obstacles, etc. Very very good read and I would think it'd be your first stop for rolling your own.
Actually, the Linksys signal booster isn't exspensive at all, Newegg lists it at only $85.00.
it only works on their 802.11b stuff, which is what the poster porbably has.
Also, I have a friend who uses it, and get's access now to his garage (about 70 feet away) even though the WAP + signal booster lies in his basement. So it sounds like a good solution, one I'm using when my mother-in-law moves into the building we live in, so I can give her some cheap broadband.
Real bigass customers probably have DVDs with oogles of good codes or key generation servers in-house.
Your sort of right. Any decent sized corporation (with over 5 pcs) and also the biggest warez'ed version of XP is the Corporate edition, which doesn't feature any hardware activation at all. It behaves just like Win2k in the respect that you put in the CD-Key, and thats it. There's no activating required.
I don't know if I'd totally agree with that. Trucking Companies already have what they need, Qualcomm OmniTracs - an all-in-one solution offering 2way text communication, email, vehicle tracking, trailer tracking, and load info. And they've had it for quite awhile. Every large scale company uses it, as well as most smaller fleets. It's essential, and cuts down on all the "let's call our dispatcher" downtime.
I know, I used to drive truck.
These systems utilize satellite communcation which, while not perfect, would be much better then truckstop hotspots for all but the smallest fleets.
To be honest, there aren't many truckstops east of Pa, and the ones there fill up fast. Not to mention certain drivers, like me, only stopped at truckstops to fuel, using wayside rests to shut down for my break.
And don't forget there's a lot of places where drivers go where there isnt a local truckstop nearby. I would sure hate delivering a load and driving for 200 miles to hit a hotspot and find out my next load. I quite liked being out in BFE and still having a link to HQ right by my side.
I had one of those pager watches Slashdot had an article about in early 2000.
All I remember from it's (short) time on my arm is that it took 3 watch batteries, which died after 30-60days requiring a new set. It was bulky, and it didnt work very well.
In fact, the only thing I did like is it would synch it's time to wherever I went to, which I really liked.
I'm afraid that the battery life in the MS watch will be dismal at best, especially processing video and audio.
I like watches that aren't obtrusive, and have a battery time of over a year using ONE thin battery.
I dunno about you guys, but I stick with my old watch.
Sure, it may look a tad corny now, but with it being open ended and allowing people to develop their own worlds I think I may be an early adopter of this stuff.
:p
I'd really dig a whole snow-crash-ish house, and who ever builds the first "Black Sun" will be instantly cool with the other geeks using this setup.
I don't see if they charge for the service or not, but if they don't I imagine a lot of people will check this out.
I can't wait for someone to build a slashdot world and I can slap the shit out of CmdrTaco myself
I agree with you there. I've tried to get into HD for over 3 years now, but they are so picky.
And they can afford to, what with the awesome benefits you get. Buddy of mine worked there, for his (I think) 10th year anniversary HD basically said "Pick any bike, with any options, and it's yours, pro bono"
That's one hell of a 10 year anniversary present, and puts my titanium desk clock I received to shame
Why not build a PC into your stereo? That's exactly the route I'm taking. A Mini-ITX motherboard for 100-200$ (Builtin everything), an old stereo to test it on from the Goodwill, a few other pieces and you have an all in one multi-media box.
In fact, Im setting it up with a wireless NIC and will be able to use my IPAQ to control BrowseAMP to change mp3s anywhere in the house.
Add to that an IR controller and the IR stuff for Winamp and it's an all-in-one solution for a lot less then one of these.
Now, granted, it's not going to handle everything you throw at it, it's only an 800 to 933Mhz Via CPU, but it's all I need.
They had a similar case like this on The Screensavers 2 days ago, and the case alone is 200$.
Thats the price for everything in my setup, including the stereo.
It's nothing special, as it's a test to see if ti works, but hell, I got the idea here at slashdot from another poster.
You have no choice but to use a credit card if your going to sell something on Ebay. They started forcing people to attach a credit card number to their account as a means of reducing the amount of fraudulent accounts people would set up to scam other Ebay users out of money.
You don't have to submit the ole CC to buy something, only to sell.
That's true, but it would be close to impossible to get enough power to those machines in a rack. Where I was, just using 1u Proliants it was real tough to get them all to fit in one rack. We had to rewire everything.
And, AFAIK, the blade servers have a big box that supplies power to the entire rack, so you don't have to have 1 circuit for each blade, whereas you would need to do that if you tried to cluster these guys.
At least to us professional truck drivers.
We use OmniTracs and virtually almost every fleet owner does the same.
It does much more then positioning tracking, allowing us 2way communications and email anywhere in the world, but it does the same thing.
It's a love-hate relationship. On one hand you hate it because they know where you are at all times, at other times I love it, as the computer guesstimates when I'm going to get somewhere and dispatches me a new load before I even deliver this one.
It's not very accurate (sometimes it tracks me 250 miles away from where I am) and a tree, bridge, or other obstruction will render it inoperable for a good minute or 2 whilst it attempts to find the satellite, but overall it's not to bad.
I haven't used one in real life, but the Electrovaya PowerPad 160 may be what your looking for. It's a slim pad that goes underneath your laptop and offers up to 16hours run time. It's not a laptop battery replacement, it's an addon. Looks like you can charge both the laptop and the powerpad at the same time in under 6 hours. A product brief (fun PDA so I havent read it) is here.
But at 500$ for it, it may be out of your budget.
Every been to Chicago? Probably not. With the inner city El and the suburban Metra to the even more outlying Amtrak Chicago has got to be the best city in terms of commute friendliness. You can commute to Chicago in under an hour and a half anywhere from Terra Haute, indiana to Milwaukee, Wi. Thats saying something. it's a 2 hour drive from Milwaukee to Chicago in good traffic. Any time you hit Chicago after 6am your looking for a lot of waiting time, even if you work on the outskirts.
Up until I was laid off, I lived in Wisconsin and commuted to downtown Chicago everyday - less then a 2.5 hour round trip. And only 150$/month to - cheaper for sure then driving, what with gas being 1.50$/gallon and parking downtown 20-25$/day.
My Ex-Company is a stock market, and we run on all Windows 2000. Root passwords? Hell, when Code Red hit we were up 36 hours straight fixing the over 2000 servers all running windows.
So all it takes is a script kiddie with some time on his hands, in a lot of the cases heh
There goes my plan.
Since the IT crunch I have taken to driving a semi, I'll (soon be) out 2 weeks and home 2 days for now.
While theres plenty of Inet access in truckstops (A lot offer truckers FREE broadband in a "Multi Media Center") theres times I'll be in the middle of nowhere and would like a lil something to keep me company. Granted, I'll have satellite email in the truck, thats where it stops. I was kicking around an idea of getting starband installed at my house (since the EULA says it has to be stationary, and installed professionally), rip it down, and jury rig it in my truck. I was even thinking of maybe getting a digital compass and basicstamp and doing a little hackjob to make it try to align itself when I was on the road.
But not anymore =\
Ok, here's how it works.
I didn't have a CDL license, they do it all.
Let me give a run down of the training.
They sent me to Green Bay, WI. Initial training was 11 days, non paid. But they pay for your hotel, transporation to and from training, and give you 2 meal tickets a day. So 100-200$ is all you need for that. Then there was an additional 5 days of advanced training at $250/week, then if you go to be a specialized driver, like me, I took another week in NC learning on hauling glass @ $350/week.
Then you team up with a driver and do teams for 2-4 weeks @ $500/week (Time varies depending on how bad they need you and how well the other thinks you do)
You have to pay for the CDL tests (round 100$) plus give the carrier 150$ for training (The pay the rest of the 3500$ class)its more to hold your seat then anything else, but non-refundable.
So I went in with a regular license and 3 weeks later had a CDL and was driving a semi. It's a lot cooler then I had imagined too. So much free time, and it's a simple job, so the gears tick better when you put your mind to something. Instead of coding all day, coming home and crashing for 5 hours only to get up and do it all again, I feel awake when I come home.
I'm in (well was) the same boat you were in. I used to do all the systems and application managment on one of the largest Windows 2000 datacenters int he country, over 2300 servers. I've written articles for Hewlett-Packard newsletters about OpenView, written a few articles for Windows 2000 magazine, even see me in a book or 2 here.
Six months ago recession hit me. I lost a 65k/year job (Not to bad for Illinois) and the reserves started to go.
What did I do? Well, after an exhaustive search I found and settled on (quite happily I must admit) Semi Truck driving cross country. The company I work for pays for all the training, gets me my CDL, and sends me out in a truck. Pay is low for the first year (no more then 36k or so) but within a few years you go up to 60-70k/year plus.
Thing I dig about it, I only work 2 weeks a month. 2 weeks in a row mind you, but I have 2 weeks off. And Im getting paid for it. It's not as abnormal as I thought either, normal job stuff. Drive 8 hours, etc. Only thing is sleeping on the road thats odd.
And on the upside I get to work on my OWN projects now. I'm working on a free game for fun, and talk about war driving. How about over 2000 sites on a trip from Illinois to Oregon and back. Hell, if anything it's sweet for geeks. A lot of toys I get to bring with me on runs. Plus I do IT stuff on the side.
I used to work 15 hours a day. 3 hour round trip commute, plus 12 hours in the shop. Now I'm not so stressed, the money is good and you meet a lot of cool people.
So give it a shot. I went through Schneider Trucking but I see ads for a lot of other companies that do the same thing.
And yes, they hire ANYONE. Literally anyone. During training I was with 5 other IT pro's, one with a MIS. There was a college professor, and a housewife too.
Where I used to work, Townsend Analytics we have a product called RealTick, which (if you pay for it) does come with its own API you can use to alter the software and bend it to your needs. Its made for serious daytraders though, so unless you have the desire to trade and the money for the account don't bother. We tend to be "cutting edge" with online trading, I.E. our software is usually a little buggy, but it will always have the newest features. In fact it's considered the Coca-Cola of the trading industry, being one of the most widly recognized names. Give it a look see. And if you do call up and order, tell em Chucakles said go to hell. They know who I am ;)
What I'd love to see if this merger goes through is the HP midlevel servers phased out and the Compaq ones come more into play. The Proliant series of rack-mount servers are stable and is rock steady, cheaper, and offers more options then a comparable HP. Then, merge TopTools into Compaq Insight manager, add some tweaks for NNM and OVO as well as a few other HP software tools and bundle it all together. They couldnt lose. You'd have arguably the best x86 server hardware with the best software management tools from one company.
Have you taken a look at Compaq hardware lately? Nothing compares to it serverwise, 2U servers with redundant PSU's, redundant fans and even redundant memory boards, HP cant come close.
Were I used to work (An all-windows shop) we used Adaptec RAID cards in all our "tower" based servers. Even the lower priced models (AAA-131U2) always performed without a hitch and we never had any problems with them at all. AMI's RAID controllers are real nice and all, but for the price it just wasn't worth it. The Adaptec solutions performed just as well and at a lower cost. You'd do good to check em out.
Now the 3200 RAID Controllers int he Compaq's, thats another diffrent story altogether.
We had roughly 2000 servers, operating 24/7 @ 67 degrees F. Two times a year we had a site shutdown. Every single time we had to bring everything back up we would have anywhere from 3-5 Compaq array controllers die. But never once did the low-buck Adaptecs crap out on us.
The makers of this new spaceship believe there is a huge untapped market of would-be space tourists - ordinary people willing to pay for the holiday of a lifetime.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't consider anyone able to pay $100,000 for 3 minutes of weightlessness normal.
But I must admit, it's a cool idea and brings us 1 step closer to a trip to the moon costing as much as a flight from New York to London. But hell, even the cost of that flight is out of my price range.
Where I used to work we had way over 3000 servers (something like 2974 or so to be exact).
We are an ECN for the stock market and process information, we also have 2 other sister corps that we run servers for too.
What we did was name our server by
So for example our NY PDC belonging to the "XYZ Company" was called
XYZNY62PDC01
Now it looks like a complicated name, but if you tell people how to decipher it it is actually pretty simple and easy to know what and where the servers are.
Yes, it was a pain in the ass to begin with, but once people understood the naming convention, there was no problems at all - and in fact made it easier for us. We no longer had to see a server called GRYFFIN and wonder what the hell it did, before we actually logged in and had to look.
That at the bottom of the Dartek page for the iMass they have a banner which says "Attention Slashdot readers: Receive an instant rebate off the iMass of your choice"?
The exact link to the pic is here. Odd eh? Talk about targeted advertsing