Month: April 2009

My car’s first owner: John A. Standish of Albuquerque.

It's not really mine, I'm just it's current caretaker

I received a letter today from Jaguar’s North American Archives confirming my Heritage Certificate request. They provided me with a rough copy of the certificate for me to proofread prior to printing. Part of the data included is the car’s “birthday” and its first owner. The car was built on February 26th, 1965. The first owner was John A. Standish of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Additionally, I’ve learned that the car’s original color was Opalescent Dark Green, with a tan interior. I suspected a green of some sort, as the photos I’ve seen prior to its restoration had a greenish tinge to them. The car had obviously sat outside in the southwestern sun for quite a while and the car looked very faded and very tired.

I have no idea how long Mr. Standish owned the car, but I’d love to find him, or his family and learn more about it.

Car Photo of the Day: Hit the road Jag!

Spring could theoretically arrive here soon. The forecast calls for a warming trend, and clearing skies. Of course the peak of said trend is not predicted until Monday! In one of those bizarre “fancy meeting you here” moments I was in a bar near Sea-Tac airport with my friend (and d.f client) David Kingsbury, as he was await a flight back to Minnesota… and I ran into Greg Bilyeau, a Jaguar-friend from Bellingham, essentially doing the same thing with a family member. Greg just emailed me proposing a multi- E-type drive for the weekend. I have lots of little jobs to do on the Jaguar, but it is in “driveable” condition… so I’m considering it.

Today’s CPotD requires no guessing games (though gird your loins boys, I think I have a couple of weekend stumpers for you!) as it is an iconic Jaguar XK-SS. No mistaking that shape!

Google uncloaks once-secret server | Business Tech – CNET News

Google uncloaks once-secret server | Business Tech – CNET News.

I love this machine. It speaks to me on so many different levels. While the server vendors have been building slimmer-but-longer 1U servers, Google has literally broken the mold, and built a server with the entire datacenter in mind, not just the rack. Instead of fighting a fruitless war for density by going longer, Google looked at the problem as a whole and came up with an ingenious solution. I applaud them. I especially applaud them from my position of having to deal with the rest of the industry’s complete backassery in their approach to the same problem, which as I have said publicly many times, has failed.

Note the low-cost components. Note the lack of a case, which only adds weight and complicates cooling. Note the lack of hardware. This server has components held together by Velcro strips. It has a built-in 12V battery backup. It has a very compact motherboard. It’s width means that it can fit 2 side-by-side in a standard 19″ rack, and its height means they can fit, I’m guessing between 28 and 32 of them per standard 42U rack. But given that they can squeeze the rows of racks MUCH closer together than in a same sized facility equipped with 36″-42″ deep cabinets this means the number of servers per facility increases by around one third to half again as dense. In fact, the larger the datacenter, the greater the delta in density scales towards this form-factor. From the one Google datacenter I’ve seen, they are large facilities.

Well done Google. My hat’s off to you.