Patrick Anderson's Blog

Google Drive was released yesterday and I have had a chance to check it out on a limited basis. If you aren't familiar with Google Drive, it is basically a cloud storage system that is somewhat of a replacement for Google Docs. They now have a desktop client for Windows and Mac, so you can keep files locally and sync them to your Google Drive.

So far, this is what I like about Google Drive:

• Easy to edit files using Google Docs system
• The grid view is a nice way to view your files
• The search function is fantastic
• Having 30 days of previous revisions is essential
• The desktop sync is a feature I have wanted from Google for years and seems to work fine
• Sharing files is just as easy as it was with Google Docs

There are a couple of things I would like to see improved:

• Integration with Picasa is needed - then Google Drive could be THE solution for backing up and managing photo collections
• Better desktop client - need the ability to limit bandwidth and to get a share link

I've know about Google Cloud Print for awhile and I even tested it just to see if it works. It allows you to do stuff like print documents from you Android phone or Chrome browser to a home printer... Even if you a thousand miles away. Pretty cool, eh?

For me, I hate printing and I am usually at home or at work with tons of printers, so I haven't had much need for it. That is until today. I was using my work laptop at home and wanted to print something out. Because I have Google Cloud Print setup, all I had to do was print to the cloud. I didn't have to worry about finding drivers or getting around my work laptop's security restriction. Just click and print. 

I've been working on a problem that involves translating an Oracle database into MySQL. The conversion process has been working great – thanks to the great conversion tool provided by Intelligent Converters. Unfortunately, we hit a snag with it earlier this week.

Because of our specific requirements, we are storing som docs and images in the database as a LARGEBLOB. After inserting the converted data into MySQL, some of the larger files were being truncated.

After troubleshooting, we figured the problem was with the conversion/insertion process. To get around this, we had to increase the MAX_ALLOWED_PACKET to 16M and get a modified version of the Oracle to MySQL too. Problem solved!

The NAS project I started awhile ago was settled when we picked the Netgear ReadyNAS line. Or so I thought. The issue was recently reopened when our HQ turned on mandatory SMB Signing and "broke" our NAS units out in the field. I was tasked to come up with a fix and that is where it got complicated.

When we noticed the new security standard had been added to our Group Policies, we contacted HQ and asked for it to be turned off. This prompted them to ask questions about our field setup. Unfortunately, our HQ really doesn't understand our requirements and think we all live in a perfect world with a datacenter in the same building and WAN connectivity.

Rather than risk HQ shutting down our whole NAS program, I had to come up with a more secure and robust solution. At first, I started looking at ReadyNAS again. But then I started think about the usefulness of having a full Linux distro. Since we are using Oracle Linux for some of our servers, I decided to use the similar Scientific Linux. Both Oracle Linux and Scientific Linux are Red Hat based distros. Scientific Linux is free, but does not come with professional support, but that is OK for our NAS project.