This is a work in progress and it will be updated over the next week or so…

My father’s company has had a linux based server, firewall and router for a while. This server hosts this web site and others, a virtual mail hosting system and general file sharing for his company. It serves as a NAT router and firewall as well. Basically it is a linux network swiss army knife. After 5 years of faithful service to us (in addition to 5 years in a production cluster) the dual PIII-450 machine hosting the system is having hardware issues that cause freezes and so we figured it was a bout time for new hardware. My father’s company purchased a AMD64 based Dell T105. While this $700 system was more expensive than the free salvaged box, it comes with 4 year 24×5 support and warrantee.

Well after playing with my bug for a bit, I could not get the GPS module to work. I sent an email to the support folks at BugLabs and after a few posts back and forth on the forums to trouble shoot, they sent me a prepaid return label to RMA the unit. This has been a very positive experience and I want to give props to the BugLabs support and technical team for their help thus far. I pre-ordered a brand new system and probably have one of the early production units. Failures happen. It is how they dealt with it that is surprising.

My brand spanking new BugLabs Bug arrived today complete with very spiffy packaging. I haven’t done much with it yet. That is a job for tonight. For now, here are a few pictures:

I’m switching my site over to wordpress as a blog engine after serveral years of using blogger.