After leaving ING and giving Charles Schwab a chance for the past six months, I have decided to change banks. Although Schwab has been decent, they have not delivered on many of their promises, most notably being able to move money between your checking and savings online – you actually have to call them to do this, or swap between your brokerage account! What a PITA! They have also had many issues aggregating to Yodlee-based aggregators. So after re-assessing my requirements, I am going to start my search all over again. ING would be my first choice, however they still block aggregators!?!? I wonder if they are still looking to support this functionality by EOY? Well back to the drawing board. Current front-runner for me is eTrade, due to their various offerings. Are you happy with your bank? If so, please share as I am open for suggestions 
Kathy Kristof took Mint, Thrive, Buxfer, Wesabe, and Moneystrands for a spin and the results were somewhat shocking as Mint blew away the competition, alot of which is based on adding financial accounts. What is really interesting about that is that Mint, Thrive, and Moneystrands all use the same Yodlee back-end, so as a nice old lady once said…where’s the beef?
Like the writer, I too have issues with accounts and Moneystrands. I would probably be using Moneystrands if they could hook into all the accounts Yodlee can. Regarding Thrive, I do not understand why the write gave a 2.5 when the only con that I could read was that they called and spoke to Matt @ Thrive. Having spoken with Matt on the phone prior, I would not have deducted that many points
Still a good read an another viewpoint on the various PFM tools out on the interwebs.
Read the full review @ http://moneywatch.bnet.com/saving-money/article/money-management-the-best-online-personal-finance-sites/369257/
Amazon now has Virtualization Blogger Scott Lowe’s new book, VMware vSphere 4 Administration Instant Reference, in stock. I’ve been reading Scott’s blog for years now and would highly recommend anyone who deals with vSphere 4 to pickup this book. Here is a summary of what it covers:
All your VMware vSphere 4 questions answered—on the spot!
If you need quick answers and real-world solutions as you administer VMware
vSphere 4, keep this indispensable guide on hand. Designed for busy IT professionals, it’s the perfect go-to resource. You’ll find easy-to-read lists, quick-reference tables, helpful thumb tabs, and much more in a handy, compact format that puts what you need at your fingertips, fast.
Topics include:
- Understanding new as well as legacy features
- Installing and configuring ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server
- Creating and managing virtual networks
- Handling licensing, storage, high availability, and business continuity
- Managing virtual machines, including security and performance
- Upgrading from VI3 to vSphere 4
- Mastering the command line
In addition to the book , Scott also has Mastering VMware vSphere 4 
After its acquisition of Mint, you knew that Intuit had one too many online PFM tools and Quicken Online had to go. Given that the purchase of Mint was less than two months ago, you wouldn’t have expected Inuit to throw both in the Thunderdome and have the crew chant “Two Men Enter, One Man Leave” this quick, however that is the case as Intuit announced that they are weening their users off of QOL and moving towards the new “Mint from Quicken”.
Here are some of the features we should expect to see from MfQ:
From Mint.com, we will incorporate:
• Extra money management power: from the ability to track investments, to additional budgeting functionality to help you save and do more with your money.
• Access to Mint.com’s Savings Engine, which uses a patent pending algorithm to analyze spending trends and finds ways to save money – on average at least $1,000 on the first visit – by showing you the best checking and savings accounts, optimal credit cards, the best interest rates on CDs and more, all tailored specifically to your financial situation.From Quicken Online, we’re going to continue to offer the tools you’ve grown to love:
• The ability to enter and manage cash purchases or checks that haven’t yet cleared
• The combined product will support all 14,000 financial institutions currently served by Quicken Online – up from roughly 8,000 currently supported by Mint.com.
• An upgraded iPhone application that includes the popular ATM finder.
To read more, check out the blog post by Aaron Patzer, VP and GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance Group
My one question: When will we see the fall of the desktop version of Quicken? With everyone wanting to work in the “cloud”, that application seems like it has a target on its back.
One of the most challenging aspects of homebrewing is reproducing a great beer twice. Here was one of my favorite brews, Milosh, that I made back in 2005. This was a recipe derived from a bit of Chimay Blue mixed with some N’ice Chouffe. Funny story with this brew, about six of us drank five 750 mL bottles of Milosh before standing up in my friends wedding. Fun times were had by all!
I have finally decided to make a switch to Mac for home use…there I said it!
After thinking about it, I never actually gave Apple a chance because I could not stand the Apple fan boys, I liken them to Cub fans constantly whining that their product is superior. After rolling with a Mac Book Pro for a couple weeks with my Windows and Linux apps running in VMs and testing out the native Apple applications, I realized that the switch would work and could improve various workflows that I have at home (most notably, my quest to go paperless using Yep!)
Now the switch did not stop with the base product, I also swapped out my 4GB Zune for a 16GB iPod Nano. Being an OG Zune user, this was a shock to many, but although very loyal to products, I realize when it is time to jump ship. As I explained to a few people, I really liked the Zune…but I think I was one of the select few. The weak adoption of the Zune platform is evident in the lack of docks or other accessories for the Zune. Hell, outside of my bud Doctor, I have never seen another Zune in the wild.
Once I receive my iMac, I will continue to write about the conversion and how I feel about it in a couple months. Right now the techno geek in me is anxious and excited, we will see if I feel that way after three months.
Welcome to the new home for the various blogs of Ryan Glover! Here you will find all posts related to p2vd.com, pwrshell.com, myhomebrews.com, and thinkplansave.com. After reviewing my various workflows, I determined that having multiple blogs was not efficient use of time. Imagine that! Thus, the new blog will cover everything branching from virtualization to personal finance to making beer and cheese. I hope you enjoy this consolidated view, and hopefully learn a few fun things along the way.
I wondered about this as soon as Intuit acquired Mint; when would they change back-ends? Makes sense though, Quicken has their own back-end, why would Mint use a different backend then its parent company? Well I stumbled upon an article at FastCompany in which Mint Founder Aaron Patzer states that a change may be on the horizon. Again it makes sense, however I’d be interested to see the fallout if such a change was made.
One decision that remains is whether Mint will stay with its backend service provider, Yodlee. Yodlee was recently lambasted by Michael Arrington at TechCrunch for not taking equity in Mint, which he said would switch to Intuit’s backend and abandon the $2 million-per-year deal. Both Mint and Yodlee say Arrington is wrong. "It would be highly unusual to ask for equity from any of our customers," said Yodlee SVP Joe Polverari. "And with startups, we’d rather have the money."
Patzer says that the backend switch isn’t a foregone conclusion, since it would mean Mint users lose some features. He says the site isn’t going to switch to Intuit’s backend until it has proven itself comparable to Yodlee, which is considered an industry leader. "When that happens, we’ll consider switching," he says. What about his plan to get all the Quicken and Mint products down to one code base? "We may actually leave Quicken running on Intuit and Mint on Yodlee, so we can compare performance between the two," he adds.
Data Mining the Mint.com Demographic | TechWatch | Fast Company
Anyone that tells you that kids do not take up much time are liars Sorry that the blog has been lacking posts lately, between kids and work, I have been extremely busy and the blog has been directly affected. That being said, I hope to blog around two to three posts a week going forward. That might change next year as we are expecting our second child
A lot has happened in the PFM space since I last wrote. Mint was acquired by Intuit, Thrive launched MoneyRight for parent Lending Tree, and I am trying out MoneyStrands (I like their analytics). I hope to tackle all these topics and more very soon. Until then, I am happy to be back and ready to start helping out anyone who needs it.
After having just sat the vSphere “What’s New” course, I have the itch to start writing again! As many of you may already be aware, vSphere has some slick new features and I am excited to start writing again about these new topics as well as Microsoft Hyper-V R2 and Citrix XenServer! Now for the post!
One area that was not really covered in the course was “what are the best practices for partitioning vSphere”. Things are very different now, unlike in previous versions, the COS is now a vmdk file and runs on a VMFS volume. Just in case you were wondering, the COS VMDK is stored on the local VMFS volume by default in the following location: esxconsole-<system-uuid>/esxconsole.vmdk. As you would imagine, this will definitely alter the way that you partition your disk, if you are installing from scratch. To install from scratch, the best practice is to partition as follows:
Note: You cannot define the sizes for /boot, vmkcore, or vmfs partitions using manual or graphical installation. Only using a scripted method can you define these values
Required:
| Mount Point | Size | Notes |
| /(root) | 5120 MB | This is the VMware recommended value |
| swap | 1600 MB | This is the maximum value. Minimum value is 600 MB |
| /boot | 1.25 GB | This mount point is automatically created and included both /boot and vmkcore partitions. The /boot partition requires 1100 MB of this value |
| VMFS | 1200 MB | This mount point is automatically created and includes the COS vmdk named esxconsole.vmdk |
| /var/log | 4096 MB | Created by default during manual installation. VMware recommends a minimum of 2000 MB |
| /home | 2048 MB | VMware recommends 512 MB |
| /opt | 2048 MB | VMware does not have any recommendation for /opt |
| /tmp | 2048 MB | VMware recommends 1024 MB |
So there you have it. Somewhat similar to what we’ve seen in the past, however with a twist in that the COS is now a VMDK!
