First off the subject line is designed to convey the impression that I want to make points about the e1000g and a separate comment about sheep. Not that I have something to say about putting gigabit drivers and sheep together!
I was trying to install a Dell Precision 650 earlier today with solaris. The machine has a floppy drive so I went with the usual convention of making a boot floppy to kick off the jumpstart install. This does not work with the e1000g and you will either get no NET boot option or a message that the file e1000g.bef cannot be found, depending on the version of solaris you try. From the last comment you get a hint that I spent a couple of hours tonight trying various different versions! It turns out that this is not a bug, or a missing file, Intel simply never intended the card to be used this way apparently. The machine does boot quite happily using PXE, so I can throw out the floppy disks now. From now on with x86 machines I’ll check if they can PXE boot first!
Now about those sheep. One reason I have been hesitant in starting a blog, and its a reason that many will share, is the so called herd-mentality. Best observed (without looking at human behaviour!) in sheep, where they will happily follow each other jump in the same way and act as general amusement to a well trained sheep dog. So are all bloggers just writing blogs because other people do? For the most part the answer is probably yes. This assertion may upset some bloggers, some may for example strive to make their blogs different to they stand out among others, in a way we are all guilty of this by tweaking our themes, picking our topics etc. Its rather like following a group of people but wearing a silly hat while doing so, so that you will stand out, as opposed to not being in the crowd in the first place! So why am I writing a blog at all then? Have I lost all of that “I’m soooo individual” mentality from my teenage years? No, there is still individuality left, otherwise my blog would be exactly the same as someone elses.
The difference between the sheep in a field and (most) bloggers is awareness. The sheep are simply following the sheep in front. (most) bloggers are well aware that they are following others, but see this as something positive and something they can contribute to and receive benefit from. They are aware that they are the herd.
There may now be some sheep feeling hard done by, my apologies. The Buddah was once asked whether a dog could have a buddah nature, but thankfully there are books to help sheep along! Its a worthwhile book for humans to read too!
Cheers,
~Al (baaaaa)