Tomkinson Family Site

I've had 'servers' at home for about the last 8 years. These are nothing more than consumer grade workstations with a Server OS but they've served me well (no pun intended) in my venture to make home networking as much of a pain in the ass as possible for my family! Joking aside, I'm a Network Engineer by trade and this is the stuff that floats my boat so my family usually feels the brunt of my latest software evaluations and network security experiments!

I find the newer technologies fascinating and though I've used virtualization products for a number of years at work, VMWare and Citrix have released two very powerful 'Bare Metal' Hypervisors that home network junkies like myself can't resist jumping all over! This has spurred a new project and one I'm hoping will set me up for the next few years ahead and involves a complete redo of my home servers.

October of 2008 turned the 10th year of our Wedding Anniversary. Most years we try to get away for a celebratory weekend and though it's hardly a substitute for a two week vacation, it is something we look forward to. Both Liz and I have busy schedules and we have to plan around each other as well as Axel, our pup. We have no issues with putting him in a kennel for a weekend but anything longer just doesn't feel right and costs the earth!

Since I arrived here, Liz has always wanted to take me to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a stay in a secluded cabin so this year being our 10th, we decided to make good on it. This was also the first year that we had Axel for our Anniversary so rather than putting him in a kennel, we found a place that would allow him to go with us.