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GRAFFITI -- January 12, 2004 thru January 18, 2004>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
 
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January 12, 2004
0801 - Good morning. Not really. The bug I have been fighting for almost a week now is returning with a vengeance. Even though I didn't do a vast amount this weekend, I did stay busy almost continuously. I cannot afford this, later this week. So I am going to take a sick day. My original "plan" was to take the first part of the day off, then work remotely for a customer site... No. I just need to relax, nap a few times and kick this bug out of here. So there!
I did accomplish a bit this weekend, mostly on Marcia's setup. She's got two printers, an external card reader/writer and USB hardware key (for the sewing gear), a USB floppy, her PDA, speakers, MS Natural Pro keyboard and redeye mouse ... surely there's something I've forgotten. That's a lot of stuff to hang off a laptop. The bane of my existence on Saturday was the PDA - I was trying like the devil to make it work properly via the USB connect kit. That wasn't going to happen:
Scott Kitterman wrote,"You aren't by chance trying to use a USB connection are you? If you are, I recommend giving up . . . there are, "Known issues" with the M100 series and USB. We ended up having to shuffle computers so she could have a laptop with a serial port so she could hotsync"
Yah, I'd pretty much arrived at the same conclusion. The solution is a USB-connected Targus multiport station for just this sort of purpose. There are more ports on this model than I have need for at the moment. But in the likely event of Marcia needing to connect even more stuff to her computer... let's just say this was a prudent purchase.
Okay, time to not roll. I'll just wrap this up for now. If I become terribly bored and if there's anything to say and if I'm awake, I might be back later.
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January 13, 2004
0736 - It is later. I have done little, and what I did required almost no minding - an excellent choice of occupation on a sick day. The first full backup from Marcia's new laptop ("Sew_What") is done. The differential is scheduled for nightly. That was easy, once I made enough space on the backup partition. That was the cause of the failure the night before last - the backup died at 5.3G, as it ran out of space.
Then there is BitTorrent. I pulled down the three disc set of White Box Enterprise Linux (like RHEL, only without the trademarked or proprietary stuff). I used BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer tool that is marvelously useful for such endeavors. The total download was 1,858,863,104 bytes, and at the 75% mark, I had 17 minutes and 23 seconds remaining to completion. Yeah, I was getting about 430 - 460 KBps download. The whole download of three ISO images took a shade less than 75 minutes - that rocks. This is an even better tool at the time of initial release for ISO images of a distribution. The bits do not have to be downloaded in order. Instead, you can download chunk 437 from Bob, chunk 204 from Harriet, and so on. As soon as you have all of chunk 437, you become a download source for that chunk to other people downloading that particular torrent. The main server, instead of being bandwidth starved, is serving out chunks at a time, and keeping track of who is downloading and telling other peers where to get bits from. BitTorrent is designed to be a peering tool - if you connect without making upload ports available, that is detected, and your downstream slows to a trickle. Paying back is rewarded, being miserly is not. About White Box ... well, I'm expecting it to be a lot like Red Hat 9. I'll let you know soon.
Marcia's desk has lots more room, now that the big monitor has given way to a laptop, and the scanner is moved to another location. 
I didn't take a before picture, because I'm fairly sure that would guarantee a night in the dog house. Everything is about in place, although I am positive that there will be a few bits and drabs of software left to install. Meantime, the dogs are getting along a little better each week. Sally just is not very competitive, and Lucy is pretty much a gerbil on amphetamines, energy-wise. I believe a balance will be reached in a couple more months.
Unfortunately, I'm clearly feeling worse, not better. Sleep was a sporadic and fitful thing last night. I've got a fair amount of congestion in my lungs, and a little bit of sinus problems. I wonder if this isn't bronchitis. If it goes on for another week, then I'll visit the doctor. But today there's work that can't wait. So off I go.
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January 14, 2004
0723 - Good morning. And a better morning than yesterday's, I think. I'm beginning to sound worse than I feel, which is a good sign, is it not? I spent most of yesterday working on a Debian mailserver for one client, along with a few other odd jobs, including some mid-evening remote admin work for a customer down in Arlington. Ah, the life of a professional computer hater!
Today is a long, two-client day, stretching from here until between 7 and 9 this evening. I'll be whacked when I'm done. Then tomorrow I'm going to sit at the hospital while Marcia has what is hopefully her last surgery for a long while. So I need to get started on my day, and depending on events and timing and such, I may not post until Friday. In any case, you have a great day!
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January 15, 2004
0740 - Good morning. I've not much time - we're leaving in a few minutes. But two items of note - Yesterday was a very long, extremely productive day. I really wrapped up work (doing some remote admin from home) at about 11:45. Prior to that was about 13 hours of work at two different clients - I got home after 10:15 last night. But a lot was accomplished - machines are working, doing what they're supposed to be doing. I am pleased.
Second, the weather liars really did a good job this time - 1 to 3 inches of snow turned into no snow at all. Either that or the really quiet plows did streets, sidewalks and yards (front and back) without us hearing a thing... Hmmm. Okay, wish us luck. See you later!
1730 - Marcia's doing fine! There was a two hour lead for checkin, then she was in and out of surgery, awake by 1130. They cut us loose at 1530, and here we are, home again. All is well, thanks for asking. Manaña...
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January 16, 2004
1100 - Good morning. All is reasonably well. Marcia has more pain this morning than she was hoping - that means a trip to the land of Vicodin for the day, something she'd rather not inflict upon herself given the option. But realistically... Anyway, she's okay, much more mobile than after the surgery in July (which was major by comparison). Also, because you like it, here's another dog picture at right - here they are sleeping together the other night. I came into the bedroom after working late, and caught them in this pose, deserving of a picture. Often they are sleeping on opposite sides of our bed.
The shipment from EndPCNoise.com was here when we got home from the hospital yesterday, smack on time. You may recall that last week I ordered fans and CPU coolers from them. Shown in the snapshot are Athlon coolers by Nexus (left, rear), P3 coolers (left, mid) and a tube of Arctic Silver Céramique (left, front), along with a stack of quiet case fans made by Zalman (on the right). I first took down Goldfinger, the dual Athlon box. I popped the old coolers (from Antec) and case fans. Then I dragged the box down into the garage and blew it out with air. Then I used IPA to clean the processors and apply a clean coat of the Céramique. Installing the first cooler, towards the back of the box, was a breeze. 
These are SOLID connections to the chip carrier - they use all 3 tabs on each side rather than just the middle one. For the front installation, well, that was a bit tougher, as it turns out that the cooler/fan assembly is tall enough to block the disk sub-assembly from being reinserted. So I ended up removing the cooler again, installing the disk chassis, and putting the cooler back in place, then finally the system RAM. All in all, about 45 minutes, counting putting the case fans in. Those come with a little add-in connector that puts a large resistor in line with the power, to slow the fan down to quiet levels. But with one fan pushing in from the front, and two plus the PS pulling from the back, I'm content. The picture at the right shows the final setup in Goldfinger before closing the case.
Then I popped Garcia, the P3 box that is a server of DNS, backup shares and more, and applied the P3 cooler and Zalman case fan to him. With both boxes closed back up and running, it is considerably quieter in here. However, it now lets me hear just how loud my old hard disks are. Sigh. I'm just NOT going to upgrade those at this point. When I do finally get around to that, I'm told that the Seagate Barracuda line is the quietest of them all.
Today I'm home taking care of my Marcia, and doing some remote work on a new mail and file server for a client. That and fighting a horrid sinus headache. Hopefully those meds (that I forgot to take yesterday in all the bustle and rush) will kick in shortly. You have a good day, okay?
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January 17, 2004
1336 - Good afternoon. A lazy day so far, mostly spent mucking about with kernels and moving data from machine to machine. I was up at around 7:30, logged onto a remote client box to reboot into an updated kernel setup. Then I went back to be for about 3 hours. Since then I've been remarkably sedentary. However, I really should jump in the shower and get some shopping done. Tomorrow I'm to work all day at a customer site. I arrange these weekend days from time to time so that I can get contiguous quality time with the machines ... without disturbing the people who normally work at the desks. Marcia continues to improve. That's all there is to report right now. Have a great day!
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January 18, 2004
1934 - Sorry for the delay, let me just finish up my time card ... There, thanks! Now, where was I? Ah, right. Updating windows boxen all day, oh, and a couple of Linux boxes, too. The most fun was using the web-interface to the 3Ware Escalade IDE RAID controller to rebuild a degraded array. That's been a hanging task for a while now, and I finally took care of it. Then we tested to be sure that everything was still in place (the client working remotely from home). Yeah, I know - that's why I do this stuff on a weekend day from time to time. This way I can get to all the systems and servers without getting in anyone's hair. I get twice as much done in half the time, getting all the systems caught up to where they should be. That's a good thing.
I didn't get up too early - about 0645 - because there was sleet and snow falling all night, and I wanted to be driving after temps had made it a few degrees above freezing. That worked out great. On my way home, four-ish, after raining all day, it was just starting to squitter plain slurpee from the sky again. That made the drive home a lot less safe, thus slower, than the ride in had been. Now the clouds are clearing and the temps are dropping like a rock - turning the roads to wet glass. Tomorrow morning will be a good day not to go to work, so I won't. It's actually a company holiday, as we track the Feds on holidays...
Marcia's got to work, which she will, from home. She isn't quite up to going to the office yet. But she's made it through the day today without pain meds of any kind - not even Ibuprofen. Yay! So we made it through hopefully the last surgery in a good long while. For most of the last 2.5 years there's been a surgical procedure pending ... after she blew out her first knee, we knew the second was going to go one day soon. Then the last two, with the duff gall bladder (out last Thursday) noticed during the procedure in July last. Whew. That's no fun - I'm proud of my baby doll hanging tough during all this not-fun stuff.
See you next week, or tomorrow - your preference.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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