06.12.08
Posted in Life, Hobbies at 6:14 pm by Stoner
I’ve been reading Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park and I have to say, it is an absolutely fascinating read. Even if you don’t give a hoot about encryption or how the Allies won World War II, it has great stories from the people who were there. You learn about their thoughts and feelings when it comes to events like being the first non-Nazis to read the message about the death of Hitler, mere hours after it happened, to deciphering the message that lead to the Allies shooting down Admiral Yamamoto Ishiroku. The stress of the work and the round-the-clock shift-work that went into the effort is amazing. The pressures put on these people, the tolls it took and how they coped with it all is simply astounding.
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09.17.07
Posted in Life, Family, Hobbies at 12:53 pm by Stoner
A while ago, I purchased a replica 1851 .44 caliber Navy revolver - a black powder, cap-n-ball revolver. I finally got to shoot it over the Labor Day weekend with my father. It was a pleasurable experience and it gave me a real admiration for the soldiers and officers who fought in the American Civil War. The effort that goes into loading and firing a cap-n-ball revolver (or rifle even) is tremendous!
A good soldier, with a reliable rifle, was able to load and fire 3 rounds in a minute. Considering how long it took me to load 6 chambers of my revolver using a pre-formed charge (no measuring required,) ball and wadding, then to put the caps on the nipples and finally to fire the weapon - I would have been counted among one of the dead. Of course, I experienced several misfires where the cap would go off but it wouldn’t ignite the powder in the chamber.
On the plus-side, out of 12 chambers, I managed to hit a target (8″ in diameter) 4 times at 25 yards, including 2 in the center bullseye. Considering it was my first time shooting that revolver and my first time shooting a cap-n-ball, I’d say it wasn’t too shabby.
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05.23.07
Posted in Technology, Hobbies at 5:01 pm by Stoner
One of my clients grows seemingly without bound. In the space of about 16 months, their Redhat Clustered MySQL database went from 2CPU/4GIG servers to 4CPU/8GIG servers to 8CPU/8GIG servers. We just put the dual quad-core Intel bad boys in last night. It pretty much went according to plan and the new cluster is humming along.
Also in that time frame, MySQL binary logging went from a few gigs a day to over 60 gigs a day (for those who don’t know, a binary log is a record of any change to the data in the database.) That’s a hell of a lot of inserts/updates/deletes. And that’s aggregated data, too!
I’m displeased with the current state of MySQL performance management tools available. Extracting the number of selects vs inserts vs updates vs deletes, something I assumed would be very basic and straight forward, doesn’t exist (that I’ve seen.) I figure I’ll have to break out some Perl/PHP and come up with some kind of trending/management tool. Oh joy.
I’ve also started a “smart” binary log purging script. When you use MySQL replication, you want to purge binary logs up to the log being used by the “slowest” replication slave. If you delete a binary log that’s being read by a slave (or is one of the next in line to be read) then replication will break and you have to either restore the binary log to manually update the slave or rebuild replication using a backup of the master.
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05.07.07
Posted in Technology, Linux, Life, Family, Hobbies at 4:07 pm by Stoner
Well, maybe not Super Colossal but busy, none the less. On Saturday, I drove to the NOVALUG meeting to sit on a panel for a database discussion. I represented MySQL, Peter took Oracle and Angelo was PostgreSQL. We each did a 10 minute run-down of the major features of the database, then into a Q&A session. Or at least, that’s what we planned to do. Had to take a lot of time to define basics of databases, including terminology like “tables”, “columns” and “database.” I guess I assumed too much of the audience.
We had some good discussions around questions like “How do you size a database server for 500 gigs of data? For 1 terabyte of data? How do you detect and repair corruption? Can I have the database fire off an event when a piece of data changes” etc. Afterwards, a buddy of mine and I went to Old Dominion Brewery for lunch. I had my usual, Angus burger (medium rare) with fries and an Oak Barrel Stout (draft, not bottle.) If you can find Oak Barrel Stout, give it a shot - but be warned, they change the recipe slightly for the bottled version. OBS draft is a whole other world of goodness.
After I got home, I played World of Warcraft for a few hours then went to bed.
On Sunday, after dealing with a client melt-down, I grabbed my .45 and 410 shotgun and headed to Blue Ridge Arsenal to squeeze off a few hundred rounds with my friend. He had his .38 revolver and rented a 9mm pistol and we spent a good hour blowing holes in paper targets. I did manage to shoot myself in the finger….with a staple gun. I reached around the cardboard to put pressure on it so I could staple the target to it and CLICK. Damn staple went into the tip of my trigger finger. Afterwards, we went to Starbucks for some coffee and lengthly discussions on Brazilian strip clubs, Bruce Campbell’s appearances in the Spiderman trilogy, rednecks and other topics of interest.
When I got home, I rinsed the dirt off my car (you have to driver a half mile on the dirt road to get to my house.) Then I picked up a lot of branches and crap in my front lawn. I never raked the leaves from the fall and the wind storms of this spring blew a lot of dead branches down. Yard work is satisfying work…especially when it’s your own lawn. I have a huge pile of leaves to mulch up…and nothing that needs mulching so I’ll have to dump it in the woods out back. Oh well.
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04.27.07
Posted in Technology, Hobbies at 3:38 pm by Stoner
I read a brief article in SysAdmin Magazine about a network monitor called PBNJ. No, it doesn’t stand for Peanut Butter -N- Jelly…but rather Ports, Banners -N- Junk. It uses nmap to scan systems to see what ports are open, records that in a database, then allows you to run subsequent scans to see what changed.
This really isn’t anything new and lots of projects do this already. I used an nmap extension to Big Brother back when I worked at Blackboard. I had to abandon it due to performance reasons but I’m very familiar with the practice and implementation. I thought I’d contribute some of what I know to the fledgling project.
I already contacted the maintainer, Josh Abraham. I gave him some advice on the docs detailing the database integration. I’m going to check out the code from the subversion repository and give a good going-over. I know I can contribute more than a few comments, given all the stuff I’ve done with Big Brother, working in the ASP/hosting space and being a sys admin for 9 years.
This’ll be fun. Since the project is fairly new, there’s room for more folks to help.
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04.11.07
Posted in Technology, Life, Hobbies at 1:08 am by Stoner
I’m just totally exhausted and I’m not sure why. Driving home Saturday and driving back Sunday night didn’t help (4 hours one way.) On Monday, I totally slacked and read a good chunk of “Dune.” Tuesday is my Living Hell day. Conference calls from 11 am to 6 pm with a 1 hour break. On top of that, I had a client maintenance window beginning at 9 pm, lasting 1 hour and another at midnight, lasting another hour. I hate Tuesdays.
But, life is good in other ways. On Monday, I drove to Gander Mountain and picked up another side arm. This time, a replica 1851 Navy revolver (black powder) along with all the necessary gear like lead shot, wadding, Pyrodex charges, percussion caps, etc. While black powder take a lot more to load and clean, there’s just that nostalgia about them, kind of like shaving with a straight razor. Now I gotta find a shooting range that permits black powder guns (most indoor ranges prohibit them due to the excessive smoke.)
I need to launch a site where I can complain endlessly about where Web 2.0 is going, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. Seriously, I get more and more annoyed with all the new crap coming out for developing Web 2.0 sites…and that’s all it is, crap. There’s nothing new about all this. What’s worse, management eats it up. Spends gobs of money on shit that doesn’t prove to be any more efficient than technology from 15 years ago. I’ll bitch more about this later…for now, I’m tired and heading to bed.
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04.02.07
Posted in Technology, Linux, Hobbies at 11:01 pm by Stoner
Well, I made some headway on my three projects:
DS-330 Voice Recorder: apparently, people smarter than me have tried to get this working under Linux but had no luck. The encoded files use a proprietry format (DSS) and the SDK is a Windows-only library. So nerts to Olympus. Looks like I’ll have to sell it. Shame really, it’s a nice recorder and worked very well. If yo’re interested in buying it, let me know.
Amarok (kdelibs): still haven’t built this damn library. I changed to serial compiles (instead of the default parallel compiles) but that didn’t fly. I filed an addendum to bug 171397. Hopefully they can figure it out (I have no desire to sift through the tons of code for kdelibs and Qt 3. Ick.)
Gumstix RTC: I tried soldering a 4-wire cable (hacked off an old IDE cable) to the RTC breakout. No luck. The tip on my solder iron is too damn big! I couldn’t get good heat transfer. I’ll have to grind the tip down to a finer point and try again.
I did write a script to save the date and time when I shudown my gumstix (posted it to the mailing list.) That way, when I boot it up, the date doesn’t revert back to January 1, 1970. This screws with programs that use a file’s timestamps (last access, last modification and last change.) My script prevents time from going backwards so those types of programs are happy. A battery-backed RTC and ntpd would be best…and I’m getting there.
Transferred all my music from the Dell/XP to the Gateway/Gentoo. Bonus. Now I can work with my tunes…gotta have my tunes. Music doth soothe the savage beast.
Tomorrow, we’re grilling steaks! A friend sent us some porterhouse steaks from Omaha Steaks! Damn, they’re good! I bought some hickory chips to throw on the coals. Tomorrow’s gonna be some good eatin’!
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04.01.07
Posted in Life, Family, Hobbies at 8:21 pm by Stoner
Busy weekend, it was. On Saturday, after getting called at 05:30 by our C3 org (they monitor the “big board” in the NOC and call in help when needed) I decided to stay up, brew a pot of coffee and read a bit of Dune. After Denise got showered and dressed, we went to Pancake Day in Winchester and ate breakfast with the whole damn town. Seriously, the line to get in stretched a quarter mile. It moved along at a steady pace and soon we were sitting down to short stacks and sausage links. It was pretty good, all things considered.
After filling up, we drove to the Home Depot and bought some knobs for the kitchen cabinets - 22 of ‘em. We also picked up a few odds and ends and headed over Circuit City. We picked up a Netgear 2.4 GHz Wireless-G PCI card and a new Sony Handicam to replace our ailing digital camera (it will no longer focus without zooming first - very annoying.) Spent a cool grand for all that (oof!)
After mounting all the knobs to the drawers, I headed to the basement and tore it up completely. Took out the Dell running Windows XP Home, moved the desk into a different corner and put my Gateway running Gentoo on it. Rerouted all the power and network wires and made a big mess in the process. Fun. I installed the Netgear wireless card in the Dell and put that upstairs in the “yellow” room. Now Denise doesn’t have to pester me about wanting to use the computer to play Neverwinter Nights 2.
On Sunday, the C3 woke me up at 05:45 to take care of a problem. Again, I stayed up and brewed a pot of coffee. I set in the recliner and read some more of Dune. Well, that recliner is so comfy, I just nodded off until around 10:30. Nice. So I got up and showered and headed out the door.
I met my buddy Looee at the gun show at Dulles Expo center. Saw a lot of cool stuff, rifles, pistols, revolvers, knives, swords, sub-machine guns, .50 caliber sniper rifles - you name it, it was there. Almost went in on a pair of 10 year old black powder revolvers (with consecutive serial numbers) with Looee. $200 a piece wasn’t too bad of a price. Instead, I picked up a model 1911-A1 .45 by Springfield Armory. My first pistol. Sweet!
I wanted a model 1911 because when you hear “.45 caliber pistol” - the image that comes to mind is the model 1911, guaranteed. It just looks cool. The weight is nice. It fires a big bullet while making a big bang. The slide is a bit stiff but a few hundred rounds and some good cleaning+oil will take care of that. I soo want to go to the range and start putting holes in some targets but I really need to clean it, remove the excess oil and “get to know your firearm” before slapping a loaded clip in to the magazine.
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03.28.07
Posted in Technology, Linux, Hobbies at 9:09 pm by Stoner
Got three “projects” going on right now. Need to get my RTC module from Sparkfun soldered to my Gumstix, need to get my Linux system talking to my Olympus DS-330 voice recorder and get kdelibs built so I can try out Amarok.
I’ve had the RTC module for a while now…just never got around to using it. Well, I cut up a standard IDE cable into a 4-wire strip…gonna use that as my power/data bus. The pads on the boards are clearly marked so it’s just a matter of cranking up the ol’ soldering iron and making it happen. It talks to the kernel using I2C so I need to build the kernel modules and install them. After that, my gumstix should be able to maintain time after power is off. [FYI: the gumstix modules don’t have a RTC so when they loose power, they loose the date/time.]
I was rummaging through a box and found my Olympus DS-330 voice recorder. This was an excellent recorder and would be nice to use it again…this time with my Linux box. For kicks, I plugged the USB cable in to my computer but the device wasn’t automatically detected. This means I need to do some research on how to connect it/configure it appropriately. What I’m not sure about is how it should function with the computer. Should it show up as a mass storage device or a USB microphone or both? With Windows, it acts as a USB mic and the recordings are access through the special software they give you. My guess…it won’t work but I’ve been wrong before.
Finally…Wil Wheaton has been harping on Amarok. Well, since I’m moving my Winders computer to the upstairs office…that’ll mean greater dependence on my Linux box in my office. And I can’t go without tunes! I want to give Amarok a spin but, damnit, wouldn’t you know it - kdelibs won’t build (I’m a Gnome-man, myself.) I already checked the Gentoo bugzilla and someone reported it. I need to track that bug because I can’t build Amarok without it. How annoying.
I’ll post updates as my projects progress.
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03.26.07
Posted in Technology, Linux, Life, Hobbies at 8:01 pm by Stoner
On Sunday, I made a giant pot of chili on Sunday, complete with big chunks of onions, red and yellow bell peppers, deer meat and hot deer sausage, mushrooms and 3 types of beans. I spent over an hour in the kitchen chopping, browning, opening cans, straining, etc. I put in 2 whole fresh tomatoes Denise and I picked up at a local road-side vendor, a can of stewed tomatoes, a big can peeled tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato sauce and a fair dash of spices. It came out really good so now I have lunch & snack food for the next few days.
Where did I get all my culinary skills? From standing in front of the stove and tossing things into a pot - literally. I don’t have recipes or secret formulas (well, I do but nothing to write about.) I would encourage you to do the same. Don’t plan anything other than a few key ingredients. Let everything come spontaneously.
Today, I finally finished updating my Gentoo system. It hadn’t been updated since I packed it away for the big move in November. That’s 4 months of updates that needed processing. If you’re a Gentoo user, you know that you can’t just “emerge –update world” after 4 months. You need to take it in stages. So, I processed all update up to the kernel itself, recompiled a new kernel, then processed more updates, pausing at key packages. I usually pause at things like udev, glibc, gcc…something very fundamental to the system. I also pause with large packages that take forever to update, like Firefox, X, Gnome, etc. They’re just take an obnoxiously long time to build.
My usual pattern is to update to a certain point, then test the system to make sure things aren’t broken. This time, due to the 4 months between updates, that wasn’t possible because some packages aren’t compatible with others unless they are all updated. Case in point, Gnome. Many Gnome packages are supposed to be updated at the same time. During my update-pause procedure, some Gnome packages were updated while others remained at the lower revision - which means testing is pointless since the different versions will no doubt break things.
In the end, everything updated just fine. When I tested things, everything was snappier and speedier - Gnome menus snap when opened, Firefox and Evolution windows open in mere seconds when launched. I’m very happy. Now I can move this Winders box upstairs and put my Gentoo system on my desk and use it as my primary machine in my office. Life is good.
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