04.04.07
Posted in Technology, Life at 8:58 pm by Stoner
I’m ready to crash. I’ve been awake since 8 am, Tuesday, April 3rd. Thirty-eight hours! Damn…I haven’t felt this good since college when all-nighters were several times a week. We had a big SAN maintenance Tuesday evening. This was an all-hands maintenance since it touched almost all clients. I drove to the data center because last time, Comcast dropped my connection in the middle of the maintenance window. It’s not fun talking someone through troubleshooting a failing Redhat cluster over a cell phone.
After maintenance was over, I drove to the office and worked for that morning. I didn’t want to face driving over an hour to get home, especially in morning rush hour traffic. After lunch, I drove home but wasn’t tired and I kept getting calls regarding problems that cropped up due to the SAN maintenance. After a while, the calls died off so I went for a drive.
I stopped at the local K-Mart and Mountain Dan’s hunting Suplies. I picked up some shooting glasses, targets, gun oil and 2 boxes of .45 ACP. Afterwards, I went looking for a rifle range that’s supposed to be close to the 4-H Ed Center near my house. Couldn’t find it but it was a nice drive through the valley. I’m itching to go shooting but it probably won’t happen this weekend since we’re going to Pennsylvania for Easter. Maybe the weekend after that.
That’s all for now. I have a meeting with my pillow in 5 minutes.
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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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03.30.07
Posted in Funny Stuff, Life at 12:56 pm by Stoner
“To err is human” or to put it another way, no one is perfect. I’m certainly far from perfect, I freely admit that. I screw up all the time, but at least I’m not this dumb.
After watching that video, I pondered what my reaction would be if I were there to watch it as it happened. I think…no, I definitely would fall over laughing for a good 5 minutes or more. I would be rendered useless, unable to lend assistance or seek help for my fallen homo sapien as my laughter would echo the hallways after witnessing such pure, utter stupidity.
What’s the most funny “people being stupid” act you’ve seen?
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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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