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2003.05.14 at 06:52 AM CDT
(Wednesday, May 14th, 2003)
I'm now at DFW with about 38 minutes until my flight to Orlando departs. I
was reminded as I left Austin, that one: I've not flown in a while, and two:
I've only flown while it was dark outside once or twice and usually at the
end of a trip. In other words, I enjoyed seeing sunrise as my flight took
off and I enjoyed getting to test my mental map of Austin as we turned north.
And apparently I've been a bad geek; I've not checked out the wireless setup
(if any) at either the Austin airport or at DFW.
And to summarize a bit, the post-911 security measures didn't amuse me or make
me feel that much safer. And I'm a bit too tired to analyze it further at the
moment. :)
2003.05.14 at 05:12 AM CDT
(Wednesday, May 14th, 2003)
I'm sitting in the Barbara Jordan Terminal at the Austin, Texas airport as I
write this. I've been through security and have checked one bag. I have my
laptop bag and a film camera bag as carry-ons. I'm travelling to Nassau,
Bahamas to re-install a server for a client of a former employer of mine.
(Yeah, I know, hard life for the sysadmin, when he has to travel to the tropics
to work. Feel free to hate me now. *grin*)
Security was "interesting." The wand-style metal detectors are sensitive
enough to complain about rivets on jeans and metal buttons (also on jeans).
Hell, the metal in my watch even registered on the wand. I'd already removed
all other metal things before I walked though the walk-through scanner and it
still beeped and I got the detailed scan. I'm not sure if that was due to
just the metal or me being picked. I didn't stay around the security
checkpoint long enough to watch other people going through. And I don't even
want to really think about what effect long hair and freedom rings might have
had on any profiling.
More in a bit... They're boarding.
2003.05.07 @ 03:10 PM CDT
(Wednesday, May 07th, 2003)
So my new aDSL line is now working. The loop install date I was originally
given is for tomorrow, so a bit early is a nice thing. :) I had sync issues
between my aDSL bridge (modem) and the DSLAM at the other end to start with,
but all appears stable as I write this. I've even stressed the line for about
45 minutes with data flowing both directions as fast as the line could push it.
I'm getting ~158 kbytes/second downstream and ~70 kbytes/second with traffic
going only one direction. With both active, I get about ~145 kbyte/second
down and ~50 kbytes/second upstream.
Also, a friend stumbled across this software license when
downloading some software he uses at work. It's cute. :)
Current music: Digitally Imported
2003.05.05 @ 08:05 AM CDT
(Monday, May 05th, 2003)
I've just been doing more reading at AlterNet. Here's a list of some stories I
found interesting.
And with that back to borrowing Mojo's bandwidth I go. :)
2003.05.02 @ 06:55 AM CDT
(Friday, May 02nd, 2003)
And so it begins... Yesterday at about 10:00 AM, my aDSL line from
jump.net/hosting.com finally went away. It was supposed to do so on April
30th, so close enough, I suppose. With that setup my the copper was owned by
Southwestern Bell (aka SBC), the aDSL signal was provided by Southwestern Bell
and the IP service by jump.net/hosting.com. My new line (when installed in
a week or so) will be voice by Southwestern Bell, aDSL signal by Covad, and
IP by speakeasy.net. I called Speakeasy to begin the install on April 28th,
so in all likelihood, Covad has been waiting a bit for jump.net and
Southwestern Bell to clear their services from the line. During the
transition I'm using dialup and/or free wireless for my online activities.
Such fun. :)
While reading a friend's journal recently, I came across an AlterNet article that I
found pretty disturbing/interesting/angering. I truly hope that the country
evidenced in that article isn't the kind of country that most United States
citizens want to live in.
On a slightly related note, we have an article
from the Boston Globe discussing privacy as we get to know more about how the
human brain works. It also mentions some of the issues raised by the
increasing knowledge we have about the human genome (sp?). Go forth and
think about it. :)
2003.04.25 @ 05:00 AM CDT
(Friday, April 25th, 2003)
Let's see... What do I have to write about...
On Monday or Tuesday last week, I was driving to get some food after picking
up an ancient Mac IIsi off of which I was to recover some data when a friend
called to invite me to see Judy
Shepard speak at the LBJ Library at UT. It was pretty last minute,
because the other friend of theirs who was going to go couldn't make it and
they already had three tickets. I hadn't even heard that she was going to
be in town. :)
Mrs. Shepard is a pretty fine speaker. She is funny and quite the mother.
<grin> She went over the events of Matthew's death and the following
trials. She also went over her reasons for activism and some of the thoughts
she has related to that. One thing that she said several times that I think
is pretty spot on is (with some paraphrasing by me), "Things aren't really
going to change (or change for good) until people come out and stay out all
day, every day."
After the talk at UT, I met up with the friend who couldn't make it at Mojo's. We got to talking about it
and I mentioned that I was still a bit sniffly from earlier. I'd mentioned
on the phone to him while we were driving that Matthew's death was hard for
me when it happened and that is still is. I don't think he really got the
extent until I mentioned that while we were at Mojo's. Hell, I'm having to
keep myself from thinking about it too much while I write this. It "helped"
that I was right about his age, it was about two weeks before my birthday,
and that there are a few physical similarities between me and him (both
blond hair and blue eyes).
In other news I have my taxes done. All that is left is to verify the math,
photocopy them for my records, and mail them off. :)
Yesterday afternoon, the TxIS crew went by
the office of CoreNAP to receive a tour.
We're looking at getting T1 from them when the contract on our current line
is over. They're a pretty cool group over there. They have a good portion
of the former Jump.net staff (or those that they can hire at present) and are
in some of the same office space they had before. So if you need data lines
or co-location you might check them out.
2003.04.08 @ 07:00 AM CDT
(Tuesday, April 08th, 2003)
Over the past several days, I've been "having fun" with the IDE disks in my file
server (tavi) at home. One morning/afternoon I woke up to some unresponsive terminals
on my workstation in the living room. I quickly remembered that those were saving
data to the file server via NFS (hard, not soft or intr mounts for those NFS geeks
among you). I thought, whee, something is up with tavi, the file server. So I walk
back to the bedroom to see that it is locked up. Upon restart it began RAID-1
rebuilds.
I have four software mirrors spread across two pairs of disks. The two older disks,
a set of IBM 75GB drives, have /dev/md3 (/data). The newer ones, a set of Maxtor
80GB drives, have /dev/md0 (/), /dev/md1 (/home), and /dev/md2 (/data2). All but the
single mirror on the IBMs rebuilt cleanly. So I figure I've got at least one disk to
replace. I then took tavi down to single user mode and ran badblocks on each of the
disks. One of each of the pairs passed. So now I'm thinking two ~80GB disks to
replace (about $200).
After running IBM/Hitachi's DFT software on each of the
IBMs I was able to have it remap the four bad blocks on the one disk that the Linux
software mirroring code had marked bad. Maxtor's PowerMax
software wasn't as useful. It either didn't like the two Maxtor disks I have or
didn't like any of the three IDE controllers I had the disks connected to when
trying to run it (the on-board Intel PIIX3, the Promise UDMA66 card, and the
Promise UDMA133 card).
I was able to use my copy of the Linuxcare
LBT CD-ROM to boot the machine and run badblocks with the Maxtor drives
connected to the UDMA66 card and without UDMA enabled. It took several hours per
drive, but turned up zero bad blocks. So I'm guessing that's there is a bad
interaction between this particular model of Maxtor drive and/or the Promise
UDMA133 card and/or the Linux driver for the Promise card when large numbers of
IDE commands are going by. It is amusing because RAID-1 rebuilds and fscks work,
while badblocks checks don't. Anyway, I'm happy to have a working fileserver
again. :) (As I write this, it has happy RAID arrays and I'm fscking the
filesystems just 'cause I'm being paranoid.)
In other news, I made it to a second anti-war protest this past Saturday. I was
outside and in the sun long enough to even get slightly sunburned. :) I ran into
a long time friend of the family that I hadn't seen in a while. It was good to
see him and to find out that he is working for the AP.
In job hunting news, I have two to four things that will hopefully turn into at
least interviews in the near future. Hopefully that will help me get back to
having regular income.
| Current music: |
Erasure - Rock Me Gently |
| Depeche Mode - Sweetest Perfection |
2003.03.21 @ 05:15 AM CST
(Friday, March 21st, 2003)
After attending the protest
at the Capitol (of Texas) and on the Congress street bridge today I find
some of the comments I've heard from several places worth talking about.
To start, is the idea that people who are protesting should, instead of
disrupting "the flow of government" (by protesting), write to their
congresspersons with their opinions of the current war. First, I suspect
that such letter writing is being done, though maybe not to the extent that
it should be. Second, part of that "theory" that has been expressed to me
is that protests are usually done to sway public opinion and not to send a
message to elected officials. I counter that elected officials are part of
the public just as you and I are. And, I further suggest that swaying
public opinion helps to further influence elected officials who are
mysteriously somehow not a part of the public that is in theory being swayed.
To continue, I don't find the protests to be a mean thing to do with regard
to our armed forces that are currently serving or will soon be serving in
this war. I don't recall any protester saying that they don't support our
troops. I do recall people saying that they don't support our government's
actions and/or handling of the current situation, politically. I personally
support our troops and hope that they remain as safe and healthy as possible.
I'd like that to be done by them not being deployed.
Finally, I'd like to clarify, in case you've misunderstood so far. I don't
currently know that I am in favor of or not in favor of removing Mr. Hussein
from power in Iraq. I know that the state of human rights in Iraq is pretty
dismal. There are other places in the world where things are just as bad.
Have we done more in those places? In some cases, yes, and in some, no.
Have we been more successful in some? Maybe, and maybe not. It this all
international politics as usual? Maybe. Does international politics have to
continue as "usual?" I hope not.
2003.03.20 @ 07:05 AM CST
(Thursday, March 20th, 2003)
Whee... We're at "war" now. Though I wonder (and no, I've not checked like
I should) if "our President" got a declaration of war from Congress? I wonder
what it will require for the U.S.A. to learn how foreign policy should work
(and yes, that statement assumes that you know something of my opinion on the
matter)?
In other news I finally tried one of the nightly builds of Phoenix. It has some
nice features, especially if you add some of the available extras (XUL XPI
objects make such installation easy). After adding some of the extras I had
most of the tabbed browsing niceties that I like from Galeon with the slowness of XUL
that has kept me from using the main Mozilla browser all this time. XUL is,
in my opinion, a nice idea. However, it is way to slow on even slightly
old machines. And yes, I consider my dual 333 MHz Pentium II machine to be
only slightly old. There are many machines of its age still out there in use
and XUL is too slow on them. So back to the never closed Galeon session I go.
2003.03.18 @ 06:10 AM CST
(Tuesday, March 18th, 2003)
Some partially untangled random/jumbled thoughts...
Gaining pleasure from other people's emotional reactions to oneself: ok.
Toying with other people's emotional reactions to oneself (to gain pleasure
or otherwise): not ok.
The ability to turn emotions in general or certain emotions on or off as if
they were a light switch: a blessing and at the same time a curse.
The fact that emotions cannot be done as just suggested: also a blessing
and at the same time a curse. ;)
Expecting other people to be able to turn off emotions as if they're light
switches: not ok.
Being angry at someone (whether justified or not, since emotions aren't
light switches): ok.
Expecting another party to help oneself deal with such said anger, ok if
there is some emotional circumstance where another party is somehow involved
in said anger;
not ok if anger is there more due to emotional circumstances not affected by
another party.
Another party offering to help one deal with anger in either case because
they care: cool, and nice that they care.
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