Dave's Good Stuff

I’ve got the bug again.
I can’t help it. I remember having so much fun building my own computers 7-10 years ago. I’d find the fastest video card I could (it was all about the monster gaming rig back then), then the best motherboard to support it, a top-of-the-line CPU (I preferred AMD back then) to run it, and fast memory to carry it all. Once that was nailed down, I’d go for speedy hard drives, a rockin’ sound card, optical drives, fancy internal cabling, and finally an easy to work with aluminum case with a power supply beefy enough to run it all to hold all the guts.

Back then, it was all about pushing the most polygons in the least amount of time for maximum framerates.

I operated that way for years, until I got tired of lugging around the heavy rig to LAN parties. So I opted for my first pre-fab computer in the form of a desktop-replacement laptop. I’ve used it steady and with very few problems for the last 5 years or so. Ironically, once I finally decided to go with an easily transportable laptop for LAN parties, the LAN parties fizzled out. No matter, I still love having a laptop around for general portability.

To this day, I’ve not owned a desktop that I haven’t either put together entirely on my own from the motherboard up, or at least heavily modified one way or another. Nor will I. I won’t – no nay never – buy a pre-fab monstrosity from Office Buy, or Best Depot, or some Corner Geek Shop.

A laptop? Sure. A desktop or server? No. Nay. Never.

Now, having updated my server to the latest version of FreeBSD, I’ve got the bug again. All that playing around with the guts of FreeBSD, relearning this and that, up and woke the bug up again. Which is good and convenient, because I’ve had some interesting fixed disk issues with the new kernel.

Hardware issues
Part of the upgrade involved utilizing the onboard Promise RAID on the Gigabyte GA-7DXR. I’m not convinced that’s the root of my problems, but I’m not convinced it ain’t. For starters, and most likely completely unrelated, I’m getting the following errors in dmesg:

GEOM: ad0: partition 1 does not start on a track boundary.
GEOM: ad0: partition 1 does not end on a track boundary.
GEOM: ad0s1: geometry does not match label (16h,63s != 16h,255s).
GEOM: ad5s1: geometry does not match label (255h,63s != 16h,63s).
GEOM: ad7s1: geometry does not match label (255h,63s != 16h,63s).

I suspect FreeBSD’s installer for those messages, actually. But, since the upgrade, I’ve had two spontaneous and unannounced reboots. The first time, there were no indications of anything amiss in the logs. The second time, I found this:

ar0: WARNING - mirror protection lost. RAID1 array in DEGRADED mode
kernel: unknown: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=765023
kernel: unknown: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=765023

Followed immediately by a 7 hour gap in logging clearly indicative of another hard reset. Pretty sure that’s RAID related.

That 7 hours ended when I noticed the server stuck in POST at an angry FastBuild screen demanding attention, and had to rebuild the array in order to get past POST. It worked, and all is up and running again, but with diminished confidence.

The research I’ve had time for has yielded sparse results, indicating either that I have a serious problem that needs immediate attention and I’d better have solid backups or I’m screwed to Taiwan and back, OR… it’s nothing serious and has been showing up for the last few FreeBSD releases.

I’ll dig into fdisk, atacontrol, smartctl and sysctl in more depth this weekend to see what that turns up, and then I’ll turn my attention to hardware research.

Server Plans
When some funds clear up, I’m going to build a new server to operate as a media center/file server for the family. It’ll be a beefy box with built in data redundancy, lots of drive space, backup power, and not much in the way of gaming potential.

I may entertain MythTV or something like it to replace the rental DVR (and then some).

So, the bug is back, but it’s purpose is vastly different now. Framerate has taken a distant backseat to reliability now… well, at least until Diablo III comes out…

Our wedding photos are available online! Our photographer, Jessica of JDC Photography, has put them up for us at Collages.net. Just log in with your e’mail address (or an e’mail address) and your first name (or a first name) to view them.

The photos are available in 6 galleries, listed off to the left once you log in, and there are plenty of photos to choose from, so take your time, and enjoy!

Don’t take too much time if you want any, because the galleries all expire on October 10th, 2010. After that, they’ll be viewable in lower resolution on my own gallery. If you want print quality versions after October 10th, you’ll have to actually contact myself or Jami directly, and we know how much of a chore that is. It’s positively chorish, even. We get that. It’s ok. We understand.

So, have at!

I ran – rode rather, the same gauntlet last night that I road last week. This time, however, I did not bonk. I’m still noticing some distinct lack of power, both “brute” and “staying”, but as a friendly commenter on the last post pointed out (I’m looking at you, Apertome), that’ll change as I keep pushing and pulling the cranks.

What did not happen was a flat. I credit the fact that I was riding solo without my buddy. He is a chaos magnet. That’s his superpower. His superpower is to attract chaos. An unassuming, by all accounts normal, rather shy everyday guy with a penchant for computers, he nonetheless gathers chaos around him like a hot knife through a flame… or something like that. How the servers he’s charged with maintaining haven’t erupted in volcanoes of sparks and lava and Udûn spawn is beyond me. The point is he’s a danger to himself and all those around him, and should be given a wide berth whenever possible.

Or perhaps the point is that I didn’t have a flat, which happens very rarely anyway, so it’s really not that notable.

Still, it’s rather ironic (I think I’m using it correctly here… it’s tough to tell sometimes) that when I ride my heavy bike with thick wide 37c tires I get a flat, and when I ride my crit bike with thinning skinny 23c tires, that have literally been to the mountain top and back, I get through without incident. Oh well… I’m not complaining. Truth be told, I was happy to not have a flat.

And what a difference those skinny tires made. If you compare the previous ride on those thick tires to last night’s ride you’ll note that I shaved 22 minutes off my time on the EXACT SAME ROUTE! Now, that’s something! Of course, I increased my average heart rate by 11bpm (though I was significantly less tired afterwards), but that’s not the point. The point is 22 minutes! I can’t explain the difference in elevation gain, except to say that maybe elevation detection isn’t the Edge 705′s strong suit. But 22 minutes! I wonder how I’d do if I dropped down to 12c tires?

I had a friend waaay back in the day (I don’t consider him an un-friend now, mind you) that played pool with a snooker cue. He used a much thinner 9mm shaft compared to our 12mm shafts. It’s amazing how much difference just a few millimeters make (“That’s what she said!” – thank you, Michael Scott). He was an amazing player as well… so much more amazing than we were (and we were damned amazing). I think that shaft had a lot to do with it. Certainly more than the countless practice and seasoning hours he spent with it.* Too bad he kept breaking with the cue until it shattered. Oh well…

So now I’m left wondering… if he was so much better with a skinny shaft (shut up, Michael-in-my-head), then how much better would I be with 12c tires? I’m assuming, of course, that the tire wouldn’t just flat out flat out immediately due to lack of support.

But you know, in the end, the speed isn’t the point. It’s the exercise and all the benefits of that, and the joy of being out on the road on the bike amidst all the drivers who hate me (and the precious few who don’t).

I think I’ll stick with my 37c’s and 23c’s, thank you.

I just need to find a way to fend off the chaos swarming around my friend…

Oh,and last night was the maiden voyage of my new Lazer Helium helmet. It gave me a headache. I loosened the Rollsys® Retention System though, and I was fine.

* Statement is false

Jami saw my PuTTY screen a couple of weeks ago while I was preparing a major home server upgrade. Upon noticing the frantic scrolling green text of a compile in progress (I have my term colors set to mimic the old Apple //e I grew up with), she belted out “What’s that?! What are you doing?! Is that some sort of crazy ‘Logo Rhythm’ thing?!”

She’s prone to sudden and unexpected outbursts. It’s her way.

One such outburst involved the History Channel. While on the couch together I was watching the History Channel (and it wasn’t about Hitler!) while she and a friend of ours who was sitting on the other couch, were talking about flowers, or butterflies, or ribbons, or some such thing. Upon noticing what I was watching, Jami immediately belted out “Boring!! What is that?!”

I couldn’t help but start laughing. As did our friend. As did, or course, Jami. The passion with which she evoked the single word “Boring!” was admirable. Thus, it immediately joined ranks with the many inside jokes we’ve developed over the last two(ish) years. I did not, however, change the channel.

This time, having asked with equal passion (and a touch of fear) about those crazy “Logo Rhythm” things, I knew immediately what she was talking about. She was talking about “Logo“, that old teaching tool for up and coming programmers where you push the little turtle this way and that. I’m not sure what that says about me that I knew immediately what she was talking about, other than perhaps that I’m critically geek. It’s my way.

New inside joke: Check.

Her childlike enthusiasm and high intensity are just two of the many things I adore about my wife. Put the two together and you have a definite distinct incomparable third.

Lest you think I make fun too much, ask her sometime about “squeeze more bees.” I’m certainly not above my own butchered colloquialisms… Then there’s my penchant for self injury… In short, I’m a bit of a mess.

Now, if you’re reading this, then the server upgrade is complete and all is back in order. I’m finally current, having not upgraded my poor server in over six years.

The two major upgrades were FreeBSD 5.x to 8.x including all the userland components, and Apache 1.3.x to Apache 2.x (yes, I finally made the move). Additionally, I reconfigured the hardware to take advantage of the Gigabyte GA-7DXR onboard RAID1 capability. Yeah, it’s an old motherboard, and I’m just mirroring, but it still works and I don’t need blazing performance. I just need some assurance against drive failure.

• is an ex-con recently released
• is looking for casual sex
• is looking for casual sex with a male
• is looking for casual sex with a male at 5:30pm this evening
• does not feel it is necessary to shower prior to this encounter
• is in construction
• feels he is able to “open up” with his conversation partner because they have “formed a bond”
• has never met his conversation partner face-to-face
• enjoys the effects of alcohol on casual sex with a male
• enjoys the effects of alcohol on casual sex with a male when he is in the “giving position”
• enjoys the effects of alcohol on casual sex with a male when he is in the “receiving position”
• favors tequila
• does not go “ass-to-mouth”
• does not mix marijuana and alcohol
• prefers bowls to pipes or cigarettes
• is in need of a haircut
• is unwilling to pay for said haircut
• believes “friends with benefits” is the most beneficial of all possible relationship scenarios
• has endured scrotal beatings while incarcerated
• did not particularly enjoy said scrotal beatings
• finds watching others involved in group encounters “hysterical”
• is completely unaware that I can hear every foul word he utters
• probably wouldn’t care if he knew

I went on a ride last night with a friend of mine. We rode about 27 miles around the bulk of a regular route of mine, minus the crazy hills on Johnson Drive just west of Renner. It’s a good thing too. I bonked hard at around mile 18.

Contributing factors to the bonk include, and may be exclusive to, improper eating throughout the day (light breakfast, light late lunch at 3:30), near complete lack of exercise since a 20 mile ride around the Wheeler Airport on May 27th, and opting for my heavier bike with its 700X37C tires. The lack of exercise, combined with poor eating habits since before the Wedding is, I believe, the primary contributing factor. I blame myself entirely. Also, we fell prey to the “excited to be riding in the first fantastic weather we’ve had in weeks” syndrome. Instead of pacing ourselves, we rode hard and fast for the first 10 miles or so. That was just dumb.

So, on to the ride…

The first 7 miles was fairly eventful. At 6.25 miles in just before the 435 junction on 95th St., I got a flat. A long, jagged and evil looking piece of plastic reached out and stabbed my rear tire. Bah. I’ve had one other flat while out on my “training” rides, and that was with the same buddy. Maybe I need to reevaluate my riding partners. No matter, I was prepared both times and the flat was fixed in little time. However, I knew something was still dreadfully wrong the instant I got rolling again. There was a distinct “thump thump thump” coming from that rear tire.

Stopping again just beyond the 435 junction, I looked at the tire, spun it, and there was an obvious flat area. Apparently, we hadn’t hadn’t set the tire properly, and an 8” section opposite the valve was sunk too deep into the rim. Very. Very. Strange. I’d never seen that before in 30 years of riding. So we deflated it again (thank the Gods for CO₂ cartridges) worked the tire to it’s proper seat, and were off again. If it weren’t the tires that came stock with the bike (Continental CountryRide 700x37C), I’d say they were too big for the rims (Rigida ZAC19SL). I’m inclined to say that anyway. For now, though, all is well, and I’ve made a mental note to verify the seating the next time I get a flat on this bike. Or any bike, for that matter.

The rest of the ride, bonk notwithstanding, was fun and relatively uneventful. At 15 and a half miles, we made the decision to skip out on the Northern Sisters, and bypass Johnson Drive entirely. It would cut a few miles, but something told us it wasn’t a great idea. That was the right call. As you can see from the easy to read charts on Garmin Connect, at around mile 18, everything really slowed down. I was all over the place prior to that in terms of speed (KS is not, contrary to popular opinion, flat and the Dew Drop is a heavier bike not built for speed), but at that point it became a slow steady climb to the house, and I just lost all strength and go-power in my legs. “I got nothing,” as I told Jon at around mile 23. But, having no choice, I dug deep (and used some energy boosting disolvey tablets in my water bottle), and made it home. It was a tough 9 miles.

I am clearly and woefully out of shape.

All’s well that ends well, though. My gorgeous wife had a hot meal waiting for me when I got home, too… how’s that for awesome?

For the last two nights, Elliott the Cat has been quiet the whole night through.

Over the course of the last few weeks, he woke us in the middle of the night with incessant, insistent crying. He was fairly consistent from night to night, making minor adjustments in his timing. First, he cried at 2:30. Then at 3:30. Then 4:30. 5:30 followed. A slight relapse back to 4:30. Then back to 5:30. His best nights had him sounding 8 to 12 meows, followed by a head butt into the door.

His worst night was 73 meows. SEVENTY THREE meows in quick succession, and in a variety of tones and volume. That night was about a week ago.

Seventy Three.

Three score and thirteen.

I don’t know… maybe that’s not that many. But I’ve only rarely cohabitated with a cat, and not for very long. That seems a lot to me.

But for the last two nights, he’s been quiet. Nary a single “mrrow” has awoken us, and he has apparently determined that the door will not yield to the ministrations of his noggin. In fact, this morning, Jami found him laying next to the door in the hallway, seemingly with patience and resignation waiting for her to get up and give him food and petting.

So, I think he’s settling in. We’ll see how he does when he moves again to yet another new house. We’re hoping that’s sooner rather than later.

On another note, we got a nice card from the vet where I took The Squanto for the last 6 years. It got me all misty again… I miss petting him on the couch that Elliott the Cat has fully taken over now. But, I think The Squanto would have wanted Elliott to succeed to that throne.

It’s taken a while, but we finally took the time to sit down and look through the honeymoon pictures… in the end, with only a very few exceptions, we just put them all up. Enjoy!

I had some serious issues with my Google Contacts yesterday. Duplicates, triplicates, quadruplicates, quintuplicates, by the Gods, even unto decuplicates there were. Moreover, those that had been cloned were not truly cloned, but merged, munged, and otherwise spliced together with other contact entries in the most perplexing and mystifying (to say nothing of frustrating) ways.

To paint an unfortunately inadequate picture… this phone number was placed with that name and another address entirely. That address was truncated and duplicated within the same (but wrong) contact several times over. That name was repeated across a dozen entries, many duplicates, but others different in subtle and aggravating ways. The deeper I dug into it, the more baffled and dejected I became. What had happened? There was no rhyme! There was no reason! There was only chaos where before had been beautiful order!

I feared the damage was irreversible, and for one who has taken some measure of pride in a complete and accurate address book (a consequence of the wedding planning), this was sore news indeed. I steeled myself for hours, days, weeks and even months of corrective work.

From about 6:30pm until 10:00pm, I worked. My first step was to stop the hemorrhaging. I uninstalled Google Sync, which I use to sync contacts and calendar entries between my Blackberry and my Google account. Having become rid of that, I moved to erase my entire BB address book using the Desktop Manager (the easiest way to accomplish the task short of wiping the BB entirely). Curiously, it wouldn’t let me b/c it was set for wireless synchronization. Navigating to the proper screen, I found that it was! Dismay! Moreover, it was set to allow duplicates! Horror! I disabled duplicates forthwith, and shut off wireless synchronization with a strong exclamation point (or “bang” if you will). Thus eliminating the possibility of additional corruption, I moved to my Google Contacts list.

The tedium begins. The immediately obvious saving grace, and clear starting point was the fact that the illegimate entries did not belong to any existing group (other than the All Contacts group). I always assign my contacts to a group (it’s a geeky organizational thing). This made it easy to identify and trim those contacts that weren’t present prior to the Google Contact Screw 2010. But my work was only beginning. While I had fewer contacts to correct, the corruption, and thus the correction, was egregious. So I commenced.

I removed the obvious duplicates. I eliminated duplicate street address entries. I recreated destroyed address entries. I moved e’mail addresses and phone numbers to their correct place. I cross referenced with my guest book listing from the wedding, and from old exports of years gone by. I spent the better part of two hours fixing the obvious errors. I did what I could to bring my contact list back from chaos and into some semblance of order. I can’t say with any degree of certainty that it’s error free now, but I think it’s close. It’ll take months, I’m sure, to weed out all the errors, especially for those contacts not contacted that much, but I’m off to a good start.

Having cleaned it up as best I could, I reinstalled Google Sync and enabled only the Calendar sync portion. Having confirmed that my calendar entries were syncing properly, I enabled native wireless syncing for my address book, making sure to disallow duplicates.

So far, so good.

Here’s what I think happened… I think for reasons still wholly unclear, that the native wireless contact sync and the Google Sync contact sync suddenly started attacking each other. In their struggle, contacts were corrupted, destroyed, duplicated and otherwise rendered unrecognizable. For reasons also still wholly unclear, I think this fight started b/c the native wireless syncing was enabled, having been previously disabled, and that duplicates were, by default, allowed.

The result was that my contact list was damaged nearly to the point of no return.

I’m not the only person to have had this problem, though… and if I follow through with some research, I may find another culprit. I’m certainly open to the truth if it differs from my own theory.

I’m not sure which I would rather… disable native address book syncing and enable Google Sync, or enable native syncing and disable Google Sync. I think, for the time being, I will enable native syncing and monitor for a reset to the apparently default “Allow Duplicates.”

My next task will be to find a way to automatically, likely via cron, perform daily exports of my address book so that, in the event that this happens again, I will have a backup to restore from. So far, python looks to be the most likely candidate, given the Google Contacts API.

I picked The Squanto up from the vet yesterday. It hit me harder than I thought it would.

I paid for the cremation, took him from the (very nice, warm and compassionate) vet and I carried him out in a little box. He rode home with me in the passenger seat. Having him next to me that way, in that little 2 X 2 X 4” plastic box, made him being gone somehow more real.

I have to admit to not even wanting to write that, as if some irrational part of my brain thinks that if I just shut my mouth and keep quiet about it, he’ll come prancing around the corner, bright eyed and ears perked up wanting to go for a ride.

Part of me thinks it’s silly to grieve so over a pet. The rest of me, a much larger part, can’t help it and doesn’t care if it’s silly or not.

We’ve been out looking for other little Schips, in spite of the fact that one of the tips for grieving pet owners is to stay clear of lookalike pets for future companionship. Bah. As much as it hurt to see him go, and as much as I miss him, I can’t help but want another of the feisty little guys (or gals). I’ll ignore that tip, thank you very much. If I can convince Jami, I may just ignore it twice.

Supporting my hardheadedness in that regard, there are lots of Schip pups out there, ranging from $200 to $1,000, depending on the seller and the pedigree. We’ve got time, though… we want to give ourselves a chance to miss The Squanto, and since puppies are so much work, we want to wait until Jami is home for the summer between school years. So, next summer it is!

On another, slightly more pleasant note, our remaining furry family member is starting to relax. Elliott the Cat hasn’t had a very good time with the move from her(our) place to mine(ours). It’s been rather rough on him. Either he’s hidden in the basement behind some boxes (which have since been packed away for better staging while the house is on the market), or he’s been getting us up at 02:30, or 03:30, or 04:30 with truly incessant meowing for attention (I counted 50 meows before I lost count two days ago). In short, he’s stressed and showing a couple of the classic signs of feline hyperesthesia syndrome.

Jami was pretty worried for a few days, but he’s shaping up nicely. The last few days he’s been very social, hanging out with us upstairs in the living room, instead of hiding out, wide eyed and twitching, tail flicking violently in the basement. What’s more, for the last two nights he’s waited until 05:30 to start meowing outside the bedroom door. That’s a dramatic improvement over 02:30, 03:30 and 04:30.

We’ve adopted an “ignore him and he’ll go away” attitude. The alternative is to respond, thus reinforcing and prolonging the behavior. By ignoring it completely, he gets no feedback, and more quickly realizes that it simply doesn’t work.

One beloved pet has gone to the clearing at the end of the path, and another is settling slowly into his new life with us. Life goes on.