|
|
Saturday, June 27th, 2009
| |
12:09 pm - You would think that...
|
...after fourteen years of supervisory experience, writing performance reviews would get easier. It hasn't. It's gotten faster, but is no less taxing. I have good people -- something I am thankful for every working day, but doubly so at review time.
current mood:  accomplished
current music: Alpha Wave Movement - Beyond Silence
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
| |
10:16 pm - Seekrit projekt. #105 . . . and 106
|
Seekrit projekt #105 is, dare I say it, 99% complete.
Section #1 is 100% complete. Application of the fussy-detailed artwork went pleasingly well.
Section #2 is 98% complete. A bit of fiddly work with a few dobs of Mars Black and then a touch of Polycrylic and we'll be done.
Seekrit projekt #106 is 90% complete. All assembly is done; main painting is complete; one last area of detail painting to finish. Then comes a final sealing coat (the above mentioned Polycrylic). Thankfully, keeping a project secret from a toddler who cannot yet go down stairs on his own is easy. :-)
current mood:  Stupid cold
current music: Delerium - Spheres II
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, June 20th, 2009
| |
8:06 pm - You get what you pay for
|
...and sometimes that's a really good thing.
At work we have this wonderful, big, honkin' NetApp SAN. It has two storage controllers, five shelves of fourteen 300GB 10,000RPM FibreChannel drives and one shelf of 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA drives. The FC drives house databases and virtual machines. The SATA drives are for disk-to-disk backup. That SATA shelf cost $24,500. That's $3.50/GB raw, and roughly $4.90 per usable GB of storage.
About the same time that we made our initial SAN purchase, I was looking to do some experimenting. I wanted to see what sort of performance I could get from a storage server assembled from parts -- my "white box NAS". For $2,466 I assembled a machine with 4x750GB 7,200RPM SATA drives, yielding 1.5TB of usable storage in it's best performing configuration (mirrored pairs, striped together -- a.k.a. RAID10). So, that's 82¢ per raw GB and $1.64 per usable GB. The box runs Linux (Slackware 12), and serves as the destination for backups from a number of other Linux boxes (it also contributes to Team MHIS)
Granted, the NetApp with its redundant everything beats my Frankenserver hands down for enterprise-class reliability, but it costs nearly three times as much per usable GB of space.
My "built from pieces" storage server has been plugging away for a year now, and is very successful at its job:
hm-lnx-nas01:~# uptime
13:49:04 up 346 days, 7:38, 1 user, load average: 1.16, 1.65, 1.51
hm-lnx-nas01:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 9.4G 3.3G 5.7G 37% /
/dev/sda3 3.8G 135M 3.5G 4% /var
/dev/sda4 19G 173M 18G 1% /work
/dev/md2 1.4T 518G 788G 40% /data
The take-away is, that if you put some thought into matching the job to the machine, there's no reason -- even in an enterprise environment -- to pay all out doors for something that really should be inexpensive.
current mood: happy
current music: Cyber Tribe
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, June 15th, 2009
| |
8:29 pm - First day back from vacation...
|
|
| Sunday, June 14th, 2009
| |
12:46 pm - Is it just me...
|
...or is the current rev of Firefox a miserable, bloated, resource-hogging slowpoke?
current mood: hungry
current music: WWUH - Ambiance
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, June 7th, 2009
| |
4:50 pm - The long walk home
|
Being the geek that I am, I ran a traceroute to see what the path looks like from our hotel in Dennisport Mass to my mail server at home in Glastonboring:
Dennisport, MA > Yarmouth > Mashpee > Marion [Entering Marion!] > Foxboro > Needham > Hartford, CT > New York, NY [leaving Comcast, going to Cox] > Providence, RI > Glastonbury ... and back! With a roundtrip time averaging 56 milliseconds.
:-)
current mood: amused
current music: Random classical
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, June 4th, 2009
| |
5:18 pm - The auditors...
|
...have left the building.
(but it's not over yet)
current mood: tired
current music: Taylor Swift - Fearless
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, May 31st, 2009
| |
1:39 pm - Balancing the budget on the backs of everyone execpt Rebpublican campain contributors...
|
Proving that she still has her neo-con chops, our beloved Governor is holding fast on her "no new taxes" policy, and is instead imploding our educational future in order to balance the budget.
Courant.comWILLIAM CIBESRell Would Sever Internet Links For Schools, LibrariesMay 31, 2009
In a move that would conclusively close the door on the Information Age in Connecticut, Gov. M Jodi Rell proposed cuts Thursday that would shut off access to the Internet through the Connecticut Education Network — a fiber optic network designed to serve public schools and libraries in Connecticut — and drastically reduce the availability of information resources in other agencies.
Cutting $3 million in "Other Expense" funding for the network, would — in the very words of her proposal — eliminate "software licenses, Internet services and local/long distance telecommunications." Defunding would:
• Eliminate all Internet circuits in kindergarten through 12th-grade schools and all libraries in the state.
• Eliminate all filtering of "adult" content for schools and libraries.
• Eliminate service lines to schools and libraries in rural areas of the state.
Schools and libraries could — if they had their own means to do so — purchase access for themselves, but it would deprive them of the economies of scale. And it is doubtful that they could put contracts in place before the opening of school in the fall.
This defunding would also deprive the state of $1 million or more in federal "E-rate" support, which pays for part of the expense of the state's network.
And defunding would certainly take the state out of the running for any grants for broadband expansion under the federal stimulus bill — since it would be extremely difficult to demonstrate that Connecticut is committed to expand Internet access, as is required by the stimulus program.
Compounding this egregiously short-sighted move is the governor's proposal to cut funding for the statewide digital library (through the State Library budget) — which has supplied much of the digital content to schools and libraries throughout the state via the Education Network. All funding ($2 million) is cut, depriving — again in the very language of the proposal — "Connecticut citizens and students with access to a wide selection of databases and electronic resources to support their educational, cultural, economic and personal interests."
But the governor goes further, eliminating all funding ($675,000) for the statewide database program, which currently provides — but no longer would do so — "for free, online access to a library catalog currently including over 4.4 million titles to Connecticut citizens to find the materials they need."
Both programs receive 50 percent federal reimbursement, so the loss of all these services would save the state only $1.3 million — and force each and every library to duplicatively purchase these services on their own.
But the cuts don't stop with taking the state out of the 21st century. The governor also proposes eliminating funding for Connecticard payments ($1.2 million annually, again reimbursed 50 percent by the feds), which support the inter-library loan of about 4.6 million books and other items each year through 195 participating libraries in the state. Libraries that may currently borrow these books from other libraries will now have to purchase them, or see information access severely curtailed.
And the cuts keep coming — moving the state even further backward in history. Half the funding for legal books and journals is cut. All grants to public libraries are gone. Current funding for computer access for families with school-age children is eliminated. Overall, $5.4 million annually to provide information access to citizens through the functions of the State Library is eliminated.
And — just to make sure that Connecticut is totally ill-prepared for its economic future — all funding in the state Department of Education "to purchase replacement textbooks for the technical high schools" is cut for the next two fiscal years.
Welcome to the new age, Connecticut! Noah Webster would be so proud!
•William Cibes of Hartford is the former head of the state Office of Policy and Management.
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
|
And yes, the would put a huge hurting on the Hartford schools and libraries. At the very least, we'd be talking about an un-budgeted expense of $3200/month for a 100Mbps line -- which would give us about a 2/5 of the bandwidth we routinely push through our gigabit CEN feed. I don't really want to contemplate what a gig feed would cost from a commercial provider.
current mood:  indescribable
current music: Wind in the leaves
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 30th, 2009
| |
9:10 pm - Seekrit project....
|
Seekrit Project #105 update.
Parts cutting for section #1 is 97% complete (really should cut that last piece).
Primary assembly of section #1 is complete (final assembly will be done after painting is complete).
Painting of section #1 major components has moved into detail work.
Painting of sub-components of section #1 is 75% complete.
Art design for section #1 is done in concept; need to work on stencils.
Design work for section #2 is done -- including a happy side trip into Visio and making D-size prints on the HP DesignJet 5500 at work. Next will come inventorying available materials and formulating the parts cutting campaign.
current mood: pleased
current music: Silence
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, May 29th, 2009
| |
10:40 pm - Seekrit project....
|
Seekrit Project #105 update.
Parts cutting for section #1 still 97% complete (one last piece). Painting of section #1 major components is 50%. Painting of sub-components of section #1 is 75% complete. Art design for section #1 is moving along (Google image search is a beautiful thing).
Design work for section #2 is complete; some experimenting and test-fitting will have to be done once parts cutting is under way.
current mood: pleased
current music: Silence
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
| |
9:54 pm - Seekrit project....
|
Seekrit Project #105 update.
Parts cutting for section #1 is 97% complete. Primary assembly of section #1 is complete (final assembly will be done after painting is complete). Priming of section #1 major components is complete. Painting of sub-components of section #1 is 50% complete. Design work for section #2 may see scratches on paper tonight. Art design for section #1 is gelling.
current mood: accomplished
current music: Random electronica in my head
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
| |
10:20 pm - Seekrit project....
|
Secret Project #105 has commenced.
Parts cutting for section #1 is 95% complete. Primary assembly of section #1 has started. Painting of sub-components of section #1 also started. Design work for section #2 is still circulating vapor inside my head.
current mood: tired
current music: Silence
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, May 24th, 2009
| |
9:26 am - Waste and weather...
|
Yesterday I mowed the Rt.17 medians for the second time this season. I noticed on the first mowing -- three weeks ago -- that there weren't that many cigarette butts in the grass. Now, after a stretch of warmer weather, the dead butt archipelago has returned.
Humans. Can't live with'em, not enough gunnysacks in the world.
current mood: okay
current music: WWUH - Ambiance
|
|
(5 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 11th, 2009
| |
5:04 pm - Monday...
|
|
| Monday, May 4th, 2009
| |
9:14 pm - Not dead...
|
...just really really swamped preparing for a Federal audit at work.
current mood: tired
current music: None
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, April 18th, 2009
| |
7:25 pm - A question of physics...
|
So, how does one guy get a 200+ lb drill press up out of one basement and down into another without a) help, b) breaking the drill press, or c) violating rule one?
( Simple machines! )
This was my grandfather's drill press -- a Craftsman 150 from the 1960s. In his semi-retirement he had assembled quite a woodworking shop in his basement (table saw, scroll saw, radial-arm saw, band saw, planer, and drill press). We have several of the pieces of furniture he made, including the table we eat at every day. Getting that drill press muscled into place and turning it on for the first time was surprisingly emotional for me. I was feeling so very connected to "Pop", yet also feeling very strongly the irrevocable finality of his passing.
He would be happy to see it being used. Happier still to know that his grandson was using it to make toys for his great grandson.
Rule one: don't die
current music: Wang Chung - To Live and Die in L.A.
|
|
(5 comments | comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
| |
7:27 pm - The power of perseverance...
|
For some time now I have had machines at home and at work donating CPU cycles to the Sanford-based Folding@Home project. Folding@Home is a volunteer distributed computing project where your PC(s) runs models of protein formation ("folding") to further biomedical research.
One of the neat features of F@H's setup is the ability to create teams. I am pleased to report that both Team HouseOfHum.com and Team MHIS are in the top 5% of contributors.
In neither case am I running a supercomputer. At work I have two Xeon-based servers (NMS), a Core-2 server (NAS), and a pair of old PIII servers (DNS) plugging away. At home I have three VMs running F@H on my Core2-quad VMware host (the F@H client isn't SMP, so I need multiple VMs to take advantage of the multiple CPU cores), an instance on my P4 file server, and five old PIII warhorses crunching away. Nothing special -- just consistent application of moderate computing power. I get a bit of curmudgeonly glee over the fact that the piiiarmy (my user ID for all of those Pentium III machines) is nosing up to being in the top 12% of individual donors. They may be tortoises, but they're making a difference.
current mood: pleased
current music: Miami Vice -- complete soundtrack
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, April 6th, 2009
| |
8:27 pm - Hrrrm
|
|
| Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
| |
8:55 pm - Scrabble Oy
|
I managed a seven letter word as my last play of the game ... went out and caught ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ashacat with a mostly full rack, and she still wumped me. 347 to 358 ... and that was that.
current mood: thirsty
current music: TV noise
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| |
10:23 am - Bangeda-bangeda-bang-bang-*BOOM*
|
The central region SWAT team (made up of officers from several towns in Hartford county) is practicing at the Police pistol range this morning -- about 500yds from our house. In addition to volleys of handgun fire and the occasional shotgun blast, they must be practicing laying breaching charges as the morning has been punctuated by a couple of deep, resonating *BOOM*s.
current mood: working
current music: Random electronica
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
