I got the Gentoo KVM server working really well (still needs more RAM though). I set up a virtual machine (Ubuntu server) to run a private KForge install, got it working with GIT, and put some of my personal projects on it. Next I'm going to be looking at maybe setting up Bugzilla so I can keep track of TODO/bugs on my projects as when I don't work on them for a few days/weeks I forget shit. 
First week of the quarter is over. The class that I thought was going to be the "easy" one (if there was such a thing) looks like it might be the hardest of the 3 I'm taking.
The other two classes are pretty much what I expected (so far).
Oh, so the KVM server is so loud that I'm trying to find ways of either quieting it down or providing heat/cooling and put it in the attic somehow. I could put it in the "spare" bedroom and turn it off when we have a guest, but I'd rather have it in a place where it can run 24/7 since that was the point. All I know is that it can't stay in the office as-is because I can't hear myself think...
The wifey and I watched Melancholia last night and I want my 2 hours back!!!
That is a serious candidate for being the worst movie I have ever seen. It was neither entertaining nor educational! I believe this is what happens when a writer takes random story bits, places the bits into a blender, and then pours out the grey goo product that resulted onto film. Even more disturbing is the high ratings it has on IMDB!
This leads me to believe that either I am seriously out of touch with reality or everyone else is...
First week of the quarter is over. The class that I thought was going to be the "easy" one (if there was such a thing) looks like it might be the hardest of the 3 I'm taking.
The other two classes are pretty much what I expected (so far).Oh, so the KVM server is so loud that I'm trying to find ways of either quieting it down or providing heat/cooling and put it in the attic somehow. I could put it in the "spare" bedroom and turn it off when we have a guest, but I'd rather have it in a place where it can run 24/7 since that was the point. All I know is that it can't stay in the office as-is because I can't hear myself think...
The wifey and I watched Melancholia last night and I want my 2 hours back!!!
That is a serious candidate for being the worst movie I have ever seen. It was neither entertaining nor educational! I believe this is what happens when a writer takes random story bits, places the bits into a blender, and then pours out the grey goo product that resulted onto film. Even more disturbing is the high ratings it has on IMDB! This leads me to believe that either I am seriously out of touch with reality or everyone else is...
I suppose it was bound to happen eventually: vacation is over and I go back to school tomorrow...
This quarter I'm taking math, computer security (a 400-level class, so I'm sure it will be fairly in-depth), and computer languages and automata (also a 400-level).
I'm guessing difficulty-wise this will NOT be an easy quarter...
This quarter I'm taking math, computer security (a 400-level class, so I'm sure it will be fairly in-depth), and computer languages and automata (also a 400-level).
I'm guessing difficulty-wise this will NOT be an easy quarter...
So I've been giving some thought towards buying a sailboat instead of a house when I finish school. Maybe I'm crazier than I think, but it sounds like a brilliant idea the more I think about it.
To ease the transition I figure I would rent mooring space here in town for a year before cutting ties and sailing. There are lots of issues to work out before then (like paying down some debt) and getting rid of all our vehicles (except maybe the VW bus?) Plus I have to ease myself out of my internet addiction or pay like $100/month for satellite internet - which I had for like 5 years and it sucks!
Anyway we've got at least a year (probably two) before we are both done with school and could do something like that, but it's good to have a long (or mid) term plan on the back burner!
To ease the transition I figure I would rent mooring space here in town for a year before cutting ties and sailing. There are lots of issues to work out before then (like paying down some debt) and getting rid of all our vehicles (except maybe the VW bus?) Plus I have to ease myself out of my internet addiction or pay like $100/month for satellite internet - which I had for like 5 years and it sucks!
Anyway we've got at least a year (probably two) before we are both done with school and could do something like that, but it's good to have a long (or mid) term plan on the back burner!
Just got back home from a trip to Everett Tattoo Emporium. The wifey got some more work done on her sleeve-in-progress. Starting to come along very nicely! 
Work on the VM server continues. Got a test WinXP, Win7, and Ubuntu guest OSs installed. It's been several days and so far no additional issues with crashing/errors (knock on wood!) I was going to install a copy of Win7 Pro (or Ult.) to act as a dev install, but apparently I'm out of legit copies/keys so it'll have to wait...
My phone (Samsung Galaxy SII, T-Mobile SGH-989) has been growing ever so more on my nerves.. I HATE the stock firmware and can't wait until Cyanogenmod supports it. I even donated $5 (I know, not much) to them this week because I loved CM so much on my last two phones. I guess fragmentation/variation is a double edge sword in the Linux community and it shouldn't be too surprising that Android has similar issues.
In Star Trek Online my fleet founder/leader has decided to mothball his Federation character and focus on his Klingon character, but before doing so he gave control of the fleet to me and one other member. So I've been doing some additional "work" in the game to keep the fleet going. Right now we are down to only 15 members (last summer we had around 120 members) so I need to start recruiting to keep it alive.
Went to the gun range yesterday with the wifey and shot under the covered area for the first time (the other open areas were in-use). It was VERY different experience as you could feel the shots in your body. I shot my Glock 23 (.40) and it was so strange compared to shooting it in the open/outdoor spaces.
Still having issues with the netbook/tablet convertible trying to get it to run Linux. The touchscreen is supposed to be well supported but I'll be damned if I can get it to work correctly. Maybe it's just destined to run Win7 for a while...
Work on the VM server continues. Got a test WinXP, Win7, and Ubuntu guest OSs installed. It's been several days and so far no additional issues with crashing/errors (knock on wood!) I was going to install a copy of Win7 Pro (or Ult.) to act as a dev install, but apparently I'm out of legit copies/keys so it'll have to wait...
My phone (Samsung Galaxy SII, T-Mobile SGH-989) has been growing ever so more on my nerves.. I HATE the stock firmware and can't wait until Cyanogenmod supports it. I even donated $5 (I know, not much) to them this week because I loved CM so much on my last two phones. I guess fragmentation/variation is a double edge sword in the Linux community and it shouldn't be too surprising that Android has similar issues.
In Star Trek Online my fleet founder/leader has decided to mothball his Federation character and focus on his Klingon character, but before doing so he gave control of the fleet to me and one other member. So I've been doing some additional "work" in the game to keep the fleet going. Right now we are down to only 15 members (last summer we had around 120 members) so I need to start recruiting to keep it alive.
Went to the gun range yesterday with the wifey and shot under the covered area for the first time (the other open areas were in-use). It was VERY different experience as you could feel the shots in your body. I shot my Glock 23 (.40) and it was so strange compared to shooting it in the open/outdoor spaces.
Still having issues with the netbook/tablet convertible trying to get it to run Linux. The touchscreen is supposed to be well supported but I'll be damned if I can get it to work correctly. Maybe it's just destined to run Win7 for a while...
Got my hair and beard cut last night. Now I no longer look like a hobo. Although I was starting to enjoy the length of the beard as it looked very pirate-like. I was overdue though and my head feels so nice now that it can breathe! 
So I had two hard crashes with the VM server a couple of days ago. Since then I've ran memtest86+ for 36 hours straight with no errors and am currently running Mersenne Prime. I got the RAID5 array all set up and all of the KVM tools installed, but I hadn't yet installed a VM. I was rebooting the server after a kernel upgrade and it failed to boot. Subsequent attempts also failed, so thinking I had a bad kernel I reverted to the previous one and it failed too. Next I tried a memtest from a livecd and it found tons of errors. So I pulled all but 2 sticks of RAM out from each CPU and ran memtest86+ for 3 passes, found nothing, swapped RAM, repeated. Then I finally put all the RAM back in and let it run for 36 hours straight. Thinking maybe it was a CPU or a heat-related problem I started Mersenne Prime... so far nothing but it's only been running for an hour.
Sometimes I wish I were a monk in a monstary that focused on Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. That way maybe I could get some work done and wouldn't be stressed about life all the time. Oh, and it might help with the ADHD too! Maybe I just need to refresh myself on meditation techniques and find that happy place once again?
Oh I found a bunch more DVDs that were from that bad batch of around 400-500 bad discs. I will NEVER EVER buy memorex again! Makes me want to buy two different brands and burn two copies of everything for redundancy! I can live with 1 or 2 discs in a 100 cake being bad, but 95 - 100% is unacceptable! Some of the "good" discs that have since turned bad show discoloration around the edges on the label side which makes me think the problem is with the glue or layering.
So lately I haven't been feeling like doing much of anything other than play Star Trek Online. Dishes have piled up, haven't done laundry in over a week, floor is disgustingly dirty, rugs are covered in dog/cat hair, etc. Sometimes I only eat once a day because I don't feel like making anything and also don't feel like cleaning it up. I don't know what the deal is but I just feel like meh, whatever. I also don't feel like there is enough time in the day for me, even when I don't do anything. Partly because I know there is a long list of things to do so I can't relax. All of the psychology classes I have taken in my college career, when applied to the symptoms, point to mild depression, but if that were true I cannot think of the source/cause... So maybe it's just a long streak of don't-give-a-fuck? I don't know what it is but it affects everything and I'm tired all the time.
On a related note I'm having trouble finishing things such as programs, homework, etc. I don't think I did so well this last quarter. I only have 3 days left of "vacation" before spring quarter starts so hopefully I can do a reset on my brain/life and be somehow refreshed for next week!
So I had two hard crashes with the VM server a couple of days ago. Since then I've ran memtest86+ for 36 hours straight with no errors and am currently running Mersenne Prime. I got the RAID5 array all set up and all of the KVM tools installed, but I hadn't yet installed a VM. I was rebooting the server after a kernel upgrade and it failed to boot. Subsequent attempts also failed, so thinking I had a bad kernel I reverted to the previous one and it failed too. Next I tried a memtest from a livecd and it found tons of errors. So I pulled all but 2 sticks of RAM out from each CPU and ran memtest86+ for 3 passes, found nothing, swapped RAM, repeated. Then I finally put all the RAM back in and let it run for 36 hours straight. Thinking maybe it was a CPU or a heat-related problem I started Mersenne Prime... so far nothing but it's only been running for an hour.
Sometimes I wish I were a monk in a monstary that focused on Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. That way maybe I could get some work done and wouldn't be stressed about life all the time. Oh, and it might help with the ADHD too! Maybe I just need to refresh myself on meditation techniques and find that happy place once again?
Oh I found a bunch more DVDs that were from that bad batch of around 400-500 bad discs. I will NEVER EVER buy memorex again! Makes me want to buy two different brands and burn two copies of everything for redundancy! I can live with 1 or 2 discs in a 100 cake being bad, but 95 - 100% is unacceptable! Some of the "good" discs that have since turned bad show discoloration around the edges on the label side which makes me think the problem is with the glue or layering.
So lately I haven't been feeling like doing much of anything other than play Star Trek Online. Dishes have piled up, haven't done laundry in over a week, floor is disgustingly dirty, rugs are covered in dog/cat hair, etc. Sometimes I only eat once a day because I don't feel like making anything and also don't feel like cleaning it up. I don't know what the deal is but I just feel like meh, whatever. I also don't feel like there is enough time in the day for me, even when I don't do anything. Partly because I know there is a long list of things to do so I can't relax. All of the psychology classes I have taken in my college career, when applied to the symptoms, point to mild depression, but if that were true I cannot think of the source/cause... So maybe it's just a long streak of don't-give-a-fuck? I don't know what it is but it affects everything and I'm tired all the time.
On a related note I'm having trouble finishing things such as programs, homework, etc. I don't think I did so well this last quarter. I only have 3 days left of "vacation" before spring quarter starts so hopefully I can do a reset on my brain/life and be somehow refreshed for next week!
So I dug out the old web server from out of the attic and am in the process of setting it up as a dedicated VM server to reduce the use/load on my desktop.
I figured why let it sit in the attic and go to waste? It's a dual-dual core Opteron (2 x Opteron 2222 = 4 cores) @ 3.0GHz and I had a bunch of old SATA disks laying around. I put in a 300GB disk for the host/root/swap/boot and 3x500GB drives in RAID5 for the VMs. I figure that'll give me > 900GB of usable disk space (I set root's reserved space to 1% on the RAID array). The server only has 16GB of RAM, but as I'm only using half of the slots (8 of 16) and RAM is relatively still cheap for this type of machine (registered DDR2) I plan on doubling it to 32GB to allow more simultaneous VMs.
Anyway, I installed Gentoo Linux as the host OS and plan to use Linux KVM as the paravirtual layer. It'll be a few hours before I can install a test guest OS as I'm stilling installing required packages in the host. Although it shouldn't take more than a few hours as I setup distcc between the server and my desktop machine (Intel Core i7 @3.2GHz + hyperthreading).
On a different Linux note: I still can't get Linux to work correctly on my netbook/convertible (Dell Inspiron Duo 1090). It suffers from several issues: a random kernel panic when plugging/unplugging the power or plugging/unplugging from the dock (seems to be related to ACPI being confused about there being two AC adapters), the touchscreen doesn't work correctly (depending on the driver, it either doesn't register a mouse click or it registers the click in the upper-left corner of the screen), it doesn't recognize the dock at all if hot-plugged, the accelerometer (used to detect screen orientation changes) isn't recognized, and the list goes on! So unfortunately it's still running a very sluggish Windows 7 Home. Windows 7 runs fine on my full-sized laptop, but it's way too much for a netbook!
I figured why let it sit in the attic and go to waste? It's a dual-dual core Opteron (2 x Opteron 2222 = 4 cores) @ 3.0GHz and I had a bunch of old SATA disks laying around. I put in a 300GB disk for the host/root/swap/boot and 3x500GB drives in RAID5 for the VMs. I figure that'll give me > 900GB of usable disk space (I set root's reserved space to 1% on the RAID array). The server only has 16GB of RAM, but as I'm only using half of the slots (8 of 16) and RAM is relatively still cheap for this type of machine (registered DDR2) I plan on doubling it to 32GB to allow more simultaneous VMs.
Anyway, I installed Gentoo Linux as the host OS and plan to use Linux KVM as the paravirtual layer. It'll be a few hours before I can install a test guest OS as I'm stilling installing required packages in the host. Although it shouldn't take more than a few hours as I setup distcc between the server and my desktop machine (Intel Core i7 @3.2GHz + hyperthreading).
On a different Linux note: I still can't get Linux to work correctly on my netbook/convertible (Dell Inspiron Duo 1090). It suffers from several issues: a random kernel panic when plugging/unplugging the power or plugging/unplugging from the dock (seems to be related to ACPI being confused about there being two AC adapters), the touchscreen doesn't work correctly (depending on the driver, it either doesn't register a mouse click or it registers the click in the upper-left corner of the screen), it doesn't recognize the dock at all if hot-plugged, the accelerometer (used to detect screen orientation changes) isn't recognized, and the list goes on! So unfortunately it's still running a very sluggish Windows 7 Home. Windows 7 runs fine on my full-sized laptop, but it's way too much for a netbook!
This made me laugh: Wil Wheaton: comedy ensues
I can certainly relate to some degree: my wife is what I like to call a "nerd-in-denial." Deep down she's just as geeky/nerdy as I am, but she was raised out in the country, on a farm, and has learned to suppress theses thoughts/feelings with good 'ole country girl/redneck attitude.
She refuses to watch any science fiction, or so she says, yet her favorite movie is WALL-E. I got her to go see the Star Trek reboot movie when it was in theaters, she admitted afterwords that she liked it, but I haven't been able to get her to watch it at home or any of the Star Trek TV series... If it even sounds sort of like science fiction she immediately rejects it. I'll keep working on wearing her down!
Like Wil Wheaton wrote, "so... baby steps. baby steps."
I can certainly relate to some degree: my wife is what I like to call a "nerd-in-denial." Deep down she's just as geeky/nerdy as I am, but she was raised out in the country, on a farm, and has learned to suppress theses thoughts/feelings with good 'ole country girl/redneck attitude.
She refuses to watch any science fiction, or so she says, yet her favorite movie is WALL-E. I got her to go see the Star Trek reboot movie when it was in theaters, she admitted afterwords that she liked it, but I haven't been able to get her to watch it at home or any of the Star Trek TV series... If it even sounds sort of like science fiction she immediately rejects it. I'll keep working on wearing her down!
Like Wil Wheaton wrote, "so... baby steps. baby steps."
I need to learn better time management skills.. I used to be so good at juggling things and lately I feel like I never get anything done.
Never really used /dev/urandom (on Linux) for anything significant before.. I never realized how slow it is until I attempted to erase a hard drive that was 1.5TB.. Yeah after like 10 hours I canceled it and found a python script that can do it faster (took about 4 hours).
The point is to make one entire hard drive/partition encrypted. I've never done a whole disk before (just loopback files) so it'll be cool/interesting I'm sure.
The point is to make one entire hard drive/partition encrypted. I've never done a whole disk before (just loopback files) so it'll be cool/interesting I'm sure.
