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| Friday, June 19th, 2009 | | 7:33 pm |
Tomorrow will go down in history
I do not know what for, but tomorrow will be remembered for a very long time. If you haven't been following recent events from Iran, I suggest that here is a good place to get started. | | Friday, February 20th, 2009 | | 12:10 pm |
| | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 2:52 am |
| | Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 | | 8:09 pm |
| | Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 | | 11:02 pm |
Rest In Peace Arthur C. Clark
May we live up to your hopes and dreams
... And several hours after I post I stumble on this....
| | Friday, February 23rd, 2007 | | 9:32 pm |
UPDATE - Clawed it back
It's the data that's back from the dead. I've got a couple of the Maxtor drives mentioned in the previous post lying around the office - decommissioned, just waiting for me to get off my butt and toss 'em out. On a lark, I pulled the controller board off one of them and swapped it onto the dead drive. Presto! Instant data availability. There were a few bad sectors, but none of them were under user data. I have a grand total of one good thing to say about those drive - they have the most controller-swapping friendly design I've ever seen. No ribbon cables or connectors. It's four pads for the motor and a bunch of pins sticking out of the cabinet (that just fit right into the board as you press it down) for the data and control. I'm now pricing out a new fileserver machine for the office, with an intention to set it up so that a) Users will use it for some of their day-to-day work b) Use it to share files rather than emailing around insanely large attachments - I've managed to mostly stamp this out, though there are still times..... c) Have it automatically pull a full backup off each office machine every night, for the data that users do keep on their machines The boss seems ... content to let me build it with FreeBSD, though he's concerned about "Will it work with our Windows applications?". I'm so happy to finally be able to setup a proper server in there. The "Thousand dollars + $100 a seat" argument seems to be having some effect. This can completely replace the old Dell NT machine, and mostly replace the "desktop turned server". If anyone knows how to make a UNIX machine look-and-act like Microsoft SQL server, please do tell, because that would let me retire the "desktop turned server". Current Mood:  accomplishedCurrent Music: Fans from a new server I need to get setup | | Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 | | 11:21 pm |
Doesen't that just fucking figure?
The 40GB Maxtor Slimline harddrive in an important employees' machine (with no backups, of course), just had to pack it in and die *less than 24 FUCKING HOURS!* before it was scheduled to be retired and replaced. Anyone familiar with what the professional data recovery scenario looks like with these drives? This is the second drive of this family (Maxtor Slimline 40GB - 6L300R0) that I've seen die in this EXACT fashion, so it can't be news to the people who do this professionally. The electronics seem to be fine, but the drive is pretty much unable to read anything off it's surface at all. Many many many read requests come back with bad sectors. In the space of no time at all the drive went from working fine to being unable to boot to Windows, or allow another machine to mount the filesystems. There's no untoward noises at all. Just in case you're reading this and haven't gotten the gist yet, REPLACE MAXTOR DRIVES ON SIGHT! Especially their older slim desktop drives. | | Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 | | 10:08 pm |
Public Service Announcement
Anything even remotely resembing a paved surface in Coquitlam is officially fucked.
I just burned some rubber off my tires trying (and failing and giving up) to get over a little hill. They're not winter tires, but they're good all-seasons with lots of tread left. If you don't have to, don't drive tonight. | | Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 | | 10:40 pm |
This is so wrong. I've just wasted the last four hours clicking around on Wikipedia. I've discovered some sci-fi books I want to read, a possible eight-legged replacement for my pet cat when he gets old and dies, and learned more about Art Bell than I ever wanted to know. And that's just the stuff I can specifically recall reading. Current Mood:  bored | | Sunday, January 15th, 2006 | | 3:18 pm |
Well, Shit. It seems that sometime over the last two weeks my favorite Japanese all-you-can-eat went and burned-itself-to-the-ground. I've got two places I eat Japanese - Brunch on weekends (I work weekdays) at King Sushi on 6th Street in New West. This is now gone. This restraunt had a limited menu, but they served it really really good. The teriyaki's were always delivered on a boilingly hot iron skillet, the Katsu kicked ass, and they had the two types of sushi I actually like. They also served godlike yakisoba. I usually put down two or three servings of that each time I go. I think it's $10.50/person on weekends, $9.50/person on weekdays. Late night (after 9:30PM) at Tomokazu on Broadway. Much larger menu than King Sushi, but I find it's generally not prepared as well. The yakisoba is terrible (like just about every other yakisoba I've tried, except the stuff at King Sushi). Only one kind of Sushi I like. It's probably a better restraunt for people with a more adventuresome palate than mine. The Late Night is cheap ($11.50/person, I think). I've tried some place over in Surrey that I can't recall the name of, I didn't like the food, atmosphere or service, and I haven't been back. If anyone can make some suggestions for Japanese all-you-can-eat style restraunts, I'd love to hear them. My primary considerations are cheap (Though I'll try something once even if it's expensive), decent selection of "non-seaweed" food (I only eat two types of sushi, and I don't do rolls at all), and if at all possible, close to the Poco/Coquitlam/Burnaby/New West area. I don't like driving into downtown just for some food. Current Mood:  hungry | | Monday, November 21st, 2005 | | 11:54 pm |
*crunch*
That sound of bank accounts breaking was me ordering my new components. I decided against the drives, and I'm buying the CPU from ATIC (ugh) because they'll sell me Windows XP 64-bit without requiring me to have them build the system. The fact they were $30 cheaper on the CPU, and despite the more liberal terms *still* $10 cheaper on the OS, didn't hurt either. CPUs aren't really a store-warranty item anyways, either it works fine or it's DOA, or it fails in the future (unlikely) then I deal with AMD directly, no matter who I buy from. I still plan to buy new drives, but I'll wait until Seagate gets 250GB 7200.9 drives out the door. I'm not paying retarded amounts of money for a motherboard with SATA-II support, just to saddle it with brand new SATA-I drives. Given that half these parts are back-ordered, I probably now have a week or two to regret my decision before I start seeing some parts to help make up for it. Ah well. | | Saturday, November 19th, 2005 | | 9:51 pm |
New Computer
So I'm considering a new machine... (well, I'm always considering a new machine). And given that it's Christmas and New Years, and I've got money, I'm considering making it a .... fairly nice new machine. I have no idea if I'm actually going to go through with buying this, but I'd appreciate any feedback regardless. Existing Cooler Master Centurion 5 chassis SeaSonic 430 watt Power SupplyASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Motherboard AMD Athlon64 x2 4200+2 1GB sticks of Generic DDR400 memory. I have no intention of overclocking this machine. Can anyone tell me if there's really any benefit to "higher-end" memory? 2 Fanless Gigabyte 256MB 6600GT PCIe Video Cards. No Noise, lets me drive three monitors, and I can SLI 'em together when I wanna do hardcore gaming. 3 Seagate 250GB SATA drives. I've already got three drives, but some are smaller and two are PATA. Newer motherboards are lacking in the PATA department. Also these Seagates will probably be quieter than my existing WD drives. Anyone know a local source for NoVibes III drive decouplers? Existing Keyboard, Mouse, Optical Drives, Sound system, and triple 20" IBM displays. Overall goal is a whisper-quiet machine that performs well for high-end gaming, large-scale downloading, DVD ripping & storage, occasional video capture & anything else I might decide to do with it. I don't care if it makes a little noise while I'm gaming, but otherwise I don't wanna hear the damn thing. | | Thursday, September 15th, 2005 | | 11:11 pm |
| | Thursday, September 8th, 2005 | | 8:11 pm |
Ghetto Rice
I drove by this parked on the road on my way home... on a sidestreet so I could stop and take pictures with the camera I lucked out and had in the car. Dialup users, beware : these are BIG pics! Everyone else, beware, my upstream sucks so be patient while they load. I probably should obscure this poor schmuck's liscense plate, but I doubt enough people will read this for it to make any difference. How does the lj cut work again? ( Ah Yes.... ) | | Friday, July 15th, 2005 | | 6:37 pm |
| | Sunday, May 29th, 2005 | | 10:17 pm |
Uuuuurgh! Nerd Smash!
Goddam I hate linux. To be fair, I always attribute part of this to the fact that I'm usually working on machine that have been doing their job for years, and which have finally developed some noticable problems. Then, ages later, I'm exposed to a brand shiny new installation and I can't help but think to myself "This still sucks!" Everytime I have to work with it I always end up asking myself "Where's my FreeBSD install disk? Would the owner get pissed off I i kinda discreetly popped it in the drive?" Of course the answer is always "Not here", and "Of course they would, because then the system they're paying me to fix wouldn't work at all for what they want". I like FreeBSDs idea of manpages for kernel drivers. It make hardware-level troubleshooting damn near easy. Does Linux have that? Of course not? Info pages for the drivers maybe, nah.... Okay, maybe there's some documentation in the kernel source tree... There is, but it's totally inconsistent and damn near useless, besides the fact that there's not really much there. How about online? nope. not a damn thing. The RAID controller is bitching about a broken mirror set completely at random, resulted in downtime for their mission-critical application a few days ago, and there's not a FUCKING THING the O/S can tell me. No SCSI utilities at all? WHAT?! Where the hell is camcontrol? Oh that's great. A forum post suggests that linux users can use "cdrecord -scsi" to scan their SCSI bus. And of course this creaky old Debian installation doesen't HAVE cdrecord.... And on and on it goes. And of course the "less" implementation that blanks out what it was showing when it quits and gives you back a prompt... SO helpful when you need to TYPE some of that in at the prompt! Of course, that might have been the PuTTY ssh program, but I've never seen less do that before, on any terminal. PressureReliefValve.Close() I'm certain nobody is interested in reading more of my steam, so i'm gonna shut up now. On the bright side, it looks like the machine will be replaced in a few months, and the admin wants to base the new one on OpenBSD. So if I ever have to troubleshoot it, I'm probably not gonna wanna gouge my eyes out. Current Mood:  cranky | | Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 | | 11:36 pm |
Aaargh!
I hate the computer market. I recently assembled an Athlon64-based machine for the office I'm working at. God. Damn. It's *quiet*. Like, *really* *quiet*. The CPU fan is damn near inaudible when it's running at full tilt. And when the machine isn't busy, the motherboard slows the CPU fan down, and can even turn it off completely. The power supply has a thermally-controlled 120mm fan that is totally inaudible. The chassis uses a single 120mm exhaust fan that's inaudible (as well as an 80mm intake fan I haven't plugged in). And it's got a modern HDD with quiet bearings. Without looking at the front panel, I can't tell the machine is running. And appearing in stores any day now, a newer Athlon64 core ("Venice") offers the same performance for about half the power. Which means it should finally be possible to build a truly fuckin' fast computer that's also quiet (Though I'd have to find a way to make the video card shut up). And to think performance-wise, this machine blows my (noisy as hell despite my attempts to shut it up) Athlon XP out of the water. I so want to buy a similar setup for myself at home. But right now is a horrible time for an enthusiast to buy. Socket 939 Dualcore is just around the corner, and the market is still transitioning to PCI-e. Arghle! Also, I feel a little more time will be needed before I would be willing to jump to the new 64-bit Windows XP (I am *never* an early adopter of Microsoft products), and I'm not a big fan of re-installing my OS. So I guess I'll grit my teeth and listen to these grinding fans for a little while longer. Current Mood:  frustrated | | Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 | | 6:12 pm |
Things you never expect to see....
Includes this for $4 at Valu Village.  I went there to give them a bunch of shit I no longer wanted, and I ended up taking stuff away instead. Now I just need to get a suitable computer up and running.... anyone have a working 386 lying around? | | Monday, January 17th, 2005 | | 5:20 pm |
Wonderful Vancouver
Ahhhh.... It is SO very nice to have this city back to it's regular weather. All the white frozen shit has been washed away by a great warm deluge, exactly as it should be. I locked my keys in my car at the local slaveway. I can get a lift back there later tonight with my spare set, but in the meantime i took the 15 minute walk home, with a huge fucking smile on my face the whole way. My new discman (which means I get to listen to cool music at work, instead of statiky shit) might have had something to do with it, but the major factor was the fact I wasn't frozen to the bone. I guess i'm not cut out for colder climates. Current Mood: Euphoric | | Saturday, December 11th, 2004 | | 1:02 pm |
FOR SALE
I have two IBM P200 monitors in perfect working condition. Price is $120/ea or $220 for the pair, assuming you come to Coquitlam and pick them up. I can deliver within reason to the Lower Mainland. I also have several with minor faults (dim corners, slight scratches and so on) that I am willing to let go for considerably less. Here's the specs 20" Trinitron tube (19.1" viewable) Fully Multisync (Works with various resolutions and refresh rates) Maximums : 2048 x 1536 x 60Hz ! 1600 x 1200 x 75Hz 1280 x 1024 x 85Hz 1024 x 768 x 100Hz 800 x 600 x 140Hz DPMS capable (Monitors understand power-saving commands) VGA PnP (Windows can identify make, model and capabilites, without an information file) Your $120 gets you a monitor, a 6' VGA cable ($5 more gets you a 10'), a power cable, and the video adaptor required to use these monitors (They've got Sun 3W13 connectors on them). If you are picking them up, you are more than welcome to see them attached to my computer before you buy them. This is open on a first-come, first served basis. People I don't know are welcome to contact me. Home Phone : 604 931 4850 Cell Phone : (Try this after home phone) 604 329 5878 email : monitors at skyhawk.ca Edit - WOW! 2048x1536! I had no idea until I tried it just now... And that's as high as my video card can run. |
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