Category: Rant

Break in

While I was mowing the grass on Saturday, I managed to notice that both the passenger side doors on Laura’s car were unlocked, and the front one was actually ajar. Since both Laura and Stevie were known to not lock their doors when they were passenger’s in Vicki’s or my cars (in much the same manner that fish are known to like to swim in water), I assumed that she or her friends had just been careless the night before. I somehow managed to miss noticing that the back window was smashed. Somebody evidently broke into her car and found nothing worth stealing.

I guess I should probably stop leaving my GPS, digital camera, film camera, kayak paddle, and flight bag with 3 expensive headsets, portable transciever and my worthless but irreplaceable log book in the trunk of the car any more. Not sure about the XM radio – yeah, it’s supposedly portable but that would be such a hassle to drag in and out of the car every night. The CDs can probably stay – they’ve all been ripped to MP3 anyway, and besides they’re all obscure crap that nobody would steal.

Back when I worked for GeoVision we had a tradition in the winter that the night of the full moon, we’d go cross country skiing in the dark up to one of the lodges there, cook some dinner, hang out for a while, then ski home. It was extremely cool. One day at work, the day after one of these ski trips, I noticed that there was no money in my wallet. No matter, I thougth, I’ll just head over to the Toronto Dominion next door. But somebody else who had been skiing with us asked if my car had been broken into last night. I said I didn’t think so, so they asked me if there was any money in my wallet. They suggest that I go down to my car and look for a small hole beside the keyhole. Sure enough, there was one. Evidently somebody had gone around to all the cars, punched a hole in the door panel near the keyhole and opened the door somehow, and stolen any money he could find in the car, but only money.

The next full moon came, and this time I decided to be one step up on the theif. I put my wallet in my bum bag so it would come with me when I went skiing, and left the doors unlocked so I wouldn’t get another hole in my door. However, I stopped for gas on the way to the parking area, and so my wallet made its way from my bum bag to my work pants, so didn’t come with me on the ski. I came back to find my wallet had been emptied once again. Buggeration.

Ok, that was getting ridiculous

After getting that error on the pt_comments table again, I went into mysql and tried a

check table pt_comments;

and it found an error, so then I did a

repair table pt_comments;

and it said it repaired it, but another

check table pt_comments;

found the same damn error again. So I shut off the web server (so I wasn’t getting hit with comment spams) and did a backup and restore of the entire mysql database, and the problem seems to be gone. For now. Maybe. We’ll see.

I don’t think MySQL liked the upgrade very much

Every time I go into my WordPress SpamKarma page, I get the following error:

Failed to purge comment spam entries.
Query: DELETE `pt_comments`, `pt_sk2_spams` FROM `pt_comments` LEFT JOIN `pt_sk2_spams` ON `pt_sk2_spams`.`comment_ID` = `pt_comments`.`comment_ID` WHERE (`pt_comments`.`comment_approved` = ‘0’ OR `pt_comments`.`comment_approved` = ‘spam’) AND `pt_comments`.`comment_date_gmt` < DATE_SUB('2006-08-14 11:36:26', INTERVAL 2 HOUR) SQL error: Incorrect key file for table './wordpress/pt_comments.MYI'; try to repair it

So then I go into mysql, do a “repair table pt_comments”, and repeat the purge operation and it’s fine. But some hours later, when I go back to the page, I get the same error. How do I repair this damn table so it stays repaired? Would doing a full mysqldump and restore fix it?

Server upgrade

I upgraded my server from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5 using yum. After going through all the .rpmnew and .rpmsave files and fixing configuration files, most things are working. A couple of annoyances:

  • It no longer puts items in /etc/fstab for usb storage devices, so I have to find what device the disk has been assigned and mount it manually. I’m hoping I can find a solution to that.
  • Can somebody please tell me why the people who wrap the PostgreSQL binaries in an RPM can’t figure out how to do a pg_dumpall in the %pre at the beginning of the process, and a restore of the backup in the %post at the end? The init.d script refuses to start up if you have an 8.0.x database on an 8.1.x PostgreSQL, so after the upgrade you have to go “oh, shit, the last backup I made was …” and restore it. If you’re not the sort of person who dumps the database every night to a file on your USB disk, you’re screwed.
  • WordPress was refusing to clear out comment spam because of some index issue, and then claimed that the table had “crashed”. I had to fumble around with mysql_upgrade, mysqlcheck, and myisamchk to get that straightened out.

So far, knock wood, those are the only issues. The PostgreSQL one is, to me, indicative that the Fedora Core team don’t really care about preserving data. I haven’t tried, but I bet you anything the Debian people don’t just say “oh well, if you didn’t back up you’re screwed.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I went for a flight today. The main reason was just to try out my new HALO headphones. But the other reason was that it has been a beautiful weekend, only two of the planes have been booked for a few hours each, and I didn’t get my flight to Oshkosh. The maintenance coordinator for the Lance has been his usual uncommunicative self, so I had no idea if it was back from maintenance again. I booked an Archer instead. When I got to the airport, the Lance was there, but when I attempted to change my reservation the ScheduleMaster site was throwing ASP errors. Oh, what the hell, I can fly an Archer can’t I?

While I was waiting for the fuel truck, there was a guy taking delivery of his brand new Diamond Star DA-40. What a beautiful plane! Wouldn’t mind having one of those on the flight line.

I started the plane up, and found that I wasn’t getting any sound in my right ear with the new headset, so I switched over to my old familiar Dave Clark DC10-13.4s (with the Headsets Inc ANR kit). Take off was faster than I’m used to – these Archers are lighter than the Dakota and Lance that I’ve been doing all my flying in. I didn’t have any plan, so I just headed out due west. By the time I got to Batavia, I decided I needed to get the wind farm waypoint back in my GPS, so I headed down in the right general area until I spotted it. And after I got that waypoint, I decided I needed the railway trestle in Letchworth Canyon as a waypoint as well, so I headed down that way.

I was in smooth air with the plane trimmed for level flight, so I thought I’d give the HALOs another try. I put them in, and had the same problem with them as before. But this time I remembered that they have a Mono/Stereo switch. The guy demonstrating them at Oshkosh had a stereo intercomm, but the plane doesn’t. Switching it to Mono cleared that problem up immediately. At first they didn’t seem like they were blocking out the sound very well, but the foam expands pretty slowly and after a half a minute or so they were blocking as well as the Dave Clarks, if not better. It seems like they were blocking different frequencies though. The engine sounded different.

After I got to the trestle, I flew up the Letchworth Canyon. While I was going up, I decided to have some fun and tried turning to follow all the twists and turns of the river, like you see those “low and slow” guys doing in their Cubs and float planes. Of course I was at my usual 4,000 feet. But along the way I thought about my usual ground shyness. If I was going to fly the twists, I might as well try to fly a bit lower. Not down in the canyon of course, but at a nice legal 500 feet above any people or structures. So when I turned to head down, I was down at 2,000 feet, which is probably actually more like 1,000 AGL. Hey, small victories, right? The ground rises towards the trestle, and I crept up to 2,500 feet. It was fun.

When I was in the area, I thought I’d do some touch and goes at Perry-Warsaw. There was practically nothing on the CTAF except a bunch of guys with thick Pakistani accents talking from some place near Toronto I think. I don’t know if it was the narrow runway or what, but I found myself quite high on final both time – the first time I had to slip like hell to get down. And the second time was better, but I still landed pretty hard. I quickly switched the radio over to 121.5 to make sure I hadn’t turned on the emergency beacon (ELT), and was relieved to find it wasn’t quite that hard. That was bad. After that, I decided to come home.

I wasn’t high or anything, but I still have problems with speed control on final. I rounded out, but was a bit high, so I put the nose down a tad, but almost immediately lost all lift. I bounced twice. Oh, that was ugly. Once again I checked the ELT, and it wasn’t on. Phew.

As I was tying down, the DA-40 was coming in. It’s such a nice plane, and I think the fully castering nose wheel would be really handy for ground handling.

I still want to go out in the Lance to try the HALO. Maybe next week.