Category: Rant

Oh, I give up

I’ve been reading Slashdot since the very late 1990s. But as of today I just unsubscribed from its RSS feed. It is probably long past time. The comments have been unreadable for 4 or 5 year now, but I kept up with it because the articles had some merit, or at least most of them did.

But today was the last straw – first there was an article that was going all hysterical about the changing of the runway numbers at Tampa airport, suggesting it had something to do with the recent bird deaths, and/or with the ridiculous and easily discredited “Pole Shift” rapid magnetic pole shifting hypothesis. Then if that wasn’t too crazy, there was another story, this time asking what equipment would be useful in a ghost investigation. So much for “News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters”.

Sorry, I know a number of people who believe in ghosts, and people who watch those ridiculous “ghost investigation” shows, but it’s neither news nor technology.

Computer problems

My laptop’s Airport (wifi) is kind of flakey. It reports a good connection and gets a proper IP from DHCP, but then stops being able to talk to the rest of the network. I’m able to keep using it because while it’s at my desk I can plug it into the wired network.

But the laptop is still covered by AppleCare, at least for the next 60 days. So I should bring it in to get it fixed soon. But I can’t leave it at Apple because every day it’s away from me is a day I can’t work. So before I can take it in, I have to figure out how to do my work from my old Linux box, or if that doesn’t work, where to borrow a Mac to work on.

Let’s see, to do my work on a Linux computer, I’d need the following things that I don’t currently have:

  • speakers (I think I have some around, I’ve just never configured them)
  • microphone (I’ve never installed one on Linux, that could be tricky)
  • Skype
  • Dropbox
  • Chrome
  • Remote Desktop Client (if such a thing exists and works)
  • VirtualBox and a Windows environment (which might take care of the Remote Desktop Client)

That will probably be enough to get me going. But it’s obviously not as nice as having my own MacBookPro, or even a loaner machine that I’ve cloned my TimeMachine backup onto.

Saying goodbye

I had my last physiotherapy appointment before seeing my doctor again. We discussed my options and it looks more and more like surgery will be my only hope. Even if it isn’t, I’m basically looking at six months before I can paddle again, and then I have to start getting back into shape. So there it is in front of me – I’ve got no season this year. Even if I manage to paddle a few miles, I’m not going to be racing, and I’m damn sure I’m not going to do the 90. I hope Doug and Mike don’t mind having me as pit crew again.

But even though I don’t know anything now that I didn’t know yesterday, last week or last month, even though I haven’t talked to the surgeon, I still find myself feeling very depressed. I suppose I should take solace in the fact that unlike my knee pain, my hip pain and even my elbow pain, this one has a definite cause and a solution.

So, so long kayak season 2011, so long Adirondack Canoe Classic, so long Long Lake Long Boat Regatta. So long Wednesday night time trials and Tuesday evenings out with the team. So long erging in Steven’s garage and Doug’s attic and coaching sessions with Dan. I’ll miss you all, but I’m going to do everything I can to come back stronger for 2012.

Random updates

I’ve been tending to write lots of short updates on Facebook instead of long posts here. So here’s a few updates.

My shoulder hasn’t been improving with physiotherapy, although I have regained my range of motion. Friday, Saturday and Sunday it was so sore I couldn’t even do my physio exercises. Worse still, on Saturday it was both shoulders that hurt. The therapist and I did some stuff on Tuesday to see if we could figure out which of my exercises is doing it, but I suspect it’s none of them – although driving for an hour and 45 minutes seems to make it worse. Oh well, I see the doctor in the first week of January – maybe I can get on the surgery list fast.

A few days ago, my project manager Nikola asked me when I was coming in to work. He didn’t say why, but I figured I knew it was one of two things. It turned out to be the good one of the two – he asked me if I would like to become a permanent employee. As a contract programmer, the permanent offer can either be awful or it can be awesome. On the plus side, permanent employment can have benefits, paid time off, sick leave, 401(k), and a sense of belonging. With Vicki wanting to retire in a few short years, a job with benefits will probably be a good thing. On the other hand, a permanent offer can mean lower wages, no paid over time, pathetically short vacation time allowance (US companies think nothing of offering a 50 year old senior developer 2 weeks paid vacation, or even worse, 15 days “time bank – which means you only get your full vacation if you manage to not get sick or you drag yourself into work and spread germs), putting up with sometimes annoying corporate rules (although that doesn’t appear to be too bad with this company) and if you don’t accept it, they drop your contract. So I’m waiting to see the offer with mixed emotions.

On the other hand, today I was a bug fixing *machine*. I had a ton of bugs assigned to me, some because the guys who normally take care of those areas weren’t around. And today I knocked off 5 of them, which is pretty amazing when you consider that I spent at least an hour filling in the various stuff that’s required to progress the bugs through the horribly inefficient bug reporting system. (I’ve suggested FogBugz, or at least Bugzilla and Jira.)

The drive home kind of sucked – freezing rain/sleet which didn’t stay on the windshield, but which did accumulate on the windshield wipers requiring me to stop a couple of times to clear them off. At least the roads were well sanded and slurried.

That can’t be good

After rebuilding the RAID on my colo box, the drive started reporting “50 offline uncorrectable sectors detected”. I figured I’d keep an eye on it and see if things get worse. A few weeks ago, I also started seeing “1 unreadable sectors detected”. Then a few days ago, the “50 offline uncorrectable sectors detected” went away, leaving just the “1 unreadable sectors detected”. Yesterday, I got a couple of “media error” reports and now it’s saying “2 unreadable sectors detected”.

That disk is a 1TB drive with 3 partitions – one swap, one used for /var/lib/xen (which is really only used on reboots), and one for the software RAID. I have a 2TB drive ready to go. What I’ve done is make 3 partitions exactly the same as the existing 3, and leave the rest of the disk open for expansion. I think what I should do is make the 4th partition of type “fd” (Linux raid autodetect) so if the first disk ever gets replaced with a 2TB disk I can add a second RAID to the first one.

I’m going to have to find some time to swap the drives. I wish I’d made note of which types of screwdrivers I need to open things up – unlike the old box, on this box the drives aren’t on convenient sleds.