2007-11-11

Someone stopped me...

...dead in my tracks the other day, and asked me what it was that I wanted.

I don't know.

I've been living one-day-at-a-time, with no discern able goal to achieve. I know what I'd *like* - things that would be nice to have, and have had done. Material possession is far overrated, so the things I'd like to 'have' are more like a consistent stream of intangible elements, for what sense that that might make.

Here's a blast from the past; heard this on a mix CD that someone very dear to me, very long ago, gave to me. And she shouldn't have, because I'm afraid that I've wasted it. Which is probably why I get so hung up on what I want sometimes - I fear that I won't do right with what I'm given.



And for all that could have been...

2007-11-09

RRGHGHHGHGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGG

WAY TO FOLLOW FUCKING PROCEDURE.

GOD.

/burns down the building

2007-11-08

Greyed Screen of DEATH

I've heard things like this referred to as the SadMac, the GSoD, or as an old friend of mine once put it 'computer boo-boo screen'. Those of you with Windows boxen know this well - in your world, it's the Blue Screen of Death. Usually happens whenever you install a device with a bad driver, or an existing device decides that it's got a burning desire to shit in its pants.

On a Mac, it's the GSoD. Example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicole_hugo/104131302/in/set-72057594069989238/.

Prometheus (my MacBook Pro) decided to pull one of these, this morning, and it makes me rather uneasy. His clock has also not quite recovered from the government mindgame that is Daylight Savings Time. (Yes, NTP is set correctly, you fool - don't patronize me on this point.)

Windows boxes will go tango uniform on command. All you have to do is boot them, or try to use them, or do something useful for a change. And then, boom! Gone. Goodbye! No more machine. Sometimes fatally. With the Mac, it's a little more mysterious. This is only the third GSoD to grace my Mac-holding career. The first was due to a shorted jumpdrive. This time? This time, I was plugging in a mouse. And, bloop! Sorry! Time to go night-night. /death

After a reboot (which took much longer than expected - &cleanup(kernel_task)->gc(); anyone?), the mouse and MBP are playing fine. I don't get why that particular booted state was special, but the USB controller had just had enough, apparently. He seems five-by-five, now, but, beware! Beware the evils of unprotected peripherals!

That is all.

Victory, not vengeance.

2007-11-05

VS2 Conversion: Supplemental

OH MY GOD.

I DID IT.

BWHAHAHHAHAHA. 0803 EST - SERVICES ONLINE.

<3

VS2 Conversion: Hour Twenty-One

Oh lordy what did I get myself into.

So I take a legacy virtual server. And by legacy I do mean legacy. We have to keep this one x86 (not x86-64, mind you) box around to support a VM called 'Xaero' (zay-ro). It's a Gentoo linux guest that doesn't play nice on x86-64 chipsets. Makes the clock run about 1.6 times the normal second speed (so where on an x86 host 10 tick-seconds will go by in a 10 actual-seconds period, on an x86-64 host 16 tick-seconds will go by in a 10 actual-seconds period - this. causes. problems.).

Not a major deal. I've worked with Virtual Machines before. Ahaha. AHahhahahaha. Hahahahaha. Oh no.

So the objective is this: take VS2 (2x 1.0GHz, 2.0GB RAM, 3x 72GB RAID5 disk array, 3x NIC), and upgrade her from the ancient rev of the OS (SuSE 10.0, GSX server 2.2 - old) to the new and shiny, with a RAM and disk upgrade to go. Okay, so I'm modifying the array. I have to destroy the existing RAID container, which means, we make an image. We always make an image. But before I do that, I have to export the VMs.

Beginning at roughly eight AM yesterday morning, I began rsyncing 120GB of Virtual Machine data off of VS2 and onto MDS-BVS10. Not a major deal, right? Dedicated gigabit backup LAN, soley for the purpose of moving large amounts of data back and farth. Should be simple, right?

Yeah, it finished at freaking NOON. Four times longer than I hoped. This is when I went into the office to begin the dirty work - making the backup image of the machine. Again, dedicated backup network? Five hours. I got stuff done on the inbetween, mind you. Got a few other machines imaged, got a salesman's laptop squared away, even found time to grind my fishing up to a respectable point. Woo.

The time comes to begin the nuts-and-bolts. The VMs have been exported (and verified), and a backup image has been made (and verified). It's time to take her apart. Adding three more 72GB disks, and two additional gigabytes of RAM. Configure a new RAID container with 5x 72GB disks in RAID5 with one hot standby spare. No sweat. I have a lovely new 287GB logical drive. Perfect. Slicey, dicey. Installing Linux! An hour later, we have a box that I can administer remotely.

Now, why is this important? Well, you see, most computers have these fancy windowing systems. With Linux - in this case, SuSE 10.2 - you'd get KDE around here. And KDE is great. If you actually use it. But see, this is a virtual server. It has no real purpose with a window manager, so we opted to make it 'headless'. Don't get me wrong - it's a great idea when you want to squeeze every last drop of CPU horsepower out of a host. The VMware Server Console makes remote administration a snap. It's really cool.

It's the conversion from yester-yester-years virtualization that's going to be the death of me. That, and a blade server with a faulty NIC.

My gripe in all of this really comes down to: data processing takes WAY TOO LONG. And processing large amounts of data allows for the introduction of minute replication errors that build upon each other.

Xaero, for example, has two virtual disks. Both SCSI, one is 20GB, the other is 80GB. That's all fine and dandy. But we've upgraded, you see. We upgraded from VMware GSX 2.2, which is ancient, to VMware Server 1.0.4. This requires retooling a few components - in Xaero's case, his disks have to be converted to support the new VMware standard.

Yeah.

The 20GB disk took almost two and a half hours. Mathematically speaking, the 80GB disk should take TEN.

I DON'T HAVE TEN HOURS! I KICKED YOU OFF AT FOUR FREAKING AM, AND YOU'RE ONLY AT TWELVE PERCENT!? IT'S FIVE THIRTY! CHUG, MOTHERFUCKER. I NEED YOU UP AND RUNNING! YESTERDAY!

Ahem. Yes, don't get me started on moving a VM that does this:

Source checksum of disk-file-1:
c3371600dcd0e7ad9ad3841bf905ec35 MDS-PAG-CVS1-IDE-0-s001.vmdk

Target checksum of disk-file-1:
ce3cc9db76f4b164d38632f7a99cc78a MDS-PAG-CVS1-IDE-0-s001.vmdk

This is the part where you notice that the checksum for the same file on two different machines is different. The bytecount is the same, but the signature is wrong. Meaning the file is damaged. And given the amount of time it took to copy, it's going to be a long, long, long ni--... morning. Frak.

I just don't want to have to explain to people that Xaero or EPICenter are down because the disk is still converting. I'll get the standard issue 'Well, didn't you plan for time yardda yardda.' I did. I'd argue that the amount of time required to convert this data was completely misrepresented to me. I'd also like to point out that I can't exactly _cancel_ the operation and let you have the disk back. It's halfway converted from one generation to another. Stopping now means the data is lost. Lost as in gone bye bye where's-your-backup-tape gone.

Hey hey! She's at fourteen percent. Ugh.

On Basic Engineering Design...

So, occasionally, while at work, I'll do a bit where I watch a movie alongside whatever is compiling or transferring or whatever, because it's infinitely more amusing than plain and simple progress bars.

In the 1800s, George Cayley gave us the seatbelt - a harness designed to protect a rider inside a moving vehicle, should the frame come to an abrupt stop, or undertake any motion that may cause harm to the occupant.

In 1903, Ford Motor Company gave us the first widely-available motorized vehicle. Accidents were commonplace, and people were hurt. In a car accident, three collisions occur: frame-to-frame, occupant-to-frame, and occupant-to-occupant (by that, I mean your guts go 'skweeesh!' inside of you - never a good thing). Seatbelts are implemented here - maybe not in 1903, but eventually - to help placate the damage done in the event of a sudden impact. As of the late 1960s, seatbelts are not only standard equipment in all motor vehicles, but are also compulsory for all occupants in most sane places. (For the record, I have never had to unbuckle a corpse from a seatbelt - plenty of living, angry people - never a dead one.)

According to memory-alpha.org, the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E) is constructed in 2372. Under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, she took part in a duel with the Reman warbird Scimitar at the Battle in the Bassen Rift. At one point in the engagement, the Enterprise and the Scimitar make a head-long run at each other, wherein a void is cut in the forward bulkhead of the bridge. The unfortunate helmsman - a Lieutenant Branson was blown out into space through the very same maw.

And then it hit me.

Why the fuck wasn't he wearing a goddamn seatbelt? Simple piece of ballistic nylon. Across the lap. You could even have a stately little Federation Insignia as the clasp if you so desired. Make it magnetic, for fucks sake. Now, Captain Kirk, of the original (yes, the ORIGINAL) USS Enterprise had a claspy-lock thing that went across his lap during faster-than-light travel. Expanded upon, so did Captain Styles (Commanding Officer, USS Excelsior, 2285), as he trumpted his 'new incredible machine' into the graces of transwarp. So the COs got big metal and steal seatbelts that could probably cut your pecker off if you happen to have a hard on for superluminal speeds.

With regard to the aforementioned winky: "He's dead, Jim.". Obligatory. My apologies.

We've seen Kirk, and Picard, and Sisko, and Janeway, and every other captain in the history of Starfleet - and their entire crews - bounced around the corridors and decks of these gigantic, amazing vessels, which are equipped with replicators, and tractor beams, and matter-decompiling-transporters - BUT NO FRAKKING SEATBELTS? COME ON, PEOPLE. You can go faster than light, but you don't see the value in strapping the poor bastard into his chair? Let's ask Lieutenant Branson what he thinks.

Tea. Earl grey. Hot.

2007-11-04

Life always picks up...

Usually not in the way you expect it. Certainly not with a particular, universal method, either.

[ Warning: This post may contain surreal imagery, and make you think that I'm a complete and total nutjob. Please understand that I am. ]

This week will prove to be trying. A support in my superstructure that I've come to rely upon has other weights to bear. Part of building something with, and through your life is the requirement that you share the load. This one is particularly difficult for me to reach out and share, but I will always constantly do my best. They know this - I can feel that, and draw strength from the understanding. The distracting part is the constant feeling of having been sundered. It's easier to deal with than I thought - but I suppose that's what this understanding is supposed to do to you.

I'm at work, as I've missed two days and needed to play catch-up. It's not been fun. In waiting and watching progress bars, I stumbled across an Adama speech that gave me.. hope? Is that the right word? No. Resolve.

"This is the Admiral. You've heard the news - you know the mission. You should also know there's only one way this mission ends; and that's with the successful rescue of our people off of New Caprica. Look around you. Take a good look at the men and women that stand next to you. Remember their faces, for one day you will tell your children and grandchildren that you served with such men and women as the universe has never seen, and together you accomplished a feat that will be told and retold down through the ages, and find immortality as only the Gods once knew. I am proud to serve with you. Good hunting."

I'm doing nothing special in any of this, but it's nice to know that even somewhere in fiction exists a character who can appreciate having someone to rely upon. To mutually reach out and touch, and be touched in return. Mentally, physically, emotionally. It's galvanizing.

I can close my eyes, and let calm wash over me. Occasionally with a laugh. Sortof that same dumbstruck 'wow-you-look-like-a-retard' smile I've grown so used to. Because I understand that that's the mindset I must maintain to accomplish my goal: to find the edge, and to go further than I have ever before, because that is what is required of me.

Of Virtual Servers, and images, and laptops, and networking equipment? Of quotas, and market goals, and time-to-production? It sounds great, but none of it matters in the end. It's all just auto-pilot for me, now, for some reason. The higher brain is preoccupied with the analog.

And, really... damn... analog never looked so good.