Astropolitan

Dog walking

The Flat Earth

The Earth can be any shape you want it
Any shape at all
Dark and cold or bright and warm
Long or thin or small
But it's home and all I ever had
And maybe why for me the Earth is flat
Friends have often asked me why
I'm sensitive about my height
I would look around and say
Hmm, I thought I was immune
All my life I have waited
to be given any word
It was screaming to be heard
Please remember...
The Earth can be any shape you want it
Any shape at all
Dark and cold or bright and warm
Long or thin or small
But it's home and all I ever had
and maybe why for me the Earth is flat
Turn the island to the storm tonight
Then when they spill the demon seed
Turn and face into the wind
All along you still believed
Believed you were immune
And if love is all you're missing
Look into your heart
Is anybody home ?
Please remember ...
The Earth can be any shape you want it
Any in the world
But don't you point that raygun at me
I might just explode
There are stones buried in your soul
And only a fool would blame the death of rock and roll, uyeah
And in time you'll come to understand
The flat old Earth is in your gentle hands

--Thomas Dolby

Computers

Computers are really annoying sometimes. Honestly, I don't know how normal non-computer people make them work at all. Even having spent the last 20 years building/troubleshooting computer issues I still have moments where I want to throw the thing down the stairs.

The latest issues revolved around my 1TB software matrix raid problems. Most of the newer intel ICH chips support software raid. The problem is they don't do it very well.

I was losing the array and data, so I ended up buying an adaptec 3805 sata raid controller. I ended up building a raid 6 array.

I inherited some hardware, so I upgraded my video, processor and went to water cooling. That involved ripping the thing apart, and at some point yesterday one of my memory sticks went bad. I couldn't post for a while, and the error codes kept pointing to the video card...but in the end it was just bad memory.

Everything is running fine now, and here is my current setup:

E6700 @ 3Ghz: 1.375V, P35-DQ6, FSB, MCH, PCI-E at +0.1V, 2G MUSHKIN 996535: 2.2V, 5-5-4-12, @500 Mhz, 8800GTX ULTRA, Dual Dell 2007FP's, silverstone OP1000 psu, 6 x 250G ST3250410AS in raid 6 using the adaptec 3805.

Raid 6 uses 2 drives for parity, so I'd have to have 3 drives fail simultaneously before my data would be at risk. It wouldn't be a perm loss, though -- I use a 500G external drive and acronis imaging to generate boot and data images of my drives.

Raid 6 is slower than raid 5, but still reasonable:


I don't have any other benchmarks on the array because the initial array init takes hours and hours and I didn't feel like messing with it more than once. I built it with a 64K stripe size, but I might try something else to see if I'm bandwidth limited due to the parity calculations.

Beer

Californication

"Something tells me it's not going to suck itself, Hank."

Gun

Red

Back to the tank

I bought a 50G gas water heater and schlepped it home in the truck. It's never fun spending money when you don't have a job.

I also bought a whole house water filter. It was only like 60 bucks, and of course home depot didn't have the correct 'not included in the box' fittings to make it work. I had to order those online.

I bought the tank-less last winter on eBay for about $550. It going for $200 new now. What a waste.

Tankless water heater not so good after all

Some months ago I put in a tank-less water heater to replace my screwed up 40G gas unit in the basement. Tank-less is on demand -- it only heats water when you need it. It's more efficient (about 30%) and you get a tax rebate. There are some issues, though.

1) power vent required: Your old water heater, if it's gas, probably ties right into the furnace vent. New code might have a separate vent for the two items, but in my 10 year old house it's a combo deal. Tank-less water heaters run a power venting system and require a separate special vent.

2) Fresh air flow: You want to put the new heater right where the old one was, which is probably right next to the furnace. This is a no-go. The spec says something like 20 feet from your furnace, because they'll both suck a lot of air. This probably means running a new gas line and re-doing your water hookups.

3) high altitude adjustments: On my unit you need a new chip for high altitude. I ordered what the rep on the phone gave me as the correct part number, which of course it was not.

Probably the worst:
4) My unit has trouble detecting low flow, somewhere around 1 GPM. In the summer my COLD water comes in about 71F. When I take a shower, I crank it to hot to get it started, then back it off to what is comfortable. This creates a low hot water demand and the unit shuts off. After about 60 seconds in the shower you're freezing your ass off. This problem is made worse if I want the hot outlet temp HOTTER than the usual 120F. I want my water as hot as I can live with without scalding myself for the dish washer, clothes washer, etc. Hotter outlet means LESS hot water flow is required for the same heat input during this hypothetical shower, which only makes everything worse.

I'll probably just end up pulling it out and getting a new gas tank heater after all.

Coffee

I never really drank coffee until my late 30's. It started like wine did -- you drink something sweet, probably a white, for some time. Then, after a while, your tastes evolve into something more complex.

For a long time it was a mocha from Starbucks (the wal-mart of coffee, I'm told): sweet, full of chocolate, the non-fat version being about 220 cals.

I dropped that when I went on a diet. Lately it's been grinding at home, coffee in the morning. Very recently it's been unbleached filters and filtered water. Next I'll need to try a mill grinder, which I've read is much better than those whirling blades of death in typical grinders.

Yesterday I spent about 3 hours on a ladder spraying the house. I sucked in a fair amount of paint (never a good idea) but I am nearly done with the main painting part.

Studying is going ok.

True love

Dead Can Dance - The Host Of Seraphim

Job and diet

The diet is going well...I've lost about 10 pounds so far. I've been eating much better (counting cals) and the workouts at the gym have been great lately.

Yesterday I had lunch with Brett and his partners down at the patent law firm in Boulder. Everything seems fine for a job there later this month. I'm waiting on my college transcripts again for my re-apply to the PTO. Hopefully they will show up here in a few days and I can finalize my registration application and shoot for a mid month test date.

After the patent bar I'll work on studying for the LSAT which I could take in December. That will help me finalize my DU law application for 2008. I'm planning on the night class program, if I can get in.