I’ve heard of going out with a bang, but this is ridiculous…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550

AN INQUIRER READER attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.

Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: “The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes”.

Should you witness such an event, his advice is, “Don’t try anything courageous/stupid, stay away, away, away!”

Er… heh. Considering this was a Dell laptop, it makes me wonder about some of the ones we have here. Images of the laptop during and post explosion are on the Inquirer news story. :-)

Another meme stolen from Merrie…

D'Arque Bishop

1. Which curse word do you use the most? Bloody, believe it or not. (If you don’t think this is a curse word, you’re not familiar with Brits.)

2. Do you own an iPod? I have a 40 GB 3G iPod.

3. What time is your alarm clock set for? 5:15 AM, just in case I need to be up early.

4. How many suitcases do you own? One carry-on suitcase I bought from an OfficeMax nearly seven years ago for $10.

5. Do you wear flip flops even when it’s cold? I don’t wear them, period.

6. Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture? I’d rather be taking the picture.

7. What was the last movie you watched? The Towering Inferno over at Dave’s apartment.

8. Do you or any of your friends have children? Me? No. I have some friends with kids, though.

9. Has anyone ever called you lazy? Several people, and on several occasions. Heh.

10. Do you ever take medication to help you sleep? Nope… usually don’t need to.

11. Which CD is currently in your CD player? Relics of the Chozo, which is a remix collaboration of music from the game Super Metroid.

12. Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk? Regular.

13. Has anyone told you a secret this week? Not that I recall.

14. When was the last time someone hit on you? Er, I’m usually so clueless about such things that I have no idea. :-/

15. Can you whistle? Badly.

16. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Someone from our human resources division.

17. Do you think people talk about you behind your back? Very likely, and probably not all that flattering. It’s not that I’m down on myself; I just know people who don’t like MK Online tend to talk shit about it and those who work there.

18. Did you watch cartoons as a child? Did? I still do! (I wish they hadn’t cancelled Justice League Unlimited…)

19. There is no question 19?

20. Are you shy around the opposite sex? I’m shy, period.

21. Which movie(s) do you know every line to? Er, not sure, to be honest… heh.

22. Do you own any band t-shirts? I had an old Pink Floyd shirt and an old Jethro Tull shirt. I don’t have anything more recent.

23. What is your favorite salad dressing? Either honey mustard or (much preferably) caesar.

24. Who was the last person to make you mad? Probably someone from #mortalkombat or #tnl… heh.

25. Do you do your own dishes? Nope.

26. Ever cry in public? Nope.

27. Are you on a desktop computer or a laptop? I’m on my Powerbook G4 right now. My home machine is a self-built desktop PC.

28. Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoos? Uh… no.

29. Would you ever date someone covered in tattoos? Very likely not.

30. What did you do before this? I helped a user get his EDGE/GPRS wireless card working on his laptop.

31. When is the last time you slept on the floor? Hmmm… two years ago?

32. How many hours of sleep do you need to function? Five at a minimum.

33. Do you eat breakfast daily? Yep… cereal on weekdays and waffles on weekends.

34. Are your days full and fast-paced? Sometimes. It’s more feast or famine.

35. Do you pay attention to the calories on the package? Nope.

36. Do you use sarcasm? Yes.

37. How old will you be on your next birthday? 33.

38. Are you picky about spelling and grammar? Quite. If you’re going to express yourself, do it properly.

39. Have you ever been to Six Flags? I went to Astroworld several times, though the last time was back in 1993. I’ve been to Six Flags Over Texas once.

40. Do you get along better with the same sex or the opposite sex? I get along with both the same, really.

41. Do you like mustard? Preferably Dijon or honey mustard, but yes.

42. Do you sleep on your side, stomach, or back? I fall asleep on my stomach but wake up on my back.

43. Do you watch the news? Nope. I prefer to read it online.

44. One of your scars — how did you get it? I was running around in daycare, horsing around, when I ran full-speed into a younger girl who had just turned the corner; I hit her with enough force where my mouth hit against her forehead and my lip split wide open.

Gah, water overwhelming…

D'Arque Bishop

Today was not one of the better days around here.

I woke up very early this morning to the sound of heavy rain and thunder outside. I heard some barking outside that sounded like our dog Chase, so I peeked through the blinds to look at the front yard below. Mom was outside walking Chase in the yard so he could do his morning business… and to my shock, the street was flooded. I went back to sleep for a short bit, and then went downstairs for breakfast and learned what was going on. I later told Sean about it…

D’Arque Bishop: We almost had water get into the house. Thanks to all of the construction to the north of us, rainwater doesn’t get soaked up there like it used to and so it comes down our way. The water was nearly to our back door’s seal.
D’Arque Bishop: In fact, I didn’t even bother leaving for work. I’m at home now logged into the corporate VPN.
Sean MC: Oh god!
Sean MC: We were okay– wonder how dad faired? You know there’s got to be water in the DeHaas house then.
D’Arque Bishop: More than likely, as the only way we avoided water getting into the house was Bicycle Repairman springing to action and digging a 6 inch trench and drainage pipe.

For the record, “Bicycle Repairman” was our old nickname for my father. It came out from the old Monty Python skit where the superhero of a world full of Supermen was Bicycle Repairman. He earned it after coming out to fix our bikes one time after something happened to them while we were in some other neighborhood.

Anyway, I digress. The entire city suffered flooding, especially around where my office was. After getting warnings about the conditions from a few employees, I decided it would be best if I just worked from home today. Of course, it didn’t help that the main network circuit at the office died and we had to find a way around it. I’ll likely have to go in early tomorrow to make sure the makeshift replacement circuit is holding up, which is not a good thing considering weather conditions tomorrow morning are forecast to be the same if not worse. :-/ *sigh*

Oh, well. I can’t afford to work from home another day, as I’ve got too much going on at the office to even consider it. All I can hope for right now is that the weather will cooperate tomorrow morning and I’ll be able to get to the office with a minimum of issues. Here’s hoping…

Rebuilding servers is such fun.

D'Arque Bishop

Once again, another fun warning: this is probably going to be a long, technical, and likely not-very-interesting post if you’re not into computers and whatnot. If that’s not your thing, go ahead and skip this one. :-)

Anyway, I decided to spend this afternoon rebuilding Frost, the DNS server with the failing hard drive. For lack of an appropriate hard drive, I had planned on actually replacing it with my old Compaq Presario 1247 laptop. (A laptop as a server… imagine that.) However, I had to scrap that plan (or at the very least put it on hold) because I suddenly found that the laptop’s PCMCIA network card was missing. It’s probably at the office… *sigh* Anyway, while I was looking for it in the home office, I found an unused 8.4 GB hard drive sitting in a box. Now I didn’t need to use the laptop as a server… heh. So, this morning, I went ahead and shut Frost down, yanked out the defective hard drive, and put the 8.4 GB drive in its place. Then I switched the machine on, popped the install CD into the CD drive, and was ready to go.

… or so I thought, until I realized that the CD drive was no longer being detected.

At that point I took one of the spare CD-ROM drives we had, and popped it into Frost. This time the drive was recognized, but it wouldn’t recognize the fact that there was a CD in the tray. With no other option short of shutting down a working machine, I popped the 4X CD-ROM drive from Dad’s old Aptiva into Frost. Lo and behold, that worked… but then it turned out my Slackware 10.2 install CD was bad. I had suspected it while trying to load Slackware onto the laptop, but this only served as confirmation. Worse, the drive was old enough where it wouldn’t read any of Dad’s CD-RWs and my black CD-Rs had a lot of difficulty being read. I ended up having to make a run over to Office Depot to pick up a spindle of silver CD-Rs. Once I got back, I burned Slack 10.2 onto a silver CD-R, popped it into Frost, and was FINALLY able to get it up and running.

Of course, with it being a 4X CD-ROM drive, it took quite a while to get the OS installed. Then I had to get the kernel updated (for performance reasons) plus get the latest patches for the system software. I didn’t get finished until about 5 PM, which is about three or so hours longer than I had anticipated. Fortunately the machine is up and running now, and is pretty much in the same state it was before the hard drive had failed. Hopefully I won’t have any more problems out of it, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it just in case.

Now I can just have a beer and relax some. If only I didn’t have to go into work tomorrow and deal with the same kind of thing… heh. Ah, well…

Halfway through the weekend…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, I would like to say that today’s been productive, but unfortunately it’s not been the case.

Last night was actually kind of fun, because Sinc and I finally gave Dawn of War a spin in multiplayer. I think we’re getting used to the concept of having infantry squads as opposed to just singular units. It took me a little bit to get used to playing as Chaos Space Marines as opposed to regular Space Marines, though. Sinc played as regular Space Marines, and we ended up playing against a pair of CPU opponents: one was a group of Space Marines too, and the other was a group of Orks. We won by the skin of our teeth… mainly because Sinc couldn’t figure out how to get his troops around this obstacle he had put up for a long time. I came damn close to being knocked out… fortunately my base defenses held against the sea of troops attempting to take it. :-) I think we’ve found a keeper, especially seeing as it didn’t have anywhere near the amount of lag problems that Command & Conquer Generals had been having recently.

We ended up taking Dad for his Father’s Day dinner tonight at Outback Steakhouse. We never go to dinner on the actual holidays, simply because the restaurants get more crowded than we’re willing to deal with. The meal was pretty good, as always… though, I must admit, I’m starting to get burned out on Outback. One place I wish I could go to more often is Chili’s; however, Dad doesn’t like Chili’s, so it becomes a moot point. That’s one nice thing about travelling out of town: I can usually find a Chili’s nearby. Ah, well… maybe I can convince them to try something different next week.

Speaking of out of town… the flight home yesterday wasn’t the most fun one I ever had. I got to the airport, had a rather generic burger in the food court, and went to the gate at 4 PM… only to see that the 4:25 PM flight to Houston (the one before mine) was cancelled. Oh, boy. I checked Continental’s website using my cell phone, and it turned out my flight WAS still running, but that it was going to be a half-hour late. Sure enough, it was. *sigh* Oh, well… at least I didn’t have anything pressing going last night. All in all, though… next time, if I’m going to be going to Odessa, I’m going to eat before I get to the airport. The generic food there did nothing for me, and there’s several good places between the location and the airport. At least I got everything done there that I needed to get finished.

As for tomorrow… I might meet a friend for drinks after dinner (I’ve found myself roped into having dinner with the folks), and I still need to replace the hard drive on Frost (I actually found a spare I can use as a replacement here). Otherwise, it’ll be just another quiet day, which is just what I need, really. Ah, well… :-)

This has GOT to be a joke…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.openlinux.org/releasedetail.cfm?id=21370

LINDON, Utah, Jun 16, 2006 — The SCO Group, Inc. (“SCO”) (Nasdaq: SCOX), a leading provider of UNIX(R) software technology for distributed, embedded and network-based systems, today announced plans to release a new version of it’s former OpenLinux franchise in early Q4 2006, known under the renowned Caldera label, branded version 10 – or shorter “X”. These versions of OpenLinux Workstation and OpenLinux Server feature several technical enhancements and capture the best tools for Linux software development and deployment. In addition to these technical updates, each release features localization in English, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified languages. OpenLinux increases the overall availability of applications and critical data by including backup server facilities within its single, high-availability, fail-over operating environment.

“Caldera has always led the way in providing stable, reliable, tested solutions for our key Linux server markets, and this release of OpenLinux X follows that same course,” said Darl McBride, CEO and President, The SCO Group. “Regardless of whether you’re a small-to-medium sized business, a corporate developer or a reseller, Caldera OpenLinux X will deliver impressive, capable and powerful choices.”

To provide extensive reliability and performance features, the Linux Kernel 2.5 codebase has been merged with recently developed additions to SCO’s world leading UNIX core operating system. Already contained code owned by SCO is still included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent Linux kernel releases.

The decision to reanimate the very popular OpenLinux product series was made after it is evident that certain lawsuits regarding UNIX® System intellectual property and contractual rights are to be finished soon. SCO is eager to be the only future provider of Linux Systems for the enterprise market. Customers will again benefit from the high reliable SCO products, with additional XML and JavaBean support, at the low costs of a Linux System. As according to the Yankee Group SCO OpenServer products still outbeat Linux’ yearly uptime by about 20 percent, world Leading companies should still consider to upgrade to SCO’s UnixWare and OpenServer series.

First off… the 2.5 kernel? That was a fricking development kernel; we’re already on 2.6.15 by now, and 2.6 has been in use for well over a year! Secondly… they are, of course, assuming that they’re going to WIN their lawsuit. Anyone who has been keeping up on Groklaw would know that slowly, but surely, the suit has been leading towards a complete and total loss for SCO.

I wonder just who’s serving the Kool-Aid over at SCO sometimes…

EDIT: Looks like this is a hoax. Sorry, folks…

On the road again, as the song goes…

D'Arque Bishop

Well, right now, I’m sitting in a very comfortable room in the Hampton Inn in Odessa. I’ll be spending the night here, and heading back to Houston tomorrow evening. I must say, though, that Midland/Odessa isn’t really as bad as I had thought it would be. Granted, it’s still more or less the middle of nowhere (especially at the location where I’m doing my work), but it’s definitely a bigger city than Rock Springs, WY is. It’s a good thing I scheduled to be out for two days, as well… granted, a week would have been better time, but I think I can get this location more or less functional by the time I leave tomorrow. About the worst that’s happened is that I ripped my shirt on a chain-link fence by accident. That in itself annoys the living hell out of me, as this shirt (my tan long-sleeved shirt with the company logo above the breast pocket) is one of my favorite shirts.

Frost’s hard drive had another seizure overnight, and I can’t log into it remotely again. It’s still operating its DNS services with no issues (likely because all the information its hosting is loaded into memory), but obviously I can’t manage the machine. I’ve not been able to snag a replacement hard drive for it yet, so what I’ve decided to do is replace it with a new machine this weekend. I have one machine available that I can spare as a DNS server; I’ll rebuild it this weekend and put it in Frost’s place, then retire Frost. Ah, well… such is life, really.

Anyway… should go get a drink and consider going to bed early. I’m tired and need sleep. Oh, well…

Probable problems and upcoming trips…

D'Arque Bishop

Bleh. Yesterday while I was at work, I was checking my home email (as I didn’t have time before leaving work and I had gotten in a few minutes early), and I noticed that Frost (my DNS server) had failed to send its daily log report. So, out of curiosity, I went ahead and tried to log into it via SSH. No go; for some reason, Frost kept rejecting connections. Despite Sinc mentioning that it might just be sshd freaking out (as it sometimes does on his own server), I kept figuring that something serious might have happened. I wasn’t sure what it might be, though, as it was still responding to DNS queries without any issues. Anyway, I got home, and switched on the server monitor… to see the screen filled with filesystem errors. :-/ I powered Frost down and back up quickly, and it wouldn’t even detect the hard drive. Crap. I then powered it down for a couple of minutes, and brought it back up. This time the hard drive was detected and it booted. I’ve not seen any further hard drive errors, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve already backed up the DNS server configuration, and as soon as I can scavenge a small (4-6 GB) hard drive, I’ll take the old drive out of Frost and rebuild it.

Also, it appears I’ll be getting one of my planned trips out of the way this week. I’m having to go to Midland/Odessa on Thursday to bring the internet circuit up at the building our location there just moved to, in addition to setting up a time clock and getting some data off an old machine. It’s not exactly how I would have liked to spend the end of the week, but it’ll do. Heh, though, it IS funny… Malia mentioned that this trip should be a fun trip and not a business trip. My response was something along the lines of, “There isn’t anything IN Midland or Odessa!” I wouldn’t exactly choose to go there on a fun trip, really… it’s really the middle of nowhere. Ah, well… at least I can always take along a DVD or something to entertain myself while I’m spending the night there.

I picked up a new strategy game Saturday night while I was out and about: Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I wanted to try something other than Command & Conquer: Generals (which Sinc and I have been playing often the past few months), and I had heard Dawn of War was a very good real-time strategy game. Plus, I must admit, I’ve always liked the Warhammer 40K setting. (Those of you from the old days who remember playing Talisman have seen a couple of elements from Warhammer in that game, as they were both made by Games Workshop.) Right now I’m still getting used to it, especially with the fact that infantry is squad-based as opposed to having individual units created and manually formed together into units. Sinc’s getting used to it as well, but he’s a little more pessimistic than I am. Then again, I’d love to get a network game going where I can try out the Chaos Space Marines and put them through their paces. :-) Frankly, I wouldn’t mind switching to WarCraft III for our network RTS games, but that was ixnayed. Ah, well… we’ll see what comes up on the horizons. Hopefully the Dark Crusade expansion for Dawn of War will spice things up even more, especially seeing as they’re throwing the Tau and the Necrons into the mix.

As for me, right now, I’m thinking I’m going to turn in early, as I’m likely going to have a long day tomorrow. Fun fun…

Talk about mixing water and magnesium…

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/features/3964802.html

LOS ANGELES — Tonight host Jay Leno might want to consider wearing referee stripes on Wednesday’s show when Ann Coulter and George Carlin are his guests.

Coulter, the acid-tongued conservative with a new book out, and Carlin, the quick-witted, antiestablishment comedian who’s in the voice cast for the new animated film Cars, were booked at separate times for the NBC late-nighter, a spokeswoman said Monday.

But the duo’s meeting could produce serious fireworks for Tonight, which usually limits its political fodder to Leno’s bipartisan monologue jokes.

This should make for some interesting viewing… heh. I’ll have to remember to record it when it comes on.

And now, another example of, “I can’t make stuff like this up…”

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.bbkingblues.com/schedule/moreinfo.cgi?id=3420

Steven Seagal is a martial arts master who has gone on to have a successful movie career, starring in movies such as Above The Law, Under Siege and Exit Wounds. As a “blues fan”, Steven Seagal admires and has been inspired by some of the greatest musicians ever, such as Curtis Mayfield, Lightning Hopkins, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King and Robert Johnson. Mixed with world music’s strong influence, his “blues world” compositions appear as natural, subtle, and authentic.

I don’t know whether to chuckle or cry. Then again, Garret has apparently heard his music before, and said, “I’ve heard his music before. It’s not nearly as kickass as his movies. But… I guess it isn’t too bad.” I’ll take his word for it; I have no plans to travel to New York just to find out for myself. :-)