I am a TESTING MACHINE here at National. Yow! Test test test... needless to say, testing has always been my least favorite activity. I guess this is some kind of bad karma coming back to haunt me.
On the bright side, familiarity is making it a tad bit less horrible. And the fact that I'm testing OTHER people's code and not my own.
Speaking of Badness, I guess I annoyed someone with my last post. Oh well. I went and censored it a bit... though my first reaction, being the annoying little shit that I really am at heart, was to do a big flaming post here to make them REALLY miserable. Somehow I often am able to restrain these evil impulses... not always, and that certainly gets me in trouble, but often.
Speaking of Testing, I ran some memory tests overnight and I *think* they indicated errors, but damned if I know what I'm doing... so I changed the settings so they made more sense to me and I'm running them again while I'm at work. If there are errors, then I get to play memory stick roulette to see what is up.
I hope its the memory, because otherwise I have to look at all of the OTHER hardware, not to mention all of the other drivers. And since the failures are intermittent (none some days, half a dozen others), we aren't looking at a fun time there.
There are some noises on the housing front, too... we may have a change in situation this year, but I don't yet know what. But when I do, y'all will be the third (or fourth) to know! After, umm, me, Marla, and our landlord.
I clearly don't get enough sleep these days... at least, I sure miss my after lunch and/or 2:00 nap.
... wha?! Oh, yeah. Journal. Hi.
The Journal won't be appearing on the recently edited box on the right of the main screen until/when I put it back under the TWiki umbrella again. Hope y'all can stand it.
What is today, Tuesday? I'm tired, so I guess this is Tired Tuesday.
W.Eng (name suppressed due to a snippy e-mail from one of the principles; doesn't want a Google search to show that things may not all be beer and skittles there) is having problems with some stuff... of course, they went and fiddle with a BUNCH of stuff, much of it relevant, and now they are in a panic. Of course, with my system problems, nothing is available for my poking at it -- no compiler, the CVS tools, the source code, nothing. Fortunately, I have the environment backed up and I can re-install the tools.
But who has time for this?! Ugh. And of course, my computer keeps dying. It's an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error, or something like that (typed from memory). Means a driver is bad, or some hardware is bad, or an update is bad... really, it's a non-specific "I'm Messed Up" error.
I'm thinking the on-board IDE controller, since I put the new boot drive on that, and that's when this specific damage started. So I'll try moving the boot HD onto the RAID; it has extra channels, so what the hell.
It's got to be better than the "repair computer with sledgehammer" approach I'm often inspired to try.
I'm in the coffee room getting hot water for my tea. Some guy is there making his coffee so, being the chatty guy I am, I say "what would we do without coffee?" A valid statement, I think -- I *must* have coffee, not for the caffein but for something else in it, not sure exactly what. But I drink tea during the day after my morning espresso, because too much coffee makes me tense.
But I digress.
His response was, "There would be a substitute. There's a substitute for everything, including yourself and myself."
Deep thoughts for a Monday morning.
Ooh, and I will be starting some book research with my father and another friend, one that may go a ways towards shaking up the world a bit. Can't talk about it, but it will be quite the amazing bit of work when it's done.
Okay, I'm sick of the delays... I think it's the TWiki taking it's own sweet time on the includes. So the Journal link now jumps straight here! Sure, it doesn't _look_ like the rest of the site, but I think the improved speed more than makes up for it.
I may go back to the old way once I have time to mess around and speed up the links.
Do you play with LEGO? Do you want to go to the __next level__ with your toys? Are you insane?
Good! I thought so. *YOU* (yes, you) need to go to http://www.lugnet.com and then your life will be complete.
Something is wrong with my computer. Sure, I only paid $500 for it (I'm cheap, so sue me), so I don't expect all that much from it. But it's taken to rebooting at random times, without even decency to throw up a blue-screen. It went down six times Wednesday as I was trying to wrap up Chapter 9... I was about ready to burst a gasket.
Damned machines.
Work has been fairly busy this week, what with testing and some of the research and documentation I've been doing. Seems there are some gaping holes in our design documents, and I've taken it upon myself to try to close them.
After all, I'm a world-renowned technical author, aren't I?
This, of course, leaves less room for Journaling, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I do need to poke my nose in hear more often, though. Yesterday I had this thought, "I need to put that in the journal." Today, I've forgotten it. My mind certainly isn't what it used to be, if it ever was.
It does look like I'll FINALLY be able to finish chapter 9 today, though, and send it off tomorrow. Chapter 10 is easier, it covers electronics again. Chapter 9 is up go 25 figures, which is a LOT if you consider how much time it takes to create them! The LEGO CAD programs, MLCad and LPub, are *great*, but it still takes time.
Oooh, did I mention that I'm director of Haunted Trails this year? Maybe that is what I was forgetting... I could go back an d check to see if I wrote about that yet, but heck, I never read what I write if I can help it. Just like I don't like to see myself on video.
Anyway, I'm director of Haunted Trails 2004 (official food: Cheesy Poofs). It should be a blast, and this trail should be the most intense yet. I expect to get complaints, in fact.
I won't put the theme up here, in a public place, because I have some vague hope of having some surprises and twists in it that would be spoiled by people reading about it here.
Just thinking about it all gets me all excited again. Woo!
Hmmm, on the new server everything is very snappy... except the journal view. I may have to do some research and find out what is taking all of that time.
Feeling a bit frustrated today, work related, I'm sure it will pass.
Today I'll be taking another Anthro test; while I like the structural bits of anthropology, the names and dates grow tiresome very quickly. Of course, I've _always_ been mostly just interested in how things work.
Well, time to go back to work and try to justify my paycheck...
At least I'm not stuck in panic mode like the rest of National, as they scramble to iron out the last wrinkles in this release. All software development cycles seem to be the same -- placid development followed by frantic finalization.
I suppose it would help if software engineering was an actual _engineering_ task. I suppose some aspects are, but for the most part the process of creating of complex software systems is not well defined.
Well, Thursday I learned the first four steps in the Tai Chi stick form -- pretty simple stuff so far. Made a few odd muscles sore through repetition.
Friday's dance class was enjoyable as always. Next week we begin a new cycle, with Waltz and a second-level East Coast Swing. Should be fun!
Did some work on Chapter 9, Power Transmission, yesterday. It's going to be a good chapter! Long, too. I'm still thinking about joining with with 8 and perhaps then dividing it along a different line to balance them more.
Also spent some time thinking about the quiz questions.
I have some initial art for the cover on hand, but I don't know if I can show that or not... I'm thinking not. Don't want to ruin the surprise!
But I will be creating it into a birthday card for Nik... just after I write this, in fact. I'm only about a month late on that. Urgh.
Well, just another entry in this peek into the mundane and fairly boring life of me.
Well, that sucked.
Sunday I spent the morning sick and the afternoon, ummm, I don't remember anymore. Probably doing laundry or something. Reading.
Monday I got a cellphone again! I'm not gonna give you my number, though, unless you promise to just call evenings and weekends, when it's free. Hmm, for that matter, I need to find out when evening officially starts.
Dance lesson Monday was fun -- we are learning West Coast Swing, which promises to be fun.
Tuesday... was there a Tuesday? I don't recall.
And today.
Work still refuses to be thrilling, but then again, I hired on at the ass-end of a release cycle, so there really is little that I can do to contribute. So I do what I can, and hope things get more interesting once this crunch is over.
Writing in the book again! Whee! It's been AGES... and I haven't studied Anthropology in ages, either. I need to get my ASS IN GEAR if I want to make all my varied deadlines. Right now, it looks ugly, but I'm sure I'll pull it off.
I keep trying to get my author's copies of my AI Java book, but damn, I don't know what form of brain damage their shipping department has, but I keep NOT GETTING THEM.
Humph.
Okay, this is getting annoying.
My computer was all patched up and ready to go this morning, so I started installing applications.
The LDraw suite came up in the queue and, for some reason, I trivialized my last bad experience with it. I figured I could make it work this time (last time it overwrote some system DLLs). So, instead of copying the folders across and manually linking them to the menus, I did the install.
Yup, it moved the system files across -- or tried. It would get them in on the re-boot.
So I trolled a bit to find where in the registry it was marked to do this action. I didn't find it, but then, I didn't look that hard.
Cleverly, I thought, I would foil its plans and set System32 to read-only! Woo! I are smart!
Not.
It turns out that the boot process REQUIRES write access to some bullshit log under System32. Blue screens without it. Can't boot in safe mode. Can't even boot off the CD to get a console!
Bastards.
So. I finally get the CD to boot, and I try for a repair. Starts out okay, but it's all confusing since I have two drives each with its own version of windows, and no way to discern which is which at the start. To make matters MORE FUN, the drive letters get swapped around, so my guess is wrong. Did I mention recently how much Windows bugs me?
So that didn't work. I unplug my RAID card so there will be NO CONFUSION.
That drive isn't boot capable. Won't find the OS, refuses to even try to check the boot track. But when I ask for a re-install, it's plenty happy to notice and then delete the existing windows folder.
Bastards.
But that doesn't work. Why? Beats the hell out of me! I started the install and then took a shower. I came back to see it was trying to re-start the install. Reboot. Can't find the OS.
Bastards.
Now I'm re-formatting. Hours (hours!) of dicking around in Windows lost. Ah well, writing is overrated anyway. Who cares if I'm a week behind again? I'll just take it out of my padding -- the padding time I was going to use to CLEAN UP BITS OF THE BOOK.
Bastards.
Yesterday after work I swing by Fry's (or darn, I had to go to Fry's again... heh) and picked up a cheap Hard Drive and a reasonably priced case.
The smallest HD I could find was 40G and $90. What happened to cheap drives? I guess $90 isn't really to bad at all, though it's funny that you can't find small drives anywhere. 40G is small! I remember when 40M was LARGE!
Hey, you kids, get offa my lawn!
Sorry. Having a geezer moment there.
The case is a cute box with lots of flashy lights and fans and a clear side panel... I dunno, a Scorpion RAIDMAX or something. The important thing is that it has drive bays inside, enough for all of my bits and with room left over.
I'm pretty sure the computer runs a bit faster, too, with this slick case.
So, it takes a couple of hours to carefully disassemble the old HP box and re-assemble it all in the new box.
The printing on some of those pins on the board was microscopic! I pulled out the handy 10x jeweler's loupe, though, and figured out where to put my power switch, etc. Us geezers are crafty!
So, another hour of dicking around with Windows, it's installed. Now my machine is a dual boot Win 2K,which is damned annoying, since I only want to boot on the new drive. I haven't found a way to convince the box that the old RAID pair isn't a valid Windows boot yet. Instead, I just set some flags to force it to boot on the new one without asking the user.
But somehow, someday, I hope to find a way to safely pull Windows off the RAID pair, just to avoid possible future mistakes.
I didn't have time to pull down the ten thousand or so (okay, I'm exaggerating) service packs and updates yet... I'll continue that on Friday. Then I need to re-install those apps that need registry support. But just a few. No need to go crazy.
Sigh. All I really want to do is write. All this other hassle is, I'm sure, all Microsoft's fault somehow. They owe me! I want my time back! Maybe I should get a Mac....
Nah.
I am NOT AMUSED by my computer at home.
It was working fine, I did a day or two of work on it, and then one night I hooked up the second hard drive so I could re-form my RAID array.
On power up, I get this message that the page file is too small or otherwise not sufficient to its task. That's annoying. Rebuilding the RAID should not have affected my boot disk... especially not the settings on it.
So I do a Windows repair. Reboot. Argh! The original BSOD I got at the beginning of this saga!
Somebody out there is sucking all of the life out of my computer, and I think the sucking is coming from the NorthWest.
Anywho, I've come to the conclusion that my RAID controller and Windows hate each other, and that having my RAID as the boot controller is not a good idea. With any luck, I'll remember to pick up a hard drive from Fry's on the way home today so I can create a nice, new, non-RAID boot disk.
Then I can keep my RAID pair as the data disk. That's all that really needs to be protected, anyway.
While RAID can protect against hardware failures, it aint shit against software damage... or incompatibilities with the RAID card, or whatever.
I just hope I didn't lose those last two days of work. Two days translates into nearly a week, after all.
Went to see my head doctor Monday. Insurance isn't helping with that cost, since he is out of network. With a deductable of $200 for his classification and an annual cost to me of about $160 there is no win with the visits. But the meds cost me $15 instead of $89! That's good! And when I run the new scrip through the mailorder meds company, that will be $15 for three months, not just one! Whee! Savings!
Finally, I need to upgrade my ISP service, mostly for this blog and the long delays involved in viewing it. But that would kick me from a cheap $15/month or so service to a far less cheap $55/month version... halfway to a dedicated server, even. About $600 a year! Ouch!
If I could make this site actually PAY something, it would be worth it. But it's mostly just a way to communicate with family, friends, and the readers of my books. So I guess, since it is essentially a business site for Simreal, it's still a tax writeoff... but I would rather buy books and tools than pay for services.
Still....
So I cancelled my stamps.com, saving about $10/month. Since I stopped selling stuff off the site, I really don't use stamps ever. All my bills get paid electronically. And I cancelled my eFax service, since I don't use that either. Another about $12/month. So the net increase for the new ISP level is, umm, about $18/month give or take a few dollars. Not _too_ bad.
Until then, get people to buy my books! And give me easy, money-making ideas! Yeah!
Yesterday I finished up some notes I was developing regarding the in-house training was taking. The training isn't done yet, but my notes are! I'll be meeting with an internal tech writer, so my thoughts can get piped into the final results.
I'm feeling useless at work again. The testing from last week is over, and I'm at loose ends. We do more testing again starting tomorrow, I think, so that's good.
I asked Gus to give me something useful to do, and I got plugged into the task of verifying some deferred CARs (corrective action reports). Looking at some of those, it only highlights the fact that I still have very little idea of what I'm doing here. It's frustrating. I need code to write. Something to get me into the action...
On the home front, I did get the Simreal taxes worked out. Thankfully, my expenses and amortized deductions balanced out the income, so it won't damage my personal tax picture any more than it already is. Next weekend, taxes, bill-paying, and a test of my budget to see how it's working.
I got a great start on Chapter 9, Power Transmission, this weekend. It will be a larger chapter, as opposed to the tiny Chapter 8, Joints. I was thinking of merging the two, but that would make a huge chapter... so I don't know yet.
Haven't really had any action from my reviewers yet, but I do hear that they are looking at stuff. It's hard to find the time to review, I understand. It's certainly hard to find the time to write!
Thursday I felt terrible -- headache, general overall nausea, the works. Crap. It was awful. I suppose my stress explosion on Wednesday contributed, but the allergens in the air had gotten out of hand, too.
So I missed Tai Chi. Went home a bit early from work and napped. When I got bored of napping, I laid on the couch and read. Big Potato.
Friday I was all better.
The testing last week got easier and easier as I figured out the landscape a bit. So that wasn't so bad.
Friday evening, before dance lessons, I got my computer working again. A little Windows installation repair, and it's all good. I also did a defrag, a checkdisk, and I burned my data to CD. Just to be on the safe side. Tomorrow, I'll hookup the RAID again to get my redundancy back.
I love the RAID-1. When things go bad, I unhook one drive and can mess with the other as much as I want... I have a backup! Saves a lot of stress.
Today I sent out the belated Chapter 8 and got a few pages written in Chapter 9. Tomorrow I need to start calculating my taxes. Ugh.
Of course, I haven't gotten a 1099 from Wittlock yet. That won't help.
I was going to say more, but danged if I can remember what.
Yep, that's the noise that Marla heard last night when my head exploded. Damn, it left a mess too... brains and blood and bits of bone scattered all over the office. Yuck. Those stains are never going to come out.
Let's back up a few minutes in time.
There I am, happily (or tiredly, if you want true accuracy) wrapping up Chapter 8. I've saved the text and now I'm inserting the figures into the document so I can create an illustrated PDF form my reviewers. Easy task, no problems.
Figure 8 doesn't draw after I insert it. Neither does 9. Hmmm. Looking at the TIF in a different program, they are fine!
Okay, be that way. Windows has gotten tired and maybe needs a swift boot the head to wake it up again. I'm happy to oblige.
After initiating the restart sequence, I wander off to see if I can find my signal generator. I find it and discover it has a 2MHz max frequency, not quite what I wanted for my test at work.
Wandering back to the computer, it's stuck at the "Applying security policy" step. Is that on shutdown or startup? Beats me!
So I poke it... Ctrl-Alt-Del. Nothing. I poke the power button. Nope, not awake.
I lean on the button. Blip! Down.
Reboot.
Blue screen of death! Aaaa! Something wrong with the boot device!
Reboot! BSOD.
Boom! My head explodes.
My disembodied spirit is writing this from programmer hell, that place you go when your computer is broken and you can't finish your job.
Yesterday was a testing thrill, like a roller coaster.
1. Gaah! What is this test? How does this board work, where do I find pinouts, where in LabVIEW is the functionality for this test? Gaaah!
2. (ten minutes later) Oh, that's kind of neat.
Repeat until insane.
I don't like operating in an environment where I don't know what I'm doing -- which is exactly where I am now. Slowly, though, I'm adding data points to my small but growing set.
Hopefully today will be less scary, since I at least know the standard operating procedure. So far, it mostly includes finding an expert and bugging the hell out of them.
Yesterday, Monday, I actually got to do something useful at work! And today I should be doing even more...
On the weekend we did a bit of catch-up shopping. After two years of limited (read: no) cash flow, things fell behind. So we are catching up. Nothing to stellar, but it takes time.
So I only got four or five pages into Chapter 8 (mechanical joints) written. Not so good. I hope I can work my brains out tonight and Wednesday to catch up!
Yesterday was a test day here at NI, so I was paired up with Amaury (what a neat name he has!) to learn the ropes. It wasn't so bad, but then, he knew what he was doing.
Today is another test day, and I don't know yet if I'm to go solo or work with Amaury again. Soon I will know! For now, I'm resetting the test machine using the Ghost utility.
Ghost is neat; it takes a bit-level image of your hard-drive and will splat it back onto the platters anytime you need. Good for resetting a test machine.
As for the memory part of the title, February 19 was my son's birthday and I was so immersed in the trauma of having a real job I completely forgot! I'm sure that makes me a bad father, but what can I do? I get focused on things and the rest of the world fades away.
Now I'm trying to get a hold of him and see what he wanted, er, wants. After all, I have some cash flow again, I can __do__ birthdays finally. But he's... umm... fifteen now and is getting something of a life himself.
Maybe we can connect this weekend
Anyway, if you are reading this Nik, Happy Birthday! And let me know what you do these days and how I might contribute.
It's tough begin 2,500 miles away from your only son.