Two Years Abroad

In the last few days...

2008-07-20T19:42:55Z

1) The motherboard on my primary laptop died, six weeks after the end of a four-year warranty. I cannot renew the warranty -- because Dell only offers warranties up to 5 years, only sells warranty periods in units of one year, and the laptop is four years plus six weeks old.

I bought a new motherboard to install. It's supposed to be on its way by now but I haven't heard.

2) My Mac Mini has repeatedly hung with CPU failures ("cpu #1 [of a dual core] has stopped responding to interrupts.")

3) My Drobo (NAS drive) died, taking every bit of data I own with it. It turns out there was massive filesystem corruption, taking ~10% of my files with it; the rest is being recovered with Disk Warrior.

4) The 120GB external drive I first used to try to make a backup of my laptop died (just a month old! Shipped back under warranty.)

5) One of the 300GB drives making up my Addonics tower has died.

All of this has happened since Thursday.

Don't read this blog entry -- my mojo might be contagious.

P.S. Performance of Addonics w/ Software RAID vs a RAID NAS

2008-04-20T01:28:18Z

Again, a USB2-connected (through a PCMCIA card) storage tower vs. a dedicated Intel NAS box.
The Addonics tower is using three drives, while the NAS uses 4 drives; both are RAID-5.

tdb@bow:~$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/AddonicsRaid/zerofile bs=1024 count=1000000
1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 198.193 seconds, 5.2 MB/s

real    3m18.889s
user    0m0.632s
sys     0m12.473s
tdb@bow:~$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/NAS/zerofile bs=1024 count=1000000
1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 1334.64 seconds, 767 kB/s

real    22m15.187s
user    0m1.176s
sys     0m51.887s
tdb@bow:~$

The NAS drive has gigabit ethernet but the server only has 100M, so that's a wash. For comparison, from another server to the NAS drive using wired gigabit, not much of an improvement due to the networking:

arrow:~ tdb$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/Volumes/public//zerofile2 bs=1024 count=1000000
1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1024000000 bytes transferred in 1111.925912 secs (920925 bytes/sec)

real    18m31.995s
user    0m4.679s
sys     0m57.112s
arrow:~ tdb$

Update: For completeness' sake, I did the same test from the other server to the shared Addonics Raid, and was surprised:

arrow:~ tdb$ time dd if=/dev/zero of=/Volumes/AddonicsRaid/zerofile4 bs=1024 count=1000000
1000000+0 records in
1000000+0 records out
1024000000 bytes transferred in 496.690487 secs (2061646 bytes/sec)

real    8m16.797s
user    0m4.571s
sys     0m54.870s
arrow:~ tdb$

So the complete matrix:

(times in minutes)	to Addonics tower w/Software RAID5	to Intel NAS w/GB ethernet
BOW, USB to Addonics, 100Mb net	3:18	22:15
ARROW, GB ethernet	8:18	18:32

Not what I expected to see at all.

My experience using Linux software RAID on my Addonics storage tower.

2008-04-18T18:23:19Z

Note: During this process, I emailed Addonics Tech Support for assistance, and in addition to their (quick) email response I received a phone call the next day to discuss the situation. Apparently this was a configuration they had not encountered before and so I offered to write up the results. (If you are not here for that technical information, now would be a good time to leave. :) )

Hardware:
  Addonics JBOD USB tower with four drives (2x300GB, 1x320GB, 1x180GB).
  IBM Thinkpad Pentium 3-M laptop with USB 2.0 served through a PCMCIA card.

Software:
  Xubuntu 7.10 with all updates as of 4/2008.

Goal:  
  RAID 5 with the first three drives (around 300GB each.)

HOWTO:
  http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/wiki/index.php/Quick_HOWTO_:_Ch26_:_Linux_Software_RAID.

Tools:
  /proc/mdstat
  /sbin/mdadm
  /sbin/mkfs
  /bin/dmesg
  /sbin/fdisk

Attempt 1: At first I wasn't aware that there was a lot of initializing to do for the array, and attempted to continue to mkfs as soon as the mdadm command completed. The mkfs repeatedly failed:


root@bow:~# mkfs -t xfs /dev/md0
...
mkfs.xfs: pwrite64 failed: Input/output error
root@bow:~#

...or ...


root@bow:~# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/md0
...
Warning: could not erase sector 2: Attempt to write block from filesystem resulted in short write
...
Warning: could not read block 0: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read
Warning: could not erase sector 0: Attempt to write block from filesystem resulted in short write
...
ext2fs_update_bb_inode: Illegal triply indirect block found while setting bad block inode
root@bow:~#

Attempt 2: Around this time I noticed that the CPU meter was still pegged even though I wasn't doing anything. Seeing mdadm still running made me look up mdadm's man page, which directed me to /proc/mdstat, which indicated the initialization was still proceeding:

tdb@bow:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid5 sdb1[3] sdc1[1] sdd1[0]
      586067072 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/2] [UU_]
      [===>.................]  recovery = 16.4% (48195320/293033536) finish=1010.3min speed=4035K/sec

unused devices: 
tdb@bow:~$

Eventually I noticed that the recovery percentage never went above around 2% (unlike the above sample, taken later) before getting back to a completed state:

tdb@bow:~$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid5 sdb1[2] sdc1[1] sdd1[0]
      586067072 blocks level 5, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/3] [UUU]

unused devices: 
tdb@bow:~$

This process took about 10-15 minutes. Since there were no error messages in /proc/mdstat or dmesg, I assumed that the work was all front-loaded and the "other" 98% of the work was trivial, like setting up a partition table, rather than calculating and writing parity blocks. However, the errors from mkfs didn't change, and the result was still unmountable. I also tried altering the partition type from fd (Linux raid automount) to 83 (plain Linux) but there was no effect.

Attempt 3: At this point I was starting to wonder if one of the drives had gone bad, although I wasn't sold on the idea because they had worked right up to the start of this process. Still, I repartitioned the drives to start at cylinder 100 (leaving the first 100 cylinders blank on each disk) to skip past any initial problem spots on the drives. There were still no changes to the error messages, indicating the problem did not shift geometry with the partition change, which in turn suggested that the problem was probably not physical.

Attempt 4: I emailed Addonics tech support. Though they had not previously encountered my configuration, within that conversation there was a clue that the creation of a RAID 5 array takes a long time ("3 500GB drives takes as much as 24 hours.") I went back to thinking of the mdadm command as the culprit, wondering why my initialization step terminated at 2%. Again, attempting to force some kind of change in geometry, I recreated the RAID array with the drives in reverse order: sdd1, sdc1, sdb1.

This worked. Completely. I was rather gobsmacked. I was able to create an XFS filesystem and mount it.

I have since repartitioned the drives back to use the complete drive geometry (20gb is wasted on one drive, shucky-darn) and everything is still working fine. I also note that the partition type (83 or fd) doesn't seem to affect the creation of the array, although it may have other consequences for mdadm and related tools (don't know yet.)

tdb@bow:~$ mount
...
/dev/md0 on /media/AddonicsRaid type xfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
tdb@bow:~$ df -h /media/AddonicsRaid
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0              559G  1.5M  559G   1% /media/AddonicsRaid
tdb@bow:~$ sudo mdadm --query --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
        Version : 00.90.03
  Creation Time : Fri Apr 18 10:56:23 2008
     Raid Level : raid5
     Array Size : 586067072 (558.92 GiB 600.13 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 293033536 (279.46 GiB 300.07 GB)
   Raid Devices : 3
  Total Devices : 3
Preferred Minor : 0
    Persistence : Superblock is persistent

    Update Time : Sat Apr 19 08:44:38 2008
          State : clean
 Active Devices : 3
Working Devices : 3
 Failed Devices : 0
  Spare Devices : 0

         Layout : left-symmetric
     Chunk Size : 64K

           UUID : b3c7a2c5:d065d41c:80d35bfa:21d4c790 (local to host bow)
         Events : 0.4

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0       8       49        0      active sync   /dev/sdd1
       1       8       33        1      active sync   /dev/sdc1
       2       8       17        2      active sync   /dev/sdb1
tdb@bow:~$ touch /media/AddonicsRaid/testit
tdb@bow:~$ ls /media/AddonicsRaid
testit
tdb@bow:~$

Et voila! A new use for those old drives. See next entry for relative performance measurements...

Is it 1984 yet?

2008-03-27T03:15:53Z

[full article from the Seattle Times is here]

The unsettling thing about living in a surveillance society isn't just that you're being watched. It's that you have no idea.

That's what struck me about a story told last week by a border agent at a meeting of 200 San Juan Islanders. He was there to explain why the federal government is doing citizenship checks on domestic ferry runs.But near the end, while trying to convince the skeptical audience that the point is to root out terrorists, not fish for wrongdoing among the citizenry, deputy chief Joe Giuliano let loose with a tale straight out of "Dr. Strangelove."

It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear "dirty bombs." They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident.

"Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour," Giuliano told the crowd. "Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]."

The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot (near the Bow-Edison exit, 18 miles south of Bellingham). The agent questioned the driver, then did a cursory search of the car, Giuliano said.

Did he find a nuke?

"Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier," Giuliano said.

He added: "That's the type of technology we have that's going on in the background. You don't see it. If I hadn't told you about it, you'd never know it was there."

The Importance of Weather Forecasts

2008-03-22T20:59:33Z

... or, How Not to Discover the End of Ice Fishing Season!

(via The Daily Irrelevant)

Aaaaaaaand we're back!

2007-11-20T01:35:06Z

Yes I am back home -- sharing living quarters with Laurie, eating like a pig, and consulting to start building up the bank account again. My life in a nutshell. :) Perhaps at some other time I will expand on that, but everything else is trivial (i.e. "it's all small stuff". :) )

The reason for reactivation of this blog: my thesis project has rather come to a grinding halt... many reasons but the end result is the same, and I am looking for a new topic. One which shows promise is something to do with the One Laptop per Child project -- which for those of you who may not have noticed, you can get one of your own, right now, for one more week. If you want one and don't live in the U.S. or Canada, let me know, and I'll order it for you and forward it. (Price with shipping to me is $423 ("Give one get one", you're really buying two of them; one goes to you and one goes to a kid somewhere) and I'll forward it for free.)

Anyhoo, I've got mine on order (so does Laurie :) ) and I've also got simulators up and running in VMware. Cool stuff, very different.

I'm posting this primarily to track some oddities about what I'm seeing so that I can track them down again later.

Some installations of a new VMware virtual machine result in a repeatedly crashing X server.


(EE) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument
(EE) AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI capable
expected keysym, got guillemontleft: line 823 of us
expected keysym, got guillemontleft: line 823 of us
expected keysym, got guillemontright: line 824 of us
expected keysym, got guillemontright: line 824 of us
(EE) FBDEV(0): FBIOBLANK: Invalid argument
/home/olpc/.xinitrc line 7: respeclaration: command not found [repeats for lines 8, 10, 11]
SetClientVersion: 0 9

** (sugar-shell:2157): CRITICAL **: _wrap_gst_mixer_list_tracks: assertion 'GST_IS_MIXER (self->obj)' failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/sugar-shell", line 144, in <module>
    hw_manager.startup()
  File "/usr/share/sugar/shell/hardware/hardwaremanager.py", line 88, in startup
    self.set_volume(profile.sound_volume)
  File "/usr/share/sugar/shell/hardware/hardwaremanager.py", line 65, in set_volume
    if not self._mixer or not self._master:
AttributeError: 'HardwareManager' object has no attribute '_master'

waiting for X server to shut down

The failure occurs (obviously) during X startup; the screen turns white, the X cursor appears... but about at the point where a working copy's cursor changes to the large arrow, the failing ones crash.

I've made about ten copies of this install image. Half of them worked, half of them didn't. The only fix I've found is to delete the image and recopy from the template.

I have four simulations running. One of them has created a shared document, two others are participating in the writing. In the fourth simulation's Neighborhood view I should see a document with three (or two, if the document counts as one itself) XOs clustered around it. I see the document but never the never see that many, only zero or one. This does not appear to have anything to do with whether one or the other has designated the viewer or the document owner as a "friend".

When one simulation attempts to connect to a shared document, sometimes it gets the correct document, but other times it gets a blank new document with the shared document's XO colors.

Something closes with a hard crash/coredump during shutdown/reboot. Can't tell what's doing it, though, the diagnostics are more than a screen long.

I don't know if these are artifacts of the fact that I'm running in a VMware simulation or not. We'll find out when the machine comes...

Other bits:

I still haven't figured out what "groups" are.

I want to find out more about the school servers.

OLPC has a job listing for a "Back End Engineer" that leads with, "Are you interested in problems of scale?" :D I've sent them a resume.

Why I Hate My Net Connection:

2007-06-11T00:20:22Z

'Nuff said.

Annnnnnnd IT'S OFFICIAL...

2007-05-02T21:50:32Z

I have earned all the credits and passed all the courses I need for the degree, other than the thesis itself!

[insert sound of Kermit the Frog cheering...]
Thank you, thank you... and I even have one extra credit (about 1/6th of a typical class credit) left over...

Received the last outstanding grade today. In total, a credit-weighted average grade of 7.8. I am very happy to report that of the 14 classes I ended up taking, I anticipate 9 having the strong possibility of being directly useful in my ideal job (whatever that is,) which is an even better rate than I anticipated -- vs. 50% -- and far higher than if I had taken any of the distributed computing degree tracks I saw in the U.S.

So I guess all this means that my time in Amsterdam is winding down. Like most transitions, this is both good and bad, but overall I'm looking forward to getting back.

Sorry for the long hiatus here but, while lots of things have been going on, none of them have been particularly new or noteworthy...

- First, of course, there are the typical winter doldrums which seem to be exacerbated by a near-total lack of sunlight for months on end...
- I took a visit back to NH in February just because I was feeling a bit homesick...
- Continuing struggles with Moxie's health, although I think she's turned the corner and is gaining a bit of weight back...

The exception to the rule: My thesis has started up! I am indeed doing the NEW-TIES related project in Scotland, and will be back and forth there a couple of times -- I've already gone once, but no pictures to speak of. I'll be staying for a weekend at some point and hope to get some shots then. In the meantime, for those interested in following the thesis in detail, there is a new blog at http://pdcs-ttg.livejournal.com/ which I am using to document events, milestones, decisions, etc. for posterior's sake.

But worth posting are these videos I took of Queen's Day celebrations two days ago -- I went out and bought some orange hair and saw some funny stuff...

First, a demonstration of the great respect and affection which the Dutch hold for their royalty:

And second, traffic jam on the canals!

From Batty to Evil

2007-01-10T18:52:58Z

I shouldn't be posting this because I have an exam tomorrow but I already know I'll be up late anyway... There's a news story I've been following because of some issues of personal interest to me, and I ran across some comments which were so jaw-dropping I couldn't resist exposing them to the light of day.

There's a deaf kid in New York who has gotten into a legal fight with his school about whether he can bring his new service dog to school with him (original story here.) Most of you know that I'm deaf in one ear and some of you know that my parents raise service dogs, so I'm pretty familiar with most of the issues involved.

I can understand why the school is unhappy about the dog -- they are worried about it being a disruption and a liability (both of which are ludicrous, and only expose their ignorance of service dogs - the mother, when asked about the dog's behavior during the heated argument, said, "He behaved himself impeccably, which is more than can be said for the adults, including myself, I might add.") and they may also be worried about the perception by others that this kid is getting special treatment by bringing a "pet". All of this should be fixable simply with everybody getting together and getting educated on the subject. There are other logistical issues around this -- what if some other kid is allergic, and apparently the school was asking for some kind of bureaucratic review which the mother didn't pay any attention to -- but the bottom line is simple: the dog needs to be with his person, and the law says the dog can be there. That's all, there ain't no more.

But I ran across a reference to this story on FreeRepublic today (the lunatic fringe right-wing site) and the comments on their story range from reasonably aware to "ignorant and proud of it" to downright evil.

A lot of people with hearing problems would really get angry to be called disabled. Kid has a pet he wants to bring to school, get over it kid.

I'm getting the feeling this mother is fishing for a lawsuit against the school (using current state and federal special education laws).

He is handicapped beyond mainstream and should be in a schools for the deaf. His mother refuses to admit she birthed a defective.

Admittedly this is a one-sided sampling, but it's the majority side.

I just wanted to take this moment out to thank my parents for raising me right. :)

Mouth, meet money. Money, meet mouth.

2006-12-16T22:10:00Z

I've been in Amsterdam for a year and a half now, and in terms of Dutch food I've primarily been exposed to snackish stuff:

french fries with mayonnaise-like sauce

the "cheese souffle", cheese wrapped in a packet of something which is sort of halfway between pasta and dough, then breaded and fried

and of course herring -- pretty good smoked, but that's hard to find in town and I can't get around the pickled ones which are everywhere.

and recently, poffertjes, basically tiny, slightly chewy pancakes of no particular taste other than they're served with a big hunk of butter and covered with powdered suger.

But I'd never really had any of the few "traditional" Dutch main courses. I've been rather put off, not only by the quality of the food I have had, but by their descriptions (as in here for stamppot specifically, or here for a general food review I posted this time last year.) And to give it a really fair test, I should go to a place recommended by a Dutch person, right?

Well, I broached the subject with a Dutch friend and he recommended a place called "De Keuken" (The Kitchen) at Spuistraat 4 near Central Station. So some classmates and I checked the place out. I, of course, neglected to bring a camera, but not everybody was as silly as that (thanks Ann!), so I give you stamppot:

click for larger image

Cook and mash some potatoes (no milk, just mash them up, and leave them chunky)

Mix in some chopped lettuce (raw, as opposed to the cooked cabbage I saw in the prior description)

Sprinkle with pieces of bacon (lots -- this is the only part of the dish with any flavor)

Add a hunk of sausage -- not spicy, not smoked, just sort of plain

Cover it all with a little thin brown gravy

Presto, stamppot.

click for larger image
See? Not as bad as I thought it might have been...

You may notice the two soda bottles behind me? 0.2L each -- together they're just slightly larger than one 12 ounce soda can. I could have gone through a lot of those... but they're US$1.75 apiece, so I restrained myself.

So all in all it was a good night, and the Dutch food was not as bad as I thought it might be. But "high cuisine" it ain't.

The "Heartbreak Hill" of the Masters Program: the Thesis arrives

2006-12-14T17:12:56Z

Well, I've narrowed it down to three topics to choose from for my masters thesis.

The first one offered would sound really good to the folks at Progress (if I cared about that, which I'm not sure I do.) It's about how to replicate a running database. Professor Friendly (not his real name :) ) has some theories along these lines about dividing up queries by matching them against certain templates and using these to allocate the queries among partial replicas of the database (subsetted by table) which can be generated or decommissioned dynamically based on load. I see this as possibly technically doable but with some pretty dramatic drawbacks in terms of real world use -- which means that the supposed applicability to Progress is actually a mirage anyway.

Professor Theory (see note about Professor Friendly) has offered me a straight implementation problem. He (or a friend of his, anyway) has developed and proven on paper a parallel algorithm suitable for reducing the complexity of state models so that the models can be more easily used to prove stuff (see the joke about the difference between a physicist and a mathematician.) He wants somebody to develop a running version of it. A mind-stretching problem (even fully understanding the problem and the solution is going to be some work for non-mathematical me) but one with little direct or visible applicability to much outside the theoretical world.

And finally, just today I managed to talk with Professor Busy's (ibid., op.cit., etc.) TA's research assistant's scientific programmer... who has outlined a need for a peer-to-peer dynamically scaling world state repository suitable for a bunch of evolutionary agents to run around in. I went to this professor originally because I was interested in evolutionary computing, but this project would touch upon absolutely no evolutionary concepts... but the dynamic scaling, load-balancing, neighbor-interactive nature of the project is also appealing. Also appealing is the fact that I do understand the problem and it's not databases. And that there's a reasonable chance it would involve (or at least let me rationalize) a trip to Edinburgh, Scotland, which has always been on my list of places to see.

I am leaning toward the last project -- I am tired of databases and not convinced that the templates/replication idea will amount to anything useful, and I'm not sure there's a whole lot of reward in understanding a mathematical project that really can't be used anywhere else. The P2P world state thing has its drawbacks too -- poorly (read: not) spec'd, some political shenanigans associated with this multi-university project, and I'd have to work a little harder to get it approved because technically the project is outside the PDCS department. But I actually feel some excitement about it, unlike the first two, which is not only a clue but important in its own right, right?

Wow.

2006-12-07T13:27:41Z

A little slow in posting for a bunch of reasons: first, Laurie was here for a week around Thanksgiving... always a good thing. :) We went to Cologne again and had real steak and soft pretzels... no, not together. Note for Philadelphians: yes, the street vendor pretzels there are based on the same recipe -- but the originals are fresh out of the oven and just wonderful. I had some two day old ones -- and those tasted exactly like Philly soft pretzels. :)

Then all of a sudden I had an absolute ton of work to do. A major graphics assignment to code, a research proposal to write, a 20-minute presentation to give, and one-page reviews of 8 other presentations, all due within a five-day span. Woof.

So the graphics thing I got done early, and the research proposal was easier for me than it apparently was for some others, once I found an appropriate topic. The presentation -- well, it's this afternoon; it won't be my best ever but it won't be bad.

And in the middle of this apparently I'm supposed to be picking out a Masters thesis topic. I guess I thought something as major as that would be something they'd set aside time and guidance for... silly me. I've met with one professor already and have another meeting with another in 15 minutes to talk about topics. A third, I've written to (a week ago) but heard no response. So I don't know what I'm doing yet.

One option is in database replication, which would go right along with what I've been doing for work for the last umpty-ump years -- which I'm not sure is something I want to do. The meeting today is for a parallel implementation of a theoretician's tool which I don't understand and don't care much about (the tool, not the implementation -- parallel algorithms are fun.) Option 3 is something to do with evolutionary computing, which is also fun, but I'm not sure how it would relate to the "parallel and distributed" meme. So we'll see.

But it's been nonstop work for a while. Last night I took a detour on the way home from school and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe; they have reasonable if pricey American food and, even better, they give you a decent size drink glass and refill it like an American restaurant. (In a Dutch restaurant, if you order a Coke, they bring out a can, pour it half into a glass (if they poured it all it would look silly because the entire can often doesn't fill up even the tiny glasses they have here!) and charge you two bucks.)

So I was sitting there looking out at canals and canal boats and listening to 80's American rock music and looking out at the 18th century Dutch architecture outside and drinking 7-Up and hearing people speak French at the next table and studying for a Masters degree.

Wow. Welcome to my Neverland life. :)

OK -- just one more idiot to go...

2006-11-10T12:49:56Z

While under ordinary circumstances I would favor a government split across parties, the R's have had it all their way for 6 years. I wouldn't mind a couple of years of straight Dem control to aid in the rollback of the most egregious excesses before sharing power again.

That said, I ran across this little riff somewhere today:

"Isn't it appropriate that the last two Senators to concede were Burns and Allen? Such comedians!" :)

Back to schoolwork...

IOKIYAR ("It's OK if you're a Republican")

2006-11-07T15:59:34Z

By now most of you know that the Republican National Congressional Committee has been running an election eve dirty-tricks campaign to get voters irritated at Democratic candidates across the country, including the NH-02 candidate Paul Hodes. Let's look at some details.

The NRCC admits to being the source of these calls.

The calls cover 20 races across the country.

The calls are prima facie illegal in that the identification of the calling party is at the end of the call rather than the beginning, and that calls were being made to people on the Do Not Call list (calls by live people to people on the list for political purposes are legal; robocalls are not.)

If (and only if) you hang up before finding out it's a negative ad, the call gets repeated. A lot. Meaning that you think the Dem candidate is harassing you -- which is really the point of this whole exercise; it's called voter suppression and, despite the fact that actvely discouraging voters from voting is about as contrary to running a democracy as you can get, this is a repeated theme of Republican election efforts these days.

And if you haven't already decided the instigators of this trick are slime, here's their response:
"It's a complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend," he said.

In other words -- we picked this time to do it expressly so that you can't stop us.

And a bit of perspective: Two million dollars is enough, in these internet-phone days, to make something on the order of a hundred million phone calls. Concentrate that into 20 districts, at 650,000 people per district -- let's say about 400,000 voters with phones to receive five million calls. Does this still sound like a "kinder, gentler GOP"?

I'll be making lots of GOTV calls today. I hate cold calling -- but some things are worth it.

GO VOTE!

(Side note: Hey Hopfgarten, are you still reading this? What's your defense of your party? This oughtta be good.)

Beautiful Night Pic

2006-10-30T23:53:21Z

Click for a larger version.

The man's got a point...

2006-10-20T23:38:03Z

The point of terrorism is, as the name suggests, to terrorize. Not simply to kill and destroy, but to frighten the broader population. It puzzles me why the RNC has found common cause with terrorists in their new ad campaign...

Source. The ad in question.

Cricket for Foreigners

2006-10-19T22:51:09Z

I remember seeing, years back, a poster with this description of "Cricket Explained for Foreigners" on it, and someone from Scotland telling me that yes, it's pretty accurate... finally ran across it again today, and so here it is. I'm sure it'll clear the whole confusing game up.

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he is out. When they are all out, the side that's been out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out, he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who are all out all the time, and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

Dependable weather

2006-10-18T12:13:55Z

Amsterdam doesn't have weather. It has climate.

The five-day forecast:

	High	Low
Today:	60	57	Cloudy, chance of rain
Tomorrow:	60	57	Cloudy, chance of rain
Friday:	60	57	Cloudy
Saturday:	62	59	Cloudy, chance of rain
Sunday:	60	55	Cloudy

I want one!

2006-10-17T22:13:47Z

I've always wanted a library in my house. Cozy little room, lots and lots of books, dark wood, comfortable chairs, maybe a fireplace.

Come to think of it, it should look something like this:

... or maybe this ...

For those of you who actually like this idea, or these photos, see more here.

First exam of the year is next week and I've finally got a copy of the book.... have pity :)

Uproariously funny, or Frighteningly Real? You decide...

2006-10-13T15:23:12Z

I haven't seen a post that puts this stuff in perspective any better than this one from The Carpetbagger Report -- so I'm stealing it whole cloth:

New York magazine has a great feature story in its new issue on Stephen Colbert and his bombastic, over-the-top, O'Reilly-like on-air character. New York's Adam Sternbergh raised an interesting point I hadn't seen explored much elsewhere:

Colbert's on-air personality…leads to a peculiar comedic alchemy on the show. During one taping I attended, Colbert did a bit about eating disorders that ended with his addressing the camera and saying flatly, "Girls, if we can't see your ribs, you're ugly." The audience laughed. I laughed. The line was obviously, purposefully outrageous. But it was weird to think that this no-doubt self-identified progressive-liberal crowd was howling at a line that, if it had been delivered verbatim by Ann Coulter on Today, would have them sputtering with rage.

True. Colbert's absurd right-wing rhetoric is funny because it's a parody. We laugh, of course, because he's mocking the Coulters and Savages of the world by highlighting just how ridiculous their comments are.

That said, Sternbergh thought it'd be fun to include a list of statements, all of which came from Stephen Colbert or Ann Coulter. Give it a shot:

1. "Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

2. "There's nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell."

3. "I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law."

4. "Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of 'Kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.' "

5. "I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior."

6. "[North Korea] is a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world."

7. "Isn't an agnostic just an atheist without balls?"

Answers are here, at the Carpetbagger link.

Some of you may remember Colbert's roasting of the Head Evildoer back in April. I learned then that quite a number of far-right types actually thought Colbert was a serious right-wing commentator...

"The Secret Letter from Iraq"

2006-10-09T15:00:10Z

James Baker III is getting his mitts dirty again on behalf of Boy Blunder. They're talking (out loud, this time) about partitioning Iraq -- an idea which I've discussed before to highlight just how bad it is. But don't listen to me. Here's the analysis by Middle East expert Juan Cole:

This is a very bad idea for so many reasons it would take me forever to list them all. But here are a few:

1. No such loose federal arrangement would survive very long (remember the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States?), so the plan leads to the dismemberment and partition of Iraq. This outcome is unacceptable to Turkey and Saudi Arabia and therefore will likely lead to regional wars.

...

3. The Sunni Arabs control Iraq's downstream water but have no petroleum resources. If the loose federal plan ends in partition, the situation is set up for a series of wars of the Sunni Arabs versus the Shiites, as well as of the Sunni Arabs and some Turkmen versus the Kurds. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia will certainly be pulled into these wars.

It is not good for the region to have a series of wars over Iraq. It is not good for the security of the United States, since those wars will probably involve pipeline sabotage by guerrillas and will likely disrupt Middle Eastern oil flows. (Did Americans like $3.20 a gallon gasoline and $300 a month heating bills? Would they like to try $15 a gallon gasoline? What do you think would happen to the world economy?)

Finally, I just don't believe that the Arab and Muslim worlds would ever forgive the US for breaking up Iraq, and there are likely to be reprisals if it happens. . .

Guess I won't be touristing around there anytime soon.

Why are they talking about this? Because of the truths on the ground: we lost. It's pretty clear why, but we won't get into that here. The point is, "It's dead, Jim." It's anarchy.

But again, don't listen to me. Listen to the guy who's there on the ground. Someone wrote a vastly sobering and moving letter. Highly recommended. Here are some sections:

Worst E-Mail Message — "The Walking Blood Bank is Activated. We need blood type A+ stat." I always head down to the surgical unit as soon as I get these messages, but I never give blood — there's always about 80 Marines in line, night or day.

Coolest Insurgent Act — Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool.

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no affect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here. Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O'Reilly.

Worst Sound — That crack-boom off in the distance that means an IED or mine just went off. You just wonder who got it, hoping that it was a near miss rather than a direct hit. Hear it practically every day.

Best Chuck Norris Moment — 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in a small town to kidnap the mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the Bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor's hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machinegun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can't fight City Hall.

Most Memorable Scene — In the middle of the night, on a dusty airfield, watching the better part of a battalion of Marines packed up and ready to go home after over six months in al-Anbar, the relief etched in their young faces even in the moonlight. Then watching these same Marines exchange glances with a similar number of grunts loaded down with gear file past — their replacements. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said.

For lack of anything better to post

2006-10-02T16:49:48Z

Home site here.

Of Ants and Pirates (and divers other things of little interest)

2006-09-21T12:29:50Z

Cream of tartar with vinegar works better than borax for getting rid of ants. Two days later, there's only one lonely ant where there used to be dozens... I think they decided to leave rather than dying out, though -- there aren't any dead ant bodies lying around. They even removed the ones I squished. Thoughtful of them...

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day I reread Treasure Island [gutenberg.org]. It's been so long that I'd actually forgotten part of the plot. What a classic. :)

Internet service is being rearranged at Chez TallGuy. With great good fortune I may have service again by the beginning of next week -- and reliable service at that! -- but I don't have any legitimate expectations until a few days later. We shall see.

Still ahead of the curve in coursework for most things despite the larger courseload. The summer really rejuvenated me. I should definitely be a teacher. Or a consultant. Or a student some more. Or something else. I dunno. :)

And a last tidbit: Walking through the red light district the other day I saw perhaps the coolest thing I'll ever see: there was a guy leaning on the wall of the alley, next to a curtained window, just waiting... with a folded-up wheelchair. Kudos, pal.

That was then, this is now

2006-09-15T20:39:53Z

After I finished a you-better-fix-this-'cause-it's-very-inconvenient phone call about the spare battery in my laptop dying (again! -- Never, EVER buy from a place called BatteryValues.com!) I ran across a set of notes for a Unix talk given by Dennis Ritchie in 1972.

UNIX is running on at least five PDP-11, no two with the same complement of hardware. The slide shows the minimal complement possible.

* 12 K core
* some kind of disk
* a clock
* an EAE (extended arithmetic element, for multiply/divide
* Some sort of tape, to provide for loading the system software and saving the disk

...
There have been rumblings from certain departments about taking over the maintenance of UNIX for the public (i.e., other Labs users) but I cannot promise anything.

"A clock"???

Thank God I am living in the age of laptops. :)

Course selections

2006-08-31T23:17:48Z

I really wanted to take Neural Networks. Artificial Intelligence is a topic I've always had a more-than-casual interest in, to the point of actually going to meet Marvin Minsky at one point under the guise of investigating a graduate degree at MIT, and falling back on a (less-intimidating) course or two at Boston University.

Besides which, it was an option that didn't require the very heavy math of "Performance Analysis of Communication Networks" or the irrelevancy of "Computer Graphics" -- one of which I might now be forced to take. Because you see, just like last year, the VU Neural Networks class this year conflicts with one of my required classes.

I did not come to Amsterdam to learn how to make a pretty box spin and change colors on the screen, a feat for which there are ample freely available tutorials on the web. I came to learn how to make lots of computers or lots of computer processes work together. Even if you include the I-don't-really-cares of network programming and security, barely more than half of the courses I've taken have really been on that topic.

I'm thinking "business world." As in, "Let's go find an actual need and figure out a way to fulfill it."