Journal Entries for October 2006 October 4, 2006 - 7:01 AM Two nights ago I started noticing a grinding sensation whenever I braked. Hopeing (in vain) that it would just go away, and not having any time to address the issue I continued rolling until yesterday afternoon I realized it was getting worse and I would not be able to make it the two more days of work until my 3 days off, so I brought in the help of my ever-handy father and we performed an emergency roadside brake replacement on the front wheels of my work van. I was surprised at how easy they were to change actually. I changed the second one by myself and it was under 10 minutes, tire off to tire on. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done and the rotor will likely need to be replaced. I doubt if there is enough good metal left in it to just get it turned. That'll be a project for another day though. Here's what was left of the inner brake pad: That out of the way, tomorrow night we pick up the hot tub Bo and I bought for our birthdays! To celebrate, Bo and I are having a birthday party this Saturday at our house and you are invited. Give me a call if you need directions. Feel free to stop by any time on Saturday and bring your bathing suit! October 8, 2006 - 12:04 AM Boy that hot tub takes it out of you! I have to work in the morning or I'd fill in more details, but her is my evening in pictures: October 12, 2006 - 2:02 AM Ok, I am a big geek. So the other day one of the hard drives in my gateway / router crashed and although at first I didn't lose anything, the drive has spiraled out of control and is now completely unreadable. The only things that I ended up losing were my emails and all the settings for the firewall and router, but nothing I'm going to lose any sleep over. So having lost all the configuration files, tonight I set out to re-create them from scratch. Not having a working router has meant our whole house has been without Internet and you may have noticed my web site was down. (And of course, if you emailed me anything I did not get it. The mail server is STILL not back up yet...) BUT, because I have built this new router with cutting edge leading software (Fedora Core 6 Test 3 to be exact) - there are a lot of new features and enhanchments in the software I use to establish my network infrastructure and online presence on the 'web. Consequently, as I was reading through all the new commands I was quite excited at the possibilities they present and had to take a step back to chuckle at myself for being so easily amused. I pass through quite a few houses a day as I go about my occupation of installing cable, Internet and Phone services to residents in Calgary. Throughout my journeys I often encounter unique individuals, but today I met someone I found to be truly interesting. As I installed her Internet service, I found myself staring at her face and being increasingly attracted to it as I did so. Our conversation, though maintaining a professional aire, bordered at times on the precipice of flirtation and we diverted from the mundane mechanics of Internet Installation to delve into the depths of our personal lives. Would you believe she enjoys red wine and hot tubs; ironically two things I personally enjoyed not more than a week ago as Bo and I celebrated our new hot tub with a bottle of wine? (Incidently, the consumption of alcohol while parcially submerged in substancially heated water will amplify and intensify the effect of the alcohol! Wow!) She is also a photography phanatic, much as myself taking countless digital images whenever and wherever she sees something that captures her attention. We found we had several similar interests and experiences as we conversed and even after I'd completed my work there and left I could not stop thinking about her. I can't help but wonder how, when and where we will meet again for without a doubt an encounter such as this one could not have occured to be a singular event. My plan for the morning before I stayed up past two to get the server up and running again was to set my alarm nice and early, get up while it's still dark out and hop in the hot tub to watch the sun come up. Then, after a significant soaking in the soothing and stimulating waters, I can slip back into bed and have a much needed morning-to-afternoon nap. Or at least that's the plan as it stands at 2:22 AM... But what do we all know about plans? Plans change! October 14, 2006 - 6:55 PM No rest for the sleepy around here... Well actually Maddy let me sleep in quite late today and I was in fact already awake when she tiptoed into my room for my Saturday Morning Wakeup Call. We had quite a fun day today; I got to be a horsie and run around the house (upstairs AND downstairs) on all fours... We played with the birdies and I made us some sandwiches (but she doesn't like the crusts so I had to eat hers.) I think the accomplishment of the day however, was when Maddy learned how to play (the first line of) Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. So then of course she had to call Grandma down to show off, and as soon as Bo was home there was another performance... She is such a showoff. It's taken years but I've finally got my server cluster and interconnecting network hardware powered by an Uninterruptable Power Supply. I found this APC model used in a second hand computer store but it's batteries had been replaced so for $50 I couldn't refuse. It powers two servers, my main switch and Shaw Modem and indicates it's capacity to be around 50% which is perfect. Now if the power ever goes off, at least for half an hour or less, the heart of cubeinc.net will stay fully functional. After much tinkering and tweaking I finally got [a new] server built, using the latest Fedora Core Linux software. It is actually pretty sweet. So far it's been running flawlessly, and everything on it is better than ever! Fedora has really come a long way, especially in the desktop environment. Traditionally the vast majority of my servers' configuration was done from a text-based console, modifying text configuration files until the server did what I wanted it to. Now, most of the configuration in this server was performed from the desktop through graphical windows. It's become so easy I'm almost afraid Linux will lose some of it's mystique as a hacker's operating system... Ok, I don't know if it's just because it's been several months since I've had any, but I have to admit I took a handful of sunflower seeds the other day and I was hopelessly adicted. Before I knew it, I'd emptied an entire 1-pound bag! They are so good. Perhaps my last taste of the Summer of 2006. I went to Robyn Lee's place yesterday to fix an intermittant cable problem they've been having. When I got there, the signal seemed great and the picture on the TV looked perfect, and then all of a sudden - it got snowy and channels 2, 3, 4, and 5 got their usual ingress and even white lines all throughout them. Then, a few minutes later - it was back to being perfect! Very strange. But after a bit of troubleshooting I found one bad connector outside that feeds many of the outlets in the house, and once it had been changed everything worked fine indefinitely. It's amazing how much of a difference one bad connector can make with cable. When Shay got home she was in her usual fine-fettled funny mood, and was wearing a magazine face she'd cut the eyes and mouth holes out of. Last night as I was falling asleep I couldn't help but take some unique pictures of objects around me. I've always loved the little end table lamps that sit either side of the pullout couch in my living room. I've been sleeping on that couch for the past couple of weeks, but tonight I re-arranged my room and put my old green and blue bed back in there, so my living room will no longer double as my bedroom. It makes very efficient space of my bedroom now with the computer desk in there, but it's quite functional and I quite like the coziness. Here are a couple of pictures I took last night: Last night we watched Click, an Adam Sandler film where he is given this remote control that allows him to control the timeline of his life, rewinding to parts he's relived, fast-forwarding to parts that are yet to come. It's Adam Sandler so of course there's the usual gags, including the O'Doyle kid who lives next door. But unlike many of his previous films there is a definite message to this one, and there was even a tearjerk moment in the film that had me sniffing; I don't know about Bo or Maddy... Ultimately, the jist of the film is Family Comes First - A concept that is easily lost in the busy-ness of business. I know even my own work can keep me quite busy, busier than even I'd like to be sometimes, and fortunatly I don't have a wife and kids to disappoint by my absense (or at least yet, anyways...) I liked the point of auto-pilot used in the movie, a mode we frequently go into whereby we simply pass life from day to day with our head down, working away, doing what we have to but not really living. And then one day you look up and realize you've wasted years you'll never get back. Make every moment count. Last but not least, here are some more pictures Maddy and I took this morning: October 16, 2006 - 10:36 PM I love my hot tub! Whoever invented the word relax must have been sitting in a hot tub. I just got out from my nightly dip and with the snow tonight it was absolutely heavenly. You're sitting there, submersed almost entirely in 102 degree water watching wafting flakes of snow land and melt effortlessly on your skin. If you let your eyes defocus and stare at the sky, the falling white spots of snow form white streaks across your vision. You know you should be freezing as clumped snow sits atop every flat part of the pine tree nearby, yet you are completely comfortable. Better than comfortable - you are contented, gratified, relaxed, satisfied, soothed, and fufilled. ... or at least the first Electric bill comes! hahaha Oh well. It's the price to pay for one of the best ways to end a long day. You just can't beat that feeling you get when your head hits the pillow after a good soak and all you can do is keep yourself from smiling as you pass away into the oblivion of hot water-induced halucinations and fantasies. October 22, 2006 - 4:20 AM Boy, did I ever geek out this weekend! Is it Haloween already? Today we carved our pumpkins for '06 and it's hard to believe a whole year has gone by since the last time we did so. I'm pretty sure we still have pumpkin seeds in the back yard from '05! Here are this years's entries: Maddy's Pumpkin Bo's Pumpkin My Pumpkin My geek project for this weekend started when the 6 Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter cards arrived in the mail last Wednesday afternoon. Several weeks ago I aquired 2 Clariion Fibre Channel 5600 series Disk-Array Processor Enclosures (DPE's) and 7 Disk Array Enclosures (DAE's), each loaded with 9 or 10 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel 9 Gb drives. (One of the DAE's had 10 36Gb 10,000 RPM drives.) A friend of a friend had picked up the units at an auction on a pallet but only wanted the heavy-duty Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS's) that went with them. He kept the UPS's and had the rest of this equipment sitting in his basement. Word of mouth got around that I was looking for some SCSI drives, we were put in touch with each other and pretty soon I was loading the back of Rusty with these monstrously heavy devices. The guy I aquired this equipment from claimed he had never even powered them up. Daunted by the two separate power cords on the back of each unit, he (mistakenly) believed that the power consumption of each was such that two separate 15 amp circuits were required to supply each one with sufficient power to function. This was not the case, in fact - the dual power supplies in each enclosure are simply to provide redundancy. You can operate any such device using only one of the power cords and their individual consumption is MUCH less than 15 amps! When I piled them into the garage, I connected up some power cords and tried them out. They all seemed to power up, but that was about all I could get them to do. Heavy boxes with flashing lights was the sum of my venture at this point... But rest assured, it did not end there! The first hurdle to overcome was that of connecting them to a computer. On the back of each DPE there seemed only to be DB9 connectors. Unfamiliar as I was to this type of equipment at the time, I assumed RS-232. A little reading on the Internet quickly put that theory to rest and I discovered what the Fibre Channel transcievers stuck on the back of each DPE were for. Each DPE had one 9-6-1 Fiber Channel Transciever module, with an SC fibre transmit and recieve port on the back of it. I wandered naievely into several local computer venues to inquire about buying a host adapter (the part that goes in the computer) to connect to a fibre channel device. Most computer store staff members I inquired of had NO IDEA what I was talking about, and the odd one or two who did shook their heads indicating that they did not sell any such warez in their store. One fellow did seem to know exactly what I was talking about and even looked up the part from his suppliers. My raised hopes were quickly dashed as he quoted a price of $3,500 for the adapter! Expensive hobby! Returning home disheartened, beginning to wonder just what I'd gotten myself into, I began to look on eBay for Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters. There were some of the 4 Gbit variants in the range of which the computer technician spoke, but there were also some legacy 1 Gbit cards at much more reasonable prices. I placed a bid of $1.00 on a lot of 6 Emulex LP8000 cards and waited. Someone bid $25.00 for the lot and thus my automatic bid raised me to $26.00 and the auction ended there, with me winning six of these Host Bus Adapters (HBA's) for less than the price it would cost me to ship them to Canada! I couldn't believe it! Now I would wait. With a card in the computer and the fibre optic cable attached to the first DPE, I thought I was almost there. It's painful to look back over this week and remember just how green I was only a few days ago. Before I bid on the Emulex cards, I did some reading up on them, particularly on their drivers. One of the reasons I went with Emulex was because they seemed to have excellent linux drivers. I downloaded the pdf manual and it explained how to install them, what they do, and how to use them to connect your linux-driven computer to fibre channel hardware. It seemed a perfect match. Of course, once I had an LP8000 card in my computer and actually began trying to install the drivers, I realized that here was yet another hurdle in the trail of this adventure. The drivers come packaged for one of two Linux Distributions: SuSE and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (RHEL) Running Fedora Core as I am, I didn't expect too much trouble as Fedora and RHEL are essentially two branches in the same tree. The installer recognized that I was running neither of the supported distros though, and aborted with a short message telling me so. Once inside the folder it had extracted however, I was able to hack and slash my way through the manual installation of each component until at long last I had a working driver installed, custom built for the 2.6.18-fc5_2200 kernel I was running. Part of the driver package includes a program called HBAnyware, for browsing the attached fibre channel ports and managing your HBA's. It connected to the first DPE and I was able to see it's World Wide Number (WWN) - the Fibre Channel equivelant of a MAC address. Now how do you configure the actual array in the 5600? Information on the Clariion 5600 and other similar arrays was surprisingly scarce on the Internet. Fortunately, a few other people had been in similar situations as I was and had done a lot of the homework for me. I'd figured out that the db9 port on the back of the DPE was for serial communication with a terminal and I'd been able to see the startup messages from the DPE as it was powered up, but it kept going into Serial Application Mode and refused to accept further instructions from the terminal. It was then that I discovered through reading the magic break code for the 5600, and was at long last able to enter the underground tunnels of it's internal workings. I discovered quickly that the disks in the slots of the array were likely not in the correct order, if they were from the right array at all. As well, as it had last been configured and running in February of 1992, there were at least a couple of DAE's connected as well. Although I had the DAE's, I did not have the cables to connect them up as well, so I toyed and tinkered with the built in operating system, called Flare, that controls the RAID array. I was able to unbind all the disks in the array and create a new Raid 0 array using all 10 drives. According to everything I'd read, this should be enough for the software in the computer to see the new array, or Logical Unit Number (LUN) - but it could not. No matter what I tried, HBAnyware only showed the target with no LUN's. I rebooted everything, tried going through the LP8000's bios, checked my firmware and boot ROM's version numbers, tried everything I could think of, to no avail. It should work - it just doesn't. Then finally I uncovered a comment in one of the forums that mentioned the System Options command (setopt). Because these units can be rebranded under different manufacturer's labels, their command sets can vary a little, depending on whose name appears on the finished unit and to what server they are connected at the end of the day. I discovered that while the setop -h command listed four different option types, the system was set to type "A" which was not even listed. I set it to type 03, or Open Fibre Channel Array, (unbound and rebound the disks) and like magic - a LUN appeared on my screen! I was ecstatic! I rebooted and found a newly formed /dev/sdc device pointer. Fdisk created a partition on the array and I was quickly able to format an EXT3 filesystem thereon as well. It worked! As I write this, I have both DPE's connected to my bedroom's linux box, with ten hard drives in each. In one I've named Betty, reside ten of the 9Gb 10k RPM drives, and in the other, named Suzy, there are the ten 36 GB 10k drives. The next step from here is to buy (from somewhere, probably eBay again) the cables to connect the rest of the DAE's to the DPE and create larger multi-DAE arrays from there. This equipment is both overkill and obsolete for anything I'd be using, although it has been (and I'm sure will continue to be) an incredible learning experience for me. Once again, however, the ever-present fact keeps blaring in my face - The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. And now, for something completely different: Some pictures of my pets and some pictures of Fall, 2006. Enjoy October 24, 2006 - 10:44 PM I got my first positive feedback today on eBay! Woo Hoo! Horray for me! Man my room is hot with all these hard drives in it... Right now this computer has two hard drives [in] it, and 20 hard drives connected to it! And once I get these other cables I've ordered off eBay, I will eventually have 90 hard drives connected to it! How insane is that? My thermometer right now claims a toasty 26.2 degrees. Too bad it's not really cold enough outside to truly enjoy the warmth it is providing! But the sound of all 12 fans pushing and pulling air through the chassis' is extremely soothing and pleasant to sleep to. I had a sniff of childhood this evening... I've searched for this stuff in stores near and far, but to no avail. Yet one sniff from this bottle brings back countless memories of being tucked in at night and having a hot water bottle thrust under the bottom of the blankets where frozen feet and icicle toes eagerly seek out it's warmth as a sensation of much-anticipated coziness begins to bring the calmness of night to a wrestless wee boy. Apparantly it is no longer in production... Same with Easy-Off carpet cleaning solution - another childhood aroma that is tied securely to many memories for me. I was over at my parents' house tonight and something on the stove burnt up, filling the house with a noticible haze. With the front door open and the setting sun shining sharply through the sifting silt suspended in the smoke, it made occastion for a number of interesting images. Puppy and I went for a walk tonight and he pooped FOUR times!!! That's a lot when you have to pick each one up... October 28, 2006 - 9:23 PM Last night I went with my brother Blair to be a part of something extrodinary. I don't know exactly for what reason Blair chose to volunteer in this capacity, but my brother - whose had virtually NO experience running live sound - decided to volunteer as sound man for an outreach group in his church, Rock Pointe. I mean, the scope of this action is huge - it would be equivilant to someone whose never picked up a guitar before, volunteering to get up on stage and lead the music. Naturally, I volunteered to assist him in this enormous step away from all that is comfortable. The night started off quiet. It was close to an hour past the [official] start of the practice before all the musicians had arrived, and as this whole venture is a work in progress, the start of something new, there is little in the way of precident to fall back on. Perhaps in a way, that was good. We worked with the band members and established a configuration of the mic's, direct inputs, and instrument pickups that seemed agreeable all around, and began to experiment with the unknown, trying to strike a balance between an overpowering drummer, two electric guitars, a bass, an electronic piano and synth, and five vocalists of varing range and volume. It felt a bit rocky at first as we felt our way about in the darkness, but as the night progressed, Blair picked up on the layout of the board quickly and began to manouver the board with great ease. By the end of the night, it sounded good all around the house, and everyone seemed to agree that we'd found a good blend of content in each of their monitors. I know Blair was nervous, and probably felt no better off at the end of the night than he did at the beginning, but I could tell he had learned a LOT and mastering the art of live mixing is a time consuming process, built upon the foundations of a breadth of experiences and challenges. It was fun to see how quickly he adapted to the changing dynamics on stage. I sat back for most of the night and just thought to myself how proud I am of my brother. I know he did not feel comfortable doing what he did last night, but he did it anyways and that's the mark of a true man. On a different note (musical inference intended), I went for breakfast / lunch with Kerri and her boyfriend Mirko. It's hard to believe that about this time a year ago we still worked together at Custom Linen. We sat at Ricky's for over two hours, and I have to say - she did MUCH better with this guy than some of her other picks in the past. I'm happy for them both, and I hope that his family will get over whatever issues they have against her as she bears them a grandchild. That's right, little 90-pound-sopping-wet Kerri is 10 weeks pregnant and going to get FAT! hahaha That image alone, it boggles the mind! Does anyone else feel like white trash when they shop at Wal-Mart? I went to Wal-Mart tonight for some quick and easy food, so meeting that criteria - what is better than KD? I bought a 4L jug of 2% milk, a 24 pack of KD (plus two Kraft Alfredo things to spice things up once in a while) and a box of unsalted soda crackers. I was wearing some softies and a battered hoodie, because after all - I was going to Wal-Mart, not out on a first date. Still, I had to chuckle at myself as I stood in line holding one of the most white-trash foods of all time, looking and quite possibly even feeling very white trash. I spent about an hour in the hot tub tonight reading a book given to me as a present several years ago that explores some of the mysteries of everyday life, like If nothing sticks to Teflon, how do they get Teflon to stick to the pan? Or Why do dogs smell funny when they get wet?. Most relaxing for the body and most informative and interesting for the brain. I love that hot tub. Bo also bought a bunch more rubber duckies to add to our collection which is now up around the five-duck mark. October 29, 2006 - 10:15 PM It's the simple things... Further to my white trash Wal-Mart comment the other day, my bit of blabber from today's events proposes to further support the stereotypical white trash Wal-Mart customer. What is another characteristic of a person deemed to be considered 'white trash?' They cannot (or just do not) read well. All over the Wal-Mart at Marlborough Mall there have been bright flourescent signs posted at every door, entrance, exit, corner, corridor - you simply can't miss them! And what does this plethora of attention-grabbing signs have to say? Wal-Mart has introduced special shopping cart wheels that will lock up if the cart is taken beyond the boundary of the store and it's parking lot. That's pretty simple, right? Easy to understand... But every day at any time you can see them. Those customers who just can't be bothered to read these blaringly obvious signs all around them and then stand there, dumbfounded, when the cart they've been pushing suddenly ceases to roll freely. Some still try to push on, others look around in great confusion. I've even seen some people (I wish I'd have videotaped this) take their groceries out of their cart and place them in one of the half-dozen OTHER abandoned carts around them! Can you guess why those other carts were abandoned in the middle of the mall hallway? Even if you can't guess, if you can read - the answer is as plain as day... Not 10 feet away there is yet another group of flourescent signs explaining exactly why your cart moves this far but no further. I've spent several lunch-time meals eating my Large Mesquite chicken sub at the Quizno's across the hall, watching with no shortage of inner delight as one after another, people come pushing their cart out of Wal-Mart which comes to a grinding halt just outside the Quizno's. It's better than dinner and a movie! Read the signs, people. Failing to do so only provides amusement for passing patrons. So winter looks like it has poked it's head out of the el Nino laced clouds and spat a sprinkling of snow upon us. I love winter driving, especially in a rear-wheel drive vehicle. It is a lot of fun when you know the abilities and limitations of your vehicle and can push it to those limits, making it slide, sweep, spin, slither, and swing along on the icy roads. The only thing that worries me is the other drivers who DON'T know their vehicles and drive with an over-inflated feeling of confidence. What would a cold winter's night be without a relaxing dip in the hot tub? There really is nothing like it, and tonight's douse of snow made the experience all the more rewarding. Since I am so utterly relaxed at the moment, I've got little energy above the amount required to lift and drop my fingers upon the appropriate keys, but even that bit of strength is abandoning me, making the appeal of the bed beside me increase exponentially by the second. And oh yes, I did my first snow angel on the roof tonight... That's truly a breathtaking experience, and the body-wide tingling sensation immediately following the re-imersion into the 100 degree water combines to form a unique sensation. Suffice it to say, I love my hot tub. October 31, 2006 - 6:43 PM Happy Haloween My first story of the day is about something I saw in an elevator yesterday that first of all made me laugh, and then made me take a picture and write about it today. This was in a downtown, richy appartment building's elevator. Doctors and Lawyers live in this building, and the front door man knows every tenant by name. When I showed up to install cable, he already knew I was coming and to which floor I was to go and to whom I was going to see. It was a fancy place. It was the kind of place you'd least expect something as simple as a sign to insult one's intelligence, but none the less, I present a picture of what I saw on the Elevator's floor selection panel: Did you catch that? There are all the usual numbered floor buttons, with the Lobby button clearly marked so. But just in case you couldn't find that elusive Lobby button, they attached a sign just a few centimeters below it, repeating the word Lobby but providing an arrow to indicate that you are ever-so-close to finding your destination, you just need but to look slightly higher and you will find what you are looking for. I'm surprised there wasn't an EXIT sign above the elevator door... Someone could get stuck in there! One of the nice things about working on high is that you get some incredible views - and not always of things you want to see! Our warehouse was all decorated this morning, and some of the warehouse and office staff who work there were costumed' up... It was nice of Shaw not to book any evening calls tonight and I was able to get home about 5:45 after a 45 minute drive along 16th Ave. The traffic in this city is getting ridiculous. There aren't any accidents, there is just so many vehicles on the road it makes all the major roadways crawl along, particularly at peak times. The sad thing is that although this is the earliest I've been home in rememberable history, I am so tired right now that all I can think of doing is going to bed. We have some candy to hand out to the trick-or-treaters that show up, but our front door's light doesn't work (it's that dern'd aluminum wiring!) As such, I don't think we're going to get many doorbell ringers and there will be more candy left for us! hehe BACK to Journal Index