Blog: Archive for June, 2002

I rebooted some machines at work on Friday, and also upgraded the packages on the main server. The last turned out to have some unexpected bad results, as one of my predecessors had replaced the packaged procmail with a home-built binary without removing the package. So when I updated the package, it overwrote the binary with a new one without the changes that had been made.

Everything was fine, though, as mail was still being delivered, just not to people's home directories. I built a new package with the local changes, installed it, moved people's mail where it belonged, and everything appears to be back to normal.

We had wanted to get out early anyway, as we both needed to get cards for our moms' birthdays out. So once I was done at the college, we headed to the Village, found some good birthday cards and some really funny postcards (forties-ish people with amusing sayings in the form of magnetic poetry pieces).

We mailed them at the Post Office (although they ostentatiously locked the doors to the inner lobby just as we arrived), and wandered around the Village for a bit.

We had lunch in a Mediterranean restaurant we'd never been in before (first time I've had falafels and babaganouch in over a year!), wandered around the main drag, poked around in a rubberstamp store and a toy store, and then headed towards home.

First, though, we stopped off at the CM School Supply store, where I found that they had a copy of Philip Pullman's The Tin Princess, which is related to his Sally Lockhart books, but that it wasn't in good enough shape for me to buy.

I also wanted to look around for ideas for crazy things I could have in my office (once I get it cleaned out and have some better furniture), and for some office-supply–type stuff. I was glad to see that they had these Page Up! copy-holders that had caught my eye a year or so ago. Unlike the similar device in the office-supply catalog that Mudd uses, which came only in black, these came in a bunch of different transparent colors—purple, red, gold, green. Alas, they were $6.95, which seemed a bit steep, although they weren't much more than the boring one in the catalog.

While we were there, we hit the British Emporium, too, where we goggled at high prices and griped about the lack of flavors of Walkers' crisps (only cheese and onion, which is just about the only flavor that M doesn't like).

Then we went home, where we watched K-PAX from pay-per-view and I talked to my mom.

Much excitement today, as our trip to Fry's in Industry started with a dragging audio cable, that we could hear but not identify until after we'd given up on the 10 (which was as choked as ever). We ended up taking a round-about route to reach the 60 by driving through Pomona, which was fine except for the girl who bumped into our bumper while we were stopped at a red light.

The rest of the day went fine, though—it turned out that Fry's has a brand-new store (since the end of February), full of shiny new things and—unbecoming a Fry's—helpful employees!

We ended up not buying a UPS, as the only ones they had weren't quite what we wanted, and were way too expensive. We did, however, end up buying some zip cable ties (those plastic things they used to include with trash bags), which I wanted for work; not one, not two, but three little copyholders in the form of half-eggs with a curved slot for the paper, which were from the same company but cheaper than the ones we'd seen yesterday; and a breadmaker.

The last had been something M was interested in for a while—she'd done a bunch of poking around on the 'Net, found the perfect model, and then we couldn't actually find any in a store. Until today at Fry's.

It's pretty cool—not only can it make bread, but you can also use it to make bagels and rolls (it has this bizarre steam feature).

We took the 60 to the 605 to the 210 to get home. I like the 210—somehow the traffic there always seems to flow more quickly than on the other roads, and the drivers seem a bit saner. It's also nice because once we're on it, we get to stay there, as it becomes the 30, which in turn runs out and becomes Foothill.

After unpacking the bread machine, we watched the video that came it it, and then dashed back out to get a bread mix to try it out (cinnamon and raisin).

The bread is cooling now, but the little bits we've eaten tasted pretty good.

(My mom's birthday.)

M started driving lessons today. They picked her up in the morning and she drove around for two hours. Then they dropped her off at work.

I called and had her added to my (our) car insurance so that she can drive our car, too. In the evening (after work), we walked home, dumped our work stuff, and M backed the car out of the garage and drove out of the complex and onto the street. Then she stopped and we switched places, drove down to a huge empty parking lot that used to serve a now very dead shopping center, and switched back. M practiced going around corners, accelerating and decelerating, and parking in empty parking spots.

Once we were sick (almost literally) of that, we switched again, and hit the grocery stores.

(I know, I know, what an exciting life....)

(M's mom's birthday.)

More hijinks at work, starting when I checked my mail this morning and discovered that the backup of the home partition on the main file server failed. The Wisdom of the Internet™ told me that the errors in the log meant that

1. The disk was a bit too active for dump to be happy
2. One of the drives in the array was about to die a horrible, grinding death

Murphy's Law tells us that the second option was the most likely, and after some discussion with my CIS counterpart, I decided I should take the server down and fsck the disks. M's sensible paranoia encouraged me to take a 36 GB drive we hadn't put into service and rsync the home directories to it first.

Meanwhile, I took care of various minor duties (adding accounts, fixing little things); did some web research; took a look through the records of computer purchases that took place before I came along; got a whole bunch of cool office supplies; and waited while the rsync job ran. (It took about four hours.)

In the evening, while the rsync job was still running, I set off to rebuild two machines in a lab, which was complicated by the fact that my predecessor's images and the stock Red Hat kernel I upgraded to weren't at all tuned for one of the machines (RAM disks—whoo-hoo!), it didn't have a working monitor, and the network port it was plugged into was actually dead. I also managed to smoke crack on the IP address for the other machine, so I'll have to change that on Monday.

Once all the hurdles in the lab had been leapt, and the rsync job had finished, I dared to reboot the server. Annoyingly, I couldn't actually see what was going on—there's something weird with the video when its running X at a functional resolution that results in the virtual consoles not working. I was, however, able to see the machine boot and fsck its disks. Lots of errors, but it cleaned them all up, and everything came up fine except for printing and mail, which I had anticipated. I fixed that, and, finally, was able to leave.

More driving for M, this time all the way from our garage down to that parking lot, and then around and around and around. I didn't mention this before, but I think she's doing amazingly well—way better than I did when I first started. She has the usual confusion over the zillions of different things that you have to remember, and she doesn't quite have a feel for the car, but she does quite well overall.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but I don't think I'm much more nervous than anytime I'm in the front seat of a car with someone else driving. I am paying a lot more attention than I usually do, though, because I have to be in a position to “CONTROL THE VEHICLE IF NECESSARY”, to quote her permit. My usual coping strategy is to read, or look off into the distance, and try to ignore whatever the other driver is doing as much as possible.

After M gave up, I took over, and we drove out to a FrankinCovey store so I could look at some of their planners and binders. I had been thinking about getting one when I got a job, and now that I have a job, it kind of seems like I should do something. I had been thinking about getting a “monarch”-sized planner, but those appear to be huge—they're considerably larger than an ordinary binder. So if I get one, I'll probably go with a “classic”, which has 5.5" x 8.5" pages.

Still, I'm not totally convinced. FranklinCovey seems to have a big emphasis on “life-planning” and achievement that makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don't have any major goals for this turn on the wheel, and I as long as I'm reasonably happy, I'm, well, reasonably happy. Having thus far resisted the allure of cults, I'm a bit hesitant to jump into the arms of one.

And, of course, there's the fact that most of what I'm doing these days is reasonably technical. I don't have (that many) meetings to attend, and the projects I'm working on are probably better planned using project-management software that can churn out Gantt charts than a pretty paper planner. But I haven't found any software I actually like for keeping track of events, calls, and so forth, and writing on paper is much more pleasant.

I've asked my brother how his is working out. B's in a much more mangerial position than I am—maybe even more so since all his direct reports were siphoned off into another department during a bizarre reorganization the company did a few months ago, and he now has to negotiate with their new managers in order to send them out on tasks.

Maybe I'm the least romantic person in the world, but I was utterly bored by Passion of Mind, in which Demi Moore is a (conveniently American) book reviewer for the New York Times living somewhere in semi-rural France until she falls asleep, when she's a powerful New York-based literary agent. Or is it the other way around?

Both Demis see shrinks, fall in love, have their lovers get ridiculously jealous about their presumably nonexistent dream rivals, and go through a bunch of other crap we fast-forwarded through before the “dramatic” psychobabble ending. Please. What both Demis really needed was extensive drug therapy, and perhaps a long stay in an asylum.

One of the most annoying things about the film was the utter lack of interest in checking anything out that both Demis, and both shrinks, and both boyfriends shared. I mean, jeez, if you're a powerful, wealthy Manhattanite, what's the big deal about jetting off to France for the weekend? Sure you're busy, but in well over a year of these crazy dreams, you'd think you'd find the time.

And don't shrinks talk to one another? Both shrinks knew each others' names and cities; even if they didn't want to call directory assistance or look in a book, they probably could have gotten their Demi to give them their opposite's number.

And, hey, wait a minute—one of them lives in New York, and the other one writes reviews for the New York Times. Why not pick up a paper, or go to the library, or call the Times?

It's all, of course, for the sake of the plot. Because the conflict is so ethereal that it would vanish in an instant if anyone actually did anything to try to resolve the situation. Because we're being set up (badly) for the big ending, which really failed to make any sense because whatever the original trauma was wasn't at all spelled out so that we could sympathize.

Yuck.

The backup ran last night, so it looks like the drive may be okay after all. Yay!

M passed her driving test today! Now I never have to drive again! (Well, not really, but it's still really cool.)