Down The Bit Bucket

THE POWER!

2011-12-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

So I did all those upgrades and still decided to overclock the CPU - after all, it is an unlocked Black Edition. So I bumped the CPU multiplier from 16 to 18 for a 12.5% bump in CPU speed. I didn't touch the voltages, and if it starts running full bore for any length of time, it would give the existing fans a very hard time.

Now Running - Debian Squeeze!

2011-09-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

Quite a few upgrades both hardware and software to catch up on:

Upgraded hardware to Athlon II X2 245 CPU on a Gigabyte MA-785GM-US2H. This CPU overclocks nicely (and the DDR2 overclocked also.)

Then upgraded to a Phenom X6 1090T with 8Gb of DDR2 1066. Ended up buying a new Antec Solo case to get the heat and noise under control - very nice case. (I feel no need to overclock this chip.)

Tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS amd64 and FAILED! (Funny, the live disk ran fine!)

Then upgraded to Debian Squeeze 6.0.2.1 amd64. (I took a hard look at Archlinux and may still give that a try later.) All working very well - I seem to conveniently forget how much custom software I have to install and compile every time I do this.

Oops! Long TIme - No Post

2011-09-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ouch! Long time no post.

We'll try and get a few out.

Upgraded To Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

2010-08-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

So I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 some time back. I did the network upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04. Without a doubt, the easiest online upgrade I have ever done. The weird thing is, I vastly prefer to do a clean install, but I could not get the 10.04 CD to work so I crossed my fingers and went for it. Only thing that did happen was Ethernet didn't work (and I had to scramble to remember the ifconfig commands). I traced this back to the way I had configured /etc/network/interfaces.

Couple of things I did do:

Un installed the Nvidia video card drivers and switched back to the stock vga driver.
Backed up my home directory.

But really, this even went better than the 9.04 to 9.10. I had to reach in and tweak the GRUB settings from a rescue CD after that upgrade to even get GRUB to boot.

Extend And Pretend - How Does It End?

2010-05-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Recent economic signs increasingly point to a "double dip", although I have to agree with Robert Reich that most (98%) Americans never got out of the first dip. I think that even the idiots in DC and on Wall St are starting to realize that there is a snowball's chance in hell that the housing market can get back to where it was in 2007 any time in the next year or two. (I'd argue that it will take ten plus years to that, maybe longer if you include inflation.) Plus, it's now obvious that TBTF banks are making "record" profits, but this has done little to nothing to re-starting the economy. (I would make the argument once again, that bailing out the banks is the problem, not the solution since time, after time, after time, all that was done since the Reagan 80's has been to bail out failing Wall St firms rather than letting them go bust - with one notable exception: Lehman Brothers.)

So when does the Obama government decide to end "Extend and Pretend" and actually start to fix the problems with our economy?

Here's my best guess - we're all Katrina victims now. NOLA is the new role model for how our nation will recover. The middle and lower class will get left to fend for themselves, the rich will be protected and coddled by the state. The economy will continue to disintegrate, our country will continue to fracture.

Problems With Libgphoto2 in Karmic?

2010-03-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Strangely, gthumb is no longer able to import photos from a CD or from Compact Flash. What's up with that?

Looks like it's this bug.

This is a pretty easy bug for me to work around so far, and I'm sure Ill run into more Karmic Kola issues. I'm working on a post on transcoding in Karmic - apparently ffmpeg is left unable to use h264 and aac due to potential patent issues.

Health Care Reform

2010-03-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

Man, February flew by without a thought! And much of March.

I'll have to say - I've been spending lots of time and energy watching and posting at other blogs about Health Care Reform. I'm not impressed with President Obama or the Democratic party. The proposed HCR is very weak, pretty much a bailout of the health care insurance industry that created our current mess.

Just giving everybody the option to buy into Medicare, with a graduated cost scale, and fixing Medicare, would have been much better.

Cash For Democratic/Republican Clunkers!

2010-01-25T23:09:00.000-08:00

A new exciting program is being readied for you by your Federal government!

Last year, the Cash for Clunkers program provided exceptional return on investment. We've spent tens of trillions of dollars on Wall St banks only to see excessive bonuses for the people who crashed the world's economy, but spending just $3 billion on Cash for Clunkers provided a over half of the GDP increase from the stimulus.

Well, with such excellent return on investment, and in accordance with the recent SCOTUS ruling, the Federal government will be announcing the Cash for Democratic/Republican Clunkers program!

This program will allow us, the real and imaginary corporate people of the United States to purchase our own brand, spanking new Senator or House member, and get rid of some real clunkers!

These Democratic/Republican Clunkers have to go now! These are all dangerously out of date, unsafe at any speed, and polluting! Heck, half of them actually have recently, due to their own action, or lack there of, been classified as the party of NO, or Not Operational.

It's just a crying shame that these perfectly useful Senate and House positions which can be used to help run the country, and ensure the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people, both real and imaginary, have been abandon, overrun by weeds, and are in such general disrepair that these are now lowering the property values of all of Congress!

So examine your budget, and come prepared to help us get rid of these Democratic/Republican Clunkers! Contact your preferred organization and learn how you can donate and participate in buying a couple of Senators and House members you can call your very own!

Poll

What Do I Have To Do, To Get You To Do This Deal TODAY?

I'm calling my preferred Democratic/Republican organization RIGHT NOW!

0% 0 votes

Well, I'm On a Tight Budget - But It's Tempting

0% 0 votes

I'm In the Market, But Have to Be Sure My Money Purchases A Real Progressive!

0% 0 votes

Darn, I Spent All My Money On Booze, Cigs, and Ammo!

16% 1 votes

I'm In, But Only Because The Little League Team I Sponsor Isn't Playing This Year

0% 0 votes

I Represent A Foreign Imaginary Corporate Person, And We'll Take Ten!

16% 1 votes

Do You Take Gold Bars, or Coffee Cans Full of Unmarked Bills?

16% 1 votes

I'm Holding Out For the Cash For Blue Dog Clunkers!

0% 0 votes

Sorry, I Just Bought One, But Came For The Free Toaster.

0% 0 votes

I'm In, But Only If They Install Luxury Owner's Boxes In the Viewing Gallery!

0% 0 votes

Does This Come With All The Required Batteries?

0% 0 votes

Is This A Tax Write off?

16% 1 votes

Can I Get This With Pie?

16% 1 votes

Sorry, I'm Just Here To Get My Democratic Clunker Tuned Up!

16% 1 votes

Can I Get This One In a Nice Dark Blue?

0% 0 votes

Ubuntu Upgrade From 9.04 To 9.10, Oops...

2010-01-17T14:55:00.000-08:00

So I had been putting off upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. I did this because the Ubuntu 9.10 CD I had downloaded was not able to live boot on my PC. Now, my PC's getting pretty long in the tooth, so I just figured it was a problem related to the age of my PC, and that I'd do a bit of investigation into potential problems prior to performing the upgrade. Well, I never did much of that and ended up doing the upgrade anyways. Oops...

So I started the network upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 yesterday morning, and it finished and rebooted yesterday evening. Busybox timed out trying to finish booting the PC. It had "lost" the root harddrive. I rebooted to a Fedora 12 Live CD I had made just last week, and did some investigation on potential Grub problems after upgrading. First, I was still using Grub 1 rather than Grub 2, probably because one only gets Grub 2 installed if coming from a fresh installation. This is OK with me, I've also decided to stick with using ext3 file systems since test reports show significant performance hits with ext4. I ended up having to modify the root= parameter in grub's menu.lst file. This got the machine booting.

There were a couple other problems I ended up having to de-fang to get things running. First off, Networkmanager sure doesn't like static IP configrations (or it didn't allow me to edit the settings) so I removed it. Second, bind doesn't seem to by running as a caching name server so I had to put a nameserver line into resolv.conf. Third, lm_sensors was buggered up and I could not get the iy87 module to load. This was fixed by adding aan additional boot parameter acpi_enforce_resources=lax to the menu.lst file, and then running grub-update. I'm still ironing out bugs and moving things around, but it's running good now, better than 9.04 did (pulseaudio seems to run better). I'll report more progress later on.

Haiti Needs Our Help, Should We Send Our Military?

2010-01-15T18:45:00.000-08:00

We have a rather stark choice here, one which we can make with humanity, grace, and wisdom, or with the casual banality of evil ignorance.

Haiti was a poor, impoverished state, barely hanging on before the earthquake. Now, it is on the knife edge of becoming a "failed state". "Failed state", that should ring some alarm bells. Afghanistan, that's a "failed state". Do we want an Afghanistan just south of our borders?

Haiti is our neighbor, one which needs our help. One which is our friend, an ally. How can we, this professed nation of "God fearing Christians", not extend a generous helping hand? Is it not best to defend our own freedom by offering the hand of friendship to those in need? Cannot our military, those who are our so often called to defend our nation, be our ambassadors of friendship, good will, and aid?

The other option is dark - ignore this natural disaster and let a country teetering on the edge, fall off, into chaos.

America did not become a world leader by throwing our military around like a great club. We did not have large standing armies for WWI or WWII. We, instead, were pulled unwillingly into defending free nations fighting evil and darkness. Let's reaffirm that tradition by sending our military to fight the evil of disaster, hurt, and hunger, and in so doing, provide aid for those in need, and prevent the spread of chaos and darkness.

Is this so hard to see?

So often our military gets to deal with the shit in this world. Send them in - let them be the heros we know they are.

Fair winds and following seas

2010-01-06T22:18:00.000-08:00

It was with shock that I learned a good friend, Dave Lewis, had passed away from cancer on December 12th. I hadn't spoken with him in a while since our work schedules and locations had changed. I should know better than to take our presence here for granted at my age, and had sent that email or picked up the phone to say hi.

Dave was good man with a big heart. He loved to sail, was a damn good racer, and we were lucky enough to go racing with him on our boat over the years.

We'll miss him.

Wow, Good Cans!

2010-01-04T21:07:00.000-08:00

No, for all you pseudo pervs that jump to conclusions, this is not a post about female body parts!

I've been using Grado SR60i headphones for about two months now, and these things are freaking fantastic! Lots of deep bass, maybe even better than my stereo in the living room. They do look a bit dorky, and can be a bit uncomfortable, but a killer price and made in America.

Here's a link to their web page:

Grado SR60i

Life's too short and most earbuds hurt and sound like shit. Get your Grado's today.

2009 Wall St Recovery, What About The Rest Of Us?

2009-12-31T19:39:00.000-08:00

So Wall St had a very good year, but then again, they got a massive amount of money from us, the US taxpayer. How much did they get? 12.2 Trillion Dollars. Now, most of that was supposed to "trickle down" to us, but very little actually did anything for Main St. Not to shabby a deal for wrecking the world's economy.

But what did we get? Well, by the same report, we got 1.8 trillion dollars which is not exactly nothing, but it's certainly almost an order of magnitude less than Wall St, and honestly, the trend here about who gets what is very distressing. The talk in DC is to reign in the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicare. It looks like Wall St is going to pull off a double whammy - they've wiped out my home equity, crushed my pension, gutted my 401K, and now thery're going to take my Social Security and Medicare (and no, those are NOT entitlements, I've been paying for them my whole adult life.) And, there is more than a passing suspicion that even health care reform is nothing but a taxpayer bailout of failed financial companies.

Here's a couple more astute financial experts discussing our recovery - or lack of it:

Robert Reich

Joseph Stiglitz

Paul Krugman

So here's hoping that the US taxpayer gets a better deal next year than this year - because this year, we got screwed.

Your Next PC Upgrade Is Free!

2009-12-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

I've used many different computers and operating systems over the last twenty eight years of being an engineer. In fact, it's a bit embarrassing to admit to the new engineers I work with that my first programming languages were BASIC on a Data General Nova (PDP-8 clone) and Fortran on a CDC 6600. I currently support PCs and CNC controllers used in a large aerospace factory, mostly different versions of Windows, and have come to the conclusion that Windows is a PITA.

At home, I've got more leeway to select my own preferred PC and OS. I've been using various distributions of Linux since 1997 (see my review here in 1998 ) mostly Slackware, Red Hat (Fedora), and Ubuntu. But I still get to be a bit of a system admin at home since my wife is using Windows XP and my daughter is using Mac OS X Snow Leopard . Currently, I'm using a somewhat customized version of Ubuntu 9.04, and am looking at upgrading to 9.10.

I doubt most people have ever had to install or upgrade Windows since it's generally provided pre-installed. Well, recently, I had to install Windows - wow - what a PITA, much harder to install than Ubuntu! Now, this took me by surprise since I've been mostly installing and upgrading Linux at home and hadn't done a fresh installation of Windows in quite a while. (I have to admit, I do like Windows XP. It's our current standard at work, and it seems to be very stable and usable. We use a company standard network installed image at work whenever possible, so even at work, I had avoided a full up installation for quite some time.)

So, if you're going to buy a new PC, or have been looking at buying the next Windows upgrade, do yourself a favor and try Linux first. I'd recommend downloading and trying one of the "Boot from CDs" distributions so that you can try it out. Here's some links to the most popular distributions:

The CD images can take a while to download. Once you have a CD, try booting and using Linux so that you can check to ensure that all of you PC hardware (especially wireless) works properly. Honestly, Linux has reached the point where everything "just works" even more often then with Windows Vista or 7, and these distributions come with all the applications you will need to have a decent PC for browsing the Internet, at school, or for a home office, and it has had all the trick "Aero" graphics features for the last couple of years so you don't have to go out and buy a new PC or laptop just to get all the cool graphics effects. Plus, Linux is a bit more efficient with PC hardware, so your dog slow PC will run like new again.

Down The Bit Bucket

2009-12-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

So this year I've resolved to publish my own rants, and with the able assistance of a host of posters, rants from others!

All more time and energy down the bit bucket!

Let the fun begin...