Friday, June 09, 2006

Almost DINKs

On Monday (6-5-2006), the boys and and Carrie left the State. The boys went to visit/hang out/disrupt lives down in Mississippi with my mom and step-father and Carrie went to a youth camp thing up in Idaho. So this past week has been nothing but Me, Reha and Ellis in the evenings.

It’s weird. The house is preternaturally quiet and we ended up watching TV the other night. We NEVER do that.

We’ve tried to pawn E. off on neighbors, but have been unsuccessful. Too many people have seen her “put stuff on my head” fetish, I guess.

So the boys are gone until late June and Carrie comes home tomorrow (though she’s off on an interplanetary cruise next week), so the wierdness will continue for awhile.

Anyway, my point is this: (I know my point is un-related to the above, but work with me people!)

It’s my birthday tomorrow and here’s what I need/want:

One SGI Origin2000. (It doesn’t have to work at all, ‘cause I want to turn it into a mini fridge.)

The basement finished. (Complete with built-in shelving, please)

Two first class tickets to NYC and a suite at W Hotel for a week.

The ability to finish all the books in The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson without putting a sharp stick in my eyes. (Dang, that guy is long winded!)

All the Rush albums that I’m missing to mysteriously re-appear.

All the weeds in the front flower beds to just DIE ALREADY!

The ability to run 6 miles without stopping tomorrow and not look like a complete idiot while doing it.

Led Zep to get back together (and John Bonham to not be dead) and come to my house for a concert.

Anyway, that’s my list. See what you can do about it, please!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Case Closed

Warning, geek stuff ahead. Tune in tomorrow for cute kid pictures and stories. I just have to get this off my chest and re-affirm that I really do hate computers and should just switch careers entirely. As Judge Smails says in Caddyshack, “Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.”

Remember how I said I was dealing with an Xserve that was misbehaving? Well, I was and I’m calling the problem officially solved, though I didn’t really do a whole lot. And my server is still kind of hosed. But it’s working in the sense that it’s not just randomly re-booting for no apparent reason. A search through the logs only gave me the line:

ApplePMU:: PMU FORCED SHUTDOWN, CAUSE = -122

Not terribly descriptive or helpful. Something about the power supply is being wonky. Google told me that and boy, howdy, that helped loads! (Not really, though at least I knew where the fault was). And no one except the sweaty, pimply hardware geek at Apple who designed the beast knows what a -122 error is. (OK, I shouldn’t say that. That’s not nice at all.) Before all of this I had physically moved the thing to a different location in the studio and I’m guessing that either the power circuit is bad there or I had a flakey surge protector. Either way, the Xserve was NOT a happy camper in its new location. So I moved it back to where it used to reside. Why fight it? Or try to figure out flakey electricity stuff? Flakey electricity scares that crap out of me, frankly.

My main problem was that though the box re-booted “normally” and would begin to do its job (file-serving, NAT, kerberos authentication, etc.), SSH was fried and certain users were not able to authenticate properly. I.E., I couldn’t do what I needed to do and a couple of people in the studio were doomed as well. Weird. I coudn’t SSH into the thing no matter what. Also, since I was so stupidly clever, when I first set up the server, I made it so our entire office went through the thing for NAT and Firewall stuff. So not only did I have users who couldn’t access their files, but they also couldn’t get on the Intarweb to pass the time while the server re-booted. Yes, I think I’ll be re-configuring the network this weekend. Probably not so important that I have everything channeling through the main Xserve on second thought.

I fixed the SSH problem by re-making a sshd_config file and it turned out that only one person was having authentication issues and he caused that problem himself somehow. Whatever.

Though something is still kind of wonky in there and I’m going to have to re-install the whole thing. (The server admin isn’t behaving properly) So I’m SOOOO excited to do a re-install. Especially since I’m going to have to go through the whole kerberos dance and the LDAP stuff. Whee!

Do I know how to do that? Kinda. Well enough to fake it, but I’m sure I’m going to do something truly stupid before I’m done.

Anyway… here’s the uptime. Six days isn’t a huge deal, but you have to understand, before I moved it away from the the “flakey” power, the thing was spontaneously re-nooting every 2 hours or so. Not good. And it’s best friend “filosofia” has been up for months without squeeking or hiccuping.





And in case you were wondering, the servers are named after font families, Vendetta and Filosofia. As if you didn’t know already, it’s Dork City over here at Ransom Note Typography HQ, people, DORK CITY.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

It’s Come to This

Even Ellis thinks Disney movies are bad:

OK, in Disney’s defense, she had not had a nap that day. And she’d been running around outside all day. And it was late.

But still, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” is not a good movie.

Friday, June 02, 2006

And Now, on a Very Special “Blossom”

OK, I’m busy at work. So here, instead of my scintillating wit, I’m going to turn the reins over to my daughter, Carrie.

On a side note, turns out that Xserves are a little persnickety about power. They don’t like flakey power. They tend to just reboot at seemingly random intervals. More later.

And now! Without further ado: The wonderful and and delightful Carrie!



So we’re in the car picking up Ellis from Teh Sitter’s. In the car are Jonah, a friend of his, Reha, me, my friend Tiff, and Lucas. Tiff is talking about how her family is planning to remodel their yard. She’s saying she wants to convince them into purchasing some Grecian statues of “buff, nude dudes.” I think this is a pretty sweet idea for several reasons:

i. Greek mythology. What’s not to love?

ii. Figure drawing is easier when a figure is present. (she’s an artist)

iii. Creeping out the neighbors (+1)

iv. Buff. Nude. Dudes.

Anyway. So Reha goes “You know The David?”

We go “Yeah.” Of course we know the David.

“Wanna hear a funny story?”

We are game. Hilarity is our friend.

“So the first time I saw your Dad naked I said, ‘Hey! You look like the David!’”

I make a face. Please understand, my father was not the dashing specimen of manhood you see in his pictures for all of my life. We’ll leave it at that.

Reha defends him. “Well, he was skinny! Like a twig. Like Jonah is now.”

I continue to make a face.

“You’re just doing that thing where you’re the child and you don’t want to think about your parents being naked. Carrie, it’s the David you know the David!”

“Yeah,” I reply, “but now it’s the Dad-vid!”

Favorite Entries

If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

• Partners
• Correspondence
• Help Wanted
• From the Office of Mis-directed Email
• A Word from the Small Person in the House
• RNT Product Review: Chocolate Mix Skittles Left Me Sterile!
• Jon’s Report Card circa… A Long Time Ago
• Dear Gratuitously Naked Conversationalist at the Gym:
• A Peek Inside the Writer’s Guild and Producers’ Negotiations
• We Regret the Error
• Letters from a Homeowner to His General Contractor
• What I Did There
• Hermaphrodite Administrative Assistants and Receptionists Need Not Apply
• Giving Me an IM Account Was Obviously a Huge Mistake
• Official Ransom Note Typography Vista vs. Mac OS X Shootout
• I Need a Real Hobby
• Beat Down
• Big Fat Lies
• True Love
• Now MY Ovaries Hurt
• Don’t Get Her Started
• Disturbing Trend
• Had to do it
• Mooshy stuff
• Ransom Note Typography End User License Agreement “EULA”
• Diva-licious!
• Just so we’re clear
• PETA may have a point

Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

 

Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?

©2005-2010 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.