Fuzz

I backed over the dog again.


It has not yet dawned on him that cuddling up with the wheels of my desk chair is a bad idea.

When I push back my chair to engage in walking meditation (machination, really!) I get him good. There are little tufts of dog hair around the floor.

There is a perfectly good dog bed beside me, out of chair range, that goes un-used.

Why?

Some things just can't be explained.

Deat Hramage

FreeNas: so good, and yet so bad.

I haven't sunk much money into new computing equipment in a while, instead picking up other peoples cast-offs. The downside of this tactic is that most of the stuff laying around the house is really old. The Mac was new in 2002. The stinkpad (still deceased at the moment) was new in 2004-5. I shortly after moving here, I concluded that system/data failure was eminent, and so enacted something of a backup plan.

It's ugly:

My brother had gifted me with a Pentium M (Dothan? Banias?) laptop with some screen and CD drive issues that made it unusable for normal work. However, it's USB and network ports worked, and it only pulls 5-10 Watts when doing nothing. Perfect for a home server. I connected what spare USB drives I had, and wrote an /etc/rc.shutdown.local script on the mac and logout script stinkpad to rsync all critical files on shutdown.

Things were pretty slick for a while.

About 139 days, to be exact.

Then I decided I wanted to completely backup everything in the house. The girlys laptop. All 70 gigs of photos on the mac. Other stuff. The system was working so well I wanted more.

Big mistake.

The first issue was that the drive had actually filled and rsync was failing to add new files. Since this was happening on shutdown and my silly script logs nothing, this was lost on me. wups.

(Que my brother "Program defensively!")
(Que me: "Defend against myself? Internal conflict! I need therapy!")

That masked the second issue that the laptop's temperature management circuitry was on the fritz, since the laptops CPU was never loaded, it never crashed.

Adding an additional drive and then attempting to transmit 70 gigs of data fixed that problem. The cpu temperature would climb past 70°C, then the machine would crash.

Lovely.


I reset the BIOS, and now the fan seems to modulate with CPU load again... I wonder if it will start working...

A Few New Spindles

The ChevOldsmoBuiac A/C fanastically failed about this time last year, on a road trip.

I had brilliantly decided to recharge the system en-route, thus ensuring we'd be stuck with a hundred miles of squally smokey failed compressor instead of the old one that was content to just spin on it's bearings. With the onset of the first heatwave in June, I took it to the shop, and momentarily doubled the cars value. Or halved it, depending on what accounting system you use.

The girly was then able to cruise to work in frosty style.

She called one day a few weeks ago to announce that the idiot light with the battery symbol had come on. Since I rarely have my cell phone on nor on me, I missed the message, and she appeared in the driveway to tell me to check the voice mail. A quick test with the multimeter showed the battery voltage to drop about a mV every second with the engine running, a sure sign of alternator failure. There was continuity between the alternator and battery. I swetted the heat and pulled the bolts for the alternator. We got to the parts store before closing, and the clerk wired it to a test bench. Then a motor whirred and the computer screen flashed "FAIL" in freaking huge letters. No amps, I suppose. Cute.

I got another with a lifetime warranty ( I tend to win that little game), and we had burritos for dinner.

—Burritos are tubular happiness—


I spent the next morning with a cup of coffee and a socket.

There are shiny parts under the hood again.

Olds in august 2010

Olds Now

Summer Onslaught

Summer is too much fun to waste your time dicking around on the internet.

And of course, there you are, internet in your hot sweaty little hand.

You're wasting your life.

I know who you are and that you're doing it.

And I know that you won't stop.

You're a compulsive like that.

I know you.

Because you are like me.

Just another monkey in the zoo.

Have a banana.

Rollerskates

My brother called sometime a while back, mentioning that he had met a tall young woman. A tall young woman who wanted him to come to a roller derby bout with him. Tall and aggressive? Intriguing and unexpected. (My brother has never been associated with The Little General...)

Naturally, I asked if I could come too.

Of course, he said "no".

He had things to do.

For subsequent bouts, however, the then-future-wife and I received invites. However, we demured for several reasons; both doggy and infectious. This last time was different. We didn't demure. Instead, bags were packed, we checked The Dog into the kennel, slid the A/C selector to "MAX", put on our glasses, pointed the ChevOldsmoBuiac North, and hit-it.

I think I have finally found a spectator sport that I can spectate with joy.

Ten people. Tight oval. Simple rules. Helmets and pads. Full contact. Roller-skates. Chaos.

I love chaos.

It's like taking the best aspects of olympic speed skating, wrestling, football, and nascar, and fusing them into a single event, then adding fishnets and tattoos for good measure.

Whatever thought processes went in to creating the sport should encouraged in the general populous. For instance, we could give D.C. area rush-hour drivers rollerskates.

Roller Derby on Wikipedia.

One aspect of the event that I appreciated was that it didn't feel overly commercialized. The tickets were affordable, we weren't hounded for parking fees or for having outside water bottles. The skaters also worked with volunteers to make the event happen. In spite of the the whole crashing into each other business, it was a remarkably friendly gig.

That's right, I just said it was friendly.

Photographing roller derby is a bit challenging. There are lots of spectators, and the track is oblong and surprisingly short. As a result, the curve coming out of the start line ends up being the easiest place to take pictures. As obviated by the large number of photographers and spectators at that very point.

I took nearly 2000 photos, and only a few came out with anything tasteful to say for themselves. The bout was lit by high pressure sodium vapor lights in a tall, indoor stadium, thereby ensuring that color rendition was poor and that high ISO noise would obliterate detail. At least, that's what I thought when going through the photos. At blog post resolution, only the colors seems to be any issue.


I want my photos to give the skaters some colors that don't seem callow, and I want them to stand out above the background clutter a little bit. I had some success using a strobe for fill, but not enough success to get any photos I wanted to post. The combination of interesting and color just wan't there, and it took a full power discharge for it to work. Worthless in shooting sports. I think using two strobes might make a serious difference, especially if the strobes could be mounted off camera and triggered wirelessly, closer to the track.