Brent’s Thoughts

What a morning. To get the whole story in let me slip back to yesterday. Yesterday being a saturday I had a big day of nothing planned, which in truth is somewhat how I like my weekends. Around 12 or so Shane called me and ask me to go in and help Michael at the opelika call center out with sending out some updates for a program we were going to be testing today. I went in and around 6:00 or so we finished up. I offered to come in this morning to test some changes that were happening with the above mentioned program since Jeremiah goes to church and I don’t. The plan was for us to come in and test it and be done…total time 45 min max. Instead I showed up and tested the stuff only to find out it didn’t work, add to that the fact that my boss couldn’t get into the call with the people that wrote the software. SO I took the lead with my call center and one of the other ones and got the program working with it and another of the call centers. I also solved a problem we were having with Wake on Lan settings and setup a process to boot machines into ghost without using floppy disks even on brand new machines. Needless to say when I got my boss on the phone he was quite impressed. So I am now the admin of the domain that this program is used accross. WooHoo!!! Working my way to the top.
On another note. In my desire to make the officers of WKU-Linux feel a love for the group and accomplish some goals I forgot a great tool to get things done. Public Forum. I have decided on one key thing. While I am executive advisor I am also a member and that makes them answerable to me. If I request something they are pretty much required to either do it or give me a reason why they aren’t and since it will be on the main list that means not only is it documented, but it is also in more peoples face. Hopefully this will make them feel like they will need to finish some of the goals instead of just waving them off with comments about classes and lack of time.

Yes that is right folks the trial run results are in and the car mp3 player passed!!! Several cool points were earned when I showed it off at the Linux meeting last night. It is pretty slick if I do say so myself. A few problems have washed out and a few nice ideas have surfaced as well. First and formost at the end of my init scripts I will be adding a small sound bite which well signify the readiness of the system. I am getting some static from the hardware, but I think once I build the case for it and place the RF sender on the outside that will be solved as well. Another noticable thing is this… if you are looking for a city with some dead air space DO NOT come to Bowling Green. There is crap (and I really mean crap) on every other click on a digital radio. The only reason there aren’t ones on the other clicks is that is would have bleed over. When you find what you think is an empty station here it is only as long as you don’t drive 2 miles, because stations fade in and fade out so bad around here it is next to impossible to tell if there is actually nothing on there or if it is just blocked by the nearest hill.
On the topic of work… I have started finding myself getting annoyed over things. Not all the time, but more than originally. I think it stems from one thing and pretty much one thing only. Managers suck!!! I know if you are a geek reading this that really isn’t anything new to you, but I need to get it out. In my world it is geeks that run the stuff because geeks are the ones that know the stuff. That is not the way that it works. Geeks are told what to do by managers who know less than the geeks, I have noticed that sometimes they know nothing about the stuff. Managers decide what to do based upon two key things: does this cost money, and will this piss anyone off. That is all there is. I have found that at afni there are a lot of times that things are done because if we change them it will piss the people that set them up off.
Example: Our network sucks. There really isn’t any way to sugar coat that. Here is about what I have figured it out to look like (there are more hubs in each layer). This is horrible, you should see the collision lights flickering all over the place during the day. Plus we found out that there are going to be adding more to the mix. But no one will make it better because it would make the inter-networking guys mad, that and it costs money. I mean I don’t think a network is ever fast enough for a true geek, but this one is really bad, poor design and it is out growing the capacity of the system. The funny thing is that there are no machines on the network that do not support 100mbit, but the hubs limit us to 10mbit. I mean even if they were running at 100 it would be better because the bigger packets would flush through faster and allow all the keystrokes for the remote sessions and stuff to get through faster. As it is now, we can slug whole pods by ghosting a machine on it, because it just waterfalls through the hubs slowing down all network traffic practically through the whole building.

“I SHALL HAVE MP3s IN MY CAR” so sayith the geek in me and so be it. : ) I haven’t mentioned it on here before so I wanted to say that I am in the process of building a Mp3 player for my car. I actually have the hardware and software done, but I am stalled in building the box to keep it in. I have pulled a couple sly manuevers in the endeavor to build this thing. In an attempt to not brreak anything in my car I thought long and hard on how to intigrate it into the machine without touching the wires in the car in any way. I fell upon a great scheme. I am going to use a DC -> AC power converter to power the machine. It will be plugged into the cigarette lighter to start with with some small plans to maybe (this is a big maybe) wire it directly into the power system, but since I know nothing about where the wires are in my car for now it will work through the lighter socket. I will then sent the signal from the soundcard to the radio via a RF sender which sends the signal on a radio station channel. Here I came across a problem, this unit also required power via the lighter socket. They make Y adapters for it but this would have made the connections uglier and also forced more wire running in the cockpit of the car. Thus I thought some more and wired the RF unit into the power supply from the computer, thus providing perfect power for it. So I am back to my one wire in the cockpit to the trunk. Next I tackled the problem of putting things like monitors and keyboards into the car. This has several disadvantages: more wires, takes up a lot of space, looks junky in the car, and requires a lot more power from the power converter. I bought a power converter capable of providing 165 watts normal usage and 200 peak. This is well under the usage of both monitor and computer. Thus I needed a new way to control it. I wanted to work with linux as the OS because I wanted to have the “scandisk”less filessytem and other features of it. So I built a stripped down Redhat machine with ext3 filesystems and started work on having it send data out the serial port which I was going to connect to my palm. In the process of finding a terminal emulator for the palm I found some software called Netstereo. This allowed you to run a JAVA server on your machine and connect to it with a client running on your palm to play mp3s. This sounded perfect for me. I spent about a week messing with it and in the end I found out two key things, Java sucks for anything but web applications and two if software is in version 0.2 that is usually for a reason. I had to install 200megs of JAVA crap on my machine to get the server to run and palm client never worked right, plus the two never really talked correctly either. So in an attempt to find some way to fix these problems I stumbled on a program called GiantDisc. This thing is impressive. Using mysql in the backend it keeps a searchable database of all your mp3s and allows you to view them via a palm and build playlists and all kinds a stuff. Hit their site for full details it is truely awesome. Anyway I got this installed and after only a few minor glitches it works like a kid in Kathy Gifford’s clothes shops (yeah yeah I know tasteless and all but hey I am in that kinda mood). Another problem I am going to try to solve is the one of a spinning hard drive in a bouncy car. I hope to solve this by mounting the hard drive hanging from the top and bottom of the box it is in. I will hang it with rubber band to provide a poor mans suspension system. Also with this 0.2 version (yeah I know what I said earlier but this version will rock : ) ) I am using an old crappy hard drive so if it gets crashed no real loss. For those that care (you know who you are) the machine’s name is “famine” and the systems name will be … wait for it .. Deluge. Yes that is right, what is the name all you kiddies will be screaming when you go to buy a car? Deluge. Now I bet you are going to ask me why aren’t you? Well just because I am the kinda guy that helps at traffic accidents here you go. The stereo in my car is a monsoon stereo (I love it. They are great. I highly recommend one if you get the chance). The system will “flood” you with musical selection. Plus a winding path through dictionary.com got me to it and I thought it sounded cool, so bite me it is my project. : ) Anyway I hope to show it off at the linux meeting this Tuesday, may not have the box done yet though.

To step away from the stuff going on in Washington and New York and to look at something that I am noticing as a side effect of it I guess. Sites like slashdot and c-net have talked about terriorists using things like SSH and other encrytpion technologies to send each other messages. (Apparently Osama bin Ladin is a big cyrpto user) This tells me that they are using the internet, so I was looking at some of the posting on sites like Slashdot and Userfriendly and have noticed that there are a lot that are very anti-american and pro-arabic. Several of the posts that I have read tell straight lies about the sanctions that we have against Iraq saying that we are holding out on medical supplies and such from them, when it is well documented that there are no sanctions stopping the influx of food or medical supplies to Iraq, only other things. There are also several posts that say things like “We should not fight back, that will only make things worse” which in and of itself doesn’t make them from the terrorists, but it is the way that the messages are phrased and the fact that almost all of them make sure that somewhere in it they put “I am an American Citizen” that tends to make me think that there is also a movement of another sort going on. I am sure that there are people in this country that feel this way, but I cannot beleive that they would carpet bomb sites like these were you can post your thoughts and feelings like this. I mean there are several hundred posts to these sites saying things like this, while the number of posts disagreeing with them is in the range of 20-30. And since according to several polls and surveys America is overwhelmingly for attacks and sanctions against these people I think it should be more the other way around. That is the thing that I am starting to focus on now. The fact that there are no boundries on sites like these and anything could be put on there to swing public opinion toward a goal. I guess this is one of the problems with internet polling and surveys. You cannot limit it specifically to the group that you are attempting to survey.

(thoughts continuing on events from yesterday) I find that a nights sleep hasn’t brought me any closer to internalizing this. As more and more is learned I get no closer to being able to walk away from it. The amount of firefighters lost alone is staggering. Tonight I drove home in the dark and felt as if the night was darker than normal. I kept finding myself wondering if the power was out or if the county had turned off the lights on the road. Instead I realized that things where exactly the same only my perception of them being darker. It is amazing how things that are not close to you and effect no one that you know can come so close to you. Amazing still but in a brighter way is that during times of peace and tranquility America can be divided and seperated, but in a time like this when the fight is brought to our doorstep and into our house we are a united front. If there is anything that is comforting in this I would say that is it. I feel like I am waiting for the other shoe to drop in this. I am not sure if that will come as a second terrorist attack or if it will come as an attack from us, but there is more to this story that what has already come out, and I don’t mean the “public interest” stories that the media are going to drag out of it, I mean a large scale set of events that will effect more than the United States alone. For now I must go eat.

“..A date that will live in infamy…”-FDR, most likely to be quoted many times during this day and in the future when referring to today. I will not try to describe the events of today, I will leave that to those more informed than I, but I would like to give my thoughts and sympahy to those that are missing their loved ones. The buildings can be replaced, but the people that were in them can never be recreated. Since this is somewhat a journal of my thoughts and events I will describe what I feel and what happened to me. I was ghosting the impotant machines today and had developed some issues that seemed big at the time, but now seem small be comparision. I paid little attention to the things that a few people where mentioning in my attempts to solve the problems that were developing. Slowly as more people started to talk I realized that this was a big deal and that the crashing of two plans into the two seperate towers was no longer a simple accident. I continued to work but when I had got a chance while sitting at a machine I made a call out to my dad for information. I knew what he told me would be logical and would be only the facts that where being giving and would contain little speculation. This is a great feature of my father and I realized this later as I found that he was the person I called when I needed straight information. What I look back now and see was that the problems I was having and the events melded together in my mind somewhat without my knowledge. I found myself somewhat in a panic which at the time I thought was due to me not knowing what was happening with the machines I was working on, but now I realize that it was more of an overlay of the panic that I should have been feeling over the massive destruction. After the sorting out of the issues and correction of the problems I went to the break area that we have and finally saw the events that were actually happening. I found then that while the events were horrifying and unreal it also worked to calm me from my panic because I could see what the issues were instead of letting, what some would say, my active imagination run free. The towers had already fallen and I saw all the events play out from recorded tape. I then spent the day receiving information and feeling emotionally drained and snappy because I had put my energy into the roll out of the images and had used what was left in the thoughts for the people and events.

My thoughts: While I know that the events that are happening are real, it is still hard to wrap my mind around. There are so many facets of this even from a purely logical point of view. Add in the emotional aspects and I believe it will take days for this to work itself out in my mind. First and foremost is the fact that as I walked around today working on machines and whatever I realized that in the Trade Building there was probably someone walking around doing the same thing that 30 seconds later was dead. This opens up the mind track of how little control we really have over our lives and the events that shape them. There is also the aspects of what happened to me as I found out the events. Would I have been worthwhile had I actually been directly involved in the things? I find that a question I do not want to answer though I hope that the answer would have been yes. I also find myself amazed that I am living through an event that will later be talked about in the same order of things like Pearl Habor and the dropping of the Atomic weapons. Right now I must get some sleep I will write more tomorrow, until then read and then re-read Dale Brown novels, “The Hammerheads” and “Fire from the Skies” (i think this is the title) the second one is the one somewhat more like these events, but the first gives and idea of some things that might have to be done to stop these events.

My thoughts from a few entries ago rang true today. Shane (who I am really starting to think is a pretty cool guy, despite is quiet nature [man is that odd for someone _I_ would consider a friend or WHAT?]) turned me loose with little intervention to finish up the supervisor image for the machines. I pushed it out this morning and all seemed well. Only minor problems and small issues with printers not being setup and such. The only thing that was annoying to me was that I found myself calling Shane a lot, partially because I am unsure the way they do things, but a few of the times I walked away from the conversation saying “That was worthless I could have (or did) figure that out without any of his help, why did I call him?” I am going to attempt to try to curb this before it really does become stupid and only call him for things that are out of my control. I also find myself trying to do as much stuff as possible to show Shane that I am good at it and to get the people there to realize that I know what I am doing. I started the week a little worried that I would falter with Jeremiah on vacation, but I am finding that it is a good thing, because without him gone everyone would have continued to talk to him and not me for their problems. It is also making me work to solve the problems quicker because I know that I am the only line of defense.

Got a couple of things to talk about today. One is the fact that my Aunt Rose is doing somewhat better. I am not sure if it is a recovery, but she is still with us. The second thing is that I found out that Todd is having a kid. It is due sometime around May of next year. While I am happy for him that also started a line of thought on my end that I was not expecting. For some reason I had always unconsciously thought that whatever kids we had would grow up together just like we did. I am not sure why I thought that. I guess it was the unconscious me thinking that no matter what Todd and I would end up living near each other. I now realize that isn’t going to happen much since he is having a kid now, lives no where near me, isn’t going to be able to for about 6 years, I have not started a family (i.e. gotten married) and I am not sure that I will be in a position to do so for a bit. Also here is something else that it started. I don’t want my kids to grow up in Ratville Kentucky or wherever the hell I might end up living around here. I liked the way I grew up. Surrounded by houses with other kids and friends. A place where you weren’t afraid to play in the street because it was not located on a Highway or anything. I don’t want my kids to have to worry about traffic and have to ride for 10 minutes to get to the nearest kids house. I am sure there are places like that in Kentucky, but I don’t think that they are in Buerksville or anything. So now I have another goal in my life.