==== Lustre /mnt/lustre/testData.out (rep 1 of 2) Wed Oct 2 14:09:09 2002 374784MB 183 clients Lustre Do_Check_Read=0 Do_Check_Write=0 access_pattern=regular, block_size=524288 bytes filecreate_pattern=file-per-proc Do_Collective_Xfers=0 Do_Multiblock_Xfers=0 Show_Xfers=0 Show_Delays=0 Delaying 1 secs before opening file for write. task 0 closed file 14 at line 1789 1443.35MB/sec write (259.662 sec)
1.4GB/s. That is not a typo.
Today was a two-ulcer day and I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe shaver will fill you in.
Joe was perusing the game show network, as he is wont to do, and what do we see but a classic 1988 episode of celebrity Family Feud: American Gladiators men vs. American Gladiators Women.
Hawk, Laser, Sabre, Tower, Turbo vs. Diamond, Ice, Jazz, Sky, and Zap. So awesome.
I’m on my way to Washington, D.C. for a couple of days. It’s my first American Airlines experience in almost exactly two years, when the pilot decided not to show up and we were stranded in Asshole, Illinois until they put us on a van to Chicago where we stayed the night without the benefit of hotel vouchers, so I made an essentially interest free loan of some six hundred dollars to American via the Westin, which I managed to recover only some ten months later after no fewer than three screwups in the American Airlines accounting office involving international currency exchange, my Canadian address, and the fact that the US accounting office was unaware of the existence of the Canadian accounting office, who issued the incorrect cheque in the first place.
But hey, it’s cool. We’re about to land.
I bought The Making of the Atomic Bomb today. I’ve been looking for a history of the US atomic weapons programme for some time, and this one seems like a winner. I wonder if I can write it off as occupational research material?
Peter gave a talk this morning at a NASA EOSDIS workshop on new technology. At least that’s what I think it was about. We didn’t stay very long.
We went to another meeting and then I flew back to Boston, after which I sat in traffic and our cab was rear-ended. Not very hard, so he didn’t even stop, he just glared at the woman in his rear-view mirror and muttered comments for the next two miles.
My apartment is freezing, probably because the boiler appears to be totally inactive. I can almost see my breath. Simon has taken extra measures to keep warm.
Comments off
Every few hours I have to go into the bathroom and break the ice that’s formed in the toilet. Good god, it’s cold in here. I hope the landlord calls back soon, because I pay way too much rent to take this shit for very long.
Update: the landlord called and informed me that the old tenant installed a new thermostat which takes batteries. Who has ever heard of such a thing? Anyways, the former tenants apparently removed the batteries when they moved out. And disconnected the wires inside that connected it to the boiler. And ripped it out of the wall. Hello?
Today was not exactly a case study in productivity, although I did use the Dremel to perform useful household tasks, such as reattaching the thermostat to the wall, and getting plaster in my mouth.
Once again, it’s somehow nearly the middle of the month and I haven’t invoiced. Even Jacob would do a better job at managing my life than I am. I need to spend more time trying to find a new assistant.
My good friends Alice and Zach get married tomorrow. I was going to surprise them, but something tells me that “extra person at the wedding” is not a terrific surprise.
After Joe and Jacob coerced me into buying an Xbox, and after we finished bruising our thumbs with NHL 2003, Joe and I tried to resume the hacking of my TiVo.
Some three hours of head-scratching later, Joe stumbles upon this little gem. Fuck them for becoming one of those evil organizations that destroy my fair-use rights through technology.
Happy Canucksgiving weekend. I’m feeling generous, so if you work for me you can take Sunday afternoon off this week…
There was a nonzero amount of excitement at the homestead today: Someone from Keyspan arrived in the early afternoon to inform me that the street outside my bedroom was harbouring a gas leak. More immediately interesting, the aforementioned gas was making its way, via electrical conduits, into our basement.
A little bit later, and for many hours thereafter, things outside got interesting. I have no idea if gas is still leaking into our basement. I hope not.
They woke me up again to check the gas leak in the basement this morning, and apparently they didn’t exactly fix it 100% yesterday, so they’re outside tearing up the street again. In a seemingly authentic replication of what they did to zach’s street, they were raising the road to a height of four feet and dropping it, over and over and over again. The whole house was shaking.
Anyways, they think they’ve fixed it. They’ll wake me up early tomorrow morning again to check for overnight buildup. I like when they use phrases like “overnight buildup” to refer to explosive gas in my home.
Authorized representatives of the always pleasing Sears corporation brought me my new dishwasher today. Someone was awarded at least one well-deserved patent for the very clever device that makes attaching it to and detaching it from my sink faucet a breeze. One hateful chore eliminated.
My workday ranked as “decent”, until shaver and I had an excellent, mind-expanding conversation. For the first time, I think I really believe that the recovery schedule–which I’ve painstakingly and repeatedly assured our customers we can meet–will actually be met. Yay, no prison for phil!
Jacob brought me thai food for dinner, because he’s a really nice guy. We watched some Newsradio on the TiVo; I think it’s growing on him.
gas is still leaking
like morning mist in springtime
thanks for not smoking
more jackhammering
earthquakes and avalanches
I can’t hear the phone
The dishwasher still has that new-appliance novelty. Dishes no longer pile up in some twisted testament to my enduring laziness. No! They are quickly and efficiently cleaned with almost no human intervention.
Blizzard recently turned me onto Sports Night, which is a remarkably good show that reminds me a lot of Newsradio. As an astute Amazon reviewer pointed out, it’s a great show with a really unfortunate name. I never watched the show, assuming it was some dumb talking-head sports thing, and apparently neither did anyone else, because it only lasted two seasons. Anyways, run, do not walk.
I did a little bit of this, a little bit of that today. Mostly I worked on recovery.
“Most cats dislike the harmonica.”
It’s almost 06h00, so I should probably get some sleep. Saturday is going to pretty much be a wash, I can tell already.
Update: It’s almost 07h00, and sleep is courting me–with flowers and chocolate and little rooftop ballads–but shaver and I are so close to passing a major recovery test…
Update: It’s almost 08h00, and the fixes are flying fast and furious, but we’re not quite finished…
I finished some simple but cool hacks today, that allow us to seamlessly stop using object storage targets when they go down, create new files striped across the remaining targets, and then start using them again when they return. Aside from that, it was not a terribly interesting workday.
Joe and Jacob came over to watch the Boston/Toronto game. Toronto did a pretty nice job for most of the game, but fell apart briefly and completely in the second period, from which they never recovered. It’s unfortunate, too, because it makes it a lot harder for me to effectively talk shit about the Bruins.
Thank you for your many birthday greetings.
My workday was briefly interrupted by the consumption of some pretty good Italian food at a nearby restaurant with Joe and Jacob.
Today I setup Bugzilla and migrated all of our bugs from the hideous Sourceforge bug tracker. I will never understand what perversion of the mind led to their “tool”. Also: when did Bugzilla become so easy to setup?
Daylight savings time ended last night, which always makes me ponder clever ways to rent out my apartment and spend the winter in Australia. As with every other year, I predict that I will spend exactly zero days in Australia this winter.
Peter arrives tomorrow for a few days of hacking in Boston, after which I’ll spend a few days of climbing and hacking and eating in Toronto with Mike. Events have conspired to disrupt my normal schedule of visiting Canmore every month, so this will be my first Canadian trip in quite some time.
Peter and I had a nice Indian dinner with Nat and Miguel tonight. I realized that I hadn’t seen Miguel in something like two months, and that I almost never see Nat anymore because I’m working 80 hour weeks again.
Peter and I started working on some changes that I don’t really believe in. I hope he’s right, but it feels like a huge kludge to me.
I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
Peter and I did some whirlwind bug fixing before he left, and then I rushed around getting ready to leave for Toronto. Mike and I chatted for a bit when I arrived, watched some hockey, and then had a rather good meal at Japan Sushi.
Ah, good times, good times.
