aubreyturner.org

I’d noticed that some people on various weblogs didn’t like the new Matrix movie.  I generally tried to avoid their reviews, because I didn’t want to get into spoilers, but I suppose that the overall tone lowered my expectations for this movie.  This was helpful, because with that in mind, I generally liked the movie.  I will be going to the next one, if for no other reason than to find out what happens.

There were a few things that bothered me about the movie, though (although they aren’t really about deep subjects like governments like some other bloggers have had).  First, while the effects were really good, I hit a saturation point where it just felt like it was all gratuitous.  I realize the Matrix allows for superhuman feats of strength and agility, but it started to get in the way of the story line, rather than being an integral part of it like in the first movie. 

While I realize that anything is possible in the Matrix (as opposed to the dirty and messy real world), there was one thing that bugged me about the freeway scene.  As far as I know, new motorcycles are always transported in big wooden crates without batteries or gas.  And with these high-end bikes (like, for example, the Ducati 996), I think the dealer also has to attach the fairing.  The idea of transporting a bunch of Ducatis on a car carrier just threw me (maybe people do this in other parts of the country, but I’ve never seen it).  I know, in the midst of all the other improbable crap that happened in that sequence, it’s a small thing, but it wrenched me out of my suspension of disbelief.

And then there was the ending.  I won’t say exactly what happened (in the hopes of not spoiling things), but the idea of the Matrix always seemed to me to be that one could do just about anything inside, but out in the real world everyone was human and subject to the laws of physics.  It looks like the movie makers decided to take a different path, although we won’t know for sure until the next installment.

My sleep cycle got really turned around last week from staying up late so much.  I slept really late on Saturday and then ended up staying up until 2:00am again.  The rain and thunder didn’t help much (at least it was good that we didn’t go camping; that storm was what my Dad would have called “a gulley washer”).  Yesterday I cleaned and rearranged from the moment I got up until around 5:00 pm.  I promised some friends that they could have my old computer desk.  The only drawback was that I still had a bunch of junk in, on, and around it.  I consolidated all my computers onto a single large table and put together a printer stand so my huge printer could sit by itself and not waste space.  The only real frustration was that the stupid wireless print server doesn’t seem to work (I realize now that I should have noted that the wireless print server was a “future” enhancement to my network in my earlier posting where I showed the network diagram).  It says it’s sending the job to the printer, but nothing happens.  Worse, the printer sometimes gives a comm error on startup.  I’ve tried a new cable as well as turning off bidirectional support on the printer.  The printer was working before I started this, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  As a test, I’m going to hook it up directly to the computer again.  If that works, I’ll have to send the print server back.

What the hell were these boneheads thinking?

HAM sandwiches are off the menu in Hume. Council staff have been ordered to stop serving ham and pork at hundreds of events out of respect to the area’s large Muslim population.

Hume chief executive Darrell Treloar said he had ordered the ban because 12 per cent of the area’s population—and two councillors, including the mayor—were Muslim.

“Rather than having a situation where staff or members of the community are made uncomfortable or put in a position where they are unable to participate in the meal we share, I felt it would be better to remove the meat,” he said.

“Instead of ham and cheese sandwiches, we can have tomato and cheese.”

What a freakin’ wanker.  This is asininity of the first order.  If there’s an issue with some people who won’t eat ham, then serve an alternate selection for those people.  But don’t be completely stupid and ban a food just because of a minority.  It’s too bad it’s illegal to beat stupid people.

You can have my ham when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers…

The folks at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications are experimenting with the use of the Sony Playstation 2 as a computing platform.  They’ve gone as far as creating a cluster of PS2s.  While this may sound weird, it actually makes a lot of sense.  The PS2 contains a custom CPU that is optimized for vector calculations (which are used quite a bit in graphics programming).  Further, a Linux kit is available for the PS2 that allows it to be used as a general purpose computing node.  The price-to-performance ratio makes it quite attractive, if the full potential of the chip can be obtained.

Besides, this is the sort of thing appeals to a geek on a deep level.  There’s something about taking something and doing something useful with it that it was never intended to do that brings a real sense of accomplishment.

Link via Slashdot.

The camping trip was postponed (my friend’s mother is sick) until next weekend, and I have to work again tonight (we finished at 1:30am last night).  I’m dog tired right now and not looking forward to being up until 1:00 again tonight.  But at least I can try to sleep in tomorrow.  It’s amazing how the anticipation of such a small thing could seem so satisfying. 

It’s all for the best, though, since I probably need to take care of a few things tomorrow (and it’ll let me get better prepared for the trip next weekend).  Hmmm… I could even go to the gun show in Ft. Worth.  Maybe I’d better not, since I’d probably just end up buying another gun (I have zero self-control at gun shows).  Frankly, I don’t know where I’d put another gun if I bought one.  My little gun safe is already crammed to the gills (not like that’s a bad thing, though ).

The saga continues.  The last problem was they were missing more files, which didn’t show up until they restarted the server.  When they looked in the directory, there weren’t any files when there should be 10 XML files that are used for configuration purposes.  What really chaps my ass is that there’s a step in the installation instructions that explicitly tells them to extract those files into that directory.  The installation should have been a pretty simple five or six step affair.

So far, it’s gone like this:
Installer: Server’s restarted.  Try it now.
Me: Not working, giving an error.
Installer  Getting an error in the logs.  <error text>
Me:  You’re missing some files.
Installer:  Checking…  Yep, there are no files there. 
Me:  Section 4.2 of the install instructions says to extract those files into that directory.
Installer: The files are extracted.  I’ll recycle the server.
   …ten minute pause while servers restart…
Installer: Servers are up.  Try it again.
Me:  Still no go.  Same error.
Installer: Getting a different error in the logs..
Me:  Looks like the proxy server isn’t running now.
Installer: The proxy server has this error in the logs…  <error text>
Me:  It’s missing its properties file.
Installer:  I’ll check…..  I added the file.
  Later… Rinse… Repeat…

I’m the first one to admit that I’m not one for the ‘great outdoors’.  I like to get away from time to time, but I want to be able to retreat to an electrified and air-conditioned lodging at the end of the day.  My idea of roughing it is staying somewhere where I have to use a dialup internet connection.   I’ve always had great respect for someone who could pack up everything they need for a week and go off into the woods and come back alive and well. 

I was invited by some friends to camp out at Lake Texoma this weekend.  I’ll be driving up there Saturday morning and coming back sometime on Sunday.  I’ll be going to the range this afternoon, working tonight, and then preparing for my trip Friday night.  Given all this, I suppose I won’t be updating this site much until Sunday (unless I get stuck waiting on the installation people tonight).

It turns out that my instinct concerning our deployment date was correct.  They spent most of yesterday getting that last component running.  They had missed some more files when they released the code to the read-only filesystem.  They had also misconfigured some settings that took a while to track down.  This gets pretty frustrating, because the instructions for those settings are clearly given in the installation documentation.  The other thing that is frustrating is that the deployment people aren’t giving our application their full attention.  The original person got called off to work a severity 1 problem for someone else, so they brought in someone new.  While he was competent and did manage to resolve the problem, it took a long time because he wasn’t dedicated to our project.  He was constantly being interrupted by other issues.

The final result yesterday was that we found some further misconfigurations in the settings that will require a restart of the servers to fix.  Because of the rules that they impose, restarts have to be done at night and they have to get permission ahead of time.  This means that we will only be able to restart the servers tonight.  Therefore, I have to be online at 9:00pm tonight.  I can only hope that they work faster than they did the night before.  Provided they have fixed the settings correctly, I will be able to get on the new system and run some testcases to verify that it is functioning correctly.  Once that is done, we’ll let the customer know that it’s ready and they can start their acceptance testing.  If that works out, the proxy changes will be done next Thursday night to make the site live. 

Of course, given the problems we’ve had so far, I’m not even going to hazard a guess whether we’ll actually make it this time (the original schedule called for user acceptance testing to complete tomorrow morning with go-live tomorrow afternoon).

This means that I may have to cut my shooting session short today, in order to make it home in time to get online.

After the previous post, we had one subcomponent that needed to be run, but the run failed, due to a file not being found (again).  The servers that our app is run on use a read-only networked filesystem to store code.  The people who run them have to follow a process of extracting code and releasing the files to the production filesystem.  Something in this obviously failed, causing some files to be missing.  This isn’t something we’ve ever had happen before, and I’m tempted to blame operator error.  But I did learn that the guy doing the install is also their on-call guy this week.  He’d been working 16 hours yesterday, so it’s likely he missed something.  I feel bad for him, but at the same time, it’s delaying the deployment of our application, and we have to answer back to our customer.  Anyway, by the time we got to that point, it was 2:30am (3:30am for one guy who’s in Atlanta), and we gave up for the night.  We were supposed to start again at 9:00am, but the deployment guy got called out on a severity 1 issue, so we’re on hold again.

Meanwhile, I feel like warmed-over death after only getting about 4.5 hours of sleep.  This is pretty frustrating, since our code has been through three test cycles and has been installed a number of times along the way.  We’re confident that the code is OK and that our installation instructions are good.  It’s just been a series of unforseen obstacles.

Sometimes, it seems like no matter how well planned and run a project is, it just has a dark cloud hanging over it.  We’ve had screw-ups from inexperienced developers, hardware failures, and various other setbacks, yet we managed to pull the schedule out of the fire through extra hours (and good planning on the part of the project manager who allowed some “contingency” time in the test phase).  However, it’s out of our hands now and we’re dependent upon the group hosting the application to get it installed.  All we can do is watch and offer advice and observations.  Unfortunately, I think we’re going to miss our deployment date, given the current situation.  It’s just a feeling right now, because it’s still possible to hit it, if everything comes together just right.  But I’m not very confident, and when it comes to project estimation, my gut feel is usually pretty close.

It turns out that the deployment guy messed up the extract of the code, such that some files were missing.  We don’t know how this happened, and it’s too late to spend a lot of time worrying about it.  At least it’s working.  Now all that’s left is some quick testing to make sure that everything is running correctly.