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Over the years I’ve had several hard drives fail. I recently built a new system because I was worried that I had all my eggs in one hard drive (to scramble a metaphor). My latest computer has five drives:

The system has a 36GB Western Digital SATA150 Raptor for the boot drive and a RAID 5 array comprised of four 250GB Western Digital SATA150 drives (which gives a capacity of 750GB) connected to a 3ware 8506-4LP hardware RAID controller. It might seem a bit paranoid to create a RAID array for a personal server. However, my paranoia wasn’t unfounded, since I had two hard drives fail this month (within days of each other). The first one was on the 14th, which was in my work PC. Fortunately, I have a laptop that I could fallback on.

The other drive was one of the new ones in the RAID array. I didn’t even notice it at the time. I only discovered it when I noticed the error in the logs. I’ve since installed the monitoring software so that I’ll get an email when there’s a problem. Still, the system stayed up and functional with no lost data from 9/17 until today, when I finally received a replacement.

I also picked up an “alien” case at Fry’s. I have to admit I wasn’t that fond of it at the time, but it was the only one in stock that had enough drive bays. However, it’s kind of grown on me. The 8 fans with LED’s give it kind of a cool glow:

A few other stats for the system:

• Motherboard: Soyo SY-KT600 Dragon Ultra Platinum
• Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3200+
• Memory: 1GB (matched pair of Kingston DDR400 PC3200 DIMMs)
• Video: GeForce4 MX440
• OS: SuSE 9.1 Professional

There have been times when I’ve wanted to tackle someone who was talking loudly on a cellphone in a public place, but I think this might be going a bit too far.

Can we talk about talking on cell phones?

The matter has been simmering for years as wireless gabbing takes place in more and more settings. For one woman in the Washington, D.C., area, it came to a head recently when she was arrested, reportedly for speaking too loudly near a bus stop.

According to a story in Tuesday’s Washington Post, a transit police officer thought that the woman was disturbing the peace with loud cell-phone talk and eventually wrestled her to the ground. Police said the woman was cursing into her phone, but she said she cursed after she’d been grabbed, according to the newspaper.

Maybe this will make her realize just how inconsiderate she’s been.

Somewhere in my travels last week I managed to get exposed to some kind of nasty cold bug.  I’ve been hacking, sneezing, and just generally miserable since Friday afternoon.  Hopefully this will pass soon.  However, until it does, don’t expect must posting here.  I’m barely managing to string together coherent sentences at the moment.

There has been a rash of car breakins recently in the parking lot that Tarrant County jurors are instructed to use.  The lot is fairly remote, with jurors shuttled to/from by bus.  A remote lot with people guaranteed to be gone most of the day has proved almost irresistable to thieves.

One problem I can see here for people who carry concealed is that the usual action when confronted with a courthouse is to leave the gun in the car.  However, given the breakins, this seems like asking for trouble.  I think that any public building that requires you to disarm should provide guarded lockers in an area that is out of public view (don’t want to advertise too much).

At least with lockers you won’t be deprived of your rights until you enter the building…

Am I missing something with HP selling iPods?  I just don’t see the point.  As far as I can tell, they are selling the same iPods as Apple, and given Apple’s MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) rules, they can’t provide any price differential. 

All I can see is that HP has become an Apple reseller who only carries the iPod.  Where’s the value add? 

While I’ve got guns on the brain (see last post), there’s one more law that I’d like the state to consider.

First, I’ve got to make a disclaimer.  I’m normally against using state power to curtail the rights of property owners.  I’ve got some serious reservations about this.  However, when personal safety is at stake, perhaps it is justified to do so.

Some companies post their parking lots as off-limits to firearms.  If the company is located in an area without any nearby public parking, this effectively disarms the employee on the way to and from their job.  I’d like to see this practice ended.  The idea that someone can be disarmed off of company property due to this kind of rule bothers me.  Truthfully, such rules don’t do much good, since someone who is determined to cause trouble will just ignore it (i.e. someone contemplating an office rampage probably won’t be worried about this rule).  Further, in that situation, an employee could potentially put an end to a rampage by retrieving his own gun from the parking lot (as happened in a college shooting incident not too long ago).

I’d heard that some state had done this recently, although I can’t remember which one right now.  I’m not advocating that states regulate what companies can do inside their buildings.  However, parking lots are generally more public (even if controlled access) and should perhaps be treated that way.

Hmm… it just occurred to me that this is similar to the argument used by the anti-smoking nazis to regulate smoking in bars and restaurants.  Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea after all, although I should note that once again I’m not for regulating what the company can do inside its buildings.  This one needs further thought.

One of the areas where I think Texas is overly restrictive with regards to handguns is in vehicles.  Texas law says that you can’t have a handgun “on or about your person”¹ unless you have a Concealed Handgun License.  A number of states (Colorado and New Mexico come immediately to mind) have laws allowing you to carry a handgun in your car without a license. 

I’d like to see Texas go that way as well.  A lot of people I have encountered don’t really know that this isn’t already the law, so they’re carrying guns in their cars/trucks anyway.  In some states, they actually accomplish this by defining your automobile as an extension of your home.  That sounds reasonable to me.  Further, given that you’re more vulnerable in your car than your home, it makes sense to make self-defense as simple as possible. 

¹  There are a few exceptions to this, such as when “travelling” (which isn’t defined in the law, so it’s up the courts to decide if you’re really travelling), when on the way to or from the range or somewhere else it’s legal to have/use the handgun.  However, it should be noted that you’re supposed to go directly to/from those locations, otherwise you might be subject to arrest if found with a handgun (carrying a handgun without a license is a Class A misdemeanor).

This past Thursday and Saturday we studied emergency medical operations and disaster medical operations in the CERT class that I’m taking.  We were issued a fanny pack and emergency supplies to keep in them (nitrile gloves, 4×4’s, cling bandages, scissors, triangular bandages, face shield, flashlight, etc). 

In particular, we spent a lot of time on triage during disaster medical operations.  The idea is to quickly assess someone for one of the three killers (obstructed airway, uncontrolled bleeding, shock) and classify them as either I (Immediate treatment needed), D (Delayed treatment), or Dead.  In particular, we are instructed to try twice to clear an airway and if the person doesn’t resume breathing to classify them as dead and move on.  At first, this seemed harsh, and it will be a tough thing to do.  But when you really think about it, it makes sense. 

You have to consider that this protocol is for dealing with a disaster situation where the system is overwhelmed and you’re likely to be the only person with any kind of training.  The skills we’re learning are only rudimentary, so we won’t have the ability to perform any kind of advanced lifesaving.  Further, the idea of disaster medical training is to do the most good for the most number of people.  If someone is not breathing in this situation, studies have shown that this person will likely die even with advanced lifesaving techniques.  Given all this, there isn’t anything you could do for them so you should move on to someone else who you could potentially help.

While I’m glad to have some training (i.e. knowing what to do is half the battle), I just hope I never have to get into a situation where I have to make this kind of decision.

In a recent Citizen Fire Academy class we were visited by the area bomb squad as well as the bomb dog from the Tarrant Fire Marshall’s office.  We were given some basic information on identification of explosives as well as a demonstration of the equipment used by the bomb squad.  A bit of useful information is that the bomb squad recommends that everyone be at least 300 feet away from a potential bomb and under cover.  As the bomb tech noted, “You can’t duck at 30,000 ft/sec.”

I gained an appreciation for the job they do when he passed around the bomb suit.  The suit weighs 80 lbs.  They had to make a hanger for it out of rebar, since no regular hanger could hold it.  When you consider that they have to walk 300 feet (each way) wearing the suit and likely carrying another 50 lbs of equipment (portable X-ray, tool boxes, etc) in the Texas heat, it’s amazing that they manage to get anything done.  And if they think there may be some kind of chemical or biological hazard associated with the device, they have to use a portable air supply and wear a protective suit underneath the bomb suit.  Imagine being sealed in a ziploc bag and draped in a multi-layer Kevlar blanket under the Texas sun…

The bomb dog was also interesting.  It turns out that the dog was trained by BATFE and he’s loaned to the Tarrant County Fire Marshall’s office.  The guy from the Fire Marshall’s office is actually deputized as a Deputy US Marshall, since the dog is also on call for any kind of national situation that they may need (for example, this dog and his handler went to Houston for the Super Bowl to help with security).  The dog is trained to sniff out any one of several thousand explosive odors, including gun powder.  The demonstration they gave involved two items placed in the room.  One was a magazine from a Beretta pistol (sorry, couldn’t help but notice the make of the Keller Fire Marshall’s gun) hidden in the podium.  The other was a small item with explosive traces on it that was given to a student in the front row to put in his pocket.  The dog sucessfully found both items. 

If you’re the paranoid type, you might want to take note that this dog is capable of finding buried guns and ammunition (and in fact had been called out to do this at one time).  Of course, they have to know what area to search in.  Still, burying a gun in your back yard might not be as secure as you originally thought.

Over the past few days I’ve heard the Dixie Chicks a couple of times now as background music.  Once in Bass Pro and again in Chili’s.  Given the close temporal proximity of these sightings (soundings?), and not having heard them in a long time, I wonder if someone is trying to test the waters for a comeback.  Slip them in on a few stores’ background music and see if anyone complains.  It has been a while since the original flap (a year and a half), so maybe they’re hoping people will have forgotten (or at least calmed down).

Or pehaps I just hadn’t noticed them before and there’s nothing to all of this.  However, I suspect I would have noticed if I’d heard them before.  I tend to notice music and I can sometimes determine a song from just the first couple of notes.  Given the Dixie Chicks situation, I’m pretty sure I would have noticed (it’s what made me pay attention when I heard their songs this weekend).