EvilBobby, we set up you the bomb!
You will not survive. Make your time. Ha...Ha...Ha...
Here at CubeZoo we believe in a first strike policy of utter annihilation using the most devastating of WMD developed...DISCO, and not American Disco either, some of the most potent, devastating European DISCO!
Live in fear KnightofNothing, NorthernMisfit, and GeekGoddess or you too may feel the funky sting of our Disco arsenal!
And yes, I've seen 99% of the movies/TV Shows/Books/Graphic Novels referenced, even 'Starcrash' (a spectacularly bad movie I highly recommend for the connoisseur). I regret that I've only seen a few 'Farscapes' and 'Space 1999' (though I had Space 1999 toys).
(the original video by Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip)
I miss the warm weather pretty much every day. This summer, I can count on one hand the number of good hot days we've had. I know those high temps and humidity don't do much for you northern natives, but this post is not about you. This is my favorite time of year at home, when even before sunup it is muggy and still and so, so warm... and every breath is hot and easy, and you wear less clothing than is generally advisable, and no one uses a phone because everyone is out on the porch in the shade. Somehow the sun is brighter and hotter there than it ever is here.
One thing to commend this state, though, are the summer storms. From blandly sunny to dark and sharply windy in a few minutes; one little whiff of nitrogen is all the warning you get before a thunderous downpour.
I'm off to get a sweater. It's raining and cool, and it's wrong to turn the heat on in August.
Are we doomed to keep repeating the Cold War and the mistakes made, the posturing, the waste of resources? It feels, much like it has since 2000, that we're regressing back in time rapidly. Its felt like there are forces trying to drag the world back to the 1950s. I can't shake the feeling that in a few years the Iron Curtain will be back, and we'll have a new Warsaw Pact vs NATO, US vs USSR global stand-off.
Evil Bobby has some interesting thoughts on the subject.
(titles are mine)
Germany Cock Blocks NATO for Russian Oil
Ukraine hears something knocking next door
So for your enjoyment some French Pop:
mmm...Shakespeare...
When I logged in to do this post the blogger post management pages was invaded by pictures of babies.
Well I was just gonna post a link (and I know EvilBobby, NorthernMisfit, GG Rhapsody, Zophorian, YoungStranger, and KnightofNothing will enjoy this link):
http://www.dipity.com/user/tatercakes/timeline/Internet_Memes/embed_tl?fs=1
Timeline of Internet memes. It contains most of them. Interesting look at the global internet culture. Some of these will make you stupider for having viewed them, others however and great artistic achievements, while many are interesting looks at pop-culture in other places than where you may live.
Really, even with the high cheese factor, this is to me a great example of how we can connect and laugh...or point and laugh...as a global people.
Happiness to you on this day of arbitrary time measurement on completing another solar cycle of existence. To you I give the gift of music and my love.
and because I can't resist...
Well not really. I've just been kicking the idea of going free-lance, Sys Admin for hire, in the back of my mind for about 5 years now. Trying to figure out what I'd need to do. I know I'd need contacts, some way to market myself, and a good stable of initial customers. As well as a way to do contracts, make sure I get paid and such. I did my own company thing twice. Both times I couldn't make a go of it because I needed to keep my own job to cover costs, so I know I was doing something wrong.
I think I'm at a phase, much like my father had, when in his 30s he decided he wanted to become a farmer, where I want to be my own boss. Choose my own work. I have skills, I'm creative and experienced in my given profession, I think people may have a need for my talent, and I'm tired of working for 'The Man'. Ideally I'd like to have a number of clients, each of whom I'd spend 2-6 billable hours per week on. Small to mid sized for-profits, non-profits, academic places would be ideal. Some place where they only need 1-2 Sys Admins, and I could control aspects of the environment, build the systems how I see fit, shape the environments to what I think are a good meld of customer needs with best practices. Can do Linux (various flavors), Solaris, AIX, HP-UX. Well versed in security policies, architecture, backup/recovery/business continuity, networking, and heterogeneous integration. I have weaknesses, sendmail and printing sub-systems are still not my forte (but I'm a fast learner). Ideally I'd like to be able to work 3-5 days/week and a bit more free time, and only be on call if I choose or get reimbursed well for it. I'm not adverse to travel, just don't want to spend a lot of time away from home, nor can I really afford to pay my expenses upfront and get reimbursed at this point.
So this is really still in the dream stage. I'm asking for a lot and I'm not sure as a UNIX admin this fantasy could become a reality. Plus health insurance in America is expensive when you pay your own way, and with my previous 'condition', I'm uninsureable (per the insurance companies own policies) for at least 10 years, maybe longer, and then I get to pay 2x-4x times more what other people pay. Because I was unlucky enough to have cancer once...and survived.
So at work we have an application suite that uses a licensing tool that is bound to specific hostids. This can pose a problem as in Solaris 10, the non-global zones inherit the hostid of the global (or source) zone, meaning you could only have one copy of this software running at a time, not cool if you want to leverage zones.
With the new Solaris 8 and 9 branded zones, you can embed a string in the XML config file like this:
add attr
set name=hostid
set type=string
set value=80001234
end
and it will reassign the hostid. This was put in place so you could pick up and move Solaris 8/9 install and move them to within a zone. Good idea, useful feature...only it doesn't work for native Solaris 10 zones. I didn't read the docs fully and was dismayed as I thought this was part of Solaris 10 Update 4. It isn't. I then went on a two day search for a solution. The first day was pursuing official SUN channels. This only resulted in a response that a RFE (request for enhancement) has been made and it will appear in an update of Solaris 10 in the future. Not good for my more immediate needs.
Day two was spent with the swiss army knife for sys admins, google. I really only spent two hours researching it but in that time I found a few things. One is that this is not a new need, people have been looking to do this since 2005 when Solaris 10 was released. Secondly there are some easy ways to do it and some less than ideal ways to do it. Eventually what helped me solved my problem was this post here (http://tinyurl.com/6fa63z). I tried the compile your own newhostid.so library and it worked, but I had problems with other shared libraries not working, mostly because of the LD_PRELOAD flag needs to have all your system libraries for proper functioning. That page also had a link to someone who put together a dtrace script that let you spoof host ids on the fly. He has a dtrace script called zhostid with the source found here (http://tinyurl.com/62wjq5). This was exactly what I was looking for as it let me add more zones to the list as I built more, could be start/stopped at anytime with seemingly minimal impact on the system. And it works fine in a clustered environment, which is where these zones are running. You just need to put this script into a start script for boot time in both nodes (or as many as you have). Now this is the part I don't like. I generally don't like using nohup for scripts, but for now it was the only way I can get this script to start and background and keep running. I'm researching putting this into SMF if I can.
For now I made a /etc/init.d/zhostid
start script that just basically called this script and backgrounded via nohup. I then linked the script old school into rc3.d until (if I can) put it into SMF.
cd /etc/rc3.d ; ln -s /etc/init.d/zhostid S99zhostid
Some caveats.
First off this script isn't supported. Its meant for demonstration purposes and the author states this clearly in his comments in the script, and its released under GPL, so make sure to credit it properly if you make changes. SUN generally doesn't support host id spoofing, I guess with the exception of in branded zones, but they also at this time do not provide functionality to easily do this.
Secondly, you are modifying the running system and modifying a system call. Dangers are inherent with procedures like this. But I feel in this instance it is fairly safe and non-destructive. You just need to be aware this could cause some oddities if you're ever troubleshooting.
But it works. And seems to work well for the needs I had.
Your result for The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test...
Wired, the pinnacle of journalism has posted an article about WoW being used to analyze people's behavior to study terrorism.
My take on this article.
1) They're trying to get play by cashing in on the 'World of Warcraft' popularity.
2) They found retards to contribute to the article. Seriously. I agree WoW is a good place to study social interactions, its an MMO. It has an in-house, partially player driven economy (not a total free economy) so it has its value for studying economics. It would be a good place to observe people for psychological study, as here you have a place where people's identities are hidden behind avatars, and there becomes a certain freedom for ass-hattery. But terrorism? No, griefers aren't terrorists, they're ass-hats.
This article is a stretch. I think even the author realized this as the link at the end between Blizzard and DHS feels weak and half-hearted.
That's right. Pernox, a Horde, has picked up a quest in your own City of Darnassus. Your defenses are weak. Your guards are asleep. I got me +1000 AD rep and 17gold beyatches!
Your own Dawnwatcher Shaedlass is in such dire need of help he'll talk to anyone.
P.S. Evilbobby loves gnomes!
P.S.S. FOR THE HORDE!
lvl 1 - strange new world
lvl 10 - lost in this new world
lvl 20 - trick or treat...give me your money!
lvl 30 - my helmet looks stupid
lvl 40 - riding in style
lvl 50 - public transportation
lvl 60 - fiery vengeance 
lvl 70 - I am become death
Nerdwife and I have been going to farmer's markets for years. We started about a year after we were married. The St. Paul Farmer's Market is one of the best I've experienced. It features only produce and meats from farms within 75 miles of the City. It was huge and had an amazing selection. Homemade breads, meats, honey, and a large selection of vegetables. Everyone there were owner/operators which is a fancy way of saying they were from family farms or co-ops. $20 could buy you two canvas bags full of fresh, minimally handled, beautiful, tasty food. It was great for people on budgets to get produce as $20 in the grocery store could probably buy you as much, but the quality would not be as good.
The market always has a certain energy to it as well. Musicians come and play. Artists sell their wares (the St Paul Farmer's Market is in the heart of Lower Town, where the artistic collectives were located).
We were excited when we moved to Rochester and heard they had a farmer's market. We were sad though, the first year there were only a handful of vendors. But that has changed. Every year it keeps getting bigger. Its now coming on par with the St Paul one, just on a smaller scale. Musicians are there now. A great florist provides a weekly source of beautiful things for our house. I always buy the radishes because I'm a sucker for radishes.
We use the farmers market to supplement our CSA share. I'm in heaven when the tomatoes are in season.
I recommend Farmer's Markets if you area has them. Especially if you are on a budget, it may prove to be a great, local source of high quality produce that won't break your wallet. Its also a great way to meet the people who grow your food. Hear good music. Be outside.
Check it out:
ROCHESTER DOWNTOWN FARMERS MARKET
SATURDAY MAY 3RD THROUGH SATURDAY OCTOBER 25TH
4TH ST SE & 4TH AVE SE, ROCHESTER, MN
7:30 AM UNTIL NOON
http://rochesterdowntownfarmersmarket.org/
St Paul Farmer's Market
http://www.stpaulfarmersmarket.com/
'through the roof 'n' underground' by Gogol Bordello
There's not a whole lot of plot to discuss here: if you're interested in this movie you already know what happens and can guess how it ends. It's a movie with simple messages, ostensibly for children. That said, it's also the most crushingly depressing cartoon with themes of overconsumption/pollution/rule by megacorporations and the futility of individual existence that I have ever seen.
My two cousins and their friends won a movie contest!
My cousins are the lead star (pony tailed steven seagal look alike)and the mohawked sniper in this film:
They won a playstation 3. Contest entries and review is here.
The judges verdict:
"Overall entertainment in video-50%"
So this is the deciding factor I guess. Both are highly entertaining and arguably better moviemaking than Seagal's Submerged or Ticker. I'm very proud of these guys. It was a toss-up, but I decided to go with Killing Time. There are so many funny little jokes but not at the expense of seeming almost like a real action movie. Lots of good guns, a mohawked sniper, and most of all a monster truck. Maybe they faked me out, but I get the impression these crazy fuckers actually crushed an old pickup truck for this contest. That is not somebody you want on the streets, that is somebody you want indoors playing Playstation 3. So with all due respect to the excellent Impossible To Kill, I gave first prize to Killing Time.
System Administration is a profession filled with long pauses. Computers really aren't fast. At least not as fast as human thought. Sure things move at the speed of near light (electrons on circuits), but CPUs still are not as fast as the speed of thought. They just seem that way because they have the benefit of living in a closed system world of relatively small size. The job itself swings from oh shit moments of pure terror (system down! code brown!) to moments of boredom (meetings, paperwork, inventory). System maintenance is a bit of a mix. You have minutes of intense activity and worry (i.e. hope this survives the reboot test) and looooong stretches of boredom (hundreds of patches being applied one at a time).
During these long stretches of waiting; but you can't walk away type of waiting you have to sit and watch. The mind wanders. I found myself listening to my 'Gallifrey Public Radio' playlist. Its a playlist of non-DRM mp3s from either CDs I've ripped at home,or acquired via legal methods (i.e. artists websites offering free downloads). Its a hodge-podge of genres and sounds. In me sounds, like smells evoke strong memories. Time, places, feelings, like a wayback machine. So I've been flopping around time and space for the last three hours while this system patches.
Its better than cable.
I also joined twitter. Not sure if I'll continue using it. I get where its coming from, and the demographic its meant to server, but I'm not sure I like it. Twitter seems like a service for those people who feel the need to talk...constantly. When I'm doing it feels stupid as my life isn't that interesting. Reading others and I feel like a perverted voyeur. But its 'hip' and 'it' so I'll give this twit shit a try.
My first twit was 'taking a mental twit' because that is what it feels like when you tweet. Like you're sitting on the edge of the cesspool that is the Internet and excreting the mental equivalent of a bowel movement.
Much like blogging actually, but for the attention deficit.
