![[SimGuy.net]](/shared/logo.png){kind=logo}
March 2005 Archive
Thursday, March 31, 2005
[Comments: 0] 10:04 AM - tangled-wires
I swear that the natural tendency of wires is to become as absolutely tangled as possible, even if you just run them all and never touch them again. When you actually have to work around them, there's no telling what will happen.
We just took care of our second, and hopefully last major scheduled maintenance period down at Equinix this morning from 12 AM to 4 AM, though it really ended up being more like what I chose to call 6:75, or more accurately 7:15. We managed our way back to the apartment by about 9:30, and everyone else has gone to bed. I should be able to hold down the fort for another couple hours, but rest assured, I am getting my nap too. :)
So what we did this morning was rerun every single network cable in four racks. The network cables are now bundled in sets of 12, and run off to the side of the rack out of the way, so as to look neater, be more manageable and be less restrictive of air flow.
We also were running dangerously close to the limit on our two 20 amp circuits per rack, so we had additional power brought in, and we added additional power strips. However, to balance load, we had to relocate nearly every server in racks 002 and 003 so they are plugged in in a logical fashion, consistent with our other configurations. We also renumbered the servers in rack 003 such that they are in order and start with 01 instead of 03. Many of these issues had something to do with power in the past.
We got what needed to be done accomplished, so I'm pretty satisfied.
One unrelated side note: It's been really warm here the past couple days. It finally seemed like spring was here. With it came some beautifully stormy weather. The storm came with some tornado watches, which is something we apparently get here. Somewhere in the middle of the storm the sky managed to turn a funky kind of yellow. I had trouble capturing it through the window, but here's my best shot:
After the system passed through, the warm weather did too. A cold breeze is blowing through town now. Our trip back from Equinix was a great deal less comfortable because we didn't bother to bring jackets along.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
[Comments: 1] 6:06 PM - get-out-of-debt
Now that I have a steady full-time job and I've had money coming in for a while, I've had the opportunity to push hard to beat down my massive college loans. I started with nearly $40,000 in loans upon graduation last May.
Since then, I've knocked out the bigger GATE loan with the high 5.590% interest rate completely, which accounts for rougly half of my loan balances. I just completed the final payment, which was 31 cents, because the previous final payment of about $1000 had interest accrue while it was processing.
My other loan still remains with about $17,500 left, and hopefully I can continue to drive that loan down and make it disappear by the end of this year or early next year. Besides basic living expenses, I haven't had a lot of stuff to spend my money on, so this is a great time to kill my loans, especially given the interest rates are higher than anything I'd earn in the bank.
My final loan's got a current interest rate of 2.625%, so the interest is quite a bit less annoying than the GATE loan, but still, I hate to see those many extra dollars accruing every month. Right now a payment of $50 goes toward that loan automatically each month, but it is almost entirely interest at this point. Apparently if I'm on time for a year or so, my interest rate on this loan goes down again.
I was always amused as I prepaid down my loans ahead of the loan schedule how they simply pushed off my remaining payments completely, so that if I wanted to, I could stop having to pay my loans again until a couple years shy of their 2017 payoff date, accruing the maximum amount of interest possible. That seems crazy to me, and I'd have no part of that. ;)
[Comments: 1] 8:40 AM - slight-miscalculation
We had scheduled maintenance overnight, with the intention of rearranging a number of servers and power equipment down at Equinix in order to better organize wiring and adjust power load over three 20 amp circuits to reduce the risk of overloading, etc. Our first project was to turn around about a dozen pieces of equipment and move two colocated servers in our second cage. The equipment had to be turned around in order to correct airflow problems that were being caused by a misunderstanding of the airflow when the racks were originally set up.
So we started on the move process, taking each server down one at a time or in batches or two to four, turning it around, remounting it and getting it reconnected and booted. By the time we were done, it was 6 AM. Our maintenance window was 12 AM to 4 AM. We overshot by a bit, and we never redid the power or networking in either cage, nor did we renumber the servers in Rack 003. So now we'll have to schedule another maintenance period next week in order to complete the remaining tasks. Thankfully, the next time around, very little equipment will be moved, so we'll probably be able to get the other tasks done much more quickly... and I hear we may have some extra hands to put to work. :)
The CTA Purple line stops running from 12 AM to 4 AM. We left the apartment at about 10:45, so we caught the purple line in time, transferred to the Red line, then the number 3 bus to Cermak and Indiana, which got us there a bit after midnight. On the way back, we were out long enough for Purple line express to start up again, so we took the number 3 bus around to Jackson and caught the express which got us all the way back here at about 7:30. Ray and Karl went to bed as quickly as possible. Technically, Ray's shift would start about now.
If I don't go to bed now, I'll be in bad shape come 6 PM. I'll be awake around 4 PM. :)
Karl's dad is supposed to visit here today. Hopefully someone will be awake to let him in. Karl will be going home to Wisconsin for Easter, so Ray and I will hold down the fort until he finds his way back.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
[Comments: 6] 4:07 AM - interest-of-saving-money
In the interest of saving money, and of course because Karl has chosen to make this commitment, we are finally going to be eating most of our meals in the apartment. This doesn't mean we'll start ordering takeout, and we do intend to still go out to eat periodically to keep supporting our favorite restaurants (though these will certainly change when we move). Karl's committed to preparing meals most days of the week!
The way it looks, Ray will continue to be the guy who spends the most time at Equinix and does the relatively busy daytime support. Karl will do daytime sales, then make dinner. I will do nighttime support and clean up after Karl's dinner preparation mess, run the dishwasher, etc. I honestly might go nuts if the kitchen didn't get cleaned up at least passably after dinner preparation (thanks, Mom!). :P
[Comments: 0] 3:58 AM - I-know-there's-a-song-lyric-that-belongs-here
So here are those lyrics that seemed to fit as I was musing what to write:
“So go downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown - no finer place, for sure
Downtown - everything's waiting for you”
The point though, is that I'll be moving again! This time the move is several hundred miles shorter. Rather than going a third of the way west, I'll simply be moving south, somewhere in downtown Chicago.
Ray, Karl, and I started our search for a new apartment much closer to and within easier reach of our datacenter and, well, pretty much everything else. Karl's going to be dropping down to part time at Northwestern University and our lease expires at the beginning of June, so it's now time for us to start looking, and hopefully we'll find a nice two or three bedroom apartment for somewhere between less and not much more than what we're paying now.
While I would certainly be happy to have my own bedroom, it's definitely not an essential sort of thing, so if the best looking places only have two bedrooms, I'll keep sharing with Ray. We sleep at different times anyway, so it's hardly like we bother each other. :)
The search officially began today, though we have been evaluating locations via the Internet for a couple weeks. We found a nice place within a few blocks of Equinix, with a three bedroom apartment. Among the best features, a direct view of Equinix from the living room window, lots of new space, free parking, lots of extras included, and it's cheaper than what we're paying now. The problems which have prompted us to continue our search include the fact that the kitchen and living room are not really as big as we'd like, the apartment is way up on the thirteenth floor (we're not superstitious, just lazy), and the apartment was extremely warm with no obvious temperature controls, which was bound to be frustrating.
Karl and Ray have been digging around looking for other places to try, some much further away, but all within easy CTA bus access of pretty much anywhere we might need to go.
In order to find our new place, there will certainly need to be more tours of potential apartments. We have to give notice of intention to vacate this apartment by April 3rd, so hopefully we'll have a good idea where we want to go and some paperwork started before that date.
Friday, March 18, 2005
[Comments: 1] 4:40 PM - my-ears-are-ringing
Liam is king of finding interesting sites on the Internet. Apparently this site called "Preople" lets you see how popular you are on the Internet. I show up with a rank of 708... or 766. I went back a second time and the number changed. What's yours?
[Comments: 0] 5:44 AM - more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-know
I threw a photo and a nice bunch of new text about me on the about page. This text is a lot more specific that what was previously there, and I think it paints a much clearer picture of my personality and beliefs. I do hope you'll give the new text a nice careful read. I certainly hope you can respect me more for what I said there, but I won't hold it against you if you can't.
If you think I've made a slip of logic or find any typos, feel free to give me some public ridicule. ;)
Edit: For example, If you think I've made a slip or logic
of find any typos...
Thursday, March 17, 2005
[Comments: 4] 5:27 AM - tweaking-is-better-than-sleeping
I've continued to mess around with some things on my site. Right now, you may notice (if you've ever been here before), that I've replaced the single selector for stylesheets with two: a color selector and a layout selector. This gave me the chance to see how Green looks on my old layout, and how Blue looks on my new layout. I think both look decent. Some of the missing layouts and colors will return; some will not.
I added Trackback support to all the posts on the site using the free standalone implementation from MovableType's web site. I doubt it will be used by anyone, since I think my blog entries are usually not worth linking to, but it was interesting to set up, and that's half the point of this site anyway! ;)
I also changed the navigation menu into an unordered list, which is a more appropriate HTML representation of what it is, and made the logo image link back to the home page, as logic suggests that it should. If you notice there's an extra list item at the top of the navigation with the layout off, it's a temporary hack because Internet Explorer is handling the first item of the list oddly when it styles the navigation in the "Original" layout. I hope to fix it, but I suspect it's a rendering bug. If IE 7 is all it's cracked up to be, hopefully these stupid rendering bugs will be resolved. :)
There a bunch of other minor code changes. I've moved the site to valid XHTML 1.1 Strict now. It required me to fix some HTML usage, such as removing old-style anchors (which I simply updated to the new style), removing target frame references (setting the target to "_blank" is a horrible habit anyway), and rearranging some block ordering. However, I think all the pages should validate now.
If you miss the fact that pages linked from my site used to open in a new window or tab, I feel I should point that if you use Firefox, you can simply click your middle mouse button or scroll wheel on any link to open it in a new tab.
Please let me know if you pick up on any bugs I've missed, or if you have any opinions on stylesheets that deserve resurrection (or ideas for new ones).
[Comments: 1] 2:42 AM - everyone-is-blog-crazy
Liam is apparently testing trackbacks as he works to reimplement his site using WordPress.
I just added an implementation of trackbacking in my blog. Let's see if his works, and maybe he'll test mine. Anyone else may feel free to test it out as well. :)
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
[Comments: 0] 9:22 PM - browser-puns
Ray decided to put Firefox on his laptop.
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
[Comments: 0] 6:51 PM - browser-wars-good-for-everyone
I never thought it would happen, but apparently it will. Microsoft has finally accepted that Firefox is a threat to their stranglehold on the market and recently announced they would produce an Internet Explorer 7, with a beta becoming available within a few months.
Now, according to some information that has leaked out, it is apparent that IE 7 will feature 32-bit transparent PNG image support! This is something web developers have been ranting about for a while now, and Microsoft has finally seen fit to listen to our cries. It's not clear whether they will implement the rest of CSS level 2 or fix their box model problems, but if they do that and keep their focus as promised on security and stability, I'd be amazed.
The article also indicates IE will have tabbed browsing support, which I think most people were pretty much expecting from the beginning. It's a Firefox and Opera feature they simply can't pass up if they want users back.
Unfortunately, if they succeed in improving IE all that much, I'll have a lot more trouble convincing people to switch to Firefox, and I'll have a lot more trouble justifying hating IE. I still hope that Firefox succeeds in holding some marketshare, because it is what keeps Microsoft from wandering from the path of following the rules set by the W3C. This is something web developers and end-users need to discourage.
[Comments: 0] 6:27 PM - clarification-saves-the-day
AOL has "re"-revised their Terms of Service, no doubt because they got a lot of flak for not being clear enough, opening up all kinds of privacy concerns, which apparently they either didn't mean to open, or didn't expect anyone to notice.
In any case, they've reaffirmed a privacy guarantee:
As explained in detail in the AIM Privacy Policy, AOL does not read your private online communications when you use any of the communication tools on AIM Products. If, however, you use these tools to post Content or other information to public areas on AIM Products (for example, in chat rooms or online message boards), other online users will have access to this information and Content.
They go on to say that they reserve the rights to use anything you post publicly in any way they please. This is certainly a much less worrying situation for lots of people, including businesses and individuals that hope to retain private conversations over the AIM service.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
[Comments: 2] 11:58 PM - two-sides-to-every-story
I've read The Wizard of Oz, and I've seen the movie. Having done both gave me an interesting perspective upon going to see Wicked. Now, I've only seen a couple shows in New York, including The Lion King and Blue Man Group, but I was truly impressed by this one. The show was no technical marvel, but the story they presented really amazed me, and the charaters and staging were done beautifully; a credit to the actors and production staff.
What's effectively been done in this case is to rewrite the Wizard of Oz by telling the story from a completely different hidden side without touching any of the original work at all, something which I believe was done amazingly well. Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West tell this story from their perspective and if you take it into account, the story of the Wizard of Oz remains the same, but the meaning of everything that happened is completely different. I'd rather not give away any spoilers, but I definitely encourage you to go see this show if you have the chance. Suffice it to say you will have no choice but to look at the "Wicked" Witch of the West in a totally different way.
On the subject of my visit home, my last minute CD list was filled by gifts from my family and we celebrated my two week prior birthday with a steak dinner at Old Fields Inn, and a yummy Carvel ice cream cake. At Wicked I picked up the first of my sister's birthday gifts, the Wicked sound track, which I've given her a month early. It's not all I'm giving her, but I'm not going to tell here, cause she might read my blog. ;)
The trip itself was relatively uneventful after I actually made it to the airport. The trip on the "L" had some problems around the entrance to the loop (for the red and purple lines) and it took me at least an extra hour to get to the airport. I barely had time to eat.
I head back tomorrow on a 12:45 flight to Chicago Midway, and hopefully the "L" will be better behaved.
I had a good weekend—it was relaxing and it was nice to spend some time with my parents and my sister.
[Comments: 2] 2:36 AM - new-meaning-to-opening-service
Ben Stanfield has made note in his blog of some interesting new features of the AOL Instant Messenger terms of service. In the current iteration they now effectively guarantee they will make no attempt to worry about your privacy for anything that is sent through their network. I never really expected there to be any implication of said privacy on AIM and more or less trusted AOL to be a good company and not bother me as long as I'm not doing anything wrong. This is an assumption I make plenty often in a lot of situations, and I've rarely been let down.
The new terms of service, however, grant AOL and any means of affiliate they want to take any text or media you send over AIM and reuse it in their own derivative works in any way without your consent or your ability to object:
In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium.
This is troubling not because I expect AOL to actually start reading all my IMs about how my day was and posting them to a global public log, but because there is now in writing an explicit official term allowing them to give away what I say to any person or party they see fit without even so much as telling me about it. All my text could be passed on to any affiliated third party who could conceivably do anything they want with it.
I'm sure that's not the intention, and probably won't ever happen, but I have to wonder whether AOL figured they'd get away with it on account of the fact no one actually reads the terms of service anyway. As Stanfield does note in a followup, there are indications these terms of service were modified to fit their AOL@Work system, which is even more troubling given that by some interpretation they could be considered to be granting themselves license to any trade secrets or other priviledged information transmitted over their services. Why would a business want to open this can of worms and pay for it, too?
Thursday, March 10, 2005
[Comments: 0] 2:19 AM - home-again-then-back
Tomorrow I'm headed back home for a little weekend visit with my parents and my sister. We've got tickets to go see Wicked on Broadway, which as I understand is the story of the Wizard of Oz told from the perspective of the Wicked Witch. I haven't heard a lot about it other than that it's supposed to be good. I imagine I'll probably enjoy it. I don't usually hate these things. It'll be nice to visit with my parents since it's been over a month since they've seen me. It's not like I haven't gone way more than a month without seeing them before now, but this permanence is somehow different for them. It doesn't feel different to me, but I can definitely recognize that it is in all the ways that count to parents. :)
I failed to blog about the fact that I just turned 23 on March 1st. I got a nice giant cookie from my parents and some cash from some family members, which was nice. I forgot to tell people what I wanted for my birthday, so I haven't made it easy for my parents or sister to find presents. I know the plan is to celebrate my birthday while I'm home, so maybe they've figured something out. I really meant to give them at least a list of CDs.... Hmm.
Anyway, I've gotta pack my stuff, including bringing back a couple items I don't need here, and I've gotta bring something with adequate space for transporting more clothing from home to here. I didn't bring any short sleeve shirts or shorts out on the first run, and I'll certainly need some once spring gets underway.
I've gotta get all the packing taken care of by around 4 PM, and then I'll run up to the Davis St. station and take the "L" to Midway for my 7:25 flight. My return should happen on Sunday afternoon. I'll see if I can remember to blog about my weekend, rather than forgetting to blog again for 4 weeks. :)
