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Oh man, what a day!

I logged off for some shuteye around 0600 and awoke about 0836 or so when the people from our new ISP/Phone provider (we just bundled with the cable company). Managed to talk a little with the supervisor of the two about the setup involved, you could say the feeling that the other knew their ass from a hole in the ground was mutual >_>.

Because the cable boxes and the computer are on opposite sides of the rooms from the computers — that’s how the apartment was originally setup by a previous provider (Which was thrown out of the complex when the owners cut a deal with another company 0.o). So we had to go out and get some wireless cards, I paid for them as I agreed to if it would (and likely would) come to it.

So far, I’ve been cursed with shopping, practically stabbed in the eye, wondering why the bleeding heck our modems refuse to talk to my laptop or our router, and cannibalizing a pair of PCs, cut my finger, and I’ve been doing it all on ~2 hours sleep and a can of root beer !!!!!!

After drinking a bit of a root beer, we went out to get her shoppin’ done and grab the cards, the plan was to be home in plenty of time to spare to get her and my (gaming) desktop hooked up so I could make it to Medics Live OP.

I was leaning over to put the water down when ma made an unexpected move of the arm and I nearly got the end of the car keys tip in my left eye. It must have only jabbed towards the point closer to the nose because I still have an eye left, it didn’t hurt, and there is no sign of damage — as much as I like MGS3, I really don’t want to end up in an eye patch like Big Boss someday.

Thank GOD for protecting fools and star ships named Enterprise 😉

While we were talking with someone at Best Buy, I asked the guy if they carried any RAM in the store and he sent me over to the Geek Squad (y). I got a 512mb dimm of PC2700 for Ma’s computer along with three LInksys WMP54G PCI adapters and we hit Krogers.

I had a plan, I really did dang nab’it ! Check the manual for the ram speed to make sure the new chip was compatible (I bought PC2700 going by memory). Copy my Wifi data to each PC, setup the router, install each wifi card, and be *early* to the live op but it didn’t work out that way.

First thing I did was plug in the router and try and set it up using DHCP instead of PPPoE but that didn’t work. So I took the CAT-5e and hooked up the modem directly to my laptops on board Marvell Yukon and wondered, wtf is my modems address since it isn’t offering DHCP services?

About 1930-1600Z I remembered the tenth commandment of C programmers*

Thou shalt foreswear, renounce, and abjure the vile heresy which claimeth that “All the world’s a VAX”, and have no commerce with the benighted heathens who cling to this barbarous belief, that the days of thy program may be long even though the days of thy current machine be short.

I ripped apart my desktop setup and hooked SAL up on the floor near the living room modem and plugged her in directly. Booted windows, opened IE7 just to be sure for compatibility, and sure enough got a welcome message from the modem! Oh go fsck yourselfs!!! But it works.

Setup the modem over HTTP, got a really fucking fast connection compared to AT&Ts aDSL line. A quick speed test out of Atlanta showed like 3-5 times the data rates we were getting!

After that I shutdown and used my now cleared desk as a work table. Cracked open Ma’s Dell 4550 for a little cleaning, install the WMP54G, upgraded the RAM from 512mb to 768mb and took the desktops original stick of PC 2100. I found that her PC was running a PC2100 and a PC2700 sprig of 256MB at 266Mhz.

Then I cracked open Vectra (an HP Vli8 500+more PC100 ram) and my brothers junked Dell 4500 PC on the “operating table”. The Dell is missing it’s CD-ROM drives and Ethernet NIC. There were two EIDE hard drives when I first salvaged it, a 40GB Western Digital and an 80GB Hitachi. The 80GB has been in Vectra for awhile now as a secondary disk but I left the smaller 40GB due to lack of space.

I tried the 40GB to see if there was a working install of Windows left on it before formatting it, the BIOS couldn’t boot off it. So I pulled the CD-ROM drive out of Vectra and popped myself in the head. I only had one set of mounting brackets left for the Dell case — which while compatible with the hard drives don’t fit the CD-ROM drive !!!

So I did something that is probably stupid but effective. Hooked up the CD-ROM to the PSU and secondary EIDE port on the mother board, sandwiching the drive between the case and the lid before I booted her. Then popped myself in the head again when the CD tray ejected ‘upside down’, I wondered why the power dongle needed to plug into the wrong side.

Flipped it over, rebooted and loaded Knoppix LiveCD but still couldn’t access that 40GB drive. I know Live CDs are slow (and that drives dated 1999 and 32X max reading speed) but it was actually a _lot_ faster then I thought it would be on 256MB of PC2100. Then I took out Vectra’s root disk an 8.4GB Maxtor hosting my OpenBSD installation and switched mounting brackets.

She still wouldn’t boot, so I tried my boot floppy from OpenBSD 4.1 (I didn’t use a floppy for the 4.2/4.3 upgrades). I shutdown and switched the cable to the other mate on the EIDE line and rebooted, worked perfectly. Then I stuck in the 40GB drive and hooked it up on the previous one. That way I could boot knoppix and scope out the 40GB drive.

I’ve read about Master/Slave issues with (P)ATA/(E)IDE based systems and what not like this before but it’s actually the first time I’ve ever seen the BIOS fail to detect and boot a drive, maybe previous systems I’ve worked on were just well cabled to avoid it ^_^.

There is a legit copy of windows on the drive and some files, so I may as well back that up just in case I need it later. ‘Cuz I didn’t get a copy of the restore disks from my brother when he gave me the PC, several months after he stripped it for ‘parts’ to use on his new custom PC. Right now I’ve got both of Vectra’s hard drives installed, I would have put all three in it as there is enough space but I just don’t have enough mounting brackets.

And while I’m willing to use a CD-ROM drive without mounting it in the case — a hard drive is full of data so I take precautions. So I can dump it later if ever, right now it’s on my desk. I had to get the drives sorted to move Vectras OpenBSD install cleanly over and install the PCI card for the wireless. That system is good to go as soon as I figure out how to get it working on my network, since OpenBSD 4.3 doesn’t support my networks level of encryption and I’m not sure if my network supports the next ideal solution lol.

Afterwards I setup my desktop (SAL1600) with the last of the WiFi cards and for the heck of it, hooked up my spare monitor and configured Dual View on my nVidia 8400GS. I find it some what disorienting especially because the second monitor has very shitty colour compared to my primary. I also don’t have another power cord to use with the other two PCs lol.

If I buy another power cable or two I can get all 4 computers running. I’m just itching for the phones to get sorted on the land lines so I can switch the modems and move the router to my bedroom, that way I can hook up one PC via Ethernet.

About 0000GMT I finally got to sit down and eat, took a nice long nap after that !!!!

* Ten Commands of C Programmers, annoted edition

modify that module wiz wanted worked on 😉 — tonight

finish neo ports manager — on going

write article(s) for BSD Mag — weekend, ongoing

write front end for a pre-processor and template based idea for work. — now

Medics live op — tomorrow

work on kde4 — as soon as people let me

write specifications and carry out planning for project black widow — classified until further notice.

Ahh… home from work.

The jobs about two times the size of our others but it wasn’t really as bad as I originally thought. That’s probably a good thing, now if only it was possible to get more work done when I’m not at work :

Between family and work I’m falling even further behind schedule !!!

The !%*)Y!)% !(%Y)! %)! %)! %)&! (%() !@%!#@!% !%! !!!

I’m sitting here working on C++/Qt4 code and my music is cutting in/out and vim starts to lag. Ok, I figure it is either some process gone wachko eating system resources (which top suggested was not the case) or the router is going fuckers again.

Sure enough, everything relating to my network shares hangs -> I do a power cycle on the AP with no luck. Full reboot and still arguing…

pinging my ap gives < 2ms to > 200ms responses and an apparent average of 20-40% package loss +/- an extra 5-7% and things are still getting rat fucked here. One test, standing right next to the aerials I was getting upwards of 10-15% packet loss for crying out fucking loud.

I’m so going to kill something when I get to the bottom of this….

This level of connectivity starvation is proving to be lethal to the whole write/compile/test cycle, hell even the web browser is dying a laggy death trying to write in this text area. Which means I’m likely to loose the nights work.

That means, if I find the source of this interference, which appears to be costing me over 4 hours of optimal work time remaining on this code base…. there will be a Spidey on the war path — hardware or neighborer related.

Hmm, there is a very fine Italian expression but I won’t do it the dis justice of trying to spell it :.

Day originally was planned as a work day, became a day off, became a job interview — the house from hell so to speak, in terms of having to work in it but otherwise a decent gig.

A friends having a hard time, brings up more then a few… uncomfortable memories but I can generally sympatise.

Spent about an hour talking with Rasa over the colour of the bike shed, only about 10-15 minutes was actually productive 😐

After that, considering that between my family, my work, and Rasa, I was over 2.5 hours behind schedule… On a day I planned to hash through task after task after task. I decided to use some of the time otherwise getting wasted for me, to join the server.

Got in a few good rounds on PG#1, ain’t played RvS in a couple since I’ve spent most of my server time either training Jonsi or camping the SWAT4 server ;-). I was surprised to see that my accuracy is still doing good, each round I did between 70-90% hits and saw most of them through to completion.

After that, I ended up joining Duke for a couple games before I had to drop to finish my chores. Honestly, joining friends on the servers is probably the biggest break from projects I get !!!

Was watching The Abyss after dinner. Pretty good movie but reminds me, you couldn’t pay me to serve on a submarine. At least if a ship goes down, you have some chance if ya don’t freeze to death. But on a sub, it is not quite that easy to get out lol.

One strange thing, while I find the idea of being in such situations some what disturbing. I really think of the idea of space travel as quite fun lol.

Maybe because I never really learned how to swim? I dunno lol. After all, in the vacum of space your dead… In water, well you might drown but you also might get through Point A and Point B alive if you don’t run out of air +S

Tired ….

Been working on a program for [SAS], was rather hoping to get it finished tonight but, time after work != cooperative. It’s only 0457 Zulu but my brains fragged, can’t concentrate on the code anymore.

Hopefully tomorrow, I can get it finished, it shouldn’t be that hard should it?

I only…

Need to finish testing the parser

Write the network interface

Write the display code.

or something like that. With luck, I’ll be off work so I’ll get to sleep in hopefully. I’m used to nodding off around local 0200-0700 and getting up around local 0930-0945 to get dressed (quickly!) for work. So, I like it when I have a chance to sleep a bit more lol.

Today was fairly good at work but it’s still one of two most strainous jobs of my week. And my family sure as fuck doesn’t help, hmm… Maybe if there was anyone in this rats nest that actually understood a lick of this, they might be less inclined to piss me off while I’m workin’ on something.

*sigh*

For much of the day, I’ve felt like shouting “If you don’t let me code today, I will go insane and I will take you with me!” but I know that would just be childish :.

A sledge hammer would work much more effectively ^_^

I’m bushed …

My sisters finally moved out, so most of the day was spent helping her. Although I did get ome break time with Dixie to work on a little Qt’coding. After the end of that, I got stuck helping ma re arrange stuff here (oy). Including having to take apart a bed, move a sewing machine, etc.

Had a couple rounds of SWAT4: TSS on PG#3 with Chester before dinner, and a good nap after that! Sitting here watching Tango & Cash,

Hmm, all in all quite a fun day.

Us guys went out, knocked over a Gandolfo’s Delicatessen for a couple nathan’s coney island dog (bad sadly without sauce :-(). I’m not exactly a big fan of hot dogs but when it involves Nathan’s famous dogs — I’m up for it >_>.

Three of us wandered around town for a couple hours before Uncle Pat and Aunt Ruth went off to Mass. Me and my brother sat outside, him smoking and I pacing while we talked lol. I wish he wouldn’t smoke but, better sugars then cigarettes I guess :. Afterward he played a bit of BF2 on my PC, he’s a good sniper but heck… Tactically and technique wise, I think if he ever took one of our tryouts in [SAS], he’d probably score below the no retake mark lol.

Once everyone got here, we went out to Red Lobster for diner. In my case, riding with my bro and listing to Nickelback on the way. To be honest, I think I am the _only_ one in this family that doesn’t blast music +S. It’s good music but, I kinda would like to avoid hearing damage >_>

Just like our mother, he blasts it loud as it will go… Me, if someone walks through the hallway I turn it down or mute it when I’ve got music going lol.

Just got home a couple of hours ago, my mothers GOD parents came down to celebrate my Birthday during their travels.

Another all you can eat night 😉

I probably shouldn’t have had a huge lunch, but I enjoy the food anyway lol.

Looks like tomorrow it will probably be me, my brother, and ma’s GOD father out bowling and then the entire family out for dinner later on. I can’t bowl worth a Russian modem but. Who knows, might be fun.

Since Ma hasn’t been included much in the plans as far a her original plans, she’s a bit pissy. I hate to say it about my seniors but I’d describe it as childish behavior :. Either way, tomorrow promises to be a full day…

I really need a vacation

Been very tired lately… Either workin’ a lot or idle as can be for not being able to get work done, pisses me off :

No one was hungry after this afternoons huge lunch, so there was no official supper. I ended up with a can of cream of mushroom and leftovers lol. Contrary to popular believe around here at times, I actually do know how to make condensed soup ^_^.

With the amount of flibin’ salt in those things, I think it would be worth while to do it by hand and skip the can :|, just more costly!

Two things I really need.. Doubt either of them are likely in the immediate future but work also has to get done…