Refusual to live with half my network offline

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Muahuahauhauahauha!!! It works, it works !!!!!

To make a long story short, in order to setup ur phone lines the cable company had to put the modem where there was a jack within reach. Which meant my room, because it’s the only one you don’t have to route a cable from here to timbuktu!

They also hooked up a second modem in the living room for us to hook up our router to, only problem? I need the router in my bedroom to avoid the OpenBSD 4.3/WPA issue or make some drastic changes instead of hooking her up via wire.

I’ve been mentally thinking about switching them as soon as I noticed that the cable guy didn’t leave anything hooked up to the jack, then it clicked in my head.

The set top (cable) box is probably just a signal repeater taht relays information without concern for routing information. They probably had to have the modem hooked up to the land lines in order to dial into the modem and tell it the setup information for the phones.

We are totally land line less until the phone company gets off their fat asses and forks over and the land lord gives the cable company written permission to hook up, which is unreliable at best.

I yanked the stuff, disconnecting the phone from the one; then the cable and power from both, and switching modems. Plugging them both in to power and then setting up the rest. Hooked up the phone and sure enough, it worked without issue.

Hooked up the other modem in my room and moved the router but I couldn’t et any external routes :-(. So shifting from plan A to plan B (guessing the modem was tied to the cable box), I went to switch set top boxes until I saw what happened, the cable must have fallen when I tied off the Ethernet cable at the modem and I forgot to plug the dang thing in ^_^. Ok, so I’m schlemiel…

But I was right the first time hehe 🙂

And now as soon as I get the power plug (read lack of) situation sorted, I’ll have my file server back online! And once I’ve got the booting issue sorted on the other computer, I can get slacking at installing linux on that one and jetting ovr the wifi drivers.

I hooked the CD-ROM back up to the machines secondary EIDE channel as the master but no luck, even as secondary slave. Since I’ve proven it’s not the cable, I’m going to have to take a look at the jumpers and probably see if I can google a manual.pdf of some sort. If screwing with those settings don’t work, well I guess I’ll need to dd myself a floppy disk to start the install.

As long as the file server gets back online, I can live without a 4th system running. Heck, once upon a time… Any body having four computers at home would probably have to be another Warbucks to afford it hehe. But in my case, 2 out of 4 PCs were free, pardoning the cost of a a sprig of PC2700 to get the one girl functional.

You know, technology is insanely simple — it just takes a lunatic to realize it!

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To damn tired to work… To wide awake to sleep :

Ended up stuck workin’ instead of attending Medics live op, and working like a Beaver in the hopes of getting done early lol.

Stuck working the weekend as well… but only light hours thankfully. And next week is a three day weekend for all intents and purposes, no work that Monday 🙂

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I recently heard that they are making Terminator 4, I can’t help but be interested ^_^. Action flicks and Science Fiction are of course two of my favorite types of movies.

Earlier today, I was thinking about it. In general the Terminator Universe has always presented me with some what of a paradox, in Terminator John Connor and Skynet essentially create the impetus for their own creation.

Yet, how could they possibly exist in the future: in order to create themselves in the past!

Let us postulate that such a thing is impossible and that at some point their creation must have come apart through the natural flow of time. I admit, while it is quite possible for Sarah Connor to have had a son named John. It is rather improbable or quite probable depending on your frame of mind, that an artificial intelligence or super computer the likes of Skynet could have crept into existence [yet] but hell, it is a movie after all !!!!

In which case when Skynet sends the first Model 101 back in time to assassinate Sarah Connor before its greatest enemy, John Connor can be born. Is ‘time line 0’ the first part of the time flow.

John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect Sarah Connor, altering history in the process: thus creating a new path in time, ‘time line 1’

John Connors father is now Kyle Reese from the future in time line 0, Sarah Connor is now warned of the future and tries to prepare John for it, potentionally creating an even more effective form of John Connor, who will lead the human resistance in time line 1’s future against skynet, then that of time line 0.

The crushed arm and CPU of the Terminator find their way into Cyberdyne Systems hands, leading Miles Dyson to create Skynet, bypassing Skynets original creation in much the same way as John Connor.

Now that John Connor of time line 1 is more effective then the John Connor of time line 0 at fighting Skynet. The new Skynet sends a more lethel killing machine back in time, the T-1000, in an attempt to kill the young John Connor. John Connor sends back a reprogrammed Model 101 to protect himself but this too ultimately changes history, creating another alternate flow of time, ‘time line 2’ when history is changed in time line 1’s past.

Learning from the Terminator about the history of Skynet in their own flow of time, time line 1. The Connors embark to destroy Skynet before it is completed, changing history themselves…

The creator of Skynet is destroyed, the data is destroyed (although for us more computer savvy types, the probability of backups on or off site surviving is quite high). The arm is destroyed, the CPU is destroyed, both Terminators are destroyed, and John Connor is further prepared to lead the resistance against the machines.

This leads to a fork of time line 1, creating the aforementioned ‘time line 2’ in which the method of creation from time line 1 for Skynet no longer occurs.

However the method by which Skynet was originally created in time line 0, is still uncertain… Now if we postulate that the original creation of Skynet within time line 0, leading to Kyle Reese and the first Model 101 being sent back in time to change history. Was in fact a Department of Defense related project, like the Cyber Research Systems work under General Brewster in Terminator 3…

Skynets birth has merely been delayed, Judgement day occurs late, John Connor and Kate Brewster’s future in time line 2 leads to the Skynet of time line 2 sending back a super weapon, the ‘T-X’ back in time to time line 0s past, before Skynets own creation… In effect changing history again when the ‘T-X’ begins killing off members of the human resistance, in an attempt to cripple the resistance before it is even created.

Thus causing a fork of time line 2 resulting in ‘time line 3’ being created when the T-X begins killing off people. The third Model 101 sent back by Kate Connor to protect John Connor and herself in the past is ultimately succesful, into which they are now much more formidable foes for Skynet in the *new* future or time line 3.

Where time line 3 is the superposition of all the events within time lines that lead to it’s creation, except for elements not merged because of the alterations or ‘created’ time lines caused by said events.

e.g. 2004 in time line 3 is different then that of time line 2, where the T-X does not exist yet because it is created in the future, which is a future that does not exist yet because Skynet was created by Cyberdyne Systems in time line 1, which occurred because of events within time line 0 that caused a change in history…

You could say I believe in the possibility of destiny but not paradoxes, even if the concept of a paradox is more then occasionally abused by sci-fi writers.

And I think people are right, I just think to damn much lol. But hey, in lack of interesting things to try and analyze… Whats wrong with a little TV to supply the input?

It’s not like anyone has invented a time machine yet or a way of proving the dynamics of time travel, if such a thing is even within mans capability.

Besides, unlike in real life (if time travel ever occurs) you can’t foul up the space time continuum if you don’t get it right because it’s only a movie :-).

Writer’s Block: Food Loves and Hates

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What foods can you not live without, and what foods can you not stomach?

Live Journals Writer’s Block

can’t live without:

cheese burgers
pizza
chili
french fries
chocolate
ice cream
little debbie snacks (lol)
doritos

and a fair bit of pasta based dishes 😉

Food that I can’t stomach?

I find egg salad and some kinds of pasta salad to be ‘uneatble” after a certain level of consumption.

Food with so much salt in it that it tastes like Bender cooked it (Only encountered one steak marinade like that; thanks bro for trying to give me a stroke ^_^).

Any thing with strong caffeine or aspartame taste to it.

Since I wasn’t allowed any soda with caffeine in it as a child, when I was finally free to have it, I can’t stand the taste of it !!! After 20 years without it you really taste it in soda like Coke or Pepsi. Luckly caffeine and aspartame are less common in food stuffs then drinks.

Anything that makes me want to gag or barf from the look, taste, or texture of it -> ain’t found anything like that yet, hehe.

I do however have a policy of “I eat just about anything that doesn’t try to eat me first”

Ahh crap… this makes me hungry !!!

Esmeralda

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Sitting here day dreaming of a sexy lady…

Dual (2 x) Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 CPUs (Yorkfields) running at 2.66Ghz clock / 1333Mhz FSB — these chips are to drool for!!!

6~8GB of PC2-5300 *ECC* Memory for good measure 😉

4 x 250GB Seagate SATA hard drives in RAID 5

Dual (2 x) graphics cards with twin dvi ports per card; twin nVidia 8600 or 7800s would be nice if possible.

4 x LCD Monitors -> 17″, 19″, 19″, 17″ or larger.

1 x Floppy disk drive, old tech but still valuable.

2 x DVD Burner

1 x CD Burner

1 x 5 button laser mouse

1 x standard issue PC keyboard

Running FreeBSD 7-STABLE AMD64 for the operating system of course.

Shit load of fans and one hell of a powerful PSU not to mention a huge desk !!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only problem, other then that the mother board needed for something like that would cost an arm and a leg alone…. Is that nVidia’s drivers for FreeBSD 64-Bit (amd64) suck and there’s only so much ram addressable by 32-bit systems without hacks like PAE.

Oh man, I think I need a cup to catch the drool, this calls for a song

Slap ya grandma that would be one beautiful rig !!!

I think my laptop is ready to disown me ^_^

Return of the files

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There’s more then one way to skin a cat baby or in the words of John McClane: yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker.

If I’m going to be stuck waiting until AT&T gets off their lazy butts and sorts the last of it, so that we can get our land lines hooked back up rather then routing everything through the cable modem, until I’ll be able to get all the equipment moved to their final operational positions…

I’m going to access my files !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The servers good to go, ready to rock and roll, except for one problem! OpenBSDs support for WPA is gonna take -CURRENT and using my 3Com Ethernet XL card means the box needs to be near the router, which it can’t right now…

So I had an idea, hook up my digital camera with the extra 2GB SD Card for storage and use the USB cable to mount her on the server. Then jet it all over to my laptop on the camera right?

I packed up ~/code, ~/Documents, and a few .dot files for stuff I use a lot into a couple of archives. The only problem? Trying to mv the archives to the camera on sd0i caused the machine to lock up! So that idea was toast, total waste of time spent fscking my drives.

Plan B.

Working off the advice from Daemon Forum regulars I managed to transfer my NIC over to it’s new home, found my last power cable and plugged the system in on the deck, right next to the router.

Hooked her up and walked off for a drink, booted Dixie and sure enough I was able to ping her, ssh in to make sure she was fully on the LAN. Then I mounted my home directory and set about copying my files over to a ‘makeshift’ home directory in /usr/Projects/Terry,

As long as I have a brain ‘tween my ears, I ain’t gonna be kept from my objectives so easy. Now if I could just do something about the lack of sleep :

Return of the files

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There’s more then one way to skin a cat baby.

If I’m going to be stuck waiting until AT&T gets off their lazy butts and sorts the last of it, so that we can get our land lines hooked back up rather then routing everything through the cable modem, until I’ll be able to get all the equipment moved to their final operational positions…

I’m going to access my files !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The servers good to go, ready to rock and roll, except for one problem! OpenBSDs support for WPA is gonna take -CURRENT and using my 3Com Ethernet XL card means the box needs to be near the router, which it can’t right now…

So I had an idea, hook up my digital camera with the extra 2GB SD Card for storage and use the USB cable to mount her on the server. Then jet it all over to my laptop on the camera right?

I packed up ~/code, ~/Documents, and a few .dot files for stuff I use a lot into a couple of archives. The only problem? Trying to mv the archives to the camera on sd0i caused the machine to lock up! So that idea was toast, total waste of time spent fscking my drives.

Plan B.

Working off the advice from Daemon Forum regulars I managed to transfer my NIC over to it’s new home, found my last power cable and plugged the system in on the deck, right next to the router.

Hooked her up and walked off for a drink, booted Dixie and sure enough I was able to ping her, ssh in to make sure she was fully on the LAN. Then I mounted my home directory and set about copying my files over to a ‘makeshift’ home directory in /usr/Projects/Terry, which thanks to vipw is now my current roost for the time being..

As long as there is a brain ‘tween my ears, I ain’t gonna be stopped so easy from reaching my objective… And in the words of John McClane,

Yippee-ki-yay, Mother F***er

Now if I could just do some thing about the general lack of sleep… lol

zzzZzzzZzzzzZzz

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Ahh shit… been up all night again.

Well, at least this time I *might* get a decent amount of sleep :

*passes out, head hits keyboard, and snores loudly*

Charting a new course

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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