robbat2: (Default)
Ok, so today I join the real world for my first full-time job. Up until now all I'd has was a large number of part-time jobs, often simultaneously (sometimes making up more than 40 hour work-week).

My new job is basically a network administrator position, for a business-oriented ISP, using high-end wireless technologies between buildings (avoiding high fiber costs from telco and other incumbants). The ISP division is being split off from the original company, which has a desire to focus on the technology only.

Since I knew I was hired a week ago, I've been chatting to the head tech guy on IRC a fair bit, finding out everything that I'll need to know to run the ISP division. The Toronto-based company that bought the ISP division, has their grounding in installing telco/PBX gear for office buildings, and they are also interested in using VOIP over this wireless network.

I came in this morning, got two AMD64 laptops for temporary use, one available to me for a week or so, needing a reinstall (and it should be done installing a complete Gentoo environment by tommorow morning), and the second as a one-day only machine, running Windows. I've spoken to one client, who had some servers located in the same office as me, and wanted external firewalling, so we figured out what to charge them and implemented the firewall rules in the networking system.

The networking system that the original company has developed is phenenomal. It contains everything from automated monitoring systems (with automatically generated trouble tickets for any detected outages), to CRM and billing controls, and networking controls for everything under the sun. There are a few ways that it can be improved, but it's mainly documentation of the system, and a few minor user interface revisions (I'm not certain on them, as there are several ways to reach a given page).

I had a look at the wireless gear on the roof of our office building, and saw the network unit attached to the wireless gear. Went downtown and picked up one of the servers that's currently giving trouble. Unfortunetly we didn't have any spare working cdrom drives on hand, so debugging and fixing it gets to wait until tommorow.

Later in the week there's an wireless unit replacement to do, and that will extend my wireless skillset.

For a good deal of this wireless stuff, I've been reading up on it for nearly a week now, and it's nothing really beyond some common sense in physics, engineering and mathematics behind it.

The VOIP stuff when it comes up will be a lot more interesting, as I realize that I bought a pair of VOIP FXO cards cheaply on eBay some time ago, and I've never used them.
robbat2: (Default)

Reading over the history of Gentoo, I realize that while we try to keep politics out of Gentoo, everybody still has a stance of some form.

However, I'd like to gauge as what the average stance of all developers is - without any weight to their standing in the Gentoo community (eg trustees are still only developers).

As a quick poll, could I get any developer and user reading this to please comment on this LiveJournal posting (comments are screened, so they won't be seen), or email me (robbat2@gentoo.org), classifying yourself into one of these groups (example text for some of the perspectives of each group):

  1. Radical Right-Wing ("Burn the fags!", "Open source sucks")
  2. Moderate Right-Wing
  3. Neither left nor right
  4. Moderate Left-Wing
  5. Radical Left-Wing ("Gay marriage for everyone!", "Down with closed source!")
  6. Prefer not to answer ("You keep to your business and I'll keep to mine")

I'll tally the results, and post only the answers here.

I'll state right now that I'd put myself at moderate left-wing, but still politically open-minded.

If you want to state some of your reasonings, or note that you are left-wing on some issue, and right-wing on others, I'd also be very interested in hearing it, esp. the polarized fields of Gay Rights and Open Source Advocacy.

Edit (22 August, 10:42am): I've been asked why I used the stereotypes for the radical sides here, and possibly biased this survey against people selecting the radical options. I know extreme people on both of the radical sides. Maybe it would be better to create two extra options, "Extremist Left/Right Wing", but I think the real size of those groups is to small in comparsion with the others, that it doesn't statistically matter. Sure the extremists make the news, but how much difference do they really make to everything else?

Secondly, I've had two people request a 2D scale, as their opinions differ wildly on the two polarizing issues I've brought up. For Open-Source, but against gay marriage. This is going to make classification difficult, but interesting.

robbat2: (Default)
This is a quick update about Marissa.

She's reached Japan fine, and is shortly starting her first training exercises (10am JST).

Her flight was uneventful, and she watched Sahara twice. The first nights dinner was a pay-by-the-plate conveyer-belt sushi, at 100¥/plate, and Marissa ate 16 plates; She's been impressed by the trains so far.

Marissa hopes to find a bit of time to blog later tonight.

FYI (mainly for Marissa). In HTML, you can write "¥" to get the proper yen symbol of ¥. It's easier to handle than 円 ("円"), and more recognizable.
robbat2: (Default)
We now return to your regularly scheduled postings. I intend to blog much more often now.

As of 11.23pm PST, [livejournal.com profile] amethest is now in Japan working a year for AEON. I stayed over with her last night, we had a buffet dinner at the River Rock Casino (with her parents), and then I proceeded to repack her suitcases and boxes of stuff for Japan. I really don't know why some people find it so hard to pack efficently - take for example the clothes iron Laura wanted to Marissa to take. Utsonomiya is almost the appliance capital of Japan, and undoubtedly Marissa's co-workers will have an iron - that's 5lbs. right there you don't need to pack. Even worst case just find a dirt cheap one in Japan, and leave it behind afterwards, for the next person.

Last Saturday I proposed to her, and she accepted. I'm not a verbose person, so I don't have much more to say on that matter. She has blogged about the ring and the evening in her journal, so have a look there for more information.

My new job starts 9am Monday 22nd August, as a network administrator/technical engineer for Net-Conex Business solutions. It sounds like I'll have an office somewhere downtown (not entirely confirmed yet), and I'm probably going to spec out the office network.

As always, in the usual fashion, I got a phonecall out of the blue today asking about my availability for doing an urgent small Gentoo deployment. I think I can fit it in somewhere (a few evenings and a weekend), and I can use the extra cash.

However, for now I shall consider sleep, as I am short on it.
robbat2: (Default)
Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I
wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.
robbat2: (Default)
Ok, so while I set out to do regular progress reports in the past, I haven't been very good about it, but I'm trying again now.

I've finally got all of my hardware together at home now, it's all done up on some wire shelving, so that I can run more of it, in a smaller amount of space.

File server - Athlon XP 2200, 4x 80GB IDE (Linux MD RAID5), 100Mb ZIP drive
SCSI testbox - Pentium4 2.2Ghz, 1x 18.2Gb SCSI, 2x 9.1Gb SCSI
MyCable XXS1500 embedded system (AMD Au1500 CPU)
VIA C3 - low power testbox #1
VIA C3-2 - media testbox, with TV capture card + TV output
SGI Visual Workstation 320 - Dual Pentium3 550Mhz, 768Mb RAM, 9.1Gb SCSI, 250Mb ZIP drive.
LinkSys NSLU2
Sun UltraSPARC5
SGI Octane - R12k 300mhz, 576Mb, 9.1Gb SCSI, dual ESI graphics heads.
SGI O2 - R12k 300mhz, 512Mb, 9.1Gb SCSI

At the moment, I'm working on getting the VisWS going again. Back in the 2.4 days I did an identical machine, but that one is long gone. So far it's work writing a new bootloader.

For the record, it IS possible to get a real command prompt for the PROM console, by doing the following:
Go to "System Utilities", "Run Third-Party Program", Select "CDROM" as the source, and enter "Command Monitor" as the command name. You don't need any CD in, just do it, and it will bring up the ARC console.
robbat2: (Default)
I'm not really a big poster, but this is a great collections of quotes about yesterday's bombing in London.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/tyrell/154027.html
robbat2: (Default)
Ok, so I've gone on a trip to Europe. I will be back July 1st. I will be at LinuxTag 2005, spending time at both the phpMyAdmin and Gentoo booths.

My latest itinerary is below, for those that care. The first rail connection is very tight.

16 June, 16h30 - Flight from Vancouver to Munich

17 June, 13h40 - Arrive Munich, clear Customs/Immigration, go to HBF
17 June, 14h29 - Train direct to Bad Reichenhall (Arr. 17h05)
IC/RE 2429 _or_ RE31021+RE2429 (change in Freilassing)
(3 nights in Bad Reichenhall for Robin & Marissa)

19 June, 11h39 - Train to Augsburg, via Freilassing (Arr. 14h35)
RB31314+IC2096
(1 night in Augsburg for Robin & Marissa)

20 June, 12h04 - (Robin only) Train to Karlsruhe, via Stuttgart
(Arr 14h53)
ICE518+IC2068
(4 nights in Augsburg for Marissa, 4 nights in Karlsruhe for Robin)

24 June, 14h04 - (Marissa only) Train to Karlsruhe, via Stuttgart
(Arr 16h53)
ICE516+IC2066
(2 nights in Karlsruhe for Robin & Marissa)

26 June, 09h01 - Train to Milan, via Basel (Arr 16h35)
ICE501+IC253
(1 night in Milano for Robin & Marissa)

27 June, 09h10 - Train to Ravenna, via Bologna & Castel Bolognese (Arr
13h30)
IC565+R11535+R6477
(2 nights in Ravenna)

29 June, 08h38 - Train to Zurich, via Bologna & Milano (Arr 16h51)
R11612+ES9424+IC380 (reserve EC)
(1 night in Zurich for Robin & Marissa)

30 June, 09h33 - Train direct to Munich (Arr 14h01)
EC193
(1 night in Munich for Robin & Marissa)

01 July, 15h25 - Flight from Munich to Vancouver
01 July, 19h00 - Arrive Vancouver, clear Customs/Immigration
robbat2: (Default)
I'm back from my vacation.

No update from me about it, read [livejournal.com profile] amethest's postings about it.

A tidbit from the New York Times: Warning: Long, pointy knives may be hazardous to your health.
robbat2: (Default)
Seeing the specificiations on the new Cell chip, I think the current crop of super-computers have a lot of trouble heading their way.

This is the #1 supercomputer in the world:
http://www.top500.org/sublist/System.php?id=7101
Rpeak of ~92 Teraflops.

This is the new PlayStation3:
http://www.theregister.com/2005/05/17/sony_unveils_ps3/
Sony claims there are 2.18 Teraflops in this box.

Even being ultra-conservative, and saying the PS3 is only good for 1Teraflop, you only need 100 of them to exceed the #1 supercomputer.
Say they cost $1000 each (including the infrastructure costs per unit), you are only at $100,000 USD, compared to a few million for the existing supercomputer.
robbat2: (Default)
Ok, so users and developers alike have been waiting for MySQL-4.1* and OpenLDAP-2.2
Finally, we're making some progress on them. Testers are definetly wanted, and be prepared for a bumpy ride.

Read my recent posts to gentoo-dev about it:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/28064
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/28065
robbat2: (Default)
I'm going on a work-weekend at Camp Potlatch.
If you need me, look here for the closest human habitation.
49.584560N 123.313894W

Sat-Photo
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=49.584560,-123.313894&spn=0.066090,0.070038&t=k&hl=en
robbat2: (Default)
w00t!
Done all of my papers now.

Good thing I woke up at 8pm yesterday (slept 11.30am till 8pm), as we have people trying their hand at fixing the roof leaks (yet again), so there is too much noise to get to sleep.
robbat2: (Default)
That last marketing paper was a massive PITA. I'm gonna get some sleep now, and then start work on my last two papers (both much shorter, and on material I'm comfortable with) in ~6 hours or so. The TechWeek schedule below is updated to show the remaining items.

By this time tommorow, I should be done everything!
robbat2: (Default)
Yay! The Jinbu interactive teddybear is completed - it looks freaky to have a teddy with a USB cable coming out the back of it's neck!

Photos etc later (the site is on a very low-bandwidth host right now).

Now to take a shower and look decent, and head off to school.
At least I don't need to be concious for this first techweek event - other than to start my AI soccer team running, and give a very short presentation.
robbat2: (Default)
You know you are working too much when you find yourself sub-consciously singing along to the Queen Platinum Collection on your Winamp.

Now if I could just get this finite state machine in Python completed, my INTD project would be practically done.
  1. Complete FSM programming
  2. Input via heavily modded X-Box gamepad into Linux, for FSM input symbols
  3. Sound output from Python, for each state transition
robbat2: (Default)

Edit #1 (April 17, 2005): The conflict on Monday is finally resolved! Also I've marked the completed items, added another item I wasn't aware of, and noted that the load is slightly lighter for the MTEC course (Report XOR Presentation required).

Edit #2 (April 18, 2005): Yay! Some things out of the way now. Placed 1st in the AI soccer. Presentations for INTD also went very well.

<quote>Repent! The end is extremely fucking nigh</quote> - "28 Days Later"

DateTimeClassWhat?TODO
13 April 10h00 ITEC418 Multicast-Multimedia Assignment deadline 1 question of 3 completed.
14 April 22h00 ITEC427 Web Services Assignment deadline Started? What's that?
14-15 April Various ITEC424 5 matches for our AI Soccer team We've got some bad imbalances in our team still...
18 April 10h00-12h50 ITEC424 AI Soccer Simulation, Presentations and Semi-Finals &l Final games (Same as previous ITEC424 item)
18 April 14h30-17h30 INTD404 Presentations My hardware prototype needs more soldering, and I have to rewrite all of the software.
19 April 16h30-17h50 ITEC427 Practical and Theoretical Exam I have no idea what material is being covered, but I'm not too concerned
20 April 10h00 ITEC418 Weekly assignment #4 Not started
20 April 12h00 MTEC315 Deadline for final Marketing paper I haven't started this either yet, nor do I have an idea of what to write on.
21 April 10h00 ITEC418 Report on Future Technology I haven't researched the material in any way.
22 April 11h30-14h30 MTEC315 Presentations It's a 20 minute presentation or a paper, so I'm doing the paper instead

Yes, I am full-well aware of the giant conflict on the Monday of TechWeek. Despite repeated pleas, the university still hasn't resolved this properly - or if they have, they haven't announced the new dates.

Additionally:
15 April, ~midnight - Pick my father up from the airport
22 April, 18h00-??h?? - Applied Science Formal Dinner
23 April, evening - Seder dinner with Marissa's relatives

robbat2: (Default)

For those Gentoo developers and users looking for me, be sure to notice what I've got on my devaway:

End of semester craziness and exams: April 4-22. Email me, but don't expect a response.

I'm reading emails as I have time, and selectively responding to minor issues, but I'm not dealing with any large/long term issues unless they are really serious (eg cvs.g.o blowing up).

P.S. If somebody has a 256-processor cluster with Java 1.4 that they could loan me access to for a few days, I'd love to hear from you. I don't care what OS it is running, as long as it's got bash, screen and java1.4. 50gb of disk space also needed. The application is intensive on inter-node I/O, but not much else.

I'm presently running on a 128-node single-way 3.0Ghz P4 Xeon cluster, and I just need my results sooner.

robbat2: (Default)
It isn't even TechWeek yet and this is the 3rd all-nighter this week.
And it looks like tommorow will be another one.

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