Month: November 2008

Received an email from Xmission — my ISP — regarding downtime yesterday.

This is how you handle an outage. A clear email, admitting where the fault was, and an explanation for the technically-minded to keep them in the loop is a perfect response. While I’m certain there are a number of pissed-off customers who went without Internet for most of the day yesterday, I was pleased to receive such a concise and clear description of what happened, rather than the stagnant silence I usually receive from an ISP who has an outage (I’m lookin’ at you, Qwest and Comcast!).

XMission Outage —————

XMission experienced a serious outage while we were performing some standard UPS maintenance today. The outage affected all services and started at approximately 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday, November 11th. Network services for many were partially restored by about 2:30 p.m. but some other services required a lot of attention and took much longer.

Details ——- About 40% of our data center, including our server room, suffered a power outage when a technician flipped a mislabled breaker during some standard maintenance on one of our 3 UPS units. Although the power outage was momentary, servers and routers often respond very poorly to losing power and sometimes take extensive work to come back up. Unfortunately, such was the case today with many systems.

Seriously Affected Systems ————————– * An important router, which some connections and servers rely on, required extensive attention from our network administrators.

* DNS (Domain Name Service) was sporadic for some customers for over an hour.

* Email services were down for over 5 hours.

* Web hosting suffered the longest outage because our NetApp storage appliance which houses all customer files and web sites lost multiple hard drives. As a result, we are currently restoring files to our new NetApp 2020 from our November 9th backup, which will take many hours yet to complete. We recently purchased this new NetApp and were merely days away from getting it online.

Conclusion ———- Today’s outage was exascerbated by multiple systems responding poorly to losing power. In spite of the holiday, our systems administrators were on site within minutes and continue to work tirelessly to restore all services. In the end, we should have performed this maintenance on a day when our systems administrators were on site because problems can arise no matter how carefully you proceed.

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To Jon, thank you. You’ve been a life-long friend, and although your time in the service meant we didn’t talk much, I appreciate you doing it. To Kevin, though I haven’t seen you in many years, thank you. To my dad, thanks. From Navy to Air Force to retired colonel, you kept the gears of the service moving. To Chris L., I appreciate your service. I’ve learned more about the reality of war from you than from anyone else, and I’m richer for knowing what’s on the line. For Ryan, they came to take you away again, and thanks for defending me. Jeremy, good on ya’. Dick, thanks for doing the work nobody else wanted to do and getting your arms elbow-deep in “monkey shit” to keep the machines that keep our soldiers safe working. Brian, though I know your time in the Navy was tumultuous, thanks for going anyway. Jeff, I’ve hardly spoken to you in many years. Your service in the first Gulf War is remembered. Our soldiers would not have survived long without you spending countless hours flying that Hercules.

To everyone that I didn’t name personally, if you have defended our country in the uniformed services, this is your thanks. Have a good Veteran’s Day.

What if The Matrix ran Microsoft Windows?

“Ubuntu? I’m going to learn… Ubuntu?”

Now that the election has passed, let’s get back to the important stuff, namely, helping Sammy G with his tech needs.

I need to know how to create an exact replica of an install DVD. I have a 100% legal copy of a popular office software program that was bought with legal tender. I then had to send the DVD on to another office. To have a working backup copy of the original DVD on-hand, I tried ripping an .iso file and then burning the .iso file using MagicIso but it didn’t work.

Help?

I wrote this over on Facebook, thought I’d share it here, too. You have it sir

You should know we’re scared. Many of us who voted for you, most of us who voted against you. We’re scared.

We’re scared because a lot of us are pro-life. We’re scared because a lot of us are Republican. We’re scared because a lot of us have said to our friends and family that you could be another Lincoln, sir.. and if you’re not.. if you go against the ideals of “The Audacity of hope”, if you fail to unite, if you swing major abortion legislation, if you fail to extricate us from our wars with honor and victory, if you fail to fix our economy – IF YOU FAIL TO BE PRESIDENT FIRST AND PARTY MEMBER SECOND.. then we’re lost.

Some are praying tonight they were right about you, and some are praying they were wrong. Hope always accompanies Fear, and you sir embody both to a lot of us.

God Bless you, Sir. God Bless the historicity of your position. God bless the people for whom you are a beacon. We see in you the potential for greatness.

Don’t let us down, America

I receive a lot of questions as to what someone should choose for their first plane. My first recommendation is always use a simulator if at all possible so you can find out if you enjoy flying a model plane, and to teach you how to fly without crashing right away. My second recommendation is to find an experienced flyer through your local club who is willing to mentor you in how to fly model aircraft. They are no less complicated or difficult to fly than full-scale; in fact, in many ways they are much harder than full-scale due to parallax shift, eyesight limitations, and control reversal. Here’s my response to a friend with this same question.

On Mon, November 3, 2008 14:33, Richard wrote: > What would you recommend I consider for a good starter plane setup and > vendor(s)? I would prefer something that I could still use after I advanced > beyond a beginner stage. I appreciate any input.

I get this question a lot. I still fly my trainers for fun; although it’s challenging to do certain aerobatics with them (notably inverted flight), even after five years of flying I love whipping out a trainer and surprising people with what they can do. If you have enough power, though, you’d be amazed at what a well-built trainer can do!

Basically, it all depends on your budget and transportation. Any good moderately-aerobatic trainer will continue to be a lot of fun for years to come. If you can’t put together $200, though, I really strongly recommend saving your money a bit longer to buy something nice and be able to afford spare parts. Investing a bit more money ($500-$600) will afford you a good starter radio.

If you can, buy a *used* aircraft. Bring them to a club meeting to help get a look over the aircraft, or even mention that you’d like to buy a ready-to-fly trainer. Often, club-mates have a spare trainer sitting in the garage that they haven’t flown for a few years and would be willing to part with. Sure, it’s going to have battle scars and repairs, but you’re going to inflict your share of them by the time you finish learning!

Small/park-flyer (electric “400” or nitro “.049” size): HobbyZone Super Cub. $160 RTF, buy a spare battery or two and a spare charger or two (figure an all-up cost of around $250 once you figure in spare parts). Slow, stable, fun to putt around with. The 8-cell battery upgrade (or going to a 3-cell Lithium Polymer batteries) is REALLY worth it due to our altitude. It can handle a little bit of wind, but really the wind should be less than 5MPH for learning. Downside: it’s only three channels (throttle, elevator, rudder) so the aerobatic potential is limited.

The Super Cub is the only one of these that I’d advise teaching yourself on. Even with that, time spent on a simulator or with an instructor is totally worth it in money saved on spare parts on an entirely new airplane.

Larger (“.15” size): A superb choice is the “Apprentice 15e RTF with DX5e Radio”. The radio can be used with multiple receivers (though it’s not a computer radio) and is 2.4GHz DSM2, so you can fly just about anywhere without worrying about radio interference. The plane is EPP foam so it’s really durable for the “oops” moments, and easy to fix with a little bit of epoxy or hot glue. Downside: it only comes with one battery, and Lithium Polymer batteries require an hour to recharge. Additional batteries are quite expensive. But it’s an excellent, quiet, large-park or flying-field capable aircraft and I’ve been really impressed with it (I’d like to buy one myself). $300, plus the cost of extra batteries and possibly a dedicated second charger. At 12 oz/sq ft, the wing loading isn’t light (it’s a little fast for a rank beginner), but moderately aerobatic, tough, and fun. Awesome on a buddy-box.

Traditional size (“.40” size): The Hangar 9 Alpha 40 DSM2 includes the same radio as the Apprentice, but is built-up balsa with a lighter wing loading, slower flight, and similar maneuverability. It’s also glow-powered, so plan on adding another $150 to the $400 purchase price for a flight box, fuel, glow starter, etc. However, the advantage of glow is that you can usually get in 4-7 flights before the receiver pack battery is exhausted, which is generally a full flying session. And if you recharge for 15 minutes after each flight, you can basically fly the plane all day if you have the fuel. Over the long term (200 flights or so), glow and electric have similar costs, but over the short term, glow is much cheaper than electric in these larger sizes. This size and larger pretty much should only be flown at a dedicated flying field.

Slightly larger than traditional size (“.60” size): Hangar 9 Alpha 60 ARF, or the Hobby Lobby Telemaster Senior. You will need to buy servos, engine, radio, etc. and that drives the cost up (plan to spend close to $700-$800), but a lot of flyers say they love the larger size of this class of airplane because it’s easy to see in the air, response time is much slower (nice for newbies), and they really “float” well.

Planes I recommend against: * Hangar 9 PTS planes. Unless your first several dozen flights are on a buddy box with an experienced trainer, these are not really good for “training” on. They look cool, but you really need an experienced buddy on the trainer cord or you’ll end up with an expensive pile of balsa wood. If you have a patient trainer willing to spend a lot of time with you, though, they are great.

* ParkZone J-3 Cub. Just say no. Horrible flyer. Even with the recent brushless upgrade.

* FlyZone planes. They fly… barely. Our altitude kills their performance.

Let me know if this helps!

–Matt

This song is over 2 years old, but I wonder how many of you saw the video. I keep watching it every so often just because of its wonderful homage to Spinal Tap. It’s hilarious.

For today’s Blast From The Past, I give you the video to Korn’s Twisted Transistor.

Note: Sysadmins may free to embed YouTube link directly into post if possible

I will always remember from Orwell’s 1984 the point about the massive propaganda machine put into motion by the state, and how as soon as a new story broke, the entire machine was made to forget the past.

Does anyone remember the war in Iraq? It’s absurd, over this past month, how all political speech has moved off Iraq and onto tax policy, the domestic economy, and general candidate character issues without mentioning Iraq. It’s as though the entire issue has been forgotten. Meanwhile, I’m a single-issue voter on this issue alone. It’s pretty disgusting.

The following is heavily paraphrased. I also wish I could imitate the accent in writing, because apparently “room” and “robe” sound exactly the same from the other fellow’s mouth and to his ear.

Phone. Dialing. Ringing. Huge phone tree. Then, in a thickly accented voice, I heard:

“Hello, thank you for contacting Squigglesoft Hardware technical support. My name is Ramachandran, but you may call me Randy. How can I help you today?”

I replied in my American accent: “Uh, hi, my name is Matt Barnson. I have a problem with my laptop. I was in my bathrobe, and had my laptop, and the laptop shocked me when I set it on my lap.”

“I’m sorry, sir, did you say you were in the bathroom?”

“No. In my bathROBE.”

“You were in your bathroom when your computer shocked you?”

“No. I was in my bedroom, in my bathrobe, using my computer. I set it on my lap, and the computer shocked me.”

“Oh, sir, you should not be using your Squigglesoft notebook computer in the bathroom. Electricity and water is very dangerous, sir.”

“No, buddy, you got it wrong. I was in my bath ROBE. As in a ROBE that you wear TO the bath. I was not in the bath.”

“You were in your bath using your computer, sir?”

“No, I just said I wasn’t in the bath.”

“OK, sir, I am not interested in where you weren’t; where exactly were you when you were using the computer?”

“In my bedroom.”

“In the bathroom in your bedroom?”

“In a chair. In my bedroom. A regular chair. And when I set the computer on my lap, it shocked me on my bare leg.”

“Then when were you in your bathroom, sir?”

“Uhh, probably a few minutes earlier. But when I use the toilet is irrelevant. The fact is, I was in my bathrobe and when I set the laptop on my lap, the bare inside of my leg got a terrible shock going down to my toes.”

“So you were sitting in your bathroom using your notebook computer, and it shocked you? Was it plugged in at the time?”

“Yes, it was plugged in, but no, I wasn’t using it in the bathroom. What’s this with you and the bathroom, anyway? I was in the BEDroom, in a chair.”

“Sir, the bottom of most notebook computers become quite hot during use. We do not advise using your computer while unclothed.”

“I was clothed. I was in a bathrobe.”

“I thought you were not in a bathroom, sir?”

I hung up and got a different service tech.