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July 22, 2005

Book reviews

I read a few books recently, and had some thoughts.

First, William C. Dietz's DeathDay and its sequel EarthRise

You'll notice they are both on the Scifi Hall of Shame list on Amazon, and for a reason. These books are post-alien invasion apocalypse (think Footfall but, I swear, worse.) The writing is bad, the characterizations are painfully polarized. The plot is thin and the theme (racism is bad) is hammered into you with all of the subtlety of a Harry Potter fanfic. The books are just bad bad bad, and I still feel silly for buying them. I got more enjoyment from the Halo novelization.

I then got saved, because someone had the brains to collect the Morgaine Saga in one volume. This is some fun high-fantasy high-tech adventuring, with a preoccupation on horsemanship. Probably some of Cherryh's best work that I've read.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I read Diamond Age . Now, here's the thing... I understood the cool fun that was Snow Crash but the writing and plot were pretty substandard, at least compared with the inventiveness that went into the world. Now imagine Snow Crash with characters you don't really give a shit about. That pretty much sums up Diamond Age, and I don't think I'll be reading any more Stephenson for a long while. I would just rather read... almost anyone else.

Last new book, Forever Peace by Joseph Haldeman (more famous for The Forever War considered by many to be the definitive reply to Starship Troopers ) Well, it's not The Forever War . For one thing, Haldeman uses the rather clumsy technique of switching between the protagonist Julian Class and the omniscient narrator. The problem is that the narrator rarely has anything interesting to say and is used for forshadowing. The group-mind concept winds up terribly similar to Man in The Forever War. The antagonists could have been done better, and I really with the protagonist's characters had just been... different. They felt too much like rehashes or something. Still worth reading, whereas I'm lead to believe Forever Free definitely isn't ;)

Posted by jeff at 12:34 AM | Comments (1)

Loadbalanced media servers

One of my more interesting projects over the past few months was an "upgrade" of our media streaming servers.

The configuration is a shitty Dell 100mbit switch hooked via a gigE uplink to CIS's network. On that switch there are 2 media servers, 2 load balancers, a webserver, and a NetApp fileserver.

The media servers were originally RedHat 7.something boxes, with the Real Helix server on them. I wiped one box and moved it to Slackware (I also shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.) The loadbalancers were originally running RedHat and the shittiest virtual software in existence . I notice they ported that crap to FreeBSD, and I have no idea why anyone in their right might would cripple themselves that way.

Anyway, I moved the loadbalancers to FreeBSD. They run CARP between them, and the Helix servers are set to use the CARP virtual address as their default gateway (yes, this works. No, it isn't something you are normally taught to do.) The FreeBSD boxen also run pf, and have a round robin rdr rule to balance media traffic between the linux Helix servers. I wrote up a script to remove a server from the pool if it pings out automatically, it's available here for anyone interested. It's not particularly complicated, but the design is rather robust. I was able to test it by rebooting the loadbalancer boxes with minimal service disruption, something that was often problematic under Linux.

Posted by jeff at 12:19 AM | Comments (0)

General life-like update

So, things have been going OK for me. I took a beginning statistics class in June, and pulled a C in it (would have been a B if I did my homework). I finally read Diamond Age and discovered that Stephenson's writing is really that bad (sorry Mr. S, if you happen to read this... hah.)

I haven't gone flying in more than a month, and I really need to get up in the air (and I should look at going this weekend.) During June I just didn't have the time, laziness aside I was just exhausted at the end of the day. This month, I was still sucking up paying for tuition from June... that said, late June and early August should be good for me for getting my license.

My apartment's a bit of a wreck right now. When I'm not entertaining guests and not actively cooking for myself ("coasting", as it were) I have a dangerously high tolerance for messiness.

At work, I have a programmer coworker leaving in early August (wanker). I put together a proposal for an entry-level SAN system, and have been working on a Nagios management UI (written in sh and dialog). Otherwise it's mostly the same business of dealing with server requests from the programmers (like "make the server load not climb to 15 you bloody wanker!")

Huh. I really have a lot more updates and a lot more detail to go into... that's what I get for ignoring the weblog for so long. It just gets too much like work, and then I see something shiny.

Posted by jeff at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

Wireless access underground

Via NANOG, an interesting article on ways wireless providers are giving subscribers network access in underground locations.

Posted by jeff at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2005

The Arkansas Trip

This is a historical entry. For perspective, this took place in May, 2005, in the Before Times.

Leonard and his sister Kristin and I decided to make our second attempt at the Ozarks this past May. We had gone previously in January, but to our dismay it was in the middle of a heat wave and the melting made streams unpassable.

This time, I left CS on the 9th (Monday) and crashed at Leonard's apartment. Bright and (too fucking) early, we headed out on the drive to Arkansas. This time around, I failed to see any of Leonard's neighbors while bringing gear to the car at 5am. Kind of a shame, because I'd thought of a great story about how we were survivalists and we'd just heard that the nukes had been launched and we were going off to live in the woods. Oh well, maybe next time.

Leonard drove his snappy new Cooper Mini. I got to ride in it from the end of the trail (where we ditched my piece of crap car) to the head of the White Rock Mountain trail, and boy is it British. In fact, it was British enough to put us in a cheery English state of mind for the rest of the trip.

We started our trek at the White Rock Mountain trailhead (some time after noon). This part of the trail was down the side of a mountain, except for a wrong turn we took for a bit. The wrong turn was totally Kristin's fault, and probably added a half mile or so. (Please understand that as a matter of strict policy I make no decisions regarding directions while on the trail proper, thereby shedding the responsibility for any wrong decisions. The is the Scout Way.) The trail was thankfully dry compared to last time, and we decided to camp after crossing Salt Fork Creek (it was early evening, and the next suitable spots were several miles ahead, uphill). Leonard's chart says the mileage this first day was a measly 2.1 miles, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was closer to 3. On the way, we passed an older gent headed back to his car. Either he went the entire length of the trail and back in like two days, or he got tired of the big hill thingy. Either way, we sent him along with a "pip pip" and a "cheerio, mate."

The second day, we quickly got to head uphill again (yay). My dromedary bag that I was using like a Camelbak didn't have its nozzle tightly secured to the bag, causing a leak. I discovered the leak pretty quickly (when my back got cold and wet), but didn't think much of it after securing it. Well, I should have thought more of it, and I definitely should have refilled my bag when I got the chance (I partly filled it when it started getting low and we hit a stream on a break). This was the day we also noticed that the Ozarks are too damned hot during the summer/late spring. Temperatures were in the 90s, we were walking up and down mountains, and the humidity was in the 80% range. Lunch (tuna on pita) was hard to keep down, and the trailmix I'd made pretty much kept me going. We camped at Fane Creek, which from my calculations made day 2 about 11.4 miles. Fane Creek was beautiful, and I should see if Leonard got any pictures (I didn't bring my camera). We talked a bit about camping there an extra day and just heading back to White Rock, but I wasn't really happy at the idea of going back up that mountain (though I was by far having the hardest time, between the water problem and generally not being in good hiking shape). Kristin caught about a dozen trout, many of them bigger than she was. Or maybe she caught one baby trout, which is about what we expect from her so-called "expert" fishing abilities. This was, unfortunately, the first day I spilled my cookies after taking a nap before dinner. It was most likely dehydration and heat exhaustion, but I honestly cannot ever remember feeling that sick (chills, shakes, etc). Leonard cooked up something delicious, and we swam in the creek. I know, it would really be nice to write something other that "Leonard cooked up something delicious, and we swam in the creek." I can't remember my own mother's birthday, how the shit am I supposed to remember what I had for dinner 2 months ago? Seriously, you people are too demanding. That said, if you can arrange to get at that campground via some means OTHER than hiking... say, kayaking. Or flying. Or wishing really, really hard. I totally recommend it.

On day 3, I was significantly more careful about making sure I had enough water. Unfortunately, this day was destined to be an approximation of Hell no matter how much water you had, unless you also happened to have a sherpa carrying your bag and a portable air conditioning unit. Every time I handed my bag to Kristin and the a/c to Leonard, however, there was a mutiny. We saw a neat shelter made from a natural cavern, used by some stonemasons at some point in the history of the Ozarks. It was blessedly cool, and I tried to convince my compatriots that we could, in fact, just live here in the mountains and not continue on the trail. We crossed a highway at Cherry Bend, and if I'd had the sense God gave a goat I would have waved goodbye to Leonard and Kristin, and sat and waited for them to pick me up after they were done with their hiking, selling sexual favors for food and water from passing truckers. Unfortunately, I am stubborn and have no good sense. We continued on... at first we thought we were going to get to stop at a stream below a small mountain on which there was an old homesite. We hoped desperately for this, but the stream in question reeked of decaying things, so we pushed on. The decaying smell continued, and we realized too late it was Leonard. The homesite was atop of what would normally be a very pretty mountain. It suffered a bit from the damnable heat and damnable foliage (impairing a view of the surrounding countryside), but at least it had a well with nice delicious cold water, and it had a great campsite. Again I yarked after taking a nap, again I had trouble with dinner. I know, most people don't care to hear the details of the illnesses of others but I'm including it for two reasons: one, I don't want people to think I was being a complete vagina about the trip. I pushed myself very, very hard. And second: those were the most memorable moments of the trip. Much of the rest of it is just a foggy haze of hyperventilation and calling out for "30 seconds". Day 3 was about 13.4 miles. Leonard saved us all in the middle of the night by telling some wayward scavengers (or possibly a bear) to go away. To this day I marvel at his bravery, as I was huddled in my tent praying that my end would come quickly, and that my neutrient-rich body would benefit Mother Nature. Or that, at least, the bear would take the others first while I ran like a girl through the night.

On day 4, I awoke and immediately started cursing god. My second thought was that I should just wait for a helicopter to come pick me up. Then I thought about how atrocious the food I brought with me was, and realized that if I didn't leave I'd be stuck with it. We struck camp pretty early, hoping to take advantage of the cooler morning. This day started off on a decent downhill. Combine that with the fact that I'd been walking for 3 days and could just about keep Leonard's manly pace, and we made good time. Excellent time. The time we made was good enough that I pointed out that instead of camping and having a day 5... we could push, and make the cars before nightfall. I know, it's ridiculous that the weakest member of the party (and I am... Leonard works out and is built like a bear, and Kristin goes trail jogging regularly) would be pushing like that, but I wanted out of the fucking forest. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to keep breakfast down on a hypothetical day 5, and as long as I was going to be killing myself, why not do it quickly and get it over with? So we quickly passed through arguably some of the prettiest bits of trail we'd seen thus far. Some nice waterfalls, pretty walls, and plenty of shade that was at the same time open to breezes. Don't get me wrong, even on this day there were plenty of sunny, humid, stagnant spots at which I would have gladly paid someone to kill me, but overall it was one of the nicer segments of trail. We made it back to my car before 6 (and the bastard started! yay) and my first act was to run the air conditioner. Woo it was nice. We then proceeded to Leonard's car, and from there to Burger King. Total mileage this day was about 13.5 miles.

As an added aside on the heat and humidity... Leonard was drinking 6 liters of water a day, and was only peeing once per day. I was drinking less, but I was having real problems keeping it down. Kristin was acting like Legolas in Lord of The Rings, running along like a fairy elf going "hee hee aren't the woods FUN!" I don't think she broke a sweat or drank anything outside dinner, and I hate her more than words can express for that. At least she didn't catch any GOOD fish. :)

The excel spreadsheet I'm basing this off of is at http://www.cepheid.org/~jeff/files/OHT_Adventure.xls just note that the day breaks aren't accurate.

Posted by jeff at 04:21 PM | Comments (4)