Archive for July, 2006

Yay Me! Two 400GB SATA Drives!

Monday, July 31st, 2006

Sometimes it pays to talk about your hobbies at work. As most of you know I am a music junkie and while I don’t have the biggest collection out there it is on the heavier side clocking in around 165.1 GB; 32552 tracks playable over 102.6 days straight. The box that my collection resides on is a bit of a lumpy headed hydra with a 60 GB master flanked by 80 GB and 200 GB spares which makes it inelegant at best and often a pain in the ass to set up and administer proper backups. In steps my boss with a pair of 400 GB SATA drives and a controller card, “Make a mirrored set and sleep well at night”.

So here’s my plan to get my new massive storage set up and running:

  1. Upgrade box from Ubuntu 5.10 to 6.06.
  2. Shut down and add controller card and drives.
  3. Bring up box and cross fingers that all is recognized.
  4. Add logical set to fstab.
  5. Enjoy my new expanded storage!

If all goes well then I have the near insurmountable task of retagging and organizing my entire collection into something that is less like a roomful of socks that blew up and more like a well ordered library. A whole different beast that I’m not too keen on tackling. If anyone knows any bash scripts that can help automate moving files in to folders based on Artist/Album I’m all eyes and ears.

Lazy Weekend…

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

With the weather being decently hot for this Yankee, Management and I have been laying low watching movies, some good and some bad and surprisingly I’ve been able to keep my attention rapt enough to follow the plots. Gorky Park was enjoyable, never thought the international trade of sable would be so contested and dangerous, as was The Machinist, a dark look at guilt and redemption. The Lost Boys was just as annoying as I remember and not nearly as fun as The Goonies. At the moment we are settling in to The Satan Bug, a 1965 film about a break-in at a germ warfare facility; promises to be part thriller, part mystery, part sci-fi wrapped up in a rough but well-meaning ex-spook.

I have about twenty pages left in Jordan’s The Shadow Rising which I’ll snack on for the rest of the day. The Wheel of Time series as been chock full of pulpy goodness thus far even it is it a physically heavy read and seeing as I am only about a quarter of the way in hopefully it will keep entertaining. For the time being I’m committed to finishing books five through seven and by the time I finish those Gabriella will be just about on the scene–lately I’ve been reading like pouring cold molasses.

Sleepy weekend and lazy indeed.

July 28th is Sysadmin Day

Friday, July 28th, 2006

SysAdminDay

Show a little love.

(I’m just saying that brownies would be nice… )

Paperback Smack

Wednesday, July 26th, 2006

Looks like I haven’t really kicked my eBay used book habit. I was going strong there for a while but my insatiable need to finish a series once I start it pushed me into trying to round out the back half of Jordan’s wonderfully trashy soap opera series The Wheel of Time. In the process of hunting down the missing books I found myself bidding on other sets by other authors, this time four by Greg Bear.

Seriously, I have a problem. As if my “To Read” list of trashy fiction wasn’t already long enough (around 87) and my non-fiction list, which I haven’t touched in over a year, still remains with some 20 books waiting to be read. At my current rate of one book = one month Gabriella will be heading into middle school by the time I’m done. That is of course if I STOP BUYING BOOKS. Like some perverse math word problem my little habit will certainly outpace my ability to read and finish. “If Jimmy finishes one book per month but purchases four books every other month how soon until Jimmy is buried under pulp fiction?”

When Gabriella comes onto the scene this is likely only going to get worse as I try and hunt down every cool children’s book so that she can be buried just like her dad.  If I’m lucky she’ll turn into a little reading junkie like us and her grandparents.  If you’re going to be strung out on something literature isn’t the worst thing.

This is me loving Linux.

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Greg at linux kernel monkey log posted a great presentation he made at the 2006 OLS. Definitely worth reading, especially for this wonderful visual:

Linux Is Evolution

Mmm. Spaghetti.

Insulting

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006

Today is only Tuesday.  It is as if the week is trying to insult me.