Zagadka's Site

It's my birthday today!

Kel made me yummy breakfast. We had bacon and sausages with baked tomatoes. Very yummy! I've been working on the HTPC some more, well most of the day actually. Put in the new power supply, since the existing PSU didn’t have the necessary P4 connector – a lead that supplies a rail of 12V to the main board. I had secured the new PSU with Gaff Tape because the existing Gateway PSU had a tricky quick-release system. I corrected that later in the afternoon when I re-attached the gateway bracket to the new PSU so it could work in quick release. I had to drill the PSU case to do it. I then mounted the two ‘tines’ on the PSU so it could mate with the top of the case, then be secured with a plastic clip.

I set up the TV tuner card and it’s all working well. It was missing channel 9 and also wouldn't record properly. I reinstalled the software and manually entered the details for channel 9 digital in manually [191.625MHz, Provider ID 1, Video UID 519, Audio UID 720]. It took a lot of searching to find those settings!

Anyways, everything was burbling away nicely. I had it running Nine Digital in full screen while Kel watched the Bulldogs game. I smelt burning. I narrowed it down to the HTPC. I narrowed it further to the PSU. I could feel the heat on my face coming off it from about a foot away while looking for the source of the smell. It was too hot to touch.

Speaking of Hot. I bought some brass bits and pieces to make an adapter so I could run the heater we got from Kel’s parents off the BBQ gas bottle. That’s all running very well now, although the regulator on the hose that came with the BBQ seems to struggle with more than 1 bar. [The heater has 3 bars] You can hear the muffled hissing sound get pretty loud at 2 and 3 bars! It’s much better than the tiny halogen heater. At least this gas unit uses a fan to circulate the air as well as radiating heat out of the front of the unit.

Adaptor

We had pizza for dinner. Dominos managed to bugger up my order. TWICE. I really can’t understand how the bloody hell "Puffection" could possibly be misinterpreted as either "Pan" or "Classic". Neither of the two terms they use to describe a pan-fried pizza sound anything like "Puffection". Bastards. No-I-dea! Had the pizzas remade after talking to the manager. They sent out pan AGAIN. Got it right third time! Go Dominos!

Liam is doing great, other than him not sleeping more than 3 hours at a time. Had a good night last night though. 7 Hours. He's also becoming a lot more vocal and a lot more dextrous lately. He will usually babble back when you speak to him and he will also now pick his toys up by himself with both hands, rather than only 'grabbing' them when they were handed to him. He's doing really well!

The HT [Home Theatre] box is getting an upgrade. I got myself a P4 1.8GHz and a 512MB stick of PC2700. It also copped a kick-arse piece of storage for recording and encoding video, so we don't have any IO bottlenecks. I put an 18gb Seagate Atlas 10K. A 10,000RPM U160 [Ultra 160 SCSI]. I only got the controller a few weeks ago second hand. It was pure luck. It cost me $10 for a bag of SCSI gear. There was a 5 point U160 cable with a terminator and a high quality Amphenol Spectra Strip cable. It's orange and white, looks cool. I also got an Adaptec U160 SCSI card.

I finally got Zagadka [The rogue in WoW] to level 30. With 3 minutes to spare before the server was coming down!

3 Mins to Go!

I killed up as close to the limit as I could while counting on at least 2K xp from the quest. I tried to hearth back at 5:00 until shutdown but got interrupted by a Spider. I ran and evaded then hearthed back to Westfall successfully. I then flew from Sentinel Hill to Darkshire.

The 2050 xp from killing Mor'Ladim *just* got me over the line!

I was lucky, I had a good group. We killed Mor'Ladim about 4 times. We also did two runs through the underground part of the graveyard, wiping everything as we passed through. We also killed Morbent Fell at the top of the hill. He's nasty.

Zagadka is now 3 levels past where he was before the "Incident" =P

We have got ourselves some new lounges, well, not new, used. They look new though =)

The removalist comes Tuesday!

I "persuaded" the old 3 piece set down three flights of stairs and I'm not feeling too good about it. A little lower back pain. At least it's just a strain, not a pinch or anything nasty. Just dull pain. It's bloody amazing what you find behind the lounge after it's been there for 2 years!

Days before I had lost the TV remote, it just disappeared off the face of the earth! I even looked around in and between the lounges. It was not to be. I *did* however find it's battery cover which had been missing for over a year, replaced by a square of gaff tape. Eventually I found the remote, albeit once I put everything back together and pushed it up against the wall. It was sitting on  the lounge under a bloody pillow!!1

1 Year Anniversary! Kel and I have been married for One Year!

Mum, Dad and Jen came over for a BBQ to celebrate. We had some chicken kebabs and some nice thick butcher's sausages. Excellent. Kel also made her french onion dip which I love!

Big  cleaning day! I may have several blonde spots or streaks in my hair after today. I don’t know how strong this stuff is. I’ve been cleaning some mould from the ceiling in the bathroom. It kind of crept up, last week there were only a few spots then BAM! There was a few large patches and even some on the walls. I just did what I did when we moved in and I cleaned. Filled the bath with about 2” of water, poured in about half a bottle of “exit mould” and used a mop on the ceiling. That is how I got some on my hair. Drips.

I've found places to stow a lot of my "crap" (as Kel calls it). I've been meaning to sort out the top of my desk and server stand for ages. A lot of small sundries have collected around my work area, heasinks, screws, cds, dvds and various other bits and pieces... I need to sort it out. A lot of the larger things have been sorted into their various containers and put away.

Well bugger me, it appears that Fedora Core 5 *will* install on a PERC2/SC drive array [on the monolith box]. We will see, knowing my luck I've just wiped out the Ubuntu 5.04 ("Hoary Hedgehog") install for no reason. It was "sort of" configured to replace the current webserver zBox. It's burbling away now installing the first CD as I burn the second CD! =P

The Little Liamlet is doing well, we've moved from Formula + Thickener to a Formula for bubbies with reflux that already has thickener in it. It seems to be doing a better job as the poor bugger couldn't get the mixture of standard formula and thickener through the teet, even with the next size teet up.

Weekly blogging seems to be the emerging pattern =(

I've been working on my stair climbing buggy again. I haven't changed the design that much, rather, the structure of the assembly. The previous arrangement had every single individual part dumped in the one assembly. Pins, Nuts, Bolts, Split pins and parts all together. The tree of parts was massive. I have started from scratch building smaller assemblies with detail parts like nuts and bolts already on them. These "sub-assemblies" are only possible where I don't need them to interact with parts that make up the sub-assembly, only with the sub-assembly as a whole. For example, the spring pack. I had to break the spring pack into two halves so it would interact with the movements of the suspension arms. It's made the overall assembly tree much clearer. Some images later.

Work has vastly improved with the return of my proper area manager. We have staff, we have everything we need pretty much. The stand in area manager completely lost me a $10-15K a week customer, for which I will never forgive him. I can't even contact this customer now. It was over something stupid, that, if he had explained himself properly instead of just getting pissed off with me, could have allowed me to retain the customer. Thinking I was doing something wrong, I told the customer that we could no-longer sell that particular product to him. I figured it was something serious as he was really pissed off, turns out he was just pissed because I didn't go to him and ask him first... I hate that bastard, he needs to feel pain, that's what he's caused me...

On a much happier note Liam is doing much better now with a formula thickener. He has a little reflux and doesn't stay satisfied long if he throws up part of his feed. He keeps it down and as a bonus, now sleeps longer. He's learned to press the foot of one of his toys to make it light up and speak and he's also learned to hold a rattle!

Man! What a week!

I've been struggling with un-reliable staff and short-of-staff type issues all week as my Assistant (Little G) has been "Floating" around the area helping out other stores, for which I hope they compensate him. I've just started getting my store back to standard since getting back from holidays. There have been a number various problems, issues and events that have managed to thoroughly screw up my return to work and work up to this point.

Oh Shit! I was supposed to be overseeing the DSE store too, I must have crossed wires or something, I didn't even visit there! Well, after a deserved and thorough reaming from my area manager I got started there after work at about 6 PM. We had a one staff member pike out (read previously mentioned un-reliable-bastard staff) at 6:00. Barely 30 mins after I sent them at 5:30 to help in the other store and after he committed to 1.5 hours more when I asked him to help out! I've given that fucker so many chances now, he can go jump off something. I could go on, but it would get ugly. Expressing my distaste for this particular individual would probably not be wise at this moment. Some left at 7, like the staff that had started at 9 and the 3IC, I feel for him, he'd already pulled a few 12hr shifts this week. We had some good staff to 9:30 PM when we had most of it done, then it was just Little G and I until about 11:30 PM when we finished, cashed up and left.

The reason for all this: The stores brochure hadn't been tied up. A brochure is a pretty important thing in Tandy, it has limited effect. In Dick Smith, however, it's up there with like, well, breathing and eating. DSE brochures tend to up sales $10's of 000s and it's relied on to have that effect. It's bloody important. I can say though, I am at least proud of that store now, Little G and I really brought the team together and got it done. The store looks damn sexy now. We tidied, faced, ticketed and put out the last few touches on the brochure. It's two days late, but hey, at least it will have an awesome effect and when the real manager gets back, he will make his budget.

Me, I got home at 1:20AM after clambering onto a train. I was so tired I almost felt drunk. I could barely read my Silicon Chip mag. Little G got home about 10 mins later at  1:30AM. I bought a Kebab on the way home. I was surprised my favourite place was still open. I got a beer and had my Kebab. Nutritious!

Poor little Liam... He had his shots yesterday, he's come up in a little bit of a fever and he's in a little pain from the injections. I've had probably 1hr of disjointed sleep if you combine all the small times where I dozed off between 1:30AM and about 6:30 when I get up. Little Liam has been screaming, not his fault though! I would be too (and probably did) at his age after having my first needles! It annoys me enough with injections and I'm an adult. That dull pain in the middle of your shoulder that you can't rub or do anything too because it's too deep to have an effect, little Liam prolly had his injection in the butt though, I don't know, I haven't spoken to Kel yet.

Whoa! It's been ages, I will have to pay more attention to my site! I've been so busy since getting back to work and looking after little Liam!

I've been shooting some macros in my parents garden, there is one image that shows me in the reflection of a water droplet.

CRW_1861_2

Little Liam is doing terrific, he's moved up to the next nappy size and is in the “crawler” nappies now. He also now enjoys baths a lot more than before. He splashes around and giggles. He is a lot more vocal now. He has also learned to smile and giggle now. Today he held a rattle briefly and shook it about a bit. This is pretty impressive for an 8 week old bub. The sleep situation was doing terrific but seems to be decaying lately... He's up and down a lot, sometimes 5 hours, sometimes 2 hours. Kel is doing a lot better now though, now that she gets more sleep!

In other news. More stuff discovered stolen when I got back from holidays. How much fun it is to return from holidays into a crap stock take. Normal stock take, sure, but a crap result because certain ex staff want to take stuff when they leave and also don't give two shits and incorrectly process cyclic stock counts writing on stuff we never had, contributing further to administrative loss; sucks arse. Fscking excellent. I love it. Nothing better than being put through the ringer because of someone else. Then theres the additional run through the ringer because the store was looking crap. What the bloody hell do they expect when they throw the keys at a part timer and say "Here you go, run it, we will 'let' you" like it's some honor. The poor bastard has no training and knows only whats essential to keep the store running.

I've got myself a copy of World of WarCraft and I play that occasionally. I have a level 23 rogue at the moment.

zBox got a minor upgrade from a P3-733 to a P3-1000. That's increased the performance of the back-end systems such as the gallery post-upload processing and resizing for the gallery. It hasn't really done much for the database side of things. I haven't yet got the MySQL back end for Postfix email working on the PowerEdge yet. The PowerEdge also got a major upgrade from 2xP3-733s to 2xP3-1000s and 1024MB of RAM. I haven't benched it yet. I also added a GigE card to it so that I can create a small rsynch network. It's storage system hasn't changed yet although I have managed to procure a U160 SCSI card and some VERY nice U160 SCSI cables. When I say nice I mean the nice Amphenol Spectra Strip with twists between the plugs!

ultra160_cable

zTop has been upgraded, replaced actually. I am now using an ASUS M6N which is a Pentium M 1.6GHz with 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. The only boggle with it is the battery, it's rooted. $220 later I will have a new one... But that's OK considering it's second hand and also considering what I am paying for it. This laptop has more bells and whistles than... well... something with lots of bells and whistles! It's got a nice video card too, a ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 with 64MB on board. It's also got IR, an SD/MMC card reader, on board GigE, Modem, PCMCIA slot, DVD Reader/CDR combo drive, 6 USB 2.0 Ports and on board 4 speaker sound.

I am currently running a dual boot system on it using GRUB. SuSE 10.0 and Windows XP. SuSE is my primary OS. I have installed XP on there for the few things that I need it for like WoW and AutoCAD/Autodesk Inventor.

I CAN'T WAIT TO GET A BATTERY!

I've finally sorted the wireless in both OS' it turns out the old wireless router I have just can't hack it. The router had crashed but the Ethernet and config sections of the router were still working. I changed the configs then power-cycled it and BAM wireless worked. I then re-enabled access filtering and WEP encryption so that no buggers can access my LAN wirelessly. Well, not easily anyway.

I've also been working on a HTPC [Home Theatre PC]. I used a spare box to make a box. I bought a 250GB hard drive, TV tuner card and a DVD burner. This will allow me to watch DVDs and also to record TV. However, it's too slow. I need a better spec box. I tried it out recording some of Dad's videos from Europe from a few years ago, he gave them to me to digitize. It's going to be much better to have them on DVD rather than analog 8mm because currently he needs the camera to watch the videos.

Yesterday I had a beer with Josh and Sandy after work. It was good to see them again. I rarely go out these days!

That's pretty much up to date now!

Little Liam is doing great, although sometimes he smells like hand cleaner when he spits out some of the gripe water. (Gripe water is stuff that smells and tastes terrible, but it's for helping babies with gas). He now settles a lot easier, though he puts up a fight when it's time to have some gripe water (once a day). It's odd stuff, smells like hand cleaner.

Fixed my headphones, for hopefully the last time. The speakers inside each of the headphone sides had come a little loose. In the left the sound was poor, the small speaker was unclipped completely and floating around inside the earphone enclosure. The right was only slightly loose, but rattled when low-frequency sounds came through that channel. They are pretty solid now. I just melted the clips and surrounds a little with the soldering iron to fuse the plastic speaker body to the body of the earphone.  

Not much blogging done!

Little Liam is doing great. He is slowly getting into a sleeping pattern that allows his parents to sleep too!

I want to get him some new bub clothing:
Level 1 Human, 0 Experience
iPood
Hello World
TCP/IP
Baby Tux

I am currently on holidays but work sucks. My offsider quit. Little-G is stepping on up now. Add to that a looming stocktake upon my return. What an awesome return to work. 4 weeks off then a gorram stocktake! Fun.

Liam Michael 3.785Kg (8lb 4oz) 36cm Head (14") 50cm Long (19.5")

1:45PM 6th May 2006

Liam Michael

It's 3AM and bubby has decided it wants out!

Another day of no baby arivals. There were a lot of false contractions today but no really painful or lasting ones.

Monolith01 got knocked up another notch. BAM! Dual P3 1GHz, 1GB RAM. That leaves Monolith02 with Dual P3 733s and 768MB of RAM. Bits left over makes a Monolith03! Dual P3 667 and 128MB of RAM. 

Ah well! The bub didn't come on it's due date. It looks like it's happy where it is and it's going to be late! We are now +2 days

Damn ads, everyone hates bloody ads! Check out Philips' new patent:

From New Scientist:

The advert enforcer

If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company's labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they have recorded along with their target programme.

The secret, according to a new patent filing, is to take advantage of Multimedia Home Platform - the technology behind interactive television in many countries around the world. MHP software now comes built into most modern digital TV receivers and recorders. It looks for digital flags buried in a broadcast, and displays messages on screen that let the viewer call up extra features, such as additional footage or information about a programme.

Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over. The flags could also be recognised by digital video recorders, which would then disable the fast forward control while the ads are playing.

Philips' patent acknowledges that this may be "greatly resented by viewers" who could initially think their equipment has gone wrong. So it suggests the new system could throw up a warning on screen when it is enforcing advert viewing. The patent also suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts.

Read the full patent here.

What a bunch of shit! Not only that but they are cheeky enough to suggest paying fees to skip the ads? WTF! I thought paying for a subscription service was the damn fee for not having ads. The whole thing is just out of control. Normal Free-To-Air TV is too hard to watch with 2 minutes of show then 2 minutes of ads! Cable it seems is not much better...

Ah! A day off. Or not.

Went into hospital with Kel today since I had the day off and watched her have her bi-weekly check up. Everything was good, although baby was a little narky about being poked and prodded when the nurse was manipulating them into position for measuring and checking of it's heartbeat.

After that we went into the shopping centre and bought a large selection of larger (0 and 00) sized baby clothes in neutral colours. Baby has more clothes than Kel and I combined! Poor bugger is going to be in pale neutral pastels (greens, yellows, whites, creams etc) for a while. We chose to keep the sex of the baby a surprise

Finally a triumph with an Old Game. Clive Barker's Undying. I've had a hankering for this game for a while now. I thought I'd blow the dust off it's case and load it up. No, InstallShield wouldn't have any of that. It seems the version packaged with the older EA Games doesn't like XP. Starts to load then craps out with a totally useless un-googleable error that means nothing. So, I went to work on the install files.

• Copied the entire disc to hard drive, nope.
• Tried doing a repair on the cabinet files included with the install, nope.
• Tried copying the cabinet files to my Linux box and installing the 'unshield' utility - got the files out, but with no ordering or folder tree. Yay. I pored over the install scripts and config files for hours looking for where each file needed to be, failed, nope.
• Ah! Hah! VMWare! I created a windows 2000 virtual machine, installed Undying and then copied the install to the real computer. BAM! We have undying. I'm not doing any more typing! I'm going to go play it!

Edit: Undying is a great old game, very scary! Great ambience!

Whoa! I'm up to my backside, well my shoulders if you stack them on top of each other in server gear! It's nice to finally get going properly on actual server gear for this site. Monolith01 and Monolith02 got an upgrade today. The 667s in Monolith01 flowed down to 02 and it's 550s went to 03.

Monolith01:

• Dual P3 733MHz/133MHz FSB
• 256MB PC133 ECC SDRAM
• 6 x 9.1 GB U160 SCSI drives (2 x 9.1 [Atlas 10K Vs] RAID 1 - 9.1GB, 4 x 9.1  [Atlas 10K IVs] RAID 5 - 25.5GB) running off a DELL PERC2/SC RAID controller.

Monolith02 (Planned): 

• Dual P3 667MHz/133MHz FSB
• 256MB PC133 ECC SDRAM 
• 1 x 18.2GB U160 SCSI Drive running off embedded U2W SCSI on mainboard.
• 1 x 20GB IDE running off 2 x ATA133 PCI RAID card.

Monolith03 (Planned - pending essential parts like ummm, RAM?!)

• Dual P3 550MHz/100MHz FSB (Possible Single P3 1.0GHz depending on slotket compatibility)
• No RAM Yet
• No Drives Yet

Linux comes to the rescue again. I wanted to play undying. It's an old FPS/RPG from ~2002. i put it down years and years ago, It doesn't actually install any more. I know for a fact there is no problem with the disk, it's the InstallShield software that is incompatible with Windows XP. So a disk that doesn't install. No Game. I found something for Linux called 'UnShield', it is able to extract the data directly from the .CAB files. Beautiful.

I finally got that bench built and the house reasonably tidy. At least tidy enough for Kel, I will finish tidying when I get home. After hours of having the lounge room filled with PCs and the dining area with pieces of wood it’s done.

Here are some shots of the bench all loaded up being inspected for final approval by the mistress of the house.

IMG_0383	IMG_0384
IMG_0386

I now have two big black monoliths (Zagadkai ) and now a big stand to put them (and the other computer(s)) on.

The Server Stand is designed the way it is to make use of the materials I have available. The frame is made from pieces cut from old bed slats (90 x 35) from the spare room bed (now the Baby's room). The top will be 3 pieces of 305mm wide 5-ply Plywood removed from the old stand as will any pieces of 70 x 35 pine used in the design. 

IMG_0380	IMG_0381
IMG_0367	Sheets

I've been hard at work today. Thismorning I moved the chest of draws from our room into the baby's room and then assembled the cot in our room in it's place.

Later in the day I finalised the plan for the server stand, printed a copy and then set about marking out cutting lines on the wood I had. Next I cut all the pieces up. After that I marked out all the holes that needed to be drilled. I pre-drilled all of the holes where screws went. Each leg of this stand has 6 holes, two of which are bored out to 10mm dia and 35mm deep because the screw goes through the widest part. In total I used 40 screws long screws. The screws I am using are 75mm long so that I didn't have the problem I had fixing together the last stand where screws didn't reach and I had to bore a hole 80% of the way through to get enough thread in the other side. I chose Countersunk chipboard screws as they go in faster and easier, the cordless drill sure is getting a workout, bugger putting them in with a screwdriver! They are nearly 4mm in dia on the threadded part and 3mm thick on the shank. I still have the top and some other stretchers to put on yet!

The bottom shelf is designed to take two storage containers. The stretchers are spaced to retain them and the lower stretchers act as a rail for them to slide on. The containers have small wheels on them... The top shelf is where the computers go.

I will have to look at the remaining materials and work out how I am going to mount a shelf above the computers to put the scanner, printer and router on. The Power Supply and CRO will take their old positions leaving me a little more storage and some more desk space.