Rantings of a Lunatic

Just some more RRDtool images, because I was curious how my work session today was going.

I have been working a lot recently, and, one of the most frequent frustrations with work is waiting on my computer. I think I have found the way to illustrate that my issues are with memory allocation on 32bit systems though, and am looking forward to moving my workstation to Windows 7. The reason is that I will be able to move to the 64bit version, and hopefully will be able to upgrade my ram to 8Gb. I have 8Gb at home, and it makes a couple of the projects I am working on fly so much faster. But, now on to the graphs. I use Cacti at work to monitor a few machines, and our router, so that I can have a record of statistics. As I was setting up the system, I found a way to set it up on my windows xp system, so I also track things like CPU utilization, and memory usage.
First, here is a pretty normal day, some web development, some IT management, maybe SSH for some database stuff or RDP for Server stuff. Nothing too taxing on my quad core machine.

And now the 14th, mostly the same stuff, probably with some extra image manipulation, PDF editing and creation, maybe some audio or video work as well. I love the CS4 master suite, though, I also hate some of the things it does.

And here is today, when I was editing video, animating, and editing audio all day. I kept having to wait, because I was paging too much data, and couldn’t keep the processor supplied with the appropriate data from RAM.

If I had a cacti server at home I would post relevant comparisons, but, this machine runs Ubuntu, and only boots into Windows when I have to do something in it,but more often than not, its in linux. Though, I keep trying to get to the point of trying some other distros. I have been quite happy with Fedora 12 on my netbook, and I have a Gentoo install on this box, but, its the most bare of installs, really nothing more than a stage 3 tarball unpacked. But, there is a planned computer upgrade coming, probably a new motherboard, move the quad-core to that with its 8Gb of ram, and get some new 1.5Tb drives for it, then put the old dual core and its 4Gb of ram back in this, and turn this machine into a file-server, and put the more powerful machine into a more energy efficient power scheme. If I do that, I could see spending some more time tinkering with a source-based distribution. But, until that happens, I will not make any changes that keep me from having access to my computer for too long.

For the month of November, I kept a pretty awesome mustache all month. For the month of December, I gave up shaving. For Christmas, I was given a wet shaving kit, which I had been looking at, but just too cheap to buy. So, today, I shaved off my beard. First, that might have been a dumb way to try to learn the art of wet shaving. But, it worked out. I just trimmed it down to my normal Van Dyke, which may not be as straight as it should, but, thats ok. My face feels great, and the shave is close. I did two passes, mostly because I didn’t want to mess up my sideburns or the region I had designated to remain. I think I might get a little braver, and try for a third pass, to see if I can get it any smoother later this week. Using the brush was awesome, I can’t believe that I didn’t get one, and use it sooner. I think that if I keep this up for a few months, I might make the jump all the way to the straight razor. I keep thinking about it, possibly because its manly. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know if its not the truth, but I assume that Sam Elliot uses a straight razor. Long, sharp, and with some sort of bone handle. But, thats a digression. And I have a project to finish, so, maybe I will post some pics later.

Today was my 1 year anniversary at my current employer. I didn’t make the realization until I was driving home from work, and it was sort of a bittersweet realization. I had known it was coming up for a while, but for some reason it just didn’t occur to me until it was over. And the thing about it is, I am still staring at the same issues, and high-level goals I was looking at a year ago. I have identified plenty of things that need to be updated or upgraded, or even reimplemented. And thats not to say that I haven’t accomplished anything in a year. Rather, I have resolved several initiatives that weren’t pre-existing. I have implemented new systems, and made small adjustments to the way that we do things, and I keep working towards integration and automation, but its a long road to the point where I feel I should be.

A year ago Obama was preparing to take office, and he had won that office on huge plans and lofty ideals. I wonder if he feels the same way. I wonder if he looks at his first year in office, and thinks to himself that he had hoped to have done more. I know that I had hoped to have accomplished so much more, and I am not deciding the future of millions of people. I am only trying to make life easier for thousands of people.

I don’t mean to imply that things are bad, rather, life is probably better for me than it has been in a long time. I am appreciative of where I am, and I am yearning for artistic output. I have been slowly working on a couple of personal pieces of fine art. In addition, I am working to enrich my knowledge of several systems that I have recently encountered, and am trying to get to the point of writing applications for my phone. In general, I am happy. I find that I am still frustrated sometimes, but, I have opportunities to find joy in the little things. I am often reminded to lighten up, and not to sweat the small stuff. I am thankful for that. I also find myself seeing further into the future than I used to. I am not entirely sure why, but, maybe its just that I am getting older. When I last saw my mother she reminded me that I will turn 30 soon. I don’t really ever remember being too concerned with my age, or aging, but its a good thing to stop and think about every once in a while. I am not a kid anymore, I am an adult, though, it really doesn’t feel like it. I find myself thinking about what I am going to do when I grow up. While its not techincally accurate, (I don’t think I will be getting any taller), it can’t be a bad thing to always think that eventually you will have to become more serious, but this isn’t it yet. I still have my toys, though they definately have gotten more expensive, and I still dream about newwer ones. But I also find myself trying to find ways to help others, such as my parents. I don’t have the solutions for things, but, I am not worried by that. I enjoy the search, the move to find the solution.

I have given up the vices that were mentally stifling me over the last year, and thats something that I appreciate as well. Since I quit my addiction to video games, I find that I am able to focus on more things, and maintain my focus a lot better. I still want to play video games occasionally, but, I also have no desire to let it consume my life, waking and sleeping again. I am no-longer interested in RPGs, instead, I am only really interested in playing where I can turn it off at any moment, and there is no obligation or detriment if I don’t login again for months at a time. This alone is probably one of the greatest points of growth that I have personally felt over the last year. While it hasn’t directly affected my math skills, I do feel that I am spending more time mentally calculating now because I am spending more time staring into code. I still regret not taking any math classes in college, because if I had, they would have only strengthened my programming skills, but, thats a lesson I learned after I finished. I feel as thats the lesson to life, once you realize that you should do something, usually its later than you wish you would have.

I generally assume that nobody reads my blog, which is ok with me, I really just write it for myself, and as such, I am starting to feel as if I am rambling, so thats it.

Well, that’s my guess anyway. I made it back to my friend’s house after work today, and took a look at the bike. I will post pictures later, but apparently the radiator hose was touching one of the exhaust headers, which combined withseveral other factors set it up for catastrophic failure. I have no idea if the hoses have ever been changed, and the bike is 22 years old, so that alone can be devastating. The fact that I pretty much walked the bike 2.5 miles in standing traffic couldn’t have helped. Anyway, the end result is a hole in the hose approximately the width of a pencil. The good news is that the hose should be under $10 I would think, and then a bottle of coolant will be another $6. And it should only take a Phillips head, an 8mm socket, and a bucket to repair the damage, and get it back on the road, and I am currently estimating about a half hour of work. Now, to be honest, that’s all contingent on this analysis of the problem, which seems pretty safe to me. There is the possibility that the water pump blew or something like that, but I am in a mood to think the simplest solution is probably the most likely.