Wednesday

No email.
Thats expcted since I came in yesterday and killed off all outstand email items.

dwmw2 pointed out to me that there was an SRM update available for the Alpha (SRM v5.7-1). So I Flashed the Alpha to see if it would do anything saner with the USB. It didn't.

Looks like I'm going to have to learn kernel PCI interrupt management because the USB portion of the cypress IO chip expects you to tell it what irq it should be responding on. Random selection of irq's would be a bad thing and I'm not terribly convinced that the SRM firmware is PnP capable. I just hope someone has written a nice PnP style irq registation routine in the kernel bootup.

My friend Al seems to be having fun back in the UK. In many ways it would have ben nice to stick around in Bristol and do work there. On the bonus side, he haas promised he's coming across to visit for a week so thats something to look forward to. Least his career life is moving foward and he seem happy. Intregingly he's mentioned Compaq clustering being used at his workplace which I'd be intrested in hearing about.

Time Warner made a very quick visit after an initial 'I'd just like to ask if digital cable is available..' email I sent yesterday. I now have a digital cable box perched atop my growing tower of video equipment. (ummm all I asked was...)
On the fun side, the cable box has a USB port on the back (evil chuckle) however I have to rethink my cabling stratagy as recording shows on the VCR are going to become a bit more messy.

So it looks like I can get digital. This means I could sign up for the RoadRunner Internet service, however, I dunno If I can justify the extra $39 a month to have it. I'm doubly unsure if it's wise to have it at home as I'd probably regress to boarding up the windows and doors and ordering pizza through the letterbox. On the plus side it would mean I could maybe work from home in the mornings until the morning traffic abates. There is still no word on the mindspring ISP account that I asked from from IS so I may well be forced to pursue the RoadRunner option. Time to buy shares in Pizza Hut or similar.

I now have *3* Alphas on my desk,.. this is getting silly. If this continues I'll be looking to move into the games room to setup a mini test lab. Blame _Elrond. More testing..... The kernel group are going to hate me soon.