Advogato blog for mkp

2 Nov 2000

Thu, 2 Nov 2000 20:11:18 GMT

Ok. It's been a while. I've been: 1. Busy, 2. In Atlanta, 3. In Miami, 4. Busy.

And in an attempt to do something non-work related in my copious spare time I decided to scrounge the Internet for VR backhoe/excavator simulators (partly inspired by my sudden urge to knock dhd's house down).

And you know what? They all suck. We're not only talking minor annoyances here or sporadic design goofs. No, no. These wonderful products are fundamentally flawed. Clearly designed by people who: 1. Have never operated a backhoe, 2. Didn't even bother to go read the specs.

Not only are the controls inherently wrong. Arm, stick and bucket movements are restricted in the weirdest ways. I can't believe it. There are plenty of spec sheets available on www.jcb.co.uk, www.deere.com, www.caseih.com, etc.

Now, go do your homework! (Morons)

30 Sep 2000

Sat, 30 Sep 2000 14:11:29 GMT

I have legs!

...seems like an appropriate statement for today. IKEA gave up finding the legs for my desk that they had (allegedly) shipped. So I got in a cab, drove to IKEA Ottawa, picked up the legs myself, went back home and faxed the bill to IKEA Mail Order for reimbursement. Should have done that 5 weeks ago. Gar!

I spent last night moving the computers scattered around my living room floor to their new home under the desk. Much nicer. Now I can get some serious work done.

Despite the fact that I was totally battered, I went to the Loon to hang out with Skud, dhd, and a few other blokes.

Oh, oh, oh. I almost forgot. We released XFS beta1. Well, uh - sort of. The web page got updated waay too early, and we were featured on Trashpot in no time. Bugger. Formal announcement from SGI forthcoming.

I like grapefruit.

20 Sep 2000

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:04:29 GMT

More XFS fixing. We had two problems with buffer_head based I/O. 1. blocksize was left in an indeterminate state, so I had to implement a BLKSETSIZE ioctl. 2. Batching of metadata requests broke with LVM. Fixed. I hereby declare XFS bugfree<tm>. Now let's get back to making the Linux block I/O layer not suck...

I should have known that ordering furniture from IKEA was a bad idea. I suspected problems. I expected problems. But I didn't expect to have a desk without legs for 4 weeks and still counting! Gah!

Still busy unpacking my stuff from .dk, which finally arrived Friday. I brought a lot of shit. Why I shipped my SPARCstation IPC and the Amiga 1.1 Reference Manuals beats me. But they are here.

My organ donor and I came to an agreement. My organ shall arrive shortly. Woohoo! Fun, fun, fun...

...except it looks like I'll be spending most of October in US. IBM LVMS meeting in Austin, Atlanta Linux Showcase, and the 2nd Linux Storage Management Workshop in Miami. *sigh*

Oh, and today is Dennis' last day at Linuxcare. I sense heavy drinking tonight...

18 Sep 2000

Mon, 18 Sep 2000 16:10:29 GMT

MUST GRIND ORGAN

'nuff said...

29 Aug 2000

Tue, 29 Aug 2000 14:15:39 GMT

Friday, I finally found the $%#@ bug that has kept LVM barfing with our new kiobuf-based I/O scheme. Turns out we were submitting previously LVM remapped requests to LVM again instead of the SCSI layer. Boo. One line fix, and it was happy.

Yesterday, Jes, Slick, Ryan and I went to see Godzilla 2000. Muahaha. I almost wet my pants laughing. Awesome! After the movie we went to - surprise - the Royal Oak (I've been there every single night this week - Mission accomplished!)

Today was a most productive day. Met up with Mr. Tilder for lunch at Collonade. Then I spent a couple of hours helping my former employees back at the university creating usernames and homedirs for all the new students. Phew. And finally, I managed to hack a bit on GDM3. Wish I had more time. And legs for my desk...

23 Aug 2000

Wed, 23 Aug 2000 23:17:24 GMT

CAN'T STOP DANCING !

One of those moments that makes you proud to be a dane! Right, Jes?

21 Aug 2000

Mon, 21 Aug 2000 16:51:25 GMT

Jes' attempt at installing Helix GNOME marks the end of the Grrr-free Week<tm>.

The local hamsters inform me that the organ I ponder buying has Caveat Emptor written all over it. I'm still going to check it out, though. I don't mind tinkering a bit to get it going - if the price is right, that is.

20 Aug 2000

Sun, 20 Aug 2000 23:50:08 GMT

Yesterday, I went to a BBQ at Martin (of NORDU fame) Wahlen's place. Met a lot of nice people and talked about non-geeky stuff most of the day. Excellent!

Ryan, Slick and I went biking along the river today. 40 klicks. Nice, nice, nice. But I'm soo tired now. I intend to nest on my couch until I go to bed. I'm a wuss, - shoot me. *Thud*

Found a local Hammond techie on #hamtech and got some advice on price/availability in the Ottawa area. Most useful. I met a fellow dane there too (The Incredible - KAZAM - SMACK - WHOOSH - Captain Foldback!

Got a letter from somebody who read my diary entry for Thursday. He said that he understood very well why my colleages wouldn't appreciate my art. Thanks for sharing, dude. As a token of appreciation I provide you with this free of charge. Enjoy!

17 Aug 2000

Thu, 17 Aug 2000 17:07:51 GMT

My DSL modem arrived yesterday and it worked out of the box. I can now move mkp.net here (When my Suns arrive, that is). Goodness. Now I just need legs for my desk, and I'll be able to hack from home. Which is good, as there is no way in hell I can fit an organ in my cube at the office (I'm not sure my colleagues would appreciate my art anyway).

Spent most of the evening/night poking a bit more at the LVM kiobuf support. Looks like we need to rethink the I/O path once again. Bugger.

I also dropped by the Hammond organ irc channel and was quite surprised to find out that a lot of the people there use Linux (silly me, joining from ottawa.linuxcare.com). I thought I was special because I'm interested in both organs and computers. Apparently not. Hence I am now declared perfectly normal (Muahaha, yeah right).

Oh. I must say that the past few days have been good hack-wise. The Grrrr-free<tm> week is really paying off. La la la la la. The danish alp is going to kill me when he gets back. I know it. Ok, I'm being evil. Let's all hope that he gets a local box to hack on soon.

16 Aug 2000

Wed, 16 Aug 2000 16:44:48 GMT

So. It's been a while since I updated my diary. Shame on me! My life has been a horrid mess, however, so I'm excused.

I am now properly settled in Ottawa after the excruciatingly painful and lengthy relocation process. Got a nice apartment, and took a day off yesterday to assemble all the stuff I got from IKEA. Yes, I know it's a defeat for a dane to buy swedish furniture. Jes did it too, however, and we have proof! But wait! There's more! He also bought a french bike. He'd probably kill me for making this public knowledge, but he's currently booth babing at LWE so I'm out of reach. Hah!

Work is good. I'm still full time on the XFS project, but I spend most of the time hacking the Linux block I/O layer and LVM code. Currently teaching LVM to do kiobuf-based I/O. buffer_heads must die! They are e-v-i-l.

Oh, I need to chastise Mr. Ryan "Honeybun" Tilder, who still can't spell my name correctly after all these years. *smack*