Fun with Macs, Sooke & Getting Back So it was Monday already and everyone was kinda on their own with things. AJ drove up Island to see Bernd and Bridgette. I let him take my CDs. I got an email mid morning ... "And Justice For all ... I Love You!". I'm here to please. Marshall had school all day, and I had planned to hang out with Brooklyn and do some business stuff with her. We hung out on line for a while, and we figured out how to do certain things with her website, and how the system works from her hosting provider. I think she's all good with that now. We created some new sites, and tested all things out. It happened to be a *nix type system, and therefore I happened to immediatley understand everything that was happening. Permissions to paths ... it all made sense.

I napped again, and she had a meeting. We went to the store for some food, and had a small lunch of sandwiches. And my sour ju-jubes were a hit. I also got supplies for diner the next night. I had said I would cook for everyone. Marsh stopped by for a bit in between class, so we had the car for the trip. When Marshall got home we hung out for a bit, and we had to get Romeo's. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm ... Romeos pizza ... so good!. So now we were fed and watered. AJ arrived after a while, and we were chilling out and looking through AJ's pictures from his trip up Island. Everyone had a fairly low key day. Lets get back to the booze and the battling. Oh yeah ... and some more Asshole. AJ also discovered CDs ... and decided to burn every CD I had, as well as Brooklyn. So several hours after we were all asleep, I could still hear AJ awake. In our drunken states we discovered "photoshop" on brooklyns Mac. The results are quite amazing, and I can not believe the pictures are actually me and AJ ... but they are. Somehow AJ's pics made it into tookit ... but not mine. ;-)

Tuesday was a day for Sooke. Since I was now well rested, I was also first up, and out of the shower while AJ snoozed. We finally headed out to see the power soft folks. We arrived welcomed by the "Welcome C.U.N.T.S. Calgary Chapter!". Dunn is kinda funny. So I visited with everyone. Caught up on the gossip and whatnot. It was all good. Aj, myself, Chris Dunn and Chris Lang all went for Lunch out to the 17 Mile. Aj has a family car which resulted in all of us getting out and Lang got locked in the back seat. He was quite embarrassed ... we pointed and laughed. Lunch was good. AJ and Dunn started off with Tequilla. I stuck with the ice tea. They finally conviced me and Lang to have a shot with them ... then I got in shit because I don't drink Tequilla ... and had Sambuca instead. Lunch was good ... Lang was the butt of many jokes. It was great to hang with them again for a while.

Back to the office. AJ went biking with Dunn for a couple of hours instead of playing golf. I got to hang with Rudy and talk shop. That was my plan all along. He showed me some pretty nifty things he's been working on. I helped him out with a couple of issues, and showed him some cool stuff too. It's too bad Mik wasn't around ... i had wanted to talk shop with him too. AJ was late getting back, but he thought he was on time. We just needed to get back to Vic because I was cooking. Not really a big deal ... I would have wanted to stay longer myself ... but we had plans.

We bolted back to the apartment, and started diner. I had some help, but I was in charge ... make no mistake. I was excited to see Karen and Johnny. They are engaged ... and expecting. That day they had an ultrasound and brought the pictures. It was awesome to see them. Non smoking and totally couplized. Bought a house ... planning a wedding ... and a baby! It was awesome ... they seem so happy. I was excited for them. I made my famous meat sauce, and we had coloured rotini pasta. Brooklyn made pizza bread to go with. I paced myself and was not over full like I normally am. I was quite please at the amount inhaled by everyone. I was more impressed at the amount marshall and brooklyn had for left overs! And by the way ... Brooklyn informed me Orange Cheddar Cheese is bad ... because it is orange dye ... which is bad for you ... but I don't care ... I dig the orange. More battling ensued ... oh and more asshole.

We relaxed and one last round of battling and Asshole. And then night came. We had to get an early start to catch the early ferry and get back to the mainland ... we had a long drive ahead of us. We opted for the "VIP" lounge on the ferry. $10, and you get the comfy chairs, all you can drink coffee, and contenental breakfast. It's totally worth the money. It's quiet, and we read about hockey and current events in the papers. We hit Vancouver, and onto the highway. Immediate mood changes happened. As soon as we were off Island ... grumpiness set in ... followed by AJ and myself screaming "FUCK FUCK FUCK". Not being on the the just sucks ass ... period. We miss Victoria ;)

So we headed back the way we came in, and actually knew where to turn this time. Soon we had bypassed all of Vancouver and were back on the higway. We stopped to gas up in Chilliwack. It was then AJ introduced to to "stackers" at Burger King. Quad stackers ... like the mammoth mountain of hamburgers ... sooooooo good. It's hard to not make a mess all over the place with them ... but we managed well. We had to break in between to relax and get hungry again ... it was definitley required. The drive was going fast. No stops unless needed. We bolted through Kamloops without stopping. It was burning season ... so we had passed many fires along the way. Nearing Revelstoke we saw some massive smoke clouds in the bush. "Hey look ... maybe the enchanted forrest is on fire!". We laughed. Then as we neared we realized ... that was the exact location of the Enchanted Forrest. So know we don't know what to think. We when finally see the sign all we see is smoke directly behind it. We had visions of a village encompased in flames, and dwarves jumping out of castle windows. We had to investigate. When we drove through we discovered someone was buring rubble in a pile right behind the sign. Wow was that weird. A quick stop in Revelstoke at the shell again for gas and diet coke. Then we bolted through to Calgary as fast as we could. We made good time, and I was back home before 10:00 P.M. It was a good trip ... with lots of stories. I can not wait until the next one.  ¶ 11:18:00 PM 0 comments

  Getting there, Brunch & Goldstream So this is long overdue, but AJ and I took a "fake business trip" out to the Island. We decided to leave on Sat the 21st. Too bad I had been on the night shifts, and by the time 4 A.M. rolled around, I decided It would be better just to stay up and wait for him. He arrived around 8:00 with Timmy's in hand. We ventured forth with coffee and new breakfast sandwiches ... which were totally awesome. I came prepared with a newly stocked case of CDs. We started the trip with "The Offspring's greatest Hits".

After a stop in Canmore for AJ to use the can ... while I refilled our coffees, we were back on the high way with a new disc, and only 10 hours to go. The drive goes way faster with someone else, and the towns were kicking past like no time. Soon we were in revelstoke stopping at the shell / Tim hortons ... do you see a pattern? We were coffeed out, so diet cokes it was. Still not hungry we decided to bolt straight through to Kamloops. About this time we decided to get ourselves out of the car. We stopped for diner a Harolds(?) family restaurant. Our waitress was quite funny, and the food was not overly pleasing ... I just remember they had really weird french frys. So after leaving Kamloops I tell AJ "dude ... I'm fading ... I might fall asleep on you". And I did ... I found out later it was only for like 5 minutes, but it felt like hours. So down the mountains, and on to Vancouver. We took the turn at Langley to get to the ferries. Neither of us had a map, and we stopped for directions ... we were so close (We knew we were not far off) ... and a quick turn and onto the highway to the terminal at Twassen.

We were early for the 7:00 ferry, so we hung around in the terminal and drooled over the chocolate makers inside. I was past exhaustion, and just kinda fucked ... but AJ refueled on coffee again. We hit the ferry, and found the amazing massage chairs ... we reloaded until all of our loonies / toonies were gone. So then we found the arcade, and I got my ass handed to me at Ms. Pac Man. We got off the ferry and onto the Island ... relaxing. We phoned up Marshall and Brooklyn and made plans to meet at Christies pub for drinks and eats. It was good to see them. We caught up and joked around. Then it was back to their new place. Brooklyn and I stopped at the store for a few things, and the boys stop at the Liquor store for a few necessities.

Their loft style apartment is really nice. I mean there is an upstairs, but not closed off. Really high ceilings. and quite stylish. We hung out, and started the trend of playing asshole, while AJ / Marsh started to battle. By this point in time I was beyond falling asleep, and I am quite sure I passed out on the futon before anyone else went to bed.

We got up in the morning and headed to the Six Mile for brunch. Brunch is soooooo good at the Six Mile. My mind was awake ... but my body was rejecting being up. Brunch included Marshall putting a creamer in AJ's beer when he was gone, and AJ returning fire by putting eggs in Marshall's beer. Marshall drank the beer eggs and all though ... sick. Yet not as sick as when the Rat came to visit us on the patio. It was like sick and coughing, and just sitting there on the deck. We brought it to the waitresses attention ... she got scared and got another waitress ... who prompted grabbed a menu and brushed it off the deck ... remind me not to ask for a menu next time at the six mile.

So after brunch was done we took a little drive around. We went through Mechosin, and around back of Royal Roads University. Through some cool housing. Then we hit the High way and went up to Goldstream Provincial Park. We were a bit early for the salmon Running, but the environment was so beautiful. We were down in a gulley, with huge trees (Some were marked with signs stating ages over 200+ years (1700's I believe). The trunks were several feet in diameter. The leaves were falling, and it was just calming. We walked along the trail for a while. After goldstream we drove up Island to Cowichan. We planned on catching a small ferry cross the inlet bay, but just missed one, and would have had to wait for a half hour. We just turned around and drove back to Victoria.

It was a really busy day. I was beyond tired, and my body was starting to give out again. The crew went to Spinakers, and I napped for an hour. Then after a shower I felt refreshed, and went down to meet them. We had nachos, and drinks, and played darts for a couple of hours. The final round was for asshole position. Marshall and I were victorious. Back to battling ... I mean Asshole. Monday is coming up quick ... stay tuned.  ¶ 11:18:00 PM 0 comments

  Ksysguard, Xming & Tofurkey I've been wanting to write about quite a few things for a while, but I just have not been in the mood, nor had time when I was in the mood. But tonight I vow to catch up on my blog, and watch some hockey.

it was Thanksgiving weekend (Canada), and I thought I would get the weekend to relax and catch up on some code or similar activities. it was the first hockey night in Canada on Sat, and I was excited to see hockey again. Nix to that says Fortress. I was woken up in the afternoon (I keep programmer hours usually), and found several IM logs, and emails. In my zombie like state I tried to figure out what the problems were. I had messages from people that upon reboot md0 was fine yet md1 failed. So immediately I think there is a RAID / disk problem. Logging into the servers is extremely slow, and sluggish. I did some md util tricks and rebuilt the array, and things were of no help. The /var partition is on md1 which would make sense to several processes not operating properly.

I called in the cavalry for another look. It always makes me feel like I've done my job when I hear Aaron say things like "neat" or "wow". It also makes me very very nervous. After some more investigation we determined the disks to be fine, and a network problem to be the cause. Try convincing others of that after claiming it to be a disk problem first. No dice. So I picked Aaron and Peyton up and we went on a field trip to the ponderosa where the servers are. We did stop to stock up on candy and appropriate amounts of other junk food.

We arrived and investigated every piece of hardware. Aaron drove, I drove, Aaron drove the clients radios and routers, and after several hours and really really really convincing it was a network issue on their side, it was realized that their new DOS prevention software marked the main mail servers as trying to DOS themselves, and clamped down the network. Nice. By this time Gregg and his family were home, and I had missed all of hockey night in Canada ... Peyton was over tired, and Aaron missed his movie with Mahlah.

While we were out there Aaron did turn me onto kysysguard for monitoring. ksysguardd also for remote monitoring. I love the ability to configure each and every page and sensor on each page. The next day I went to work, and installed such wonderful goodies on all my servers. Now I have a ksysguard which has too many tabs to fit on the screen, but I can monitor all the servers easily now.

This spawned my thoughts of how awesome this could be if we could use it on windows, and I started the looking into of Xservers for windows. I knew about Xming, but never really did much work with them ... c'mon ... when do I ever do anything on windows? But I must rave about it. It was super duper easy to install, and run a little wizard to log in with putty and run a program. I created a few little icons for Xlaunch files, and now I could run ksysguard on a windows machine. Mostly I thought this was cool for some other shared lower level admin people who survive in the land of windows. Neat though. I highly recommend it if you ever need to run X programs through windows.

Thanksgiving was good. I was invited to Mikala (sp), who is Mahlah's sister for diner. Brad (Mikala's BF) was there, and other friend, Mahlah, Aaron and Peyton. I brought Mikala a nice bottle of port as a gift. Since some folks were veggie / veganites. The joke of the night was the tofurkey. There was real food for everyone else, but some people were force fed the fake bird, just to see what it was like. I think Rob said it best ... "Alright ... but I think if I had to eat a whole plate of that I'd puke". All in good fun, but I can't stand that stuff ... it takes very much getting used to ... like 10 years of eating paste. ;-). I glad I'm back to being a carnivore ... I got tired of being hungry all the time.  ¶ 10:56:00 PM 0 comments