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Sunday 18 August 2002

Sunday - since I spent yesterday mucking around inside the house, I'll have to spend time in the yard today. I don't like to make noise in general, and particularly on Sunday, so I think I'll wait until mid morning, say 9 AM. I can hear people stirring already, so that's OK, I think. I need to mow, and then to weed. And the front flower bed is in complete shambles. That darn tree we cut down almost two years ago keeps sending up shoots, and the weeds are all over, and the roses need feeding.

The carpets are nearly dry. I was just going to leave the windows open, since it's so hot, but the carpet guys suggested running the central AC. It acts as a de-humidifier, and that worked pretty well. Normally I just use the swamp cooler, as it is much cheaper, but it would add moisture to the air inside the house, not so good in this case.

Monday 19 August 2002

Monday - work as usual. I did finish a lot of yard work yesterday, but there is a lot left to do. I stopped by the hardware store on the way home and picked up some fungicide for the spots on the back lawn. The label on it suggests alternating with other poisons but doesn't name any. Not exactly reassuring.

It's a bit like those "ultrasonic deer whistle's" you are supposed to attach to your car that are guaranteed 99% effective. Of course, if you do hit a deer you are simply assumed to be in the other 1% and the guarantee is, therefore, worthless . If my spots persist, I suppose we should assume that it was the other poisons problem?

Tuesday 20 August 2002

Tuesday - working away. One of the machines hiccuped, and we discovered the hard way, two weeks into a 38 day run, that the restart capability wasn't all that it should be. I didn't write that routine, but it's annoying, since we are already a bit behind...

It looks as though I might be going back for more surgery. Bah. The MRI shows a ruptured tendon...

Wednesday 21 August 2002

Wednesday - work and a visit to the hand therapist. I need to get the fungicide spread - fortunately it's a coolish afternoon.

Ooops, there goes the phone-

Talked to a good friend, then out to poison the lawn. I used the whole bag of gunk, recommended for extreme cases, and I think my rear lawn currently qualifies.

Thursday 22 August 2002

Thursday - I decided to go ahead with building the 'beowulf' at work - waiting six weeks for a run is just too tedious and it does bad things to project schedules. I brought in to work a couple of old ABIT-BP6 machines. They are old dual processor Celerons, but they should suffice for proof-of-concept. Redhat Linux 7.1, and a five port fast ethernet switch should suffice to see what we can do to speed things up.

Friday 23 August 2002

Friday - wrestling a bit with Linux security settings. I am going to try to use PVM and it uses 'rsh' - which is turned off by default. For general security this is a good thing ( use SSH ), but this cluster won't be hooked up to the net, so I really want it to be just as open as can be. It turns out that the redhat 'workstation' option doesn't install the xinetd stuff, so I had to reinstall as 'custom'. I could use 'server', but that installs a lot of stuff I don't really need. There are, in fact, network bootable options, but I am at the ragged edge of my network knowledge as it is... So I now have two machines, Bilbo and Frodo, who can happily talk to each other via telnet, ftp, and rsh.

Next I need to become conversant with PVM and it's options.

After that I simply need to port an unsteady time-accurate CFD code over to PVM. Maybe two or three codes...

And get a good Fortran compiler for Linux as well. I have the demo Intel version, and there is always the free g77.

I should probably mention here that Linux is getting quite usable and installable for the user. A few years ago I couldn't have said that with a straight face, but it's at least as usuable/installable as Microsoft Windows 3.1 or even Microsoft Windows 95.

In the evening some friends and I went to the Antelope Valley Fair - A Fair to Remember - on it's first night. Lots of fun, the old time crafts, the carnival stuff, live music - a general good time was had by all. The kids particularly - twelve and nine respective - each had a friend of the same age along. What could be better than hanging out at the fair with your best friend? Best of all, I didn't have to go on any rides...

Saturday 24 August 2002

Saturday - a nice relaxing day. Hung around, played in a friends pool a bit, and went to the fair again. This time we looked at the exhibits and what not. The 4H and FFA, paintings, pies and cakes, place settings, and so on. Lots of fun. My friends children entered some of the cooking contests and won! Very impressive.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: Here we are driving toward the Barringer Meteor Crater in the distance. You can easily see the crater rim, much as you would on our own moon, or any of the many cratered surfaces in the solar system.

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