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Saturday 23 November 2002

Saturday - down in beautiful warm San Diego. It's cool and foggy - quite a change, but nice. Mostly just sitting and relaxing. I was supposed to go see "Harry Potter II" but had to beg off, as I had just gotten up, and wasn't ready to head out. Mostly we just sat around and talked, and did a bit of shopping.

Friday 22 November 2002

Friday - I took a picture of leaves falling from the tree in the front yard. But it's so tedious to get pictures from the camera into the computer right now that I will have to wait on that. The weather continues mild - blue skies with some high clouds for the most part.

I managed to get the pvm program working on several processors - I think. Unfortunately I managed to delete the source while trying to format a LINUX floppy - bah. I had the executable still, and it ran in about 14 seconds on one dual processor abit bp-6 box, bilbo. I then added another box - pippin. The job still ran in 14 seconds, but started on both boxes, with 16 slave processes instead of 8. It may be that the debug printouts and excessive number of processes are taking up the time, not the actual computation, which should be shorter by a factor of two... Without the source it's hard to change that! And the reason it was dying randomly, and locking up yesterday - the slave debug statements were filling up the /tmp space!

I am to go visit some friends down in San Diego this weekend, so posts will be short or non-existent for a day or two.

Thursday 21 November 2002

Thursday - got the simple finite difference code (heat diffusion, forward time, central space) to work. Occasionally the pvm daemon chokes, and everything hangs. I'm not sure why, but I was running a lot of processes on a single processor, I'll have to check on that.

Linux, well, Redhat 7.1 specifically, has a lot of screensavers - I have it set to random and it changes every 20 minutes and it's really cool. Penrose tiles, colliding particle galaxies, etc. Neat.

On a less cool note, I was evaluating a co-workers new dual processor system. I assumed that you could run two identical jobs and get almost 100% utilization; instead each process runs at about 66% of a single process. This system has lots of fast RAM and disk, so it's not that.

Dinner was at The Oliver Garden, and yours truly consumed 22 ounces of Samuel Adam's best....

Wednesday 20 November 2002

Wednesday - well, managed to get a simple program written and debugged for PVM. Several silly mistakes - I was at the point of checking the net to see if the g77 compiler had some weird bug, but it was 'human error'. Oh well. I've got the hang of it now I think, it's just a matter of implementing and tweaking...hah. For serious work a better compiler will be needed, but for now it will do.

The weather continues clear and warm in the daytime, and down near freezing in the early mornings. I like this sort of weather. The leaves are changing, I'll post a picture soon.

Tuesday 19 November 2002

Tuesday - I feel better about not going out to watch for meteors. A lot of people did, and were not too impressed. I guess I can wait for the next meteor shower.

Worked late.

Monday 18 November 2002

Monday - work. Not a lot new there. I figured out how to add a network connected printer to the Linux boxen - hint, look at the Linux "How To" section, and pick "jetdirect" as the printer type. Cool. The particular Lexmark we use was not available in the list of printers, but generic "postscript" seems to work well.

I worked late, then went over and did a little algebra tutoring, then came back, late, and watched the roomie fix some cat proof latches. At midnight I realized that I wasn't going to make it to the Leonids out in Red Rock State Pack. Too tired, and it was cold!

I should mention that I picked up a used Laser Printer at a yard sale, for $25. I have a friend who watches for stuff like this. I'll have to try it out soon. I also have about a zillion daffodils' to plant soon...

Sunday 17 November 2002 Sunday - I had big plans. But the morning was actually spent reading, this time L.E. Modesit's " Ghost of the Revelator ". Modesit comes up with interesting plots and situations, but they usually involve some sort of ecological question, and a near superhuman protagonist. Fun reads.

In the afternoon the goddaughter of my friend showed up. She brought along a couple of little girls, circa age five, and they had a little birthday party, after which they went out and bought princess outfits (bridesmaids dresses at the local thrift stores, $1.00 a pop - cheap thrills for the five year old female set).

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: When a ship at sea crosses the earths equator, the shellbacks (those who have crossed before) and their king, Neptune, initiate the polliwogs (rookies) into the fraternal order of the sea. This picture shows some of the crew of my fathers ship, in WWII, being dunked in sea water as part of the ceremony. At sea - and at war - no one dared stop, so a landing barge was filled with water for the salty baptism.

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