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WEEK 7 2006

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Saturday 18 February 2006

Saturday - woke up with a tooth ache, in the tooth that supposedly had a complete root canal last month. The dentist must have missed a bit of the root. It lasted most of the day, but abated in the late afternoon. But it did suck some of the joy out of Saturday.

Since some neighbor's were having a (noisy) party last night (after all, it was Friday) I slept in the back guest room. It only has a twin bed and is not heated - the cars cats were not quite sure what to make of it. They (the cats) crashed around the room for an hour or so before leaving me alone to fall sleep. But, when I awoke, it was because they were peacefully sleeping beside me - and crowding me off the bed. Since it was 5 am, and the neighbors were quiet, we all retired to the master bedroom.

I suspect it's not so much feline affection for me, as it is a house thermostat set to only 61 Fahrenheit.

It was cold last night, though not bitterly. There is snow on the hills all around the AV, and it looked like snow flurries were still coming down in the mountains, even in the late afternoon. My father called to say the weather up north is terrible as well. So, probably a good thing I didn't go.

Friday 17 February 2006

Friday - no walk, too many things to do at work.

There is a big storm predicted for this week - I had thought of visiting up in the bay area but the dire predictions of snow down to 3000' feet decided me against it. My ordinary disbelief in weather forecaster's has been disturbed by the remarkably accurate storm predictions of this last Christmas.

Happy Cat

Thursday 16 February 2006

Thursday - slightly more interesting than yesterday. I got my walk in, as it was sunny and nearly windless. It wasn't particularly warm, perhaps in the 50's, but that's OK, it means I didn't get all sweaty. I'm trying to maintain a four mile per hour pace for an entire hour, but didn't quite do it. Today the four miles took an hour and ten minutes, for about a 3.5mph pace.

It's not that I can't maintain the pace, but I forget that I'm exercising and start to think about this or that, and start to amble rather than stride.

Tim sent me a news article, about a plane crash at Palomar airport in Southern California. Essentially it appears that it tried to land at twice the correct speed and went off the end of the runway. Weird. A mis-set altimeter can cause a few knots error in airspeed reading, but not 100% error (and modern planes usually have a GPS backup anyway). So why'd they try to land so hot?

In other news the Oceanside locals have to deal with the "terror of coyotes in our city." Actually what happened is kind of scary, if you own a pet or have a small child.

There are more stories in the news, recently, about planes being targeted with lasers. This was just a single location (Cincinnati?) rather than the multiple sites last year, so I suspect it's just some clown.

More interesting to me is the news blackout on the rocket that went by Flight 621 near LAX last year - a plane thousands of feet in the air and going hundreds of miles per hour. After the feds suggested the usual suspects - contrails, bottle rockets, mistaken pilots, the whole thing has faded away.

So the question becomes: do we have a really good anti terrorist task force doing their job stealthily and secretly - or do we have a really bad anti terrorist task force, not doing their job?

Wednesday 15 February 2006

Wednesday - let's see, meetings on this and that, proposal reviews, reading up on MPI and CFD stuff took up most of the day. Not all that interesting to write about.

The wind was up - and it was cold and dusty. No walking at lunchtime. I did have an interesting talk with a friend at lunchtime.

He used to row, and was talking about the process of choosing the Olympic teams for that sport. (I suppose you could call it sculling culling. Heh.) It seems that the selection process used to generate a lot of lawsuits. Teams generally practice together, compete together, and then tried out together for the Olympic teams. The selection rules were...vague...I guess. There was competition from the 'official' Olympic teams, who had a compound somewhere that they trained at. The rules for picking teams next time were supposed to be revised and finalized after each Olympics - but would often end up being changed just before the next Olympics, hence the lawsuits.

That's it. I have no idea how our rowers are doing. I don't bother with the Olympics. It's just not very exciting to me. I'll ask Mark next time I see him. Though I wonder, is that a winter sport? Maybe they aren't competing for a couple of years...

I'm going to bed early - I was a bit under the weather today. But the TIVO will record Bones for me, I hope. There was no NCIS this week - I need my fix of rotting corpses.

Tuesday 14 February 2006

Tuesday - talked to the sysadmin and got an account on the cluster. Only ten nodes, but each node is about eight times as fast as a node on my old cluster, and it's either a fast ethernet or GigE (I've gotten different reports) interconnect, compared to my old 10-Base-T network.

I suppose I can run some tests and see what the throughput is. I tried the network configuration tool and was rebuffed - I've no administrator privileges.

The MPICH package is installed, and so I ran a couple very simple jobs. It's a start. The PVM package is there, but doesn't seem to have been completely installed. I've a feeling that I'll be doing more with MPI, but it'd be nice to compare the two.

Supposedly there is a (broken) install of TETRUSS as well. I'll have to see if I can get it going.

An odd evening - we've had some good wind today - nothing outrageous, but steady. Going home the entire west valley was enveloped in a mist that the sun dropped into, turned red, and disappeared. And it smells a bit like the sea. We don't often get the marine layer in the Antelope Valley.

Years ago, when computers were just the playthings of geeks, there used to mildly salacious ads in the back of Byte magazine. Tame stuff really, girls in bikini's selling memory chips and SCSI cables. Eventually when Byte hit the big time they made a pompous editorial decision to can the cheesy ads. Then Byte folded. So much for the PC revolution. So I was amused to get the graphic below in an email from NewEgg.

Computer hardware? Check. Scantily clad girls. Check. Lord of the Rings allusions? Check...

Monday 13 February 2006

Monday - the trip to Virginia has been canceled. The big storm is the culprit. I suppose they'll reschedule at some point.

The boss dropped a manual for CFL3D on my desk, and asked how the parallel processing was going. Heh. It wasn't, but I went upstairs and talked to some people about getting an account. The sysadmin was out, but talking to another user I discovered that the problems were much the same as my old Hobbiton cluster. This cluster is called "wulfpack"

On the way home I stopped at Target to pick up some handkerchiefs - and they had none. Sheesh. Afterwards I went next door to Radioshack and picked up a headphone-to-RCA adapter. I bought a gizmo before Christmas to convert analog out into MP3's - but had no analog out ports to hook to. All were being used, and I really didn't want to move the stereo cabinet every time I wanted to record a tape. This should work, if the impedance is close enough between devices, and the S/W doesn't conflict with something else on the laptop.

Sunday 12 February 2006

Sunday - another beautiful day. Went to a greek restaurant - Mythos - for lunch, with friends. It was good. I'd seen the sign before, but just assumed it was a sandwich place. It was actually 'sit down' food, and very tasty.

For the rest of the afternoon I worked on cleaning up the garage. It's in sorry shape - stuff piled everywhere, tools, wood, fittings of one type or another, junk. Some of which the cats had peed on. Ugh. I filled two garbage cans with debris, and I'm not done yet, not halfway.

Every time I would go through the garage this winter I'd wince. It was a nice day to putter about, and now my conscience is salved a bit. So I can slack off again until summer...

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: This is a sunset picture, using the PDA's camera. It was a spectacular sunset, but looks a bit washed out here. Not bad though, it's a phone afterall.

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