Music: "Artistry" at the Conga Room

November 04, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I haven't been out for music in a couple weeks, but tonight I'm going to wander west on Wilshire (like that?) to check out "Artistry" at the Conga Room. I got emails about the event from Yardley, and I definitely am excited about getting out to see them again (it's been far too long), but I'm also really looking forward to Joe Purdy and Quincy.

My musical attention of late has been focused on some cool stuff downtown, but I don't want to count any chickens before they hatch, so I'm not going to talk about that yet.

new life for the laptop

November 04, 2004 by Eric Richardson

On Tuesday afternoon I ordered a new laptop hard drive to replace my ailing one. That turned out to be a good move, as my loveable drive quickly turned from correctable drive ticks to a mindset where it would hit something it didn't like and lockup solid.

Here's why I love CDW: I ordered the new drive Tuesday afternoon, probably around 3pm PST. CDW's in Illinois, so that's 5pm or so for them. This morning my drive arrived. It shipped from Iowa yesterday morning and made it to my door 24 hours later. And that was with the cheap shipping (which ended up being UPS 2-day Air... $13 or so).

I never understood how small laptop hard drives were until today. These things are tiny. A credit card almost covers the entire surface of one.

My installation procedure is pretty much down to a science. From the blank drive I restored Windows XP using the Toshiba rescue DVD. That's just a ghost image that throws the factory default installation onto the drive. Then I booted into a Knoppix cd and used qtparted to resize the Windows partition down to 12gig or so. Then I booted the Debian netinstall cd, and Debian's currently downloading and installing.

Hopefully this will bring some closure to my laptop and drive issues.

ah, the force of inertia

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

For a long time now I've been using a keyboard that has a broken-off Insert key. Not a big deal: I don't use insert that often. But then just now something clicked and my mind said, "Hey knucklehead, you've got two keyboards identical to the one you use but without a broken key sitting right out in your living room."

I guess I'm going to switch.

Update (a minute or two later): Whoah... This keyboard's a lot cleaner than my old one. The keys are an entirely different shade of grey.

hacked by me?

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I just totally freaked myself out into thinking I had been hacked. I logged onto my server and saw a last login line I didn't recognize at all, at a time last night when I didn't think I was anywhere near a computer. I didn't need this.

Then I realized I actually ssh'ed in from Kathy's apartment then to check my email.

Whew...

I should keep a more active eye on the logs, though. I do see stuff like:

Nov  2 05:46:51 bit sshd[31463]: Illegal user patrick from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:52 bit sshd[31465]: Illegal user patrick from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:58 bit sshd[31478]: Illegal user rolo from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:46:59 bit sshd[31481]: Illegal user iceuser from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:00 bit sshd[31483]: Illegal user horde from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:01 bit sshd[31486]: Illegal user cyrus from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:02 bit sshd[31489]: Illegal user www from 137.48.138.228
Nov  2 05:47:03 bit sshd[31491]: Illegal user wwwrun from 137.48.138.228

That one goes on for another 20 names or so. I feel pretty good about my security, but always better safe than sorry.

ah, long hours on the air

November 03, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Last night I had class until 6:45 and then a meeting until 9, but after that I got sucked into watching the election coverage. We bounced around the different coverage a good bit, but mostly stuck to CBS. Dan Rather's had his issues of late, but how can you argue with lines like:

But as we always say, if a frog had side-pockets it'd carry a handgun.

And:

Now let's catch you up. Maybe you just put the baby to bed, or went and popped the cap on a beverage, adult or otherwise.

Adult or otherwise.

Beautiful.

i lost count of what round this is

November 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Can I just say that 2004 for me has been the year of the vengeful computer? Obviously the whole server drive debacle is pretty fresh, but that wasn't at all the beginning of it.

It started January 6th, when my laptop started its death spiral. The spiral slowed, though, and must have started pretty high, 'cause after its near-death experience it didn't completely succumb. Instead it committed itself to a life of torture. It's been in that life up to today. If you leave it on too long it'll start to kill itself. The clicking begins, but oddly you can prolong the suffering by tilting the machine a little. It's like the data gets stuck, and you need to loosen it up and help it find its spot on the platter. Eventually though you're waving the laptop like a fan just to keep it moving and it's really not keeping up. That's when you have to shut it down for a day or two and let it recuperate.

January 11, of course, I got back to LA to discover that my desktop drives had been traumatized by a power supply fan failure.

At times I've thought my laptop was getting better, but over the past few days it's put that idea to rest. I think it's finally time for it to be dealt with. Of course now that it struggled out so long the warranty has expired, so any new drive will be on my dime.

I need a profession dealing with something friendlier, like snakes.

Update (4:00pm): I just ordered a new 40gig drive from CDW. It should be here end of the week or so. For now I've set drive spindown timeout as short as possible to give it rest.

LA Times on NextBus

November 02, 2004 by Eric Richardson

The LA Times today has an article on NextBus in Ventura. Basic gist is that GPS sensors on the buses allow people to hop online, see where the bus is, and see a dynamically computed time for the bus's arrival at their stop.

That's cool stuff, and it's something you have to have for buses that have long headway times. For example, this morning I took the Metro 38 from 6th/Spring to USC. The bus runs roughly every 20 minutes. To make it to school for a 9am class I have to catch the bus at around 8:34. I'm always right on the edge, and until I see that bus show up I always assume I've missed it. As the article says,

"It makes a big difference whether you're there a minute before a bus arrives or one minute after it leaves," Schmier said.

Hopefully LA will be getting to this party sometime soon.