What I’m playing with today:
The hardware is an unreleased engineering sample with no make/model number. Best way to get CPU info may be to deal with /proc/cpuinfo on the system.
According to the abovementioned file, this system believes itself to have 16 CPUs, all of which operate at 2.6GHz. “Top” shows 8GB of RAM.
That is all.
My life is terrific, taken as a whole. There are one or two little speed bumps of bitchiness, which now I share with you:
I have vague memories that, this morning, as she was leaving the house at unholy:30, redmed called me a “slug.” This, of course depressed me and made me sleep for a couple more hours.
In town at Alewife again, because it’s quiet and good for focused work. On the way in, I stopped off at the MIT food trucks and had the freakishly spicy noodles. The food trucks are awesome, because you can get way too much food, pay with a $5, and get paper change.
Hanging out at MIT always makes me feel so eryu…areo…eryiodight…
Edumacated.
Update: We’re going to the iG Nobel prizes at Harvard on Thursday. Hilarity will ensue.
VTech phones has lost their last piece of compassion from me. I am now attempting to hate them to death. After the last bit, I sent them back the offending phone (they no longer make the handset which is compatible with my base station) and asked for my money back. They received the phone on September 19. Today, I talked to “Anna” at VTech. She told me:
Fun evening at technolope and capital_l‘s place. Got to meet (in person, no less), rossja and aerospacegirl. Ate kickin’ lasagna, and then technolope broke out this huge stash of chocolate. No exaggeration, he had like, 15 bars of high grade chocolate. We made s’mores. It was pretty blissful, really. I’m still on a chocolate high.
Oh yeah, and we gossipped about simianpower, _earthshine_, and a bunch of other Ann Arbor folks. Nyah nyah.
Glad to finally be developing a social network around these parts.
My house was built with a series of additions. I’ve been putting up insulation every weekend for about three weeks now. Every time I get up there, I look at what has come to be known as The Dark and Scary Hole (DASH), and decide that some other part of the attic should be insulated first. The DASH leads to the space above the master bedroom. From my initial forays, I can see that it probably needs the insulation more than the rest of the attic, but dammit … I’m just not feelin’ it.
I’m nearly out of “other” spaces, so today I ripped up a bunch of the sub-floor that’s scattered around the rafters up there and insulated *under* that. I even did the bits around the access hatch (with associated Fear of Falling) rather than climb through the DASH. I have one more roll up there, and I think I’m going to clean up the corners and make sure I got all the open spaces, rather than voyage onward.
Being an adult, at least in part, is doing it anyway – even when you’re really not feelin’ it.
I had a hankering for garlic fries last night. So I searched the intarweb for recipes, until I found one that required 1/2 cup of minced garlic. It was pretty darn good, though next time I’m going to cut the salt by a factor of four. Even *I*’m feeling bloated today. Then we went out and got pie and beer, followed by the movie. So, dinner was garlic fries, pie, and beer. If that’s not the best (by which I mean, least healthy but most desirable) dinner ever, I don’t know what is.
Today, I just wasn’t feelin’ it. Put in a roll of insulation in the attic, took an 8 mile run. Then we bought a new toaster because the old one had achieved “bitch about it every single time we try to use it” status … plus a waffle iron. Still not feelin’ it. Maybe I need a nap … or more garlic fries. Perhaps less garlic fries?
Oop. Ack.
Went to Boston today with the intention of sitting in our little office at the end of the red line and getting some serious work done. Said office is connected to the internet by a line of sight microwave link. This is for political and business reasons beyond our control. We’re borrowing the office from a Big Pharma, and there is No Chance In Hell of us getting an IP address in their range, or a live jack on their router. Far easier to run cat-5 to the roof, and do line of sight to a co-lo facility.
Anyway: long story less long – there was a thunderstorm this afternoon which apparently struck some tower related to our internet. All of a sudden, I was off the air. Wanting to stay productive, I sprinted to the T (I mentioned, “thunderstorm”, right?) and hung out at the Harvard Square Starbucks for the rest of the afternoon. Late in the afternoon, my buddy from Boston Datacenters declared it to be sushi night, and I went over to chinatown to have dinner with that crew. Good conversation about politics, public transportation, and the rock-star life that we all lead.
I left the restaurant around 8:20 for the short walk to South Station, planning to catch the 8:40 train back to Providence. Unfortunately, said train now leaves at 8:15. The next one leaves at 10:25. Suddenly, I had two hours to kill. I called up technolope, who just happened to be with capital_l, watching the Sox game relatively nearby. The T ride there and back, plus half an hour of friendly chatting nicely got me to the train.
Okay, it was my flat out sprinting that got me to the train. Note to self, allow more than half an hour for a T trip during off peak hours. Sprinted from Park Street to South Station, through the station, out the quay, and onto the train. It pulled away, no kidding, like a minute after I got on board.
Overall, I count the day a victory.
Another gem from JWZ.
Of particular note is the closing paragraph:
Do you know of a solution to this issue?
Yes. Treat your co-workers as co-workers instead of as criminals or children. Set the policy and expect your colleagues to follow it because it is their job to do so, and not because of some halfassed technical impediment.
This is why I love my job. No rules, no regulations, but a poop-load of respect and high expectations.
Oh yeah, and tropical storm “longwang” is making me giggle a lot right now.
