Found my advogato password today. The cookies had quit working and I had forgotten my password, and with no way to reset the password ("mail me my password") I was out of luck for nearly a year until I found that I had written it down when I created the account in a secure location, where I just happened to be looking and surprised myself.

Spent much of the weekend reading, partially George McDonald's Malcolm (in the original Scots) and partially an unpublished novel.

Most of yesterday and today I spent working on procps, getting ready for a new release. I could not believe how many of the bug reports I had queued were from people whose distributions still shipped the old version 2.0.2 -- 2.0.6 was released last November and fixed nearly every bug that continues to be reported. In the end, I told the polite ones to upgrade and the impolite bug reports I just canned.

Did some work on preparing a bank of IA-64 machines to be used as a compile farm.

Forgot to go to lunch...

Hmm. Learned about Cisco switch management a little yesterday. I'll see how much I remember when it comes time to change the configuration... Worked on solving cable routing problems without working myself into a hole. Built the wooden ladder rack and it ended up being much more flexible than the real thing, as I realized that I could use it for much more cable management than just running some wires overhead. I'm quite pleased. And it doesn't look like falling apart any time soon.

Today arrived at work to find that someone had cut a power cable (idiots with backhoes!) and we were subsisting on emergency power. That keeps the servers running, fortunately, but meant I wasted some time bringing up "non-essential" machines after power was restored.

Spent some time catching up on lad-comments email. I kind of lost track of it while I was in .nl and forgot to catch up with it when I got back. Oops. The errata is now up to date. Now I start on patches for procps that have accumulated over the past few months. Time for a new release.

Rain yesterday evening shortened the fireworks display. Had fun anyway. Went to a 4th of July get-together with some church group friends, and got a chance to meet a few new people, and also to talk again to folks I had not talked to much for too long. Also did five loads of laundry...

Read almost all of the printed version of Grokking the GIMP yesterday when I wasn't watching fireworks, eating bratwurst, or doing laundry. Definitely worth purchasing. Unfortunately, that was one of the books that fatbrain mangled somewhat. :-(

Today I worked some in the test lab, working on setting up the kernel and HA development/test areas. This included finding some strips of plywood that will make an excellent ladder-rack substitute; our cool facilitities dude is going to bring in his cordless saw tomorrow and I'll make up some real ladder. Today I just used some pieces of metal and some screws to make clips that go on the end of the boards to hold them onto the rack with the switch in it. When I'm finished it will be really cool. ("Trust me, this is a good idea. I know what I'm doing!")

Some people might use this as an opportunity to complain about low-budget lab equipment setups, but I absolutely love to jury-rig things, so I'm abosolute enjoying myself. (Sorry, Bryce, I couldn't resist ;-) In all honesty, real ladder rack would not attach terribly well to the rest of the equipment (for example, the wire rack opposite the real rack) so a custom solution is probably the best thing in any case.

It looks like I'm going to be learning a bit about Cisco switch management as well so that I can set up the local switch for equipment on these racks. Always something new to learn.

I'm brilliant. Simply brilliant. Proof? I forgot to bring a phone cord with me when I took this business trip, and so I didn't, um, waste time with email while I was gone. :-)

Came back to find that several of the books I ordered from fatbrain showed up. Unfortunately, their packaging methods leave a lot to be desired; they damage the spine by shoving the packing bill all folded up way into the book, and their single-book packaging with the flexible sticky corrogated cardboard can easily damage paperbacks.

Also came back to discover a loud server machine installed in my cube. Clearly, msw is trying to get rid of me... (In all fairness, he has to put up with the noise, too...)

I should plug Mutopia because it is so cool. An on-line free music (real music, none of this wussy rock-n-roll stuff!) archive I've been frequenting lately. My keyboard is finally getting some use again as I've been rediscovering my lost piano skills. Some of the pieces I've been enjoying include Bach's Wohltemperierte Clavier I, Prelude I (BWV 846), Carcassi's Etude 15 for Guitar (still playable as a keyboard piece), and Clementi's Sonatinas Op. 36, Nos. 1 and 3. A few of the pieces I printed out have turned out to be well beyond my current abilities, including Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag and a Bach Fugue or two. I miss having a real piano, but maybe if I stick with this for a while I'll save up for a piano.

jpick: the mirror problems were caused by the same BART-sponsored cable burn as all the rest of the bay area phone problems. FYI.