Concepts in the Paradox

Over the next 3 days I’ll be moving this site, along with my hostees, email, blogs, image server, and database to a new swanky machine courtesy of DataSieve. I have tons of data to move, so I’m going to have to move services over one at a time, so if the site is inaccessable or images are broken, don’t panic, I’m all over it.

For the technically inclined, I’m going with a Dell PE w/Dual PIII’s at 1Ghz + 1GB memory, 60GB disk. Not high end, but this is a shoestring operation! OS: FreeBSD 6.1, jails as ‘containers’ for various services. I’ll have an implementation doc posted as soon as I’m all done.

Since I’m going to be fairly busy this week, I’m going to go ahead and “officially launch” my two blogs ahead of Sept.1 launch date:

First:

LastMuni, the San Francisco transportation blog. You can add this blog as a Livejournal friend to read updates on your Livejournal friendslist: LastMuni syndication feed

Second:

XenJournal, the open source virtualization blog. You can add this blog as a Livejournal friend to read updates on your Livejournal friendslist: XenJournal syndication feed

On other projects, my thesis project is a go again. This is process suspension between virtual machines in a cluster, the idea being to pause unwanted processes that talk over tcp and resume them at a later time.

I have two more projects in the pipeline, one will be an NLP blog in about 6-8 months and the other is a “Muni survival guide”. If any one wants to help me with the MSG, let me know and I’ll add you to the wiki for edits.

My poor colo server is taking quite a beating. I serve a bit from my colo, which is located in downtown SF at United Layer via NetPublishing. The box is an old Pentium III 1Ghz with 512MB of memory, but it is leased and the cost is pretty low for what I get.

I have a few more wiki’s and blogs I want to launch in the coming months, and even with the small amount of traffic I get the machine crawls during peak times (noon and 6pm) as everyone goes online to edit the wiki, comment on blogs or view photos. I typically have a memory use of 786MB, so I’m swapping like crazy, and the system load is almost always 3 (that is, three processes are waiting for 1 CPU to become available).

I’m now in the market for a new colo box. I talked to Greg, the colo provider, and he says he can spec out a new machine for me, which means I might get to finally run FreeBSD 6 (horray!). Moving to a new machine is going to be a pain, as I have had this machine for almost 2 years, and in 2 years I’ve collected a lot of databases, shell scripts, and odd configuration files to get everything working well. It is sort of like moving to a new house, you find all this broken stuff, and stuff that makes you wonder why you had such stuff to begin with!

Just a heads-up to all my readers, I’m moving this blog over to Wordpress in the coming days, mainly because Wordpress is much better at comment spam than Newbruiser. Also, while I like keeping my entries in plaintext, using a database scales better. The site is getting pretty darn slow these days.

I finally got around to putting my Mac Mini, which has been sitting disused in a box for 2 months, up on Craigslist. I made up a nice little ad, slapped on a price of $450, and immediately got one buyer, and only one buyer, who was interested. Expecting another flake out, I told this guy to pick it up ASAP or I’ll sell it to the first guy who comes to my door. “Sure”, he says, “I’ll be over tomorrow morning”.

Since I had just given some stranger my address and phone number, I figured I’d see if this “Cliff Stoll” guy had any Google juice. And well, uh, I guess he has Wikipedia juice too.

When he showed up, he didn’t even ask me to boot the little Mac up. He said he’d looked at this very blog, decided that since I ran Linux I was trustworthy, and handed me the cash.

I was now $450 richer. So what to do with $450?

I went to the Freewheel Bike Shop on Valencia and asked what they recommended for $450, and they recommended the Marin Muriwoods 20 urban bike. I took it for a ride up the block, in what I can only describe as “frightening” San Francisco traffic (really, is it possible for people to drive any worse?), and loved it. I bought it with a helmet and ulock, and now I have one less way to get fucked by Muni in the morning:

Oh Laundry, how you taunt me so. I watch as you slowly pile up in my basket, reaching for the top until finally you spill over the sides. I dig around for all the quarters I can find, take you down the dangerous and twisty stairs behind my apartment, all three flights. I feed you my quarters, my soap, my hopes, my dreams, all in the name of being clean.

This isn’t a perfect existence, no. In a perfect world you’d wash, dry, and fold, all on your own. Alas, the dryer is half broken, so you always come out damp. You can’t be folded the same day you are so damp, so every door, chair, and table becomes a resting place so you can dry. Why must you be so difficult laundry?

Your cousin, the soap and wash just down the street, does a much better job. Alas, she is a far walk and doesn’t share the same interest in the Internet as I do. She goes to bed early, and keeps some questionable company. In many ways I wish she was a lot more like you, but at the end of the day I spend my night with you.

Laundry, if only you could dry for me, or just do yourself, my life would be a lot better. Life isn’t like that these days, and so I’ll keep you for yet another night, and get another roll of quarters next week in expectation of your ultimate arrival next week.

This blog is now available as a Livejournal Syndication. Add markballew as a friend to view my blog from your Livejournal friends list.

This is the first post of what will become my personal blog. Considering that even Cambodia’s ex-king has a blog, I’ve decided that I should join this ranks as well.