Posted by bronson
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:46:00 GMT
The power supply on the 7904 is definitely toast. I’m leaving Ventura in a few hours so it will remain broken until I can return with some real test equipment. Current score: machines 3, humans 2. I’ll have to return.
Got a good pic of Detch laying some of the worst MIG beads you’ve ever seen. We fabbed a trailer hitch keeper out of a rail off a broken bedframe. It looks like hell but it works great. As usual, it got dark before we finished. Trivia: Festival pronounces Detch to rhyme with hitch instead of how it should, rhyming with wretch. It’s got to be a bug.
Notice how he’s welding to the frame right under the gas tank. We had the spray bottle there for safety.
(We actually bricked the tank and filler in with plywood and had big fire extingusihers and a garden hose ready to go. Not that they would have done much good if the gas had caught…).
Also, Detch introduced me to Adblock. On the left, the regular ebay home page. On the right, ebay with all DoubleClick ads removed. No more flashing. This rules!
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Posted by bronson
Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:01:28 GMT
Great… Now my
7904 is blowing its 4 amp fuse every time it’s switched on. I love this old machine but I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!
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Posted by bronson
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:52:00 GMT
Right after I found out that my identity had been stolen (early Oct) I went to the PA police department to report it. They were very kind but said they can’t do anything about it because it’s not in their jurisdiction and that I need to open a case where the crime was committed. Um, it’s a computer crime. It wasn’t committed anywhere (well, technically it was, but only the crook knows where).
I did manage to figure out that the fraudulent checking account was opened near Los Angeles. I’ve been in Boston for the last 3 weeks so I tried to contacting the LAPD by phone. I left 8 messages over the last 3 weeks. They called me back once. They said that they can’t do anything and that I need to contact my local police. Which is strange because just about every message I left mentioned that I had.
Luckily, I’m in Socal now. I can straighten things out in person. Except the LAPD told me that I’m not a resident of LA, and that I need to have the Palo Alto police forward them the case information. By mail. And that’s it. They won’t even talk to me. It’s really strange. To protect and serve. Hello?
So…. Palo Alto won’t open a case because the crime wasn’t committed there, and LA won’t open a case because I’m not an LA resident. I’m wedged. I’ve left messages for both police departments and now, surprise surprise, I’m waiting for calls back.
I really envy that crook.
Posted in Living, Living | Tags ID, Theft | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bronson
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:02:00 GMT
(clearing junk off the laptop before Detch gets it…)
The biggest limitation to using distcc is that you must have identical compilers on all the computers participating in the compile. Identical. Their recommendation of matching minor version numbers just wasn’t enough. I’m lucky it bombed out instead of generating corrupted binaries.
I was trying to add two Ubuntu machines (gcc-3.3.6) to a Gentoo ebuild (gcc-3.3.5+). The emerge that should have run all night came to a halt after about ½ hour. It sucks that distcc bails out completely when it runs into an error on a remote machine. It should log the error and re-try locally.
This mismatched-gcc problem can be worked around. Just copy the following files onto on all machines participating (skip the gentoo arch-specific stuff unless you’re emerging):
as cc gcc i686-pc-linux-gnu-c++ i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc strip
c++ g++ gcc-3.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu-g++ i686-pc-linux-gnu-strip
Then, launch distcc with:
$ DISTCCD_PATH=DIR distccd --allow 192.168.1.109 --no-detach --log-stderr --log-level warning
Really, though, it’s probably not worth the trouble (and danger!) unless all machines are running the exact same distribution.
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Posted by bronson
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 02:20:00 GMT
So… The dealer wants $650 for a fuel pump because the car is so old that the part has been discontinued. Blue book for the entire car is twice that. Aftermarket fuel pumps only $200, but I need one today because mine keeps blowing 30 amp fuses (normally it takes a 10A fuse). Following directions on rangerovers.net, I managed to fit a generic pump into the Rover frame. Instructions below.
Here’s a pic of my very old pump assembly torn apart. Notice how there’s nothing inside the pulser (oval metal thing in the lower left). It looks like it’s just a rubber diaphragm that flexes a little to dissipate pressure spikes (it should be called an anti-pulser). I also tore the rubber off the black lump in the positive lead… I’m not sure, but it looks like an inductor to suppress voltage spikes before they can arc across a loose connector.
Read more...
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Posted by bronson
Sat, 22 Oct 2005 15:00:00 GMT
When they brought us unsalted tortilla chips from a bag and salsa more like marinara than pico de gallo I suppose we should have left… Weak ritas and uninspired food, though they did accurately capture the post-mex bloat. Boston is 0 for 3 for Mexican. Still looking.
I’m leaving for the Bay Area in a few hours. First I’ll drive to LA to open a case on the lowlife who stole my ID and bounced a ton of checks in my name (dealing with the LAPD by phone is near impossible). I’ll visit some estranged friends, then banzai back across the country with the car. Given America’s lack of control over gas prices, I’ll probably spend 2/3 as much on gas as my car is worth. To somebody else.
Posted in Living | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bronson
Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:00:00 GMT
Verizon just hooked up our ADSL. It tests at 2.58 Mbit down, 690 Kbit up. Great, except that it's PPPoE and I can't keep a TCP connection up more than about an hour. If you're wondering why every 45 minutes my IRC nick changes bronson -> bronson_ -> bronson__ -> bronson___, it's thanks to grandfathered dialup technologies and lazy telcos. I am constantly SSHing back into remote hosts and recovering edit sessions. Arg!! Hurry up FIOS!.
On the other hand, maybe this will finally get me to set up proper VPNs.
Posted in Living, Networks | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bronson
Fri, 21 Oct 2005 17:28:00 GMT
Apparently I just moved into The Cave. I discovered my new apartment had history when I found Nat’s LinuxWorld Expo 2001 badge and some keys in a closet. Good omen or random coincidence? Time will tell. (Links from google.)
Notice how white paint is carelessly slathered over everything? Beautiful mouldings, glass, latches, doors frozen shut, everything is carelessly obliterated with thick generic latex. At one time (the 80s?) this apartment was really nice. It’s tragic.
Posted in Living | 1 comment
Posted by bronson
Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:33:00 GMT
Though I have admired a few blogs in the past few years I never figured it would be worth the time to set up one of my own*. Most bloggers either take themselves too seriously or just use them to urinate in public. Who am I to think that I could do any better? Besides, who came up with the awful jargon? Blog, blogger, blogosphere… It sounds like the product of an overfed urban marketing department. Count me out.
On the other hand, I do wish that I had a simple record of the past few years of my life. Today’s trivia beocomes tomorrow’s nostalgia. So, damn the social ramificaitons. Today starts the journal. Although, I did carry over one article from my previous blog attemtps.
——–
* Well, not quite never. I did set up a few blogs in 2004. Started with MovableType but within a few days they changed their licensing terms. Best get off that train before it goes too far. Set up WordPress but jettisoned it when I started playing with the code. Apparently it’s improved a lot since then. Then I tried Blosxom. At first I was amazed… Here is a large and complex system compartmentalized into easy to understand discrete components! Brilliant! Except that trying to integrate the components into a usable, bug-free system was an utter nightmare. I spent two days code monkeying, ironing out stupid conflicts and shortsighted design decisions. When I finally had a system that worked to my satisfaction, performance was abysmal. And there was no way to speed it up without tightly connecting the components together again. Oh well. It makes sense when you think about it. So I shelved blogging for a year and a half.
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