Will Slusher.net

… Ok, so not really…  But if you’d checked in with me yesterday evening I might have felt differently…

Short story long:  So midday yesterday I’m at work when I get an e-mail from my friend Scott…

“Um, is there something up with your server, or your internet connection…”

I check, and sure enough, things are running REALLY slowly…  A little more digging by Scott and I reveal that one of my hard drives seems to be dying…

…Unfortunately, when I set the server up, I was greedy, and opted to set the two drives up in a RAID 0 array (which stripes the data between the drives, giving you twice the space) rather than a more redundant RAID 1, which mirrors one drive to the other, so if one fails you don’t, you know, lose everything…

So, I get home and try to pull some of the data off, but it’s very slow going…  I get a few files copied, but then everything grinds to a halt and the server hangs…  So I chance a reboot, but, sadly, the system barely gets started and the kernel panics…  not good…

I try a couple live CDs that I have laying around, but those can’t seem to see the RAID drive…

After a run and some much needed (but probably ill advised) comfort food (um, maybe the run and the double-whopper with cheese cancel each other out?), I tried the drive manufacturer’s disk diagnosis tools, but those were a bust as well.  Basically, all it gave me was “There are too many errors to report, you’re screwed”…

Sigh…

Finally, just before bed, I happened upon some forums discussing how to set up Ubuntu Linux on a RAID 0 array…  Basically, the live CD alone doesn’t have the necessary packages, but once you’ve booted up, you can install the “dmraid” package and use that to make the array available for mounting…

…Sooooo, I bang my head against the wall for about half an hour trying to figure out how to get that to work… the instructions are really simple, but for some reason my drive just isn’t showing up…  Finally I realize that the live CD I have is a couple versions old, and apparently I need something with a newer kernel…

Well, a quick (ok, not THAT quick) download later, I was able to boot into the latest Ubuntu live CD, installed dmraid, and I’ll be danged if all the partitions didn’t show up…  Amazingly I was then able to mount the ones I needed and kicked off a full backup while I got some much needed sleep….

I took a quick look at things this morning and it looks like everything I needed copied over just fine…  I’ll have to do a bit more checking this evening to be sure, but I think I managed to recover everything…

Anyway, for the time being I’m now more or less up and running on my backup server (which is why, if you checked in yesterday, you got the site as it was several months ago)…  I’m still pondering how best to get the real server back up…  I’m guessing that the failed drive will need to be RMAed.  Once it’s back, I’ll probably switch it to a RAID 1 array (250 GB should be more than enough, right?), and then maybe ponder an OS change (I’m thinking CentOS, to match the rest of the TechieNet family?)…

…I also think I need to look in to a routine backup solution…  yeah… :)

Go crazy?

Don’t mind if I do!?!?!

Update: Weird… maybe all I had to do was yell loud enough about the problem…  After posting this I noticed that my page was much snappier when loading then it had been before…  I just stopped by the house and sure enough, things seem to be back to normal…  Weird…

Sheesh, what a mess… So, about a week ago I began to notice that my internet connection was getting a little sluggish. Web pages were slow to load, streaming media was having to buffer much more than normal… I figured the tubes were just a bit clogged…

…Well, things kept getting worse… A few days later I was down to slower than dialup speeds… When I finally broke down a called tech support it actually took me 15 minutes (I timed) to navigate the three pages necessary to find my ISP’s support number… Not… cool…

The interesting thing is though, when he walked me through an FTP speed test to the closest test server (on the same subnet as the equipment my DSL equipment would be connecting to) everything seemed peachy keen… At that point (very nicely and apologetically I have to say) he had to more of less wash his hands of things, since everything looked fine from my house to their equipment… His conclusion was that it had to be a clog in one of the tubes connecting them to the internets…

…Soooooo, I waited a few more days… and things are now worse than ever… I can’t open any webpages 99% of the time and even my terminal session lock up and time out after a few seconds…

At this point I’ve swapped out every piece of equipment with the exception of my really old DSL modem, so my best guess (since I think more people than just me would be screaming if their primary outbound connection was hosed) is that that has failed in some strange and interesting way that makes it drop packets that are going more than a few hops…

Soooooooooo… I availed myself of my ISP online chat support this morning, and after many “been there, done that” responses to his initial cut and paste troubleshooting steps I was able to convince him to send me a brand new modem…

I believe this is my favorite part of the conversation:

10:33:58 AM		Dwight H.	OK i have sent a new modem to the house as well you should receive that with in 2-3 business days.
10:34:32 AM		You	Excellent. I really appreciate your help. Will I need to ship the old modem back to you?
10:34:53 AM		Dwight H.	No you can destroy it.
10:34:58 AM		Dwight H.	When you get the new modem that is.
10:35:28 AM		You	Excellent… :)

Oh, you can bet I’m going Office Space on that baby… ;)

…don’t ya hate it when you do something really stupid… like, say, completely overwriting your website’s theme without making a backup…

Ah well, I guess I have a project to work on this evening… :)

Update: Well, I guess it was time for a change anyway…  I think this new theme will do until I have a bit of time to customize it…  I kinda like the layout, but as it is it makes me look like much more of a Mac fanboy than I really am….  ;)

Ok, it has seriously taken me too long to write about this… sorry about that!

Anyway, I’m very please to report that everything with the marathon went really, really well. The weather was perfect, a little cool in the morning but not too warm by the time the race finished, everything went smoothly along the route, and, as sick and twisted as it may sound, I had a really great time running 26.2 miles… :)

The race started off on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall at 6:30 AM. My friend Scott dropped me off a little after 6:00, so I had plenty of time to get stretched out and ready to go. I have to say, it was pretty cool being on the Mall that early and seeing the whole place packed with nothing but runners…

Since it was pretty cool that morning I decided to wear my fleece jacket for a while. Luckily things worked out perfectly and Scott returned with my parents just before the start of the race and I was able to pass the coat off to them just before taking off…

I won’t bore you with a mile-by-mile recap of the race… :) The first couple miles of the marathon were really cool though, because everyone was still pretty tightly grouped together… I was really neat just to be part of a huge mass of people running down Main Street and the Corner…

After a while (especially after the half-marathon runners hit their turn-around point) though the field got pretty thin… which was nice too…

I have to say, Scott and my folks did a great job of finding spots to cheer me on (though, I guess I did give them directions to a couple of them… ;)). The first spot was near mile 10, right at the top of the first really big hill… It was definitely nice to have them cheering for me as I reached the top, and my dad even ran along with me for a little bit, which was really cool…

Anyway, things went pretty well until miles 22 or so… By that point I think I was getting just a little tired… :) Also, that stretch was pretty much all a slow, uphill run… I ended up walking a fair bit of that, but I think it all worked out for the best, because after a little break and some Goo ™, I felt ready to finish things off…

My friend Margaret offered to run along with me towards the end of the race, and I met up with her (along with Scott and the family, who had been joined by Dante, Libby, and MB) right around the start of mile 23… It was definitely a huge boost to have her run along with me and cheer me on for a few miles… I think I lost her on a particularly grueling uphill stretch, just before the last mile (which was all, thankfully, downhill ;)).

The home stretch of the race was pretty uneventful. I always seem to save just a little bit of energy for the end (either that or I was just REALLY ready to be finished), so I turned on the speed a bit (the downhill helped with that too) and finished the race at a good pace… Much to my mother’s dismay since I was apparently running too fast for her to get a good picture… ;)

I ended up finishing with a time of 4:28:20, with an average pace of about 10:17 per mile… pretty much exactly what I was aiming for…

I was pretty much exhausted after crossing the finish line, so you’ll notice there are several picture of me just chillin’ on the curb while people gather round me for pictures… :)

After some much needed snacks and hydration, it was home for a very nice (and also much needed shower). My parents decided to head back soon after that to check on my grandmother (or, more likely, to check on my uncle Eddie who offered to take care of her while they were away), and then Scott and I met up with the rest of the gang for a somewhat sizable lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise…

Ah well, thus ends my talk of marathon glory… :) All in all, thing went better than I ever expected they could… The race itself was a ton of fun and amazingly my muscles seemed to recover pretty quickly afterwards, so I was hardly sore at all…

I do want to say a HUGE thanks to everyone who cheered me on, whether you were at the race, or sent me a card or e-mail, or if you just thought about me while I was running that morning. I definitely couldn’t have done this if I didn’t know that you guys were out there believing in my… Thanks! :)

Anywho, if you want to check out some pics from the race, you can find those here:

Charlottesville Marathon Pics

or, if you want the high-res one, you can grab them from the Google Picassa Web Album version:

Google Album

Just a quick post with a few funny things from around the interwebs…

First, from my friend Dave, in his first YouTube posting, I present to you an essential dance tutorial for all my fellow rhythmically challenged would-be dancers… I present to you: The Box!

Next, I was thinking a week or two ago that I really go for some for some old episodes of The Trevor Moore Show. Sadly, as you can perhaps tell from the previous link, it’s been many years since The Trevor Moore Show has graced the airwaves of Charlottesville Public Access… However, this week, I noticed this on the cover of The Hook: Is America Ready for Moore?

Looks like he’s got a new comedy troupe in NYC, The Whitest Kids U Know, and now new show of the same name on Fuse… Pretty funny stuff…

…but I could still really go for some good old “Dialing for Shiffletts”… :)

And finally, I was very excited to see this evening that Jon Stewart will be doing a live show in C’ville at the John Paul Jones arena at the end of next month… I may just have to make this my first venture into the new JPJ areana…

Anywho, I suppose that’s about it for now… I’ll try to put together a bit more interesting post soon… promise! :)

Well, I seem to be doing pretty poorly at the whole “getting back into posting more regularly” thing… Ah well…

First things first I suppose, to update on my previous post, the server upgrades went quite well… I replaced the old 80GB drive with two 250GB SATA drives in a RAID0 configuration, so I now have a nice, happy .5 TB of space to play with. I also consolidated into the one box (which was originally just my web server) my MythTV backend and configured a shared folder that I can access from all my other computers to consolidate my files… All in all everything went pretty smoothly…

One thing still on my wishlist is finding an app that will serve content to my TiVo (be it MythTV recording, archived video files, etc.). I played with one application, TivoServer, that comes pretty close to doing exactly what I want (it will index a directory or set of directories, publish itself to your TiVo as another TiVo that is accessible through the multiroom viewing option, and I believe even transcode content on the fly to the format the real TiVo is expecting), but currently it requires a “patched” TiVo, and I’m not quite sure I’m ready to tinker with that…

That upgrade sort of trickled down and resulted in some upgrades to my other computers… The quick recap is that I pulled the 160 GB drive from my desktop and replaced it with the old 80 GB drive from the server. That then got set up to dual boot my old WinXP desktop as well as Ubuntu 6.10. Happily, I can say that I have not run Windows in my home in several weeks now and, frankly, I’m not missing it one bit…

Anyway, I then took the 160GB drive and put it in my TiVo, doubling my storage there… And finally, though not really part of the “trickle down”, I also upgraded the hard drive in my iBook to 120GB and put the old 60GB drive in a nice external enclosure…

Whew… ok, on to not so geeky matters… :)

I’m still training hard for the C’ville Marathon… Last weekend I had my 17 mile training run, and, I must say, it actually felt pretty good…

Well, as good as running for nearly 3 hours straight can feel… ;)

Amazingly, after a bit of a scare back around Christmas, my knees seem to be holding up pretty well. I actually didn’t have much soreness in them at all after this last run, which is hopefully a pretty good sign… I do seem to have a little shin splint action going on, but hopefully though the downtime between my next long run, along with the nice, shiny new running shoes I just picked up, will take care of that…

But yeah, so far so good… I’m just doing my best not to completely freak out about having to be able to run 26 miles in, let’s see, just under 2 months time…

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! :)

Ah well, that’s enough updating for now… I probably should get back to work… ;)

Just a heads up…. over the next week or so I’m going to be doing some maintenance on my web server… Some new hard drive, an OS upgrade, nothing too fancy… but I just wanted to warn you since there may be some downtimes…

In preparation for this, I’ve actually moved my website over to a different box… I think everything is working properly, but if you do notice anything weird, just let me know…

…and two months later, we’re back to Paul Simon again… :)

Sorry for the extended absence… it seems like the past month or two I’ve been bouncing back and forth between being too busy to write and just not feeling like it… But, today is a slow work day and I seem to have some things bouncing around my head, so at the very least I can hopefully get caught up a bit and try to get back on track towards writing a bit more regularly…

First off, I have to send out a big (if a bit belated) congratulations to my friends Dante and Libby, who FINALLY tied the knot on Nov. 4th! I’m working on mooching some pics of the big day from the other folks that were there (I really need a more pocket friendly camera), so hopefully I’ll have some to post soon… The ceremony went really well (only a couple little *glitches*, but I don’t think it would have been right without them) and the reception was an absolute blast… It was great getting to see all the usual gang, and also great to catch up with some folks I hadn’t seen in ages… Also, I don’t think I’ve danced so much (or had so much fun doing it) in a long while… so good times all around and many, many best wishes to the happy couple!

Also, a big congrats to my friend Kellan and her husband Mike who recently found out they’re going to have a baby! :) I wish you guys all the best!

…and, I suppose, congrats to me for turning the big 2-9 last weekend… now begins the countdown to the dread 3-0…

Ah well… :) In other new, my new running program is going well. For those of you who don’t know I’ve officially signed up to run the C’ville Marathon next spring, so I’ve got a lot of training to do between now and then to convince my legs to run that far in one go… They can do about half that at the moment, so hopefully with the right training I can double that in the next 5-6 months… We shall see I suppose… :)

Ummmmmm…. ok, I think that just about gets us caught up… We now return you to your regularly scheduled silence (hopefully not… I’m going to try to do better… really!).

Ha! Fooled ya, thought I was going to go with another Carbon Leaf lyric didn’t ya! Showed you…

Actually, I very nearly went with “Breathe in the night, Let it know just who you are…”, since it is more apropos to my topic today, but the Paul Simon lyric’s just been stuck in my head since I walked in to work this morning…

Anyway, list night, after going to the weekly FYP Tech meeting, I was driving home… but the closer I got to my apartment, the more I realized I really didn’t want to go there just yet…

So, when I got to my turn, I just kept going… and going… and going…

I ended up out on the Blue Ridge Parkway, heading towards my thinking spot… The overlook I always head to when I need to just get away and clear my head for a while…

…it’s also the overlook where, about three years ago, I spent a wonderful birthday evening with a group of friends… but ended up spending most of the night cuddling for warmth with an amazing woman… lost in blue eyes like none I’d ever seen, and a smile that never lost it’s ability to melt my heart… talking about the stars…

Driving up, I worried that being there again would be too hard on me… I worried that the memory of that night, and a thousand others, would just make the pain and frustration of loosing that all the the stronger…

…but, that wasn’t the case at all…

After parking, I shut off my car, walked around to the side, and, leaning up against the fender, looked out over the valley… The lights in the town below were twinkling and shimmering off into the distance… the tail lights of a tiny car popped up on the road below, and I followed them until they were lost again behind trees and hills… Looking up, the man-made lights below were outshined by sky above, bejewled with more stars that I could ever count… stars free to shine bright and clear, away from the harsh pink glow of the city… Towards the horizon, off above the town, a thunderstorm was rising and the distant clouds errupted and glowed with flashes of lightning…

… and standing there, looking out at this scene… listening to the gentle rustle of the wind through the trees, breathing in the cool night air, as expected, all the memories of all the wonderful times Kris and I spent together came flooding back… So vivid, so rich in detail it was almost like reliving them again…

… and that’s when it happened… that’s when I smiled… for the first time in weeks… I smiled a real, deep down, honest to goodness, smile…

… and in that moment, I realized something… I realized that letting go of things with Kris… that accepting that some things just aren’t meant to be… that starting to move on with my life… none of those things mean that I have to let go of all the wonderful, happy memories Kris and I shared… The past three years with Kris, in addition to all the amazing experiences and adventures, have given me a sense of strength, a sense of pride that I’ve never really known before…

… I realized in that moment that letting go of the love we once knew could never take from me the memory of the love we shared, or the gifts that love had instilled in me… I guess you could call it a sort of catharsis (which has to be spoken like Kevin Spacey inpersonating Al Pacino)… I honestly felt as if a huge weight had been dropped from my shoulders…

…and so I stood there, leaning against my car, looking out at the world for a bit longer… soaking in the scenes and enjoying feeling at ease and at peace for the first time in a long time…

… until my inane fear of crazed, inbred, parkway axe murders (and bears) got the better of me and I decided to head on home…

I think I may be the emotional equivilent of a Weeble ™.

Sometimes I wobble… sometimes I get knocked so far over that my face hits the dirt… but somehow, I don’t fall down… somehow I eventually end up back upright…

I think, right now though, I’m still in the wobbling phase… yeah… definitely still wobbling…

Anyway, not a lot new to report from here… I did some tinkering with my car over the weekend… I very nearly screwed the car’s electrical system by twisting the head off the screw where all the car’s electrical stuff grounds… but I managed to move that to a different screw… no harm, no foul… The end result was a dedicated battery and ground wire running through the firewall to the interior of the car…. Now I just have to figure out a good way to house the new fuse panel and power supplies I have, and I’ll finally be able to move my car computer off the stereo’s power supply…

Sadly, I also discovered that my snazzy new computer case doesn’t fit under the passenger seat… soooooo, I’m looking into other options… I may try to build it in to the back of the driver seat… there seems to be a lot of empty space there… We’ll see though…

And that’s about it… the whole running idea is going fairly well too… I ran a little over 4 miles this past weekend… I’m shooting for 5-6 this weekend… Should be interesting…

Ah well, and that’s about it… This weekend I’ll be traveling up to NoVa for my friend Dante’s birthday… should be a good time… and a much needed escape…

Ok, that’s it.. really… :)