T-minus 21 days
The countdown to final endex at ISI is 21 days. In that time, I have to help bring a cluster online, get some performance numbers for the mesh router code, finish a paper for I/ITSEC, and actually quit working. Nothing much. 🙂 I’m not sure how I feel about leaving. I really like working with the guys at ISI, but I think getting a PhD is the right choice. So off I go, to WWDC thankfully.
No malloc() for you. Only sbrk().
Apparently there are some failures with LAM and it’s internal ptmalloc code, the Portland Group compilers, and the AMD Opteron platform. Of course, we don’t have one of those and don’t usually test that configuration. Someone lent us some accounts, so that helps. But it’s still a pain. I hope there isn’t something borked in there – that would be a pain in the butt. Something tells me I’m going to have to import ptmalloc2 and see if that makes the problem better. Which would really be a pain, as LAM 7.1 is actually approaching stabilization. Jeff’s getting goodness on gm. Vishal is looking into the remaining IB bug (which seems to be one of those fluttering things that’s hard to find). And I’m doing configuration, build, and documentation bugs. As well as a bunch of little bugfixes that should make everyone’s life easier.
The automobile should be a time-saving device
The Civic decided to be a little brat lately. It’s had a dead battery twice in the last two weeks, which is a major pain. I’m not sure what the deal is – I think the first failure was because I left a light on in the car. Not sure what the cause of the second failure was, but it can’t be good. Oh well, I’ll have them take a look when I take the car in for service next week. In addition, the stupid windshield cost me $250 to replace after shattering from a rock on 580 a couple of weeks ago. That’s just not cool. Ah well, I suppose the car is just in its terrible twos. Not much I can do about that ;).
Because if it isn’t heavy, it isn’t a computer
I was bored during the last trip to San Diego and spent a good day trolling around on ebay while the event progressed without issue (definitely not complaining about the lack of issue – it makes me look good that I can sit there and do nothing). Anyway, I ended up buying a Sun E250 server. It has two 250MHz processors, 512MB ram, and 6 9GB UltraSCSI drives. Because Solaris doesn’t come with a software RAID stack by default, I think it is going to run Linux for a while. Still deciding exactly what to do with it. Definitely going to be a server somewhere, and the RAID setup is going to make it appealing for use as a cvs/svn repository and all that. The silly thing has redundant power supplies and is rack mountable, so it weighs like 100lbs. Glad I don’t have to worry about getting it back to Bloomington.
On the lighter computing side, I need to find a cheap Apple machine that can run OS X for use at the apartment. I want to try to have a media server hooked up for streaming MP3s and the like. I’m thinking a nice Bluetooth presentation mouse and a VGA to TV converter will make for a fun little toy. But this is probably going to take a little while to configure, since I’m going to have to be poor for a little while. I’d rather just buy the TiVo Home Media option or one of the streaming servers, but none of them seem to support Apple’s FairShare encrypted AAC files (the things you buy from the iTunes Music Store). And I want only one set of playlists, if I can do it.