Another Word for Nerd

Got a Linksys NSLU2 in today, so I overclocked it, installed OpenSlug, upgraded that to OpenDebianSlug, and now have a nifty tiny ARMlinux system with a 200G hard drive. I’ll be using it as a NAS and possibly move my rsnapshot-based backups to it as well.

runt:/# uname -a
Linux runt 2.6.12.2 #1 Tue Sep 27 20:21:18 CDT 2005 armv5teb GNU/Linux
runt:/# cat /proc/cpuinfo | head -3
Processor : XScale-IXP42x Family rev 1 (v5b)
BogoMIPS : 263.78
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp

Took the iMac down to the Apple Store at the Galleria today, and if their hardware guy hadn’t been out to lunch, I could have had it fixed while I waited. The guy at the Genius Bar (Eric) suspected it’s just a bad power supply. He said that I’ll probably have it back this evening or tomorrow.

Update: The Apple Store just called (7:10pm) and it’s fixed. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.

SBC has finished their acquisition of AT&T, and they’ve bastardized the classic “Death Star” logo 8-(

In a repeat of problems I had a few weeks ago, the iMac G5 refused to power back on (even using the internal reset/power button) after I turned it off to rearrange some cables. Unlike last time, I’m now unable to get it to power on at all.

I’ve boxed it up so I can take it to the Apple Store at the Galleria tomorrow and see what’s wrong. Hopefully its something simple like the power supply; I already had to replace the midplane (motherboard) on this system back in March due to faulty capacitors.

Until the iMac is fixed, I’m stuck on my 800Mhz iBook G4.

I have to admit.. I owned this Dallas Cowboys jacket as a child.

Why do I get a better picture when connecting an analog display (Dell E173FP 17″ flat panel) to a DVI port using a DVI-to-VGA adapter than I do when connecting the monitor directly to the VGA analog port on the video card? Signal separation and shielding?

This has happened on two different cards - a GeForce FX5200 from Chaintech and a GeForce 6200 from PNY.

Google has announced (and released) Google Analytics, the result of their purchase of Urchin a while back. Basically, it’s free web statistics software, for sites with less than 5M pageviews/month.

I’ve set it up (along with Measure Map) on both this site and SunHELP. It will be interesting to see how the results from each service compare to the stats I pull with webalizer every night.

Amy and I are always on the lookout for good Russian food, and tonight we tried dinner at the Russian Bear Restaraunt and Bar. We got there about fifteen minutes after they opened, and got to watch them prepping the A/V system for the dance show later tonight.

For appetizers, we had their salmon caviar bliny and the cold meat platter. Both were excellent; the bliny were perfectly pan-fried and the caviar (and sour cream) was very fresh. The cold meat platter was flavorful and well cooked.

For entrees, I had pelmeni, while Amy tried out their stroganoff. The pelmeni definitely beat out the ones I had in Austin - these were definitely hand-made (not frozen) and came with plenty of sour cream and seasonings. Amy’s stroganoff, while not quite as good as the stuff she makes here at home, was well worth the asking price (and so large that there were still leftovers after BOTH of us had eaten some of it).

We enjoyed it, and will definitely be going back next weekend to have a good dinner (and watch the dancers this time). I think next time I’ll try the borscht.

let’s get ready to ruummmbbbllleeee!

mrbill@ohno:~> lisp
CMU Common Lisp CVS Head 2005-11-10 16:18:45 (19B), running on ohno.mrbill.net
With core: /usr/sfw/lib/cmucl/lib/lisp.core
Dumped on: Thu, 2005-11-10 17:13:36-06:00 on ohno.mrbill.net
See for support information.
Loaded subsystems:
Python 1.1, target UltraSparc/Solaris 7
CLOS based on Gerd’s PCL 2004/04/14 03:32:47
*

mrbill@ohno:~> sbcl
This is SBCL 0.9.5, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
More information about SBCL is available at .

SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
BSD-style licenses. See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
distribution for more information.
*

mrbill@ohno:~> emacs –version
GNU Emacs 21.4.2
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
You may redistribute copies of Emacs
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named COPYING.

I got the MIT CADR emulator up and running on my Linux system as well.

Good news: I was just handed a matched pair of AMD Opteron 248 CPUs.

Bad news: The cheapest motherboard I can find (socket 940) is $200.

Anybody know of any single-CPU Socket 940 motherboards with 8x AGP for less than $200?