Over the weekend, I wiped out my RAID 1 partition that was running off of the motherboard SATA Raid controller. This controller is also known as “Fake RAID.” Instead of using this, I configured a software RAID 1 using open source tools, notably mdadm.

Monday morning before work, I rebooted my box to check for good measures. Everything booted OK and the graphical login screen appeared normally. Then I proceeded to login, authenticated successfully, and then my desktop was all black. Against the black background was my gkrellm, configured to load after login, blinking like crazy in various colors of green, orange and yellow. Since my box is a dual core AMD, one of the cores was spinning at near 100% CPU usage and then CPU usage spinning alternated between the two cores. After watching this madness, I restarted the X server and the graphical login displayed normally. I logged in again and the same horror continues. I decided it’s time to reboot the box to observe what’s going on by clicking on the Options button on the bottom left hand side in the graphical login screen. Lo and behold, clicking that button redirects me to the login screen without popping up a menu for me to select “Reboot.” My Ubuntu Gutsy box is b0rked!

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I learned an important lesson this weekend while equipping the mobile transportation unit with a hook up for the iPod. Don’t cut a USB cable and plan to reconnect the wires. They are very small and a good portion of life could be spent on this task. Amazingly enough everything worked after the procedure. A wire stripper that works with small wires would have been nice though. Thanks Angad and Maks for the useful car / stereo links.

I really sucks that someone can obtain my credit card (bank ATM card) information, use it to charge 300 dollars to blizzard entertainment, and Bank of America can launch a full investigation only to determine that I am responsible for these “authorized” charges that someone else made and I have to pay.

BoA, this is not over

A quick note that a laptop can make an excellent shield when your 1.5 year old nephew is trying to clock you in the head with hard objects. =]

If you’re an office worker who sits in front of the desk for long periods of time, you better read this.

Continuous improvement or the Japanese term, kaizen, is one of the key principles of Lean Manufactoring and Agile software development. This has been buzzing around with hype, but the concept is not new. It has been practiced in Japanese and Chinese cultures for many generations through Confucian values.

Furthermore, principles from the book Art of War, used by many universities in their business courses, have been applied to business practices. Here’s a highly recommended read of David Li’s interview.

What really hit home is this old article I serendipitously found, “Know thyself.”

Capturing and spreading knowledge within an organization is one of the premier challenges for business in the new century.

Corporate knowledge assets also are at risk. Because of a lack of tools and processes to actively capture, manage, and connect organizational expertise, an estimated 3.2% of corporate knowledge is incorrect, and an additional 4.5% is unavailable due to employee turnover, information mismanagement, and knowledge hoarding.

“Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.” — Confucius

This quote can definitely be applied in software development.

As I am sure many know, The Burning Crusades expansion has been released for World of Warcraft.
This post is just a small update and info on my current character. Me and all of my friends decided to start on a brand new server, and switched from Alliance to Horde. It has been a blast so far, and its great to be on a brand new server.

A fresh economy and everyone rushing to make a name for themselves. No famous guilds or people yet, and everyone is on even footing. It is a much more enjoyable experience to raise a new character on a new server for me than to create a new character on an already established server. So watch out West Coast PVP server Rivendare, Rakuin is in the house.

Current PVP Kills = 11
Average Level of PVP Kills = 31
Current PVP Deaths = 3
Current Level = 24

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Hey everyone, I have a really odd post for you today. My roommate came home today and found a Winner medallion sewn to the inside of her Dollhouse brand Jacket.

She felt something odd inside and decided to cut open the jacket to find this:

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Howdy everyone. :) Due to the demand on the PS3 forums I am making some install videos of Yellow Dog Linux. Sorry about the slightly shaky footage, since I was installing and holding the camera at the same time.
They are a bunch of short videos instead of one long one since the process is taking a while and a lot of people wanted updates as it was happening.

I will be updating this with more videos, as well as YDL running on the PS3. I will also see if I can show it streaming videos from a Windows Vista PC.

Part 01
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Introducing you to Buggy Rollin..!

Jean-Yves Blondeau’s Buggy Rollin’ suit has 31 wheels, can go up to 60mph

Must see videos…! Science World article

Introducing you to the PhatMobile, the Maybach Exelero

Promo:

Here’s some stats of this magnificent piece of metal machinery:

* Length : 5.89 m (19.3 ft)
* Width : 2.14 m (7.0 ft)
* Weight : 2660 kg (5864 lb)
* Engine : V12 bi-turbo from Maybach 57 S 700 hp (SAE) (522 kW), 1020 N·m (737 ft·lbf)
* Top speed : 352 km/h (220 mph)
* 0-60 MPH : 4.4 seconds
* Tires : 315/25 ZR 23
* Fuel used for Top speed test: 110 octane (6€/liter)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybach_Exelero

Do not know quite what to say about this. Sony has caused Lik-sang.com to shut down due to multiple lawsuits. They used tactics to bleed the company dry in legal fees, opening as many cases as possible in as many regions as possible.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - OUT OF BUSINESS NOTICE

Hong Kong, October 24th of 2006 - Lik-Sang.com, the popular gaming retailer from Hong Kong, has today announced that it is forced to close down due to multiple legal actions brought against it by Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited and Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Sony claimed that Lik-Sang infringed its trade marks, copyright and registered design rights by selling Sony PSP consoles from Asia to European customers, and have recently obtained a judgment in the High Court of London (England) rendering Lik-Sang’s sales of PSP consoles unlawful.

Lik-sang.com was my prefered online shop to import games from Japan and other countries. It was one of the most popular, and only websites that offered this service to gamers worldwide. I was able to pre-order games and get them days after they were released in Japan, for the same cost as a US release. In addition they sold many things that are not avaliable anywhere else, and offered deals that cannot be matched on things such as Metal DDR pads.

Sony has sunk to a new low with this effort. Here is Sony’s justification:

ultimately, we’re trying to protect consumers from being sold hardware that does not conform to strict EU or UK consumer safety standards, due to voltage supply differences et cetera; is not - in PS3’s case - backwards compatible with either PS1 or PS2 software; will not play European Blu-Ray movies or DVDs; and will not be covered by warranty

To “protect consumers” they have just, to put it kindly, raped the import market, removing one of the only places avaliable for average consumers to get things for a resonable price. This reeks of greed, more than anything. Shut down the little guy who sells our hardware for cheaper than we do in the UK. Consumers who are importing know damn well what they are buying, and do not need protection from Sony.

Goodbye Free Worldwide Shipping on Imports.
Goodbye to the supplier who sold me my DS Lite months before a US release.
Goodbye to the supplier who provided me with Berserk, Bleach, Soul Caliber 2, Naruto 1, Naruto 2, Naruto 3, Naruto 4, and countless other games. Not to mention mugs, t-shirts, and more.

Farewell Lik-sang.com. The gaming community will miss you.

I was suprised to see a mention of the Fresno Fair on boingboing.net. Apparently a photographer that sells pictures of your loved ones with birds has determined that he can have a “copyright-protected area”. lol