Yes, I'm a little late to this party, but, I Am Joe (tips o' the hat to iowahawk and Tammy Bruce).
My name's not Joe Wurzelbacher and I'm not a plumber. It's Kurt and I'm a computer geek, but when the Elite Left and the media attack Joe the Plumber for having the temerity to ask the f**king Obamassiah a specific question, then, dammit, I AM JOE.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:22 2009-01-24 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
CCache Over NFS Considered Harmful (Linux)
With apologies to Edsger W. Dykstra.
I frequently (or is that constantly?) build and rebuild portions of our software stack at work. Because my home directory is an NFS export, I build on the local disk to avoid the overhead of compiles over NFS. Starting Tuesday, I noticed that compiles that usually took 10 minutes or so on my desktop system were taking nearly an hour and not finishing before I grew impatient and killed them. Clearly, something was wrong and by late morning Thursday, I was frustrated enough to start troubleshooting the problem.
I looked for the usual suspects. ps and top didn't show any processes hung, consuming CPU, or in an uninterruptible sleep. In fact, CPU usage was surprisingly low for a parallel build. The kernel wasn't OOPSing. Every other process or application was running fine. After concluding (wrongly, it turns out) that the culprit was not software, I started looking at hardware. SMARTD didn't show anything amiss with the disk. memtest86+ didn't uncover memory errors. The CPU wasn't downclocked. All the fans were working, so the box wasn't overheating. The GPU was fine.
I pulled the disk out my desktop system and put it into a crash test dummy and tried the compile, which ran equally slowly. I put another disk into the desktop system, booted as a local user (rather than using my normal user, which authenticates using LDAP), and ran a compile. It blazed right along. From this, I concluded that the original disk was bad but the desktop system was fine. So, I installed F10 on the new disk and went home.
Returning Friday morning, I logged in as usual, started another compile, and quickly saw the slow compilation problems had returned. This forced me to the conclusion that something was not right with my environment. While running yet another compilation, I ran watch ls -alt $HOME in another terminal and noticed that the $HOME/.ccache directory, which I had previously deleted, had mysteriously returned.
In the first place, I didn't install ccache when I installed Fedora 10 before the break. Secondly, its cache directory should not have returned after I deleted it. After killing the compile, running rpm -e ccache, and re-deleting $HOME/.ccache, compiling our software stack completed in 10 minutes. Mystery solved!
It was slow because even though the build was happening on local disk, ccache was building and updating its cache on a NFS mount, which requires lots of round trips to the NFS server. Thus, ccache over NFS considered harmful. What remains a mystery, though, is how ccache came to be installed in the first place. I didn't install it initially, but it might have been installed during an update. The perverse part of that story is that the version that did get installed was from Fedora 9. WTF?
So, I spent seven hours over two work days resolving this issue. Grmph.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 09:50 2009-01-24 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
On Gaza, Israel, and Civilian Casualties (Politics)
While I'm speaking my mind on politics, I might as well toss my incendiary comments on “the Gaza situation” into the arena.
In a phrase, screw 'em. I don't give a rat's ass about the plight of the Palestinians. I don't care who started it. I'd like to see Israel kill every last member of Hamas and Fatah. It works like this: If some so-called freedom fighter started launching rockets across the border from Tijuana into San Diego or from Juarez into El Paso, I'd expect my government to kick butt and take names and not stop until said freedom fighter was a grease spot and a bad memory. I wouldn't care about the justice of the grease spot's cause or all the injustices the gringo north has inflicted on him and his.
So it is in Gaza. Israel moved out, which is what Hamas wanted. That's not worked out really well, if only because it's given Hamas' terrorists (yes, that's actually repetitive) the ability to launch rockets and mortars farther and deeper into Israel. People seem surprised that Israel is fighting back so ferociously. It isn't rocket science, folks; Israel is fighting to remain alive. It is situated in the midst of countries with the stated goal of wiping Israel off the map. So much for the “religion of peace.”
I don't know how it works at your house, but if someone promises, even vows, to do everything in their power to kill me, I believe them and will take action appropriately. At that point, the situation has passed well beyond anything that talking is going to address.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 18:49 2009-01-21 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Congratulations, President Obama (Politics)
So, we have a new President. Congratulations.
For the record, I'd like to point out that he is not black. He's bi-racial. So, while we're busy congratulating ourselves, let's not get too smug or congratulate ourselves too vigorously (actually, I can't do either of those because I didn't vote for him). On the other, let us all give thanks that we didn't elect Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Shudder. Can you imagine a ticket consisting of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Shoot me now.
Meanwhile, back at the White House, I hope President Obama enjoys his honeymoon with the press. When the press and popular media get tired of their new toy, when bi-racial Executives are no longer the new hotness, the media will turn on him. I expect it will be sooner rather than later because the media are fickle navel-gazing and self-absorbed.
Not that I wish our new President ill. Quite the contrary, I wish him nothing but the best. But I'm quite sure he's not going to turn the economy around. President Obama might be able to help, might give things a nudge, but we won't tax and spend our way back to economic vitality. Regardless, I'm not posting to slam our new President's economic policy. Rather, I'm just observing that he has feet of clay, which fact the media will shortly realize or remember. Once that happens and/or the disappointment sets in, it isn't going to be pretty.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:02 2009-01-20 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Who Are the Extremists? (San Jose)
I was at my favorite coffee shop (yes, a truly pathetic Web site) picking up some coffee beans and saw a flyer from Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (sorry, find your own link) for a counter-protest against the Walk for Life—West Coast. The flyer is a real piece of work. “STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN,” it screams. “Unite to Fight the Right Wing!” Turn the anniversary of Roe v. Wade “a day of mass outrage against ultra-right bigotry.”
They demand:
- Free abortion on demand
- No forced sterilization
- Defend immigrant rights
- Stop the racist Minutemen
- Civil rights for queers; Rescind anti-marriage Prop. 8
The proposition is, apparently, that marching in favor “free abortion on demand” defends women's reproductive rights. Help me out here. What does abortion (you know, terminating pregnancy) have to do with reproduction (you know, having babies)? I'd say the two are diametrically opposed. I was also amused to learn that people who oppose abortion and/or same-sex marriage are now “ultra-conservatives” and bigots. Who's doing the name-calling here? Who's lumping people into a category based on a single characteristic?
The best part, though, is the hyperbole that opposing abortion represents a war on women. That's just rich. I guess if I were to use that tactic, those who support abortion are waging a war on the unborn. Yes, I absolutely get that a woman has the right to determine what happens to her body. Perhaps she should have thought of that before she spread her legs and got pregnant. Beyond that bit of moralizing, though, is the question of who speaks for the unborn child whose life gets terminated? I've been a long time coming to this conclusion, but I have finally decided that life begins at conception, so abortion constitutes murder. In my book, the right to life trumps a woman's right to control what happens to her body.
I guess that makes me an ultra-conservative bigot.
UPDATE: And, before someone asks, yes, I do oppose the death penalty on the same right-to-life grounds. Which is not to say that there aren't some people I'd be thrilled to see dead and even some who in my opinion deserve to be hustled on to the next life. But, whether someone lives or dies is not a decision that's mine to make. In fact, it puzzles me that many of the same people who support abortion rights oppose the death penalty and that others who oppose abortion support the death penalty. It strikes me that we can't have it both ways.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 21:12 2009-01-17 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Virus Writers (Tirades)
…should be shot, beaten, stabbed, hung, drawn, quartered, diced, sliced, fried, injected, skinned, electrocuted, maimed, set on fire, dismembered, given hot lead enemas, pushed out of aircraft at high altitudes sans parachutes, and made to eat liver.
I spent this morning getting rid of the Vundo or Virtumonde virus on my wife's PC. I am not amused. Microsoft knows how insecure their operating system is but has not made a genuinely substantive effort to resolve the issue. Either they don't care or they're incapable of doing so. Vista's security theatre was just that, theatre. It pushed an awful lot of security work onto users and bolted security features onto the OS instead of writing security into the OS.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 10:21 2009-01-17 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Sad and Insane (General)
Of 2008's 120 murders in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 73 occurred in Pittsburgh and an astonishing 66 of them, or 90.4%, were black-on-black murders, or at least that's how I interpret the numbers in that article.
What is it about young(er) black men that makes them some prone to murdering each other, at least in Pittsburgh? What is it about the culture in which they live that makes life so cheap and the decision to end someone else's life so easy?
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:35 2009-01-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
No More Child Support (Tirades)
Cue the choir of angels singing Alleluia! I made my final child support payment on 31 Dec, 2008! Yet, therein lies a tale.
The court-ordered arrangement (which, I might add, was suspended in 1999 and never reinstated) was that child support would continue until the children were 18 or graduated from high school, whichever event occurred last. Fine. The ex-wife helped me out a couple of years ago by permitting my daughter, now 20, to quit high school. On her 18th birthday, child support dropped to $600/month. Fine. I didn't think much of that decision — the days are long gone when one can survive on just a high-school diploma or GED — but there was nothing I could do.
After receiving the January 2009 child support payment for my son (paid on December 1, 2008, yes, a month in advance), my ex-wife wrote, “Just think, next June you won't have to do this any more,” attempting to imply that he was still in school. An important detail here is that my son turns 18 in February.
With the February 2009 payment, I included the following note:
Accordingly, unless [our son] is still in school, this is your final child support payment. If [our son] is still in school, please provide enrollment or attendance records to this effect. One month seems sufficient time for you to obtain this information.
Kelly gets credit for suggesting that I ask for proof of his continued attendance.
The catch here is that I already knew the ex had allowed my son to quit high school. How I came to know isn't important. I knew that she couldn't provide the evidence I requested. Not to be outdone, though, the ex sent me this message upon receiving her money order yesterday:
Subject: Congratulations on your last child support payment
[Our son] is behind in a few credits that will preclude him from graduating on time with his class, however, he is enrolled in a GED preparation course through SLCC which will prepare him to take the GED in April. He is doing 98% and above in his mock tests, and will likely pass the GED with flying colors. He has plans to enroll in a graphic arts program beginning in the summer.
I have to let you know I am relieved you are no longer obligated. I really don't have any need for your child support, or I would go to the pains of providing you with his enrollment in his prep courses. It's just so much kissing up to you, however, and I won't be made to feel it is necessary to “report” to you. So I'll gladly forego the extra couple of months' payments to be released from this self-entitled lordship. I laughed OUT LOUD at your request in your letter. I anticipated it. It's just so typical of you. I had plans to notify you that I was releasing you of the obligation anyway. Oh, the irony . . .
I will trust there will be no further contact between us. Thanks for the years of paying the child support, albeit it was not without a few hitches and complications.
Notice that she fails to mention why my son is “behind in a few credits.” Moreover, didn't her previous message suggest that I look forward to child support payments through June? If she didn't need the money so badly, why did she write me almost every month, especially when the 1st fell on a weekend, to find out when she would receive the payment? And how is that my son, whom she permitted to drop-out because he was not getting the one-on-one attention he needed and who was having serious academic problems, is now passing his mock GED tests with flying colors? Not that I doubt he's capable of it. Rather, I doubt everything she says.
The bottom line is just this: my ex-wife attempted to lie to, deceive, and take advantage of me. She got caught, and instead of having the grace to say so, tries to turn it around by attacking me and claiming she was going to “release” me in the first place.
I was born at night, but it wasn't last night. I just checked the mirror and I don't have d-u-m-b-s-h-i-t stencilled on my forehead.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 16:41 2009-01-03 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)