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In case you were wondering, this is the alpaca I was standing by while troubleshooting the RAID issue. (click for the full-sized image).
The alpaca did not have any ideas why the hard drives were failing, although it did suggest that perhaps I check to see if the the drives were too hot with the S.M.A.R.T. tools.
Update: my sources tell me this is a llama; I’ve fixed the image name accordingly for the benefit of Google images.
I’ve been in Michigan for a few weeks now with my wife and her family and will be here another week. Internet access is at best intermittent, so I haven’t (and won’t) be blogging much.
The technical highlight so far has been trying to troubleshoot problems with the RAID on bostoncoop.net over a cell phone while at the county fair, surrounded by pigs and alpacas.
Speaking of RAID problems: can anyone suggest why more than half of our 200G drives would fail in various ways within a year of installation? They are from various manufacturers (WDC and Maxtor), and have failed differently, and some are giving SMART errors only days after installation. Almost all of the other equipment is new as well. Most commonly the failure shows up as kernel DMA errors, which as best I can tell don’t really point to any particular cause. We suspect temperature problems—is 50-60 celsius enough to be a serious problem?
In particular, I’d appreciate any suggestions as to how to limit the problem to hardware vs. software, hard drives vs. controller(s) vs. motherboard vs. memory… And so forth.
I’ve been back from the honeymoon almost a week and too busy to blog thus far while I’m working part time and studying for the bar (it often surprises civilians that law school doesn’t give you any specific bar exam preparation). But here is a “taste” of our honeymoon for your enjoyment:
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We stayed at Le Chat Botté, a wonderful little bed and breakfast in North Hatley, Quebec. Every morning the innkeeper cooked a wonderful three-course breakfast for us, three days of which are captured above (each row is one day). For the first four days, we were the only guests so we got especially individualized attention. All of the meals were vegetarian, and started out with a glass of frothy fresh-squeezed juice—a different juice each day. The garnishes always came from the innkeeper’s garden, right outside the dining room window. I was going to try to put captions to explain what the dishes were, but I don’t remember all the subtleties so I’ll just have to leave it to your imagination.
I haven’t been blogging for the past couple of weeks, and won’t for the next couple of weeks either, so here’s a quick life update and explanation for the radio silence.
In the last week, I’ve gotten a post-graduation job at an intellectual property firm, Wolf, Greenfield, and Sacks; I graduate from Northeastern Law School tomorrow morning; I’m going to sign the papers to buy a house in Roslindale tonight and finish up the mortgage bureaucracy tomorrow morning (during my graduation, I guess); I’m getting married on Sunday, followed by a weeklong honeymoon (during which I have covenanted not to use the Internet!).
And those are just the life-changes that are publicly-disclosable. It’s been a busy time.
If you’ve emailed me in the past 72 hours and haven’t heard back from me, please resend your mail. It’s been a rough three days.
More details this weekend, once I’ve recovered.
I’m back in Boston now. This photo sums up my California experience nicely.
If nothing else, California has become less of a mysterious far-off land for me. I suppose one could even eventually get used to these long cross-country flights.
Who knows—maybe I’ll be back before too long.
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I took lots of photos on my trip to the Pinnacles·, but I don’t think it’s possible to capture the magnitude of these rocks and caves, at least not with my cheap and obsolete digital camera. Here’s me under a giant boulder that gradually settled into this canyon as it was chisseled away by flowing water, and a view of the rock formations on high. The pinnacles were formed by a volcanic eruption millions of years ago. The peaks were originally three times as tall and spanned a major fault line between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates; now half of the mountains have moved down near Los Angeles and the other half are in the bay area.
For my local California readers, here are a few things I’ll be doing in my last few days here, please join me!
Modern Times Bookstore is having an Indie Press Party to celebrate the release of McSweeney’s Issue 12. The event will feature readings by an array of writers from Issue 12, including Julie Orringer, Ben Ehrenreich, Shann Ray, Salvador Plascencia. Additionally, because McSweeney’s is the Independent Press of the Month, all McSweeney’s titles will be 25% off at Modern Times during the month of November.
Thursday, November 20
SAN FRANCISCO
Indie Press Party for McSweeney’s Issue #12
Modern Times Bookstore
888 Valencia Street at 20th Street
Ph: (415) 282-9246
7-9 p.m.
Most of you haven’t seen my new (fairly dramatic) haircut. In fact, many of you have never seen a photo of me at all. Here’s me and Sappho, the boxer I lived with in Castro Valley. Living in the Mission is great, but no Sappho.