![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feren...to borrow again from Rockhound, "It's time to embrace the horror."
No, I'm not traumatizing you via the "You have not yet registered for an account" banner. Scroll past that and within a moment or two you should see what will be keeping me awake at night for the next two weeks. I blame![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roho for sharing this link with me, and if he wakes up with me clinging to a teddy bear and whimpering at the foot of his bed it will only go to serve him right.
On a completely different note it was a terribly unproductive day. I procrastinated for most of it, breaking into a fit of productivity long enough to make lunch for myself (cheddar brats, quite tasty), take out the garbage and retrieve the mail. After that it was back to being unproductive again, waiting for 4:50 PM to roll around. When it did Roho and I were off to pick upkestral from her workplace. She gave us the nickel tour of her workplace, and I got to drool over a few pieces of equipment (they had immense happy plotters, something I've been dreaming of at work for years now) and their main conference room (Solid wood paneling, beautiful desks, brass...). After we'd been briefly shown around we made our way over to the nearby theater to catch the evening's last matinee. At my urging we picked up tickets for the 5:30 showing of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines."
The film was decent overall. If I were to compare it strictly to its predecessors (especially T2: Judgment Day) I would say it was sorely lacking. If I were to rate it on its own merits I would call it an enjoyable action flick with some stellar special effects. The three biggest problems I have with it can be summed up easily: cinematography, the acting of Nick Stahl as John Connor, and the sound track. I definitely felt the lack of Cameron's touch in the writing and directing of the film. The style this was filmed in was more like a John Woo action film to me, with a lot of shots that felt sort of jerky and unnecessarily overworked to me. Nick Stahl, the fellow who filled the role of John Connor in the film, just didn't seem to bring a real sense of urgency to his part. Everyone else around him seemed pretty on the ball, but he had this dazed and "out of it" feel to him throughout most of the film. He only really came into the part at the end of the film, and by then it was almost too late. The last thing, and perhaps the most frustrating, was the scoring in the film. The original composer was never brought in, and the fellow they did choose only put a small bit of a teaser of the incredibly powerful original theme music in at the end. The rest of it was sort of a mishmash that didn't seem to really go anywhere. Another gripe I have, albeit a minor one, is that they used the Terminators for a lot more humor in this film. I think this was mostly done in an attempt to cover over some of the less stellar parts of the film, and while I didn't have a problem with it I felt they were a touch heavy-handed in their application of the jokes. We have killing machines from the future, here! Let's try to leverage that to our advantage instead of using them to get a chuckle out of the audience. Cybernetic killing machines deserve our respect, they're almost people too!
The special effects were incredible and awe-inspiring in the theater we went to. Everything was lovingly rendered in DTS, and the picture was crystal clear. You couldn't tell where the CGI ended and the actual film began. Chase scenes were amazingly destructive and tons of fun to drink in on the wide screen. The ending of the film, though, that's what really delivered for me. In the last twenty minutes of the film I forgot almost all of my complaints with the plot and the acting and just...lost myself in the film. For a mass-marketed movie I'm impressed they closed this story the way they did. Kestral pointed it out to me that it leaves room for a Part Four in the series, but that's okay... the way this film ended was brave and edgy and not what I think the American audience was expecting. I'm not sure how it's been received by most others, but I honestly liked it. I can't say much more than that without risking being a spoiler.
After the movie let out we drove over to the Continental and had dinner. I opted for scrambled eggs, ham steak and a side of bacon. Then it was back to the apartment to sit out on the porch, smoke and talk for another 40 minutes or so. As usual our conversation wandered from one topic to the next, never really dwelling for too long on any particular thing. We talked about my upcoming trip to New Jersey, my various tasks at work, some of the trials Roho has been faced with at work, data center design, storage and more.
Speaking of storage, I unpacked my D1000 today, since it arrived Friday. Guess what, kids? It only takes 1" height drives as well!!! All of my 18gb drives are 1.6", every last mother-loving one of them! I swear I'm cursed when it comes to storage for my server... all my other purchases (the Firewire drives, the Firewire cards, the enclosures, the DLT changer) have been flawless and I've gotten exactly what I wanted and needed. With these drives, though, it's like a never-ending circus of mishaps.
I further swear that the SCSI "standard" was only created as a psychology experiment to see if it was possible to drive a man (read: me) into psychosis with nothing more than a series of acronyms. Differential SCSI is different than High Voltage Differential SCSI, which is different than SCSI-2 (Which is also known as Fast SCSI). But wait, Fast SCSI (SCSI-2 for those playing the home game) can come in Differential and High Voltage Differential flavors as well! To make it even further confusing some vendors will put a certain style of connector on their product that makes you think it's one style of SCSI when in all actuality it's really a completely different revision! Oh yeah, SCSI is backwards compatible, so if you get "Fast/Wide SCSI" (not to be confused with Fast SCSI) drives and put them on a cable driven by a regular SCSI controller then they'll still work, albeit at the slower rate. Everything is backwards compatible with everything else -- except for the Differential systems, those only work with devices of the same type.
This is me, tearing my hair out, going just a bit more bald. This is how it all began, I swear to you. One day I got frustrated as a kid with my go-cart, reached up and pulled at my hair. One lone strand was pulled free. Thirteen years later there's no hair to pull out anymore....
So the plan of attack I have for now is to wait until I'm done with my travelling for the wedding, then I'm going to take the six 9.1 gigabyte drives that came with the D1000 and pop them into my 12-disk Multipack. Then I'll go with the Multipack and the tape jukebox over to where I co locate my server, put it all together and have at least 36.4 more gigs of space on the server and a way to back it up. The D1000 and the multitude of disks I have amassed will be sold off on eBay. With luck I can recover some of my expenses and give somebody else the parts they need. I may go back later for another try (I really want to put a ton of disk space on the system) but right now I'm cutting into my budget far too deeply for my tastes. I've got six more months until I go house-hunting, I can't keep blowing cash out of my account like this.
Tomorrow I will hopefully be less lazy, and will get the bedroom cleaned and bags packed in preparation for Thursday's flight. My sleep last night was repeatedly interrupted by the terrible chirpings of my cell phone notifying me that sites had gone up or down, but I haven't had any actual help desk tickets opened for me so far this weekend. I pray that my luck holds through tomorrow.
She needs an answer to her confusion
No, I'm not traumatizing you via the "You have not yet registered for an account" banner. Scroll past that and within a moment or two you should see what will be keeping me awake at night for the next two weeks. I blame
roho for sharing this link with me, and if he wakes up with me clinging to a teddy bear and whimpering at the foot of his bed it will only go to serve him right.On a completely different note it was a terribly unproductive day. I procrastinated for most of it, breaking into a fit of productivity long enough to make lunch for myself (cheddar brats, quite tasty), take out the garbage and retrieve the mail. After that it was back to being unproductive again, waiting for 4:50 PM to roll around. When it did Roho and I were off to pick up
kestral from her workplace. She gave us the nickel tour of her workplace, and I got to drool over a few pieces of equipment (they had immense happy plotters, something I've been dreaming of at work for years now) and their main conference room (Solid wood paneling, beautiful desks, brass...). After we'd been briefly shown around we made our way over to the nearby theater to catch the evening's last matinee. At my urging we picked up tickets for the 5:30 showing of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." The film was decent overall. If I were to compare it strictly to its predecessors (especially T2: Judgment Day) I would say it was sorely lacking. If I were to rate it on its own merits I would call it an enjoyable action flick with some stellar special effects. The three biggest problems I have with it can be summed up easily: cinematography, the acting of Nick Stahl as John Connor, and the sound track. I definitely felt the lack of Cameron's touch in the writing and directing of the film. The style this was filmed in was more like a John Woo action film to me, with a lot of shots that felt sort of jerky and unnecessarily overworked to me. Nick Stahl, the fellow who filled the role of John Connor in the film, just didn't seem to bring a real sense of urgency to his part. Everyone else around him seemed pretty on the ball, but he had this dazed and "out of it" feel to him throughout most of the film. He only really came into the part at the end of the film, and by then it was almost too late. The last thing, and perhaps the most frustrating, was the scoring in the film. The original composer was never brought in, and the fellow they did choose only put a small bit of a teaser of the incredibly powerful original theme music in at the end. The rest of it was sort of a mishmash that didn't seem to really go anywhere. Another gripe I have, albeit a minor one, is that they used the Terminators for a lot more humor in this film. I think this was mostly done in an attempt to cover over some of the less stellar parts of the film, and while I didn't have a problem with it I felt they were a touch heavy-handed in their application of the jokes. We have killing machines from the future, here! Let's try to leverage that to our advantage instead of using them to get a chuckle out of the audience. Cybernetic killing machines deserve our respect, they're almost people too!
The special effects were incredible and awe-inspiring in the theater we went to. Everything was lovingly rendered in DTS, and the picture was crystal clear. You couldn't tell where the CGI ended and the actual film began. Chase scenes were amazingly destructive and tons of fun to drink in on the wide screen. The ending of the film, though, that's what really delivered for me. In the last twenty minutes of the film I forgot almost all of my complaints with the plot and the acting and just...lost myself in the film. For a mass-marketed movie I'm impressed they closed this story the way they did. Kestral pointed it out to me that it leaves room for a Part Four in the series, but that's okay... the way this film ended was brave and edgy and not what I think the American audience was expecting. I'm not sure how it's been received by most others, but I honestly liked it. I can't say much more than that without risking being a spoiler.
After the movie let out we drove over to the Continental and had dinner. I opted for scrambled eggs, ham steak and a side of bacon. Then it was back to the apartment to sit out on the porch, smoke and talk for another 40 minutes or so. As usual our conversation wandered from one topic to the next, never really dwelling for too long on any particular thing. We talked about my upcoming trip to New Jersey, my various tasks at work, some of the trials Roho has been faced with at work, data center design, storage and more.
Speaking of storage, I unpacked my D1000 today, since it arrived Friday. Guess what, kids? It only takes 1" height drives as well!!! All of my 18gb drives are 1.6", every last mother-loving one of them! I swear I'm cursed when it comes to storage for my server... all my other purchases (the Firewire drives, the Firewire cards, the enclosures, the DLT changer) have been flawless and I've gotten exactly what I wanted and needed. With these drives, though, it's like a never-ending circus of mishaps.
I further swear that the SCSI "standard" was only created as a psychology experiment to see if it was possible to drive a man (read: me) into psychosis with nothing more than a series of acronyms. Differential SCSI is different than High Voltage Differential SCSI, which is different than SCSI-2 (Which is also known as Fast SCSI). But wait, Fast SCSI (SCSI-2 for those playing the home game) can come in Differential and High Voltage Differential flavors as well! To make it even further confusing some vendors will put a certain style of connector on their product that makes you think it's one style of SCSI when in all actuality it's really a completely different revision! Oh yeah, SCSI is backwards compatible, so if you get "Fast/Wide SCSI" (not to be confused with Fast SCSI) drives and put them on a cable driven by a regular SCSI controller then they'll still work, albeit at the slower rate. Everything is backwards compatible with everything else -- except for the Differential systems, those only work with devices of the same type.
This is me, tearing my hair out, going just a bit more bald. This is how it all began, I swear to you. One day I got frustrated as a kid with my go-cart, reached up and pulled at my hair. One lone strand was pulled free. Thirteen years later there's no hair to pull out anymore....
So the plan of attack I have for now is to wait until I'm done with my travelling for the wedding, then I'm going to take the six 9.1 gigabyte drives that came with the D1000 and pop them into my 12-disk Multipack. Then I'll go with the Multipack and the tape jukebox over to where I co locate my server, put it all together and have at least 36.4 more gigs of space on the server and a way to back it up. The D1000 and the multitude of disks I have amassed will be sold off on eBay. With luck I can recover some of my expenses and give somebody else the parts they need. I may go back later for another try (I really want to put a ton of disk space on the system) but right now I'm cutting into my budget far too deeply for my tastes. I've got six more months until I go house-hunting, I can't keep blowing cash out of my account like this.
Tomorrow I will hopefully be less lazy, and will get the bedroom cleaned and bags packed in preparation for Thursday's flight. My sleep last night was repeatedly interrupted by the terrible chirpings of my cell phone notifying me that sites had gone up or down, but I haven't had any actual help desk tickets opened for me so far this weekend. I pray that my luck holds through tomorrow.
She needs an answer to her confusion
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-07-26 09:28 pm (UTC)ARGH!
Ahem. Deep breaths. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-26 11:38 pm (UTC)Roho and I reached the consensus that we would sacrifice the vehicle in favor of escape. I would not waste any more time than it took to reach the door handle in deciding to leap out of the car on an interstate, faced with a huntsman that close to my head. Or my lap.
Especially my lap.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 12:00 am (UTC)Yes, they do hide there. Hence why I /check/ by habit before I get into the car, since years ago I discovered one under the visor. I have a big huge fear of driving along, pulling down the visor, and one dropping into my lap. Believe me, I'd be making the same choice about escape, however it's bound to be hindered by the must-wear-a-seatbelt rule we have here, too.
It's a conspiracy, I tell you.
I wasn't able to read the thread - I saw the second picture and freaked out. Ack. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 06:12 am (UTC)How in the name of all that's holy does something that huge get into your car in the first place? I mean, do they somehow compress themselves to the size of a dust mote and just drift in, or what? I cannot imagine that your car has rust holes sufficiently large enough to let a monster like that come and go as it pleases.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 03:53 pm (UTC)On second thought, don't. I'm already sorry I did :P
The horror..
Date: 2003-07-26 09:34 pm (UTC)The picture doesn't bother me, actually.. I'm squimish, but I know that spiders like that don't live around here, so it's ok. And I actually don't have to try to convince my subconscious, which is a wonder.
Handy SCSI table:
Date: 2003-07-27 03:33 pm (UTC)SCSI-2: Introduces fast SCSI, wide SCSI and differential SCSI. Devices can be 8, 16 or 32 bits wide, run at 5 or 10 MHz (up to 20 MB/s on a 16-bit cable); 8 bit devices can use the SCSI-1 connectors (internal devices still use the 50-pin headers) or HD-50 connectors found on Suns and some SCSI cards; 16-bit devices use the HD-68 connectors.
Differential in SCSI-2 is high-voltage, which isn't compatible with regular ("single-ended") or later SCSI-3 LVD devices. Required special drives and controllers, and was never common to begin with.
SCSI-3: Introduces Ultra SCSI (20 MHz bus in 8 and 16-bit widths, up to 40 MB/s) and Ultra2 SCSI LVD mode (40 MHz bus, 80 MB/s max throughput, backward-compatible with Ultra SE and SCSI-2 but will run entire bus at a maximum of Ultra SE in that case). Also officially recognises SCSI command sets on other media, like USB, Fibre Channel and FireWire.
Ultra160 and Ultra320 are similar to Ultra2, they just run the bus 2x or 4x faster.