Hacking up some python classes and object bits for a project. Honestly, this would be soooooo much easier in Perl, but for a number of reasons, the person started it in Python. So we are trying to contribute. And I am running into some of the more joyous elements of python. Such as completely inane error messages which tell you next to zero about what the real problem is. Thankfully, I have google.

Ok, maybe not the spec so much. Maybe just the client codes. Working on setting up an IPsec tunnel. The only IPsec implementation that I’ve tried on the client side that actually seems to work (e.g. get to a point where I can debug it) is Apple’s. Haven’t tried the Cisco yet, we don’t have a support contract with them, so we can’t download it and test it. Since we are setting this up for a customer who does, either we’ll VPN into their site and set it up, or work something out.

I’ve mentioned it before here, that this is a presidential election year in the US, and I expect it to be a nasty one, at best. We in the states largely fall into one of two major parties, with some of us proclaiming independence or preference for other parties in the noise. The media in this country is biased pretty hard in one direction with one solitary exception. Every now and then they admit it (as the NY Times did a few days ago).

Was trying to install an app on Saturday. Up popped a request for more information, including a second attempt at getting my password, and then 3 “security” questions, including “What city was I first kissed in.” Um. Ok. That is an EPIC FAIL in and of itself, but lets go on to the real … BIG EPIC FAIL. The security questions presented on the Apple app do not match those, or even come close to matching those on the appleid.

Previous results here. 12.4TB/hour. A new JackRabbit unit with some updates. New results: 1TB written in 228.2 seconds. 15.8TB/hour writes Run status group 0 (all jobs): WRITE: io=1024.6GB, aggrb=4597.1MB/s, minb=4597.1MB/s, maxb=4597.1MB/s, mint=228167msec, maxt=228167msec and for the reads … Run status group 0 (all jobs): READ: io=1024.6GB, aggrb=5341.9MB/s, minb=5341.9MB/s, maxb=5341.9MB/s, mint=196392msec, maxt=196392msec This is 18.3TB/hour reads. Writing 1PB on this machine would take almost 65 hours. So if we could break the writes across 65 machines (9 racks), we could write 1PB in 1 hour.

See info here.

Pretty good probability I’ll be needing to go to London this weekend to fix a problem caused by a somewhat overzealous local support org. See the motherboard post from a few days ago. Turns out they damaged the replacement they put in. I like London. I don’t like having to do this though.

A few months ago, the bank which had foreclosed on our now former landlord executed what could be called a legal pressure manuever. They wanted us to buy the space we are renting. They threatened to sue us for back rent. Our lawyer skillfully deflected this, pointing out their several failures in the process. They finally admitted they were seeking to pressure us to buy it. Go figure. So we are about to move to a larger spot.

… is that they won’t be precision tuned after you are done with them. And worse, much of this is self-inflicted in various cases. We try to ship absolutely peak performance machines. Tuned as much as possible, though in some cases, customers make requests that go against high performance. We try to explain the issues, but customers are always right, even when they aren’t. In a number of cases, customers wipe what we’ve done.

Something like this just happened to one of our customers. I am aghast that this was done the way it was, but it was. One of these things where you don’t find out that there was a service issue until its “done”. For various definitions of “done”. I anticipate being on a phone call to Europe in a few hours to discuss my definition of “done” with the people who did this, and ask them if their definition of “done” includes the concept of operating correctly.