Misc. Ramblings

Week of 19 February through 23 February 2001
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Snap. Crackle and Pop. My main PC at home, a 400Mhz Celeron had a problem with its power supply over the weekend. In fact, it blew two capacitors clear off the circuit board. So I went looking for a replacement power supply at CompUSA but did not find any. I then went to a local PC store (Byteware) and found Antec power supplies. The problem is I wanted a 300-watt unit but all they had were 250s and 400s. And the 400s cost almost $100USD. So for now, I'm having to use SWMBO's VAIO desktop while I think about what I want to do.

For $599, I can get a "bare bones" PC that has a case, an Intel 815 motherboard, and an Intel 800Mhz PIII. But do I need to spend that much right now? Obviously, I could get the 400-watt power supply and be done with it. But there is always the possibility that when the power supply went, it did some damage to the motherboard/CPU/drives in my current PC (the damage from which may not be immediately apparent).

Right now, I think I'll take my chances and just get the power supply. But I have to think about it a little more.

Computer Chronicles. Here I thought the PBS series the Computer Chronicles was having just a two-part mini-series on high tech in Hawai'i. Well, it seems they are actually doing four parts. The third of which was shown locally on Saturday. They took a short tour of the Maui High Performance Computing Center (mentioned here a couple of weeks ago) and mentioned they are upgrading from about 800 CPUs to 2000. This should up the power to about 2.2 to 2.4 teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second) which would put it up there with some of the more powerful systems in the world.

I have to finish my 10-page paper for tomorrow's class so I gotta go -Aloha!

Linux Standards. InfoWorld columnist Nicholas Petrelely's column for this week (see it here) looks at something I've been saying for some time. Namely, Linux base distros must become standardized. Without such standardization, companies are dropping like flies, not becoming stronger through value added services.

The base problem <g> is that once a distro is installed, how do you update your applications if the control files these applications use are scattered in non-standard locations and given non-standard names and parameters? The answer of course is you can't, unless your distribution uses something like Red Hat's RPM updates. In general, the problem with that is you are trapped into waiting for those updates from your distro manufacturer, not the company that created the application you are using. And if that manufacturer happens to be Caldera, you can wait until hell freezes over, or their next major release (whichever comes first), for an update.

So the answer is standardization. Will standardization actually be agreed to when manufacturers are seemingly wedded to a business plan that does not work? Stay tuned.

Progress on my 10 page report for class tonight has gone very slowly. So I gotta go - Aloha!

Local Kine Jokes. A Hawaiian, a Japanese, and a Dubyah were doing construction work on scaffolding on the 20th floor of a Waikiki building. One day as they were eating lunch, the Hawaiian said, "Fish and poi! If get fish and poi one more time for lunch I'm going to jump off this building." The Japanese man opened his lunch box and exclaimed, "Rice and takuan again! If I get rice and takuan one more time I'm going to jump off, too." The Dubyah opened his lunch and said, "Baloney sandwich again. If I get baloney sandwich one more time I'm jumping off also!"

The next day the Hawaiian opens his lunchbox, sees the fish and poi and jumps to his death. The Japanese opens his lunch, sees rice and takuan and jumps too. The Dubyah opens his lunch, sees the baloney sandwich and jumps to his death also.

At the funeral, the Hawaiian man's wife is weeping. She says, "If I'd known how really tired he was of fish and poi I never would have made it for him again!" The Japanese man's wife also weeps and says, "I could have given him teriyaki or tempura!" I didn't realize he hated rice and takuan so much."

Everyone turned and stared at the Dubyah's wife. "Hey, no look at me!" she said. "Da bugga makes his own lunch!"

Babooze secretary's memo to her boss:
To: My Boss
From: Dubyah
Subject: Changing calendars from Y2K

I hope that I haven't misunderstood your instructions because, to be honest, none of this Y to K problem made much sense to me. At any rate, I have finished the conversion of all of the months on all the company calendars for next year. The calendars have returned from the printer and are ready to be distributed with the following new months:

Dubyah Medical Dictionary
artery..............The study of paintings.
bacteria............Back door of a cafeteria.
barium..............What doctors do when a patient dies.
bowel...............A letter like a,e,i,o,u.
cat scan............Looking for a kitty.
cauterize...........Made eye contact with her.
fester..............Quicker.
fibula..............A small lie.
hangnail............Coat hook.
impotent............Distinguished, well known.
labor pain..........Getting hurt at work.
node................Was aware of.
outpatient..........A person who has fainted.
rectum..............Damn near killed 'em.
secretion...........To hide something.
terminal illness....Getting sick at the airport.
ultrasound..........Very good music.
varicose............Nearby.
vein................Conceited.

This farmer has about 200 hens, but no rooster, and he wants chicks. So he goes down the road to the next farmer and asks if he has a rooster. The other farmer says, "Yeah, I've got this great rooster, named Dubyah (long for "W"). He'll service every chicken you got, no problem."

Well, Dubyah the rooster is expensive, but the farmer decides he's worth it. So he buys Dubyah. The farmer takes Dubyah home and sets him down in the barnyard. Giving the rooster a pep talk, "Dubyah, I want you to pace yourself now. You've got a lot of chickens to service here, and you cost me alot of money. I'll need you to do a good job. So, take your time and have some fun," the farmer says with a chuckle. Dubyah seems to understand, so the farmer points toward the henhouse and Dubyah takes off like a shot.

WHAM! He nails every hen in there THREE or FOUR times, and the farmer is just shocked. Dubyah runs out of the hen house and sees a flock of geese down by the lake, and WHAM! He gets all the geese. Dubyah's up in the pigpen, he's in with the cows. Dubyah is jumping on every animal the farmer owns.

The farmer is distraught, worried that his expensive rooster won't even last the day. Sure enough, the farmer goes to bed and wakes up the next day to find Dubyah stiff as a doornail, stone cold, in the middle of the yard. Buzzards are circling overhead. The farmer, saddened by the loss of such a colorful animal, shakes his head and says, "Oh, Dubyah, I told you to pace yourself. I tried to get you to slow down, now look what you've done to yourself."

Dubyah opens one eye, nods toward the sky and says, "Shhh, they're getting closer...."

I finished the paper yesterday about an hour before class. The night before, I stayed up until 12:30am and then got up for work at my regular time, 4:50am. A long day. Then class. And then to sleep. Today I'm still recovering from lack of sleep but I guess I'll survive. Oh, the paper ended up being 12 pages long.

Cybercourt. Michigan wants to be the first state to have a separate court division for technology cases (see the article here from the new York Times). The court would feature the latest in technology itself:

Michigan's governor believes having such a specialized court will attract high technology. Governor Engler, who proposed the cybercourt in his annual address last month, said he thought technology companies would be attracted to Michigan just as Fortune 500 companies were drawn to Delaware, where the 200-year-old Court of Chancery is especially equipped to handle business cases.

Hmmm. What problem would this type of court be solving? Judges who are unqualified? A state with laws that seem to attract lawsuits, not technology? A state that puts more resources into lawyers instead of engineers? If so, I wouldn't want to be trumpeting these things for all to hear...

I Robot. Speaking of cybernetics, there was an interesting program on the Discovery Channel this weekend (I tried finding some information on their web site but was unsuccessful) about a collegiate competition hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology (see their web page here). The competition involved touring a simulated natural disaster site to locate casualties, identify the the types and locations of toxic wastes, and avoid hazardous areas marked by fire, gushing water, or other obstacles. Well, what's so interesting about that? Simple, it is to be done by an autonomous, untethered robot.

Most of the teams that entered the competition last year used model helicopters equipped with sensors of various kinds and processors running custom programs using AI to get into the air, find and map the site, identify and avoid the hazards, while at the same time finding the survivors and marking their locations (using GPS). All without any human intervention. This is a truly amazing engineering and computing accomplishment. And then to remember that it was done by college students, well - that's even more amazing.

The winners last year, Technische Universitaet Berlin, emphasized the importance of keeping the systems as simple and robust as possible. For example, rather then using expensive stereoscopic video systems for "vision", they used a simple still camera taking photos every five seconds. This made their robot not only simpler and less likely to have problems, but it also made it lighter. On the other hand, those schools who made their systems as complex and leading edge as possible ended up crashing and burning (literally for some). The next competition is set for July of this year.

June Jones. Everyone in Hawai'i was shocked yesterday morning when we heard that University of Hawai'i football coach June Jones had been in a car crash. He is still in critical, but stable condition this morning after four hours and two surgeries yesterday. All of Hawai'i sends their thoughts and prayers for Coach Jones and his family. May he have a full and quick recovery.