December 2008

There were 82 posts published in December 2008 (this is page 7 of 9).

Mythbusted

I have to say I think I’ve exhausted all the potential bottlenecks to try in my attempt to turn my MythTV box all-digital. The Avermedia A180 HDTV card simply doesn’t get along with my motherboard/CPU. I spent some time over the weekend adjusting the PCI latency times for the system’s peripherals, including removing and/or disabling unused devices. I also upgraded to the latest ivtv driver. These changes seemed to help: I was getting far more of the signal than I used to but I could never completely eliminate the dropped frames.

My tinkering did reveal that the CPU is only an Athlon 850 MHz when I thought it was at least a 1 GHz. That matters little as I place the blame on the bus speed or memory speed of the system. It just can’t keep up.

I also noted a conflict between the Avermedia A180 and the PVR-150 Plus. When the PVR-150 Plus is present the A180 will claim to be tuning channels but it won’t receive any signals. I read about this behavior with the PVR-150 and different card and it seems to be the same thing with the A180 and the PVR-150.

I don’t want to go back to the analog setup as I want to drop basic cable, but at this point its either that or invest in a new motherboard/CPU. I’ll come back to it some other time.

The Reality of Pearl Harbor

I found this DailyKos posting an interesting read yesterday, Pearl Harbor Day:

The Reality of Pearl Harbor (updated)
by railsplitter
Sun Dec 07, 2008 at 12:12:42 PM PST

Note: I originally posted this on 12/7/07. Several folks have emailed me to re-post today. Minor updates are included

=================

This is one of several diaries today on Pearl Harbor. If you’re looking for a syrupy retrospective, stop reading now.

First, the good news. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was an unmitigated failure. Of all the ships damaged during the attack, only three were total losses; The Arizona and Utah remain where they sank, and the Oklahoma floundered being towed to the West Coast after re-floating. All other ships damaged in the attack were repaired and returned to active service before the end of the war.
Continue reading →

Dinner party weekend

It has been a good weekend: full of social stuff!

Friday evening the whole family went to the Padgett’s annual holiday party. It was our first one and boy, was I surprised at the multitude of people at that party. It was wall-to-wall friends. I didn’t get to meet nearly everyone I wanted to meet but I had some good conversations with people I already knew.

Saturday’s dinner party was at my friend Scott’s place, where we had pizza and a good time. We finished the evening at the Peace Street Starbucks for some coffee and talk. And tonight we hosted some friends from the neighborhood for a dinner party. Its a lot of work to host a dinner but its always fun.

Got in some good exercise with Rocket in the back yard both days, too, and yesterday I cleared the back yard of leaves and pine straw with the leaf blower.

There’s a few more interesting jobs for which I want to apply. I’ll put in for those this week and wait for the phone to ring. And even though I’m between jobs now I have a few lunch meetings this week with friends and fellow volunteers, as well as meetings and holiday parties for the boards that I’m on. I may be jobless now but I’m sure not bored!

Some good job leads

I’ve got a resume in with a well-known virtualization software company and know someone there who works in a similar role. It would be doing what I did for Zenoss: implementing the virtualization software at the customer site.

Hopefully I’ll get an interview out of it.

Wall Street Journal interview

I just got interviewed by the Wall Street Journal about my recent layoff. The story seems to be focused on how the newly jobless are dealing with the upcoming holidays.

I don’t know if or when the story will run, but the reporter was interested in speaking to others who were laid-off. If you fit the bill, drop me an email and I’ll put you in touch with the reporter.

Move? For a job? Are you kidding?

Ran into a friend last night who was aware of my job search. She asked me “what it would take” to make me move away from Raleigh.

I laughed after quickly realizing she wasn’t trying to kick me out of town.

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, reassuring her that there was plenty of work here for a multipurpose geek like me.

It would take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get me to move. Unless I get a phone call starting with “please hold for the President-elect” I’m staying right here.

How to become a scammer

For the next RDU Barcamp (which will be my first, as I have yet to participate in any), I thought it might be fun to teach a mock class on how to scam people. You know: pretend I’m a big-time con artist showing the ropes to wannabe Nigerian scammers. The class will include critiques of sample scam emails and suggest easy ways to get important information. The take-away from it all would be to educate my “students” in how not to get taken.

I might not wait for Barcamp but might package this as a TriLUG presentation for a slow night. I bet it would be a lot of fun!