IBM BladeCenter voodoo

I’ve been working with computers practically all my life and thought I’d seen it all, but this one really surprised me!

At $WORK we have a number of IBM BladeCenters hosting our VMWare environment. Each blade chassis has 14 IBM HS21 bladeservers in it, and the way the environment is designed to scale everything has to be identical. Well, my department needed to take a blade chassis out of this identical environment and repurpose it for another project.

The plan was to install Red Hat Enterprise 4 on these servers using a PXE kickstart process. On other blades and equipment this would go off without a hitch. For some reason, though, these particular blades caused a kernel panic right when the Linux kernel would load. Turning off acpi didn’t seem to help. That Red Hat 5 would load on these same systems made us even more puzzled.

Finally, one of the night shift UNIX gurus had the solution, which was provided years ago by our IBM vendor. Their solution? To swap the CPUs on each motherboard! Our team dutifully did this and somehow each blade successfully booted Linux.

I about fell out of my chair when I heard that this worked. It makes no sense whatsoever but somehow it worked.

Just when I thought I’d seen everything . . .

Wow! Two in one day!

Looks like the money mule job market is picking up. That’s two job offers in one day! Who could believe it? And I’ve always wanted to work for a guy named Inaptitude! Where do I sign up?!?!?

From: inaptitude Dobson inaptitudebxwdobson@hotmail.com
To: sgarrid1@gmail.com
Subject: Job Opportunity. id 396VQ
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 08:13:27 -0500

Hello,

Please, read this letter.
Gold Investments Incorporated company is looking for an individual for the courier clerk position. It is a remote/part-time/full-time position and it is home-based.

GII inc was founded by several Polish businessmen and is functioning since 2004 with its head branch based in Warsaw,the capital of Poland .

GII inc provides the dispatching service of a middleman among sellers and customers from all over the World. You will need to have a personal computer and internet access including printer/scanner to work with us.
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East CAC success

I conducted yet another successful East CAC meeting last night. We had about 25 people in attendance: not bad for a day of non-stop rain.

This time around, the streaming video worked flawlessly to carry video (and sound!) to an audience of five. Unfortunately, for reasons I’m still trying to fathom LiveStream did not save a copy of my meeting as it usually does. I’ll have to figure out why.

Next month, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is on the agenda to discuss growth in East Raleigh. It should be interesting!

New position. (id – 52ZC)

Looks like I’ve got another great job opportunity sent my way. I’m going to be rich!!1!!!1!1!!111!!

From: trek Stanley trekstanleyqnu@hotmail.com
To: riverad@consultant.com
Subject: New position. (id – 52ZC)
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 05:06:38 -0500

Good dayHow are you? I am a Dealcom LTD staff manager and I’m responsible for headhunting among the candidates for the open positions with our company. We have read with interest your resume detailing your qualifications and relevant work experience and want to offer you a well-paid part-time vacancy. We believe you can be considered as a successful candidate for the position. If you are interested in our company as well as in more information concerning this opportunity please e-mail the recruitment at Recruitment@dealcomltd.com. Thank you for your consideration and have a nice day.Take care.

Of course, I’d have to risk going to jail as it’s simply a money mule scam, but what the hey.

Mark Cuban swings and misses

I used to think Mark Cuban was a smart guy. If smarts were judged by the amount of money in one’s bank account, Cuban would be a genius. So I don’t understand how Cuban could think that cable will threaten NetFlix.

The other thing to note is the percentage of Netflix subscribers that already subscribe to a TV provider. Netflix has to be concerned that it will be easier for those people to give up Netflix if their TV provider expands their VOD offerings and allows for queuing of streams to a TV channel than it will to give up the TV provider.

Maybe Cuban is worried because he owns a cable TV station and depends on subscribers. Maybe his billion-dollar bank account has blinded him to the burden that a $100+ monthly cable bill presents to the average American. Cuban’s certainly got to keep his cable television masters happy or face his HDNet channels being dropped. To say that a working-class family would opt to choose an ever-escalating cable bill with horrible service over a $15/month, all you can watch NetFlix streaming account is unlikely to me, but I admit I don’t watch much TV.
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Engine 1792 makes it home

NCDOT Engine 1792

I found out today that the NCDOT’s Amtrak Engine 1792 made it back to Raleigh. It and the coaches involved in Thursday morning’s collision in Mebane were sitting back in the NCDOT yard this afternoon. Travis and I snapped photographs from outside of the yard gate.

From the reader-submitted photographs taken at the scene the damage looked worse than it did in person. We were seeing the right side of the power unit (the side that didn’t burn) but from what we saw it looked salvageable. It was sitting on its own trucks, so the frame may not have been bent after all – at least to the extent that I thought.
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Stopping the leak vs. siphoning it

I find it telling that BP’s efforts to stem the massive Deepwater Horizon leak seem to be focused on siphoning the oil from the ruptured well rather than capping the well. BP’s priority seems to be getting the oil, not stopping it.

Also, NPR reported today that, based on analysis of BP’s video of the leak, the flow rate of the leak is closer to 70,000 barrels per day: far higher than initial official estimates. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez dumped 250,000 barrels of oil into Alaska’s Price William Sound. The BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster is pouring an Exxon Valdez-sized amount of oil into the Gulf every four days.

I’m sure glad my kids have gotten to see the Gulf before this disaster because they’ll probably have kids by the time it’s cleaned up. If ever.

Amtrak’s Piedmont hits truck, derails

NCDOT's Engine 1792, The City of Raleigh

This morning, the Amtrak Piedmont train hit a flatbed truck that was stuck on the tracks in Mebane. No one was killed but a dozen people were taken to the hospital with cuts and bruises. The locomotive, number 1792, was heavily damaged and caught fire immediately after the collision.

This particular Amtrak train, the Piedmont, is run in part by the State of North Carolina, and the train carries the state’s red, white, and blue livery. The locomotives are quite distinctive. I saw the photographs of the damaged train and recalled that I’d taken some shots around the NCDOT’s Raleigh yard a few years ago.

Above is my photograph of the 1792 in better days. It was being overhauled at the time to rejoin the other locomotives in Carolinian and Piedmont service. I don’t know if the engine can be repaired but it couldn’t come at a worse time for the state’s passenger rail service: the state is adding mid-day service in June.

NCDOT's Gray Squirrel

Here’s also a picture of the Gray Squirrel passenger coach. The Gray Squirrel wound up on top of the errant tractor-trailer, so it will likely be out of service for a while, too.

Be sure to read the chatter about the crash on the Train Orders site.

[Update: 1:48 PM Friday ] More railfan speculation on Trains.com.

A special walk home

I met Kelly and the kids at Hallie’s school to hear an update from the teacher on Hallie’s progress. I left smiling when her teacher called her “phenomenal,” but little did I know I wasn’t done with hearing good things. I decided to forgo hitching a ride home with Kelly in the van in keeping with my carpooling experiment today and opted instead to walk the 1/2 mile home. Travis decided to join me, so together we walked up the hill back to our house.

As we walked, we chatted about lots of things. He wanted to hold my hand and so we walked up the hill hand-in-hand. As the conversation continued, he said something that made me remark “that wouldn’t be my favorite thing.”

“You know what’s my favorite thing?” he asked as we kept walking. “My love for you.”

All I could say was “awwww” and returned the compliment. It was so sweet to hear but as I thought about it later I only appreciated it more. Travis will often tell someone he loves them but it’s rare that he offers it the way that he did.

His hand in mine, the pleasant walk, and words that would make any father proud: it doesn’t get much better than this.

Carpooling

A few months ago a new guy named Rob started as a contractor in my department at work. I discovered later that he lives a half-mile away from me, so it got me thinking about carpooling with him instead of driving myself every day. I mean, if you can’t make carpooling work when you both work in the same department and live within walking distance of each other, you can’t make any carpooling work. So, we discussed it yesterday and decided that today we would carpool.

How did it go? Outstanding! Rob met me right on time and we breezed through morning traffic, arriving early in fact. I never missed my car at work today, and when it became time to go home we both left our desks at the same time. It couldn’t have gone any easier.

I enjoy my job but the biggest headache is the commute. If I can continue to carpool, it will make my commute a lot more interesting and I might save a few bucks, too. Pretty good deal!