Musical Genious

Psuedo in IRC pointed me towards this, and if you have ever been into mathematics, you can really appreciate what the creator of this video is saying.



1 comment Tags: music, tool, maynard james keenan, fibonacci sequence, math in music

Louisville, KY? Would have never guessed

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Here's a nifty tool to use....

For those of you that have iPhones and iPod Touchs, There is a pretty spiffy tool that will allow you to 'back-up' your music and other files from your phone to your PC (sorry mac users, you'll have to find something else).  It's called Tansee iPhone Transfer.  It says it costs $20 USD, but after you install you can use it in a 'trial' capacity, which seemed fully featured to me.  Yay for device 'back-ups'!

Post a comment Tags: tool, iphone, back-up, ipod touch

Dad's New Ride!

This is my Dad's new, well new to him, 2000 Honda Shadow 600.  He let me take it for a bit of a spin.  It's a pretty sweet ride.  I can't wait to get my motorcycle license so I can share the bike with him!  w00t!

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Post a comment Tags: shadow, motorcycle, honda, wess tobler, wess

Ever felt like you're the rope in political Tug-O-War?

This shit is getting old, fast!  How I got stuck in this political posturing pissing contest, I don't know.  My technical lead wants to kick me out, but the actual boss wants to keep me around.  I know I want to stay.  I'm making easy money for the company, and I like who I'm working around, so why should I want to leave (plus, the extra cash in pocket definitely helps)?

 

Why is it that this kind of retarded shit always happens to me?

 

peace.

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And still taking off on time!

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Wess, welcome to now!

So, the short of it is..... I'm Dumb. 

I have a freaking iPhone and I haven't been keeping up with the whole 'social networking/blogging' thing.  I have unlimited data and txt messages.  I'll be making a conscience effort to have a bit higher profile.  The picture below I took last week with my phone.  I just thought it was really cool.  It has been a long time since I paid attention to a sunset over the mountains.  I hope you enjoy!

Like I said, I'm Dumb.

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Sunset over the Rockies

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An Update and then Some

Well, then.   It would seem as though my time out here in Denver has finally been given a finite ending date.

Well.....sorta.....

I was told this morning by my team lead that she plans on rolling me off in 2 weeks.  It is a mix of emotion.  I work with some really cool people and have gained some awesome experience.  For that reason, I'm not too happy about leaving.  The flip side to that coin is the fact that this project really sucks.  It is destined to be a complete abortion of an SAP implementation.  It will be, by far, one of, if not the, ugliest SAP baby ever delivered.  

A big part of this business is networking.  Making good with the right people for future reference.  I think that I've done a pretty good job with that.

I'm really happy about being back home for a while.  I miss sleeping in my own bed every night.  I miss sitting at my own desk with my nice aeron chair, 24" Dell LCD monitor, and my Altec-Lansing 2.1 PC speakers that can rattle the walls if I wanted.  I'll enjoy being able to see my friends regularly, and spending time with my girlfriend.

update:  not so much with the roll off now....w/e

Sub Post - Trials of being a Video Podcaster / IPTV Producer and Life Lessons

Amidst my boredom here in Denver, I've found myself starting to read my friends' blogs and twitters.  Since I've hardly been around, it is the easiest way to get caught back up.

Darren made a really interesting post here talking about all the times we boarded the 'failbus' during our adventures making Hak.5.  Reading it made me think about how our direct lessons are applicable to many facets of geek life.

Specifically, I would like to highlight the first paragraph of his conclusion:

Experimenting, failing, learning, and re-engineering the production of Hak5 has been a fun and challenging process. We’ve come a long way from shooting multiple cameras to their individual tapes and cutting in post, a process that took nearly a week of editing per episode, to shooting segments live-to-tape. Each new process presents its own unique challenges and as a producer I’ve been more than happy to approach them head on, even if it takes falling on my face a few times.


Now, in the typical geek ways, lets remove the specifics and replace them with variables.  I'm too lazy to do that editing, so just do it in your head.  Now roll it around for a minute....


Done?  Good.

Is that not the way of the geek in general?  To me, at least, the statement goes a lot further.  We as geeks try things, it is our nature.  "My crime is that of curiosity."  We like to learn.  Sometimes that learning involves a really long ride on the failbus.  

It sometimes involves spending extra money because we brick a device because we did something dumb like accidentally unplug the thing while flashing the firmware.  Sometimes we literally get our wires crossed and see the magic smoke.  Hard drives tick, and power supplies surge.  It happens, and we know it happens.  However, when we get to the finish line and find that end product, it means the world to us.  

It can be something as simple as being able to write 'Hello World!' in some programming language, cracking that test WEP AP you set up to understand wireless security, popping that sand box using the exploit published a month ago so you can understand how it works, or finishing that last solder point and running the first test cycles of your automatic under-water basket weaver that you can control from your cell phone using PHP, Apache and X10.  They all have the exact same feeling of satisfaction.  

I think Darren inadvertently defined the essence of Technolust.  Thats what its really all about.  One must ride the failbus for an undetermined amount of time until you get off on the stop of sweet success.  

My final word to the wise is to not let failures deter you from achieving your goal.  Something is only a complete failure when you give up.  Anything else is just an obstacle that needs to be over come.

I apologize for yet another long-winded post.

Trust your Technolust

--Wess




Post a comment Tags: darren, sap, wess tobler, hak.5, darren kitchen, wess, failbus, trust your technolust …

SQL Server 2005 is the DEVIL

My job out in Denver is to be a DBA of a SQL Server 2005 database.  Seems simple enough, right?  All I do is load data in, run a small summary script, then make a new flat file out of the table created by the script.  EASY!  Not so much.


This particular table has been 2 weeks in the making.  One problem after another, after another.  First of all, I ran out of disk space on the original machine I was using.  Solution, add 2 1TB WD hard drives, and put them in RAID 0 for performance and to have 1 2TB drive.  Well, it helps when both drives are healthy and 1 doesn't have bad sectors out of the box!  Bastards!  Solution B) get another hard drive to replace the one that was DOA.  All is well in the world again.

Next problem, corrupt flat file sources.  First step, re-unarchive from the zip file given to me.  It could be a fluke in the decompression process.  No luck.  Put the word in for a new extract from the data source.  They don't understand why we need it and what we mean when we say "the data is corrupt".  One would thing that is pretty self explanatory, but I guess not.  I break it down to them on the hex level.  There is an ACK character in my data file.  How that POS got there, I have no clue, I can only guess a dropped packet or something.  Regardless, its F'ed up, I need a new one.
I get a new one, the dumb asses forgot to pull one of the 62 columns in the source table.  How the hell can you manage that?  Wouldn't you think they'd just recycle the script considering there were 136 flat files all with the same structure??  I guess thats asking too much.  Its too much like right.  Ask for yet another pull.  Finally, the short busses get it right! The data loads with out issue.

On to the next problem child.  Long story short on this one, there was a misc. column delimiter.  Only took me a week to find it.  Our fine friends in Redmond, with their cryptic ass error codes, and a seeming inability to add a few extra lines of code to SQL Server to tell me what row/record the error occurred on.  Again, I seem to ask too much.

All data loaded, hoo-ray!!  Now to run the summary script.  There are now ~800 million records in the table.  The data file and log file combine to +/- 500 gigs!  This is one massive table, and is going to take some time to run.  I can deal.
I execute the query, go for a smoke, five minutes later, I return to see there is an error.  The tempdb ran out of space so the query canceled.  Hrmm...C:\ is completely full.  Well then, easy solution, move the location of tempdb and templog.  

A little google action later, I find the T-SQL script to move tempdb and associated files.  We're in business!  The query looks like this:

USE master
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE (NAME = tempdev, FILENAME = 'd:\tempdb.mdf')
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE (NAME = templog, FILENAME = 'e:\templog.ldf')
GO
--Where 'd:' and 'e:' are the paths you want to relocate the files to.

I guess I missed the part at the top that says 'USE master'.  I guess I ran that inside of my HISTORY database.  The changes don't take effect until after SQL Server has been restarted.  I restart SQL Server, but it doesn't come back.  It kicks an error saying that it either can't find or doesn't have permission to change d:\tempdb.mdf.  I think this is an easy fix, I'll just copy the two from their original location.  Yeah, not so much.  I spend the next 4 hours learning about single user mode and sqlcmd and how to get the management studio to connect to a database in single user mode.  I try re-running the query, making sure to specify USE master this time.  The query completes, I restart SQL, and PRESTO! everything is working again.

I'm just super freaking happy that I have all that done now.  Talk about a weight being lifted.  I can now just cruise on through to the end of March, and maybe on to the first of May, assuming I don't get fired of the project.  That wouldn't exactly be a bad thing though.  This project is going right down the crapper, and I certainly wouldn't mind removing my name and presence from the abortion that is going to be delivered here.

Anywho...sorry for the long post.

Trust your Technolust!!

1 comment Tags: rant, sql server, hak5, sql server 2005, wess, tobler, hak5wess …

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