Category: Uncategorized

MySQL 5.0 has a Blackhole Storage Engine. [here]
Cool. And if you make me grumpy, all of your performance data will be stored there! 🙂
Via: Jeremy Zawodny

If you are Canadian, you know what follows after those words.

My friend Kennedy writes to inform me that today is the thirtieth anniversary of the sinking of the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald. [here]

30 years. Wow.

Ok, if there is an issue with GrabPERF or any of the other services on this server this weekend, it is unlikely that I will be able to fix it.
We are going to see friends in Maine, and we aren’t even sure if our mobile phones will work.
I will try and check mail once a day, but don’t expect long essays or grand thoughts this weekend.

I want one.
<pout>
I hate Windows.
Linux Desktops make me nuts.
And Dell…don’t take me there.

Ubuntu, oh how I wish I understood you!
My understanding of why people prefer Windows and OSX is cemented. Evolution keeps crashing, and the wireless card, which worked perfectly at the office, can’t see my WRT54G.
Sorry Linux, until you can make it JUST FREAKING WORK, you are sent back to /dev/null.
I don’t have time to play; I have work to do.

Last night I made some code modifications to the Line Graph (“Basic Chart”) function in GrabPERF. Previously, the performance graph had been built using data gathered from the rollup table, hourly_site, except for the current hour, which was built from the raw data table, data.
Now, both the Availability and Performance graphs are built from the raw data table.
Also, I began using the Math/Stats PEAR package to calculate the statistical data from the results.
However, the most significant change is that the graph now displays Geometric Mean and 85^th Percentile values for each hour. This will give a better sense of the “average” performance, as well as the degree to which there are outliers in the data.
Feedback is appreciated.

The question is a simple one: why do I have to dial “1” for long distance from my home phone?
This likely doesn’t apply to VoIP users, but I still use POTS at home.
I understand that it is an artifact of the way that the long distance system was originally built. However, my home line is the only phone I use that requires me to dial “1” first.
On both my mobile (T-Mobile) and office phones (MCI VoIP), I dial 10 digits and I am done.
So, why can’t the local phone systems figure this one out?

Technorati: telephone, long, voip, pots, telephony
IceRocket: telephone, long, voip, pots, telephony

The second measurement agent is now up and running on Ubuntu!
And the happy news is that it is reporting CONNECTION ERRORS!
Well, ok, not so good news for those of you who are getting them. On the other hand, a gap in the measurement data should indicate a serious problem now.

In order to avoid doing some work today, I will be upgrading the second GrabPERF Agent from Mandrake 9 (10?) to Ubuntu Breezy 5.10.
Hopefully this will improve the stability of this machine and allow connection error signals from the kernel to be captured correctly by cURL.

Kathy Sierra once again reminds us that only the truly intelligent employers realize that the Work/Life balance is more important than ANYTHING else. [here]
And her reason for this: clients who abuse startups and small companies who then abuse their employees to work miracles.
The takeaway:

And as the tech employment market starts to tick up ever so slightly, it’s becoming less and less of an “employer’s market” again. I don’t care about the Aeron chair, but I do care about having a life beyond work. If you can’t make your business model work without promising your clients a miracle (which we’re expected to pull off), change your business model! And when you DO ask us to go our ass off again, a little worshipping goes a long way ; )