Blog @ simpletofind.ca

Please welcome a new server to this world…

February 12th, 2008

I’m proud to announce I brought up a new server. As always, this is a remote, geeky, for the hell of it type of server. It is self sufficient, requiring no external help “per se”. The server is powered by a bank of golf cart batteries, 6 of them to be exact, in series and parallel, giving me 12 volts. From there, we have a 480 Watt inverter. Quick tests/math guesses give me 25-32 hours of power without any external sources. To recharge the batteries, I have a 500 Watt turbine connected directly to the batteries. The turbine has a built-in overcharge unit to keep from killing the batteries. The server runs idly at around 58 Watts and 190 Watts at full load. I had to use an external video card because the onboard card added an extra 12 Watts (vs 2 Watts for an older ATI card). The CPU was declocked 12% and that saved another 2-14 Watts (depending on load). For internet access, I am currently using an RJ45 cable running over the side of an apartment building to a cable modem running with a 20 meg connection and no blocked ports! I am building 2 cantenna’s as we speak, so it will be upgraded to a 108MB wireless connection tomorrow or the day after. So, it will be an almost 100% self reliant server! The cost of the turbine was totally not worth the electricity savings; but the geek factor makes it all so special!

What do I plan to do with this server? I have no idea. I put in 1TB of storage on a RAID 10, 4x500GB drives, SATA2. There is about 2GB of ram and it is running Windows 2003 Server as its host and VMWare server running another Windows 2003 Server and Debian J I will most likely use it as a form of storage and offload my web traffic on it when my other servers are overloaded.

Nothing like hosting your own backup solution, just need to upgrade my encryption algorithm: 3DES (encrypt/decrypt/encrypt, 1 KEY).

Tags: geeky, random, tech
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Broken toes and bad parking jobs

February 11th, 2008

Broken toes simply suck. You can break them, the doctors can tell you they’re broken, but there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Another rant for tonight? Parking. How many times have you come to a perfect spot that is just slightly screwed up? I have a reserved spot, however, someone found a way to take up too much damn room and take up my space. Yesterday, at the mall, I found a great spot. Near the main entrance of a store, loads of room, no complaints. After I was done what I came there to do, a lady hit me. Really. She opened her door and slammed against the car, leaving a nice and shiny new scratch. Her response? Sorry. And she walked away. Luckily, it is a rental and I was forced to pay that damn “accidental coverage”. I left a nice note in the window saying these exact words: “Thank you very much for slamming into my door and leaving a big scratch. Please be careful.”

Edit: I know this is completely random. I was debating between talking about Playboy models over the years or something really geeky about power generation and server placement.

Tags: broken bones, random, rants
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Visiting my real estate agent, seeing my old home and definitely not missing the snow.

February 10th, 2008

After being out of the country for a while for work, coming back home brought a lot of memories. Since I had to fly to the area on a business trip, I decided to take a bit of extra time to visit old friends and get some R&R. I drove to my old house to see if anything had changed and say hello to my real estate agent, who had actually bought my house and lived in it since. Getting back to the area, I realise just exactly how much I did not miss shoveling snow. Since moving to Seattle, I have never had to shovel snow. In fact, I do not even believe the city of Seattle has the equipment to shovel snow. I am pretty confident they just wait for it to melt away. I like being descriptive in text, but the amount of snow is just inconceivable, so I am posting a picture (I took a lot…).

This snapshot was taken from my old street. A lot of kids, not too much traffic, but nice and quiet. I could not get my house sold when I left town, but my real estate agent offered to buy it from me. I found it a bit odd, but I could care less: I got it sold! Well, sort of. My agent is still renting it from me, but it will eventually be sold!

Back to the snow: It sucks. You wake up to a generally fresh 1ft coat of snow in your drive way, spend an hour shoveling it, and spend another hour shoveling the snow that is plowed into your driveway from the road. Usually you do this twice a day, as, if you want to park your car in your own drive way at the end of the day, another plow happily filled your driveway while you were out.

I would really love to invent a type of energy efficient “snow box”, shaped like a green house, that would slowly melt the snow and make it “disappear”. I do not think it needs to really take in a lot of snow, but if it could dispose 1 to 2 sq ft of snow per day, you would be a very happy camper. Throw in R/O and you’ll have a great supply of water. No yellow snow please.

Tags: random, rants, snow
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Computer Engineering, Human Sexuality and Knitting

February 8th, 2008

Starting with last nights post: “ooops”. I wrote that from a night of heavy drinking (really awesome!) and that post originated from getting an email from my webhits logger. I keep a syn capture running *just in case* I get a DOS attack. Seeing I do not get a lot of hits, I had a low threshold. Last night, I got an email telling me my throughput was increased by 600%. Drinking and blogging is not a good idea and thus my stupid post. I wont remove it, but I had to mention that

Today I had to present at Concordia University in the heart of Montreal. I was early, as always, and I had time to kill. I explored the building and noticed a LOAD of sex posters, from STD studies, to kama sutra group sessions, to sex advice, to forms of new birth control, and more if I kept looking. This was all around the computer studies department, which was very amusing to me. This is Quebec, this is Montreal, so I should have expected this and not been as surprised. What caught me off guard was the knitting club being advertised too.

So there you have it, come to Concordia, learn computer engineering, find a partner and knit!

Tags: knitting, random, rants, women
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Keeping warm in a cold Montreal

February 7th, 2008

Here’s a bonus blog posting today.

I was bored and decided to walk around Montreal and see what the city had to offer on a Wednesday night. I am near McGuill University, so I should be bound to find local student bars. Having an almost non-existent drinking age should also aid in finding young people. However, my search was fruitless. Almost every bar was either a strip club or an empty bar.

It is a very cold night in Montreal, so maybe that is why people are staying home and not coming out. However, keeping warm in Montreal should not be hard. There are so many prostitutes wanting to go home with you it is eerily creepy and very disturbing. Walking into a dance club and sitting down for a drink, I was asked straight out: “do you want to go back home and screw?”. Telling her no was another story, I simply said I did not even know her name and it would never work out. I was not paying attention to her talking/story after I said that. About 5 minutes later, she moved onto another john in the bar. On my way back to the hotel, I was followed by yet another “lonely” girl asking why I was walking home alone. This was an easy turn down, I said I did not have money and she was welcome to watch a movie with me (ed note: I did not have any movies). She dissapeered just as quickly. And finally, when I pushed the hotel’s elevator button, there was yet ANOTHER prostitute sitting in the hotel’s lobby. How do I know she was a hooker? She asked if my “wife” was already in bed. I said yes and went to my room.

No, there was no wife in my room. There is no wife anywhere.

Tags: hookers, random, rants
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From winter hell, to random education, to winter hell, to a suite

February 6th, 2008

My morning started in a winter drive with around 5 feet of visibility. A decent speed of 40km/h was attained. Unfortunately, I did have to dodge the oddball idiot travelling way too fast. Luckily, they had a soft landing in the ditch. The drive that should have lasted 2 hours took well over 4 hours. After arriving at my destination, I was still quite early. Seeing that I was at a University I have never been before (or the city), I decided to spend my extra time exploring. This University (Queens) has a beautiful and old fashioned campus. The first building I decided to explore was a converted church to auditorium. It was amazing what they had inside. The best part was a teacher giving lessons on how to play an organ. I have always enjoyed listening and even watching someone play the organ. What happened next came as a complete surprise: I was asked if I would have liked to try! There was no cost, no one in line and I had to put on little booties. I told the teacher (I assume?) that I had no experience what so ever. She said that was okay and I would have a free 10 minute lesson with only my feet. I’m a slow learner, so I only got time to practice with my right foot. It was *awesome*. After that excitement was over (not really, I’m still excited 12 hours later), I explored the rest of the buildings, the library, the residence, everything I could possibly have time to walk. I did some PR and managed to get more people to attend my presentation outside of the small expected audience (definitely a plus!).

After a great 3 hour presentation, it was time to go. The snow storm got WORSE. Visibility was reduced, the roads were covered in snow, and the transport truck drivers drove like wild idiots. I watched a truck jackknife less than 100ft in front of me, I watched an SUV go sideways into the barrier and I followed a car that thought it would be safer to use two lanes, the shoulder, the other shoulder, back to the middle… It was not a fun drive. Total driving time: 6 hours, expected time: 3 hours. Chance of survival: 20%.

All is not all that bad. Once I had arrived at my hotel, I was put in a luxury suite because they sold mine. I am sitting here blogging on the 28^th floor of a Sheraton, enjoying a great view of the city of Montreal. Time to explore the street level and see what is going on in this busy city J

Tags: driving, education, random, rants
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#! ’s…really well. (even geeks need loving)

February 5th, 2008

The first time with her was amazing. Just watching her sitting there was incredible. I felt safe with her next to me. I held onto her and wanted her to also feel safe. I started to massage her neck. I continued to gently stroke her lips, watching them get firm with each rub. I could not suppress that urge to caress her neck. She turned towards me and tried to kiss me. I offered a peck and backed away, teasing her slightly, and then finally moving in for the kiss. I pulled away and gently removed her clothes. I massaged her back, arms and legs. I continued to massage her body until she could not handle the passion.

How can one find a girl this amazing, with so much passion, and hold onto her? A question I doubt to be answered anytime soon. Was this experience even real? Could I have dreamt this amazing experience?

The best moments of your life will forever be in your mind. The question is this: when telling other people your best experience, is there a difference between you actually living it or dreaming it?

Tags: love, random, rants, women
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Giving good blow…to a breathalyzer

February 3rd, 2008

3:30AM rolled around and I was driving with cruise control on my way home. I had a good night out with friends, played some board games and had tea. No, it was not your typical Saturday night of partying. Preparing for my flight the next day, I generally can never get to sleep. Something about being stressed about the littlest of things keeps me up the entire time. So, I pull an allnighter and relax.

Getting back to the drive home, I get pulled over by our finest state trooper in WA. Completely understandable; it is past 3am and it is indeed a Saturday night. What came next, was not as expected: A breathalyzer test! I had not taken a single drink of alcohol tonight, which apparently would have made things easier. Scoring a nice level of 0 causes the officer to make you test a few more times to make sure things are working properly.

After he concluded I was *safe*, he decided to give me a lecture on the dangers of drink driving. I was not sure what he was trying to get at, but he was very graphical about removing my body from the side of the highway if I ever did decide to drink and drive.

From now on, I should carry a small mickey with me and take a shot just before getting pulled over… should make for an interesting at the station, with no alcohol in your blood by the time you get blood tested

Tags: cops, random, rants
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Getting over one girl is not always as simple as getting under another

January 31st, 2008

Today’s posting is going to focus on three specific relationship scenarios. We got our couples who are just into each other, the couples who do not share the same craze and the couples who simply hate each other. I am not going to focus on the couples who are just into each other (eg: freshly dating) or the ones who hate each other (eg: the married ones).

It seems to almost always go like this: person A really likes person B, but person B feels leeched on and pushes person A back. Person A cannot have person B, without pushing away person B, losing person A, and thus completing the cycle of life. Generally, if person A does back off this cycle usually reverses itself. However, and generally, person A is never truly able to back off and we are still stuck on this ever winding downhill tumble. An interesting sign of dependence can be seen when person B does not feel as loved when person A does not feel as strongly as they once did (see 1). I will have to include a slight reference for my blog posting, as I cannot take 100% credit for some of these facts.

Why am I blogging this? It is this special scenario that always gets me going in circles: Person A really likes person B, person B does not want person A (eg: too clingy, possible fear of being hurt), yet person A keeps getting the attention of person C/D/et al. Psychologically and physically, person A can definitely take on C+n, at the cost of person B now being desirous. By this time, it is too late for person A to be with person B, as if person A did go back with person B, there is a high likelihood of person B taking the role of person A (see 2).

What goes on in my mind, and I always ask myself this time and time again, what should one do? Move on with your life, go after what you believe is right until the very end (eg: it’s just too damn expensive emotionally/economically to keep up, they get married to your best friend or run off with your sister)? Should one just move on at first opportunity and follow the path of getting over by getting under? Or should you do your best to be there for them until you no longer feel that same way? If you wait it out, improve yourself, become a better person; chances are, you may finally get what you want, but it would have already been too late…you’ve moved on.

1- (Norman, McKenna, Heyman. (2000). Couples’ shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 273–284.)

2- Korotayev, World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective, Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0.

Tags: advice, psych, random, rants
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