8 new spark plugs

2010-01-19 | #General #Owen

Lately, my truck has been stalling when I make a stop. It happens more frequently in the mornings, and while I’m on an upward incline, though it doesn’t seem to matter if I let my truck warm up or take off cold. My Brother-in-Law, Charles, recommended that I replace the spark plugs and check the air filter. His simple statement of “Sure, you could do it…” was enough for me to decide I was going to do all 8 (and he did remind me there were 8, thanks for the vote of confidence Chuck :) ).


recent music purchases

2010-01-16 | #Music

Not an instrument, but albums. I enjoy listening to music a lot, it makes my commute better, it makes jogging a lot of fun, and sometimes I don’t mind running errands because it gives me a good reason to listen to a new album. So, here are a few albums that I’ve recently picked up and really enjoyed. [caption id=“attachment_698” align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Roger Waters - Amused to Death”][/caption] Fist off, check out that cover, that looks like a movie poster of something I’d watch.


new aussie

2010-01-10 | #Family

We have been talking about getting a new dog, off and on, for a year or so. There was very little doubt that it would have been anything other than an Australian Shepherd, since I’ve been pretty vocal about that. That, and I try to abduct everyone else aussie. So, now I have my own, and he’s pretty freakin’ awesome. Let’s talk about names. I’ve had a rough time picking one, nothing has really lived up to how awesome this dog is.


freebsd 8 0 a great nas server

2009-12-22 | #Featured #FreeBSD #Geekyness #kickassery #Samba #ZFS

I need to share this. When I google for “Samba performance”, I never see real numbers, real configuration files, or real hardware environments. All I read are anecdotal recollections, and that is not good enough. I like numbers, and I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves: > netstat -I em0 -w 1 input (em0) output packets errs bytes packets errs bytes colls 90166 0 98762637 95363 0 5332847 0 18131 0 24713156 20042 0 1123684 0 4 0 310 1 0 178 0 8 0 518 1 0 178 0 10153 0 10952920 10696 0 598129 0 92990 0 102837002 98476 0 5514994 0 92025 0 102680574 97277 0 5439496 0 92080 0 101799874 97403 0 5448637 0 75348 0 90861608 80972 0 4537737 0 90895 0 100323946 95781 0 5360948 0 89313 0 97371154 94364 0 5278618 0 81363 0 89229738 85861 0 4803589 0 2 0 126 3 0 286 0 I was so shocked that I had to use gstat and zpool iostat to verify the information:


wushu west 2009 12 20

2009-12-21 | #Christmas #conditioning #Wushu #Wushu

Patti called me on Friday, and invited me to come Sunday for a workout and food. This has always been a nice little tradition at Wushu West, Patti likes to do this around the holidays. I was pretty excited, I haven’t been to wushu since June/July, when they all went to China for the summer. I have sort of enjoyed my free Tuesday and Thursday nights, and so has Caralyne.


kringle

2009-12-19 | #Cooking #Cooking #Good Eats #Kringle

Tools 2 cookie sheets 1 large mixing bowl 1 medium mixing bowl parchment paper The Ingredients The Dry Stuff 4 cups of AP flour 1 cup of Vegetable Shortening (original recipe called for lard, Michele winced at the mention of that though :) ) 3 tablespoons of sugar 1 teaspoon of kosher salt The Wet Stuff 1 package of dry yeast 1/2 cup of lukewarm water 3 egg yolks 1 cup of lukewarm milk


noooo gasp ooooo

2009-12-13 | #guitar #Music #Owen

NOOOOOO todo OOOOOOOO todo OOOOOOOOO todo OOOOO!!!!! todo !!! I came home with Owen last night, it was dark in the house. I was going to Owen’s room to get him ready for bed, and I went to the corner of the room to turn the light on. What I forgot, and didn’t see, was my guitar that I left of the floor. I normally lean it up against my computer, or the wall, but sometimes I’ll leave it on the floor to encourage Owen to play with it.


why you should use disk labels

2009-12-10 | #FreeBSD #Geekyness #GEOM #Jenny #Labels

I recently had a little problem with a new FreeBSD install, and it is one of those times were I sort of appreciate how FreeBSD assigns device handles, yet at the same time hate it :) The setup is this: The OS was installed on a mirrored hardware raid device (using the mpt(4) driver), and then I had a large RAID6 array attached via a FC controller (using the isp(4) driver).


the tree

2009-12-06 | #General #Owen #yard work

A few weeks ago, I was snapping some pictures of Owen in the back yard todo Owen outside And I brought the camera focus on my long time yard nemesis: todo Ugly Palm Tree cluster No one was home (beside Owen), which means I didn’t have any adult supervision, and I wanted to see how difficult it would be to cut the tree down. I grabbed my small hand saw and cut down one of the trees.