Such horridly primitive working conditions you must suffer.

 

Mrs. Joe Perez seen here changing reels on his new tape backup system!



The only reason we use tape is for offsite backup. We contract with a secure transport and storage outfit who shuffles the tapes around for us. I <3 virtualization, but we need another SAN

One of our CORAID SANs straight up FAILED right after the company went out of business so we scrambled and went Dell for a replacement. We've grown to the size of our fishbowl and need MOAR SPACE so its going to be Dell or HP this time around. There is talk of something SSD or full on flash based but I think that well is going to dry up when we start getting quotes.

 

Yeah, you're right. There were a couple of different bugs (one race condition, one overflow), but philosophically similar. The programmer didn't properly deal with a counter reaching its maximum value, and people died as a result.

Windows '95 was another good example- it had a timer that wrapped at 49.7 days, and subsequently crashed the system. Now, most end-users never experienced 49 days of continuous uptime on a PC of any kind during that era, but it caused all manner of hell for people who built industrial control systems.

Back at PR&E, we used an embedded PC running Windows in a couple of our products, and didn't find that particular bug until after several of the Integrity digital audio consoles had already shipped to customers.

 

People are weird, man.

I'm selling the 1994 Miata. Guy meets me on Wednesday evening and looks at the car. Bit of a hassle as he went to the wrong place first, but no big deal. He likes the car, seems excited. Says he's taking a bodywork course and wants a cheap fun car to try some dent repair and paintwork on. Perfect. Says he gets paid on Friday so we agree to meet today after work.

He texts this morning and wants to negotiate. I normally only negotiate in person but tell him I can agree on his price but that means I won't negotiate further in person.

Good signs later on, he's texting me saying he just got the cash out of the bank, etc.

One hour before we are to meet, he sends me a text saying he just left a used car lot and he bought an almost new Audi A4, and (for some reason) also tells me he didn't think he could get financing. I wait for a bit but no further texts arrive so I ask just to be clear, "So you're backing out?" One word reply: "Yes."

​​​​​Okay, I guess. I hope he's happy with his financed used Audi.

 

​​​​​​tons of people like that man. I'm trying to sell my v8 wrangler and have had couple of those people. I had one guy agree on the price of 5300, he comes he checks it out. crank it over, runs fine for 10 mins as hes walking around and looking at everything. After hes done looking we shut it off. We get ready to start signing. the guy goes i only brought 2k.. umm 2k when we agreed on 5300... 2k for a v8 6.0 wrangler with the appropriate drivetrain with just over 90k miles on the drive train.

 

I forgot the (kind of) funny part.

The only reason he saw that Audi was because when he went to the wrong meeting place on Wednesday evening, I was a nice guy and went and met him there...across the street from the used car lot.

 

I still kinda want it.
But 100 miles a day on the highway would kill it i'm sure.

 

Update: I replaced the machine.

 

My barber uses his fingers to apply shaving cream, then smoothes it with the backside of the straight razor. I approve of this technique



Having resided in Chicago for three months now, I can attest that this law could stand to be enforced more vigorously, and in cases other than just horse-riding. Holy ****, people in the midwest are fat, lazy and stupid...



The above also applies to this law. In fact, **** jail; we need to build an Auschwitz-style camp to deal with them all.

 

To be honest, i still get the urge to work on it but working on it out of an apartment building sucks. obviously no garage and second, no room for large tools and materials like steel and a welder.

 

Took it apart today, that is confirmed. the plastic teeth thing ripped from the tip of the antenna so it would just spin in the housing. Took it apart, cleaned it, lubed it up with some ky put it all together and ordered an antenna mast.

 

First snow in Chicago today. The Continental ExtremeContact DWS on my Mazda3 have me considering selling my dedicated snow tires. The DWS holds its own pretty well in the snow, based on my test drive on a few snowcovered sidestreets.

 

Irony:

Six months after I wrote that, I was spending 3-4 hours a day commuting in from Metro North territory like the peasants.

That was an annoying year.

 

No ****. The view from my condo is bleak:





Serious: buy a good set of snow tires. I mounted the Michelin Xi3s last weekend- those tires got me through the Snowpocalypse in NY two years ago without even coming remotely close to getting stuck once.

 

Not an aviation expert either, but I am aware of at least one route which could conceivably result in the plane being continuously powered on. United is flying 787s between Auckland and San Francisco, a 9-10 hour flight. Those planes are probably never powered done unless done so deliberately; they land, get cleaned/restocked, and the return flight boards. I'm sure there are other examples of continuous there and back again routes like this.

 

I have just received $40 Steam monies.

Suggestions? Ill probably get Overwatch regardless, but....

 

I'm kind of surprised you can fly a 787 for 500 hours continuously without needing to take it out of service for some kind of scheduled maintenance.

--Ian

 

I would have to imagine that it's in the best interest of Boeing to minimize the amount of maintenance required by a new airframe. As they get older, they do tend to need more maintenance, but seems to me that for periodic service checks, an airline would want to maximize it's ability to conduct those checks either via minimally invasive procedures during refueling/restocking the aircraft, or electronically via said computer-that-can't-be-trusted-to-run-for-more-than-about-three-weeks.

The military tends to go way overboard on maintenance requirements; most especially for rotary wing aircraft (helicopters). An example is that blackhawks, which are big, heavy, and relatively ancient, require upwards of 10 hours of maintenance for every 1 hour of flight time, depending on the current operational requirements (10:1 is low demand CONUS). I'm sure they could probably get away with far less than that, but the more time is spent maintaining it in a low demand environment, the less time is required on the airframe when it is rotated into theater - that and the fact that while a malfunction on a commercial airline flight can result in a diverted flight, a helicopter in a combat situation rarely has the luxury of simply diverting for - say - a degraded pitch bearing. Better to replace those when they're still good than clean up the mess after they have failed, after all, even though a blackhawk has 4 blades on the main rotor, it's not exactly a redundant system like the second engine on the 787.

 

At my last assignment in the Air Force I learned much about helicopter maintenance. The Army depot supplies parts for the H-60's. Well, the Air Force has much more stringent inspection requirements than the Army, so, many parts get rejected by us. The Army doesn't have those requirements as part of their process and tells us there's nothing they can do to make sure we get the "right" parts. It ends up as a constant parts exchange until we receive something that actually meets the AF requirements.

 

Boeing's specs for the 787 say that the line-maintenance interval (Boeing's terminology for an A-check) is every 1,000 flight hours. The A-check isn't a major event, it's just giving the plane a once-over as it's parked at the gate at night- they pull oil for analysis, check the brake pads & tire pressure, inspect control surfaces, etc. So it's entirely conceivable that the aircraft would remain on shore-power during that period. Base maintenance, where it actually gets hangered and torn into properly, is every 36 months.

Makes sense, given that decreased maintenance cost and downtime is a huge selling point for Boeing on the '87. For comparison, line-maintenance intervals are 600 hours for the 777, 700 hours for the A330 and 300 hours for the 767. In reality, most carriers have much more aggressive maintenance schedules- Air Canada, for instances, gives their 787s a line-check every 150 hours or 8 days- but you gotta consider what the budget carriers are gonna do.



Related: I noticed a couple of weeks ago that JAL is apparently fighting against the Empire.