WIJFR: The Wizardry Consulted

After rescuing the world from the creatures of darkness and chaos by applying a few computer logistics, Programmer and Systems Analyst Extraordinaire Wiz Zumwalt finds himself in another fix when he is kidnapped by dragons.

“The Wizardry Consulted” by Rick Cook is my latest iPhone/Stanza read. Resuming the story three years after “The Wizardry Cursed,” this next installment finds Wiz stranded in a provincial town far to the lands of the North, having been kidnapped by Wurm the dragon. He is there, ostensibly, to help the townsfolk solve their “dragon problem” but ends up mired in council politics. Luckily, Wiz’s former life as a computer programmer and consultant lets him fast-talk around the council, baffling them with confusing presentations, graphic slides, project plans, and buzzwords.

As with the other books, a heathly dose of technology-meets-magic is mixed in: the internet, IRC chat, e-mail, packet routing, and the FBI all play a part. There was even a mention of the Cleveland Freenet, which was one of my first experiences with the internet back in the day (my user ID was ag154). Much like the second book, the narrative is split: Wiz and his dealings with the council, townspeople, and dragons; and then the rest of the folks back at the Wizard’s Keep (Jerry, Danny, Moira, etc.) who are trying to track Wiz down and rescue him from his kidnappers.

Unfortunately, it looks like the fifth book, “The Wizardry Quested,” was never published as an e-book and the paperback is out-of-print ($300 for a new copy on Amazon!?). Additionally, Rick Cook never finished the sixth (and final?) “The Wizardry Capitalized” but has put the unfinished manuscript online. So it looks like I’m done with this series unless I get motivated to read the partial manuscript. Overall, though, it was very enjoyable series to read. Fare thee well, Sparrow!

WIJFR: Cross Country

Alex Cross, a Washington, D.C., police detective, takes on a human monster known as the Tiger with ties to the African underworld. When the Tiger and his teenage thugs butcher writer Ellie Cox, her husband and children in their Georgetown home, Cross is devastated because Ellie had been his girlfriend in college. The Cox family massacre proves to be just the first in a series. Cross pursues the Tiger to Nigeria, where the profiler finds himself at the mercy of corrupt government officials who may be working with the Tiger.

I just finished James Patterson’s 14th Alex Cross thriller, “Cross Country.” I’ve read other Patterson books in the past, but never any of the Alex Cross novels (though I have seen the movies of “Kiss the Girls” and “Along Came a Spider”).

I don’t have that much to say about it: Cross ends up chasing a killer from D.C. to Africa in a hunt that takes him to Darfur, Sierra Leone, Lagos, and other impoverished locations. I’m not trying to be insensitive, but after a while it felt like I was reading a political statement instead of a novel. It just wasn’t that interesting or thrilling to me and maybe that’s the reason I wasn’t that impressed (plus, I could only see Morgan Freeman in my head as I was reading).

The novel is not short, but at 403 pages it contains 158 chapters. That’s about 2.5 pages per chapter! As a result the narrative seemed choppy, but on the other hand it read very quickly (and gave me lots of places to stop). Maybe Patterson’s earlier Alex Cross stuff is better and after 14 books, the ideas are running out …

Acer Aspire Revo 3610

My Dell OptiPlex Linux server was getting louder and hotter in its old age. For the past three years it has been running 24×7 as my media server in the closet. The fan in the power supply had started to whine (especially when the CPU was maxed), and I already lost one hard drive to a crash earlier in the year. I decided it was time to replace it and started looking for smaller, quieter, more power-efficient alternatives.

I call this box a server because it hosts this blog, a small Gallery site, some home media applications for my TiVos, and is running all the time, but I don’t need a server-class machine. My past Linux machines have traditionally been older desktops, even a laptop! So the latest crop of nettops seemed like an ideal solution.

After researching products like the Asus EeeBox, the MSI WindBox, and even the Dell Studio Hybrid I decided on the Acer Aspire Revo 3610. This little box packs in Intel’s dual-core Atom N330  CPU (1.60GHz), 2gb of RAM, nVidia’s ION graphics chipset, and a 160gb hard drive. Peripherals and storage can be connected via the 6 USB ports (one of which is used for the included wireless keyboard a mouse), the eSATA connector, and the SD card reader, and network connectivity includes a gigabit network connection and B/G/N wireless. The Revo has no optical drive, but experience with my EeePCs has made me comfortable with booting/installing from other removable media like USB thumb drives, so no biggie there. Also, since I’m not using the Revo as an HTPC I won’t be using the HDMI or digital audio (SPDIF) connections, but they’re there. The Revo comes with Windows 7 Home Premium pre-installed (although I wish Acer sold a cheaper version without it). If you’re going to use it as an HTPC it comes with a mounting plate so you can attach it right to the back of your HDTV.

My plan was always to put the latest version of Ubuntu on the box. Warranties be damned! After unpacking my new Revo, before even turning it on, I immediately cracked it open, thinking I would make an image backup of Windows 7 just in case (since it comes without a rescue disc). Unfortunately, even with my lack of fear for warranty-voiding, removing the hard drive involved more steps than I was willing to take. So rather than wiping the drive and starting clean, I booted Windows 7, did some initial setup, and then shrunk the primary partition so I could dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu. Considering the current server only had a 30gb hard drive in it (and most of my media is on external NASes), having a 60gb partition for Ubuntu was acceptable to me.

Installing Lucid Lynx didn’t go as smoothly as I anticipated, however. The 64-bit version (imaged onto a 2gb USB stick) wouldn’t even boot correctly and the 32-bit version would start and then complain it couldn’t find the CD-ROM. After figuring out how to manually boot the installer from the command-line, I found this blog post that helped me get through the rest of my installation issues. Shortly, I had my Revo set up as a 64-bit Linux server!

It took me a few days to get everything transferred from the old server to the Revo and then get everything set up and configured the way I wanted. So far I am very impressed with the Revo. It’s very quiet, even when both cores are busy (i.e., folding a work unit and transcoding a video file), and my UPS utilization dropped from 29% to 10%! That’s a serious cut in power consumption. I have noticed a slight performance decrease over the old Pentium 4 Dell, but nothing major and it was expected. It’s well worth the trade-off for the reduced noise and power usage, though!

Out with the old, in with the new!

Sears warranty repair rant

Back on Wednesday, April 21, our four year-old front-loading Sears Kenmore Elite HE4t washer broke. It was in the final spin cycle and somehow got unbalanced which caused the inner tub to spin erratically. It made a loud grinding/squealing noise and then stopped with an F06 diagnostic code.

I called Sears customer support and was told the F06 was some sort of electrical malfunction. The service rep was able to fit us in for the next day and it would cost the basic $129 for the on-site visit/repair.

The next day after just 15 minutes the repairman determined that the entire inner tub assembly of the washer would need to be replaced. Luckily the tub was still covered under the warranty, but it would take a few days for the three big parts to arrive. He estimated he could come back next Thursday to finish the repair.

On Tuesday, the 27th, we received an automated message on our answering machine from Sears asking us to call back about rescheduling our service appointment. No parts had arrived yet. We called and were told one of the parts was back-ordered and would not make it in time for the Thursday appointment. Instead, they wanted to reschedule for Monday, May 3. If all the parts arrived earlier, the service rep told us, we could call back and try to get an earlier service appointment.

Now, according to the receipt for the parts left by the original repairman, the cost of these replacement parts was almost as much as the washer cost us new back in 2006 (over $1,200!). Rather than have to wait another 6 days to have a working washer again (it’s already been 6 days at this point), we asked the service rep if it made more sense for Sears to just give us a whole new washer that could probably be in our home in a day or so. We figured in the end it would save Sears money since there was the cost of the parts plus the time and labor of the repairman. The rep told us that wasn’t their warranty policy and our only option was to wait for the parts. Nice, thanks.

Thursday evening (April 29), all three parts of the tub assembly arrived. They came via UPS Ground from the Sears Parts/Outlet seven miles away from our house! I probably could have driven there and picked up the parts faster, or at least the repair guy could have. Why ship them UPS Ground a mere seven miles? Whatever, fine, the parts are here. We call Sears and are told there are no available appointments for Friday the 30th so we’ll have to stick with our original Monday window. Grrrrr.

Monday, May 3 arrives and we’re joyously anticipating the return of our washer usage later that evening. After lunch, my wife calls me at work: the guys arrived and discovered that more parts are needed! Yep, day 12 without the washer and we have to wait on another $60 in parts (which are probably going to ship from that same center down the street).

Those additional parts are expected to arrive tomorrow and the next service call is scheduled for Thursday (day 15). Of course we just happen to have out-of-town guests arriving on Thursday, and our laundry room is part of the guest bathroom, so that’ll be yet another inconvenience. If the parts don’t arrive tomorrow and we have to re-schedule the service call again … well, I don’t want to think about that right now.

I’m pretty upset with how Sears has handled this so far. They could have (presumably) saved some cash and (definitely) saved some customer frustration and loss of goodwill by just replacing the entire washer.

Leaping with the Lucid Lynx

Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) was released last week so over the weekend I completed three installs.

I did a clean install (from a USB thumb drive) onto my sandbox EeePC 4G Surf that was running an older build of Chrome. Ubuntu now calls this smaller build the UNE (netbook edition) instead of the UNR (netbook remix). It looks basically the same as before, except for the new purplish color scheme.

On my EeePC 900A, I did an in-place upgrade install via the Update Manager:

I had to free up about 200mb on the 900A in order to download the upgrade since the 4gb SSD in that netbook was too full, but once I did that, the rest of the upgrade was smooth and painless.

On my server, I did the normal command-line upgrade I’ve used for the past few releases. Having done this quite a few times now I have excellent notes (if I do say so myself) so it’s relatively easy to put back my customizations and settings where necessary. I did run into two post-upgrade problems, however. First, I was getting blank pages from Gallery and seeing segmentation faults in the Apache error log. I was able to work around this by switching from the ‘mysqli’ driver to the ‘mysqlt’ setting. Next, nut would no longer recognize my USB-connected UPS but I found this bug on Launchpad and was able to download a patch to get it working again.

Let’s go Cavs!

My Cleveland Cavaliers open up the second round of the 2010 NBA Playoffs tonight in Cleveland against the Boston Celtics. The big news, of course, other than LeBron James becoming the 10th player in history to win the MVP award two times in a row, is James’ elbow, which started giving him trouble at the end of Game 5 against the Bulls (leading to a missed left-handed foul shot). Will “The Elbow” be added to Cleveland’s list of Championship Frustrations?

Of course, Cavs fans are nervous. They remember the disappointments of “Red Right 88,” “The Drive,” “The Fumble,” “The Shot,” and finally, Jose Mesa’s meltdown in the 1997 World Series. So, nobody here wants “The Elbow” to nudge its way into such infamy.

I hope not! I’ve already got lunch at the Cheesecake Factory riding on the Cavs’ winning the second round (I made a bet with a Boston fan colleague at work).

Let’s go Cavs!

WIJFR: Anathem

On the far-future Earth-like planet, Arbre, scientists, philosophers and mathematicians—a religious order unto themselves—have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. Their role is to nurture all knowledge while safeguarding it from the vagaries of the irrational saecular outside world. Among the monastic scholars is 19-year-old Raz, collected into the concent at age eight and now a decenarian, or tenner (someone allowed contact with the world beyond the stronghold walls only once a decade). But millennia-old rules are cataclysmically shattered when extraterrestrial catastrophe looms, and Raz and his teenage companions—engaging in intense intellectual debate one moment, wrestling like rambunctious adolescents the next—are summoned to save the world.

I just finished Neal Stephenson’s “Anathem.” Considering it took me about 4 months of occasional reading to get through the 761 pages of “Blue Mars,” completing the 981 pages of “Anathem” in just under two months was definitely faster than I expected.

I’ve read all of Stephenson’s previous work, so it was a no-brainer that I would read “Anathem.” I didn’t even really know what it was about other than it took place on another planet, which immediately differentiates it from all of his prior works. You also know you’re in for it when the book starts out with a “note to the reader” containing a detailed historical time line and almost Dune-like glossary. Oh oh! So the first few chapters were pretty rough, trying to wrap my brain around the new vocabulary and immersing myself in the world of Erasmas, the narrative main character. Arbre is a strange place, but luckily there are similarities to our own world. For example, can you guess what kind of person an Ita is from this definition in The Dictionary?

Ita: A caste dwelling in the mathic world but segregated from the avout, responsible for all functions having to do with syntactic devices and the Reticulum.

Sound like anyone you know? There’s a hint in the first two letters. 😉

While perusing Neal Stephenson’s website earlier this evening, I discovered that there’s actually a trailer for the book!

There are also some good interviews here where Stephenson describes how he came up with the idea (he even mentions “Dune” and the glossary!) and how it ties in with his other books at a philosophical level. If you’re thinking about reading “Anathem” take a few minutes and watch the videos, it’s worth it. In fact, all of the introductory information on his site of course does a better job than I could do here describing the book. Be sure to go back when you’re done too, he’s even got some of the avout chants there from the musical score.

I worked out to my benefit that I started “Anathem” during my trip to Arizona for Spring Training because it gave me the chance to really focus and get sucked into the story. If I had started reading it in 20-page chunks as I am wont to do, I probably would have been more confused and not as enthralled. Check out this blog post I found that’s pretty accurate in describing how it can be hard to “get into” this particular book.

To close out this post, here’s a funny quote from the book that I actually marked so I would remember to mention it. I found it to be a comedic, yet strangely accurate, summary of the novel:

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,” I said. “We have a protractor.”
“Ok, I’ll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.”
“That’d be great.”

More Wii homebrew: running games from a USB hard drive

I dabbled in Wii homebrew last year but didn’t do much beyond getting the Homebrew Channel working and messing around with a few apps. Then last week I saw this post on Lifehacker and thought, I have got to try this. The Lifehacker tutorial is pretty straightforward … the Wii hacking community has done some amazing work to make the soft modding process easy and (almost) risk-free. At least I haven’t bricked my own Wii, which is running the latest 4.2 firmware, yet.

I already had the HBC installed and working, but the first problem I encountered was during the DOP-Mii step. For some reason my Wii wasn’t able to download the IOS updates/patches from NUS (Nintendo’s Update Servers), the same issue as described here (even though wireless connection was working). I wasn’t able to figure out how to get the required WADs onto my SD card for a local install, and trying to re-run the DOP-Mii step was now causing scary crash messages, so I gave up. I noticed that after attempting this, when my daughter went to play Wii Sports Resort, the Wii re-downloaded a system update, so luckily that seemed to reverse whatever the failed DOP-Mii patcher had done to the IOS.

A few days later I found another guide at WiiHacks.com and decided to give this another shot. This time I had the required WAD patches downloaded locally on my SD card so the DOP-Mii step worked as expected. But then I ran into a problem trying to install the cIOS. After some more Google searching I figured out I had to use the AnyTitle Deleter to clear out IOS249 before the new custom IOS would load properly (it’s possible that this was something left over from my last experiment with homebrew). After getting past all of that, though, I was able to complete the rest of the Lifehacker guide as documented.

For my initial testing, I used an old 40gb laptop hard drive I had laying around connected to a barebones USB adapter (pictured to the left) but I’ve since switched to a 320gb WD Elements drive split into two 160gb partitions (one WBFS, one exFAT).

Using the amazing USB Loader GX app, I backed up all of my games to the hard drive and then had it download the various box and CD cover art. It looks fantastic:

I tested running a few games from the hard drive and they worked just fine (even the online ones like Mario Kart). Sweet! Check out this little video I made to see it in action.

A helpful note: I kept having problems where the USB Loader would crash. It turned out that while moving the SD card back and forth between my PC and Wii, at some point the lock switch moved down slightly so the card was effectively read-only. Fixing the switch resolved the crashes. Just something to keep an eye out for!

Maybe we should have played P-I-G

My daughter’s basketball practice was canceled this evening so we drove over to the local park to shoot some hoops so she could still get some “practice” in.

After some warm-ups and basic practice, the three of us decided to play H-O-R-S-E. Needless to say with my daughter being relatively new to basketball, she quickly fell behind. When she missed another shot and got her “S” she cried out in frustration: “stupid hors!” (read that aloud if you don’t get it).

My wife and I looked at each other for a second, then couldn’t help ourselves and burst out laughing. Of course my daughter thought we were laughing at her and got even more upset so we had to try to (delicately) explain why what she had said was funny.

We’ll definitely play with a different word next time. 😉