Todd’s Blog

At the request of my mother, I will post my Christmas list for interested parties.

1. Sony PSP Slim/Lite. Do not buy the original PSP, I want the newer, slimmer version. The model number should be PSP-2000.
2. 8 or 4 gig Memory Stick Duo. Only necessary if#1 is bought.
3. Addition Roland cymbal for my new drums. I have one input remaining so I might as well fill it with another cymbal.
   1. Roland CY-15R
   2. Roland CY-12R
   3. Roland CY-6
4. Roland MDY-10U cymbal mount if#3 is purchased
5. Dozens of Titleist Pro V1 balls.
6. Liquid Drum Theater DVD
7. Drumming shoes – size 13. Save the receipt in case I need a 12.

Our soccer team performed admirably this week as we defeated our nearest rivals 5-2. We were down 0-2 early on, but we scored our first goal ten minutes later to give us some more breathing room. We went to half 1-2 and within another fifteen minutes we quickly scored two goals to take the 3-2 advantage. Erin put in another goal with 7 minutes left to give us a 5-2 lead.

The other team played commendably, especially their goalie. Tom, our goalie, also played very well. The score would have easily been much higher if for not the efforts of those two.

First place for now!

I played OK, had a few good passes here and there.

Our team won by a healthy margin, 16-1. There was only one sub during the game so I was able to play for a long time. Since we had such a large lead, there was little thought to team organization so I played forward for a little bit. I managed to force an own-goal against the other team by centering a ball towards the goalie. And then I scored my first goal ever in the second half. Pretty lousy shot, but it ended up directly in the corner. I had some additional chances later on, but I failed to convert them.

I’m getting better. My hands are in acceptable shape but my feet are atrocious. I can barely play quick doubles anymore. I’ve been reading the web about some improvement tips when I came upon the mention of wearing ankle weights to help develop your stroke. So I went out to Sport’s Authority today and bought some 2.5 lb. weights for each ankle. I tried them out today and wow, I like them. I could still play normally as the weights are too overpowering. I played for a good 15-20 minutes of heaving bass work, doing alternating LLLLLLLL-RRRRRRRR as well as long stretches of LLL RRR. When my right leg couldn’t keep up I knew it was time for a rest. I decided to take off the weights and see how they felt and it was like I was floating on air. A nice improvement in only one session.

Of course I realize it will take me weeks of practicing to get where I want to be, but I’m on my way now.

Here’s a picture of my kit

My trusty network switch died yesterday. I was unable to unlock my screen from my terminal, xscreensaver was just hanging. I know this symptom quite well. I run a Windows domain on my main server and I use LDAP authentication to sync passwords with my Linux and Windows machines. When the network craps out, anything user related also craps out – such as xscreensaver having me unlock my screen.

So the first step is to see if I can ssh into my server. No dice, can’t connect. I try pinging to no avail. This means I have to drag the monitor from upstairs and connect it to my headless server. I saw the hard drive lights flashing on the server so the first thing that went into my mind was ‘uh oh, I hope a hacker’s not in there.’ Fortunately I have my system locked down quite well. I logged into the root account and did a quite check of the system. Everything seemed normal. dmesg revealed that eth0 went down. Ok, so I performed a quick /etc/init.d/net.eth0 restart. Everything looked like it worked, so I tried to ping my other machine. Nothing. Hm weird.

So finally I opened the network cabinet and lo and behold, the switch has no LED indicators. So I tried unplugging it and and replugging it in, no such luck. It’s dead Jim.

I setup a crappy 100 Mbps 5 port switch in the meantime and did some research for new switches. Of course it needs to have at least 8 ports, be gigabit capable and support jumbo frames. Found a nice Netgear GS108 at Fry’s Electronics today. Working well so far!

Be warned however, there are two different boxes for the GS108. If you look at the date on the bottom of the box, it shows 2006 or 2007. Naturally I picked up the 2007. Let’s see how this switch handles being shoved in my mini-network-closet-embedded-in-my-wall at 86 degrees ambient T outside the cabinet. I can only imagine the heat inside.