For some reason the x-server died when starting up Evolution. I had to kill the email client twice and eventually reboot the server. The reboot hung will one of the CPUs “got stuck” so the power had to be yanked.

The last time the server rebooted was about 4 months ago when we had a power failure at three in the morning and the time between reboots triggered a forced fsck.

I sorta hold my breath when I reboot servers or even my workstation. You never know when it the computer may not come up clean so I just leave them running 24/7. But this time, the server did not come up clean.

When fsck fails in the bootup script you simply run fsck on the device in question, or /dev/sda1 and the problem goes away after the scan finishes and corrects the errors.

Somehow fsck kept failing over and over which brings me to the title of this post “Gin and Tonic.”

At work we have two servers “gin” and of course “tonic”.  Tonic’s been a very reliable server but for some reason we have to reboot it several times a week.  In our geekiness, gin was the next server we added to support software development.

But all I could think after all these reboots of my dedicated server was poor old tonic and it’s root problem which has yet been located.  I digress.

After a few more reboots and a fsck on “/” instead of /dev/sda1 seemed to resolve the problem. Who knows.  I just hope my server doesn’t become a Gin and Tonic problem.

Decades of an unergonomic work environment really caused severe tenosynovitis in my wrists and right shoulder. For whatever reason, the inflammation reared it’s ugly head with such intensity that work was nearly impossible.  Ten days after giving blood, the pain was bad enough to seek medical help because the 1600 mg of Advil a day just wasn’t reducing the inflammation anymore.

I guess my mind was playing tricks on my, but with the bluish-yellow bruise from the blood donation, my only thought was that it was infected and the source of the pain.  Just tenderness and slightest touch in the area was magnified 10 fold due to the tenosynovitis.

Luckily, there was no infection or blood clot.  Just continue on the anti-imflammatories until the pain subsides.  Some physical therapy to boot.

Sorry, I digressed, but to make the point clear, an ergonomic environment really reduces this type of injury and makes it easier to recover while continue working.

I splurged and installed an HumanScale keyboard tray because in my honest opinion the best that I’ve ever used.  This is the second one I installed in the house.

My original plan was to install keyboard trays underneath the built-in desks in our home office.  But I never got around to it because I liked the keyboard on top of the desk even though it was awkward and never quite the right height and position.

I took about an hour to install.  I’m sure that anyone else could have done it faster.  It just took me about 15 minutes to find the tools that I’ve left scattered all about the house.   The 1″ thick desktop is dense and even after drilling starter holes, I had trouble attaching the base plate while laying on my back.

With base plate screwed to the bottom of the desktop, you then add the back rubber stoppers, insert the sliding adjustable keyboard mechanism and then the front stopper.   The tray comes with cable attachments so your mouse and keyboard wires are kept out of the way.  I use the wireless Microsoft Natural Mouse so there is no mouse wires to worry about.

An additional  feature about having a under desk keyboard tray is that you get an extra 2 square feet of desktop that you can now use.  My desk should be nice and clean which should make me and my wife very happy!

Joking …

Sometimes you have weird dreams like tossing in the towel and taking a life of a less stressful job like a Truck Driver making runs up and down the frozen lakes of Yellowknife Canada.

I only know of a developer who actually tossed in the towel.  He and his wife sold their house at one of the California housing peaks in the late 80’s.  Quit their jobs and moved to Canada.  Eventually got bored and took a job as a bus boy.

He resumed his development career after he figured out that he was taking the same amount of carp but was getting paid 10x less.

But my Ice Road Trucker dream is still a reality and I’m planning to take off one winter to see if I can at least drive 18-wheels as good as four.  I’m sure that Hugh Rowland would hire me to drive one of his trucks.

Now how do I get this thing out of first gear?

Please, someone at Intuit tell me why?  The last time I had to upgrade from Quicken 2002 to Quicken 2005 was because Intuit changed the QIF API to OFX.   I loved 2002 with a very natural UI and hated 2005 with it’s new UI.  Took me months to get used to it.

After I upgrade to Quicken 2008 and find out that Intuit didn’t change the API or put a stupid Office 2007 UI, guess what, I’m not going to upgrade to Quicken 2011 in three years.

I’ve been planning to retire PLMS1 this year, trying to go green and virtualize servers on a multi-core workstation. Another 6 months and PLMS1 would have been decommissioned and moved over to a Virutal Ubutu server.

So now, some of my development projects are put on hold right now. God, sometimes I just hate computers.

Excerpt From My First Dictation (unedited):

This is a review of Dragon natural speaking. Getting used to the headset is very difficult that tends to squeeze my head and makes my ear hurt. Perhaps this is why it took me almost 3 months to install the software.

So I decided to go to Wal-Mart and picked up a wireless microphone however the quality of the microphone was not good enough so I had to use the default headset.

Out of eight bucks, I installed software ran the utility to train my voice and my dictation and now I’m writing this article without typing.

It’s a pretty good utility that is easy to use, very productive, and very easy to learn.

Some of the important commands are:
“undo” (I had to type this ’cause it kept undonig it)
“select”
“go to end”

The undo command basically is a oops allowing you to correct your mistake. The select command allows you to select words or phrases enabling you to correct those on-the-fly.

The undo command allows you to correct the last mistake; however, it only allows you to correct one mistake. That is, it doesn’t appear to have endless undo commands. This can be a feature of the DragonPad since this is what I am using to write this article. It may not be a limitation of software if I was using Microsoft Word.

The go to command allows you to move within the text you’re dictating. It is very helpful after selecting the word, and correcting your mistake, to go to the end of a line or paragraph. Just say “go to end “and the program will take you to the end of the line.

This is an incredible program which I should’ve bought years ago to help improve productivity and my writing skills. I highly recommend it!

Now, trying to debug a simple error condition with an analyzer, is becoming a chore trying doing this remotely from home. 02h — You’re Killing me!

The mouse got a new life with some old 1800 mAh rechargeable batteries I found in the garage. (I hope the batteries still hold a charge!)

The Microsoft Natural mouse took about 3 days to get comfortable with due to its ergonomic size and shape but I have less pain in my wrist than I ever had before.

Eventually I ended up getting one at the JOB because the cheap mouse they bundle with computers today basically suck. They have a horrible shape and feel to them. That cold plastic and dove-bar shape is nothing to get excited about.

I expect I’ll be replacing the batteries in the mouse at work next month sometime if the battery life is about the same.

You would think that 1.7G is plenty of space to upgrade, but no….

The server was an old Dell 6300 with 4 Pentium II running at a lighting speed of 450 MHz. When it was purchased about five or six years ago, it was an extremely powerful server. And it still is powerful for driving I/O to the Firmware I’m testing.

Since it’s used for testing, it was no big loss. Just the time to reinstall 2003. I plopped in the Enterprise edition and it wouldn’t boot off the CD. I checked the BIOS and alas no “Boot From CD First” configuration. It can boot off a 3 1/2″ floppy.

So I go about trying to create a bootable floppy with 2003 on it. Usually, the Windows OS CD has a utility to create 2003 boot disks so you can install it initially from a floppy. But not on 2003.

There is a way to create a 2003 boot floppy, install a loader and SCSI driver so that you can read the CD after you boot from floppy. So I went through all the trouble to create the disk, plopped in the CD again and reboot.

This time the Dell sees the CD and starts booting off it. The only different I did this time was put the latches down over the CD ROM. Duh. The CD ROM is mounted vertical in the server instead of horizontal as in the majority of all computers. Doh! What a time killer.

Any way I got the OS reinstalled and I’m back in business.

I’m also holding unnatural mice at the same angle as the Natural Mouse. I just need to get a new mouse for every computer I’m using…

– Howard