Worked. Gave the Clarity overview to the new Systems person. Figured out that LILO doesn't work on our blades because the old version packaged with Red Hat doesn't support Major 67 for SCSI devices. At least now I know what was happening. Also fixed the bug mentioned yesterday with file descriptors being inherited across fork(). Now my agent doesn't crash. Go me.
Making more progress on patching. For the first time I was able to use Benny's GUI to call my installation engine. Very nice. The target is to demo at the end of the week.
Afterwards, Dan, Morris and I went out to Reservoir for dinner/drinks. Then on the cab ride back to Astoria with Dan, Matt called and we met him, Alana, and Jeff for drinks at the Broadway station. Now I'm home and tired and ready for bed.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Second Patent
Oh yeah, and I found out yesterday from Reggie that my second patent got issued. If anybody cares, it can be found here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,981,041.WKU.&OS=PN/6,981,041&RS=PN/6,981,041
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,981,041.WKU.&OS=PN/6,981,041&RS=PN/6,981,041
Plugin' along
Turns up the meeting with Cathryn (the VP or Corporate Dev / HR) was just a typical "what do I do here" meeting. So I gave her the schpeel. She had a bunch of questions about management style and what people in the group are thinking. In particular, there were a bunch of questions on my take on what people thought of Shamoun's management style. Also, she indicated that they are in the process of looking for a Director of Engineering. I mentioned that Dan is already the DOE (at least in title), and she said that he doesn't really want to play the management role (he's always been more if an 'in the trenches' kind of guy). She had said that she kept hearing all these good things about me and therefore wanted to find out more about what I did in Technology. All in all, a good lunch.
Found a fun bug tonight. Apparently when the agent spawns processes, it doesn't close any of the file handles after the fork. I found this out when I couldn't restart the agent because the Oracle Cluster Manager was controlling the listening socket for Dagent. I told Matt, and he said "That's such a rookie mistake!". I couldn't agree more. It's funny though because I found the same bug in Netilla's software several years ago. I feel like the old man who's seen it all before.
Patching is coming along. I found out that Naoum's perl-DBD-Oracle module didn't work because he didn't do the dynamic linking properly. He fixed it today, but it's a bit of a hack. It's good enough for now but I should take a look at some point. Also found out that when he imported Xerces last week that he didn't static link it. Unfortunately I discovered this when I installed the latest version of the software on my box and the agent crashed because it couldn't find the library. Converted the node monitoring tools over to the new transport, so we don't rely on SSH anymore for it. Also Naoum started learning gSoap so I can hopefully get him to convert the NodeConnect message to SOAP.
New episode of House tonight. Very exciting.
I was thinking about my car earlier. I wish I had taken a picture before they took it away. It was such a beautiful day on Sunday too, so it would have glistened in the sun.
Found a fun bug tonight. Apparently when the agent spawns processes, it doesn't close any of the file handles after the fork. I found this out when I couldn't restart the agent because the Oracle Cluster Manager was controlling the listening socket for Dagent. I told Matt, and he said "That's such a rookie mistake!". I couldn't agree more. It's funny though because I found the same bug in Netilla's software several years ago. I feel like the old man who's seen it all before.
Patching is coming along. I found out that Naoum's perl-DBD-Oracle module didn't work because he didn't do the dynamic linking properly. He fixed it today, but it's a bit of a hack. It's good enough for now but I should take a look at some point. Also found out that when he imported Xerces last week that he didn't static link it. Unfortunately I discovered this when I installed the latest version of the software on my box and the agent crashed because it couldn't find the library. Converted the node monitoring tools over to the new transport, so we don't rely on SSH anymore for it. Also Naoum started learning gSoap so I can hopefully get him to convert the NodeConnect message to SOAP.
New episode of House tonight. Very exciting.
I was thinking about my car earlier. I wish I had taken a picture before they took it away. It was such a beautiful day on Sunday too, so it would have glistened in the sun.
Sunday, January 8, 2006
Sunday
Yesterday went down to South Jersey. Had lunch with Grandma/Lauren/Jen. Got the recall fixed on the Saturn. Went to Jen and Jon's house, got cake and played "Star Wars, Lego Edition" on her X-Box. Yes, somebody combined Star Wars, Lego, and video games all in one. It is quite addicting.
Left Jen's at 11:30pm. Got home at 12:45. I was surpised that I was able to get all the way from Jen's in Freehold to my place in only an hour and fifteen. Quite speedy when there's no traffic. As it turns out, I live right off the BQE, so I was on the highway the whole time until the last 1/2 mile.
Today I putzed around the house. Cleaned. Had breakfast at the diner. Got some hot chocolate from Starbucks. Naomi's mom and sister came by to pick up the car. Called up Patrick and had dinner at Pizzeria Uno. Now I'm watching West Wing, Desperate Housewives, with Grey's Anatomy coming up.
Left Jen's at 11:30pm. Got home at 12:45. I was surpised that I was able to get all the way from Jen's in Freehold to my place in only an hour and fifteen. Quite speedy when there's no traffic. As it turns out, I live right off the BQE, so I was on the highway the whole time until the last 1/2 mile.
Today I putzed around the house. Cleaned. Had breakfast at the diner. Got some hot chocolate from Starbucks. Naomi's mom and sister came by to pick up the car. Called up Patrick and had dinner at Pizzeria Uno. Now I'm watching West Wing, Desperate Housewives, with Grey's Anatomy coming up.
Thursday, January 5, 2006
Just another Manic Thursday
Day was relatively uneventful. Benny and Eric broke the news to me today that they won't make next week's deadline. Now I have to do the same to Shamoun tomorrow.
Went out to Dewey's Flatiron for a couple of drinks with some of the guys after work. Strange how six people can rack up a $267 dollar bill in a couple of hours. Of course, I had two Sprites, so my share was about four dollars.
Afterwards, went back to work. Now I get to play PHP developer since we are behind schedule and my stuff is working. Holy 2001 Batman!
Ok, off to bed soon.
Went out to Dewey's Flatiron for a couple of drinks with some of the guys after work. Strange how six people can rack up a $267 dollar bill in a couple of hours. Of course, I had two Sprites, so my share was about four dollars.
Afterwards, went back to work. Now I get to play PHP developer since we are behind schedule and my stuff is working. Holy 2001 Batman!
Ok, off to bed soon.
Wednesday, January 4, 2006
Ick
Feeling kind of lousy tonight.
Most of today's progress got stalled because it turns out the build was not really ready for Oracle to be installed. Unfortunately I somehow thought Patrick had gotten further than he really had before he left the company, and found out the hard way when Eric came back with a huge list of problems.
And I feel lonely. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to hang out with. Ick.
I tend to find that if you want to maximize productivity of your engineers, give them good tools.
Most of today's progress got stalled because it turns out the build was not really ready for Oracle to be installed. Unfortunately I somehow thought Patrick had gotten further than he really had before he left the company, and found out the hard way when Eric came back with a huge list of problems.
And I feel lonely. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to hang out with. Ick.
I tend to find that if you want to maximize productivity of your engineers, give them good tools.
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Progress is a good thing
Making steady progress on the patching system. It is now able to access the job database and install patches in parallel on multiple hosts. Wohoo. Still need to be able to collect the results, but this is a milestone if I ever saw one. Also wrote a simulator and a forking CGI so that Benny can call it directly and write the front-end, even though the backend is unfinished.
Came home, had dinner, watched House. Finally some new episodes.
Got caught up on some reading. Debated playing with Mono a bit, but decided I've already got enough balls in the air and should avoid the temptation/distraction.
Dan Cohen sent me an interesting commentary on hiring good software developers and how Java makes it hard to distinguish between good programmers and mediocre programmers:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
Ok, off to bed.
Came home, had dinner, watched House. Finally some new episodes.
Got caught up on some reading. Debated playing with Mono a bit, but decided I've already got enough balls in the air and should avoid the temptation/distraction.
Dan Cohen sent me an interesting commentary on hiring good software developers and how Java makes it hard to distinguish between good programmers and mediocre programmers:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html
Ok, off to bed.
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