General

Downage

Sorry for the downtime, folks — yesterday I rebuilt the box that serves unxmaal.com, and this morning I put php+mysql support back into apache. Mailservice is still on its way back, so hold off on the “we missed you, unx” and “how’s atlanta, unx?” and “let’s spawn monkeys, unx” emails for now. This is the first time in over 368 days this server has been rebooted, so whining will only conjure the bofh.

We now return to your regularly scheduled mindbending; have a nice day!

Moved

Yay! I made it to Atlanta, and have mostly settled in, although I can’t find my microwave.

Email and posts will be spotty for the next few days. The whole apartment complex gets its cablemodem service through Charter Cable. “Charter” is a Latin word that means “festering goat feces.”

Ryder Truck Rental Services sucks, too. Not in a mild, breezy way, but in a chaotic vortex of doom way. It was ok that the truck was filthy, late, and the wrong size. It was ok that it was missing a mudflap and the reverse-beepy-thing. It was, however, not ok that the truck was overdue for maintenance, or that the truck’s tires were so worn that it constantly vibrated and veered left.

And thus ended my employment

And thus ended my employment for NASA: not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with the shuffling of paperwork, and the clicking of lacquered nails against a keyboard.

It is sad, in a way. I will miss the great group of people I worked with. However, I’m really looking forward to Atlanta, and to working at Sprint.

Dual Athlons are nigh!?

Great news for those of us (me) who have been holding off buying an AMD Athlon-based system until the platform was dual processor-capable: it seems VA Linux yesterday demoed a machine with dual 900MHz Athlons using the new Palomino core at the ceBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany. More information at tecChannel.de… Babelfish seems to choke on this URL, but it does an OK translation if you paste the text.

Cockroaches

I’m glad we have scientists working diligently to make amazing new discoveries for the betterment of humanity.

My question: where would they find bondage gear for insects?

Leeches

Since all I got Kevin for his birthday was a shoddy Wal-Mart cake, I could probably make it up to him with a tubful of medicinal leeches.

Processor History

Wondering which processor is right for you? Curious about the history of microprocessors? I found an article today that has some decently indepth views about the history processors and how they work. This tells about the mistakes and advancements in the microprocessor world. Comparisons between CISC and RISC, Motorola, Intel, and AMD. It’s a good read if you have some time. I found the first part somewhat biased against Intel but it seems to be well written.

Georgia

Looks like it’s not a really good idea to be travelling to Georgia. I just hope my moving van doesn’t get shot at.