Never been one to let the carrier drop

(Where all the men are smart, the women are good looking, and the computer equipment is above average)

Well, I haven’t had time to breathe lately, much less write journal entries. I’m trying to maintain my 50+ hour work week while also putting in two days a week of packing/moving, and it’s taking a bit of a toll on me. But I remain cautiously optimistic that I will have moved everything major by June 1st. Tomorrow we’re moving the computers (at least the server-type computers) to the new house.

My back keeps hurting intermittently, then stopping whenever I actually get to the point where I’m going to call my physical therapist. I’ve been trying to sneak in the stretching exercises during my normal stretch breaks..

I’ve been getting up very early lately.. usually ~8-9 AM. Very strange and different for me.

Hope everyone else is doing well. I will try to get back caught up with everyone once I have my weekends back.

In other news, does anyone have any preferred dates (mid-July to mid-August) for the housewarming party? I’d really like to see Brenda, Dan S., Chris M., Mei, Deadman,  Josh, Ryan, and any friends/SOs/whatnot they’d like to bring along therem but I know finding a day that all said people are available isn’t likely 😉 Also, if you place your order in advance, we’ll be sure to have your favorite beverages available.

As part of the move, many server addresses have changed or are changing. If you use me for web hosting, name service, email, or some other network-related service that you have partial control over (i.e. you own your own DNS), please contact me so we can do this change with a minimum of disruption (none, I hope). I already have a colocated server providing name service so it should be possible for you to have a seamless transition.

HOWEVER – I would like to request that those of you who are using me for name service and only have a couple of A records consider finding a cheap or free name service provider to use instead of me. As you all have noticed, I move networks a lot, and the administrative headache involved in getting in touch with all of you every time I renumber is beginning to get on my nerves. I love you all, but you’d be better off this way too 😉 I’m happy to continue hosting your web sites (and assume you’re bright enough to either use CNAMEs or update your IPs accordingly whenever I move).

By the way, if any of you are already doing this and suddenly can’t see your qm-hosted site, please note that qm’s address has changed. the new address is 208.70.77.153 (which you will see if you ping qm.sheer.us or qm.numbermining.net)

Thanks..

S.

I had a problem recently with a CentOS host that is DHCPing off a older Cisco switch that takes several seconds to do link negotation.

The problem was that Ubuntu would give up on DHCPing and take the ethernet interface down before the Cisco switch got around to negotiating the link.

Is there some easy way to put a DHCP timeout in interfaces? does anyone know?

For now, what I did was put the following in rc.local (yes, this really does work):

echo -n “Activating godawful hack to get ethernet up despite very slow Cisco POS switch…”
/sbin/ip -o link set dev eth0 up
sleep 25
echo “Done”
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup eth0

So, our landlady is selling our current house, and because I’m a complete and utter slob, we’ve decided to move rather than leave her with having to show the house with me living in it. 😉

We found a wonderful house in downtown long beach. This house features:

1) Lots more space than the current place.. about as much as the house in Seattle – which is good, because I’ve felt a little like I was inserted in the current house with a shoehorn. 😉

2) Older house – with nifty hardwood floors, stained glass windows, octagonal windows, bay windows, skylight, and other features found only in older houses. Tons of storage, handpainted dining room ceiling.. it’s a little on the dark side, but when I’ve retrofitted it with several thousand* watts of CF bulbs, I’m sure it’ll be quite nice. 😉

You all can look and see the pictures if you’re so inclined at http://kayti.peterbilt.sheer.us/photos/Public/2008/NewHouse/. These photos were taken by the real estate company and are both watermarked and lo-res, but they still give the general idea. Housewarming party TBD.

* = probably about 2. But several sounds more impressive.

Kayti has asked me to be her fiance and I have accepted. We still have a list of issues that we want to work through before we set the actual date. I think I have grown some since my last engagements and this will turn out to be a positive thing in our lives.