• Good - Reorganizing the servers in my workplace is done for now
• Bad - Said maintenance started at 3am last night and took a long time, hence no sleep.

We have this aging server called bester that, according to the messages it's been spitting out, has been slowly experiencing more and more memory or CPU related NMI's (read: It's dying). This server has been in my group forever, with lots of custom, largely undocumented work to make it friendly, and lots of cool brain-analysis software, some of which has unknown sources that google can't find. It also had two huge raids connected to it giving it multiple terabytes of storage. I, being worried about us being super-dependent on hardware that's dying and a software configuration that's difficult to replicate, got us a shiny new dual-amd64 rackmount system many months ago from a reputable vendor (Penguin Computing). Nevermind that I don't (yet) have a rack for it, nor even a room that's reasonably well ventilated -- those are battles for a later day. Alas, the vendor doesn't have rear wide-scsi faceplates, so after going through a lot of pain trying to get a preferred vendor, or any authorized vendor, to sell me one, I just order one out of my own pocket on eBay. They're cheap -- not a big deal. Unfortunately, there's also a comedy of errors relating to amd64 -- turns out that SUN's JDK on amd64 isn't quite up to snuff, so after debugging that for awhile, I decide to go with the x86 JDK. Also, some of the brain-analysis software we're using isn't 64-bit-pointer clean, so I compile 32-bit x86 versions of the software after an abortive effort to rewrite large parts of it. When everything is, in theory, working, I have the dying server export the RAID over NFS to the new server, and leave it that way for two months while I'm busy running experiments and don't have time for heavy sysadmin stuff. Some people try alba, and I work out several other glitches. Finally, with my most recent study being done, tonight was the night to clean up the situation. I installed the SCSI faceplate on alba, moved the RAIDs to it, and made alba the sharer and bester the sharee. I also did some heavy-duty cleaning of the machine closet. Yes, I know it's boring, but I am quite pleased to have this finally done. W00t! Unfortunately, I have things to do at work today, so I haven't gone home. Tonight, I will probably sleep rather well.

And now, other things! Some time ago, on Wikipedia IRC there was a discussion about the McDonalds coffee case, and someone provided a pointer to a summary. Apparently some people support the coffee-spilling lady, feeling that the coffee was unreasonably hot, relying on surveys from people as to how hot they expect coffee to be. I still think that's crazy -- maybe it's the way I was raised, and I am admittedly not a coffee drinker, but if coffee is at all similar to tea, when I order it, I expect to get it as close as possible to boiling. Drive-through or not, that's what I call good tea (and possibly, by extension, coffee). I'm not a big friend of corporations, especially with my politics, but I am a big fan of good tea, and I am also bothered by stupid lawsuits that make life worse for the rest of humanity. Life doesn't come with training wheels, and when people get hurt, it's sometimes their own damned fault.

China says it's anti-secession law is aimed at peace. Hmm.

Visual Basic Developers revolting. I always thought so. Perhaps if these people ever learn a real programming language, they won't find it so difficult to move between them. As is, they're expecting developments in automotive technology to make their tricycle faster.

Oops! I'm out of time. More later, perhaps.

"I still think that's crazy -- maybe it's the way I was raised, and I am admittedly not a coffee drinker, but if coffee is at all similar to tea, when I order it, I expect to get it as close as possible to boiling."

I DO drink coffee, and I can tell you it's not a good analogy. Near-boiling coffee doesn't taste good, it just scorches your mouth and then you can't taste anything. Order coffee at any good coffee shop and you'll see what I mean.

Nevertheless, I'm in agreement that McDonald's is not liable to regulate the temperature of their coffee based on the expectation that people will spill it in their lap. The argument for very hot coffee is that if you're getting it at the drive-thru, you may not intend to drink it until you reach your destination, and by that time it could be just right. Except for being shitty McDonald's coffee, of course.

Pat, you guys might want to take a look at Liebert's "Mini Computer Room". It's basically a completly self-enclosed rack with one or two integrated air conditioners ;)