DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

My webserver suffers from annoying and fatal flaw: it sometimes refuses to boot up. This problem has existed since March, and I’ve lived with it since then because the machine, typically, never has to reboot… I powered it down in March (after several months’ worth of error-free operation) to remove a fan, and then it crashed two weeks ago when a power outage lasted longer than my UPS. Those are the only two times the machine has had to boot up in 2001 — such is the stability of Linux.

Both times, due to some as-yet undiagnosed hardware glitch, the computer refused to boot: fans and drives would spin up, but the SCSI card’s LED would show a bus error, and the system would not beep, POST, or display video. Both times, reseating or removing components had no effect on these symptoms. And, both times, after perhaps a dozen attempts, the system eventually booted up as if nothing had ever been wrong.

Which proves to me that x86-class hardware is basically crap. I was tempted to migrate to a RISC platform, and may regret not following through on that temptation… I decided to stay with the x86 platform because it is familiar, and well-supported by my OS of choice, which means I have a wider selection of parts from which to construct the new server.

Which brings me to the question I asked a handful of engineer friends a few weeks ago: what to do? I needed a server but was basically 2 years out of the loop on hardware news. I’m capable of building a server from components — although maybe not capable of building a server that won’t develop mysterious hardware problems 18 months from now.

“Buy Dell,” one friend said. I rejected that idea immediately, convinced it would be more expensive and provide only a cookie-cutter solution that would not meet my needs. As it turned out, this conviction was only half right.

So I read, and researched, and read a lot more. I spent a week of evenings poring over reviews of CPUs, motherboards, cooling technologies, and the like. I decided that the most important criteria is that the system be quiet: after three years I can say with certainty that I am tired of working in a room that sounds like a heliport.

(There is a difference between “quiet” and “silent,” and I was definitely opting for, or settling for, the former: this server will have two high-end SCSI disk drives, which will generate more noise than would qualify as “silent”.)

Quiet- and silent-PC information and tutorials:
Piotr Mitros’ silent PC, Silent PC Guide, The Silent PC

Vendors of quiet fans, PSUs, etc: QuietPC, Directron, Plycon, A Conto

My performance needs are moderate. The current server is a 500MHz AMD K6-2, and is idle 99% of the time. I had no reason to upgrade to anything faster (except to take advantage of related technologies that might accompany a newer CPU). I am a big fan of software-based RAID, though, and plan to install a zippy Ultra-160 LVD SCSI-3 chain.

The only other requirement was that the whole mess fit into a horizontal case. Tower-style cases are more common, but for my purposes a lot less efficient.

With this statement of my needs, I was ready to begin shopping. The details follow in a future installment.

I saw Pixar’s latest animated film, Monsters, Inc., a few weeks ago, and was somewhat disappointed that there were no “outtakes” during the closing credits. Today Pixar has re-released the film, including outtakes. You can sample the outtakes at the Monsters, Inc website.

The Pixar Theater hosts the original outtakes from A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2.

In related news, if you have Apple’s Quicktime software (free for MacOS and Windows), Apple’s movie trailers page is just awesome.

David Lazarus, tech columnist for the SF Chronicle, tells an interesting story about telemarketing in his 11/5/01 column, No free PC, no comment. In brief, a particular telemarketing company leaves voice mail messages promising free computers, and explains only after gullible victims call back that there are significant strings attached to the “offer.”

“I know it’s misleading,” Greg [an employee of the telemarketing firm] said quickly, “but it’s not illegal. It’s just a marketing ploy. It’s just a way to get you to call back.”

The marketing ploy to which Greg is referring is commonly known as lying.

So, I know it is commonplace, so much so that we generally ignore it, treating it as an unfortunate but harmless case of free enterprise going too far. But why do we stand for it? Is it enough to simply opt out, or should we be fighting back?

Even if I liked stock car racing, I don’t think I could have brought myself to watch the Pork The Other White Meat 400.

That name is a real mouthful, wouldn’t you say?

I was surprised to see that porkracing.com is a real website — I pictured a satirical description of, I don’t know, kids pushing slices of ham around an oval track.

But maybe it is already silly enough to offer access to both race schedules and pork recipes in one place.

We did finally get the slab all cleaned up and the tile floor installed. The result is great… it totally justifies the 10 hours of backbreaking work getting the vinyl floor out of the kitchen — but only, I admit, because I didn’t have to do it myself. Nothing would justify that!

We survived the minor inconvience of not being able to enter the front half of the house for a few days… an easy task compared to what the contractors were going through.

The tile is an 18'' x 18'' ceramic from Italy, with a slight texture to the surface. I like it on the floor even better than I liked it in the showroom. It complements the 3 shades of brick better than I expected it would.

Next up: baseboards, windowsills and framing, and then a home-office remodel that will take weeks. This homeowner stuff never really ends — by the time we get “done” we’ll have outgrown the place, and we’ll be starting fresh somewhere else.