Greg’s weblog

Apparently the hard drive was able to go 20 times faster than it had been. Normally it wouldn’t have caused too many problems, but the server does a lot of disk intensive things, and doing a couple of them at once caused bad things to happen to the machine. After several kernel recompiles, I got the correct drivers installed, and it’s now happily going along at ~60megs/sec compared to the previous 3megs/sec it was doing. Much better anyway.

William and Julia have been sick for the past few days, which has made life fun. Julia hasn’t been sleeping well because she can’t breathe as well as usual, and William has been just downright cranky. I think Julia was breathing a little better last night, so hopefully she’s just about past the worst of it. As for William – let’s just say that at least he’s trying to put DVD’s into the VCR instead of sandwiches.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Bingo, bango. Sugar in the gas tank.” – Guy with mustache

Apparently when I installed a new harddrive into this system a week or so ago, performance degraded noticeably when accessing that drive. I didn’t put two and two together until today though. Apparently reading from that drive is 15x slower than reading from the other drives that were already in the system, and that’s caused all sorts of other problems. I will have to spend some time working on it tonight I guess.

I don’t want to talk about the hockey game, except to say that I hope that Saku Koivu isn’t seriously injured. That was pretty scary, but clearly not a penalty </sarcasm>

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Take this object, but beware it carries a terrible curse!” – Store Owner

When I built my MythTV box, part of the goal was to remove the ExpressVu dependence from our TV habits. I knew as soon as I first used the 5100 PVR that I’d have to have a PVR regardless of which TV provider I went with, and Myth seemed like the best way to accomplish that goal. Well, Myth has been running well, and you know the old saying, if it ain’t broke, break it.

We got a letter from ExpressVu saying that if we didn’t update to the “new” packages, we’d be charged an additional $3/month. As it works out, we’d wind up paying about the same as if we did upgrade to the new packages. Well, colour me unimpressed with yet another increase to their bill (and note that it’s not just the $3 – the increases have been cumulative until we’re paying nearly twice what we used to.) Fortunately, there are lots of options, and now that I’m not tied to a provided PVR, I can explore them. I think we’re going to switch to Shaw, and get the HD terminal, which has firewire output and should hook right into the Mythbox’s veins. The scary thing is that the payback isn’t all that long when you consider how much we can save by switching to a Shaw bundle. Plus I get HD hockey and HD football.

Sweet.

If it works.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “To kill him, you must drive this stake into his heart… No dad, that’s his crotch…” – Lisa (inspired Sheldon Souray’s unfortunate injury last night)

The weather changed quite a bit over the weekend, meaning that there was lots of wind. We took William’s pirate ship kite out for a test flight, and though the wind was too strong, the kite really wanted to fly. In fact, to get it up in the air, all I did was hold it in front of me and let it go. It was tough to get much height, because the wind just wanted to pull it out horizontally. We didn’t stay out for too long, because it was pretty chilly actually, and we hadn’t really dressed for it.

I got to watch the Habs game on Saturday night, which was good. The shot totals were a bit out of whack I think – Carolina might have outshot the Habs, but not by as big a margin as the boxscore said. The difference was in the quality of shots though – Carolina was held to the perimeter for most of the game, while the Habs managed to get some quality shots from in close. Bonk’s goal was a good example of that – he almost seemed surprised at how much open ice he was given in the slot with the puck. Not that Gerber played well, but there were some definite defensive issues on the Hurricanes’ side of things.

Game 2 goes tonight, so I’m looking forward to that. Each game in a 7 game series seems crucial, so this one is too. It’s great to get a split on the road, but it’s much better to be up 2-0.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I think we got our umbrellas switched.” – Grandpa Simpson

Poker was berry berry good to me last night, I won some key pots, and took down a bunch of smaller to middle sized pots while getting out of the way in some of the big pots that I would have wound up second best. The cards treated me well, and I managed to take advantage to to the tune of doubling my buy in. ($10 woo hoo!)

Unfortunately, William was asleep when I got home from work, and he didn’t wake up until after I left. The result was that Bomberman Day had to be postponed until today for the poor kid ;)

Wednesday night, I installed Windows on the mac. It went pretty smoothly. My only complaint is that the wireless connection kept dropping. Based on where it is, I really should have it connected with a wire, so it’s not a huge deal. It’s still primarily a mac system though – I’ve set up OS X as the default, and only plan to switch over to XP when I need to use hardware that isn’t supported under OS X, or those few pieces of software that I haven’t replaced yet.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Why ye mutious dogs. From now on I’ll be requiring hairnets.” – Captain McAllister

I haven’t been following hockey that closely this year, so I could very well be out to lunch on a few of these picks. Here they are though.

Western Conference

(1) vs. (8) – Edmonton is overmatched here, and even though this isn’t viewed as a battle of the goaltenders, I have to give a huge edge to Detroit. This might be the only series that doesn’t go 6 or 7 games. My pick: Detroit

(2) vs. (7) – Playoffs are often about goaltending, and Colorado doesn’t have it. Not to say that Dallas is strong in net, but Jose Theodore has had an absolute nightmare of a season, and will be anxious to put it behind him. Despite the lack of shootouts in the playoffs, I’m picking Dallas

(3) vs. (6) – Remember what I said about goaltending? I tend to pick the team with the hottest goalies, and Calgary’s got the best in the business minding the store for them. Look for Iginla to bring his A game to improve the Flames’ offence as well. I have to pick Calgary

(4) vs. (5) – I’ve been openly critical of the schedule being so heavily balanced in favour of intra-divisional matchups. Nashville was a beneficiary of playing in a weak division. Never mind the tear that the Sharks have been on since Joe Thornton arrived in town. Toss in an injured starting goaltender, and most people agree that San Jose will win this one.

Eastern Conference

(1) vs. (8) – What a difference a couple of years can make. Tampa barely squeaked into the playoffs because of a lack of goaltending. Ottawa has the kind of firepower that can take teams apart. They’re missing their starter, which makes them ripe for upset, but I still think Ottawa will come out on top.

(2) vs (7) – The Andrei Markov factor will be in full effect. Cristobal Huet has been given a bit of a rest leading up to the playoffs, and Carolina is probably coming in pretty confident after winning all the games in the season series with a pretty hefty goal differential. They won’t have Jose Theodore to shoot pucks by though. If Huet is the real deal, this will be a hard fought series. I have to pick Montreal Did you really think I’d pick Carolina?

(3) vs. (6) – Winners of their last 11 games, the Devils have been one of the hottest teams in the league since the break. I don’t think they’ll just roll over the Rangers, but I do think they’ll be able to win it. Stealing home ice advantage is a boost too. Gotta go with New Jersey.

(4) vs. (5) – I’ve heard it said that you should never bet against the evil Swede Peter Forsberg, so I’m picking Philadelphia.

So, get your picks in, and I’ll add you to the pool. I hope to have more participation again this year, so if you haven’t put your name in before, give it a go this year.

YouTube is a site that lets you post video clips and share them with the world. It’s been gaining traction to an amazing degree, and I think it’s only a matter of time before they run out of money and have to shut the site down. In the meantime, here’s a link to a list of Sesame Street video clips that are available on YouTube. Wow. Just Wow.

Sesame Street quote of the day: “You’ll have to speak louder Bert, there’s a banana in my ear.” – Ernie