Dying SATA's & Learning Python...

The SATA drive in my linux box is starting to die. It started with just dropping into read-only mode in linux. Now, it's getting hardware failures from the on board controller. I think JEA cut my power a little to often for it and my UPS isn't keeping itself up anymore. :-(

On a more positive note, I've just about finished learning Python. It an object oriented scripting language that uses line indentation to delinate code blocks. I used to think that was a crap cobol-like idea. Now, I kinda see how it helps. I decided at Usenix that I wasn't getting enough done to be useful in the internet, so I decided to fix a feature in yum where it randomizes the mirror list so that you often will get a mirror but not necessarily the closest one. So I'm teaching myself python that hopefully I can make it work in a more 'better' way.

Usenix '05 Day 4 -- Work stuff and meeting people

Up at 7am here, but it's 10am back home. Just in time to find the draft of the cluster proposal. It's not bad, but after yesterday's morning tutorial session that had mis-information in it, it really got my goat. I came down for a talk on NFSv4, and typed my response while listening to the presentation. The room was full and that was really cool. It seems like a very good update of NFS with significant updates in functionality and speed.

It seems like a much more complicated protocol that depends on a lot of different systems, including kerberos and the GSSAPI so it's not easy for implementors. Having said that though, it does look like a very complete protocol fixing a lot of the issues that are apparent in NFSv3.

After lunch I spent more time working on the yum mirror selection tool. I found an error in the way I was thinking that Python worked. With a list, you can remove elements by listname.remove(index), I was thinking that index was the item of the list, but it's really the number of the item in the list. I was treating it like a hash value.

Anyway, after that were the Work In Progress sessions, short reports describing the work that people are doing in various areas. I was interesting in the filmgimp project but the presentation broke, so it was video less. That's ok though, i can see where they're trying to go with it.

I met a couple of guys, one working for ticketmaster, and one working for F5 Networks who were really cool. The guy from Ticketmaster was orginally from Norway, and the guy from F5 was from the Chzech Republic. It was good to talk with them. They told me alot about living in the US on a Visa. It was weird b/c there are a lot of tech ppl who think that having the H1B visa workers removes their abilities to get jobs. For these two guys, they can't work anywhere else. If they lose their jobs they have to get out of the country within 10 days. Family and all. So it's a big deal for them to lose their jobs, much more so than it would be for me.