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A few days in San Francisco

:: Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004 @ 1:53:04 am

:: Tags:


cindy, obsessive

Crazy reef girl Cindy picked me up from the airport on Saturday and hosted me until the next day. As usual, we ate, chatted, and stared at her beautiful reef tank. I’m totally grateful for her hospitality. And… her guest bed is very comfortable. :)

I spent much of my four days here in the Bay Area rehearsing with the piano trio I’ll be playing with next week at the SLSQ Summer Chamber Music Workshop. It has been SO GREAT to play music for a few hours each day, and I can’t wait to start the week of intensive chamber music coachings. I almost feel like I’m back at Stanford again. see some photos]

But before that, I have to go to Ecuador again to photograph dead sharks for the Shark Research Institute. It will be a difficult thing to see, but I think that the outreach possibilities that come from the project will make it well worth the effort.

And more computer anomalies:

1) Work with Elliot to install a Promise Fastrak TX2000 RAID card into a Dell Dimension 4500 (goal: mirror two identical 120GB drives). No luck. Trust me. We tried everything.

2) Having given up by this point, I restored a drive image I had made with Acronis TrueImage (the best imaging program ever), expanding the partition size at the same time to fill the existing drive’s available space (8GB used/22GB unused -> 30GB used).

3) On a whim, Elliot plugs the card in again — and this time, it works.

I hate computers.

Hasta lunes!

Popularity: 2% | San Francisco, CA | link | trackback | Jun 23, 2004 01:53:04
  • vinh

    the picture of cindy is interesting. to her left, the tank looks blue-ish. and to her right, the tank looks green-ish. odd.


    promise RAID controllers aren’t exactly hot stuff, often times they’re no better than software RAID in performance. if cost isn’t a big issue, 3ware RAID controllers are the way to go; they’re well supported under linux. the Dimension 4500 has a P4 i believe, you might also consider just using linux’s software RAID. that way, you’re not locked into a specific vendor/controller.

    hmm… did some searching… it looks like the TX2000 isn’t a hardware RAID controller at all… its BIOS writes some RAID info, but it’s the driver that does the actual work… in other words, it’s a software RAID… you’re better off using Linux Software RAID for better compatability… if you paid more than the price of a standard IDE controller, return that TX2000 and get your money back…

  • Chester

    Eric’ll probably tell you himself, when he gets back, but he’s actually going to go with a 8506-8. I’m very jealous.

  • http://www.xanga.com/cyclgrl cindy

    did you have have have to show post that photo? dammit, me in my wife-beater tank-cleaning tshirt!

    yes, vinh, the 2 lights are appear slightly different in that ballasts do not fire the same exact bulb the same way for some reason. i think it might have to do with the draw on the circuit. still trying to figure that out.

  • http://www.alexking.org/ Alex

    ‘…and this time, it works.’

    We’ve all been there haven’t we?

    Only in computerland do smart people try the same thing over and over again with hopes of different results. In any other endeavor, they’s just be dismissed as idiots. :)

  • Valencia

    First time visitor. You have a amazing site! Your cats are adorable. Lucky you.

  • http://www.xanga.com/timmychanga timmychanga

    Promise controllers are CPU resource hogs as they are software RAID. I’m one of the four ASIC designers at 3ware (now acquired by AMCC) and have worked on the last 3 products. If you don’t mind giving up a significant chunk of CPU resource to perform RAID operations then Promise is much cheaper and in some configurations, faster. But if you want true hardware RAID with practically no hit on CPU resource then go with 3ware or (can’t believe I’m saying this) even Highpoint. Adaptec is just too slow and the most expensive in IDE RAID controllers.

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i hate computers.