Lethal Eatin’

(January 30, 2012)

After doing intense research, I’m able to confirm that the lethal Kinder Eggs are still availble in Italy.  And furthermore, they contain amusing stuff like the construction set and the paper thing on the right, and not just boring figurines. Let the touristing commence!

Roma

(January 29, 2012)

Roma

(January 26, 2012)

January 20th, 2012

(January 26, 2012)

The magical key! Dear Diary, today the IOPS-unlocking FastPath key arrived for the LSI MegaRAID 9265-8i card arrivied!  I was so excited, until I opened the box an found what’s basically something that short-circuits two headers on the RAID card. What a rip-off.  It probably disables some sleep(1) calls in the firmware on the card. … Continue reading January 20th, 2012

January 15th, 2012

(January 16, 2012)

Dear Diary, after the rather disappointing random read benchmarks (I mean, 4K files a second? It’s pitiful) I almost went into a severe depression and started thinking about using vi.  Again. But then I went back to the hardware pusher’s web site and noticed something strange.  They’re selling something that’s supposed to make their LSI … Continue reading January 15th, 2012

January 14th, 2012

(January 14, 2012)

Dear Diary, today I’ve written a small benchmark utility to try to emulate NNTP server performance.  A one-file-per-article spool has somewhat unusual performance characteristics, totally dominated by stat-ing and stuff. So my little utility is a C program that recursively reads a real news spool, and then just discards the result.  It’s extremely single-threaded, which … Continue reading January 14th, 2012

January 13th, 2012

(January 14, 2012)

Dear diary, today is the most joyful day of my entire life.  The Samsung 830s for my new server arrived!  Sort of out of the blue!  The web shop insisted upon them not arriving until the end of the month, and then they sent them anyway. Look at how pretty they are.  One might even … Continue reading January 13th, 2012

January 4th, 2012

(January 11, 2012)

Dear Diary, today the RAID card arrived for my new server. I had apparently only ordered a single SATA cable instead of the six I had meant to order. But it turned out that the card didn’t use normal SATA cables at all, but a weird one-to-four connector.  It’s a big connector on one side, … Continue reading January 4th, 2012

December 29th, 2011

(January 6, 2012)

Dear Diary, arghh!  Now the shipment date of the Samsungs has been pushed back to January 31st!  “Tentatively.”  Can I really wait that long to test the new server? (Continue reading my secret diary.)

December 23rd, 2011

(January 6, 2012)

Dear Diary, today I was rummaging through the drawers in the office, and I happened upon an SSD there.  It was a Corsair Force 3, which is a SATA 3.0 disk!  Yay!  I can finally do some benchmarking, I thought. I put the SSD into the server and switched it on, but it came up … Continue reading December 23rd, 2011

December 22nd, 2011

(January 5, 2012)

Dear Diary, the Samsungs haven’t arrived yet, but they’re supposed to arrive any day now. I’m starting to wonder whether they actually exist out there, or if they are a phantom product that’s announced, but not actually shipped. But I just looked on Newegg, for instance, and they claim to have them in stock, so … Continue reading December 22nd, 2011

December 19th, 2011

(January 4, 2012)

Dear diary, Sinking Heat today I got the heat sink and the RAM for the new server. I installed them and hit the power switch. It’s alive! I haven’t built a server in ever so long, so I’m happy and kinda surprised that it works.  The Samsung 830s I ordered haven’t arrived yet, but they’re … Continue reading December 19th, 2011

December 16th, 2011

(January 2, 2012)

Dear Diary, There’s only one 8-pin header on the motherboard today I got the motherboard I ordered for the new server!  I yanked the old motherboard out and put the new one in.  And it fit!  I got all the power cables, the SATA cables, and the fan cables fitted without any major problem, despite … Continue reading December 16th, 2011

Useful Consumer Review

(January 2, 2012)

Ugly OS This year, I’m finally actually really (this time) learn to read French.  So I needed a dictionary by the couch, so I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is the tablet with the longest battery life, allegedly.  (Apart from the tablets from The Company That Shall Not Be Mentioned.) The most immediately … Continue reading Useful Consumer Review

December 12th, 2011

(January 1, 2012)

Dear Diary, since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to have their news spools on solid state disks instead of those pesky spinning ones. The load on the Gmane news server frequently tips over the 16 point (which means that access is denied) purely from people and bots hammering the web and news interfaces … Continue reading December 12th, 2011