Nick Johnson

shiny new alternator

2008-10-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

alternator

2008-10-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sea World Dolphin Interaction Pictures

2008-09-29T20:50:00.000-07:00

Hung, Maggie, Nick

Nick, Maggie

Maggie shows Nick a trick

hung in a kilt

2008-09-28T15:21:00.000-07:00

Doesn't he look scottish?

hung, maggie, nick

2008-09-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

dolphin

2008-09-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

very little radiation

2008-09-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

That needle is reading 0.035 "roentgens per hour" on my granite countertops. Same reading outdoors. The reading by a smoke detector is 0.04.

The manual for this device cautions that any reading under 10% of the scale is unreliable and a smaller scale should be used. So we can't really trust that the reading is correct, but we probably can reasonably suspect that the granite is not giving off gamma radiation in significant excess of the background radiation from all other sources (cosmic rays, etc).

I further suspect that this scale is actually in milli-roentgens per hour, not roentgens per hour (little 'r' rather than big 'R'). Otherwise the number would look like about 1,000 times greater than it should be, whereas if it's mR, it's about right.

eat more turkey

2008-09-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

koala coaster

2008-09-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Microsoft Idiocy

2008-09-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

Some time yesterday, there was a power outage at my place of sufficient length to cause my UPS software to hibernate the machine. That apparently went OK, but when the machine tried to restore from the hibernate file, it instead bluescreened and rebooted.

This resulted in a familiar screen to frequent hibernate users to appear upon rebooting. It's the page of text that tells you that the last attempt to restore from hibernation failed, and asks if you want to continue with system restarting or delete the hibernate file and then start the system.

That's all fine and good. In cases like this, I usually want to try one more time to restore from hibernation (which works about 20% of the time), and when that fails, I just cut my losses, delete the hibernate file and continue.

The problem? This menu does not work, at all, if you have a USB keyboard. At first I thought it might be a problem with my KVM switch, so I took that out of the loop and connected my USB keyboard directly to the PC. No luck. Then I thought maybe there was a problem with my new USB keyboard, so I tried accessing the BIOS with it. That worked fine.

Fortunately I still had my old PS2 keyboard laying around, and I could plug it in to respond to that prompt. But anyone without a PS2 keyboard handy would be unable to boot into windows until they got one.

Somehow, Microsoft, one of the largest software companies in the world, with its thousands of engineers working on Windows XP, can't manage to make a simple menu work with standard USB keyboards. Idiots.

Postscript: It seems a number of others have gotten into this particular failure mode. A Google search for windows hibernate "restoration data" "usb keyboard" turns up a number of people experiencing the same problem, and mostly solving it the same way: by plugging in a PS/2 keyboard to respond to the menu.

hand made chocolates

2008-09-07T08:25:00.001-07:00

layer two

2008-09-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

Thermal Nick

2008-09-01T18:29:00.001-07:00

Another shot from the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose

wireframe head

2008-09-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

From the Tech Museum in San Jose

someone stole my chair!

2008-08-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

keyboard stand

2008-08-11T15:45:00.000-07:00

Finally it is no longer on the floor or on a chair.

new desk

2008-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

It replaces the old dining room table that i had been using for a desk.

Mind-Boggling Idiocy

2008-07-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last week I ordered a monitor. A Dell 2408WFP. I have one at work, and I know it to be a great monitor, so I wanted to get one for home as well. For work, it took roughly 3 days from the time I ordered it until the time it was delivered to my cubicle.

I placed the order with Dell last week, but today it looked like it was seriously stuck in the "in production" phase. What's there to 'produce' anyway? It's just a monitor. There's no customization needed. It just needs to go in a box. So I submitted a web request with Dell Customer Service, which included my name, customer number, order number, home address and so-on. I jokingly asked, "is it being assembled one pixel at a time?"

I got back an automated response telling me that the industry standard for stuck or dead pixels is 5 per screen, and that if I had that many or fewer, I'd just have to live with it. Or if that didn't answer my question, I could reply. I made the mistake of replying.

I say 'mistake' because Dell has outsourced customer service to semi-sentient balls of yarn in India, and what happened next was a colossal waste of my time. The one saving grace is that from a certain perspective, it is a funny waste of my time, especially when the conversation is condensed and all the email headers removed. I shall present the conversation to you now, replacing the Dell representative's name with the word "yarn."

Me: I didn't ask about stuck/dead pixels. I asked why it's taking so long to process my order for a non-customized piece of equipment.

Yarn: To protect your data privacy, we require a Dell identification number. This can be found on any communication you have received regarding this order. A Dell identification number can be an order number, customer number, service tag number, express service code number, case number, or DPS number. In order to resolve your concern I would request you to provide the name on the account as it appears on the original order documents. Please get back in touch with us once you have located this information and we will be glad to assist you.

Me: My name, customer number, order number and address are already in this email if only you would look. What more do you need?

Yarn: In order to resolve your concern I would request you to provide the complete name on the account as it appears on the original order documents.

Me: It's the same name that it's been in all of my emails: Nicklas Johnson.

Yarn: Your order number ######### is currently in production and has an estimated delivery date of 8/8/2008-8/12/2008. You can track the status of your order online by visiting
http://support.dell.com/support/order/status.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&~ck=pn
and entering your order number ######### and customer number ########.

Me: Yes, I already knew all of that. My question is: why is it stuck in the "in production" state for such a long time? It's been "in production" for almost a week. There's nothing to "produce" since the only thing in the order is a monitor. What takes so long?

Yarn: It is just an estimated delivery date, however, the order might be delivered to you before that also. Orders can be delayed for a variety of reasons.

Me: I appreciate that orders can be delayed for a variety of reasons. My question is, what is delaying MY order?

Yarn: Orders can be delayed for a variety of reasons. Please be informed that we will not be able to specify any particular reason.

Me: Who can?

Yarn: Orders can be delayed for a variety of reasons. Please be informed that we will not be able to specify any particular reason.

Me: You already said that. I asked "who can?" As in, "who can read my email and give me a constructive response that addresses my initial question?" or "who can tell me why it is taking such a large amount of time to fulfill a simple order for one item that requires absolutely no customization of any kind?" Who can investigate further and explain why this order is stuck? How do I contact that person or persons?

Yarn: I apologize you are experiencing this delay. Dell is making every effort to ship your order as soon as possible. The most current information we have is that your order number ######### should ship on or before the Estimated Delivery Date of 8/8/2008-8/12/2008.

(It is at this point that I gave up.)

Hey, Dell: you guys are assholes.

Tally-Ho Resumes!

2008-07-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

After quite a long pause, Tally-Ho is once again moving along. This weekend I managed to upgrade to Wicket 1.3.4 from 1.2.6. This was much less painful than I had anticipated. It was primarily a matter of updating to the new package names and then fixing the Validators and calls to getModel() and setModel(). At the same time I also updated my development environment at home to Eclipse Ganymede and the latest Java 1.6 JDK. And just for show, I updated to OpenJPA 1.1.0.

One bit of weirdness to note is that data caching doesn't seem to work properly in OpenJPA using Java 1.6 runtime class retransformation. I discovered this the hard way by forgetting to include the -javaagent VM argument when running my unit tests. On 1.5, this didn't have as weird a failure mode... OpenJPA seemed to cope with it. With 1.6, it seems to lose track of object identity, such that when queries are run that should be returning the same object (or at least the newly queried version of an updated object), sometimes different objects or old versions of objects are returned.

The moral of the story is to specify -javaagent with OpenJPA at runtime if you're not doing static instrumentation of your classes. Class retransformation doesn't work properly yet. If I can find some time, I'll create a simple testcase for the OpenJPA folks demonstrating the problem.

Left to go on Tally-Ho is completing the arbitrary content with attachments feature, and then looking at Spring to see if / what can be leveraged to make life a little bit easier/simpler.

In other news, this is my 200th blog post. Woohoo?

comfortable?

2008-07-21T19:50:00.001-07:00

ace loves daddy's lap

2008-07-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

new cat6 ethernet ports

2008-07-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

I opted to put the new Cat-6 Ethernet ports underneath the existing outlet rather than to the left of it (to the right is a stud) because it would look less weird and require less reaching to connect. I tried to get the top to roughly line up with the top of the stairway railing. (It's actually a bit high by maybe an eighth of an inch.)

Both ports connect to a Linksys gigabit ethernet switch in the attic. Today was the first time I've used a punch-down tool in roughly 11 years. Fortunately, they still work exactly the same way they did 11 years ago.

(That thing hanging down from the outlet is a wireless doorbell chime extender. Downstairs there's a module that sticks to the doorbell and 'listens' for it to ring. When it picks up a sufficiently loud noise, it transmits a signal to the extension chime so we can hear it upstairs when the doorbell rings downstairs.)

hoya likes spatula

2008-07-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from the Mount Shasta trip

2008-07-15T22:40:00.001-07:00

Many thanks to Mike, one of my climbing peers, here are a couple pictures of me from the Mount Shasta climbing adventure.

This is what I looked like in the middle of the night before we started climbing. Note the apprehensive look on my face that shouts, "hooooooh boy do I really want to do this?"

And this is what I looked like toward the top of the West Face. Note how much more tired and basically dead I look. Altitude sickness sucks.

My Creme Brulee Recipe

2008-07-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

I use the term 'my' loosely, unlike John McCain and his wife who tend to publish other people's recipes copied & pasted wholesale as their own. I did not invent creme brulee, and I adapted this recipe from the most excellent Roxube recipe. Key differences:

Flavor it with 2 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tbsp triple sec. Using real vanilla bean sounds like a neat idea, but vanilla beans are really expensive, and all those nice black specs just sank to the bottom of the ramekins, so there was nothing to enjoy. And triple sec is just good.

Use 1/3 cup sugar rather than 1/4. Come on, don't pretend anything about this is good for you. If you're going to eat a high-calorie dessert that would kill you if you had it often, you might as well not skimp on the sugar. I like using baker's sugar for the brulee because it's finer and dissolves and mixes with the egg yolks faster.

I found that it was easiest to get the custard mix into the ramekins using a ladle rather than trying to get all that mix into yet another container to pour it.

Use a convection oven at 300 degrees fahrenheit for exactly 23 minutes.

Aside from that, it's easiest just to follow the Youtube Video.

I calculated that if you throw a couple berries on top of the brulee, the final calorie count if you use 6 ramekins comes to about 450 each. Fortunately, you can also burn 450 calories on an elliptical machine in 30-45 minutes if you work at it. Isn't it worth it?