James Manning

Hit it transferring some iso’s from another machine.  Fun!

May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] BUG: soft lockup detected on CPU#0!
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000]
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] Pid: 768, comm: kirqd
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] EIP: 0060:[_spin_lock+28/128] CPU: 0
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] EIP is at _spin_lock+0×1c/0×80
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] EFLAGS: 00000246 Not tainted (2.6.15-26-686)
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] EAX: 00000001 EBX: ccbf012c ECX: 008b6dc5 EDX: 00000000
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] ESI: cec74000 EDI: c47d0c00 EBP: ccbf012c DS: 007b ES: 007b
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] CR0: 8005003b CR2: b7a78014 CR3: 04c50000 CR4: 00000290
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [tcp_v4_rcv+2072/2608] tcp_v4_rcv+0×818/0xa30
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [__do_IRQ+204/272] __do_IRQ+0xcc/0×110
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [ip_local_deliver+322/800] ip_local_deliver+0×142/0×320
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [ip_rcv+944/1584] ip_rcv+0×3b0/0×630
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [pg0+273625538/1069167616] packet_rcv_spkt+0×122/0×2c0 [af_packet]
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [netif_receive_skb+685/896] netif_receive_skb+0×2ad/0×380
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [process_backlog+140/288] process_backlog+0×8c/0×120
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [net_rx_action+222/512] net_rx_action+0xde/0×200
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [__do_softirq+114/224] __do_softirq+0×72/0xe0
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [do_softirq+53/64] do_softirq+0×35/0×40
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [irq_exit+69/80] irq_exit+0×45/0×50
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [do_IRQ+30/48] do_IRQ+0×1e/0×30
May 19 14:52:58 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [common_interrupt+26/32] common_interrupt+0×1a/0×20
May 19 14:52:59 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [do_irq_balance+576/1184] do_irq_balance+0×240/0×4a0
May 19 14:52:59 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [balanced_irq+174/240] balanced_irq+0xae/0xf0
May 19 14:52:59 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [balanced_irq+0/240] balanced_irq+0×0/0xf0
May 19 14:52:59 sublogic kernel: [22683255.100000] [kernel_thread_helper+5/16] kernel_thread_helper+0×5/0×10

James Manning [10:25 AM]:
is it normal that I have Wiggles songs running through my head all day every day?
Jason Prickett [10:26 AM]:
No. You should buy real music to listen to at work.
Jason Prickett [10:26 AM]:
Something like Dora the Explorer sings
James Manning [10:27 AM]:
swiper no swiping!
James Manning [10:27 AM]:
aw, man!

While Sarah and I were making her mommy a lemon meringue pie yesterday, we used lots of lessons from the Good Eats episode covering such creations.  Proper separation of eggs (indeed, Alton’s quarantine approach works well, as I messed up the first egg), tempering the eggs as we introduced them to the lemon sugar mixture - it was very fun :)

Funny enough, the pie is still sitting on the stove - we’ve been eating other things this weekend and we haven’t gotten to it yet!

I visited Charlotte this past weekend and had a blast.

I got to:

• Visit Microsoft’s Charlotte campus which I hadn’t been to before - it’s only about a mile or so from South Carolina.
• Meet a few of the Microsoft-Charlotte guys I had been working with on some projects over the last couple of months face-to-face.  That was pretty fun.
• Pick up an Xbox 360 for Chad at our company store.
• Go into the tallest building in NC (and the tallest between Philadelphia and Atlanta) to hang out with Chad (he handles some kind of investment banking thingy, I was lost in the details) Friday.  Chad works on the 3rd floor, so it doesn’t take 30 minutes to get up to his floor :)
• Help Chad find a couple of busted transactions ($81 million total, which seems like a lot to me except his day’s totals were around $60 billion)
• See Chad’s parents (and his nephew) again, whom I haven’t seen in a few years.  Chad was the one with the good basketball court at his house (concrete slab in the back yard), so we all headed over to his place for playing and hanging out :)  Chad’s mom made (and still makes!) sweet tea the proper way - the water has to get HOT so you can get enough sugar into the solution :)
• Meet Chad’s girlfriend (Mary Cat) for the first time.  We had talked on the phone a couple of times (she was there when I had called Chad to catch up), but this was the first face-to-face meeting.  She’s very sweet and friendly, and she’s really good for Chad.  She lives down in Rock Hill, SC - about a 20 minute drive for him.

Quite a fun weekend :)

My favorite part of the poster?

<random>

American-style gets 1/28, 5/12, and 10/24, but fails for 256.

European-style gets 12/8, 25/6, and 5/12, but fails for 1024.

</random>

Normally Fidelity’s error messages are well-phrased - they do (IMHO) a good job explaining what the failing condition is (insufficient funds, for instance).  However, in attempting a transfer between 2 accounts today, I got an error message from them that lacked any explanation of the failing condition. 

To be clear, it wasn’t a “system is down” kind of issue - because of the nature of what I was doing, it seems likely to me that I’m triggering a bug in their software, so this may just be their “unhandled exception” / “unexpected error” message for all I know.

To be fair, here’s an example of one of their “good” error messages.  It gives a great explanation as to the failure condition and gives available action options (I wish my product’s error messages were all this good :)

(120009) The dollar amount requested is greater than your available cash balance. Select the Back Button and choose a lower amount, or call a Fidelity Representative at 800-544-6666.

My fanboy-ism of the day.  Of course it relates to PowerShell.  I find myself wanting to write PowerShell scripts on my Ubuntu box on a daily basis now. :)

Scripts have varying degrees of awesomeness.  connect-webservice falls into the OMGWTFBBQ realm - it goes to 11.