Looks like the Seagate that I got replaced under warranty is starting to fail. It’s spitting out Media Errors according to iostat -En, and ZFS has found some checksum errors in it’s weekly scrubs. Trying to get smartmontools installed so I can pull the serial number before yanking the drive from it’s case. Times like this make me wish I had externally accessible, hot swappable drive bays.

I’m happy that ZFS saw the problem and let me know about it early. Much better than losing the drive suddenly. However, this is going to set me back a ways in terms of camera and lens plans. Bah.

Looks like imay not make it – the D700 is on internal firesale. I was hoping to save up enough to buy the camera this summer, but if the internal $1999.00 sale ends April 30th, the replacement can’t be far behind. And it’s going to be full price for at least a year.

I’ve been working on a massive home project recently – writing an Ajax frontend to Nagios and NDOUtils. This similar to groundworks, zenoss and op5, but I have specific needs to address, and a lot of what I learn in doing this can be used for my work projects. The important part of this is getting a handle on AJAX – it’s been all the rage for the last few years, but I avoided it because javascript implementations differs between browsers, and it wasn’t worth the hassle for what I needed to get done.

However, I’ve stumbled across jQuery – a mature, lightweight AJAX javascript library designed for cross-browser compatibility. I’m also working to achieve graceful degradation – so if a user doesn’t have javascript enabled, or their browser only understands a subset of the javascript calls, they still get full access the tools I write.

So, all of this lives in a subversion tree, and I’m madly hacking away on it. Once I get a stable, clean demo that validates user input, I may well post a link to it.

Sorry for the delays on posting to the photo blog. I had processed pictures to put up for today and the rest of the week, but fell down in the evenings when it came time to actually schedule the posts. Time has been very short these days – possibly noticed by the lack of substantive posts to this blog. I hope to be remedying that this week, as I have several posts that I have been mulling over that should get enough time in the evenings to flesh out into real posts.

Anyway – the picture of the day will be up in a few minutes. Apologies again for the delays.

A small tip for anyone using rsync, and trying to sync files from a server running SSH over a non-standard port (ie, something other than 22):

rsync -ac -e 'ssh -p24' username@remotehostname:/remote/path /local/path

In essence, you can run any command that gets a remote shell with the -e option, and if you use single quotes, you can pass as many arguments as you like. Handy.

Back from my little trip to the beach, settling back in, and getting pictures off my memory card. It appears, however, that I forgot the fundamental rule of taking pictures – make sure your lens is clean. There are a handful of dust spots on every image I’ve reviewed so far. For some images it’s no big deal, but for a lot, they are very distracting. Once I saw them, I hauled the lens out, and there they were, plain as day. A through cleaning and a spot check later, I’m happy that I got them all. Still a little mad at myself for taking all these pictures without cleaning the lens first.

A year ago today, at 12:19 in the afternoon, Qais Emerson Dezendorf was born. The last year has been one of learning and growth – for him and for my wife and I. We have learned how much joy the little guy can bring into our lives, even as we learn how to get by with less sleep and less time to do other things. We have loved every minute of it, even the hard parts. We would have it no other way. Qais, you are worth every minute of every day.

I’m also deeply indebted to my wife, who has taken on the full time job of a stay-at-home-mom. There is no greater job in the world – in gravity, in rewards, or in importance. I am humbled at her ability to care for, feed and love our child. My goal as a father is to do half as much for him as she does – and I often don’t come close, though I try as hard as I can, every day. Qais’s birthday – especially this first birthday – is as much a celebration of her as it is him.