I have absorbed several accounts of the viability of the “space elevator” from Scientific American and various programs on the Discovery Channel, but I have remained as skeptical as I am eager for this advance. I decided to run the numbers myself, completely unassisted, to see how viable it seems to me. After about 20 minutes of “math fun”, I came across the Wikipedia article which basically had it all solved out for me. Check it out: Space Elevator. I highly recommend reading it, and definitely not reading the bullshit I was going to write before I found it =)
August 24, 2008
August 17, 2008
Trouble installing GNU/Linux with an ASUS P5Q Motherboard (Marvell 88SE6121 IDE controller)
There comes a time in every computer engineer’s life when they must analyze their storage solutions and admit that they are, in fact, no longer sufficient for the stuff they wish to store. In fact, this time usually comes about every 18 months for me.
I decided that this would simply not do. My last file server, now over 18 months old, had 600GB of raw storage in a 400GB three-drive linux LVM2 software RAID 5 array. I had added an extra 200GB of “non redundant scratch storage”, but it still wasn’t cutting it. I was also concerned that I had heard from several people that RAID 5 redundancy is not as good as one might like to think. Because the array can only stand a single drive failure without data loss, often times a single drive fails, a replacement is obtained, but then the stress of rebuilding the replaced drive causes one of the others to fail, dooming the entire array.
On a whim, I decided to see what it would take to slap together a fileserver with a little bit better longevity. I decided to get a rackable case, as my “tower of towers” is getting pretty ugly even though it is in a dedicated “machine room”. Some day I’ll actually buy a rack to put it in (but not today). I decided that for performance and reliability, I wanted to build an 8-disk RAID6 array. I figured I’d spec it out with 8 cheap drives, and cheaper hardware, and another with 8 huge drives and slightly nicer hardware. I ended up choosing the bigger and better one (naturally).
In the end, my file server would run me just under $2300. It included:
- 1xChassis Supermicro (CSE-833T-R760) 3U chassis with 8 hot-swap SATA bays and 760W Triple-Redundant power supply
- 8×1TB Seagate ST31000340AS Drives (32MB cache 7200RPM SATAII 3Gbps)
- 2×2GB Corsair DDR2 1066Mhz (PC8500) ram
- 1x Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz
- 1x ASUS P5Q ATX Motherboard LGA 775 (has 8 on-board SATA II ports)
With a RAID6 array, I would have 6TB of usable space – that’s a lot of por…erm…”Anime”. Once the parts had all arrived, I excitedly started slapping it together. In the end, I forgot a video card (whoops, thought I had one, but it didn’t work anymore), so that was another $30. I tried a serial console install first but that didn’t go to well. Next I finally got the bios to boot the Debian netinst CD – SUCCESS! Or…maybe not. During the install, I got this error:
No common CD-ROM drive was detected. I did some research, but I couldn’t figure out a solution. It appeared to be a problem with the debian installer.
I finally came to the real answer. This motherboard uses a Marvell 88SE6121 controller (I believe it is a PATA controller only). The bios was able to read the CD to boot, but then the debian installer couldn’t find it, because the module we need (pata_marvell) isn’t available in the 2.6.18 kernel on the Debian netinst CD (or wasn’t built into it by default). I had to build a custom install CD with an updated kernel in order to get this baby up and running! =(
Details on how exactly I got the CD built will be coming up soon. Also, maybe I’ll post the ISO. For now, I gotta get some shuteye. Chow!
August 5, 2008
What it must be like to work for a crappy “average” software company…
I work for Amazon.com. They are not your “average” software company. And so, I often wondered what it is like to struggle to find work straight out of college, just barely get that job, then work your ass off to get the requisite experience to get a job you don’t hate. This blog paints a pretty sad picture:
http://skepticalmethodologist.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/new-hire-cannon-fodder/
Wow, I haven’t seen something I disagreed with so completely since the windows 95 manual stated “Now windows is easier and more stable than ever!”. If this is how companies that aren’t Amazon operate, than I sure am glad to be where I am. Where this author is most wrong, however, is dragging the Amazons and the Googles and the Microsofts of the world into it. How the fuck does HE know? I don’t see any mention of him working for Microsoft of Google. He takes some article written SPECIFICALLY about YCombinator – a VC startup – and starts making all sorts of ludicrous conclusions about Microsoft and Google:
It probably began with Microsoft, but you can see its effect at Apple (notably Steve Jobs’ notorious temper) and I’m sure it’s at Google too (except it’s far more sinister there.) If you have recently graduated from college with a CS degree, congratulations, your stock options are just behind that Machine Gun nest.
Did Microsoft or Google even start with VC? I thought Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft by stealing from Xerox with their own sweat and blood. And Google started out at Stanford with a PhD thesis. Why is it “more sinister” at Google? Because their employees are even HAPPIER, and better compensated? Because they get free food?
The author of this blog suggests that companies hire all these “young, naive” programmers so they can make mistake after mistake, then suggests they shouldn’t try so hard, shouldn’t work so many hours, and should basically give up, coast through life, and be mediocre. How absurd! You don’t get a job at Microsoft, or Google, or Amazon, by being mediocre. The hiring bar is insanely high. This author either has some sour grapes over some startup they worked for, or they are completely making shit up. And as for the difference between startups and Microsoft or Google or Amazon – you can’t compare those inexperienced know-nothing startups who have only proved they have the strength to weather several months to a REAL software company.
Let me put it this way – Amazon was started in 1996 by a brilliant business man with a vision and a garage with some empty shelves where he hoped products would go someday. Now Amazon is a 20 billion dollar multinational company. It, unlike so many, survived the “dot com bust”. The people who founded the companies this author is referring to were “still in diapers” the year Amazon first made a profit.
Maybe I am just biased for Amazon, but I love working for Amazon. Sure, Amazon pays me “pennies” – over 8,000,000 of them a year, plus an excellent medical plan, plus I got a signing bonus, plus stock units worth an amount I’m not really supposed to discuss (let’s just say it’s more than you think). Add to that the fact that my work is interesting, challenging, and rewarding, and it’s a no-brainer. Add to THAT the fact that I could gain valuable experience here that I can get nowhere else, having worked for Amazon is a “get an interview free” card with just about any software company on the planet, my manager constantly talks about my career advancement and it is clear the company cares deeply about my future, and it’s a slam dunk.
So what hours do I *really* work? Am I just a brainwashed, 80-hour a week code monkey? Not at all. Amazon doesn’t care when you get to work, and Amazon doesn’t care when you leave. Amazon cares what you accomplish. So you know what? I’m not as smart as my peers. At Amazon, you are surrounded by brilliant people. Next to them, I feel inadequate at times – but that encourages me to work hard, and do my best, and it has made me a better engineer. So I work an average of 50-55 hours a week. I do this by choice, because I want that promotion, because some day I want to be able to take it easy, but today is not that day. When I do take it easy, it will be because I am talented and experienced enough to get my work done in 40 hours a week.
On that subject – the author is dead wrong about the ludicrous picture he paints of engineers:
Junior designers see lack of sleep as a ‘badge of honor’, they see long hours as proof of their worth.
That is, quite simply, the dumbest thing I have ever heard. What I see as a badge of honor is the guy that sits next to me, who I notice has a source control submit of *real* code every day, sends out code reviews twice as often as I do, and the guy leaves an hour earlier than I do, and arrives an hour later than I do, every god damned day. That guy is a fucking genius. In less time than me, he does twice as much. THAT is a badge of honor. THAT is an engineer I look up to, and hope to emulate some day.
So you can say what you will about “poor CS graduates” and the “mean startups” that abuse them, but from my perspective, that’s the exception, not the rule. If you want to work for a video game company, welcome to the club – so do 60,000 other CS graduates – and some of them are willing to pull 65 hour weeks if that’s what it takes. If you want to work for a startup that might mean retirement at age 29, well, so do 60,000 other CS graduates, so maybe you have to be willing to work a little harder. But if you are talented enough, you have plenty of “reasonable” options – for example, Amazon is hiring =P