Blog Fiasco

September 2, 2010

Beonard’s Losers — 2010, Week 1

Filed under: Sports — Tags: , , , — bcotton @ 6:51 pm
Due to technical problems, this week’s Beonard’s Losers has not been recorded.  Sorry for the lack of audio, and also the late post.

Howdy, football fans! It’s been a long, crazy off-season. Conference shuffles mean the Big Ten and Big XII are about to get very confusing. Notre Dame continues to insist that the calendar says 1989. At least they’re not USC, which is facing a two year ban from post-season play. Or BYU who just this week hopped on the independent bandwagon.  All-in-all, it’s enough to make you ready for the start of football season. Once again, we’ll be looking at the Big Televen, plus Notre Dame and a selection of top-25 matchups. Now that the introductions are out of the way, let’s take a look at this week’s games.

Marshall at Ohio State

Doc Holliday’s Herd thunders into Columbus on Thursday evening, and will try to give their coach an unblemished start to his career. Jim Tressel’s nuts come into the season ranked number two, and they’d hate to give that up so quickly. The Bucs have a big trip to Miami scheduled for the following weekend, but Ol’ Sweatervest will keep them focused. Beonard’s loser? Marshall.

Towson at Indiana

The Tigers stalk into Memorial Stadium in the hopes of catching the home team playing a game of basketball. Bill Lynch needs his boys to defend the rock early and often if he wants to keep his job much longer. Fortunately for him, Indiana’s been fairly good at starting the season with a few wins. Beonard’s loser? Towson.

Minnesota at Middle Tennessee

It’s a color clash on Thursday night when Tim Brewster brings his gilded rodents into Murfreesboro to take on the Blue Raiders. The pedagogues are no slouches, winning their last six games on 2009, including the New Orleans Bowl. The groundhogs, meanwhile, haven’t won six in a row since 2003. It hardly feels right picking a Sun Belt Conference team to win against the Big Ten, but there you have it. Beonard’s Loser? Minnesota.

Youngstown State at Penn State

Have you ever seen a Penguin try to fight a Lion? Let me tell you, friends, it’s not a pretty sight. With Bobby Bowden out of the way, JoePa can run up the lifetime wins total without having to worry about any competition, including from the visiting team. Beonard’s Loser? Youngstown State.

Western Michigan at Michigan State

The Broncos start the season by taking a ride into East Lansing to take on the green and white warriors. Soldiers traditionally get along pretty well with horses, but these spear-toters would much rather fight on foot. With a fairly agreeable conference schedule, Mark Dantonio hopes to sneak his way atop the conference standings at the end of the season, and feasting on horse meat is a good way to start. Beonard’s Loser? Western Michigan

Eastern Illinois at Iowa

Unlike Youngstown and Penn States, this matchup favors the avian team.  Iowa worked their way into the national championship discussion last season, and you know Kirk Ferentz will have his flock ready.  Kinnick Stadium is just no place for kittens.  Beonard’s Loser? Eastern Illinois.

Illinois versus Missouri

With the Arch Rivalry scheduled to go on hiatus for a few years, it could be Ron Zook’s last chance to win this contest.  Mizzou has gone 5-0 in games played this century and the Chambana tribe ain’t too thrilled about losing again.  Unfortunately for the natives, Zook’s squads have been masters of disappointment, and this hunting trip looks to end in disaster.  Beonard’s Loser? Illinois.

Purdue at Notre Dame

With a new coach at the altar, the Papal pigskin squad will try once again to bring glory back to the Indiana Vatican.  Adjusting to a new system is never easy, though, and the West Lafayette locomotive has already had a year with Danny Hope in the engine.  If the conductor can keep from calling a timeout at the end, the train will roll on through.  Beonard’s Loser?  In an upset, Notre Dame.

Connecticut at Michigan

It’s not often Connecticut is a “must beat” team, but that’s very much the case for RichRod and his Ann Arbor animals.  The winningest program in college football can’t be happy with a third straight losing season, and dropping the season opener at home would not be a good start.  The Hartford pups fared pretty well in the Big East last year, but playing in the Big House is a different game all together.  Beonard’s Loser?  In a close one, Connecticut.

Northwestern at Vanderbilt

Robbie Caldwell had better be an expert deep-sea diver, because Vanderbilt currently sits at the bottom of the ocean.  His salvage efforts will be hampered by Pat Fitzgerald and the purple kittens.  It’s not too often we see the Big Televen and SEC face off, but the Dixie-dwellers would just as soon this game doesn’t happen.  By the end of the day, the Evanston felines will be Nashville cats.  Beonard’s Loser? Vanderbilt

Wisconsin at UNLV

For the second time in four seasons, the cheese-eaters head for the bright lights of the Las Vegas strip.  In 2007, the Badgers only managed to win by 7 points.  This year, the game should be a little more one-sided.  Bret Bielma wants to come into the game against The Ohio State 6-0, and his boys will steamroll anyone who tries to get in the way.  Beonard’s Loser?  UNLV.

Well, friends, that’s about all I’ve got time for this week.  Stay tuned for next week when we have a whole ‘nother crop of losers.

To the Beonard’s Losers main page.

August 30, 2010

Hurricane Earl forecast contest

Filed under: Funnel Fiasco,Weather — Tags: , , , , — bcotton @ 10:40 pm

The hurricane season is in full swing, with three active storms.  Danielle is scooting off to oblivion in the North Atlantic, but Earl is gearing up to take a run at the east coast…somewhere.  As of this writing, the forecast track is such that landfall could be anywhere from the Outer Banks to Nova Scotia, or perhaps it may yet turn out to sea.  Of course that means there’s a Funnel Fiasco tropical contest underway. You can enter by clicking the link on the tropical weather page (or go directly to it here).  The deadline for entry is Tuesday at 8 PM EDT (Wednesday 0000 UTC).  Just a reminder to make sure you enter valid numbers, I won’t check them for you.

Stay tuned for more on Hurricane Earl, and also for a potential repeat when Tropical Storm Fiona get closer.

It’s beginning to look a lot like LISA

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — bcotton @ 4:32 pm

We’re just over two months from the Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference, and the website has recently been updated with details. I’ve never been to this conference before, but as a member of the official blog team, I’ll get to spend the week doing nothing but participating in, and writing about, LISA ’10. Can I write two blog posts and countless tweets every day? It will be a challenge, and I’m sure I’ll be tired of writing by the end, but there should be plenty to write about.

With three days of workshops, 48 training courses, and three days of technical sessions,  there’s plenty to choose from.  I’m especially interested in the talk “Measuring the Value of System Administration” scheduled for Thursday morning.  Of course, each evening there will be Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions, which I’m told are the most valuable part of the whole LISA experience.  BoFs are an informal meeting of the minds, where admins who do similar work compare notes and pick up new ideas to bring home.  And drink beer.  I’m okay with that.  The BoF schedule is still pretty thin, but no doubt it will fill out as November approaches.

If you’re interested in attending LISA, you can register online at http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa10/registration/.  Registration is available in half-day increments, so you can pay for exactly the amount of conference you want, and if you register by October 18, you get the “early bird discount.”  I hope to see you all in San Jose!

August 28, 2010

Purdue football predictions — 2010 edition

Filed under: Sports — Tags: , , — bcotton @ 3:56 pm

Finally, the college football season is almost upon us.  Let’s take a moment and extend our sympathies to my wife, who will effectively be a widow for the next three months of Saturdays.  I’ve got my tickets in hand, my jersey cleaned and ready, and my optimism at full throttle.  Last year was pretty disappointing for Purdue fans, although there were encouraging signs.  A questionable timeout at the end of the Notre Dame game might have been the difference between a bowl game and staying home.  A respectable Oregon team barely managed a win at home, and eventual Big Ten champion The Ohio State got a big shock in West Lafayette.

The Boilers haven’t received much love from the national media (gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?), but that’s okay.  If everyone stays healthy, and no one else ends up academically ineligible,  Purdue could wind up being in the hunt for the Big Ten title at the end of the season.  Of course, many of the games it takes to get there will be close, so the end result could vary quite a bit.  Of course, I’ll be taking a look at each game week-by-week for Beonard’s Losers, but in the meantime, here’s my poorly-researched, quickly-written view of Purdue’s season.

At Notre Dame: The Irish are on their fourth coach (fifth if you count George O’Leary) this decade, and Brian Kelly has his work cut out for him.  Notre Dame has a new quarterback who is recovering from a knee injury, and a new coach to learn.  Notre Dame has some votes in the pre-season polls, but that’s more name recognition than anything else.  South Bend is not normally a friendly location for the Boilers, but they should be able to get a win.

Western Illinois: Directional Illinois isn’t necessarily a guaranteed win, as Northern showed last year.  Fortunately, Western is a less worthy opponent.  There’s no excuse for losing this game.

Ball State: BSU isn’t quite the pushover they were back in 2004 when Kyle Orton and company hung approximately one trillion points on them.  In fact, there was a time not that long ago when I considered the Cardinals the best team in the state.  That time has passed, and I wouldn’t expect to see Ball State do much better than they did last season.  This should be another confidence-builder.

Toledo: The Rockets have been a favorite early-season opponent the past few years, and generally help the Boilers get off to a confident, if overrated, start.  Toledo will be a good final test before conference play starts, but shouldn’t be too challenging.  There’s a reason I consider Purdue to be the MAC champions, and after this game they should be 4-0.

At Northwestern: It doesn’t seem to matter how good Purdue is, Evanston is always a tough place to play.  Since this game is in the first half of the season, the weather shouldn’t be too horrible, but it’s going to take more than a nice fall day to turn this into a win.  If senior quarterback Dan Persa can keep the offense going, Purdue will have a hard time winning this one.

Minnesota: Tim Brewster is the first of several coaches that Purdue may see the last of in 2010.  In three years under Brewster, the Gophers have never gone .500 or better in the Big Ten and their best finish is a tie for 6th.  Adam Weber needs a strong season, but without Eric Decker, I don’t think we’ll see anything better than “fair” from him.  If the Purdue secondary can play at all, the Boilers should win this game.

At Ohio State: Some of the key pieces are back from last year’s matchup, notably Purdue defensive end Ryan Kerrigan, who gave Terrelle Prior nightmares.  It’s tempting to pick Purdue to get the upset again, but it’s worth noting that this game is being played in Columbus, not West Lafayette.  Not to mention the fact that the Buckeyes are pissed about last year’s game and will be out for revenge. This won’t be a guaranteed loss for the Boilers, but it’s likely.

At Illinois: Boy, this team is hard to gauge.  Ron Zook has a talent for recruiting good teams that under-perform.  He’s the second coach that may be packing his bags at the end of the season; it’s just hard to imagine that Illinois would be content with another disappointing year.  The Illini schedule is very front-loaded, so it remains to be seen how the team will handle facing Penn State and Ohio State on consecutive weekends.  Frankly, I think it’s more likely that Purdue will lose this game than that Illinois will win it.

Wisconsin: Last year’s 37-0 shellacking in Madison can’t sit well with the Boilers.  Purdue will be worked up for this game, but I’m not sure it’ll be enough.  The Badgers should be good this year and all of the emotion in the world won’t fix that.  This year’s matchup will be closer, but Purdue loses this one, too.

Michigan: Purdue has only beaten Michigan 14 times in the history of the sport, and never three times in a row.  Yet that’s what’s at stake this November.  If the NCAA hasn’t done him in already, a loss in this game pretty much guarantees that the Wolverines bring the RichRod era to an end.  Michigan seems to be improving, but they won’t have enough to win this one, unless the two-game losing streak saps Purdue’s will to live.

At Michigan State: Purdue had the lead through three quarters last year, and, if they’d held on, would have become bowl-eligible.  It seems like (and I’m too lazy to check) Purdue and Michigan State have been very well-matched the past few years, and this year should be no different.  I’m not sure the Boilers will be seasoned enough to take away a win from East Lansing, but it should be a fun game to watch.

Indiana: Indiana has lost the last 2 matchups, and hasn’t won in Ross-Ade Stadium since 1996.  They’ve got a good quarterback, and a few other pieces, but I don’t see much of a team.  Bill Lynch is a pretty lousy football coach, and he may be done after failing again to reclaim the Old Oaken Bucket.

So that’s my look at this season.  We’ll see how horribly wrong I end up being.  If the above predictions hold true, Purdue finishes 7-5 overall, 3-5 in the Big Ten, 6-1 at home, and 7-1 in the state of Indiana.  This would be a big improvement from the past few seasons, and might help bump up the flagging ticket sales.  Boiler up!

August 24, 2010

Is Twitter just a crippled version of IRC?

Filed under: Musings,The Internet — Tags: , , — bcotton @ 12:24 pm

Back in May, Karsten Wade posted “microblog format/interaction is a crippled, radically transparent form of #IRC. Otherwise, seems to serve same purposes.”  I don’t know if that’s his own conclusion or if he was quoting someone else, but I disagree either way.  The other evening, I had a related discussion with a friend.  Her take was that Twitter is a less-featureful version of Facebook status updates.  I don’t believe that either, but it seems to highlight a problem with Twitter: it’s utility isn’t readily apparent.

Twitter easily supports one-to-one and one-to-many interaction.  Many-to-many is possible, but requires some searching and/or client configuration.  That makes it a rather poor replacement for IRC.  IRC is also more real-time than Twitter is necessarily.  Although Twitter is often used for real-time events, it doesn’t have to be.  The big difference between IRC and Twitter is that IRC is self-contained.  This is a point I made several times during the Mario Marathon, when people in chat felt they were being ignored.  IRC can be very active, but no one outside the channel will notice.  With Twitter, the message gets spread each time someone posts.  If a topic begins to trend, that can pull in even more participants.

There’s a better case for saying Twitter is just like pulling the status updates out of Facebook.  Several people I know post Facebook status updates with their Twitter accounts, so it seems reasonable.  I’d agree that they are mostly the same, but there are a few differences.  The primary difference is that Facebook more easily allows threaded discussion, whereas a tweet stands alone.  Neither way is necessarily better; in certain circumstances one is preferable over another.  There’s also the lack of passive support.  In Facebook, you can “like” a status with impunity.  On Twitter, to express support, you must re-tweet and therefore own the statement.

To me, there’s a clear use for Twitter.  That’s not the case for many people, and until they can figure out a use, they simply won’t use it.

August 20, 2010

There’s a world of data out there

Filed under: The Internet,Weather — Tags: , , , , , , — bcotton @ 9:03 am

While working on yesterday’s Weather Watch post, I decided that it was important to know what the normal river levels were this time of year.  After all, knowing the river stage is pretty useless without context.  Flood stage is pretty easy to find for most sites, but that doesn’t necessarily provide context for low-water situations.  For example, the Ohio River at Louisville, KY (McAlpine Lock and Dam, lower) has a flood stage of 55 feet, so being 15 feet below flood stage is normal.  In contrast, 15 feet below flood stage for the Wabash River at Lafayette, IN is four feet below ground.  The concept of pool stage exists, but it’s not widely used.  So how can river depth be put in the proper context for low-water situations?

Like most other data meteorological, a comparison to the average value over some period of time is apt.  The question then becomes “where do I find the average river height for a particular site?”  Of course, the average height can vary greatly over the course of a year based on local and upstream precipitation patterns, so month-by-month data is preferable.  Unlike temperature and precipitation, though, the National Weather Service does not issue daily climate summaries for rivers (at least not that I’ve seen).

Fortunately for the numerically-minded, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has a wealth of data available for free on the Internet.  It’s a little tricky to navigate, but with patience, the National Water Information System (NWIS) will surrender the desired information.   With data for approximately 1.5 sites available in a variety of readable and parseable formats, there’s enough to keep even the most efficient data nerd busy for a long time.  For easier-to-navigate real-time hydrologic data and forecasts, see http://water.weather.gov/ahps/.

August 17, 2010

How helpful is helpful enough?

Filed under: Linux,Musings — Tags: , , , , , , — bcotton @ 10:18 am

I have a confession: I am a compulsive favor-doer. When someone asks for my help, I have a hard time saying “no”. Since there’s only so much Ben to go around, this gives me a tendency to over-commit.  I recognize this as a problem, but I can’t help myself.  It’s in my nature to be helpful.

So how helpful should I be?  My wife works at the county library, and last week a gentleman was checking out a book about Linux.  In the course of small talk it came up that he’s trying to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows 7.  Angie mentioned that I run Linux at home and he wrote down his phone number and e-mail address for her to give to me.  I’m not mad at her for it, she hasn’t committed me to anything, but it got me wondering.

My initial reaction was to e-mail the guy and introduce myself.  After all, I’m a nice guy and that’s what I do.  Then I realized that this would probably make me his go-to support.  I don’t mind helping people, but an open-ended commitment isn’t exactly what I’m in the market for.  I already do a fair bit of free work for strangers.  I answer questions in the #fedora IRC room, on LinuxForums.com and on Serverfault.  Additionally, I write this blog, and I write documentation for the Fedora Project.  Maybe I don’t do as much as others, but I’m definitely contributing back to the community.

So maybe, I thought, I should set a rate and charge him for help.  That seems like too much effort, though. I’m not really interested in doing enough consulting/contract work to make it worth the trouble of filing the appropriate paperwork.  Besides, I have such a hard time asking for a reward for being nice.

Where does that leave me then?  I have no idea.  In the meantime, I’ve gone with the head-in-sand approach.  I’ll just pretend like this never happened.  Perhaps someday I’ll be able to solve this quandary.

August 10, 2010

Sometimes, Windows wins

Filed under: HPC/HTC,Linux — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — bcotton @ 6:59 am

It should be clear by now that I am an advocate of free software.  I’m not reflexively against closed software though, sometimes it’s the right tool for the job.  Use of Windows is not a reason for mockery.  In fact, I’ve found one situation where I like the way Windows works better.

As part of our efforts to use Condor for power saving, I thought it would be a great idea if we could calculate the power savings based on the actual power usage of the machines.  The plan was to have Cycle Server aggregate the time in hibernate state for each model and then multiply that by the power draw for the model.  Since Condor doesn’t note the hardware model, I needed to write a STARTD_CRON module to determine this.  The only limitations I had were that I couldn’t depend on root/administrator privileges or on particular software packages being installed. (The execute nodes are in departments across campus and mostly not under my control.)

Despite the lack of useful tools like grep, sed, and awk (there are equivalents for some of the taken-for-granted GNU tools, but they frankly aren’t very good), the plugin for Windows was very easy.  The systeminfo command gives all kinds of useful, parseable information about the system’s hardware and OS.  The only difficult part was chopping the blank spaces off the end of the output. I wanted to do this in Perl, but that’s not guaranteed to be installed on Windows machines, and I had some difficulty getting a standalone-compiled version working consistently.

On Linux, parsing the output is easy.  The hard part was getting the information at all.  dmidecode seems to be ubiquitous, but it requires root privileges to get any information.  I tried lshw, lshal, and the entire /proc tree.  /proc didn’t have the information I need, and the two commands were not necessarily a part of the “base” install.  The solution seemed to be to require the addition of a package (or bundling a binary for lshw in our Condor distribution).

Eventually, we decided that it was more effort than it was worth to come up with a reliable module.  While both platforms had problems, Linux was definitely the more difficult.  It’s a somewhat rare condition, but there are times when Windows wins.

August 6, 2010

In search of the local flavors

Filed under: Musings — Tags: , , , , , , — bcotton @ 8:18 am

I will readily admit to enjoying national brands.  I eat fast food, I drink Coke, etc.  That’s not to say that I eschew any regional or local vendors, just that I’m unrefined enough to enjoy the mass-produced things in life.  There’s a lot to be said for the local flavors, though.  Two of my favorite restaurants in Lafayette are completely local.  When I travel, I like to eat at local restaurants — both for the food and to see what the locals are like.  Even more interesting than local restaurants, though, are local (or just rare) soft drinks.

Whenever I’m in the Jasper, IN area there’s one task I must accomplish: buy all the Ski I can.  This delicious beverage is not to be found around here, so I have to stock up.  I think the same might happen for Ale-8-One, a Kentucky favorite that I’d bet mixes quite well with Bourbon.  Big Red is a drink I grew up on that is becoming more widely distributed.  Every once in a while, I’ll stop at a gas station that sells Nehi and I have to buy a bottle.

Imagine my distress when I stopped for gas in Clinton, Tennessee last weekend.  I needed something to drink, so I looked in the coolers — there were no local drinks at all.  I thought about it for a while and realized that the absence of local beverages is the norm, and it’s uncommon to find those interesting local flavors.  So where have they gone?  I’d guess that many have been purchased by larger companies and have become national brands, but is there really no demand for local soft drinks?  There’s only one thing I can do: I must whine about it on the Internet.  In the meantime, I’ll just keep looking in all the gas stations.

July 19, 2010

Why am I giving my work away for free?!

Filed under: Musings — Tags: , , , , , , , — bcotton @ 8:17 am

Recently, I began writing a regular weather blog for the local newspaper.  I’m not getting paid for this, so people may wonder why I’m giving free content to a for-profit organization.  I asked myself this very question, and the answer is that I don’t find the terms sufficiently objectionable.  Although the blog appears on the Journal & Courier website, they likely don’t make too much money off the ad revenue.  And while I don’t make any money either, I get the chance to refine and showcase my writing skills for a different audience than I currently have, and I get the chance to bring a little bit of traffic here (maybe I should start selling ads).  Of course there’s always the joy of sharing my knowledge, proving a public service, and keeping all of that meteorology I learned in school in my head a little longer.  Finally, I’m a compulsive favor-doer.

More than any of that, though, I am philosophically in favor of sharing information.  The vast majority of the writing I do is released under some form of the Creative Commons licenses.  The Fedora Project requires me to use the CC-BY-SA license, which does not prohibit commercial use.  In that sense, writing documentation for Fedora and writing my weather blog both could result in people who are not me making money off my work.  That’s fine, because I’m not doing it for money (although if someone wants to leave an envelope of cash on my doorstep, that’s okay).  In both cases, I consider the free access to my effort to be fair trade.  My Fedora work is my way of contributing to the project that provides me with free (both gratis and libre) software that I use on a daily basis.  The writing I do for the Journal & Courier I see as contributing to the betterment of my society (or at least the lowering of my blood pressure. Weather-related stupidity angers me quite effectively).  The fact that one is a non-profit and the other is for-profit is not a consideration for me.

I am a firm believer in freedom for users, but I also believe that content creators should be free to license their works as they see fit.  Copyleft licenses like the GPL are preferable to more restrictive licenses, but if someone wants to put a restrictive license on his work, that right should be available.  In each case, a decision must be reached as to what is and is not acceptable.  In the cases I’ve discussed here, I have determined that, for my own criteria, the terms are acceptable.  The nice thing about volunteer work is that if I determine at some point that the terms are no longer tolerable, I can simply stop contributing.  In the meantime, I hope as many people as possible enjoy the fruits of my labor, and I look forward to enjoying the works of others.

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