entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

Putting this out there for the mighty Google overmind to pick up: if your shiny new Uverse TV installation won't let you record any programs with the message "DVR not available on this TV", you need to "unblock the memory" of the DVR by resetting it like so:

• Push and hold the Down and OK buttons on the DVR
• Push and hold down the Power button until the picture resets, then release
• Once the gear appears on the screen, let go of the Down and OK butons

Albert Einstein is credited with saying something along the lines of, "Time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once."  I have clearly transcended such mundane limitations:

• We are in the process of buying a new house (we plan to rent the current one)
• I'm in the midst of switching jobs (leaving Netflix and joining shopping.com)
• Both cars are in the shop today (and thus we are contemplating buying a newer one)
• I had to return my MacBook Pro to Netflix (which necessitated completing Portal 2 before my time was up), and my personal XP laptop hasn't been turned on in at least two years due to a bad CPU fan, so i'm writing this on my phone, which means i am contemplating buying my own MBP, even though i know that our funds first need to go towards home improvement and car repair

Maybe someone can call Larry fucking Ellison and get him to spend some of his yacht racing petty cash on a goddamn QA box.

Bug No.                   5389730
Filed                     13-JUL-2006
Updated                   30-OCT-2006
Product                   Oracle Server - Enterprise Edition
Product Version           10.2.0.1
Platform                  Generic
Platform Version          No Data
Database Version          10.2.0.1
Affects Platforms         Port-Specific
Severity                  Severe Loss of Service
Status                    Development to Q/A
Base Bug                  N/A
Fixed in Product Version  11.0

Problem statement:

10.2.0.1 32BIT OCI EXECUTABLES FAILS WITH ORA-12154 ON SOLARIS 10 X86-64(AMD64)

[...]

PROBLEM:
--------

10.2.0.1 32bit OCI exceutable built using Oracle make file fails with ORA-12154.
The exact same code works when a 64bit executable is used. sqlplus is 64bit
executable so the connection works.  The problem is only on seen on solaris 10
X86-64(AMD64)

DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS:
--------------------

Inhouse tried the test on both regular solaris 10(celcsol3) and x86(celcx86b)
and was not able to reproduce the error.

REPRODUCIBILITY:
----------------

Inhouse cannot find solaris 10 X86-64(AMD64) testbox.

I spent the afternoon helping elmuchacho deal with his evidently Parkinsonian computer.  An OS reinstallation turned out to not solve the problems with it, so we tried one of the carcasses i had lying around, but it was DOA.  As a last resort, i gave him my very own desktop computer (itself a reclamation job), to which he added a hard drive that contains his school work.  Since my computer won't be here, i won't need my 19" LCD monitor, so i let him take it instead of having him drag back his 21" CRT monstrosity.  I wasn't using it except for Civ4, and i got my fill of that this weekend.  These days, my primary computer is my work-issued Z60m StinkPad, so i'll be all right.

<kevinying> i almost bought the wine named Solaris because that was the only thing I recognized in that rack
<ronebofh> it would need three years to be ready to drink!
<davewsmith_blog> 19" rack?

<Xney> "In the meantime, if you get a lot of broken linker references at compile time, try running make again (possibly several times) until it all works."
<Xney> I love our devs

Ten straight hours of struggling with chroot, apache, BIND, bad documentation, build deployments, Chinese food, high-fructose corn syrup, and puny bandwidth to India.  And to top it off, i get to sleep alone tonight because Kimmy's in San Francisco, because tomorrow morning she'll walk the half-distance Nike Women's Marathon (VORSICHT: Flash).  For the San Franciscans, the finish line is on Great Highway, halfway between Lincoln Way and JFK Dr, in case you want to drop by and cheer.  She should be finishing at around 11:15-11:30.

So yeah, pity me, but cheer my wife.  Or else.

We're using a particular Tyan board on many of the workstations at work.  It maxes out at 4 RAM sticks of 1 GB each, for a total of 4 GB.  However, upon booting, the OS (and memtest86) would only find 3296 MB (despite the BIOS claiming "4096 MB OK").  I updated the BIOS and that let us have 128 MB more, for a total of 3424 MB.  A friendly Google search yielded information that suggested we enable the "software memory hole" in the BIOS setup; apparently, these things reserve space between 3.5 GB and 4 GB for god knows what, and enabling the setting frees that up.  Upon enabling the SMH, the RAM test during bootup shows it happily counting up to 3072 MB, freezing for a second, then counting up from 4096 MB to 5120 MB, and upon reaching that, going back to display "4096 MB OK".  The OS now admits to seeing all the RAM.

(Oh, and i didn't even go into the near-impossibility of making a bootable CD that included the BIOS Flash file and utility that worked.  We ended up finding a floppy drive and disk rather than suffer and keep dumping coasters.)

It's a good thing that my livelihood doesn't depend on understanding computers, because god damn i hate the fuckin' things.

I swore i'd never make the by-now cliché "i'm sorry i haven't been blogging" update to my journal.  I also had a snappy putdown for myself in my mind this morning when i was thinking about writing it, but a day of resetting firewalls and building bookcases and Pilsner Urquell means that i've forgotten my clever phrase.  But never mind that.  The point is, i don't owe you, the reader, anything; this is my fucking journal and i'll write in it when i write in it about whatever it is i'm writing about.  No, wait, that's completely wrong.  If i didn't owe you, the reader, anything, then i should just shutter the whole operation and write my journal on paper in elegant longhand and store it under lock and key (as opposed to under lock with no key, because then i'd never be able to get it out).  Anyway, "Fuck me, fuck you, fuck everyone," as that great patriot Al Jourgensen once said.

I think the World Cup recaps were a little draining, albeit not nearly as draining as actually getting up to watch nearly every early game.  Work has been a busy affair, what with getting familiar, actual tasks, and moving my workspace twice in two months (and top that off with an impending trip to Bangalore).  To compound that, my workspace at home was also disrupted, specifically by a CPU failure.  So not only have i been too busy to sit down and be creative, but when i have sat down, it hasn't been in a place where i felt comfortable.  So all you've gotten from me since the Cup ended has been soccer reports, link dumps, cheap one-liners, and anti-Semitic crap bad sports analogies.

I've had the next part of E&TG sitting on the hard drive of my (now fully operational battle station) workstation, and gods has it been so long since i've worked on the damn story, and i just want to finish the damn thing.

There's lots of detritus and debris in my head of things i wanted to write about.  I know i have some empty wine bottles kicking around the house that are waiting to be written about while the memory of their flavor is still present.  I have to write a book report of Eco's The Name of the Rose for my dad.  I also want to review a couple of movies.  We'll see how it goes, but at least now i can get on with it.  My journal: confessional booth or bathroom stall?  You, the reader: priest or creepy voyeur?  I think i'm done.  Am i done?  Yeah, i'm done.