Feeling Slow? Check the Load

January 12, 2008 by Eric Richardson

My phone (an iPhone) has been feeling sluggish lately. It took until today for the light to turn on where I said "Why don't I open the terminal and check top?" Load was around 4, and it was instantly apparent the culprit:

12796 gnuchess    31.7%  7:12:55   2    31   109  1.36M  1.47M
12538 gnuchess    28.0%  6:46:13   2    30   109  1.36M  1.47M
12116 gnuchess    25.8%  7:02:24   2    30   109  1.36M  1.47M

Turns out that if the chess app crashed it was leaving a gnuchess instance running (and running hard, apparently) under the hood. A couple of those had built up and were choking out anything else trying to hit the CPU. A simple killall gnuchess and I'm feeling much better.

... And Wet Here

January 05, 2008 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

We got back into town Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday evening it started raining. It's been dry this morning, so I rode over to the river to take a few photos. You can see them as a set here.

Shot taken from the 7th street bridge, with the shutter at 1/4 sec to get the silky water. And, yes, it really was that brown.

It's Cold Here

January 01, 2008 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

Tomorrow morning Kathy and I head back to L.A. after a little over a week here in Michigan. We arrived to a snow storm and despite a little warming in between it's been pretty consistently cold with two good snowfalls. While it's always nice to see family, I'm good and ready to get back to California warmth.