four whole years

July 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Looking at my On This Date... I see a post telling me that today is the 4th anniversary of the release of eThreads 1.2. That is, as I've mentioned, the most recent release. Yikes. Four years.

smart, sgi, smart

July 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I mentioned last month that I had picked up an Indigo while up in the Bay area. Sunday night a 13W3 SGI monitor out here, so all the pieces were in place to give it a shot at booting up. I thought I was going to have to find an old, big external SCSI cable, but then last night I realized I had one under my bed, so that wasn't really an issue. What is an issue, though, is this error:

Initializing tod clock
setting secs=0 min=0 hour=0 day=1 month=1 year=0
Can't set tod clock

And repeat, ad infinitum.

Apparently if the clock battery on the Indigo motherboard goes dead, it won't boot at all. This flies in the face of logic and even of other SGI behaviour (my Personal IRIS has had a dead clock battery since I got it. On boot it sets the clock to the latest file timestamp on the drive). I think the box is an R4K, which means the battery's soldered onto the mobo. This guy says it's an easy connection, so I'll have to break out the soldering iron and see what happens.

one of those days

July 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Today's one of those days where I just can't seem to wake up, even though I've been out of bed two hours, driven to work, taken a walk in the sun, and listened to music. I just walked down to the cafeteria and got root beer, though, so we'll see if that does the trick despite a lack of caffeine.

Only two more days after this in my shortened work week. Friday my mom flies into LAX, and I'm taking that day off along with the first two of next week. I don't have much of a plan for her visit yet, but I know what some of the pieces will be. Friday night Lee Beth's band Yardley has a show at the Hard Rock in the Beverly Center, so I told her we'd come out to that. Sunday morning I'll be taking her to Bel Air Pres. But that's really it as far as set time things go, I think. I know one of the nights I want to take her out somewhere fancy, I'm going to bring her in to see around JPL, and we've talked about going hiking. That still leaves a good bit of time to plan, but I'm sure things will come together.

waiting their turn

July 12, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Driving up Hill this morning, I passed the Superior Court around 8:20am. Outside was a line of business-suit clad people stretching out the door, down the steps, and around the corner. I don't know if for some reason a lot of extra people needed to be there, or if a security checkpoint was malfunctioning, or what, but that didn't look like a fun line to be standing in.

a evening of many events

July 11, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I did walk over to The Standard last night to check out Sent. I think it was my first art exhibition opening, and it was pretty clear to me on walking in the room that I am in no way part of the art scene. I didn't feel cool enough to be there, and more importantly I was wearing entirely too much color with a muted orange shirt. — Continue Reading...