Posts by tallguy-13088

1) Message boards : Technical News : Timing is Everything (May 09 2007) (Message 564845)
Posted 11 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
24tb? In a few years this is gonna be one HDD..

Remember the times when 20-40 MB hdd was impossible to be filled? How long it took to jump from 120-160MB to 120-160GB? Tens of terabytes is just a few steps ahead.


I remember using personal computers when cassette recorders were the "bulk storage" device for PC's, 160K, 5 1/4 inch single sided floppies and CPM <grin>. 16 Kb was quite a bit of memory. The first one I played with was a TRS-80 Mod 1. However though, I wasn't around when they "invented" dirt ... but that was a long time ago <very big grin>!
2) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Trying to quit smoking......after 25 years..... (Message 563979)
Posted 9 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Anybody else trying to quit this addiction??? I know it's whacking me. Even the kitties don't like it.


Just getting around to "half-heartedly" trying to quit. Two packs a day and primarily due to boredom. Picked up some nicotine gum last week and have used it several times to gauge how it will work. So far, it has been very good as a replacement for the nicotine but a bad one for the actual physical act of smoking. It is the new "Fruit Chill 4mg" and according to all I have read, much better tasting than the original (likened to tasting like cow dung smells ... there's an impetus to try it <grin>).

Smoking down the last of my available butts to force the "conversion". Chewed twice today and have only smoked 3/4 of a pack in the last twelve hours. Pretty effective and I'm assuming that once I make my mind up to actually not buy any more cigs, the gum should allow for a relatively smooth transition. Yeah, there is a bit of a "peppery taste" but relatively easy to deal with. Worth a try! $50 for a hundred pack (Syracuse, NY) so it is not cheap but I figure that a couple of weeks of gradual decrease in freuency at 4mg should allow a realatively simple "back down" to 2mg and then quit it altogether. Giving it a couple of hours between chewing and smoking so that I don't inadvertantly bump up the addition <grin>.

P.S. I understand that Vitamin C helps kill off the nicotine so it might make the process of weaning a bit faster.


3) Message boards : Technical News : Slowly Approaching... (May 08 2007) (Message 563162)
Posted 8 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
In my best Yoda voice:

"Much patience must you have young Jedi. Seek the calm within you must. Care not for the physical; instead seek the day we are re-IPL'ed and are one with the Force!"
<grin>

It may seem that the waiting is the toughest part of the job ... the real challenge will really be to avoid the "adoring crowds" after you get everything back up! Get some rest while you can.
4) Message boards : Technical News : On the Horizon (May 07 2007) (Message 562556)
Posted 7 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Matt,

You are merely getting a "taste" of what IT is all about ... not a bad thing. You are obviously keeping your head above water and you will certainly have a new outlook for those "long periods of waiting punctuated by moments of frantic activity" <grin>! Everything you have written shows your concern for your "farm" and your cool, level-headed response(s). Keep up the GREAT work! I suspect that we have a major league CIO in the making here. Hope that everyone out there appreciates all the fine work from a very talented individual!

Most of this should re-enforce the reasons that "Mom and Dad" sent you to school to begin with <very big grin>! Most folks expect that machines just go around "doing their thing". Very few realize what actually goes into keeping them "humming". No one will ever laud you when things are going smoothly and the best you can expect is some level of "grousing". When the "feces hits the rotary oscillator" seems the only time your existence get acknowledged and then usually in quite a negative context. Shrug it off "for they know not what they ask". You know you have done your best and to those of us who know a little about the game, it is a VERY FINE JOB! You're winning even though it doesn't always appear to be so. Keep marching forward!
5) Message boards : Technical News : Down Time II (May 02 2007) (Message 558470)
Posted 3 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Still no joy regarding the science database server. It's in pieces on a cart just like we left it yesterday - the drives in a pile, carefully numbered and mapped out so we can plug and play once we get a replacement (hopefully very soon). As expected we ran out of work to send out rather quickly, and while the project seems "down" all the public facing servers are still up and accepting results as they come in - there should be no loss in credit due to approaching deadlines and such.

Without the noise from maintaining the system I spent a chunk of the day finishing and beta-testing the code which will grant "contribution" when users are granted credit. In other words, a new table will be swiftly populated with user/workunit info that depicts which users did which workunit - something we were lacking before. This will happen in real time, while I also debugged a script which parses our flat-file archives containing similar data in order to "catch up." I can't fully debug this until the science database is back, however.

- Matt


Sorry about that last post Matt. Fingers were a bit faster than the brain was. Many Thanks for the update. No matter how fas the processor, we still all "wait" at the same speed. Don't let the people breathing down your back take the "curl out of your hair" <grin>. Like most machine related things, they will proceed at their own pace no matter how "frantic" anyone gets. Best of luck in getting this resolved!

6) Message boards : Technical News : Down Time II (May 02 2007) (Message 558467)
Posted 3 May 2007 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Still no joy regarding the science database server. It's in pieces on a cart just like we left it yesterday - the drives in a pile, carefully numbered and mapped out so we can plug and play once we get a replacement (hopefully very soon). As expected we ran out of work to send out rather quickly, and while the project seems "down" all the public facing servers are still up and accepting results as they come in - there should be no loss in credit due to approaching deadlines and such.

Without the noise from maintaining the system I spent a chunk of the day finishing and beta-testing the code which will grant "contribution" when users are granted credit. In other words, a new table will be swiftly populated with user/workunit info that depicts which users did which workunit - something we were lacking before. This will happen in real time, while I also debugged a script which parses our flat-file archives containing similar data in order to "catch up." I can't fully debug this until the science database is back, however.

- Matt

7) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@HOME Accumulating Time While Preempted. (Message 328713)
Posted 6 Jun 2006 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Joe,

Many thanks for the explanation!

I am running a hyperthreaded 3.2Ghz Pentium with W2K and BOINC Mgr 5.4.9.


I bet that you have one of Windows 95, 98, or ME, and this is a known issue.

I think you lost the bet ;^).

The splitter problem which caused the bad workunits forced triplet finding which took nearly forever. The application doesn't necessarily quit immediately when BOINC asks, but it normally checks often whether it has been asked to stop. Those bad WUs were not a normal situation, but they should be gone now so the problem should not be seen again.
                                                    Joe

8) Message boards : Number crunching : SETI@HOME Accumulating Time While Preempted. (Message 328232)
Posted 6 Jun 2006 by Profile tallguy-13088
Post:
Hello,

I just encountered an "interesting" situation when I checked my current workload using the BOINC Mgr. I am running a hyperthreaded 3.2Ghz Pentium with W2K and BOINC Mgr 5.4.9. When I brought up the TASK screen to see what work was running, three projects were accumulating time. The SETI@HOME task was marked as PREEMPTED while the other two were RUNNING. I tried suspending the SETI task but it continued to accumulate time. After resuming the task, I EXIT'ed BOINC Mgr. and restarted. The SETI task promptly started to UPLOAD and then transitioned to READY TO REPORT. The messaging appeared as follows after the restart:

06/05/06 21:07:03|SETI@home|Resuming task 03mr99ab.9678.30961.211072.3.61_1 using setiathome_enhanced version 515
06/05/06 21:07:19|SETI@home|Computation for task 03mr99ab.9678.30961.211072.3.61_1 finished
06/05/06 21:07:21|SETI@home|Started upload of file 03mr99ab.9678.30961.211072.3.61_1_0
06/05/06 21:07:24|SETI@home|Finished upload of file 03mr99ab.9678.30961.211072.3.61_1_0
06/05/06 21:07:24|SETI@home|Throughput 25068 bytes/sec
06/05/06 21:08:24|SETI@home|Sending scheduler request to http://setiboinc.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah_cgi/cgi
06/05/06 21:08:24|SETI@home|Reason: Requested by user
06/05/06 21:08:24|SETI@home|Requesting 43200 seconds of new work, and reporting 1 completed tasks
06/05/06 21:08:26|SETI@home|Scheduler request succeeded


What I see for the result (stderr) is:

<core_client_version>5.4.9</core_client_version>
<stderr_txt>
ar=0.441499 NumCfft=71097 NumGauss= 444318140 NumPulse= 85070500991 NumTriplet= 7234122530816
ar=0.441499 NumCfft=71097 NumGauss= 444318140 NumPulse= 85070500991 NumTriplet= 7234122530816
SETI@Home Informational message -9 result_overflow
NOTE: The number of results detected exceeds the storage space allocated.

</stderr_txt>



I'm opened this post with the folks at BOINC first since I really don't think that Mgr. should be allowing time to accumulate once a project is marked as PREEMPTED. I'm not sure whether this is a BOINC issue or SETI Enhanced didn't do it's part properly.

[bold] Note: [/bold] that there is apparently a situation where Seti Enhanced may have stumbled on the work unit and possibly "tracked through memory".





 
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