MIG Welding

* Welding with shielding gas is not practical for windy conditions.

* Flux cleans the metal and keeps it from oxidizing while you're welding.

* Welding with shielding gas keeps your weld from spattering molten metal all over and gives you a cleaner weld.

* Welding with solid core and shielding gas is best for inside work on clean metal.

* Welding with flux core and no shielding gas is good for outside work on unclean metal.

* Welding with flux core and shielding gas is good for inside work on unclean metal.


I'm still not clear on the polarity stuff and the proper gas mixtures for each type of MIG welding.

Ask Ms. Dewey

A high school buddy of mine, named John Reid, just lead an effort to launch Ms. Dewey. Our entire lab group had a great time playing with her today. I think the best way to describe Ms. Dewey is to let John do it:

"She's a sassy know-it-all micro site that we've created that serves up some
hilarious video clips to your search queries. She's really smart (she has 3
brains, seriously). You can ask her anything, and she?ll not only know what
your asking, but serve up a snarky (yeh, I said snarky) response."

I personally found that she was oddly accurate with her video clips. She's also got a bunch of easter eggs that were pretty entertaining to stumble upon. I hope a lot of people stumble upon this because it really is a lot of fun to play with!

Solar Cell Efficiency Boost

Interesting approach to boosting solar cell efficiency. In a nutshell, solar cells cannot convert light from the lower end of the spectrum into energy. Some very smart people have figured out how to chemically combine two low energy photons into one high energy photon which can then be used by solar cells to generate electricity. Linked here.

log4j and UNIX syslog

I couldn't find Java code examples anywhere on how to get log4j to log to Unix syslog. I'm sure they're out there, but I'll be damned if I could find them. I spent a few hours with log4j today and managed to decode what's going on. Here it is in all it's glory:

import org.apache.log4j.net.SyslogAppender;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.apache.log4j.SimpleLayout;

class FOO {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        FOO foo = new FOO();
    }

    public FOO () {
        SimpleLayout layout = new SimpleLayout();
        SyslogAppender appender = new SyslogAppender(layout, "localhost", SyslogAppender.LOG_DAEMON);
        Logger logger = Logger.getRootLogger();
        logger.addAppender(appender);
        logger.info("This is just a test");
    }
}

I'd write more about how cool log4j is, but I'm under a deadline and have to get back to work...

P.S. If this still doesn't work, then you probably forgot to make your syslog daemon listen to a socket....

2001 Saturn SC2 PCV Valve

I got my oil changed yesterday at one of those Grease Monkey(TM) shops. They're annoying because they always want to upsell you on stuff (and yet I keep going back). This time they wanted to sell me a PCV valve for about $17.00 and an air filter for about $20.00. I know the air filter was about 4 times cheaper if I bought it myself. As for the PCV valve, I'd never changed one out, but from the looks of it, I knew it was pretty cheap to buy. In addition, they had it out in about 30 seconds, so I knew it wasn't hard to replace either.

Today on my way home from work, I stopped into an auto parts (Auto Zone) store to get a PCV valve and an air filter. The PCV valve cost me about $5.00 and the air filter would have cost me about $5.00, but I opted for the snazzy KnR filter that lasts for the lifetime of the car. I got out of there for about $45.00. For my money, I got a new PCV valve and an air filter that will never need to be replaced. If I'd opted for the Grease Monkey(TM) parts, it would have cost me $37, but I'd still have to replace the air filter every 12,000 miles. I figure if I drive my car for 96,000 miles I'll break even on the KnR filter, although I haven't factored in inflation against the potential ROI if I'd bought the cheap filter and simply invested the other $35. If I always bought Grease Monkey(TM) filters, then the KnR filter would pay itself back in about 24,000 miles.

So anyway... Now that I had this PCV valve, I needed to install it. After a bunch of poking around, I found it sitting right next to the oil cap. It was incredibly easy to replace. I just pulled out the old one and plunked in the new one. Didn't even require any tools.

Overheard...

Overheard in the office today:

P: "It's 4:27am in Tehran (Iran) right now..."
S: "Which year?"

Network Chat

Almost 19 years ago to the day was the first time I chatted with someone else over a computer. I was 13 years old. We dialed each other up using those goofy old 300 baud phone coupler modems. I learned all sorts of cool stuff about terminal emulation that way.

My 10th anniversary...

I just realized that it's the tenth anniversary of the very first website I ever put up.

The iPod Bandwagon

I jumped on the iPod bandwagon last weekend. I got myself a 60Gig iPod color. I must say, this is definitely the cadillac of portable players. I've now got my entire CD collection (about 30 CDs; a mere fraction of what I once had) ripped to the player. It's neat listening to all of my music in shuffle mode. I didn't realize that I had such a nice collection of music. When you're listening to it one CD at a time, its easy to get tired of the music and just let it sit on a shelf.

This iPod also stores pictures and addressbook contacts. I can also sync up my calendar to it. Even more impressive, it has a few relatively amusing games on it, ostensibly to pass the time while waiting at the doctor's office. The next accessory I want to get is the FM radio attachment so I can listen to my iPod in the car just by tuning to an unused radio channel.

At one time I used to buy a lot of music, but I've been turned off lately at how much time the RIAA spends litigating against single moms and elderly pensioners. Instead of taking the time to realize that there's an opportunity here, the RIAA insists on clinging to the old ways and litigating with their customers. Not a terribly wise way of running a business IMHO.

What's more interesting to me, than commercial music, is the various independent music you can find out there. I like the fact that I can pay my money directly to them, rather than through a bunch of lawyers. I also like listening to the various podcasts out there. I don't really have a favorite yet, but I tend to enjoy the NPR Science Friday podcasts. I also just finished listening to the first book in podcast form, called Earth Core. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it to anyone.

I'm off to the Tom Petty concert tonight at the Columbia River Gorge Ampitheater. I'll try to get some pictures. The views are some of the best I've ever experienced in Washington and I hear that Tom Petty puts on a great show. Should be a fun evening.

Cats are expensive!

Damn cats are expensive. I picked up a stray cat a few months ago and have only recently gotten nearly everything straightened out with him. He had ear mites, fleas, worms, deformed leg, upper respiratory infection and some goofy form of respiratory herpes that only cats can get. On top of that he took forever to learn how to use a litter box, has the nastiest crap I have ever smelled, and has a bad habit of getting "almond roca" stuck to his hind legs, which he then tracks all over my apartment. At this point, and he still needs to be neutered in a month, the bill for this cat is up near $700.

After all of that though, I love this little guy to death. He runs in and greets me as I get out of the shower every morning, and is *EXTREMELY* playful. He's also got this goofy way of sleeping on his back with his mouth open, that almost makes him look dead.

Ethernet Bonding

Working on bonding my wireless ethernet interface to my cat5 ethernet interface on my laptop tonight. This way my laptop will dynamically choose whichever interface is up. If both are up, it should choose the faster interface. Not sure this is going to work though since it appears that the Orinoco driver doesn't support mii monitoring. I'm going to have a look-see into the code, since, in the past, I have noted that our 2.4Ghz cordless phone caused the wireless ethernet interface to disconnect and register in syslog, whenever the base station polls the cordless phones.

Spent most of the day today building a failover cluster with RHEL 3.0. Dual P3 1.4Ghz 1U servers with a snappy little external disk enclosure. Got most of the work done except for the UPS configuration. The majority of the work is going to be testing various failover scenarios.

Seattle Times

Bill and I were photographed today by Seattle Times photographer Steve Ringman. QLL is going to be featured on the front cover of the business section in the Monday Seattle Times.