If you told me this was a real conversation, I'd believe it.

Tech Support Call (Flash).

Worth the laugh.

[/random] permanent link

Firewire and Solaris HOWTO

I have a Belkin Firewire PCI card in a Solaris 10/Intel box with an external enclosure containing a 120GB IDE disk in it. Solaris recognizes the device automatically via the scsa1394 driver, but it doesn't do anything with it out of the box.

A grep for 'scsa' in dmesg output shows:

genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] scsa13940 is /pci@0,0/....snip
genunix: [ID 408114 kern.info] /pci@0,0/...snip... (scsa13940) online
scsi: [ID 193665 kern.info] sd1 at scsa13940: target 0 lun 0

After a bunch of perusing at useless documentation and finding nothing useful (like iPod on Solaris 10), I fell into the following strategy.

Comment out the following line vold.conf:

#use rmdisk drive /dev/rdsk/c*s2 dev_rmdisk.so rmdisk%d

(The man page for scsa1394 has a typo as it says to comment out rmscsi.)

Restart vold to pick up that change:

/etc/init.d/volmgt stop
/etc/init.d/volmgt start

Ensure that it still sees it via rmformat:

# rmformat
Looking for devices...
   1. Logical Node: /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0p0
      Physical Node: /pci@0,0/...snip.../disk@0,0
      Connected Device: WDC WD12 00JB-00GVA0          
      Device Type: Removable

Run fdisk on the partition to ensure that there is a 'Solaris' partition there. (Note the logical node displayed in rmformat.)

fdisk /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0p0

Then, run fmthard to dump the disk characteristics (format doesn't work):

fmthard -i -n "" /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s2 > /tmp/label.dat

I then copied the line for the '2' slice to '0' with the following changes:

0           3       00              0               185566815

(The value in last column should be the same as the last number in slice 2.)

Then, I reloaded the format tabel as follows:

fmthard -s /tmp/label.dat -n "disk" /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s2

Then, I ran newfs:

newfs /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0s0

Mount:

mount /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s0 /mnt/sda

Voila. I think. Haven't rebooted to see if it busted the rest of the partitions on that drive yet. (Don't really care if it does.)

[/software/solaris] permanent link

The anti-home-court advantage prevails

In other news, Dirk & Co. won their first game of the series tonight at Houston. Finley came alive with 20 points. More than anyone else, I think the fortune of the Mavs are tied to Finley. If he does well, he takes the pressure of Dirk. If he throws up bricks, then they don't have a legitimate scorer to ease the pressure off Dirk. Stackhouse isn't consistent enough to be considered a truly legitimate scorer who will keep the opposing teams honest.

I'm hopeful, but not optimistic that they can pull it out. Game 4 will be crucial. (Statin' the obvious, but that's my duty!)

Nutty shot by Carter in the MIA-NJ game at the end of the first OT. But, the Nets really didn't deserve to win that game. Actually, neither did the Heat. Yet, in the end, someone had to win it.

[/sports/mavericks] permanent link

Game 23: The bats went dead again!

Young is starting to show some consistency. That is encouraging.

However, the bats aren't at this point: one night, they explode for eight runs; the next night for one run. That's not sufficient. And, they are just wasting quality starts by their pitching staff!

Almanzar is still rusty and he's getting hammered off the mound. Hopefully, he'll pull it together. (The personal things he's been going through off the field are admittedly horrific.) Yet, he turned a close 2-1 game into a 4-1 game that even 'Everyday Eddie' couldn't blow. Ouch.

Buck needs to realign the way he is using the bullpen. It's not working.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 22: The bats came alive!

Rogers got some run support early and cruised to the victory.

Blalock is showing some patience with three walks. Nix is hitting well since being demoted and promoted back to the bigs.

Cordero gave up the only two runs in garbage time in the ninth.

In other news, Frankie Francisco is going to have Tommy John surgery. The bullpen is in desperate need of help.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

The boot architecture and partitioning of Solaris/x86 stink.

It's been a long time (Solaris 7, I think) since I've tried to get Solaris/x86 working in parallel in a multi-boot Intel system. On my main server, Solaris/x86 is the only OS; so these problems don't appear.

FWIW, the hardware is on the Dell OptiPlex GX240. I'm holding out hope that true to the word of the other blogs that Firewire is actually supported in Solaris 10 now. I don't have enough hard drive space internally to perform a build of the OpenSolaris system, but should have just enough for the install. But, I do have a Firewire enclosure, spare 120GB hard drive, and a Belkin Firewire PCI card. (It works just fine with Linux!)

So, I started this process on Monday. I've been doing this in my spare time as I wait for other tasks to complete that I need to get done. It's only today that I've actually gotten it to pass the initial CD install. Groan.

First off, the Solaris 10/x86 installer hangs when trying to do a graphical install. Only 'Option 4' (Console) mode worked. Very odd. I don't know if it doesn't like the ATI graphics card in these machines or not.

After figuring this out, it then barfed at the partition layout that I had. Solaris requires installation into the primary partition: i.e. 1-3. Well, on the Dell boxes, they have a 'System Utility' partition in #1. #2 was Ubuntu, and #3 was FreeBSD.

for a new primary partition. Something needs to move.

Since Ubuntu is way cooler and probably the most resilient to being moved around in such a horrific fashion, I decided that I would copy it's / partition (i.e. #2) to a space in the extended partiton scheme via

rsync -axHSD / /mnt/hda7

That's archive, one file system, preserve hard links, devices, and spare files. Tweaking /etc/fstab of course! Other than the fact that I didn't reboot Ubuntu after creating that 7th partition (which meant that I did the first rsync into /dev/null essentially; which meant that I had to do the rsync twice), it worked out okay. There were also some problems getting grub comfy as the Ubuntu partition housed the boot loader. Remember:

root (hd0)
setup (hd0,6)  # Grub is N-1 from Linux's partition space!  Mine was hda7

You can do this via the 'grub' binary on a Linux rescue CD or whatnot (see Knoppix and Ubuntu's Live CD. At that point, I could reuse partition #2. Not done with it yet...

So, I go through the Solaris Installer for about the ninth or tenth time (I lost track, seriously). I made it through the section where it asks me to create the fdisk partition. However, the deletion of partitions was buggy: it never would commit the change to disk, so it always thought the partition was still there, so I had to go to Linux and clear out the #2 partition manually. Reboot and go through the installer again. Sigh

On this time, I go through and do the layout again creating a new Solaris partition. Am I done? No way.

I finish the layout, but it then complains that the extended partition exceeded the whole disk and that it would not let me proceed. Never mind that Solaris doesn't even reside on that partition!! As I grumbled on IRC, Solaris needs a 'shut the f*c* up, I know what I'm doing option' to avoid this being a fatal error.

There's nothing obviously wrong with the partition table as far as I can tell in Solaris's fdisk CUI system. Exit to a shell. Solaris's fdisk on the raw disk doesn't show anything either. Grr. Reboot back into Linux: perhaps Linux's fdisk would be more helpful.

Nothing wrong at first glance, either. However, in going to expert mode of fdisk, I see that the extended partition (#4) overlaps with (#3) by two sectors. However, none of the partitions inside the extended partition overlap (so there isn't any overlap in the real data partitions). The only way to fix that was to delete the extended partitions and recreate the data partitions manually. (Pencil and paper to record the start/end sectors and the partition ID.) Shouldn't have to modify the data in those partitions since the data partition boundaries are correct.

Cross fingers. Offerings to Cthulhu (who obviously wrote this boot and partitioning system).

Reboot. Go through the install steps for the fifteenth time at least.

It then proceeds to install the Solaris #1 CD. (No DVD drive on this Dell machine, alas.)

After it was done with that, I needed to reuse my rescue CD to overwrite Solaris's lame boot manager (circa 1995) to reactivate GRUB.

Instructions for Solaris and GRUB is very helpful as it gives the incantations for using GRUB to invoke Solaris.

It's currently going through and finishing up the #2 & #3 CDs. Interesting note that it doesn't recognize the CDs on the first time I put them in: I have had to retry them each time to get it to read the CDs successfully.

I am definitely looking forward to 'newboot' available soon. The boot and partitioning system in Solaris 10 stinks on Intel boxes.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Tried the Ubuntu Live CD...Nah.

I tried out the Ubuntu Live CD on an Intel box today. Feh.

It's okay, but I wouldn't use it as a rescue CD. For that, KNOPPIX is still better as it autoconfigures everything.

[/software/ubuntu] permanent link

Game 21: The long-ball wasn't enough.

Four solo HRs wasn't enough.

Drese wasn't fooling anyone. Brocail is just proving he doesn't belong in the bullpen.

On the bright side, Teixeira has 6 HRs now. Yay.

Rogers takes the hill tonight. Look for the Rangers' bats to go quiet.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

T-Mac takes control...

T-Mac took the Rockets on his shoulder and silenced Dirk & Co.

The Mavs will try to even the series tonight. Go Mavs!

[/sports/mavericks] permanent link

Game 20: Big Unit looked purty.

Ooooh, too bad for George (SiaS) that was Randy's first win of the season.

Nothing went the Rangers' way.

Day off today. Yay!

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 19: Those pickups look real nice, George.

Chan Ho has another good performance this season. Yet, his control seems a little off again: too many walks.

Wright got hammered and looks like he's headed to the DL. Good use of $21 million dollars there.

Teixeira has two HRs, which is an encouraging sign. Blalock not doing much is about as discouraging. Hidalgo hasn't play for the last two games as he's been struggling at the plate: Matthews (who can't really hit any more on his best days than Hidalgo on his worst) replaced him at RF.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 18: Where have you gone, Kevin Brown? To the showers!

Kevin Brown received some payback for all that bad karma he generated while with the Rangers. Although he did settle down a bit after the first inning though...but enough damage was made that it didn't really matter.

Young had his second straight acceptable performance. His pitch count was a bit high though for 5 2/3rd innings.

Mahay almost blew it in the 9th such that Cordero had to come in for the save. Grr.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 17: The law of averages catches up to Rogers

A really nice start to 2005 for Rogers, but he's got zero wins to show for it. Last year, he had oodles of run support and racked up 18 wins. This year, nada.

On the bright side, Teixeira hit a HR.

8-9 after 17 games...

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

A note for folks with PowerBook G4s running Hoary

I'm typing this from Ubuntu Hoary on my old PowerBook G4.

I tried running the Tiger seed on this laptop, but everything kept crashing and the xterms were displaying dark blue in a funky light blue. That made it really hard to read.

So, I downloaded Ubuntu for the PowerPC. A little bit of hassle getting the wireless key for my network inputted (the 'advice' it gives on what the key format is wrong). But, then the big problem was that the display was only 640x480. Yikes. That's bad.

Digging around the logs, it looks like detection of the 'refresh rates' for the LCDs in the ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility 9000 (M6 LY) is busted in XOrg. So, you need to manually override the scan rate like so in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Monitor"

Identifier      "Color LCD"
Option          "DPMS"
HorizSync       28-57
VertRefresh     43-60

EndSection

Going through dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and doing an 'Expert'/'Advanced' on the monitor will allow Ubuntu to 'guess' at the LCD sync/refresh rates. (This accomplishes the above xorg.conf change.)

Still haven't figured out how to use X properly without a two-button mouse. I can't bring up any of the context windows. And, the function keys are inverted from OS X: the F1..F10 buttons are the default. To do screen brightness, etc, you need to hit the Fn key. Odd. Sure there's a config file to change that somewhere.

[/software/ubuntu] permanent link

Game 16: The bottom of the order comes through.

Drese was shaky throughout, but the offense bailed him out in the end.

Barajas hit a grand slam. Nice. Mench followed up with a bases-clearing triple. Cool. Coco came on in the 9th for the save: shouldn't have been necessary! (Why does Buck send Brocail out in a game anymore?)

Oh, yes, the error by Charles Johnson was atrocious. How could he drop that pop up in the middle of the infield? I guess I realize why he was traded for a tax break for the Red Sox.

Nix looks better with the bat in this one game than Matthews had all season. Why the Rangers only recalled Nix now is a mystery or a sign that management just has no clue. Gonzalez being sent down for Nix is borderline indefensible: Matthews (on merit) or Allen (on the fact that Nix is essentially replacing him!) should have been sent down instead.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 15: Astacio++; Soriano--

Astacio is making it look easy with another really good performance.

Soriano, on word that he wasn't in the lineup, threw a tantrum. Something for Buck to keep an eye out. This also won't boost Soriano's trade value.

Somehow, Cordero even with his two blown saves leads the league in saves so far. He still should have eight saves not six. Does this just mean that the Rangers are in more close games than the rest of the league?

Meanwhile, the AL West continues to beat up on each other. The current standings entering 4/20 are:

• Anaheim: 7-7
• Oakland: 7-7
• Seattle: 7-7
• Texas: 7-8

Should be fun to see how this one plays out over the course of the year.

(I was at the Angels/Mariners game today at Angel Stadium. Day games are just so much fun as long as you keep the sunscreen handy!)

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

CDDL isn't that wonderful from this side of the fence, either.

Simon Phipps comes to the defense of the CDDL. So does Claire.

It seems that the GPL folks are screaming that CDDL stinks because it allows bundling with non-CDDL licensed works. Yawn. As a BSD-style license advocate, it's not that wonderful either.

My first problem with the CDDL is that it enforces derivative works of a CDDL file to go back to Sun. It's essentially (and mostly functionally equivalent to) the LGPL in that sense. Yet, as we've seen, that only forces developers to implement all sorts of goopy hacks to try to not have their custom changes be encumbered by CDDL.

Furthermore, what exactly is Sun going to do with these changes that third parties make? Why force it back in to the commons? Why do they think those changes are going to be any good?

I'm also willing to bet that Sun themselves won't honor the CDDL on the source either: they will use their position as copyright holder to 'close source' their Solaris modifications. If they need to make any changes to the Solaris tree, which they currently claim will be derived from the OpenSolaris trees (much like Mozilla and Netscape's odd marriage at one point), that the modifications will be kept private and, hence, not under CDDL.

See the CDDL grants an uneven playing field by allowing the copyright holder more rights than rest of the community. At least, the BSD-style license allows everyone on the same playing field by allowing third-parties the same rights as the copyright holder (i.e. to make private modifications and distribute them). This disparity is even more acute with GPL than with CDDL: see MySQL and their licensing nightmare.

The BSD-style licenses are the truest forms of 'open source' - you do what you want, just don't use our service or trade marks. If you want to contribute it back, brilliant. If not, have fun.

At least Sun is making a real effort and can talk intelligently about it. Props for that. But, welcome to joys of open-source licensing: no one is ever happy no matter what you do.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Game 14: Chan Ho + Ball = Souvenirs & Happy Feelings

Chan Ho just didn't have any command last night. He was walking folks from the beginning and gave up the gopher ball to Chavez.

As Chavez said, "It was just a fastball down the middle, I'm glad I didn't miss it. I've been missing a lot of those."

Nice to know how considerate Chan Ho is of the opposing batters to make them feel better. Nothing like a fastball down the middle to make your day. Grr.

But, this is the Chan Ho we've been expecting, but haven't seen yet.

Haren pitched well for six innings.

I have no idea what the umpire saw on the 'balk' by Riley. I didn't see him move at all. Nuts. The ump probably needs some glasses...

Almanzar got torched in relief. And, that actually played a part because the Rangers scored 3 in the bottom of the ninth off Cruz to force the As to bring in Dotel. Oh well.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 13: Pile on early, but not often.

6 runs in the first two innings was enough to hold off the Blue Jays.

They split the series so that was good.

Hammering Hank hit a HR and Young followed up in the second.

Young pitched better than he has all season - avoiding the demotion to AAA - which I still think is probably deserved.

Cordero seems to be settling down and getting into his groove. Yay.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 12: How about that Napoleon? *mumble*

I spent all day at the Getty Museum.

So, I missed out on the 8-0 loss to the Jays.

That was probably much better for my mind and body that I spent my day at the gorgeous Getty looking at a Jacques-Louis David exhibit instead of Gustavo Chacin making mincemeat of the Rangers.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 11: Running into a brick wall called Drese

I've got to do a better job of getting out of the office and being home by 5pm. Oh, well...

As Halladay mowed down the Rangers last night, Drese kept the Jays in check tonight. I think Drese is on his way to proving that last year wasn't a fluke.

Teixeira had a nice night: 2 walks and a HR. Young chipped in too with his double and HR...

Interesting to see DeRosa get some playing time. Too bad, it's coming at the expense of Gonzalez - whom Buck just needs to get in the lineup every night! Kinsler being down at AAA is a good move just because he wouldn't get playing time in the bigs and he needs gobs of playing time. The Red Sox just optioned Youkilis for similar reasons: he'll have a chance to play every night down in Pawtucket that he wouldn't get with the big club. When (not if) Soriano gets traded, look for Kinsler to leap frog DeRosa.

Almanzar was also activated and Regilio (who was just activated the day before) is sent back down. Ricardo Rodriguez may be sorting his stuff out as well: which is perhaps a positive sign too.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 10: Running into a brick wall called Halladay

I admit that I didn't get a chance to watch any of the game tonight. Oh, well.

Astacio pitched 7 innings and gave up two runs - very decent, but Halladay looks like he's returning to Cy Young form early on this year. The rest of the league needs to be on the lookout.

Dickey's been placed on the DL and called up Regilio - who pitched two scoreless innings in relief. And, it looks like some pitchers are on their way back. Francisco and Almanzar are reportedly going to be activated for tomorrow game; I'm not sure yet who they'll send down. Regardless, they'll provide some much needed help to the collection of firestarters present. At this point, they could pretty much randomly point to anyone in the bullpen and send them to AAA and it'd be the right call.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Attended the OpenSolaris BOF at Usenix: Part II

See Part I

My second comment after listening to the BOF and the Sun employees speak about OpenSolaris is that Sun wants to place themselves as challenging Linux. That makes sense in the marketplace and perhaps even in the broader sense. Yet, where it falls down now is in the technical analogy. I don't believe the Solaris engineers have settled upon a clear and compelling analogy as to how OpenSolaris is different and better than Linux to a developer or a system administrator.

In the BOF, the Sun developers kept tripping over themselves trying to explain how they provide more than just a kernel. The answer should have been: "Everything in the OS is part of OpenSolaris." You can leave the qualifications about legally encumbered binaries and source out of it. People can realize that: Linux has binary-only drivers too. It's not worth obfuscating the conversation over those little details.

In my opinion, the close technical comparision as to what OpenSolaris will offer has to be BSDs - such as FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly, etc. The BSDs essentially provide the same deliverables that OpenSolaris would when all is said and done - the BSD camp has releases available today and done so for years (heck, decades). Hence, in turn, the arguments that the BSD people often make against Linux may very well apply to presenting the ideal OpenSolaris vision.

For many reasons, I much prefer the governance model and the philosophy behind FreeBSD over Linux. I'm not at all a fan of the 'benevolent dictator' project: Linux just happened to reach a critical mass and was extremely lucky. But, there's no way that I think that could be successfully and consistently copied. In fact, every time I've seen this behavior on other projects, they've been complete disasters. (qmail anyone? sourceforge?)

The FreeBSD folks have a set review process and a release engineering team. Yes, it's not on the scale of Solaris's review processes. However, FreeBSD is just a bunch of unpaid volunteers, too. So, the FreeBSD folks have to make do with what resources they get from the community. It's not realistic for them to make it impossible to make progress: no one wants a project that doesn't release. I know that the Solaris team places a lot of emphasis on code quality and stability. Excellent. Glad to hear it. So, does everyone else on a high-quality project. The difference, I feel, is how much resources we can realistically spend on it. Sun, by virtue of their pocketbook, can place a lot of emphasis on testing: vastly more than a strictly volunteer-based organization.

In comparison, Linus explicitly believes that it is the role of the downstream distributors to deal with quality and testing. Now, that's not necessarily invalid, but it's not the model I prefer. "The buck stops THERE" is a great way to end up with unmaintainable code. The Linux source code I've seen has uneven code quality: some places are great, others very poor. There's little consistency. That's why code reviews are essential!

And, this, of course are two reasons why I think OpenSolaris may indeed be more successful than Linux in the long run: a much stronger governance model and higher-quality code. Yet, that honestly guarantees little.

And, if it survives the initial onslaught of Linux, my question is how is it going to differentiate itself long-term from FreeBSD? Does it even need to do so? Perhaps so, perhaps not. I noticed David O'Brien from FreeBSD in the BOF: I wonder what he thinks of this.

It'll be a very interesting experience to watch this experiment unfold.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Attended the OpenSolaris BOF at Usenix: Part I

Roy and I decided to attend the Developing for Solaris and OpenSolaris BOF at Usenix '05 tonight up in Anaheim. Roy, of course, is on the CAB. And, I'm part of the OpenSolaris pilot program (representing the ASF infrastructure team).

The BOF started with an introduction to debugging and the tools available for development. (zones are yummy.) They went into some depth on smf. smf, in return for dropping init scripts, gives you a lot of flexibility and power in controlling the init process via XML files. That's nice. Except I'm not sure we (as admins or developers) really needed this: init scripts worked for the last twenty years - it wasn't just begging to be replaced, in my opinion.

Random question: how much slower does the XML-based smf system make Solaris in booting? I'm specifically thinking how much work Thom and the Canonical folks did on speeding up the boot process of Ubuntu. I just can't imagine parsing XML is a world-beater; but frankly neither were shell scripts.

I realize that the console login starting much earlier in the init process is great: but really, that could have been done with init scripts too. Just background the init output into a virtual terminal. If that was the real goal, it could have been done without adding XML. (XML is not the answer for world hunger.)

In sum, I think smf just makes it harder to administer Solaris machines because it now does this thing that no one else does. After all, FreeBSD just got init script support in 5.3.

I don't want to live in a monolithic OS world. But, as a user and developer, I do want some constants so that I can remain sane as I hop from platform to platform. For example, a Unix system without zsh would be useless for me. I'm reduced to 'Newbie Level 1' when I see tcsh. But, give me zsh and I'm off doing my black magic. The same goes for init scripts: if I have to specifically think about how the system is initialized, I'll go nuts. That needs to be standardized as much as is practical!

Paradoxically, this very point is where I think OpenSolaris could play a role: help make innovation spread in a consistent fashion. How about developing a portable variant of smf under the auspices of OpenSolaris that works on Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris? A framework for starting processes doesn't have to be platform-specific - in fact, it's likely not at all. If smf appeared on every platform, then, as a developer, maybe I'd buy into its complexity because it'd work on every platform I need to support. That would justify my time learning those features. But, if it only works on Solaris, as a developer, I'm not inclined to learn that much more about the cool features and make my program support smf.

Of course, Sun appears to have written smf files for httpd - have they contributed them back? I'm also sure Graham would love help with packaging httpd on Solaris properly. More frequent interaction with the upstream open-source developers is something that would be valuable for the Solaris team to consider as they launch OpenSolaris.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Game 9: A surprise: Chan Ho didn't keep the ball in the yard and won.

Figgins hitting a HR? Although, he did hit it fairly well. But, the #9 guy in the order with a shot like that? Yikes.

I think Byrd just got tired and was clinging on for dear life by the end.

Chan Ho pitched fairly well. So, far the starting pitching (except Young) has delivered beyond expectations. But, it's the bullpen that's been really rocky. Again, help is on the way there, we hope!

Gonzalez HR was a shot: this kid can hit. Buck had better put him in the lineup for tomorrow and the next day and the next...

I'd bet that Young's triple and Teixeira's double are homers if they were hit in July or August in TBIA. But, since it's only April, they didn't go the extra three or four feet to go over the wall.

Blalock's getting some walks which I think is a great sign. Patience. Very nice. Good sign of a maturing hitter.

Soriano made a wonderful defensive play in the top of the 9th. Yes, you may need to re-read that sentence again: it doesn't happen often. Heh.

Cordero gave up a 2-run single to Erstad. Has Erstad become Cordero's daddy?

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Game 8: Why isn't Adrian Gonzalez starting all the time?

Gonzalez seems to have an uncanny knack for fouling off lots of pitches. He worked a HR on a count that was originally 0-2 and kept waiting for his pitch. Also had a nice 2B later on. Nice. Buck needs to work him into the starting lineup for every game.

Blalock also had a nice slap single.

Alas, it wasn't enough.

Young looked really poor - he probably deserves a demotion so he can figure out what's going on and come back soon...

I also have serious concerns that Dickey just can't handle it at the major league level. Too bad Buck seems to be blinded linke Torre about pitchers: some of them are 'his' guys and some of them aren't. Eek.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

mail.apache.org was letting newer viruses through...fixed.

In the category of whomever thought this was a good idea should be shot:

The FreeBSD port maintainers switched the default clam AV database default in a point revision in the ports tree. That's fine as far as that goes.

What isn't fine is when the port silently updated the freshclam.conf but didn't do the same to the clamd.conf file. Therefore, freshclam was updating the database happily and clamd had no clue as it was pointing at the old directory. Grr.

The ports should never ever ever touch a live configuration file. I don't care what they think is good, but that's just dumb behavior. clam not using a single configuration file probably isn't that smart, either. It lets people walk into these types of mistakes.

The offending commit to the clamav port Makefile

Anyhow, fixed manually as of yesterday morning.

[/apache] permanent link

Game 7: Are the Angels Cordero's Daddy?

Two blown saves by Cordero and we're only 7 games into the year. Yikes. This can't be encouraging.

I spent most of the game watching the mlb.tv feed of the Red Sox ring ceremony while having the Rangers/Angels game on the GameCast window.

Rogers did fine again - seven innings with three runs. But, the bullpen blew it. (Once again, when I turn into the video, they promptly blow the lead. I tuned in right before Cabrera's HR in the 10th.)

How much longer until Almanzar (on the bereavement list) and Francisco (on the DL) come back? This bullpen is like a fire starter not a fire extinguisher.

Thoughts on the Red Sox ring ceremony:

• Pesky looked mighty fine getting his ring. I don't know if I should say that I'm shocked that Henry & Co. broke down and gave him a ring, but all those years in the organization would probably deserve it.
• Russell, Orr, Seymour, and Bruschi added a nice touch. They said Russell hadn't been to Fenway in fourty years. Incredible.
• The Pops were cool. I'm thinking James Taylor would have been better to do the Anthem. I'm just not a fan of those instrumental anthems.
• And, to be sure, "World Champion Boston Red Sox" sounds real nice.

"World Champion Texas Rangers" would be even nicer. I can dream.

[/sports/rangers/2005] permanent link

Items bought on iTunes Music Store

• "Dream On" by Aerosmith (song stuck in my head.)
• "Vivaldi's Cello" by Yo-Yo Ma & Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra
• "To Is a Preposition; Come Is a Verb" by Lenny Bruce
• "The World of Nat King Cole" (Box Set) by Nat King Cole

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Game 6: How about that Tiger?

Okay, I admit I was watching the Masters during the Rangers/Mariners game. What a shot by Tiger on the 16th. Absolutely incredible: it looks like it's going to stop right at the lip and then rolls in. Insane.

It's unfathomable to me that CBS didn't show the early morning continuation of play. Tiger was behind, and then caught DiMarco before the third round of play. Insane.

I did turn on the Rangers game at the bottom of the 7th inning. They were up 7-6 by that point and managed to hold on. Drese apparently got shelled (not good). Riley got the win for pitching well in relief (I did get to see a bit of him though). Dellucci apparently hit a bomb just before I tuned in. Teixeira doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders yet. Cordero had a uneventful 9th. And, how many times has Jeff Nelson pitched for the Mariners now? MLB.com says Nelson has been with Seattle 4 times now.

But, how about that Tiger? DiMarco should get props for catching up with Tiger on the 18th and forcing the playoff. But, was there every really any doubt?

Rangers home opener today. Yay. Even though they are .500 (3-3), I get the feeling that the AL West is just going to beat the snot out of each other this season. Winning 90 games might just be a stretch...but it's still early.

And, plus, the Red Sox get their rings today. Yipee! My dad is taping 9 hours of ESPN today so that he's ensured of being able to watch the ring ceremony tonight. If only I got ESPN here...groan

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Game 5: Everyday Eddie sure isn't anymore...

I was able to watch this game on mlb.tv. It took me until the 7th inning to get it working on my Windows box which is connected to my TV. (Until then, I watched the game on my PowerBook.) My Windows machine's sole purpose in life is to view mlb.com on my television in full screen mode. I had to disable multicast and UDP in Windows Media Player to get it to play. It didn't really even give an error message - just that it was 'Ready' but never played it. Stupid Microsoft product. (RealPlayer worked okay, but the quality wasn't seemingly as good as it was with Windows Media Player. Go monopolies!)

Astacio looked nice - almost servicable for a fifth starter. He was able to keep the Mariners in check for most of the game.

Scary play when Reed and Soriano collided. I know it's snarky, but I was wondering what number Kinsler would wear if Soriano went on the DL. Luckily (or not!), Soriano looked like he just had the wind knocked out of him.

Yet, Shouse and the bullpen blew it again. (That hesitation on the throw to first is why Soriano got nailed by Reed.) The only saving grace was that the Mariners bullpen decided they were envious of the derision thrown the Rangers's bullpen way. So, Everyday Eddie (hahaha, guffaw) decided to singlehandedly one-up Texas's awful bullpen performance.

I was flipping between the Masters (Tiger looks scary if I'm DiMarco, no?) and the Texas game saying, "I wonder if they could pull it out. Nah. Let's watch Tiger." Soriano got on with the error (right through the legs!). Then, Blalock hit a screamer that was begging to go foul; but it stayed fair. Down by one at that point. "Nah, they couldn't do it." Young singles. "Hmm. Teixeira's up. Maybe." pfft Ugly swing and a miss for the K. Then, Hidalgo comes up and bam see ya. Up by one.

Cordero didn't make it look easy though in the bottom of the 9th. Yet, he held on for the save. ("Oh, no. Beltre.")

I'll take it.

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Game 4: The bullpen blows it.

I was out last night, but I was able to catch the bullpen blowup in the bottom of the 8th by the Rangers. Wasn't much fun. Not much more to say.

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Game 3: Signs of things to come.

I wasn't able to post last night since the network connection from my apartment is spotty. Grr.

Anyhow, another good game. For a time there, the Rangers looked like they were going to be blown out as Young was shaky. However, things settled down and they clawed back - eventually forcing the Angels to win it in the bottom of the ninth.

Gonzalez finally got the start at DH last night, and he had a terrific 15 or so pitch at-bat against Lackey. Until then, Lackey was on cruise control; but, after the Gonzalez AB, he just melted.

Soriano continued his "poor defense, great offense" strategy. Pfft.

Even though they are 1-2, I think there's reason for optimism.

Bring on the Mariners.

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Game 2: A likely parable for a season.

I think the lesson from the 12-inning marathon victory tonight is as follows...

We will live by the home run. Small ball just isn't the Rangers style. The hitters don't know how to advance runners yet: too many runners get stranded.

The starting pitching tandem of Drese and Rogers might hold up. Couldn't really ask for more. (Another inning from Rogers perhaps, but geesh.) See how Young does tomorrow night.

The bullpen did an okay job with the exception of Cordero blowing the save in the 9th. Yah, but, he did get out of the bases-loaded jam in the bottom of 8th. I'm not really worried about Cordero though - he'll do fine in the long run.

What's the point of having a bench if you don't use it? Buck sure knows how to use lots of pitchers, but why not pinch hit for some of the weaker hitters (yes, I mean you Gary Matthews and Rod Barajas). Scioscia used his bench fairly well tonight - did Buck sub any hitter? No. Yikes!

The baserunning was ridiculous again. I believe it was Young got thrown out on an overslide (when he shouldn't have been running to begin with!), and Matthews made an out a home that was just silly.

The defense was scary bad. Mench flat-out misjudged the fly ball from Guerrero in the bottom of the 1st. He ran in, then started to run back. Ouch. Soriano is going to continue to be an adventure at 2nd. The mess in the 8th inning wouldn't have happened if Soriano hadn't bobbled the ball. Barajas also had an error on the throw to second. Teams just don't usually win by giving the other side extra outs.

On the token about giving the other side extra outs, I'm not sure I'm a fan of sacrifice bunting. Giving the other team one less out they have to work for is absurd. My dad and I chatted about the merits of 'Billy Ball' - screw the bunt. The out is more precious than moving the runners around when they might be likely to do that anyway. As Billy said, "You only have 27 precious outs."

Yet, Soriano redeemed himself with the homer. However, at that point, I wasn't sure who was left in the bullpen. Luckily, Shouse held on.

And, the Rangers are 1-1. Rubber match tomorrow night.

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Game 1: Advice for Buck.

Me at the ballpark:

Pictures from Game 1

A piece of friendly advice to Buck: Don't pitch to Vlad with anyone on if it is close. Seriously. He wasn't the AL MVP for nothing. Dare Anderson to beat you. Perhaps he might too. Yes, you might be tempted to challenge Vlad because he swings at everything, but haven't you figured out that he hits everything? (Unlike Soriano!) It's a stroke of luck that the double didn't go over the fence. It was hit almost as hard as the home run. I just went, "Oh no. Don't pitch to him here." Then, bam, double to left-center. Tie broken. sigh

Drese pitched extremely well. If he continues to pitch like that, I'll take it. At one point, I think he retired 15 straight batters. Nice. Too bad he had to face Guerrero.

Colon was typical: shaky at first, but since the Rangers didn't run him to the showers early, he settled down and got his 110 pitches in. The Rangers had their chances to blow the game open (runners on third in the 1st and 2nd and no one in? Come on!) and failed to capitalize.

Frankie was good in the 9th. Made Barajas look silly. Got Sori and Blalock to induce into weak little outs. Yet, he was mainly throwing 80mph sliders from what we could tell. Either he wasn't comfortable with his fastball or he was confident enough that he didn't need the fastball to get them out. I'd guess the latter. (I hope to see Cordero before they leave town!)

Teixeira was good. I hope John Hart realizes what he's got and doesn't let him go away. Interesting note: the HR that Mark hit was one section to my left and about 15 rows down from where we were sitting. Yet, even with as few Rangers fans in attendance, the ball ended up in the hands of a woman wearing a Texas hat. Oh what fun she had when the crowd wanted her to throw the ball back and she kept waving her T hat. Justice.

Absolutely silly move by Matthews to try to stretch a single into a double that eventually turned into the 2nd out of the inning. I didn't see if he went on his own or whether the first base coach was at fault. Yet, he shouldn't have tried. The Rangers needed base runners (as Colon was starting to get near his pitch count) and they just gave the Angels a free out. Well, in addition to leaving so many runners on base in the first few innings.

On that same token, the Angels are remarkably effective of getting runners home while the Rangers don't seem to have figured that out yet. (At one point, I think it was 8 LOB for the Rangers and 2 for the Angels. 3-1 at that point, if I remember right.)

And, yes, I applauded Vlad when he was announced before the game. This guy is flat out great and not applauding what he does is inane. No shame in that (even as I was wearing my Texas regalia). And, Vlad's probably due to get even more respect this year. More managers are going to wish they had taken my advice by the time the year is out.

Anyhow, game two tomorrow night. Washburn vs. Rogers. I doubt it'll be as low-scoring as tonight's game was.

Best sign: Where in Los Angeles is Anaheim? chuckle

Last thought: the jets in the flyover during the anthem were incredibly low and loud. Neat.

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Opening Day is today!

I'll be at the ballpark tonight for Opening Day with my Rangers opening the season against the Angels. Once again, I'll be one of the few folks wearing blue amidst the sea of red. Oh well.

The Angels red still perturbs me since the Rangers wore red when TBIA was opened in 1994. Of course, I was there for opening series at TBIA against the Brew-ha-ha-ha-has (back when they were in the AL). I have my tickets framed over my desk. The Angels just copied the Rangers, or so I tell myself. But, why didn't the Rangers copy their World Series victory? Gah!

I'll be at all the Rangers games at Angel Stadium this week. Yay!

Go Rangers!

Some hopes on the cusp of the new season:

• I hope Mark Teixeira has a breakout year. Whatever position he plays...
• I hope Orel works his magic on Matt Riley.
• I hope Hart gets a decent return for Soriano. (Pitchers or outfielders anyone?)
• I hope Frank F. throws baseballs better than chairs this year.
• I hope Ryan Drese pitches like it was 2004. (cross fingers)
• I hope Richard Hidalgo likes playing in TBIA. (Could we have any worse OF production than we got with Brian Jordan last year???)
• I hope Kenny Rogers pitches like it was 1995, again. (pray hard)
• I hope Hicks is forced to eat Chan-Ho-Ho-Ho That One's Gone Over The Fence's salary. Fitting on so many levels. (pray really hard)
• I hope Chris Young does not wish he was playing basketball instead.
• I hope Laird gets a real shot to be catcher again at the MLB level.
• I hope Coco saves even more games than last year.
• I hope that by September Ian Kinsler makes me forget about Soriano and A-Rod.
• I hope that this year they are in through the last week of the season like last year.

No opinions offered on how likely these are from this dreamer...

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Migration issues when you get a new Apple computer...

This is now the second time that I've run into this set of problems, so here goes for the record and for Google and the world to take note!

When you get a new Apple (like I did this weekend when I picked up a new PowerBook G4 laptop - yay), it offers you the option of migrating all of your existing data via FireWire when you first bring up the new machine.

It works, mostly.

I've found three caveats:

• X11 is not installed on the new computers. So, you have to manually fetch X11 from Apple's site. Since I'm an X addict, this is really annoying until it is fixed, the X11 app on my dock just bounces and emits an error in the console.

• XCode (aka gcc) is not installed either. So, you need to install gcc.

• The printers aren't carried over properly. So, all of your printers are seemingly lost when you migrate. Sucky. However, the fix is rather simple: copy the //etc/cups/printers.conf and /etc/cups/ppd/ directory from your old machine to their respective locations on your new machine, and restart cupsd.

Enjoy! (I am.)

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