Thursday: Q41/My power went out today.

And my internet as well.  Then the power came back on, and went out again.  It's back now, but I spent at least an hour rebooting and checking things.

• The idiot is so stupid.
• I sold my turnips today, with this site helping.
• Cotton Library.
• Elijah Wood.

Tuesday: Internet Day!

The best day ever!

Also vacuum day.  Which is cool, and now I know I probably could have taken the vacuum apart in Alameda and saved me $45, but whatever.  I can vacuum my floors now.  I also probably should remember not to answer my door with a box cutter in the future.  I was cleaning up my recycling, which surprisingly, I was able to do in a single trip.  Including all my bin recycling, and the trash.

Having actual internet is great, because I can listen to a youtube video of a song I heard this morning while watching a youtube video I would have watched a long ago if I'd had internet constantly.

The internet hookup went reasonably well, with the install guy having to do only a few tests and things before it was up and running.  I then spent way too much time trying to configure the wifi router to use a static upstream IP address before just giving up and installing a dhcpd server to give it the IP address.  I think I've made the parameters permanent, but I may have to reconfigure wireless if the power goes out again.

Which it did today.

Because it was raining.  A lot.  Like a proper thunderstorm.

While driving, I've set my radio to remember something like four NPR stations.  Also one "other" station that I first thought was the university station, a random techno station, and a 70s funk station.  It turns out to be something of all of those, so here are songs I've heard and had google identify for me.

• Melorman - Inside your dream
• Asha Puthli - Space talk
• A Certain Ratio - Lucinda
• Akira Inoue - Seaside Lovers - Sunset Afternoon

I should maybe find a way to get these albums.

Sunday: I needed a day to do nothing

So I woke up, went back to bed, got lunch, went back to bed, made cookies, did a quick clean, and now I'm going back to bed again.  Not having internet has put me back into the dark ages.  It's like 1247 here.

 With stand mixers.

 And buttsed cookie dough.

 And vindaloo leftovers for tomorrow.

 And cookies!

 And a salad and grilled cheese for dinner.

 And oddly targeted ads on Tumblr.

 And evening coloring time, because there's nothing to do.

And art sent by internet poke-friends, because even no internet actually just means "only your usual omnipresent level of internet."  But, you know, without the big screens.

Tuesday: Successfully rewrote a bunch of stuff today. And then discovered a bug that's like 9 years old.

Another camouflage cat.

• Messing with a dog.
• Squirrel girl.  Also She-Hulk's face.  "I HAD OTHER THINGS I WAS GOING TO DO TODAY!"

And then the internet from the island to the rest of the world disappeared, and I considered calling to rage at that fucking robot again.  But it's back now, so I don't need to talk about "raining hellfire down on your useless programmers and moronic owners."

Maybe this will work?

I had a burger and cheese fries.

My old man neighbor who had the girlfriend with the smelly perfume seems to have moved out.  I noticed him packing things up a few weeks ago, and today a realtor was having an open house there.  I think he probably moved in with his girlfriend.  The old man, not the realtor.  I don't know anything about that guy.

And then my internet kersploded, and I spent a half hour screaming "give me a real fucking person" at the useless Oceanic Time Warner robot.  I can explicitly tell you what's wrong.  "No Ranging Response received".  I know how to read my cable modem logs, so I don't need a phone tree.  And why does the robot make "typey typey" sounds when it pauses?  I know it's a robot.  It has a robot voice.  It says things like, "OK.  I understand you have a problem.  Choose from the following responses which best matches the problem you're having."

But now it kind of half works, and at least I can get youtube videos to play.  It's clear that I'm losing lots of data somewhere, as things are very bursty and erratic.

The fact that this is an improvement is still unacceptable.  The fact that I have to wait until Friday for a guaranteed tech visit is unacceptable.  Telecom monopolies should be destroyed.

Sunday: my internet is out and it's the worst thing in the world

"You're exaggerating."

No, I'm not. Everything was working properly, I was about to make a blog post, and then nothing would load.  Rebooting the cable modem resulted in a never ending cycle of failed attempts to connect.

"You're posting this. You still have phone internet."

Yes, but I can't connect anything else to the phone internet.  That means that my RSS reader can't get updates. That means my internet reading ability is ruined until this is fixed. When will that be? Friday.

This is why the infrastructure should be nationalized, and multiple isps in direct competition with each other.

I wonder how much a secondary DSL line would cost.

Sunday: Fuck fuckery

Somehow last night, the master boot record for the hard drive that controlled The One Ring Computer that runs my life became corrupted.  And the system crashed.  Casting me into the outer darkness.

Upon discovering this fact, I sojourned to that black rotten tower that exists there, to obtain the supplies necessary to rebuild my kingdom of automated perfection.

Yes.  I went to Best Buy, and actually bought something there.

Specifically, a 500GB hard disk, the SATA cable that should be in the fucking box, but isn't in the fucking box so they can sell you a motherfucking $11 SATA cable, because you're buying it at Best Buy, so clearly you have no other options.  And a USB stick.

Reinstalled the system, and almost everything that runs on it is now back up.  I was able to get the bad disk to mount and read, so I was able to salvage almost everything.  The status report:

• Wifi.  Since this serves as the wifi router for my apartment (using hostapd), this was the most essential service to turn back on.  Sitting on the floor with the keyboard and mouse that came with my PS2 Linux Kit reading the TV isn't the best way to configure things.
• CVS.  All of my papers, configuration, code, random bits of things I need to keep "safe" are all kept in CVS.  This was probably the next most important thing, but with the disk readable, it's basically just an rsync to fix.
• Email.  I concentrate my email here, because logging into to a computer you don't own is a bad way to read email.
• RSS.  This was a challenge.  The old database files are incompatible with the new version of tt-rss.  The solution here was to shutdown the database server, repoint it to look at the old files, mysqldump the database to text, shutdown again, point back at the compatible files, and then manually re-enter all my feeds by perl scraping them out of the dump file.  Clunky, and now I have to mark as read something like 20k RSS entries, only ~500ish maybe are new things.
• Network storage.  Since giant desktop disks are easier to work with, this is where all my storage lives.  NFS farms it out to the wifi cluster, and using the magic app on my phone, it syncs its data back there too.  This was easy, as it's just writing /etc/export and symlinking things into the correct locations.
• Home directory.  Just another rsync.
• DVR.  I'm not even going to bother trying to get this running tonight.  I think it will be as easy as ingesting the database dump, and then installing mythtv.  I have the /etc configuration stuff too, so it's just a matter of getting it set up the same way.
• DVR part 2.  This is technically an X11/gdm issue, as I need to have the display server know that when it starts up, if no one logs on within fifteen seconds, that it should launch a session for the mythtv user, and autostart the front end.
• Consistent, indestructible backup system.  Based on this collapse, it's clear I need to automate backups.  The list being:
• rsync /etc to storage disk.
• rsync /home dir to storage disk
• rsync /home/cvs to storage disk
• mysqldump ttrss to storage
• mysqldump mythconverg to storage
• rsync storage disk to backup storage disk
• rsync backup directory to USB attached storage.
• This is where an rsync to a remote drive would live, but as raspberry pis have issues with USB, I'm a bit hesitant to use that to run the remote system.  I should think about this more.

Network Reconnect

Canned videos and games of solitaire were barely able to keep the forces of oblivion at bay.  LTE backup channels provided the bulk of the heavy defense in this situation, but waning battery life made it clear this would never match the standard level.

Resource scan shows that other than a backlog of vital communiques, no systematic damage has occurred.

Battle of November 8, 2012: resolved in a cease-fire.

Thursday: situation critical

Main internet supplies severed.  Restoration ETA unknown.
Reserve internet supplies dwindling, with data rates insufficient for continued existence.
Hope for reconnection soon.  Time running out.
Send spare bandwidth.