Challenge to Goddard Graduates: Purchase Your Dignity

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a convicted murderer who shot Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel J. Faulkner (born December 21, 1955 the youngest of seven children) in the back and in the head on December 9, 1981. The Goddard college graduating class has invited him to speak at their commencement:
http://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2014/10/01/goddards-commencement-speaker-is-controversial-mumia-abu-jamal

Here is an open challenge to them:

Give your first year's salary to Maureen Faulkner as atonement for inviting her husband's murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal to give your commencement address.

Daniel Faulkner's widow Maureen still walks, breathes, dreams, and cries like every one of you students, your professors, each of the Mahoney State Correctional Institution in Frackville, Penn, each of the police on duty this very hour, and as well as every one of you reading this petition.

Some ideas are better than others. The notion that "freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that" is a license to disrespect the legacy and dignity of all officers killed, their families, and friends is preposterous.

Whatever Mumia Abu-Jamal has to say can be sought out by anyone wishing to sample his brand of thinking, and discussed at length in public or private, no barriers or critical thinking needed. Legitimizing any diatribe he may have with a Goddard College invitation lends nothing to his words, nor does it lend any radical or critical elements to your thinking. Most likely it degrades your institution at its foundation.

Assuming no monumental shift in your sentiment emerges great enough to rescind the invitation, I call on you to each pledge to give your first year's salary to Maureen Faulkner after graduation as atonement for the grievious assault on her dignity.

Scared Silly by Ubuntu and jfs

So I have a second internal HD, previously mounted and working, where all the pictures and data are stored, you know the important stuff. One morning I find the PC unresponsive, doesn't answer pings, blank screen (was running gnome), nothing on the virtual terminals (Ctl-Alt-F1, C.tl-Alt-F2). I reluctantly powered it down and rebooted.

When it comes up, those partitions (the important ones) on the HD won't mount! I believe the drive is functional, since /dev/sdb4 is mounted as swap and /dev/sdb3 is my old ubuntu partition.

My worst fear is I pulled the plug on a "non-responsive PC" that was in the middle of something useful and caused more damage (corrupting the drive).

Is the superblock corrupted?

Are the block id's (output from blkid) cached or stored on the disk?

First let's just calm down, and gather some data using the tools I have at my disposal:

# mount /dev/sdb1
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail  or so

# blkid | grep sdb1
/dev/sdb1: UUID="3e4a975a-e771-4bd5-975b-bf27c019cac0" TYPE="jfs"

# grep 3e4a /etc/fstab
UUID=3e4a975a-e771-4bd5-975b-bf27c019cac0 /z    jfs     relatime        0       2

# dmesg | grep sdb
[    1.937133] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte hardware sectors: (160 GB/149 GiB)
[    1.937154] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    1.937157] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    1.937192] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    1.937263] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte hardware sectors: (160 GB/149 GiB)
[    1.937282] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[    1.937285] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[    1.937319] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    1.937323]  sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
[    1.985901] sd 0:0:1:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[   11.461397] Adding 1959920k swap on /dev/sdb4.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:1959920k

First, let's try fsck again, which if the superblock is hosed (in the old days) then this is an act of desperation:

# fsck /dev/sdb1
fsck 1.41.4 (27-Jan-2009)
fsck: fsck.jfs: not found
fsck: Error 2 while executing fsck.jfs for /dev/sdb1

I guess I need jfsutils ...

# sudo apt-get install jfsutils
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed
... [snip] ...
Unpacking jfsutils (from .../jfsutils_1.1.12-2_i386.deb) ...

Rerun fsck... Et Viola! Success!

Holy crap! Success in 3 minutes? The stars are aligned. This has got to be a new record for:

cost_of_data_loss * (fear && anxiety)
-----------------------------------------------------
speed_of_solution

So my only complaint is that when a JFS partition is corrupted, why is it reported as a bad superblock?

qneill

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Another Cycling Criterium Race Report

... in which I report on my third and fourth attempt (the first and second were also in one report) to get a handle on zipping around on a bike with other padded and helmeted and clipped-in and sunglassesed (bzzzt - not a word) people, max out the heart rate, and probe the effectiveness of my bicycle maintenance to date. This was from the 6/25 Driveway Austin criteriums, in which I did both the Cat 4/5 and the Mens 35+, because the second is only $5.

It was quite stale at the time of posting, but the entertainment value is I'm sure as eternal as the internet.

Cat 4/5

Strategy: Try to be a bit smarter/efficient, get near the front sooner (last 2 laps). I have no idea who was racing or who was winning or who was attacking who and who was marking who; dreaming of breaking the top 20.

Impressions: Reported 110 degrees at the start. Lots of squirrely, brakey activity in the corners. Seems better than last week though, perhaps everyone is better at RH turns? First lap a big guy moves onto me bars to bars - I calmly lean back a bit (gotta help him keep his line :). Long straight-aways allowed some water sipping in the heat, but there was lots of packlash (gap/squeeze/gap/squeeze - hey, a new sniglet) even in the front half. Some suffered, I felt like a kid having a bunch
of fun. At one point (lap 5?) I was zipping around, taking wind, having
fun; checked the HR and saw 178. Oops, chill out! Moved back to pack
middle, avoid packlash, match burning.

Results: With 1.5 laps I moved up before the hill, up and through the two turns through the finish, moved up 5-7 spots just like that. Stayed in the top 10 on the back, which was much faster the final lap. Had enough to pop up the hill again and pass two or three in the curves again and took one more in the sprint for the 6th place. I am cornering better, but still room for improvement. With some more efficiency and an earlier move, seems like I could take a top 4 given the same race?... Just dreaming anyway.

Between Races

Legs are dead. I whined. I thought about sitting and watching, but one hour helped me not decide. Drank a gallon, ate a pear, paid my $5 and got to the start. Did I mention my legs feel dead? :) Maybe it was the 1 mile intervals I ran yesterday, more likely the stupid 175mm crank arms. About the time I get used to them I'll swap em back out for 172.5's.

M35+

Strategy: Finish.

Impressions: The 35+ is definitely smoother, less squirrely. Still, surprising amount of braking and movement. More yelling and commenting. In one corner El Torito almost bumps me off his flank, I stay clear, a pack of 4-5 off my flank all break into audible complaints of "come on!". I'm wearing my plain pearl izuma yellow jersey, no sponsors or italian stitching, they are wary of me (newbie!). Maybe I will use this later to gap them with some wiggly turns.

I get to see our JPB boys working the front. I wonder if they are packlashing us on purpose, it would be a good strategy the next time. Benz sits in the back of a big pack (lots of 60 second attacks: stretch the pack like a rubber band until cracks appear). Later, I see Mike is dragging a big bean-bag of a peleton behind him; actually the pack is pushing on him, people are sitting up and drinking. Helps me recover, I might finish after all!

The packlashing gets bad. At one point I refuse to brake, and shoot off the front for the lead for a few seconds. I'm pretty sure this is a bad idea, I coast back into the middle. Later, feeling well situated, I glance back to see the pack and find I'm 2nd to the back; it's like noticing you are standing with your heels on the edge of a cliff! I use a match and the rebound off the packlash to get back in the top 3rd. Okay into the top of the bottom 3rd, anyway.

I hang on. I stay out of a crash. I close gaps a bit better than some others, but I see plenty around me still with jets even in the last 3 laps, while I'm close to redlining.

Results: On the final lap I start a "sprint" which is more like a continuation of a big 2-lap interval. I gladly sit up on the last turn behind a poor soul who crashes 50m from the finish, maybe a top 20? Actually I took 14th - Woohoo!

Retro: Again need work on efficiency and pack hiding. Maybe only racing 35+ would help too. Can't decide if the logo'd shirt would be an advantage or not. Had lots of fun.

Budding Cyclist

Despite the admitted volleyball nature of my nascent blog, I will spend some time on a recently emerged passion of mine: bike riding. Okay, let's get right into it. On 6/11 I did my first Criterium, which is a french word for "about to crash", at the Driveway Austin raceway. Seriously, I liken the sport to a bunch of dogs who are stalking prey, at any moment they will turn on each other but meanwhile they are the best of pals.

Although it is a bit stale, here is the "race report" I sent out to my cycling clan. They know all the lingo and can relate to the scene (and in fact they are the ones who led me into this scene of desperation and triumph), but in retrospect I guess it thinly passes the test for entertainment so I post it here:

It was a blast, except it was only 22 minutes instead of 30 because of fear of storms (turns out they were well founded - rain just after the last races of the night).

I easily stayed in the cat 4/5 pack effort-wise. I was kind of feeling my way, I probably could have been smarter about reserving energy (staying closer in, cornering faster to maintain momentum), but I didn't want to crash or pop. I saw J go off the front early, I resisted the urge to go join him (I would have flamed out I'm sure).

I was next to the only crash I saw: on lap 2 I think in the final (sharper) 90 turn at the end of the long out and back, one guy lost it and took two guys out into the grass with him, one stayed up and rode out though. Later I almost ran over J.s bottle on lap 4 or 5, he sent it through the middle of the pack on the downhill like a torpedo, LOL. Later the same lap I was next to one guy who touched wheels and almost down in the middle of the pack, I lost a big chunk of momentum there where I think I could have squirted by him but I reacted with a brake (like plenty around me).

I was a bit cautious in the turns only because there was a lot of wiggling and I didn't trust others (or myself I guess). I can see where accelerating and being more aggressive could help a bit. I think the bell lap caught everyone by surprise, so the finish lap was a bit more frantic (of course that.s just an impression, it was my first race, what do I know?). It wasn't too hard of a workout, recovering on the long parts helped, but I was sand-bagging. Parts of the last 2K were at maximal effort (except the reverse corkscrew and final turns) so to finish higher I should have spent some matches much earlier, like the entire last lap? Definitely had more matches to burn.

So my finish started I guess around 2K but in the corkscrew a squirrelly turning guy caused me to back off and we gapped the front 15-20 people, so I spent that last 3 turns trying to close at all out. I came in at the back of the front pack in 17th by Alex's count, or if you prefer at the head of the 2nd half of the pack. At least nobody nipped me at the end.

And the reward for finishing is making it into the official photo gallery "full bore into the final turn". Nice pain face there.

Well there you have it. Perhaps it entertains you. More likely it bores the non-cyclist stumbling upon it. Let me know what you think.
--
Q

Set me High and Tight: Attitude

Okay I waited for a few years to try this blogging thing, I was hoping they'd change the name to something less mushy-sounding, but it looks like this one is going to stay. And by now I guess I'm feeling full of it, enough to give it a try anyway. That and I'm tired of sitting on the publishing fence...

So why the name Set High and Tight? While perusing all the jack-of-all-trade types of activities in my life, I went back to a repeated theme in sports, work, home, and in life. It's a stance, approach, context, attitude that gets its name from my years of being a volleyball gypsy in South Carolina.

Permit me the time to explain.

When you asked for your sets, you could have them low and fast, high and slow. You could also have them isolated off the net or tight on top of the tape. I always seemed to prefer my sets high and tight, which did a couple of things. It gave me time to approach and meet the ball at the top of my jump, and gave me access to wicked angles. But it also gave the blocker time to cover, and the chance to cover more completely. It was a challenge. Besides, it gave me that spark of competitive adrenaline to get the hops going and get up there and crush that swat-melon in ways that made the guys in the back row feel like gymnasts. Or (most likely) I was just too lazy to "jump high like mountain" for sets off the net.

So back to this blog.

I hope that the following rants and ramblings will span the decades in both directions. I suspect they will cover a plethora of points, most likely covering (in no particular order (but in parenthetical retrospect in order of relevance to the 2009 here and now)) being a husband, father, time-gymnast, riding a bike, triathlons, (triathloning? triathlonage? triathlonation?), hoops, volleyball, handy-man stuff, web programming, family IT man,Unix, Python, Ruby, Perl let's cut the list short right there, it could go on forever.

Needless to say it will reflect the richness and variety with which I am blessed today in the year 2009 in a way that I couldn't ask for. Actually, I guess I could ask for it, and if I did I imagine it would go something like "Set me high and tight".

Q