Thursday, August 30, 2007

Geek post

This is a geek post so don't bother reading any further if your not a code monkey.

We are currently investigating why some software is running slow and are looking at disk IO as a possible problem. Unix can log all sorts of things but you are lucky if they are human readable. This lill' Perl script will grep through all the the io.out logs from iostat into a csv file that you can open in Excel to graph.
Edit the regular expression to get the time - in out case its stamped Eastern Standard Time - EST
Edit the regular expression to find the device you are interested in - in this case d80


--------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl

#-----
# Perl code to output io files as csv
# usage: $ perl io2csv.pl io.out.* > d80.csv
#
# This little script will turn unix i.o. logs into a csv script
# from whence you can graph them
#-----

print "r/s,w/s,kr/s,kw/s,wait,actv,wsvc_t,asvc_t,%w,%b,device,dateTime\n";
# go through input one line at a time
while(<>)
{
# put input into a variable
my($line) = $_;

# remove trailing and leading spaces
chomp($line);

# regexp to get the time
if ($line =~ /EST/)
{

# get the time part of the date time into a variable (split on white
# space and get 4th element)
@dateTime = split;
$dateTime = $dateTime[3];
}

# look for data lines that are related to the mount
if ($line =~ /d80/)
{

# make white space separated data into a comma separated string
$fields = join(",",split);

# write output plus date
print "$fields,$dateTime\n";
}
}

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

A self indulgent post

Well, it's been a full on few days. Saturday Alex and I moved about a ton of dirt to rebuild the garden that was destroyed by the plumbing works in our unit complex. Sunday morning I spent doing odd jobs including pulling a substantial number of parts out of the innards of a Scandinavian build washing machine to clean the pump. The instructions were in the same pictograph style as an Ikea brochure, possibly written by Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow *. Needless to say I swore quite a bit but it eventually Yielded to my threats and I managed to emancipate the loose change that had blocked the pump.
Sunday evening we went to see a movie - Så som i himmelen, about a successful international conductor who suddenly interrupts his career and returns alone to his childhood village in Norrland. I'm a total girl in movies and cried just all the way through. Interestingly it took more money in the cinema I went to see it at than Titanic. Proves that I live amongst a bunch of chardonnay drinking intellectual snobs.
On Monday a colleague and I solved a cracker of an IT problem which directly affected the VC of the uni. I celebrated, even tho' it was a school night by getting plastered with Steve (the visiting physicist) and Row (pregnant uni friend) at the Belgian Beer Cafe. Well she didn't have more than a sip but Steve and I got a little silly. Thanks for your company Steve, It is always good to see you.
Tuesday was testing Mondays work and then in the late afternoon ducking home and bringing Annalise and Adrian into uni for show and tell and then up to the library to show Annalise the Tyrannosaurus bones on display. She said "Daddy, the dinosaur has popped and died and only his bones are left". I guess when you are 2 and a half and a bit a popped balloon is the closest you have to a concept of death.
Today, Wednesday; meetings, meetings, gym, meetings and them off indoor climbing with Sean and Andrew.

Then I think that I am going to have a lie down.

---------------
* Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow was an Adelaide academic who wrote instructions for kit-set model products, mainly balsa wood aircraft and submarines which ran on baking powder. The manual included here was for the assembling of a twenty-five-foot aircraft carrier marketed by Myer stores between 1954 and 1960.

Take the pieces from the package,
Lay them out as per the graph,
Gathering the bits you'll need,
Removing what your shouldn't have.
With the implement provided
Ease the bearings to the left,
Push the little angled mullion
Up into the socket 'F'.
This will free the moulded bracket
Holding back the nylon strand,
Draw the slippery hoop and coupling
Through the right-hand rubber-band.
Put the topside brown side outside,
Push the inside upside down,
Underneath the left-hand wingnut,
Press the folding backward crown.
Overlapping lifting side-flaps
Lower in to fit the screws,
Pack up tools, retire to distance,
Don protective hat, light fuse.


Apologies to John Clarke

Didja see it

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

No!!! NO DON'T TURN THE MILK CUP UPSIDED ....

...
ARSHIIII...

Deep breath, get the cloth.

I heard that the Federal Government wants to hand out parenting dvd's to all new parents from October onwards. What I really think they should offer is taser guns. That'll help them remember to do what they are told.

..... During an act that went horribly awry

you know you are going to click through and read this don't you.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

They want me to take some leave

Get this - I've been at work 1 week after being away for 24 weeks and they want me to take some leave, aparently I have accumulated 280hrs

Go figure.

Friday, August 10, 2007

An attractive blond


Well, the wife has gone to bed early tonight, so it's just me, the internet and an attractive blond.

Paper under an electron microscope



check out the paper project.

Whats so unique about me

Alternate title, so why am I called Unique_Stephen and not Mr Wambenger

It's all kind of a non event really. I used to work as a code monkey for a software dev firm that opened an office down in rainy, cultured Melbourne. Because Alex was moving down there from Sydney for work for a few months I took up the opportunity to work in a slightly more senior role and drink Melbourne coffee. Being an IT firm we, of course, couldn't sort out our own IT and our internal mail kept falling over. The firm had the name "unique" in it's title so we all got hotmail accounts in the form unique_[Your Name Here] etc. to use for work.
And that's it really. After they retrenched my arse and closed the office I used the account for anything online that might attract spam in preference to my 'real' account.
No flash of creative inspiration, no searching through Latin dictionaries for fascinating unusual words (that was for the blog title) or geeky 'phiber optik' handle. Now it's like an old hat that fits to well and I can no longer tell if I've changed to fit the name or the name has changed to fit me.
if the hat fits ...
---
p.s. anybody called Wambenger deserves to die after a year of mating

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

I know a secret

Ner ne ner ne ner ner

Monday, August 06, 2007

Back at work

I'm back at work after 5 months being a stay at home dad.

Free at last, Free at last free at last

Saturday, August 04, 2007

A wee spot of fishing

P7250106
Thanks Patrick for taking me out fishing and thanks especially for catching my dinner.
Patrick is a young guy who lives across the horse paddock just around the lake from mum and dad's place in Tuross. He has a tinny, a 3.3hp 2 stroke and an infectious love of fishing that he sates by heading out in the boat after he's done his homework and with a spot of weekend work in a local fishing shop. If Mark Twain had have had the pleasure Tom Sawyer would have been a biography and not a fictional tail. I very much enjoy his company.
The evening before we left we managed to squeeze in a fishing outing after he came home from school. Tackle, nets, oar, fuel, Motor and accoutrements in the back of car and off we went for the short trip across the hill to Tuross lake. Unlock boat chained to tree, attach and fuel motor chuck in tackle box etc. and wade out pushing boat through shallows to edge of sea grass whilst trying not to do a Steve Irwin.
On previous trips we had fished on soft plastic lours but today Patrick insisted on using live nippers sucked from their homes in the shallow tidal flats so we stopped off on a bar in the middle of a branch of the Tuross river where it enters the deepest part of the lake. Picking our way around the largest of the piles of pelican poo we raced the light to get enough bait together to do battle with leviathans that awaited.
Looking for nippers
looking for nippers
After collecting 60 or so of the little beasts we pushed of and immediately hit a snag - or rather we didn't, we just floated around in the channel like, well, uncannily like a boat with an engine that wont start. Drawing on my manly "man over motor powers" and resorting to the tried and true technique of pulling the lid off and poking a few things the motor spluttered to a start and I retired to my position in the bow and the captain piloted us to his secret fishing spot.
I can say the bait worked like magic. Every time we cast within a minute we were reeling in another brim or small snapper. Problem is they were all about the size of the magnificent trophy I'm holding up in the picture below.

Thanks Patrick
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