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Dan Dan The Linux Man uses pico: he uses no spell check. Things look funny or are not aligned? Email: fsras@uaf.edu. Feb 16 at 1p I think we are within one thousand packets of the next guy we are going to pass now. Given that he is basically not moving, it should take us 40 days or so. No news on the recruiting front. No news on the spreadsheet front either, the spreadsheet being important so I can calculate things like about how many computers are working for us as well as the rest of the good ol stats. I would like to do that, but it requires windows. Ug. Perhaps I'll find my way to yeti's box and borrow that some day when he isn't using it, which seems to be often enough. Perhaps I'll do a bi-weekly super-mega-big-update. I haven't gone door to door asking about v2.0 seti clients yet, but you better get em soon if you don't have them already. The v1.x clients will stop working before too much longer. I am getting back into the programming (and hopefuly soon quake) cycle again, and so I won't be doing to many wild and wacky things around here. With ojohnson safely behind and no other immediate threats, we can just sit back. I would like to do some page upgrades, but who knows when that will happen. For one thing, this page is getting pretty long. Feb 14 at 1a We averaged less than 20 packets a day these past two days due to the server outages, which isn't so great but not really a big deal. We are in fact in 16th place now on our team, and 1597th out of all the seti users (there are 1.7 million accounts, many idle). So anyway we're doing pretty well. It also appears that we're about the 13th best on our team in terms of all-out packet production per week, which is pretty good I think. Of cource I am still looking to improve that number any way I can. We are working on getting another linux box, a cyrix so-called 200 that runs at more like 150mhz. Still, a box is a box, linux is linux, and packets are packets. In addition to that box, named atrus or something, that guy runs a 466mhz celeron windows box named the_realm, or something, for us. I didn't even know this guy was helping us. A digital camera has fallen into my hands recently and soon pictues of many of our boxes will start to pop up. Right now I have suitable pictures of modzer0, whoremachine, hal9000, skud, and skug. I would like to add yoda, yog-sogoth, spoon, book_of_mudd, seamonkey, wilbur, and the styrophoam computer to the list tomorrow. Ion (or modX) is probably out of range, as is jaskug, hal_jr and a number of other boxes not in the dorms. Dan Dan The Linux Man's trusty servant, his little brother, is still busily working away at trying to get us all old pentiums that his school has around. Hopefully we will see them in a few weeks. Adding a few of those, no telling how many well get, would be pretty neat. Like Dan Dan The Linux Man has tought me: a packet is a packet. Or actually maybe that's my saying. Important news item: The 2.0 clients are fast, everyone should upgrade to them. Feb 13 at noon The servers are back, at least a little, now. Skud and hal9000 each have one packet going and skug also got its packet. Lets also rejoice that ion (or is it modX?), bishop's home box, has been up for two days in linux, a new record, possibly. For those of you who are unenlightened about this box, it is an Abit BP6 based computer, and those BP6's sometimes seem to have big problems with linux. Anyway lets hope it keeps running, cause we all like dual-processor linux computers. Especially those running seti for Dan Dan The Linux Man. Feb 13 at 10:30a The seti servers are down. Skug has been trying to connect since last night, I think one of hal's setis got done like 9p last night and couldn't connect. I was also unable to get to the webpage for statistics. Assuming that this isn't another UAF-only outage, when we come-to we should find ourselves ranked above cthulu and in 16th place. Next guy to destroy: 1000 packets ahead of us, but at least he's flat-lining. The real concern for Dan Dan The Linux Man now-adays is people getting us from behind, and right now I don't see any that are going to do that real soon. Well I tried out staroffice's excel-speadsheeting ability last night on our seti records, and it did ok, but its ability to handle graphs is sub-par. Now I miss two applications from windows: I miss photoshop and now microsoft's very own excel program. On the good side of things, Dan Dan The Linux Man himself is going to see if some new linux drivers for his tape-backup mighnt work now so he doesn't have to boot into windows to back up his data. I would never slight Dan Dan The Linux Man, yet somehow it strikes me as pretty funny he boots into windows to backup his linux stuff. Well anyway if those drivers work, no more windows! Haha. That would mean 5 linux-only computers. Unless I follow a plan I've sort of been forming to boot whoremachine into windows, despite its faithful service, so I can maintain a proper speadsheet and do some graphics for the page. I think it would be pretty stable there, since I wouldn't install very much for windows to trip over. Of cource whormachine has been up for 14 days or something and we don't want to make it stop. If only I hadn't broke that little peice of plastic off of pez's processor clip I'd run windows on the 100mhz box, heck, I'd clock it DOWN to 66mhz. Feb 12 at 8:30p I lied. I do that. I found out we have a computer made by Gateway that the dad of Dan Dan The Linux himself runs seti on. Its a 300mhz or maybe 333mhz, and he runs it at work. I think this is also the only workplace machine we have working on us. Don't know what its called, but I've asked. Feb 12 at 1:30a Our packet throughput was good today at 26 packets, which was enough to keep us pulling away from ojohnson, but not enough to catch cthulu who is still 11 packets ahead somehow. We've been accumulating 1/20th of a year of processing time per day for the past few days, which is pretty impressive it seems. We do a year in 20 days... almost. Well recruiting these days isn't a real lucerative busness. We got turned down by the guy upstairs who has the 600mhz P3 Hewlett Packard... of cource he does have a HP so we didn't really want him anyway, right? Interesting fact: Dan Dan The Linux Man, outside of Macintoshes, has NO pre-assembled computers working for him. Yes, its true. Well this page is still up for improvement. I am still working on that counter idea and also adding the section for mission statement and a list of computers by name, along with their hardware, OS, and distigishing features. Such as being a peice of crap. The main thing holding me back from just going out and making things go here is that I don't want to learn how to use Gimp... I liked Photoshop fine and I don't want to go changing that... now if only they made it for linux. Oh well perhaps I'll do the graphics from someone else's machine. Feb 10 at 12:15a Well it appears that ojohnson is once again closing in on us, now 10 packets behind, so we better watch out. On the positive side of things, cthulu is now only 56 packets ahead of us and just barely moving at all, so in two days we should have him. And in not so interesting news, I was noticing that our average time went up pretty good again, and is about to break back into the 13 hour 42 minute range again. Interesting tidbit of the day: we have spent about 156514685.849821 seconds on seti as of sometime today when I was installing seti on skug. That translates into about 4.9597 years. Looks like tomorrow (the 10th) will be the day when we beat the 5 years mark. Feb 9 at 9:30p Whew... got linux installed on skug and it works now. This is of cource a proud moment for Dan Dan The Linux Man, cause after a week, three (or four) linux installs, one windows install, four network cards and three video cards, Dan Dan The Linux Man's armies have emerged victorious over the vile OS known as windows. The windows CD goes back to its deep, dark drawer were its tortured soul will remained imprisioned for all time. heh. They could make a game like diablo about this. Hopefully tomorrow this page will get a hit counter divided by team memeber hits, outsider hits, and total hits. Another project I want to work on but haven't yet even made a master plan for is making a sub-page for a mission statement of sorts, and a page listing and talking about all of Dan Dan The Linux Man's serfs. Feb 9 at 2:00a Dan Dan The Linux Man is fast approaching two important events: one is surpassing the 5 YEARS of processing time mark, and the other is passing a fellow ars-technica guy named cthulu for 16th place, probably the last time we'll increase in ranking for a long, long time. Our team is a serious team... let me tell you. Our average time is swelling up pretty quick again... no idea why. Jumped by something like a minute on average. Thats a big change given 3140 or so packets already there. Much like before when it dropped, I am uncertain why it now climbs. As far as getting more computers on the job for us, well, it takes time and right now I am a bit busy. In all honsety, I am sick of hardware, reinstalls, things not working and the load of it. Still, I think when I get linux back on skug I'll install it on pez also. There is also a guy upstairs with some pentium that he has got in linux these days that says he'll work for Dan Dan The Linux Man, but he doesn't have the RAM yet. Also, I periodically see if I mighnt get it running on twig's windows box, but for some reason he won't do it. Feb 8 at 1:00a Well today was a bad day for me, mainly because my linux on skug went to hell. But at least it took my entire windows install there with it. The only happiness I can get from this is that one more install of windows has been destroyed and not (yet) replaced. We did 28 packets today and logged about 1/20th of a year of processing time, our averge packet time went up a little but is still pretty good. I am going to bed. I hate windows. I do not like mandrake linux very much anymore. Feb 6-7 at midnight We are now ten packets ahead of ojohnson, so it looks like we've got him beat. He could still catch up, of cource, we're not outrunning him by that terribly much, and we aren't pulling ahead cause we sped up... he slowed down. We did an ok 25 packets in this past day, but our average time dropped pretty fast and is into the 13hr 40min range now, the lowest its been in a while. Not completly sure why. It seems like the newer clients must be helping, along with yoda, and wilbur also does packets in 12 hours or so, and so its helping bring it down too. On a bit of a sad note, our 133mhz pez is now a 100mhz pez, cause I thought that our floor's RA mighnt just need that extra 33mhz more than a seti box did... this is a sad moment for Dan Dan The Linux Man, but since we gave that 133 to a windows box, well, I guess we're in the running for some kinda Nobel Peace Prize or something. Of cource bishop may snap and kill either me, the RA, both of us, the windows box, or perhaps all three. It is his processor... does it help that me and wilbur's owner (are we calling him null_pointer?) built it on peice of styrofoam (from a box of my 750a case)? You know, I just have to post of picture of that computer. One of these days I'll get this page fixed up with a few more features, but don't hold your breath... I'm coding again. (at modzer0's LILO prompt) linux init 1 pico /etc/rc.d/rc.local (arrow to bottom) (type:) cd /seti nice -n -19 ./setiathome & (cntrl X) (Y) reboot **ahem** "oh me oh my," "i think im gona die," "oh poor poor me," "modzer0s idle is 99.3!"(percent) Feb 6 2000 at 2:30a Busy day (the 5th). Dan Dan The Linux Man, by means of terrorizing and bullying the local peasantry, has aquired yet another computer. This time its pez, the computer that was replaced by book_of_mudd. Minus the p200 which went somewhere else last semester. So bishop, being the kickass guy he is, brought over a p133 for Dan Dan The Linux Man, and the two (the processor and mobo) are about to be united on my floor. This union will create a new linux box, our 6th to inhabit this very room. The stats for today (the 5th) reveal that we pulled ahead of ojohnson and are now six packets ahead, for a total output of 33 packets (the backlog was reduced to 5 packets). This has been a great day, according to our 30-packet line. It is highly unlikely that we will complete so many packets tomorrow: I forcast a mid-20's output. Our average packet time is more-or-less stable now at 13 hours and 41 to 42 minutes a packet. I hope to see this number decrease, since it seems like the vast majority of our computers should be doing sub-12 hour packets. Of cource pez won't help that much with all its 133mhz... Feb 5 2000 at 8:00p Looks like we in fact are leaving ojohnson behind... by a lot, suddenly. We pulled something like 34 packets so far, including the elimation of some of the backlog I think. Not sure exactly where the packets came from, but packet production always has, and probably always will, vary from day to day with no apparent pattern. In other news, with the conversion of skug from windows to a dual boot (with most of its time in linux) we have gained a linux box. This is, needless to say, of great importance to the collective ego of Dan Dan The Linux Man. Feb 5 2000 at 11:45a Well we finished two packets ahead of ojoshnson yesterday, so looks like the recent addition of winbur and the couple of packets ion did (at risk of crashing itself) have kept us from falling a rank. This is most excellent. I also installed the new 2.0 GUI client on skug and it did a 10 hour packet, which I believe is better than its average old packet by two hours. If the 2.0 client makes this big of a difference, we certainly need to get it on yog-sogoth, spoon and book_of_mudd, which are all high-clock low-bus computers simular to skug except faster (and in same cases, with a lower bus speed). Our performance, aside from being good relative to ojohnson, was pretty good at 28 packets logged with a ten packet backlog yesterday. Assuming some of that backlog starts to get churned through today, we should get credit for another nearly 30 packet day. For the record, a day with great performance is at 30 packets or higher. There was once a time when we could do that every day, although it was brief. And like I keep saying, when ion comes back from its sickness, we're gona get there again. For those of you who may have tried to get here late yesterday and couldn't, well we installed mandrake 7 on modzer0 and that took a bit of doing. For one thing... it thought the harddrive it was installing on was bigger than it was and so we would install it and it wouldn't work... but eventually we got that fixed. Feb 4 2000 at 1:00p According to the seti page we have put two more packets between us and ojohnson, for a grand total of 3. It remains to be seen if we are still that far ahead tonight. Feb 4 2000 at 12:00a Just got the seti stats for tonight. Looks like we've done an average of 26 packets a day for the last two days, which isn't too bad. Our 10 day average number of processor*days is hanging just below 15 still, also not too bad. ojohnson is just one packet behind us, however, so we're gona need to do a bit better to stay ahead. Today Dan Dan The Linux Man gained a servant. A guy down the hall joined up and brought his dualboot win98/linux celeron 300a at 450mhz (wilbur) along. He is even going to run seti dedicated for us. He also has helped me to learn how to do web page things, so I can do this page. Back to the packet-crunching: In addition to wilbur, the mac seamonkey (running mk linux) is also back on the job, after a downtime of some length I am not entirely certain. Seamonkey is a 300mhz G3, and does packets at a rate of one every 8 hours I think, making it a top performer amoung the computers of Dan Dan The Linux Man. The fact that it also runs linux is a object of great pride, since that means 3 of our top 4 boxes run linux. (It is not clear what computer has the 5th best packet throughput, but should ion ever become stable, it will be the 2nd fastest (but VERY simular to skud) and skud, yoda and seamonkey will take a step backwards and linux will count for 4 of the top 5 computers.) On a sad note, I don't even know if one of our old top-5 is still running: a box named Whee-Knee (or something like that) that moved down to the lower 48 somewhere with its owner, Aaron. He said he'd still work for us, but I haven't heard from him yet... sad story. Well anyway his box was/is a dual booting 504mhz pentium 3, and did the packets pretty fast. Another sad story is a box named Buddha owned by my old roomate. That thing is a prime example of why we don't go by Dan Dan The Windows Man, although it does live in one of those big 'ol Supermicro sc750a cases and have lotsa SCSI stuff. Its another 300a at 450mhz, when its running, that is. Perhaps some day he will once again lend a hand to our cause. Overall, I'd have to say that the story of 300a's around here is a tradjedy. Not that they aren't fast, no, they all have gotten to 450mhz, but the fact is that we've had no less then 5 of them in our effort at one time or another, and at this moment I think the only one we have is wilbur (who was added today). The others were sambra, a linux box with a disinterested owner, kore with a hard-core linux owner (that sucker did the packets FAST for a 300a) who sees seti as unessasary, buddha, and twig's other machine named twig (it may run seti again some day soon). The only two things around here more common than 300a's are celerons in general and Matrox video cards... Feb 3 2000 at 7:30p Oh no! Last night I actually forgot to collect my seti data! This is terrible. A sighn of weakness in Dan Dan The Linux Man. Day Of Statistics #123 will go down in history as a big, black, mark. And speaking of weakness, the mortal known as ojohnson is hot on our tail. Still. Feb 2 2000 at 8:00p Last time I checked, I guess last night, ojohnson was just 3 packets behind us. This is bad. He also had gained 3 packets since the night before. Also bad. We may soon find ourselves at 18th place. Feb 1 2000 at 11:30a Suppose I should have talked about it last night, but anyways we've been in a tight race with a guy named "ojohnson" for 17th place in Team Ars Technica, our seti team. Looks like we are pulling ahead again, after several days of loosing ground an in fact being behind him briefly. Also, our average time per packet had been growing steadily, but in fact last night it went down. We can probably credit that drop to yoda, the newest box we have, I think. Its a 585mhz pentium III owned by none other than yoda's owner, and it does packets in about 7.5 hours a piece. Sadly, this newest box is a windows box, and this marks the biggest threat to the local supremesy of Linux yet, although hal9000 still slaps it silly and skud is a little faster. If ion ever becomes stable, then this little usurper windows box will really be put back in its place... 4th place. Oh, and when the Linux boxes get their upgrades next semster... Feb 1 2000 at 1:15a Dan Dan The Linux Man's first news posting! All you ho's around here not already working for me... get with it! Well OK, perhaps I'll forgive you if you don't. Its a bit hard to tell exactly, but we've had an average of 15 processors working for us over the past 10 days. Of cource, four of those are in me and Dan's dual boxes, so that leaves 11 of the rest of you... not too bad but we were better before spring break. One word about this processor measurement: its measured in processor*days, which is a processor spending 24 hours working on seti. This means that we have more than 15 processors actually working for us, just many of them spend only nights working and so it mighnt take two or three of these screensaver boxes to add up to a single processor*day. Some boxes, such as our linux boxes, run 24-7 of cource, and so they add up time much more rapidly... and two processors rack up the time twice as fast as one, needless to say. This means that the linux boxes- hal9000, skud, modzer0, and whoremachine, account for about 2/5th of the time by themselves. When you add in skug, yoda and scott's mac (what's it's name, anyways?) we arrive at 11 processor days amoung the hard-core alone, the other 4 or so go to the screensaver fleet. Just thought I should share that with you all. We've been doing about 24 packets a day over the past 15 days, which is headed roughly down, sadly. If you, for some reason, want to talk to me, I can be reached at fsras@uaf.edu. Yes, I would love to hear from anyone who wants to bodily sign himself or herself over to me for the glory of Dan Dan The Linux Man. We do try to stick to only people we know, however, because we are not creating a mini-team here: only looking for those who will run for Dan Dan The Linux Man. Not that I forsee a rush to join. |