i did a little performance tweaking on my network and server today. i had three pata drives in a raid 5 array, but two of them were sharing a channel (primary/secondary) which was cutting performance in half. i swapped out the secondary pata drive and put in a sata drive on its own channel and almost doubled my disk throughput, which is nice for all the virtual machines i'm running on the box.

i also partitioned my wireless network into two separate networks, one for 802.11n and one for 802.11g. unfortunately my laptop and one AP are the only 802.11n devices i have, so everything else is on the 802.11g network. i tripled my laptop's throughput from 28mbits/sec to 88mbits/sec using 802.11n on 5ghz with wideband channels.

i also tried out ethernet over power (not power over ethernet) to extend the wired network to the back of the house to improve wireless coverage. i think it's pretty cool so far, just plug one box into an outlet on one side of the house, plug another box in on the other side of the house, and wada-tah, you have a 200mbit connection. the wiring in my house isn't the greatest so i'm getting about 128mbits. don't forget to set an encryption key, otherwise anyone who buys a compatible adapter in your building will be able to connect to your network. who knows if the encryption is any better than wep, but anything sensitive going across my network is encrypted with ssl/ssh because i'm a dork.

see, i'm not crazy. if you drink caffeine at or after noon it will still be in your system when you try to go to sleep.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/07/28/hm.insomnia/index.html

and then there were three... (golden girls)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/22/estelle.getty.obit/index.html

bmw is coming out with electric and diesel minis in the future. time to upgrade?

i kicked some butt in jello wrestling today. awesome.

an article on people putting more weight on the size of the house than their quality of life when deciding to buy a house.
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/07/buying_the_wrong_house.php

a new yorker article on american commutes and their effect on society.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten

study of muncie indiana from the 1800's to 1925. "The book is written in an entirely descriptive tone, treating the citizens of Middletown (Muncie) in much the same way as an anthropologist from an industrialized nation might describe a non-industrial culture." it talks about the deterioration of community and the increase of passive activities thanks to cars and radio. the citizens are also wary of politicians, the city is run by the business class, and religion was declining in popularity. hmm, if you swap out "radio" for "internet and television", you have pretty much the same story today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middletown_studies

a friend and i volunteered for habitat for humanity today. using power tools and getting covered in sweat and sawdust makes me feel like a man.

yes, the europeans have combined chess and boxing.
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1821639,00.html

what do you get when you combine a non-newtonian fluid with a subwoofer? spooky dancing blobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9jcA4decA

windows 3.11 will be officially discontinued in November. who knew it was still around?
http://gizmodo.com/5024101/windows-311-to-sing-its-last-midi-song-on-november-8th-2008

i just finished restoring a heathkit a-7 mono tube amp. it looks and sounds sweet, and i like that hardware from the 1950's still works and works well. it looks like this one, but cleaner and without the long knobs. and we all know how anal i am, but did you know that i polished every screw head just to make the amp extra clean and shiny? yeah, i'm a dork.