well last night was fun, we just ended up going for a concert in the park and playing uno with friends.

The concert was, well different. It was supposed to be latin music, so I expected something like Santana style and instead we got some very strange and unexciting acoustic guitar player singing English songs.

Well at least we had fun with friends.

The picture on the left was only taken, because the light was so pretty...

since people starting to complain that this blog is to much about work and coding and so, well there is now a new blog, only about coding.

Coding and More

SetupX Installation under Ubuntu

moved to: Coding and More

Creating Minimum and Maximum date in Java

move to Coding and More

playing a bit with my friend ashleigh and the camera.

But somehow nothing worked as planned, but we got some nice shots of her.

Grails and some annoying default CSS

moved to Coding and More

well after years of grilling tri-tip and pan fried tri-tip we tried something new and involves the smoker (what a surprise)

We made an amazing smoked tri-tip and I think this is the way togo. Well the guest's seemed to be pretty happy too and we ended up making so much food, that I have a whole smoked tri-tip left to my self :)

Anyway the recipe:

• get yourself a good looking tri-tip with some nice marbling and about 1.5 - 2lbs trimmed, or 2.5 - 3 lbs untrimmed (and trim it a bit)
  
• make a dry rub out of salt and pepper and rub it onto the meat. You need roughly a cup of dry rub
• toss in a zip lock bag and leave it in the fridge for 5 - 6 hours
• remove it from the fridge when you are setting up the smoker, ca 45 minutes prior
• fire up the smoker with some hickory wood and let it settle at a temperature of 220-250 Fahrenheit
• toss in the meat, add the remote meat thermometer and enjoy a couple of hefeweizen (roughly 1 hour a pound, so about 90 minutes or 3 -5 hefeweizen)
• do NOT open the smoker and look all the time, that's what's the remote thermometer is for
  
• once the meat reaches 145 Fahrenheit, take it off the smoker and let it rest for 10 - 20 minutes so it's as juicy as possible
• slice it into thins slices, alone in the kitchen (everybody else is outside...) and serve to the hungry pack

the dip

since I like to keep things simple and quick I just made a spicy (for germans) yogurt based dip.

• 1 lbs of yoghurt, not the fat free kind!
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• Salt, Pepper, Basil, Oregano to taste
  
• half a red onion, minced
  

mix everything together and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. It works really well with meat, since it enhances the taste of it, by adding a slight sour and fresh note.

well today I took of the day to move to my new place for this year and I hope to stay longer here. Depending how everything goes with the roommate and my wonderful girlfriend.

So here are some pictures of the front and backyard and I post pictures of the rest of this house as soon as possible.

My room basically has barley any stuff in it so far, since i need to remodel my bed and so. But once it's done it's going to be beautiful.

The backyard and frontyard are nice and I smoked my first tritip tonight, which was just amaizing and pretty cheap at 20$ for 4 lbs.

I guess I have this kind of sandwiches for the next 4 - 5 days.

Anyway it's late and time for bed.

well this is something new, a very strange behavior in one of my tests cases:


List result = this.getEntityManager().createQuery("from " + LoggingEntityBean.class.getName() + " b").getResultList();
assertTrue(result.isEmpty() == false);

int size = result.size();
int exspected = testSize * addres.length;

logger.info(size);
logger.info(exspected);
assertTrue(size == exspected);


now why do I get this error message...

[17:37:02,007] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [400]
[17:37:02,008] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [200]

junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: null
at edu.ucdavis.genomics.metabolomics.binbase.logging.server.LoggingServiceTest.setUp(LoggingServiceTest.java:73)
at org.jmock.core.VerifyingTestCase.runBare(Unknown Source)
at org.junit.internal.runners.JUnit38ClassRunner.run(JUnit38ClassRunner.java:81)
at com.intellij.rt.junit4.Junit4ClassSuite.run(Junit4ClassSuite.java:99)
at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:40)



error in this line:

assertTrue(size == exspected);

ok it's supposed to fail because 200 isn't 400, but not with a NullPointer exception...

now I have been working with intellij for a bit over a week and it have to say it has it's highs and it's lows.

• refactoring is just great
• override/implment function works good
• I hate the code completion, it's just strange behavior wise
• the junit plugin is nice, but a bit strange
• the grails/groovy support is exceptional good
• the performance is good if I work on a single project, if I work on my average 40 projects at once it's impossible to work with
• nice support for for python, works quite well
• uml support is great
• ant based build are a nightmare, but we want to use maven anyway whenever, where ever
• maven plugin is great in therorie, but with complex pom's it's extremely slow.

conclusions:

• python development will be in intellij
• groovy development will be in intellij
• scala development will be in intellij
• java development will be in eclipse
• pom writing will be in intillij and I generate the project directly via 'mvn idea:idea eclipse:eclipse' instead of using the pom as project file
  

ok it's not hot in davis,

it's ridiculous hot, 47 Degree Celsius....

I mean seriously...

lesson:

• do not buy a car with black leather seats...
• do not buy a car with black leather...
• do not buy a car with black...
• do not buy a car with...
• do not buy a car...
• do not buy a...
• do not buy...
• do not...
• do...
• ...
• ..
• .

translation I hid in the office, enjoyed the AC and got some stuff done (Die hard, Die hard with a vengeance,...)

Also no smoked meat today, I will not sit for 12 hours next to this thing fighting with the heat during the day or the roaches at night.

Now time to run for a restaurant and get some tasty food. I'm in no mood to cook tonight.

mocking spring,

moved to Coding and More

ajax and grails

moved to Coding and More

to cancel flight's is fun...

Flight cost summary

Flight cost - 6/16/09

Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$679.25
Flight cost	$679.25
Exchange cost - 6/25/09
Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$688.78
Previous airfare	-$679.25
Airfare difference	$9.53
Orbitz exchange fee	$30.00
Airline change fee	$200.00
Total exchange cost	$239.53	USD

Grand total itinerary cost to-date	$918.78 USD

boy my checking account truly hates me right now...

so it look's like the raid is now running, so this next step would be an lvm2 layer on top of it.

I thought it would be easy, but...

/dev/sdc1: lseek 10448441413827256320 failed: Invalid argument

Incorrect metadata area header checksum

--- Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/md3

VG Name data

PV Size 9.09 TB / not usable 3.25 MB

Allocatable yes

PE Size (KByte) 4096

Total PE 2384157

Free PE 2384157

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2EQH1i-BIYU-BDvH-sRb3-yruB-V15f-ZCTywN

"/dev/sdc1" is a new physical volume of "8.98 EB"

--- NEW Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/sdc1

VG Name

PV Size 9.06 EB

Allocatable NO

PE Size (KByte) 0

Total PE 0

Free PE 0

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2;??-ƈ+-?m-s?b3-?ruB-V15f-ZCTywN

"/dev/sdn1" is a new physical volume of "64.01 PB"

--- NEW Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/sdn1

VG Name

PV Size 64.01 PB

Allocatable NO

PE Size (KByte) 0

Total PE 0

Free PE 0

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2EQI1i-BHYU-BEvH-sRb3-yruB-V15f-ZCTywN

it looks like I just got promoted to a 64 Peta Byte server on the disk's sdn1 and 9.06 Exta Byte on sdc1.

Guess I got more harddrive space as I ordered...

So it look's like it's adding my disk's to the group instead of only my raid6 devices. The solution for this is to disable in the /etc/lvm/lvm.com the related disks:

filter = [ "r|/dev/cdrom|","r|/dev/sd*|" ]

Time for the next issue...

currently I'm fighting since 4 weeks with a retarded server, well whenever I got some time besides

• fixing bugs
• keeping the system running, because the main server is offline since 2 month now
• helping people with problems
• fighting with power outages
• fixing servers
• and actually coding doing research in the left over time

anyway for some reasons the raid system keeps failing all the time, specially it keeps forgetting it's devices.

So just some small things for me to remember for the next time...

• removing existing raid stuff: mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd[c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p]1
• stopping a raid: mdadm --stop /dev/md_d3
• getting some info's about the raid: mdadm --examine /dev/sd[c-p]1
• trying to assemble a raid: mdadm -v -A /dev/md_d3 /dev/sd[c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p]1
• creating a large raid0 for testing: mdadm --create --verbose --force /dev/md3 --level=raid0 --raid-devices=14 /dev/sd{c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p}1
• creating a raid6: mdadm --create --verbose --force --name=data /dev/md3 --level=raid6 --raid-devices=12 --spare-devices=2 /dev/sd{c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p}1
• storing the generated configuration: mdadm --examine --scan --config=mdadm.conf >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

solution: found here

now just wait a tiny bit for the rebuild...

md3 : active raid6 sdp1[13](S) sdo1[12](S) sdn1[11] sdm1[10] sdl1[9] sdk1[8] sdj1[7] sdi1[6] sdh1[5] sdg1[4] sdf1[3] sde1[2] sdd1[1] sdc1[0]

9765510400 blocks level 6, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [12/12] [UUUUUUUUUUUU]

[>....................] resync = 0.7% (7591112/976551040) finish=1074.7min speed=15024K/sec

well since this month turned out to be much more pricey than planned

• ticket to germany 700$
• visa fee 200$
• conference fee 200$ (should get reimbursed in the next view weeks)
• smoker 350$ (including needed stuff like coal and wood)

and next month is going to be the same game

• rent deposit 500$
• last month rent 500$
• paying rent for 2 places 750-1000$

well I need a new cheap hobby, which won't cost more than 50$ a month and the eququiment should be also affordable/rentable.

Solution?

I will try to pick up free climbing, which will also help me to conquer my fear of heights. And also will try to survive on 500$ of food (so no more chocolate and soda)

so what's new,

• my experiment to live on 100$ a week worked quite well, only 2 days left and I still have 2 whole chickens in the freezer, which are going to visit the smoker tomorrow
• for some reasons my back is killing me time to try a different workout and I'm looking forward to swimming again
• booking a flight to germany and a visa appointment and screwing it up, now I have only a 2 day window to get my visa delivered
• trying to learn and understand ajax
• trying to work more with groovy and grails
• learning a new IDE (IntelliJ 8) and so far I love it
• switching from firefox to safari for internet related stuff, since firefox is so slow
• looking for a small ultra portable laptop with 10 hours of battery live

just another saturday, well since I decided to skip carmel this weekend and stay in davis, since friends are in town, well I decided to use this weekend and give the smoker a run for it's money.

So today we make trout spread for bagels and smoked trout.

• buy 4 trouts = 10$
• buy cottage cheese and cream cheese = 5$
• buy 12 bagels = 6$

ok now this is out of the way time to setup the smoker, this time we use apple wood chips to see how they work.

First we brine the trouts for an hour in sugar and salt (lesson for next time, brine 2 - 3 hours, they are a bit dry and needed a lot of salt), while setting up the fire. It turned out that the new york times is an aweful starter, so let's try another newspaper the next time.

The trouts are now happily smoking for 3 hours at 220-240 Fahrenheit and I use this time to be productive, equals watching cheesy movies.

Once the trout were done, we had one for lunch, put away one for dinner and mixed 2 for the spread.

• sellery
• onion
• garlic
• cottage cheese
• cream cheese

It turned out that my hand blender is broken, our other blender is not strong enough and a fork is a lot of work. So the spread is a bit chunky, but very tasty!
And I also have about 2 pound of spread now, which has to be eaten in the next 4 days, so 2 bagels for breakfast everyday and if somebody want's some spread, call me.
(It has some fishbones, blame the blender...)

About the smoked trout in general? It's is amaizingly tasty and quite a fat fish. I like it.

so the smoker finally arrived and so we started to cook our first dish.

The lesson of the day? It's not worth it to cook a single chicken, since you need way to much charcoal and wood for it. It was like 5$ worth of charcoal.

lesson 2:

one chicken is not enough, they are so damn tasty you want a second one 5 minutes later

how too?

• soak chicken in solution of salt and sugar for 2 hours
  
• try chicken
• put pepper on chicken
• preheat smoker to 250 degrees fahrenheit
• leave chicken in there for 3h
• try to understand where you need to put the thermometer and figure out why it constantly looses connection
• figure out a way to kill the coals and wood once you are done, since it makes me nervous as hell to leave the bbq on over night and going to bed
• carve the chicken, executed by ashley!

todo:

get more chickens and repeat!