Time machine failures

I've been having time machine troubles lately. From the console log it was giving a "failure to mount" the sparse image.

I didn't notice exactly when the failures started to happen, but I blamed it on an OS update. Now I suspect that it started to happen when we where having renovations done and the contractors turned off the power - probably mid-backup. I tried disk utility to fix the backup file, but something was corrupted with it. I found a way to repair a corrupted sparse file, but it requires DiskWarrior at 100 $. Since I don't really care about the history of the backups, I just want them to work now, I ended up just creating a new file and letting it run for a while (117 G ended up taking a while to backup).

So, what I learned is that time machine doesn't like it too much when the drive it's backing up to suddenly looses power. If I had more critical stuff on that drive, I'd put an UPS on it, but I'm still not sure if that would be good enough for the little 100 $ drive I've got plugged into it.

The other day the guys at work made fun of me for backing up my stuff twice - once manually and once with time machine, but it comes down (at this point) I don't trust time machine or myself manually backing files up. Hopefully both processes won't fail at the same time. Now I just have to set up a couple of more sites to backup files to - when copies and space are essentially free, why not store stuff every where I can. ;-)

The family grows

Laura would probably want me to wait to announce it, but I can't, I'm too excited. Our family is growing. At first we had Billy, then Niki, and now the newest member: Lulu (tentative name).

The third one is always the most rugged, and dare I say it, dashing good looks. :-D

Update: it looks like the name we have settled on for the new camera is "Steve" - because it's a pretty name.
(you won't get that unless you've seen Over the Hedge)

Backing up MovableType 2.611

One of the many things that I don't do much is make a backup of my blog. Until recently the last backup was from 2005. This post is to help anyone else that had similar similar issues using MovableType 2 (version 2.661). Most posts on the 'net say "just press the export button". One of the complications that I have is: 1) I don't have access to the command line or db 2) I've never had access to the export command So, using either a template or scraping the html was the only way to grab the content. I found a really helpful post on a export template. The only issue was that it was written for a version of MT 2 versions newer than what I needed. So below is the tweaked template that I used. It's not perfect, but it's easier than scrapping html. The lastn attribute is for the max number of attributes and I had to remove the mt:if statements because those were from MT v4 (but I can't find the link right now).

<MTEntries sort_by="created_on" sort_order="ascend" lastn="25">
AUTHOR: <$MTEntryAuthor$>
TITLE: <$MTEntryTitle$>
BASENAME: <$MTEntryBasename$>
STATUS: <$MTEntryStatus$>
ALLOW COMMENTS: <MTEntryIfAllowComments>1<MTElse>0</MTElse></MTEntryIfAllowComments>
ALLOW PINGS: <MTEntryIfAllowPings>1<MTElse>0</MTElse></MTEntryIfAllowPings>
DATE: <MTEntryDate format="%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"/>
CONVERT BREAKS: 1
<MTIF tag="EntryCategory">PRIMARY CATEGORY: <MTEntryCategory/>
<MTEntryCategories lastn="1000">
CATEGORY: <$MTCategoryLabel$></MTEntryCategories>
–––––
BODY:
<$MTEntryBody$>
–––––
EXTENDED BODY:
<MTEntryMore/>
–––––
EXCERPT:
<MTEntryExcerpt no_generate="1"/>
–––––
KEYWORDS:
<MTEntryKeywords/>
–––––
<MTComments lastn="1000000">
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: <MTCommentAuthor/>
EMAIL: <MTCommentEmail/>
IP: <MTCommentIP/>
URL: <MTCommentURL/>
DATE: <MTCommentDate format="%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"/>
<MTCommentBody/>
–––––
</MTComments>
<MTPings lastn="1000000">
PING:
TITLE: <MTPingTitle/>
URL: <MTPingURL/>
IP: <MTPingIP/>
BLOG NAME: <MTPingBlogName/>
DATE: <MTPingDate format="%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S"/>
<MTPingExcerpt/>
–––––
</MTPings>
––––––––
</MTEntries>

Appropriate Process

In a big org, and gov't is one of the biggest, people are very process focused. I'm okay with that. I love some processes: issue tracking, unit tests, continuous integration, one click deployments, automated quality metrics, etc. The thing that I get frustrated with is process without an apparent positive ROI.

One term that's been mentioned at work lately is "appropriate process" and I really like that. Process can be the best of things if it's appropriate. Filling out forms that are not checked against the actual product you are creating is not something that I would call "appropriate". That would fall into the "process for the sake of process" category. I think that is worse than no process at all because it's taking time / money away from actually doing something positive for the org.

Management is always asking for feedback. That's what they say at least, I'm still not sure if they actually mean it. What I would like them to do is come up with a business case for every "stage gate", "go / no-go decision point" and what ever buzz words of they day is being used.

Part of that business process would help you cost out all the parts of bringing something to prod. I wonder what percentage would be attributed to "process". 10%? 50%? 80%?

I want everyone that I work with, from the top to the bottom, to be "adding value". If you're not, well then at least get out of my critical path. I just want to route around the damage.

Possibly moving and the plan

With Ryan gone I have no idea what's going to happen with his hosting and domains. I don't know if he's arranged to pass them on to someone else or what. If I was in Ryan's position, I sure that I wouldn't have made preparations like that.

Having said that, I'll probably be moving to a different location on the 'net. Not sure where or when. I've made a backup of most of my posts (not the last couple yet), so hopefully where ever I move my blog to, I'll import the last 1035 posts. Ideally I'd set it up as smoothly as possible so that it this location has the proper redirects etc. but we'll see.

One thing that I would like to do is make sure that Ryan's site - or at least the contents - don't get lost. Not sure what the plan is for his site / domain, but what I'm going to do is make a backup of his blog and host it where ever I have hosting. He's hosted me for this long, I think that I can host him the rest of the time. Fair is fair.

I think that for someone who's spent so much effort and time working online, an online legacy is fitting. Maybe that's just me. That's my plan to honour my friend.

A compartmentalized life

Today was Ryan's funeral. It's funny how you can learn things about people after they are gone that you never knew in life. But I think that's the way that Ryan liked things. He told Karen and I once that he had "going out friends" and "work friends". Since school was "work", we were in the work category. For most of school Ryan wouldn't do social things with us, because that would breach that imaginary boundary that he had set up for us.

As life went on, he did would start to come to social things, but not always. He didn't want to muddy that line too much.

It's funny how Ryan kept things so compartmentalized in life. I always knew he loved sports, but I didn't know that he played hockey. I know that he loved music, but I didn't know that he played the trumpet. Apparently he played it very well - winning awards, joining regional groups, even tutoring grade 12's when he was in grade 9.

He was a passionate guy. Always seemly to be totally focused on the current task - even if the current task seemed to be multitasking. ;-) I seem to remember him saying that he had burned through a couple of pvr's because he'd watch / record 2 football games at once and when one game was in a break, he'd watch the other one. Because of his stories, I wanted to always rent our pvr rather than paying for it for when it inevitably burned out. We've never burned ours out. I guess I didn't put quite the same load on it as him.

You can see how he kept his life compartmentalized in his memorial page - it's either about programming, music, sports, or fun. Not much overlap in any one comment.

I'll miss his passion, his funny t-shirts, his laugh and the hidden secrets behind his eyes. You could seem them in the twinkle and his smile.

I'll miss my friend.

Goodbye Ryan

I can't believe that I'm saying goodbye to another friend who left us in November. I found out yesterday that Ryan Lowe had passed away. There's a place on facebook where people can share stories and grieve.

I knew that Ryan was having a rough time, but I had no idea that he was so, so sick. Like with Betty, I should have visited recently. Email wasn't enough. I should have just gone. I shouldn't have made any excuses to myself - "tonight's not a good night", "tomorrow won't be enough notice". I feel like I've been run over by a truck, and I feel that I deserve every treadmark. For someone that had taught me so much, been such a good friend, I feel that I let him down when he needed support.

I feel so guilty and ashamed.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ryan was such a clear thinker. He'd quickly be able to move things into categories like "not worth my time". When we'd go to Tim Hortons at SITE, he leave all the pennies on the tables because he figured that they weren't worth his time.

Most of all he seemed to be passionate about everything that he did. Programming, sports, chillaxing - he never seemed to do anything half way. He's the one that got me into TDD. He seemed to have so much patience (trying to) teaching me ruby on rails.

He's been the one hosting this blog for over 6 years. He's the guy who got me to use a mac. He's the one that was always pushing for better. He's been my model developer.

I can just picture him doing one of his start-high-handshakes, smile, turn and walk away.

Goodbye Ryan. Safe journey.

Rude - just the opposite

Sometimes people from a given region get a reputation for something - being kind, smelly, tall, jolly, or rude. Like all stereotypes, you can always find supporting and contradicting cases.

We recently went to Toronto for a conference. People from Toronto seem to have developed a rep for being rude and always in a rush - or so tv tells me. In fact that it was just the opposite. People would stop and offer to help (as we're taking arm shot photos), help me with things when the bags I had dumped, and were generally just really pleasant.

I'm really happy that this stereotype seems to have been proven wrong in this case. ;-)