My work revolves around our codebase and our customer's codebase. Both are architected in a very minimalistic fashion, using ant to build. There are a couple xjc tasks, some javac annotation preprocessing and some code generation, but the bulk of the build process is pure javac. I'll shutup now; you're here for the numbers. Here they are ('real' time from time(1)):

64-bit OpenJDK 6 b20, FreeBSD 8.1-STABLE

Codebase 0:

18.36 real
17.59 real
17.57 real
18.60 real
17.97 real
------------
(avg: 18.02)

Codebase 1:

23.06 real 
23.37 real 
22.34 real 
22.64 real 
22.34 real 
------------
(avg: 22.75)

32-bit OpenJDK 6 b20, FreeBSD 8.1-STABLE

Codebase 0:

12.99 real 
13.64 real 
12.77 real 
12.38 real 
12.42 real 
------------
(avg: 12.84)

Codebase 1:

15.35 real
15.44 real
15.20 real
15.17 real
15.14 real
------------
(avg: 15.26)

Compiling with a 64-bit javac is 140% and 149% SLOWER than the 32-bit javac. Roughly 1.5x! How much time have I wasted compiling with a 64-bit javac during the last year? I don't want to approximate that math. If I worked in a real office, I'd have a reason for compiling with 64-bit javac. Needless to say, JAVA_HOME has already been changed.

If there's a more general point to be had here, it would be that those extra bits can indeed affect performance in a human-perceivable and negative fashion. Always be sure to evaluate your tools to determine where you are wasting time.

If it's worth building, it's worth over-engineering the piss out of. I decided to roll with 4x1.5TB drives in a ZFS raidz pool (RAID5-equivalent capacity). I knew that initial shipments in Seagate's 1.5TB 7200.11 series had firmware issues aplenty; these had been resolved by the time I decided to build this array (early August 2009). I was doubly re-assured by the drive's placement on the Maximum PC Best of the Best list (where it reigned, I believe, until the recent arrival of the WD 2TB Caviar Black). I pulled the trigger on August 4.

After basking in the glow of 4.5 (4.0, effective)TB of empty space and the awesomeness that is zfs, I moved the contents of my 400GB array over. Everything went as smoothly as could be expected. About two days after this, however, I awoke to a S.M.A.R.T. error on one drive accompanied by its subsequent detachment from my system. I quickly started the RMA process at Newegg only to have a second drive begin exhibiting the Click of Death (before I had shipped the other drive back). ZFS's raidz can tolerate one drive failure, so I immediately shut my machine down to stymie the impending doom of the second failing drive. I amended my RMA to be a refund for two drives and ordered two new drives with expedited shipping (makeshift advanced replacement). With my array once again happy, I continued on my merry way.

Before October's passing, it decided to leave me a gift: the dreaded Click of Death had begun on another drive. Being out of Newegg's 30-day zone, I RMA'd the drive through Seagate. The drive was still accessible, but since access was painful, I shut my machine down. I paid the $19.99 for an advanced replacement and return shipping label, reslivered the new drive into the array and was off to the races (again). On a side note here, I decided that I would sell my (original) Raptor when I built this array, assuming it would be fast enough for OS/applications.

Fast-forward to yesterday. December has given me an early Christmas present: ANOTHER FAILING DRIVE! As I wondered why my machine was running sporadically slow yesterday, I discovered while refilling my coffee once that the Click of Death had once again visited me (my new headphones are designed to block out noise, so I didn't hear it until taking them off...). I did my due diligence and ran the long test provided by Seatools; this is just a bootable S.M.A.R.T. agent. The long test is the same as the S.M.A.R.T. long offline test (which would not complete using smartmontools, as the drive would disconnect after extremely long seek delays). This morning, I called Seagate Warranty Support, determined to at the very least not pay $19.99 for an advanced replacement AGAIN.

I initially suggested to the customer service representative that Seagate refund my money for all four drives. I would be much happier buying four new drives from a different manufacturer, such as the WD Caviar Black. Obviously, this suggestion was dismissed. I battled this rep for a good 20 minutes to get the advanced replacement with no charge. Upon requesting a supervisor, she told me her supervisor was on another call but suggested I talk to tech support before they could approve my request. I wasted time talking to a helpful tech support rep. who agreed that any clicking warrants drive replacement. He made his notes on my account and transferred me back to customer service.

I was now speaking to a different rep. than I had initially. She read the notes on my account, again presented my two options (I ship, they ship or advanced replacement) without waiving the $19.99 fee. She told me she could not approve that, so I waited in the queue for her supervisor.

The supervisor was pleasant but worthless. He danced to the same tune - they could not send me an advanced replacement for free. I don't typically let my emotions get the better of me, so I was cool-headed but forceful with him. At this point, I didn't care about Seagate's obligations or policies. I was a loyal customer who had experienced a 57% failure rate in four months of ownership of a drive with an advertised annual failure rate of 0.34%; I wanted him to go out of his way to make me happy. The best he said he could do was to send me a shipping label to ship my drive in, free of charge. That would result in at least a week turnaround which is, to me, unacceptable.

Once I had become exhausted with attempting to garner a concession based on sympathy for my (hopefully) unusual experience with faulty drives, I turned to logic. I asked this supervisor what the difference was between giving me the advanced replacement for free and covering my shipping costs. He stated the $19.99 was their cost for the packaging materials and shipping via UPS, and that's "just how it is". I asked him to explain, logically, how it could be any different. He's offering to cover shipping both ways. They are going to provide their own packaging materials even if I send my drive first. He did not refute these points, but he still could not explain why the options were really any different cost-wise.

They aren't. The only difference between these options is shipping order. In both cases, Seagate was going to pay for shipping from them to me, shipping from me to them and packaging materials for the replacement drive. As this gentleman did not have a supervisor, I am now waiting 24-48h for the department he reports to (Seagate Global Customer Service or something...) to call me back.

I would also like to note that Newegg's packaging and UPS's shipping are suspect here. I was fairly pleased with the packaging - each drive was individually wrapped in a copious amount of bubble wrap and the box was filled with packaging peanuts, but various sources on the Interweb swear against Newegg when it comes to magnetic hard drives. I've seen this same dogma applied to UPS shipping, too. In the future, I will attempt to avoid both these potential pitfalls. My friend and colleague Stephen Shelton ordered four of the same drive from Dell a week before I did. They came in foam packaging designed for four hard drives (just like the first replacement I received from Seagate); he has had no problems with his drives. At the same time, "normal" shipping abuse should be considered by manufacturers - how else are these drives going to get to end users?

I'm beyond the realm of logic now. I've spent more time than the $19.99 is worth between being on the phone and not having my workstation running. Now, I fight a battle of principle. I was, even with this failure, willing to place blame at Newegg and/or UPS. Seagate has thus far shown me they don't care enough about retaining me as a customer and proponent of their products to concede a bullshit $19.99 fee. For this, they will lose my business in the future.

A lawless language is English;
The plural of box is boxes,
But more than one ox is not oxes.
One fowl's a goose, more are two geese,
But more than one mouse is certainly not meece.
On the contrary for mouse, the plural is mice,
While the plural for house is never hice!
If more than one man is always men,
The plural of pan should then be pen?
One may be that, and two may be those,
But the plural of hat is surely not hose!
Masculine pronouns are he, his and him.
Imagine the feminines she, shis and shim!
The English language, I think you'll agree,
Is as strange a language as ever could be.

If anyone happens to know the proper author of this, please let me know. Otherwise, enjoy what I feel is an accurate and humorous critique of the English language.

It turns out that maildrop doesn't have any facilities built in to do this automatically. It does, however, provide you with the tools to roll your own:

cc "${MAILDIR}.offers/"
`for x in ls ${MAILDIR}/.offers/new/*; do mv $x ${MAILDIR}/.offers/cur/${x##*/}:2,S; done`
to "/dev/null"

Since the 'to' directive exits immediately after execution, you must cc then move. Delivering to /dev/null then stops execution of the filter.

The instructions for the pasta machine noted that Semolina flour was traditionally used for pasta making. Semolina is made from durum wheat. The flour itself is a bit coarse (compared to white flour) and hard. This makes for a hard time kneading. The last time I made pasta, I was EXTREMELY frustrated, as the 2 servings took me about an hour and a half to make. Last night, I took matters into my own hands. The pasta pictured was made with a 1:1 ratio of semolina to white flour. That made the dough MUCH more pliable and easy to work with. The recipe I used was:

• 1c semolina flour
• 1c white flour
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1t fine sea salt
• 2T extra virgin olive oil
• water, as needed

Mix dry ingredients and form a well. Pour beaten eggs into the well and work into the dry ingredients. Work olive oil in. Continue to knead, adding water to get to a good consistency (it will be a bit sticky). Follow your pasta machine's instructions for making the pasta. No pasta machine? Roll out to the desired thickness and use a knife to cut the desired width.

Next time, I'll revise that a bit and convert the inaccurate volumetric measurements to weights. The yield was just under a pound. I cooked 9oz., though 8 would probably have sufficed for the two of us.

I've been working on my alfredo for awhile, and I just started writing everything down within the past couple months. I have a Moleskine dedicated to the kitchen, and I take note of everything I create, keeping track of successes, failures and constructive criticism. I'm pretty happy with my basic alfredo:

• 1c heavy cream
• 2.5T butter
• 3oz. grated Parmesan (reggiano, if you can)
• 1.25oz. grated Asiago
• a couple drops of extra virgin olive oil
• a dash of salt and white pepper (be careful with the salt - Parmesan is a salty cheese)

Melt the butter and olive oil over medium-low to medium heat. Add the cream and bring to a simmer. Whisking constantly, start adding the cheeses a little at a time. Add more or less of each to taste. Whisk constantly until a silky consistency is reached.

The chicken? I just sliced a boneless, skinless breast and added salt and pepper. I then pan-seared it in olive oil in an iron skillet over medium to medium-high heat.

It's garnished with some dried parsley and served with some homemade focaccia au levain.

What is the role of technology at Spacely Sprockets? It is a tool. Technology enables them to more efficiently and effectively produce sprockets. In this case, the best IT department is an IT department who is never seen or heard from. Ideally, Spacely's IT department has configured their systems to be completely invisible. Computers never crash, phones never disconnect and printers never make archaic requests such as "PC Load Letter". Sound too good to be true? It is. Though this level of perfection can probably never be attained, it can be approached.

On this sliding scale of IT perfection, there is a point where IT becomes inhibitory of the company's business. I fear many companies in the world are at or below this point. Why? I believe incompetence and arrogance account for most cases.

Incompetence (or its brother, ignorance) can cause solutions to be implemented poorly or not at all. Part of the job of an IT department is to recognize where technology could improve business in any way. If no one in the IT department is able to recognize the need for a given technology, it's unlikely anyone will. These flaws can also yield half-baked policies which end up inhibiting production.

Arrogance is the lower volume offense here, but it can be just as damaging. One case of this type of behavior is the technique of building a fortress. Ever known someone whose job security was that no one knew how to manage what they had built? That's a fortress. Did this person build the fortress with the sole intention of keeping people out? Not necessarily. There are circumstances where some constrained resource (people or time, usually) can limit transparency. I'd say these situations should at least yield a wiki page in the corporate intranet about the system (don't have a corporate intranet/wiki? see the previous paragraph...). Arrogance, in some form, can once again yield inhibitory policies. These are typically knowingly inhibitory, meant to draw attention to the power held by the IT department.

What can be done about these problems? Well, to some extent, these are character flaws. Those in charge of hiring can screen the extreme versions of these people very quickly. Once they are in power, though, those in charge of them must have the ability and willingness to deal with potential problems as they are identified. The worst case scenario has an arrogant IT department gone rampant with a CEO who will not lay down the law. IT is just another department. If your sales team isn't producing, you take action. If your IT department isn't producing, you need to take action. IT is an integral part of your business but should not control it.