So, I just purchased 75′ of magnesium ribbon on eBay for just under $21, shipped.
Heh.
This is much safer than the pound of metallic sodium I was considering purchasing a few years ago. I’m really glad I didn’t do that.
Anyone having a bonfire soon? Mg is great fun there.
Huh. So I just got off the phone with Shiva at PCBFABEXPRESS. After discussing the problem with him and explaining that four of the five boards appear fine and only one was bad, he understood that this is simply a manufacturing defect. He said that he will take a look around PCBFABEXPRESS’ backstock and see if there are any more copies of my board available. If one is, he will send it out right away for me to take a look at. If not, he’ll have another run of five boards made and will send those out to me.
This is looking a lot better. Of course, my PCBFABEXPRESS Review has been updated accordingly.
I was talking with someone who purchased one of my pieces of x0xb0x artwork, who is also building a MIDIbox SID, and who also is finishing up a 9090 and he pointed me to this site, entitled Anodizing Aluminum At Home. Seems pretty straightforward. H2SO4, NaOH, a 12V power supply, and a hunk of lead.
On a suggestion I took a look at using lighttpd instead of Apache. Well, from what I can see for now it looks like an excellent substitute, especially for my needs. As long as I can get its mod_rewrite working as I need, it’ll be exactly what I need.
(Crap, just thought of one thing… Gallery doesn’t know how to deal with it, I don’t think… Must investigate it more… May need Apache. hrm.)
Anyway, here’s another wonderful error I received from DreamHost. Enjoy:
attempt to access field 'dbname' in object of class Ndn::Dreamhost::QueryTime at /usr/local/lib/site_perl/Ndn/Common/Object.pm line 949
Ndn::Common::Object::AUTOLOAD('Ndn::Dreamhost::QueryTime=HASH(0xc0ecc04)', 'undef') called at /usr/local/ndn/web/dhwebpanel/index.cgi line 117
Apache::ROOTpanel_2edreamhost_2ecom::index_2ecgi::handler('Apache=SCALAR(0xba6f09c)') called at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/Apache/Registry.pm line 149
eval {...} called at /usr/lib/perl/5.8/Apache/Registry.pm line 149
Apache::Registry::handler('Apache=SCALAR(0xba6f09c)') called at /dev/null line 0
eval {...} called at /dev/null line 0
Well, PCBFABEXPRESS are being asshats. I don’t think I’ll be using them any further. In short, their website states that:
“If your printed circuit boards are not made to your specifications, we will remake them immediately.”
By this I would presume that this means defect-free.
Their customer service is refusing to provide a replacement board and has instead suggested that I repair the board myself. This is possible (and I have done it) but I would imagine that a company which wants to keep someone’s business would either follow their own policy or at least offer a credit towards future purchases.
Because of this experience and the (thus far) good experience I’ve had with PCBEX.com I’ve written up a review of PCB Prototype Shops which I have delt with on nuxx.net.
If you are curious about the problem or the email exchange with customer service (which I’ve included in full) this can be found at the PCBFABEXPRESS review.
So my new server is having a couple of problems. For one, when I tried to turn it on last night, it took three tries to power up. Now today it’s rebooting whenever there is a lot of disk load. See?
/usr/ports/comms/yawmppp/
/usr/ports/comms/zmtx-zmrx/
/usr/ports/comms/zssh/
/usr/ports/converters/Makefile
rm: /usr/ports/converters/Makefile: Bad file descriptor
Read from remote host 192.168.0.2: Connection timed out
Connection to 192.168.0.2 closed.
-bash-3.1$
(That was while running an update to the ports collection.)
I’m starting to think that my server wasn’t really compromised, and it just happened to be having power problems at the time it got hacked, and the massive amount of disk activity during the mass deletion / replacement caused the server to reboot.
So, I’ve ordered a FSP550-80GLC (PDF drawing) to hopefully resolve this problem. I likely won’t get the server into the colocation facility until next week, but I’ll see what I can do to get it limping along for the time being so that the OS can at least be installed and configured.
jawbreaker:~> time ls
bin gallery2_data logs Maildir mysql_backup www
0.000u 0.000s 0:02.84 0.0% 0+0k 0+0io 158pf+0w
jawbreaker:~>
Anyone want another reason why I’m leaving DreamHost?
That’s just absurd.
I can’t wait to get home and (hopefully) start getting the new server together.
Thanks to everyone who took a look at the schematic for v1.1, the hopefully not screwed up version of my version of the Casio SK-1 MIDI Mod.
Besides not feeding +5VDC into Vcc on all the ICs (doh) and shorting out the LM7805, I also replaced the resistors with 1/4W parts because they are easier to find. Things were cleaned up overall, too.
So, hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll have these available. For now, I’m just adding rubber feet and using the defective PCBs as coasters.
Here’s what I made for Danielle and I for dinner. Except she had a glass of Yates cider (from the same batch as what I’m currently fermenting) instead of the beer. That’s some sweet corn from Boyka’s on 23 Mile somewhere around Romeo Plank, baked mac and cheese from the Alton Brown / Good Eats recipe (except made with a vidalia onion and Clancy’s Fancy), and an amazingly smoky beer which only becomes available around this time of the year.
Mmm.
I’d forgotten how loud the server formerly known as rez.nuxx.net is.
By the way, what should I call it now? lazerus.nuxx.net? Or…. ?
