the gridcolo train keeps on truckin. a friend asked me about the service this morning. he wanted to know "if" he could run a java server on port 8080. haha - im starting to understand the plight of the average webhost customer.  i told him its not webhosting, but a virtual linux box you get root. he asked about 'domain transfer' - which makes sense if your service is vhost based. i told him you get a public IP so set the DNS for that domain to the given IP address. he was thrilled.

building the second box is an adventure in PC hardware. i enjoy monkeying with them because its a nice break from writing software. after learning that my mobo required the extra 12v power header, from a fry's employee no less, i got an adapter that goes from an accessory PS connector to the mobo +12v thingy. then i learned the via VT8237 southbridge, which does the ATA, is SATA 1.0a. The swanky seagate SATA drive I have is SATA 2.5  and guess what they're not compatible. also SATA II doesnt mean SATA 2.0 and SATA 2.0/2.5 doesnt necessarily mean 3.0Gb/S. 3 gigs a second is only useful if the data is coming from cache anyways. tomshardware shows the top ATA drives are pushing 60MB/sec. im going to be performance measurement oriented with these boxes. RAM throughput can be measured with memtest86. disk throughput will probably be tested with 'time dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null', the old standby.

im at the UG, which is the place i write software at. i was at home yesterday because i was working on the hardware side of things. plus i spent the afternoon with Tom H. and his two boys. One of which is 3.5 years old and a ton of fun.

cory made my mackerchino (blended ice coffee drink) strong on the coffee today. im already buzzing, which means i'll crash by lunch.

props out to my homie DJE who should be in route to north sulawesi for scuba diving.