Pile of Dross

Hmm, I’ve preordered the new Sims 2 expansion pack from GAME, to get the free doobrie and hopefully encourage them to do this in the future, I’m tempted to find an e-mail address and mail Maxis/EA saying why and asking them if they’d consider expanding such offers to Amazon UK as that’s who I normally use.

Setuping up Babar’s space on dcache
Asked for input on Experiments activites vs GridPP milestones - decided on free-for-all, got people to schedule T1-T2 transfers over the remainder of the month
Attended GridPP-Storage phone conference
Helped out OS with dCache problem
reinstalled Marley

Transfers to CERN finshed at around midday - 150MB/s achieved overnight
Lancaster did some transfes from early afternoon - 833Mb/s
Marley’s disk reported errors - handed over to GP
Assisted CB with dCache problem

(Makes it easier to read all of long log entries if they have a title, so going to try and remember and put relevant dates in work entries)

Made various tweaks to dCache -restarted all gridftp door over course of the morning - this fixed an balance issue we were seeing with SC transfers avoiding gftp0444 -probably due to lingering connections to that system
Restarted some more pools
Cleared the CMS files from nfs39 left over when we gave it to LHCb, as dCache decides to use pools based on the amount of free space, not the the amount of “freeable” space so nfs39’s pools weren’t getting as much use as they might have.
Noticed queue of transfers on nfs39 - so raised maximum movers - immediate data movement out of server to lhcb jobs on batch farm, still not understood why things had got queued though - possibly too many jobs opening multiple files?

Attended:
Monday morning ops meeting
Tech discussion (gave talk)
SC3 phone conference (mailed RAL’s report afterwards to JS too)

Yay, success. Overnight we were accepting data from CERN at a rate of 150MB/s. This is an important number because its the nominal rate we’ll have to accept data at when the LHC switches on, though spot data rates my be higher - up to 600MB/s has been estimated. Also, this is really the first time we’ve seen sustained rates of over 1Gb/s on the optical private network we have to CERN, despite it being provisioned at 2Gb/s.

Another impressive feat is that last week we had 12 sites accepting data at 800-1000MB/s cumulatively, yesterday and today with the number of sites trimmed down to 6, those sites (us included), were getting close to accepting data at 800MB/s. A far cry from the summer when with 12 sites it was hard to sustain 600MB/s.

The atmosphere’s different here too, in the summer it was desperate, we were swamped with software problems and hardware glitches, this time its subtly different - we’re still seeing some hardware glitches and some software behaviour we don’t understand, but they’re puzzles to ponder, not horrendous obstacles to overcome, that doesn’t mean I haven’t spent times trying to raise network rates by thought alone, by peering intently at the network graphs - just that it seemed to work this time :-D.

Apparently inspired by my posting of my best man’s speech for his wedding, Graeme has put out the
call for blog posts about his wedding which reminded me that I had noted down some thoughts before I went to sleep afterwards, but never got round to posting, so once more with the blockquoting:

Post wedding -

At last the nightmare ends - bloody speech is given. Spent goodly amounts of time chatting to various folks I see even less than the people I see occasionally, and spent a even more goodly amount of time chatting to them too.

I do have to wonder whether there’s a genetic imperative for Scotsmen to sing and dance like a complete loon when nicely drunk, either that or I’m less of a curmudgeon than I let on - the only two explanations why me and ColinD seemed so in sync with each other.

Several people came up to me beforehand and told the speech would be fine, that everyone’s on my side etc etc etc, but I am a natural worrier, so these words while comforting to my conscious mind really did little to ease the subconscious icy ball that had taken up residence in my stomach.

Choosing to go with the “saying nice things about the groom in slightly twisted way” speech rather than the more traditional “make groom out to be complete imbecile” speech which had been crafted after much study of internet websites turned out to be the smartest gut instinct I’ve ever had. It fitted nicely in with what the Father (and Mother) of the bride said (by pure luck) - certainly one of the jokes in the ‘nasty’ speech would have fallen flat, as the incident had already been set out in a much nicer light already and I think the whole tone would have been wrong - one of the themes of the the FotB speech was how worthy the Groom was to marry the Bride - jarring to paint a picture of him as a buffoon after that.
The speech was possibly a touch too short or possibly I was going too fast - but I wasn’t aware of me gabbling - which I normally am- so short is more plausible. Still I’ve never seen so many people laugh so heartily at the word ‘Graeme’ before. And I didn’t muck up my toast, so that’s somewhat of a relief - always a danger, I think, of people toasting the wrong thing at the wrong time.

So advice for future best men:
Either be aware of what the Father of the Bride is going to say, or don’t be too nasty about the groom. The general lesson is work out how the speech fits into the evening - you’re typically last to talk so have to tread carefully and should probably avoid anecdotes that have already been mentioned.
Cue the audience when you want them to do things and once they’re cued get to what you cued them for sharpish, avoid all digressions and
asides or don’t wave your toasting glass around while doing so, as some people may be cueing off of the raising of the glass more than what you’re saying.
Short and pithy is probably better than long and drawn out - a short speech with a few jokes will go down better than a long speech with the same number of jokes.
People will laugh where and for how long they feel like it, don’t force it along or look upset if its not going quite how you anticipated - go with the flow - but they will try to find the funny if its well signposted enough - even if the punchline is not that funny - its a genuine friendly audience - you’d have to work really hard to alienate them.
Bride is best thing since sliced bread - no one in their right mind is going to disagree with someone complimenting the bride on her wedding day, but too much might look a bit odd.
In fact in general saying nice things about people is a good road to take.
And the final advice for future best men: don’t take the job in the first place, go along to the reception and (quietly) laugh at the poor sod who did agree to do it and generally have a good time - its so much less stress.

Friday Jan 2oth

More babysitting SC3 rerun, csfnfs51 gave too many files errors - restarted it
Research for talk on Dcache and SRB on Monday
Various errata rpms applied to systems
Meeting with ST

Thursday 19th

Monitoring SC3 rerun
Research for talk

Well knock me down with a feather, Maxis and EA have apparently finally realised that people in the tiny fraction of the world that is non-North America buy computer games online too and have started offering
preorder bonus items in the UK for the upcoming Sims 2 expansion pack. Amazon UK would have good but I suppose GAME is not too bad either

Its been 1 month since Annabel and Graeme’s wedding, so I thought I’d mar[k] the occassion by digitizing my bestman’s speech from my cuecards for those of you who weren’t there/couldn’t hear me clearly/want to relive the agony.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name’s Derek
and I’ve the honour of being
Graeme’s best man today.

On behalf of the bridesmaid, Zoe
and Laura, I’d like to thank Graeme
for his kind words. I’d just like to
say that both are looking lovely today
and are only outshone by Annabel
herself, who looks absolutely stunning
unlike Graeme who just looks stunned.

I’d also like to thank the ushers:
Colin, Andrew, Mark and Jon, who
have do a great job shepherding
people around and generally making things
happen.

Its traditional in best man speeches
to maock the groom, however I’ve been
doing that since I first met him in
ab Edinburgh University Lecture theatre,
so I thought I’d give him a break
on this day of all days and try
and say nice things about him.

No easy task!

Firstly, I’d have to say that he’s very
good neatured, he’s put up with 8 years
of jokes, sarcasm and ridicule
with good humour and grace
and still thought well enough of me to askk me to be
his best man.

Or perhaps since he knows of my _love_ of public
speaking, this is his way of getting revenge.

he can be very enthusiastic and energetic
though for soeone whose daily consumption
of coffee is measured in litres (not cups)
this isn’t too unexpected.

He can be stubborn and determined too, pity
the person who tired to convince Graeme that
staying out drinking till 3am, when there was a
9 am exam was a bad idea. I still have
the scars!

Graeme does have excellent taste as
his choice of wife clearly shows
(as I’m sure you’ll all agree)

Graeme, you’ve married a beautiful,
smart , caring, witty person in Annabel. I
hope you realise just how lucky
you are.

Annabel, you’ve married…. Graeme
Well he has plenty of potential at least.

So I’ve tried (and possibly) failed to say
nice things about Graeme. I hope I
haven’t scared his new in-laws too
much.
But seriously, I wish you two all the
joy and happiness in the the world in
your new life together.

So Ladies and Gentlemen, if I can
ask you all to be upstanding…
and join me in
a toast to Annabel and Graeme

- THE BRIDE AND GROOM!

Right, done, you can stop cowering behind the sofa at the sheer cringeworthyness of it.

[update - Uggh and 101 typos fixed too]

Either I’ve broken something or my iBook has worked out that I don’t want to start iTunes when I plug my iPod iN. Last time the iPod sat with the big tick that I could unplug it but I had music playing, this time my iPod didn’t appear in Finder upon connection of the cables.

I’d like to think its that smart, but my natural pessimism and Occam’s razor suggest that something gone a bit peculiar.