random neuron misfires

pilot-link 0.11.6, “Chasing Platform Bugs”

Mac OSX
I successfully ported pilot-link 0.11.6 over to OSX and managed to get it building cleanly.. apparently the libtool provided on OSX isn’t really the same as GNU libtool.

Apple’s Developer Tools contain a program also called libtool, which is used by the compiler driver to build shared libraries. However, this is completely unrelated with GNU libtool. The GNU libtool that Apple ships is installed as glibtool instead.

What I had to do, was change autogen.sh from pilot-link to run ‘glibtool –version’ instead of ‘libtool –version’, and now configure runs properly. I’ll hack in a check for that later.

This Fink Libtool page was useful.

FreeBSD 4.7-STABLE
There’s still a lingering FreeBSD issue that I can’t seem to quite figure out yet. I’m not sure if it’s BSD, or pilot-link that is the problem (or both), but I’m leaning towards BSD, since the same branch of code works over serial and IrDA through birda, without problems. Thanks to groggy, and the PR he filed, we may see some positive fixes in this area.

I’ve had a machine donated to me by a very helpful person in Dallas, specifically to put FreeBSD on and get this working. Its actually caused me to close up a bunch of lingering bugs in the past month (thanks Larry).

AIX 4.3
There’s an open issue with AIX 4.3 using vsnprintf(), basically that it has none. I need to add a better test for that. tridge lent me a shell for a bit, but I ran out of neurons to focus on it. Can anyone else lend me a chrooted/jailed environment that I can ssh into and test building pilot-link against AIX?

Sparc
Sparc hardware requires aligned structures and addresses. Our current use of unsigned char slp_buf[…] and then casting it to a struct slp * then dereferencing it causes a bus error because of the misaligned address. Again, need testers or actual shell time to fix this.

Most of the trouble right now is gaining access to boxes that I can test and fix these issues on. Everyone seems to be in either some far-away country, or behind very restrictive environments that I can’t mole my way through.

Plucker 1.2

Well, we released Plucker 1.2 and have had quite a bit of hits lately on the site. The whole site was redesigned from the ground up to take the load, and to properly stuff the necessary bits into mod_perl. This is all going to tie into a larger project on the horizon, when I get time to work it out.

I managed to cut together an email-only interface to Plucker also (info here), and threw a wiki up with all of the PDA-sized urls I’ve been capturing for years (over here). I also did a comparison of AvantGo vs. Plucker, which has been quite popular, gauging from the hits (over here).

Rack it up!

I need to find some 1U and 2U rack cases. Anyone know of a dot-com or three that has some of these they want to unload, fairly inexpensively? I’m trying to get all of these bits of various hardware racked into 1U and 2U enclosures, so I can start saving space around here in the server closet. It’s getting crowded in there.

Weather calls for… SNOW!

One big huge pile of snow says the map. No mountains near here though to take the board out on.

Genetics

Well, it looks like I’m next in line for the chance to be a father. I wonder what the percentage of Y chromosomes it takes to father males or females. My father had brothers, my mother had three sisters, and their families had lots of siblings (though ours did not). I also have a brother. Does that mean I’ll have sons?

Employment

Status: None, 385 days.

I did find one small contract gig, which should pay up a small slice of the bills, and maybe give me some money for Christmas expenditures, but nothing really promising looms on the horizon. The threat of major layoffs at $PHARMA has us both concerned.

Landlords

Our previous landlord’s daughter, who owned the apartment below us, verbally told us that her parents weren’t going to renew the lease on our unit (which was up in about 45-50 days), since she was going to buy the entire building. She handed “E” the classifieds.

We immediately scrambled to find a new place to live, and sent the landlord a very formal letter, explaining that since we weren’t properly notified, as required by Rhode Island’s Landlord Tenant Act (specifically 34-18-37(c)) which says we are supposed to be given 90 days, in writing), that we were legally justified in terminating our lease 30 days early, and moving out post-haste.

We moved out, and then the landlord gives us a hard time about some dirt in the oven, and some minor garbage he found on a shelf in the bathroom. He demanded we come over and clean it up first, and he STILL hasn’t given us our deposit. He has 20 days, and if he doesn’t return our deposit by that time, RI law says we can then persue him for triple damages PLUS our deposit back. That’s $2,900.00/USD total.

Since there were no damages to the unit, and there was no “back” rent owed (we always paid on time), he legally cannot keep the deposit. Cleaning is not damage, even if he wants to hire people at $100.00/hr. to paint the walls or polish the wood floors. Then he claims WE terminated the lease without proper notice. How inept.

We’re settling in well in our new place, 4 floors of a split townhouse. Lots of little fixups to do, but it’s nice and quiet here, unlike the previous place, which was a circus 24×7.

So much to do, so much to learn, so little time, it seems.

Lastly, something I saw on a job forum the other day, which was perjured out of Slashdot:

1999: “How To Get Hired As An Open Source Developer”
2001: “How To Get Hired As A Developer”
2002: “How To Get Hired”
2003: “How to Get Hired in a Completely Different Industry”

How true it seems… how true…