This and That

I recently flew on Southwest airlines for the first time, and while the experience on a whole was pleasant, there are a few ‘gotchas’ to be aware of.

First of all, Southwest does not allow you to choose your seat when you book your flight.  You are assigned a group and a number when you check-in that dictate when you can get on the plane.  Once on the plane, any seat is fair game.  So to avoid getting the middle seat and to ensure that you can stow your carry-on, it is imperative that you check-in as early as possible (typically 24 hours before departure time).  Fortunately, Southwest has a webpage designed for mobile devices, so you can check in even if you’re away from a computer.  However, if you have the misfortune of being on the terror watch list, you might be screwed.

Next, when boarding, the seats in Row 1 look attractive because of all the legroom.  Unfortunately, these seats do not have tray tables for some reason.  If you get a drink, you’ll have to hold it until you’re done with it.  Every other plane I have ever been on has tables that fold out of the armrest for the first row seats.  I can’t see this being a cost-saving issue, so I don’t know why Southwest omitted these tables.

Finally, Southwest’s planes do not have closets at the front of the plane to store garment bags in, so you have to stow them in carry-on bins.  Again, I’ve never seen this before on other airlines.  I can see how removing the closet frees up some extra room, but it’s a pain having to try and layer a garment bag on top of a bunch of irregularly shaped carry-ons that barely fit in the bin to begin with.

This guide assumes a decent working knowledge of Linux, compiling source, virtualization, and networking. For my purposes, it was easier to just blow away OSX and install a Linux distribution on the MacBook Pro. Supposedly, someone has been able to compile Xen on OSX, so you may want to check out the xen-users mailing list. Also, if you don’t intend on modifying any of the xen source, it’s probably easier to just install from modules using apt-get, yum, etc.

Picking a Distro:
The first step is to pick a Linux distribution that comes with GRUB 0.97 or greater so that the hybrid GPT/MBR that MacBooks come with will be supported. I chose RHEL 5.1 (Ubuntu 7.10 Workstation will also install on the MacBook, but I did not try to install Xen on it). It might be possible to install a distro with an earlier version of GRUB like RHEL4.5 and then use rescue mode to upgrade GRUB, but I did not try it.

Partitioning:
In previous RHEL/Xen installations, I followed the partitioning instructions found here. However, when I attempted to replicate the partitioning scheme with RHEL5.1 on a MacBook, the partitioner would crash. I even tried creating the LVM volumes manually with Knoppix and then running the RHEL installer, but the partitioner would still crash. I ended up just accepting the default RHEL partition scheme that only creates one LVG. This means that I am going to have to use QEMU files for VMs.

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So, I recently realized that a couple of ‘factoids’ I’ve been telling people are actually not true.

First, shorts cups at Starbucks. I had never seen these before I visited Seattle in August of 2006, so I assumed they were a Seattle-only item. However, I talked to a Barrista today at the West Springfield Starbucks, and he told me that back in the day (like 5-6 years ago), short was the small size and tall was the medium. Then, they added the venti (which just means 20 in eyetalian, because it’s 20 oz) and made the tall the smallest menu size. Apparently, all locations still have the short cups, but they’re normally hidden away and not listed on the menu. I didn’t really start drinking Starbucks drinks until I started working after grad school (2003), so it would make sense that I missed the changeover from small.

Next, we have the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Some teacher in my youth told me that the character was ‘mad’ (crazy), because of mercury poisoning from the mercury he used to treat hats. However, Wikipedia tells me that the character is probably based on a real life person. Also, real symptoms of mercury poisoning are “timidity and a desire to remain unobserved” which was not how the Mad Hatter behaved.

So GH3 has been out since early November, but for some reason extra guitar controllers for the Wii are not available yet. And when they do become available, they’re going to cost $60! Let’s review, the game and a controller together cost $90. So you’re telling me that a) the game should be valued at $30, and b) a controller that relies on a Wiimote to provide communication to the Wii really costs $60. This is the kind of price-gouging that turns consumers off. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like third party controllers will be available until March, and they don’t look to be much cheaper.

So, I’ve been trying to install Xen 3.1 on a machine that has the relatively new Intel ICH9 chipset. Unfortunately, the Xen build process uses the 2.6.18 kernel which does not support ICH9 SATA controllers, so dom0 would kernel panic. To get around this, I made the changes suggested in this patch to the 2.6.18 source and recompiled. Before and after finding the patch, I posted a few times to the Xen Users mailing list, but nobody replied. I guess, technically, this is a hardware issue, but since Xen 3.1 is tied to 2.6.18, it seems like a Xen issue to me too.

Here’s the gear I took with me when I hiked the Milford Track.  I was on the Track from November 10 - 13 of 2007  (late Springish).

Clothes:
REI Lightweight MTS Bottoms - Men’s Tall - These did their job. Though, I only wore them on the third day underneath my rain pants.
REI Lightweight MTS Long-Sleeve Crew - The REI guy was right. These were the perfect thickness for hiking in cool weather. They kept the sandflies off my arms too.
The North Face TKA Glacier Delta Top - This worked well as another layer when the Long T (see above) wasn’t enough. Compact enough to fit under my rain jacket comfortably.
REI Sahara Convertible Pants - I ended up wearing these pants through most of my trip in NZ and AUS. They’re light and quick-drying.
REI Taku Jacket (Waterproof) - This jacket kept me dry through rain showers and the Sutherland Falls. The exterior got a bit damp, but I was dry inside.
REI Ultra Light Pants (Waterproof) - Worked as advertised.
Mountain Hardwear Dome Perignon Hat - Only had to wear this hat a few times, but it kept my ears warm.

Cookwear/Utensils:
Evernew Slick Non-Stick Titanium Pot - 0.9L - I ended up using this primarily to heat up water for my freeze-dried meals.
MSR Mountain Bowl - This became my morning coffee cup.
REI Ti Spork - The only untensil I took, and the only one I needed.

Miscellaneous:
Asolo Fugitive GTX Hiking Boots* - Didn’t leak even when almost totally submerged. I could feel the coldness of the water through them, and the exterior took a long time to dry. I think if I had to go too many more days without drying them properly that they would have leaked. After the Milford Track, I took these on some very sharp rocks on the coast, and they were no worse for the experience.
CamelBak OMEGA Reservoir - 100 oz - Worked fine. However, the bitevalve did manage to slip off at one point. Luckily, I noticed it before it got lost.
North Face Cat’s Meow Sleeping Bag - As usual, the CM was warmer than I needed. I had to vent out some heat a couple of times.

* Everytime I lace these up, I’m reminded of a) Han Solo or b) Hope Solo

New Zealand

Australia

Computers:
Macintosh Mini PPC, 1Ghz:
-Idle - 15W
-Playing MP3 - ~17W
-Decoding MPEG2 (running MythFrontend) - 22W

For anyone thinking of buying GH3 for the Wii (and PS2/3 for that matter), don’t! For some reason, the jackasses at Red Octane/Activision thought it would be a good idea to omit probably the most popular feature of Guitar Hero 2 from the game. In fact, the only way I’ve ever played GH2 was through Co-Op Quickplay. I don’t know if this is because the developers rushed the game to market, or are just completely out of touch with their user base, but this is a huge omission. The 360 version of the game had a release-day patch that added Co-Op Quickplay, and the PS3 is supposedly getting one as well, but that leaves PS2/Wii owners high and dry.

Okay, so as all MythTV users probably know, zap2it stopped offering free channel listings on September 1st of this year. I didn’t look too far into the details, but I think some jerkstores were using the listings for commercial purposes in violation of the ToS. The 9/1 cut off was known well in advance, and a non-profit company named Schedules Direct was created over the summer to provide listings. Currently, SD charges $20 a year which is a bargain compared to Tivo. Supposedly, an existing MythTV installation can be hax0red to work with Schedules Direct, but I figured I would just upgrade to the latest version (0.20.2) which includes SD support. I’d been putting off upgrading for a while since TV was in rerun land, but now fall is upon us, and so is Ken Burns’ WWII documentary. Read the rest of this entry »