Naxxfish

Ah, time for another happy installment.

• User: Hi, are you a helpdesk person?
• Me: Yes ….
• User: There’s a wasp in Level 2 Computer room … can you get rid of it for me?
• Me: Um.  I’ll call security.

• User: Hi are you IT support?
• Me: Yes ….
• User: My the tap in my kitchen is leaking.

In a feedback form:

• User: The noise level in Level 4 Extension is unacceptable!  I can’t concentrate, it’s  like a discussion area!
• Supervisor: Level 4 Extension *is* a group discussion area.

• User: My document isn’t coming out in colour!
• Me: (looking at their print history) that’s because you printed it to a black and white printer.  There’s 2 colour printers, colour2 and colour3.
• User: Oh.  Can I get a refund?
• Me: Because you sent it to the wrong printer?  No.

• User: My document didn’t print
• Me: (looking at print history) that’s because you don’t have enough credit.  And you’re not likely to either
• User: What?
• Me: Unless you happen to have £13,000 in pound coins on your person.

(turns out they had put the pages they wanted to print into the copies section, and so were ordering something like 242,526 copies of a 60 odd page document. )

**UPDATE**

Had to squeeze this one in:

• User: I’ve tried to print a document in colour and it’s not coming out.
• Me: (looking up the job) Ah well, that’s because you printed it on a black and white printer.  In a computer room on the other side of campus.
• User: Oh.  Can I get a refund?
• Me: Uhh, no.

(I eagerly await the day when someone accidentally prints something on another campus, and then they ask me where the printer is)

I’ve been working on my second year project for the last …. 12 hours now.  Most of the backend is done.  It looks like this:

As I snapped this screenshot, I noticed that my BlueJ window was exactly 1337 pixels wide.  That’s surely got to be a good sign, right?

Now, before someone goes off on a rant “Oh, NMEA parsing isn’t hard, I did it in a Python script!”.  I’ve got to do a bit more than just updating Location information.  I have to generically parse all NMEA sentences and check if they’re valid or not, and depending on whether they’re a Proprietary sentence or not I need to switch send the data to the right sort of object.  I’ve got measurements coming in on the stream which gives me Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and vertical acceleration.  I need to be able to dispatch these Measurements to the right places so they can be updated in the GUI. Also, each one of these Measurements needs to be associated with a Location.  I also need to be able to throw Exceptions which can be sensibly handled by the clients. Also everything needs to be completely documented.

It’s not particularly hard, just big and long. The class to turn the GGA sentences into Locations was the easy bit.

Now: I’m going to watch some BSG and go to sleep before my shift in 10 hours.

Bleeeding!

Oh, OrCAD.  If it weren’t for these little gems of error messages, I’d throw it out the window.

I’ve been in the lab since I finished work 4 hours ago.  I’ve still not managed to get my embedded system board routed.  I’m annoyed with:

• 40 pin TQFP packages
• IDC connectors
• OrCAD’s autorouter
• Having to mix surface mount and through-hole components because I can’t be sure what package certain things are labeled as in OrCAD.

I’m going home now >_<

Some of the wonderful questions I get asked at helpdesk:

Hi, I just got a printer with my laptop and it doesn’t work.  Does it have anything to do with the University Website?

(In the Library)
Where are the books?

• User: Printer 1 is jammed!
• Me: Um, no it isn’t.  What’s your username?
• User: ***
• Me: Right, well, it’s definitely not jammed because you didn’t print anything – you don’t have any printer credit left
• User: Credit?
• Me: Yes, you have to pay for printing.  Sometimes your Department will give you an allowance but if you go over that you have to pay it yourself.
• User: What, I have to pay for it?  Out of my own money?
• Me: … yes.
• User: Psh, screw that.  I’m using Printer 2 instead.
• Me: … you have to pay for that one as well.
• User: What about the one in Rutherford?
• Me: Yes, you have to pay for ALL of the printers around campus, unless you’re an Electronics students and their printers are free
• User: Oh, how do I become an Electronics student?
• Me: I think changing your degree over a 50p document may be a little extreme.

After being told to plug their console into the network so we can register it

• User: I’ve plugged it in like you said, what’s next?
• Me: Um, you’ll need to turn it on as well.

At 1800, just as the office is closing

• User: Hi, I need an appointment because I can’t get on the Internet. I need it TODAY
• Me: Well, I’m sorry, but I’m just about to lock the office up now. I can book you an appointment for tomorrow though.
• User: No, no, it’s got to be TODAY. I have an assignment in tomorrow
• Me: *sigh* What’s the problem?
• User: Mah laptop won’t turn on.
• Me: Well, I’m afraid we can’t help you with that, you’ll need to see a computer repair shop. I can give you a list of places who could help …
• User: Nah nah, they won’t be open will they?
• Me: No, they won’t – for the same reason we’re not!

There will be more.

Campus was closed after 1PM today due to snow.  Which of course means, SNOW FIGHT.

It’s snowing in Canterbury!  Whee.  Lots of dark clouds, and my patio has been turned into a giant natural etch-a-sketch (except with less vibration and more snow).

Also, I decided to buy some Wendsleydale cheese the other week and I’ve been wondering what to do with it.  After Ben did some googling for me, he came up with Rostis!  So, I grated a potato and some cheese, added some thyme, salt and pepper, squeezed it out to get rid of the excess moisture, added an egg and proceeded to fry away.  Had two of them with baked beans, and it was very tasty.  Probably the most complicated thing I’ve cooked in a few weeks.

Afterwards I decided to try Wendsleydale and Rasperry Jam on toast.  Surprisingly, it was very tasty!  I recommend it to anyone who has some Wendsleydale and doesn’t know what to do with it.

On the “how many kittens” front, I’m doing some research into the various parameters including positioning and power output of an average kitten.  It’s starting to become a rather complex problem.

I’ve just finished a big uni project, and I feel like doing something frivolous.  Twig has provided me with something to do:

* Twigathy wonders how many kittens is as noisy as a aircraft taking off >_>

Thank you!

We need some guestimates to start off with.  I’m going to say that an aircraft taking off is about 120dB (from this page), and a kitten’s mew is about 64dB (quite a noisy kitten). Both these figures are dBSPL.

We will say that we have n kittens, and that their mews are incoherant (i.e. at different phases and frequencies – unless they’re exceedingly well trained kittens).  We’re going to assume that they all meow at the same 64dB.  The equation to sum sound pressure levels is:

L_pt = L_ps + 20 log(n)

Where

L_pt = total sound pressure level (dB)

L_ps = sound pressure level from each single source (dB)

n = number of sources

(stolen from Engineering-toolbox.com)

We want to extract the n from the log and make it the subject.

Some algebra later, we get

n = 10 ^ ((L_pt-L_ps) / 20)

If we plug in 120dB for L_pt and 64dB for L_ps.

n = 10 ^ ((120-64) / 20)

n = 630.957

So, there you have it.  It takes 631 kittens all meowing simultaneously to be equivilant to an aircraft taking off.

EDIT: I’ve realised I’ve left a lot of things out, so expect another update with more detail :p

So, I grab my lappy this morning and find that it’s locked up for no reason.  Again.  It’s almost certainly a hardware problem, as I’ve seen it lock up during OS installs too.

Then I go to reboot and I get four beeps, which apparently means “System Board is broken”.  Rut roh. After a bit of googling, I find this blog post which details how to reflow the chipset (!!!) to fix cold solder joints.

So, after disassembling the thing completely  according to the service manual, down to the System Board, I get some tinfoil, a heat gun and give it a try.  After using the tinfoil to mask the other areas of the system board, I did the following:

• Let the gun warm up for a minute
• Point the gun at the chipset from about 30cm, swirling for about 2 minutes, whilst occasionally bringing the gun closer
• For 30 seconds,I held the gun about 5cm away from the chipset.
• For a minute, I held the gun at 30cm
• Then I turned the gun off and allowed it to cool for 20 minutes.

It’s now booting OK, and I’m running memtest86+ to see how it goes.  I hope it works!

This is the cake to end all cakes.

This is the most ridiculous cake ever.

It has a Malteaser cake as the base (!!), three chocolate sponges flavoured with vanilla and honey, and filled and iced with chocolate fudge icing.

Choctastic