fuzzyunicorn.net

3 workstations running off of one computer

Ezra has had his own computer for years, and lately Sebs has been begging me to build one for him. The computer room was already getting too hot just from the two computers, I couldn’t imaging adding a third. So I decided to try something I read about years ago, but had never really messed with.  My computer, which I built myself for my birthday last year, has a 6-core processor and 4GB of RAM. The only thing I ever do with it is browse the web, edit photos, and occasionally transcode videos. I have plenty of extra horsepower to spare for the boys. You see, Linux, unlike Windows, has the ability to run more than one user at the same time.

The only real tricks were trying to separate out 3 keyboards and mice so they don’t interfere with each other, and getting two X (windows) sessions running off of the two outputs on a single video card (hint, you can’t)

The keyboard thing ended up being relatively easy. It was just a matter of figuring out which physical port each device was plugged into, and then setting up each “seat” to ONLY use the ports associated with the keyboard and mouse I want to control that seat. The one bad thing about this is that I can’t just plug in a new keyboard or mouse and have it automatically detected. I don’t plan on adding new peripherals that often, but if it becomes a problem, I will write a script to add them and let me choose which seat to connect them to.

The second problem proved to be a bit trickier. Initially I was trying to use the two outputs of my Nvidia 9800GT for me and Sebastian, and an Nvidia 6200LE for Ez. The problem was that as far as the computer was concerned, the 9800 only had one big output, not two individual outputs. So there was no way to tell it that my session should be on monitor 1, and his on monitor 2. Any time I tried it, they would overlap, and end up crashing the computer.

I finally gave up on using one card for two people, and decided to put a third card in, one for each of us. Then I ran into my next problem: my motherboard only has 2 PCIe x16 slots. The only slots I had left for the third card were standard (read OLD) PCI slots. The only cards I have laying around are AGP, not PCI. I scrounged through the buckets of cards we have at work. Tons of AGP, tons of PCIe, ONE standard PCI. It was an old Nvidia FX4400. Unfortunately  Nvidia does not support this card with their current drivers, so I can not run it at the same time as my 9800. After a couple of days of searching, I finally found an old machine in storage that had a PCI Nvidia FX5500. Not much better than the 4400, but hopefully usable.  Initially it would not work at the same time as my 9800. The driver series I was using had dropped support for the 5500. BUT one series down supported both my 9800, and the 6200 and 5500.

So after couple more days of tweaking configs, I finally have a three headed computer, where both boys and I can all browse the web at the same time. And my computer is already quite a bit cooler without Ez’s old computer running.

Some projects for the future:

• Adjust the configs so that I can take over their screens on the fly and have triple monitor running
• Build a hinged monitor rig that will allow flipping their screens in towards me for triple monitor
• Fix the sound so we can adjust the volumes independently. Currently all three workstations are running through one sound card.
• Write scripts to make reconfiguration easier (you know Daemon will want his own station in a few years)

This was Daemon’s first Halloween, so tradition dictates that we do Satyrs and Fairies again. (Ez’s first halloween and Sebs’ first Halloween)

We were getting sick of going to Uptown Sedona every year, so Isis suggested we go to Old Town Cottonwood this year. The Old Town shops would be giving away candy just like Uptown, but there was also a Fall Carnival with “rides for the kids and tons of treats”. It also had a costume contest for 2 to 7 and 8 to 12 year olds.

This sounded perfect. The boys could get a bunch of candy trick or treating, and then get a ton more treats at the carnival. They would also get to ride some rides, and then mop up at the costume contest. (not to be conceited or anything, but my costumes were WAY better than the 100 store-bought ninja costumes that were there) I was going to have Ez say he was 8 so he didn’t have to compete against his brother. (it’s not that much of a lie, he will be 8 in a month and a half)

As awesome as all of that sounded, the night was anything but. Trick or treating started at 5:00pm, and was supposed to go until 8:00pm. We got there around 5:45pm, and 3/4 of the shops were already closed. Not sure if they had run out of candy, or just closed down before anyone got there so they wouldn’t have to buy candy. Judging by how small the crowd was, I doubt they ran out.

After the 10-15 minutes it took us to go to the few open shops, we headed over to the Carnival. It was on one of the little league baseball fields.  There were 5-6 bouncy castles, a seemingly un-manned radio remote truck playing a loop of halloween-ish music, 2 light poles providing not nearly enough light for the field, and one little card table where some dude was selling hot cocoa. There was no obvious sign of anyone in charge, and more importantly  no sign of my promised “tons of treats”.

The boys didn’t seem to notice the lameness, and were excited to bounce in the castles. We had to strip off their horns, wings, and hooves so they could go in. I did this more to protect the costumes than to follow the rules, since there wasn’t anyone manning the entrances like there usually are. I finally saw a dude wearing jeans an a t-shirt that might have been working there, but I’m not positive he wasn’t just a dad that enjoyed yelling at other peoples’ kids when they misbehave in the jumpy castle.

The horns, hooves, wings, and vests were getting somewhat cumbersome to carry around from castle to castle. So Am suggested I put them in the car until the contest. BAD IDEA! Halfway to the car Ez’s horns fell and snapped in half. Then as I was opening the car door, Sebs’ horns fell. At first they seemed ok, but then as I was putting everything in the car, I felt a crunch under my foot. A piece had broken out of the side of one of his horns, and then crushed into several smaller pieces when I stepped on it.

Luckily I had brought a hot glue gun, just in case something happened with one of the costumes. I searched around for an electrical outlet, and ended up in the men’s room, on the floor right by the door. Several guys came in and looked at me like I was crazy while I squatted there, waiting for the glue gun to heat up.

By the time I finished gluing everything back together, it was time for the costume contest. I quickly got the boys back into their costumes and rushed them over to the stage. It was a very dimly lit, rickety old stage, that had probably been built in the late 80′s.

A single dude with a microphone asked everyone everyone to line up on stage. A young girl that must have been his daughter was going through a cardboard box full of plastic trophies. I looked around… Where were the judges? Then he explained the rules: “There are 3 categories: scariest, prettiest, and most original. When I put my hand over a costume you like, yell.” So this wasn’t so much a COSTUME contest, as a POPULARITY contest. We definitely weren’t going to win prettiest or scariest. But we should at least be able to get most original.

The first category was scariest. He went down the line, and some not so scary princesses got some cheers, but it came down to a scary clown and a mexican girl that looked like Lily from the Munsters (long black hair, a black cape/dress, and white face makeup with black lips and eyes) He went back and forth a few times, and the witch-girl ended up winning. Not the way I would have gone, but there were a LOT of mexicans, maybe they’re not a fan of clowns.

The next category was prettiest. He went down the line, and I was amazed when this pretty little girl who was a Peacock-Fairy only got a few cheers, probably from her mom and my family. (I might have been a little biased since she and her mom came up to us earlier in the night and complimented our costumes). The dude with the mic kept going down the line, stopping over little girls in princess outfits. Then from the crowd you could hear “the dinosaur, the dinosaur!” He stopped and went back to a little 2-3 year old mexican boy in a dinosaur costume. The crowd went crazy. Needless to say the dinosaur won for prettiest costume. This was not a costume contest, it was a “who brought the most mexicans” contest.

Any hope I had of the boys winning most original was gone. I hadn’t brought ANY mexicans with me.

We left the Carnival with nearly no candy, and feeling like the night had been wasted. Next year we’re going to Clarkdale, where Gabe’s kids made out like bandits. Either that or I’m stopping by Windsong to pick up a few amigos for the costume contest.

Amber and the Boys on “Prep Day”
I had everyone try out their costumes the day before Halloween to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

We come home from dinner last night, and as we come around the corner just before my house, we see a ton of cops in the street stopping traffic. The cop stops us, and I’m sitting there wondering if there was an accident in front of our house. I look over at the house, and see an orange truck in my driveway. Then I realize the truck is at a 45 degree angle, with it’s wheels against my bedroom wall. There is a tow truck yanking on the orange truck, trying to dislodge it from what’s left of my A/C unit.

I lean my head out the window and tell the officer in the middle of the street, “Ummm….. that’s my house!” He says, “Oh good, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get a hold of you.”

I pull in front of the house across the street and talk to the officer. Somehow the guy pulled a 90 degree turn in front of the house, went through my chain-link fence, across the driveway, over the A/C, and up into the bedroom wall. They’re not sure if he was drunk yet! He went to the hospital before the cops got there, so they didn’t have a chance to question him.

They did get all of his info, and said that his insurance should cover everything. If not, we do have homeowners insurance, but I’m sure they’ll raise the rates if we have to use it.

What’s left of our A/C. And it’s the middle of August in Arizona.

Amber’s side of the bed. A nice 6 inch window to the outside!

My side. Not quite as big, but still some good size cracks, and at least one broken stud.

And the craziest thing: a few weeks ago, a storm ripped one of my trees out of the ground, and threw it across the driveway. If I hadn’t cut it up and moved it, it would probably have stopped the dude, or at least slowed him enough to keep him from hitting the house.

Am’s mom came to visit this week, and after a couple of days of trying to shop with the boys running around, they decided that they needed to bring me to watch them while the girls shopped.

We went up to prescott, and the while the girls shopped for clothes at Ross, me and the boys wandered up and down the stip mall. In target, I saw their ad for 512mb flash drives for $9.99. So I drag the boys to the electronic section, but of course they are all out of the ones that are on sale. They did have a pretty cool bracelet usb drive, but it was only 256 meg. It was like a black rubber arm band, and the clasp part was the usb plug.

Next we went to the Petco, and they were having an adopt a dog sale. It must have been the humane society, but I didn’t see any indication of that. But all of the dogs were kind of “used” looking. The boys went to pet one of them, and they said “oh, don’t let them put their fingers near him, he bites, he doesn’t like kids” Then they invited us to come pet a nicer dog. As we were petting him, I noticed he only had one eye. EZ said “Dad, this dog only gots one eye! That’s Cool!!!” The lady started cracking up and said only a boy would think that.

As we walked by Officemax, I saw a bunch of flyers out front. They didn’t have any great deals, but they did have a 50 pack of dvds or 75 pack of cds for $9.99. I’ve been meaning to make some videos of the boys for relatives, so I decided to pick up a pack of dvds. I also decided to see if they had any flash drives for cheap. They were all in the $50 range though, and that was mostly for 256 or 512mb ones. I found the dvd section, but none were marked $9.99, so I had to compare skus on the flyer to the shelves. Finally I figured out it was the Memorex ones that were on sale. Not bad, I usually get the Great Quality ones at Frys, and let me tell you, that name is a misnomer. Memorex are usually $30, and every disc in the pack works, unlike GQ.

After another hour or two, the girls were finally done with Ross. We went to the mall, and the boys and I played at the play area while the girls shopped for another 2 hours. I’m surprised the mall security guys didn’t think I was some sort of weirdo, watching the little kids play for hours at a time.

After lunch and Costco, we finally get to the last store. Grandma’s favorite, K-Mart. As bad as the name sounds, this store was 100 times worse. We go in and get a shopping cart for the boys to ride in, and every single one is so dirty, I didn’t even want to touch it, let alone put the boys in it. I dig through to get the cleanest one, and we wander the store for an hour or so while the girls look at clothes. We go the the electronics section so EZ can play whatever demo video game they have out. It’s a really dirty, beat up gameboy advance, with mario pinball.

I wander over to the usb drive case, and see a 1gig drive on sale for $14.99. The 128mb one in the same brand is $20, so that’s a pretty good deal. And it’s a Memorex, not some generic junk. So I buy it, and I’m reading the package while we wait for the girls to finish trying on the clothes (more like start trying on the clothes). Under system requirements, it says Windows XP, NT, 98SE as usual. Then a little lower, Mac OS 8.6 and above, and to my surprise Linux 2.4.x. Memorex actually knows what Linux is!!! And they know enough about it to know you need a 2.4.x kernel to use usb.

Reading the package a little more, I see that the drive comes with a couple of applications that are set up to be run off the drive. One of those applications is Mozilla Thunderbird! So not only does Memorex know about Linux, but they’re also helping to spread Thunderbird. Granted, all of the applications are the Win32 versions, but still, every little bit of press helps.

Soon I would like to see them putting a full distro on the drive, so you can just buy it, boot from the usb drive, and test out a new OS. It wouldn’t be that hard, I put PClinuxOS on it this morning, and it only took about 10 minutes including the download. If they put a small distro like Puppy or DSL on there, it wouldn’t even take up much room. And it wouldn’t cost them anything. They could be helping to spread Linux, and at the same time boost the value of their drives over the other companies.

I guess it looks like I’m going to have to start supporting Memorex over the generic stuff I usually buy. I just hope I can find good deals like this every time.

My loyal readers may have noticed a little change on some of my pages. I’ve decided to implement Google AdSense to make the boys some college money. Well, maybe not. But maybe enough for the down payment on a used minivan. Or lunch at McD’s. Actually Google won’t even give me any money until I’ve earned at least $100, so it may be a while before I get anything.

The AdSense rules are kind of funny. I’m not allowed to ask you to click my ads. I can’t have arrows pointing at the ads. I can’t do anything that would draw attention to the ads and cause you to actually click them. So whatever you do, don’t click on the ads. But do click on the firefox button, or go there directly and download it. Help make the web a safer place. I should see if Ubuntu has a referral program too. It’s easy enough to use even AM can do it.

F.U.

We knew having two boys we would be visiting the emergency room sometime. Last thursday was the first time for Ez. He and his buddies JJ and Joey were having a playdate at the house. I was at work. My cell phone rings, and it’s Am. Ever since the shaken kitty incident, every time she calls I expect her to call freaking out saying someone’s going to the emergency room. This time it happened. She was actually calmer than I would expect, but still pretty shaken up. She said JJ and Joey had “ripped” Ez’s ear, and Lara was going to take them to the emergency room in cottonwood to get stitched.

I called my boss and told him I had to go, and he said don’t bother closing, just lock the door and go. So driving to cottonwood, the whole time I’m thinking “how could they ‘rip’ his ear? Were the wrestling and pulling on it?”

I get to the emergency room, and there’s no parking. Apparently everyone’s getting hurt tonight. Once i get in, Am leads me into the nurse’s station, where Ez is sitting very calmly. He says “I got some blood on my ear, but the doctor’s gonna make it better” He takes off the washcloth and icecube, and I see it’s not “ripped” along the seam like I expected, it’s “cut” right in the middle through the cartilage. It looks like he was in a knife fight.

From what we could piece together in his story, JJ pushed him over, and he fell and hit his ear against the changing table. He must have hit it just right against the corner, because it was a really smooth clean cut.

After waiting 2 hours in the waiting room, we finally got sent back to the doctor. She was pretty cute, in her mid to late 20′s. Ez really liked her. He said “You gonna make me all better?” “You’re a very nice doctor, I like you” He kept flirting with her the whole time. He didn’t cry once, I couldn’t believe how big he was.

She decided he didn’t need any stitches, they would just use Dermabond, which is fancy doctor-talk for superglue. She used an entire pen/tube of glue on it, I guess she really didn’t want it coming apart.

It’s now a week later, and the glue has come off and his ear is splitting a little. Am wanted to go back to the doctor, but I said why don’t we just put some more glue on there. She said no way, absolutely not. Then when I got home, she said “why don’t we just glue it ourselves?” I reminded her that I had suggested that only a few hours earlier, and she had nearly bit my head off. But now her friend’s sister who used to work in a doctor’s office suggested it, and it was ok. So we’re going to get some glue today, lets see if she actually lets me do it.

Ok, so I’m really lazy and didn’t write my halloween post for almost a month. But I’m going to back date it and pretend I wrote it the next morning like I wanted to.

Halloween was a hit. I wasn’t feeling very into it this year, so I decided to re-use the Satyr/Fairy costumes from Ez’s first halloween. I had to make a whole new suit for Ez, and I made improvements all the rest.

First we went to the mall, and every shop wanted to talk to us about where we got the costumes, and Am was always proud to tell them I made them. The mall was really dead this year, there were only like 10 other groups while we were there.

Then we went to uptown. It was much busier than the mall but still not as busy as it usually is. People kept stoppping us to take pictures. Ez really liked all the attention. Every shop owner said we got the prize for best costumes of the night. Some even gave Ez extra candy because of it.

There’s a picture and more story on the halloween page. More pictures if I ever feel up to working on it.

After sewing like crazy for the last few weeks, the big day finally arrived. Ezzie looked so cute in his little Yoda costume. Everyone wanted to know where we bought it, and they were amazed when I told them I sewed it.

We went to the mall first, and Klara (who works with AM) was very impressed. She sews, so she knew how much work it took to make the costumes. Ezzie had a little hood with Yoda ears, 3 fingered gloved, 3 toed feet, and the Jedi outfit I made for him back when Ep III came out. Technically the tunic and pants were the wrong color, since they were made in the Obi-Wan style, and Yoda’s tunic is very dark, but no one seemed to notice.

They also didn’t know that I was Anakin and AM was Padme. Most people thought we were Luke and Leia. One old dude even said “Hey, I thought Leia was supposed to be a virgin!” =)

Every shopkeeper we saw said ours were the best costumes of the night and we should win a prize. Most of them did give EZ twice as much candy as they gave everyone else. One lady was even going to dump her entire basket into his “pumpkin” (KT got mad that I kept referring to it as a pumpkin, since it was actually Darth Vader’s Head. I feel that it is still a pumpkin, even if it takes a different shape).

We got stopped by at least 10 people who asked if they could take EZ’s picture. And we noticed quite a few others who took it as we went by without asking. Many with video cameras too. We should have charged a few dollars a pop.

Over all EZ thoroughly enjoyed this Halloween, not just for all of the candy he got (which I will be taking a percentage of for costume construction fees ), but also for all of the attention he got. I think he liked that even more than the candy.

Check out my halloween page for this year’s costumes as well as all of our costumes from the past few years.

Ubuntu: Linux for human beings.

Lately I’ve been very frustrated with M$ wanting me to buy a legal copy of Windows XP. They refuse to let you use Firefox to download windows updates, and if/when you use IE to do it, they scan your computer to see if you have a valid product key. Who knows what else they are scanning for. I’m sure Bush gave them a little extra to help find “terr’ists”. He don’t need no warrent, God gave him the right to do whatever the hell he wants when He made him president.

To get away from old BillG and W, I’ve been thinking about going to linux. BUt my experiences in the past have been so/so. My main concern was a lack of drivers. Every time I’ve installed some flavor of linux, my network card has not worked, and I would have to go online to download drivers (if I could find them) But to get online, I had to have my network card working! So I would boot in Windows, find the drivers, then reboot in linux, try the drivers, find out they didn’t work right, re-reboot into windows, look up why the drivers didn’t work, re-re-reboot into linux, but by that time I would be tired of all the rebooting, and just stick with windows, which pretty much works out of the box.

So somewhere I heard about Ubuntu, Linux for human beings. It was supposed to be really easy to use, and “just work”. I decided to try a “live cd” first, to see if I really like it. There are 2 flavors of Ubuntu, regular Ubuntu, and Kubuntu. The only difference is the Kubuntu uses KDE for the desktop instead of Gnome. I had heard that Gnome was a little bloated and slow, so I tried the Kubuntu version first. (This was going to be for my laptop with limited resources)

I popped the cd in, went through the language choices, and waited (linux boots a little slower than windows. the thought is that you won’t have to boot often, since the system won’t crash) It goes through the “detecting hardware” phase, and says “detecting network hardware” Yeah right, like my el cheapo Fry’s wireless card is going to be detected. I had a hard enough time getting it to work in windows. The next screen says “searching for wireless networks” What?!? It actually found that card AND installed the right driver? At this point it wasn’t able to connect to my network, because I have WEP, and it didn’t ask my for the key, but at least it was trying.

Once everything is up and running, the desktop looks pretty nice, it’s stable, but still no network. I go through and try to put in the WEP key, but it’s still not connecting (I have the same problem with windows some times) Finally I decide to turn off WEP to see if that is the problem. Sure enough, it detects the network and connects automatically.

Now I decide to go through and change some settings to personalize my desktop. The dialog box is so big that the OK button is off screen. How the hell am I supposed to click OK? I search through a bunch of forums and find out that this is a common problem with KDE at 800×600 (which is the best my laptop will do) I like (K)Ubuntu enough to keep it, but I can’t deal with not being able to hit OK. So I decided to try regular flovored Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop. I like it. Gnome doesn’t seem any slower than KDE, and most importently, all of the dialog boxes are the right size.

So now my laptop dual boots XP and Ubuntu, although I don’t think I’ll be using XP very often. I’ve got Wine if I need to run any windows programs. Try Ubuntu, I think you’ll like it.