Andreas Wacker

The unix sar command is a nice way to have a quick view of how a system has been doing. The default shows cpu and IO, but its output can be customized to your hearts desire. Should said organ harbor indeed things of that nature.

Looking live at values is possible too. You just have to give the program the sampling time in seconds and -and this is the kicker- optionally the number of repetitions. For instance: observing how the next minute works out for your machine in 6 six equal time chunks would require you to enter:

sar 10 6 

So far, so good. But what if you want to look constantly? More than 20 years ago I learned that using

sar 1 0

would just give me that. The zero as the last parameter was interpreted as having no end to the repetition. Zero resulting in an never ending eternity. Yes, if marketing people don’t breathe down your neck, you can put things like this into what you create.

But no good deed goes unpunished. It turns out an even smarter option is it, to make that second parameter entirely optional:

sar 1

already gets you that desired simple output. That works, is awesome, and the right thing to implement it like.

Working on a more recent machine (we are talking decades here, not even kidding) I did not get the expected output when I applied finger muscle memory and then old known pattern. Then it got funny: I read the manual, googled around, emailed the author. I just felt solving this. Apparently I felt like writing about it too. All the while the machine – that I am now successfully looking at – revealed to me what it was doing, when it got bogged down.

I am unaware about what has led to my actual epiphany to consider the omission of the second parameter. Paying closer attention to such circumstances seems like a very fruitful enterprise.

I looked back, and I encountered the issue 2013 already. Back then, I must shamefully admit, I solved it by just entering a large second number.

Two years ago it actually took me 7 seconds to find the right solution already. For me a quick solution will seemingly not be remembered when there are so much previous habits and repetitions.

Harrisburg University currently incinerates this paper (PR for it via archive.org). I wonder how people can spend months working on a concept like this and don’t prepare for all the not so pleasant attention it will surefire gather upon its surfacing.

I have no idea about the content. If something does not get published it can not be examined.

I would not be surprised if there would be two sides looking at this: One says that it is not morally right to conduct such an investigation. The other will say that it is not morally right if certain thoughts and research directions are not allowed. Discussions of this nature lately not often end up in an amicable exchange of each others viewpoints.

Not related to this I personal find trouble in the term “criminals”. “people exposing criminal behavior” I like more. The later word is a determination. A person is so many cm tall, has a certain eye color and is – well – criminal or not. Which is wrong.

Of course most criminal behavior emerges from the same perpetrators. It should always be the criminal action that gets punished, not the person per se. A society where the government instruments strong deterrents against such behavior benefits in very great measure. Even better: All people – regardless of their wealth – will have a better life. It would be stupid and counter productive ignoring the reality of said behavior clusters around certain people. But it should always be the actions of a person that get punished. Not more, not less. Actions happen in the real world, they can weight and judged by others, and therefor rightfully punished. I personally like the sound of the German ahnden actually better than that of its English equivalent.

These things are known since 200 years or more. Sometimes I wonder for how much longer. If we cancel research – only because the initial premise is stupid and not fitting dogma – we might hasten the demise of knowledge.

Around 26,000 is the DJIA at the 23 of this month. It has been around this level for weeks. This does not make this valuation less ridiculous. We were in ever increasing bubble territory last in 2019 already. Then came the biggest economic event since 1945. The world overall will be changed more by Covid-19, than it even did on average when the Soviet seized existing.

And yet: “the market” makes up a “V shaped” narration. Hertz, being bankrupt, and therefor worthless, contemplated in earnest to sell a billion dollars worth of its shares. It got approved to do so. But somehow came to its senses and ended up not doing so. It would have been the equivalent of selling a burning house.

Somehow trades think that with a vaccine everything will just snap back to normal. And they probably think that a vaccine is as easy as them entering a trade on their keyboard. It is not. Coronaviruses got discovered more than 50 years ago. They make up about a third of the common. Vaccines we have developed against them: exactly zero. Covid-19 is luckily rather stable. I am personally hopeful that we will have candidates and some that will work. But it takes time to develop, test, produce and then distribute them. A vaccine will probably not make an impact this year. So this year all we can do is to social distance. Different countries can apparently do so at varying degrees. Social distancing has commercial impact. Not only for opera chorus singers. For everybody. The stock market is supposed to be about the future. Right now it certainly is not.

It is not impossible that the shape of the recovery will be “L shaped” – Pretending as if nothing happened and money printing of the feds will just magically fix everything makes no sense. At all.

After almost twenty years Segway’s will stop production next month, according to Fastcompany. There was allot of hype around this product back in the day. It never not take off – at all.

One of his past owners had really bad luck with the product. But what probably killed is, that you look really stupid riding it. There is no real good look using it. I think it had its best media appearance in Jenji Kohan’s Weeds. Specially since it was so brief and quirky. Much like the device itself.

There is probably a thing one does for the first post. Just like a first program should output “hello world”.

Instead I might just mention what this blog is running on: An AWS tiny instance. Actually cheap*. Latest WordPress as per June 2020. Actually free. It has been more than 15 years since I installed WordPress the first time. Over the last ten I had little reason to deal with it. After this hiatus it was interesting to see what has changed. And what has not.

Getting the technology stack going today was the usual mix out of ‘oh this is nice’ and ‘wth – why is this broken now’. The actual work is not even that much or particularly complicated. Just that there are these unpredictable potholes where one can get stuck for hours on end. Without having the faintest idea when and how a solution might emerge.

It appears in the end it worked out OK. I don’t think I would want to work on WordPress ‘powered’ sites for a living though. Hacking (like in axe, not as in computer skill) the extraneous items off from the default theme was cumbersome enough. Trying to chase specifics out of a mediocre theme is probably not much a fun.

*and as it turns out not sufficient. I got everything ‘up’. But running things was not pleasant / possible. MariaDB liked crashing. Not wanting to make a project from it I asked

mysqltuner.pl

and it laconically replied:

Variables to adjust:
*** MySQL's maximum memory usage is dangerously high ***
*** Add RAM before increasing MySQL buffer variables ***

Stoping the aws instance, starting it at – now as a tiny instance – gives me the same reply. But it is work trying, since the next level up gets me into even higher monthly costs.