Thanksgiving Trip

During the Thanksgiving holiday of 2006, we went on a journey from Silicon Valley to the Death Valley, the city of Las Vegas, and turned around after a visit to the Hoover Dam on the border of Nevada and Arizona. The entire trip took 3 days and covered a distance of about 1200 miles (1900 kilometers). It is our longest road trip so far.

Day 1: Mountain View to Ridgecrest, 350 miles
Day 2: Ridgecrest, Death Valley, Middle of Nowhere, Vegas, 280 miles
Day 3: Bolder City, Hoover Dam, Barstow, Mountain View, 600 miles

Close Call

After an unsuccessful attempt to get /etc/acpi/action/sleep.sh to work (properly), the hard drive froze up after the lid was opened after closing. Even reboot could not help, a hard disk volume error was found and self-correction failed. System entered read-only mode, requring root privilige.

I was scared. Having poked around as root for some minor system setups and installations, I NEVER did anything related to system recovery.

I had 2 choices:

1) install FC6, it's about time to upgrade from FC4 anyway, but doing so I will lose all my data on the corrent FC4, including some project data (code) and all the network configurations I just finished.

2) try to fix the currupted file system, even though I have no clue.

Realising that failing to do (2) would still allow me to do (1) as a last resort, I held my breath and marched on. Having absolutely no idea what I was doing, I logged in as root and followed the instructions given by the system, word by word as I went alone. I turned out that it was mostly some (about 200) inodes were messed up and I was fixing them with the help of the system. And then, after reboot, it worked :)

System fully recovered and running without a problem.

The Future Is Open

On Drugs

Teeth

A week ago, I felt some scratching of my mouth against my teeth in the upper back. Turns out they are the wisdom teeth, and there are a few cracks on them. Doctor suggested surgical extraction.

So here I am today at the dentist's clinic. Ready to have 2 of my wisdom teeth taken out. I was told not to eat or drink anything at all 8 hours prior to the surgery. I did not understand why. It turns out that it is because they do not want me to throw up in the middle of the procedure because the anesthesia might cause vomiting. I did not want that to happen anyway. So some starving is rightfully necessary.

I was given general anesthesia through a needle in my right arm. 15 seconds after the doctor put in the drug, I did not know anything, I did not even know that I passed out. When I woke up, it seems that nothing ever happened ... First thing I thought of after waking up, was that some of the stuff in Hollywood movies might be true ... This is much better than my last encounter with anesthesia, when it did not kick in until 3 hours after the whole thing was over ...

Anyway, I was then transferred from the surgery room to a regular room. I walked all the way there, did not feel any dizziness or disoriented except that my eyes are kind of reluctant to focus so I cannot see very far. I probably looked weird with my left eyeball out of synch with the right one 8-). I envisioned a lap around Thunerhill just to make sure nothing is wrong with my head.

Then the nurse called in my wife and let us watch a video together about things to be aware of after the surgery. However, the computer crashed.

We eventually left the clinic after watch the video. I was feeling ok. Probably the doctor injected some pain killer into my teeth area because I am not feeling any pain at all even though I am now completely awake.

Now it just the beginning. The days after the surgery is supposed to be worse than the extraction itself. I cannot eat solid food for a few days (I've been eating a lot recently just in case). And there is expected to be some pain but I've already told my boss that I might have to take a day or two off.

Wait and see.

Loser Wins 2006 MotoGP

That's life. Rules are rules.