thomasng [dot] net a nerds life. changing things one byte at a time.

Last paycheck for a while

Yesterday was my last day of work. I decided to take the entire Friday off so I can get more of my packing done during the day. I need to, however, drop by work sometime this morning to get my final paycheck and also drop off my ID badge.

What’s coming up:
Well, for starters, it’s going to be a nice relaxing 3 week winter break! I’m hoping to start things off by seeing “Kong” tonight with Josh, Katie and Troy (and whoever else is going). I’m moving my stuff down to Corvallis during the afternoon on Saturday (17th). Jill will return to Portland on saturday too, so i’m sure i’ll hang out with the gang that night.

Anything beyond that is kinda up in the air… but my goal is to go snowboarding as much as I can before winter term starts up!

Job Title

Hmm… apparently rumor has it that the RadiSys organizational chart lists be as a hardware engineer for when I start full time with salary pay. I was hired officially as a Software Engineer, Associate, now it’s Hardware Engineer, Associate. That’s pretty bad ass. =)

The weekend is here! I have 5 more work days left until my internship ends. i finished a new software release this morning, and I’ve been trying to find some odds and ends to do so that I won’t just be sitting idlely twiddling my thumbs. My current ‘project’ is to import the RedHat kernel tags (via `make tags`) into a MySQL database, and also append the src code file that is associated with the tag. This should generate a fairly large database that will be “disk intensive”… as the underlying purpose of doing this is some performance testing on an ATCA iSCSI blade.

Tomorrow (Saturday): LAN party between 12noon (Sat) to 12noon (Sun) at RadiSys. Should be interesting =p

Work is quartering me

OK… first thing is first: the work week was very crazy! Major changes left and right and very long work days!

So, there is about two more months left in my internship with RadiSys. New products are going to be brought up during this time, and it should be a quite exciting process to see and be a part of! fin.

Oh… i heard back from my previous manager at Mentor Graphics. They want to see if I’m still available and if I want to pursue a career in the Catapult C group. That’s a cool feeling. I would possibly apply for the job, but I’m already taken!

HA! It’s been one long crazy work week. I plan to sleep early/do nothing Friday night and hopefully go do something worthwhile to make up for this this weekend!

My long, long day at work

My god…. I was at work from 6:30am until 8:15pm doing SIT (System Integration Testing). ALMOST 14 HOURS!!!! CRAZY!!!!

We carted over a working system in a RadiSys ATCA Promentum chasis to DC-3. Friday is demo day for one of our customers. This week has been a full ATCA training orientation gig for our customers, and well, tomorrow is the day my group presents. That should be awesome…

We have the Promentum chasis loaded with:
(3) CPMs (CPU blades)
(2) SCMs (Shelf Managers that take care of the central network, and power management)
(3) ATCA-7010’s (the network packet processing module that I’m working on).
(2) ATCA-7010 RTMs (Rear transition modules with 10 x 1GbE fiber optic connections)
(4) Blanks to help with the airflow.

The ATCA-7010’s are hooked up to a SmartBits unit, which is generating IPv4/IPv6 internet traffic. We will demo the 7010’s ability to do IPv4/v6 traffic forwarding, as well as some chaining ability of the module. Other demos will include the Diagnostics Monitor (our test suite that i’ve been working on), and showing some features of RedBoot and the TCAM NSE unit (it’s a network search engine onboard the ATCA-7010).

So today started off something like this:

5:45am – wake up.
6:00am – showered up, read my e-mail. Seagate Rebates e-mailed me stating there was no purchase date on my receipt. Got that fixed. Rebate to be mailed soon.
6:30am – walked into the office. Headed towards the cafeteria, got two cups of coffee and walked down to the SIT lab. Booted up my blades and tested the new software drops that the Boca, FL team sent me over night.

11:00am – started to wonder where the time went. Found the Rev 2 boards that we have. Tested those, reflashed the boards with the latetst Boot Manager, diagnostics and MV-Linux.

1:00pm – more testing. More conversations between myself, my manager and the people in Boca. Many software drops later, many bugs worked out in a short period of time.

5:00pm – We think we have the system ready to move. Found a bug.
5:30pm – Built solution for bug, tested system one more time. Works OK. Shut everything down, put on carts… rolled to DC-3 training room… The room is a mess.

6:00pm – found some food left in the training room. Grabbed three boxes for the three of us. Free dinner. Started connecting everything back up. Rearranging the room.

6:15pm – Can’t login to a NT 4.0 box with stupid Novell Netware installed on it. Called tech support. x1777 and you get some help from a guy who sounds like he’s in india… but really just two buildings over.

7:00pm – Powered on chasis and the entire system configuration. System can’t see ethernet devices, no DHCP, no nada… troubleshoot linux. Searched Google for answer. hehehe.

8:10pm – Forgot to get an extension VGA cable, WBSvr (the IXA SDK Workbench Server app for our Network Processor), and 1GbE ethernet loopbacks.

8:15pm – Got into my car. LEFT.

It’s 9pm right now. I need to start on my homework… though I think I’m just going to watch TV. So… screw ENG104.