Oliver Hansen » Personal

Vacation In Jamaica

Oliver — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:53:13 +0000

I spent almost two weeks in Jamaica the end of August and beginning of September. Originally I had planned to spend three weeks there but as anyone who has used frequent flier miles knows, the flight dates are very limited. I spent most of my time in Kingston visiting a few friends and helping out in the computer lab at Kingston High School which I will write about separately as it was an involved project. I did get to spend a couple days in Negril at the beach but because of the elections I didn’t have as much time there as I had planned. I did get a couple nice photos though.

As you can see, not all of Jamaica was ravaged by Hurricane Dean.

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Hurricane Dean Pics

Oliver — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:59:37 +0000

On the drive from the airport to the Howell’s (where I stayed on my vacation) home we took a detour to see some of the hard hit areas in Kingston. One of the worst was Caribbean Terrace which is almost right on the water. Here are some of the photos:

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Visiting Monifa in Dallas

Oliver — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:53:05 +0000

I took a short trip to Dallas to visit my friend Monifa. A friend from Jamaica, she had been working at Six Flags through a summer work program most of the summer. Because I already had the time off work and couldn’t go to Jamaica as early as I wished, I took the time to go see her.

I rode a couple roller-coasters — some of the bigger few that I had never tried before because I was too scared. Now I can just say I don’t like them. I don’t mind the speed, it’s the jerkyness of the whole thing. Having my neck thrown around by the sudden movement just isn’t my thing. Second day I got to go to the water park which was more my style. I got some sun and got to experience it free since she could bring a guest in.

Throughout the days and later the last night I met her coworkers and friends. Some from Jamaica, one from Trinidad, some from Turkey, and some from Moldova. Here are a few photos from that trip.

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Hurricane Dean Hit Jamaica Just Before My Trip

Oliver — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 20:58:38 +0000

I am leaving for Jamaica tonight but there was a little doubt last week as I heard of Hurricane Dean’s approach to the island. Yes, Jamaica has been sparred for many years and many have become complacent but there will be another big one and you never know when.

I found it quite interesting that I could get very up-to-the-minute coverage of the events. I listened to Jamaicans calling in to report their area of the island on Jamaican radio station Power106 online, watched videos that were uploaded during the midst of the storm to youtube, as well as the weather channel on tv. A good variety of viewpoints.

One video I watched today shows just how insane these storms can be. Everything is fine for the first two thirds of the video and then the storm crashes violently.

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Breaking Boards

Oliver — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:18:35 +0000

I’ve been taking lessons for a while from Jungyae Moosul which is down the street from me. I tested for the first time tonight because I have missed the previous tests due to my work schedule. The results are not in yet but I feel I did pretty well. I guess the part I looked forward to the most was breaking the boards. This testing session the break was with the elbow / forearm. We always just practiced against a pad during class so I was happy to finally get to break something! My instructor chose 4 boards for me to break but seeing how easily the single and doubles broke for the other students I wasn’t worried.

Before:

After:

That’s it — nothing fancy but it was fun

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Recovering My FreeBSD NAS Server From A Hard Drive Failure

Oliver — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 04:49:04 +0000

The Signs I Ignored

I was out of town on work for a few weeks and when I came back I noticed a loud click from my server occasionally. It wasn’t constant and I figured it was just something annoying with the fan so I didn’t think much of it.

The Moment It Happened

I decided I should make sure all the applications I installed from the ports on FreeBSD were up to date so I found a program that would do it for me. It took a while but I had it going remotely most of the day while I was at work. Some time in the afternoon my session was disconnected from the server. I tried to reconnect and I couldn’t access it. When I arrived home, I turned on the monitor to find a single blinking cursor in the upper left of the screen. I don’t normally have a keyboard attached to the server because I just SSH into it. I decided to just shut off the power to the server and restart it. When it restarted it booted up to a point and then I got a message similar to this

/mnt/usr: bad dir ino 16392 AT OFFSET 512: MANGLED ENTRY
panic: ufs_dirbad: bad dir

It would only reboot after this message so I decided I was screwed.

The Search and Solution

I turned to Google of course and found a page for the panic ufs_dirbad problem. Good. At least I can get a hint of what the problem is.

What I Tried

When rebooting the server S.M.A.R.T. told me that my hard drive was bad. Fortunately it’s not the hard drive with my data on it (which is a link)','caption', 'Redundant Array of Independant Disks' );">RAID array anyway) but just the drive with the system and programs installed. The one that was being used during the upgrade process. I decided to boot up with my FreeBSD install CD and go to the FixIt mode which presents a command prompt with some basic tools. I used fsck as suggested on that ever helpful blog and found it actually repaired a few things on the drive. After rebooting again I was finally able to log in but SAMBA wasn’t starting and there were some files still seeming to be missing or corrupt. Well, I wasn’t going to bother trying to repair the installation on a bad hard disk anyways so I thought why not take an image of it!

A little more research brought me to some simple instructions on using dd to image a drive. I booted to FixIt again and ran dd to copy an image to my external USB hard drive. It took quite a while but in the morning it was finished! I checked to make sure the file was there, shut down, went out and got another hard drive, installed it then tried to mount the USB hard drive again. That’s when it decided not to come up. My only guess is that I didn’t unmount it and the drive data was corrupted when I shut down the computer. Normally on shutdown, everything is unmounted but maybe when running in FixIt that doesn’t happen. I’m not really sure.

What Worked

My next chance was to just reinstall FreeBSD. Did it a few months ago so I might as well refresh my memory! Installation wasn’t too bad. At least I knew what programs I needed or didn’t need this time. So I installed the programs and then followed my own tutorial on installing the drivers for my link)','caption', 'Redundant Array of Independant Disks' );">RAID card which I had just posted a few days before on OpenSourceCommunity.org. Got the link)','caption', 'Redundant Array of Independant Disks' );">RAID array loaded up and then figured out how to configure SAMBA without the use of the web gui which I used last time. So everything is back up and running now! Tonight I’ll run dd again to get an image of my working install so I’ll be prepared next time.

I just love the fact that almost every problem you have, someone else has had it and you can at least get some clues to the solution online. Thanks to the people who wrote these articles, I was able to get my server up and running again in a couple days and learn a little more about FreeBSD as well.

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Green Eyes In Africa — A Spectacular Story

Oliver — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 03:37:08 +0000

The way I found the site Green Eyes In Africa is a little interesting in itself. Ever since I discovered my old site was on the front page of the Google search for my name I have been curious to see how high I could get my sites. Some call this a vanity / ego search but the point is I found another site that popped up on the same search and decided to check it out. As I read through the site the stories became increasingly interesting to me because of my brief time spent in Mexico at an orphanage which instilled the value of volunteering and had a lot to do with my deciding to join the Peace Corps later in life. For a reasonable donation Green Eyes In Africa will send you one or both of the DVD documentaries An Orphan’s Gift and Green Eyes In Africa.

Reading more about this person who shares two of my names, it turns out Ryan Oliver Hansen is quite an amazing young man. As an art student at BYU he decided to make a touching documentary which in his words in an article at The Daily Utah Chronicle he says

Originally, my trip was meant to be a summer-only endeavor-a fun, feel-good experience that would look smashing on my ever-improving résumé.

That documentary An Orphan’s Gift took place as he spent 7 months at an orphanage in Esmeraldas, Ecuador which would change his life forever. On his journey he found the importance of loving and giving attention to every child in the orphanage. He learns that he is not only there to make a movie but to help the children and learn much about himself. You discover in the next movie that he decides while still in Ecuador that he is going to Africa.

Green Eyes In Africa the documentary shows the creation of the organization after volunteering at what he found to be a terrifying orphanage. He cries to the camera in his room as children are being beaten because he knows if he tries to intervene he will be forced to leave, but seeing their misery is tormenting him on the inside. Children with obvious health problems are left alone, their illness blamed on witchcraft, while the money he gives to the owner of the orphanage mysteriously doesn’t help the children. Finally he decides to start his own orphanage and bring all the children with him. What he faces on this challenge is more than enough to show his tenacity and commitment to the children.

As it says on the front page of their site, when you donate to Green Eyes In Africa, all your money goes to the children. 100 percent. No, I don’t have any proof of this but after watching the documentary I don’t doubt it at all. So go ahead and donate some money to the children — at least you get a great documentary or two so you can know what your money is going to! And by the way, Ryan has talent as a filmmaker and these titles show it.

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Post Office Is A Strange Place

Oliver — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:15:51 +0000

I don’t go in there regularly but when I do I am never sure what paperwork I need to fill out or whether it’s priority or express mail I want to send. The really strange thing I noticed just recently was that the Post Office is one of the few places where you go in with something, pay your fee, and come out with nothing. And you’re happy about it! It was just a weird feeling!

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Hey There Delilah – Plain White T’s

Oliver — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 05:46:21 +0000

Hey there Delilah
What’s it like in New York City?
I’m a thousand miles away
But girl tonight you look so pretty
Yes you do
Times Square can’t shine as bright as you
I swear it’s true

Hey there Delilah
Don’t you worry about the distance
I’m right there if you get lonely
Give this song another listen
Close your eyes
Listen to my voice it’s my disguise
I’m by your side

Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
What you do to me

Hey there Delilah
I know times are getting hard
But just believe me girl
Someday I’ll pay the bills with this guitar
We’ll have it good
We’ll have the life we knew we would
My word is good

Hey there Delilah
I’ve got so much left to say
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away
I’d write it all
Even more in love with me you’d fall
We’d have it all

Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me

A thousand miles seems pretty far
But they’ve got planes and trains and cars
I’d walk to you if I had no other way
Our friends would all make fun of us
and we’ll just laugh along because we know
That none of them have felt this way
Delilah I can promise you
That by the time we get through
The world will never ever be the same
And you’re to blame

Hey there Delilah
You be good and don’t you miss me
Two more years and you’ll be done with school
And I’ll be making history like I do
You’ll know it’s all because of you
We can do whatever we want to
Hey there Delilah here’s to you
This ones for you

Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
Oh it’s what you do to me
What you do to me.

Lyrics from plyrics.com

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A Day With Mom

Oliver — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:23:45 +0000

I’m going to be gone for a while in July so I decided it would be a good weekend to spend a day with mom. She decided to join an alumni group from her university and that gives her access to a nice lakeside recreation center on Lake Whatcom. It was this recreation center we decided to visit because they have kayaks for a very cheap price.

So we took the kayak out after I figured out how to get my long legs inside without tipping it over. We decided to get a two person kayak and it was pretty nice. One of us could take a break while the other kept going. We went quite a ways and it was a really nice day.

After the water, we went back to mom’s and had some nice fish. I don’t eat fish very often but when I do it is usually good. The fish lacked a lot of flavor but the topping was very nice. Also had a fresh salad from her garden! We had time to play a called bolo toss which was actually quite fun. As my mom says, it would be a great family game ’cause everyone can play! Simple but competitive.

I then showed mom the DVD from Green Eyes In Africa, a non-profit that runs an orphanage in Africa. The documentary is about how they got started and I plan to review it soon on this site. I also gave her my copy of Office Professional 2007. I hope she can get used to the new menu system. I’d had it for some months now but couldn’t think of someone who really needed it. I left soon after that and got home in time for my weekly chat on Skype!