/sys/admin/blog

Check Engine Light, OBDII driving cycles, and more than I cared to know about all of it

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:46:19 -0400

So, just as one of our cars was due for registration renewal and inspection, the check engine light on it came on. We took it into the shop and had some valve, the AC system, and a couple other things fixed and the mechanic told me that they could not do the inspection yet because the car has to pass a “drive cycle” before the engine light will turn off.

What the hell is a drive cycle?

Well, it turns out that the on board diagnostics (OBD) computer has to run some self tests on the emissions system. Those tests are set to “Incomplete” or INC whenever you reset a code in the computer, disconnect the battery, or replace one of those components. After certain conditions while driving are met, the tests run and mark each component as “OK”. When that’s all done, the engine light goes off and the car can pass inspection.

But the freaking light won’t go off!

And without an ODBII scanner, you have no idea why. So I bought such a scanner, and finally that damn check engine light means something. Why they can’t put the text of the code on one of the numerous text capable displays in the car without the need to plug in a serial cable connected to this gizmo to get the code is beyond me. Well, the scanner told me that a couple of the “drive cycle” tests were still “INC”. Hmmm. But we drove it for like a week! One mechanic told me “drive like 150 miles”. Another said “just run over to Greensboro and back, that ought to do it”. Really? You guys don’t know how it works either?

Again, What the hell is a drive cycle?

Oh, drive cycle, right! Well, depending on the car, you have to do a few things like idle from a cold start with the AC and rear defrost ON for 2.5 minutes. And run at 55 MPH for 3 minutes after a half throttle acceleration. Oh, and coast from 55 mph to 20 mph WITHOUT TOUCHING THE BRAKE! Really? That’s pretty specific stuff and I don’t think I was ever going to trigger the accelerate with NO AC AND NO ELECTRICAL LOAD in the middle of August in North Carolina. That AC is ALWAYS on!

Well, some Google searching and I found out the exact conditions that the OBD drive cycle tests need. Armed with that knowledge, I can get the car to run all it’s tests in about 20 minutes.

But the light’s still on!

Sigh. Well, it turns out that the gear shift computer just started throwing an error. U0404. Yeah, I got your 404 right here, buddy. @#$%^&! The car is all ready to go for the emissions inspection but can’t pass until that freaking light is off. So, it goes back to the shop next week to fix that code, probably will need my expert gyrations through another drive cycle, and a quick verification on my trusty new OBD Scanner and THEN maybe it’ll pass the inspection and I can do my guest spot on Car Talk…

Sharepoint Best Practices Conference 2010

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 14:04:47 -0400

I attended the Sharepoint Best Practices Conference 2010 this week and it was time well spent. They did a great job of having lots of speakers and covered everything from administration to development to business use. I haven’t done much with Sharepoint since its early versions which were frankly painful and even 2007 hasn’t impressed me a whole lot. Sharepoint 2010 is definitely faster, more stable, and more feature rich and I think it’s come a long way. They have my attention now.

Sharepoint 2010 will take resources (likely in both time and money) to optimize it as well as lots of training for the end users but it will have a strong place in our environment. I left feeling much more confident in my knowledge of the product and I feel fortunate that I work in a mixed environment where we try to use the best tool for the job at hand. I’m glad I work where we have the flexibility to have the “best in breed” in whatever we do though, because for the things where Sharepoint 2010 still isn’t perfect we can use other options. I heard quite a few folks at the conference explaining their IT environments where it’s one technology and that’s it.

While I can see why some IT departments like that model, I can’t imagine that’s a “best practice” at all. The bottom line remains: there’s no silver bullet out there and there never will be. Sure, you can build a whole lot with a Swiss Army knife, but it’s never going to be as powerful as a toolbox full of the best tool for each task. Am I going to move my blog to Sharepoint? Nope. Do I think I’ll be doing a lot more with Sharepoint? Absolutely.

Anyway, the conference was quite good and I learned a lot and spent a lot of time with some great people. I’m honestly excited about the potential that Sharepoint 2010 has to add to my toolbox after everything I learned. So much for slowing down for the second half of the year! Oh, and if you ever need to fend off a pushy vendor at a Sharepoint conference expo try “I’m a Linux guy” followed by a serious expression. I’ve been laughing about the confused look on that guy’s face for days!

Flickr Groups for theme ideas

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 09:07:54 -0400

This project365 is going very well and much to my own surprise I haven’t missed a day yet. Some days are harder than others to come up with something to photograph. I’ve found that Flickr provides many ideas and there are some great groups that have a weekly theme that are very helpful in motivating me to try something new.

Here’s my favorites for each day of the week:

Strobist Sundays
Macro Mondays
Slice of Life Tuesdays
Bokeh Wednesdays
Things I Love Thursdays
Nifty Fifty Friday
Saturated Saturdays

If you’re looking to get more photography experience, try joining a Flickr group and submitting something to a weekly theme. It’s a great way to keep you motivated to get the camera out.

WorldWide Photowalk 2010 - Durham Edition

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:25:08 -0400

Today is the 3rd Worldwide Photowalk, hosted in cities everywhere. I participated in the downtown Durham, NC one.

I chose to travel light and I took only one lens on my T1i and carried it on my R-strap. That was a good choice as it was hot as hell and I was happy not to be lugging a lot of gear around. I did miss my macro lens a few times but I’ll go back to get some of those shot another day. The other gear I brought that I would highly recommend for anyone doing this in the heat were a wide brim hat and a camel back for water – those made all the difference in making it a great walk and not a hellish one.

The whole walk was great and we had a pretty nice crowd. I’ve shared my favorite shots from today on Flickr.

Over half way through Project365

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:34:47 -0400

Well, I’m past the half way point for my Project 365! Even to my own surprise, I haven’t missed a single day yet.

It’s been a great way to force me to explore new techniques and subjects. One of the coolest aspects is that I can remember something about every single day this year by looking at the photos. It also reminds me that time moves far too fast!

The other aspect that I haven’t done enough of is the great community participation. Other people doing these projects contribute to flickr pools and we comment on each other’s work. That’s been helpful motivation to keep going and also provided some inspiration to try new shots. For the second half of the year I’m going to try and browse and comment on more of other people’s work.

Cold Turkey

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Mon, 17 May 2010 07:36:36 -0400

I quit Facebook this weekend and I left Twitter a few months ago. I quit Facebook once before by deleting my account but I found that I still wanted to be able for friends and family to see photos and stuff so this time I’ve kept it active and have my Flickr account linked to it. We’ll see how long that lasts before I actually go delete it again.

The signal to noise ratio is all wrong on these platforms. Even after keeping your friends list trimmed and hiding all of the stupid games and such, what value are these sites bringing to your life? Sure, I like to keep up with people I care about but I can do that by actually talking to them. The bulk of the posts are not anything that will affect my life in any way, positive or negative. The time sink that these sites create though, will.

Social networking can be an addiction more than a value add to your day; just another way to kill time instead of doing something productive or with lasting value to your life. I quit watching network television a couple years ago for the same reasons and I don’t miss that either. Go cold turkey for a month and tell me what you’re missing… IF you can make it that long.

Career Tools Podcasts

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:23:02 -0400

I’m long term fan of the guys at Manager Tools and I think there’s plenty to learn from those podcasts even if you’re not a manager. That being said, they’ve got a series of podcasts designed for the individual contributor role now too: Check out Career Tools.

Lizard Brain

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:12:50 -0500

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain on Vimeo – you want to do great things? Focus on finishing things.

Project 365

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:17:26 -0500

Practice makes perfect, right? I’m embarking on a year long “project 365” to take a photo every day. I’ll be posting them on Flickr.

Mi chiamo Via

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:40:59 -0500

I finally tried some of Starbuck’s new Via instant coffee and it’s actually pretty good. It’s not regular instant freeze-dried-whatever-the-hell-instant-coffee-is crap. Via is “micro ground” coffee beans that you just add hot water to and you’ve got a cup of coffee. You can see some fine particles in the last sip of the cup but you can’t detect them in the coffee in a bad way.

Via is going to be my coffee of choice for the next camping trip for sure.

Google Wave

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:04:21 -0500

Hearing about Google Wave and not sure what it is? There is a good 10 minute video from Google showing some examples of it being used here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw&feature=player_embedded

Cool stuff. I think I’m going to plan poker nights with it… if only more of my friends can just get accounts already!

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:24:15 -0400

Just a sampling of my favorites from the past week:

“Why didn’t you tell us in advance of the unscheduled outage you didn’t know would happen?”

“Is there any technical reason you’re doing this?”

“It’s your job to figure out what I really needed even though you gave me exactly what I asked for, that’s called customer service.”

Sigh.

Happy Sysadmin Day!!!!

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:11:00 -0400

Thank you to all of you that make IT work! Happy System Administration Day!!!

Macro Exposure Trick

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 10:57:49 -0400

Shooting macro photography without a tripod is hard. You need a lot of light and you’re trying to balance the depth of field with a fast enough shutter speed to get a sharp picture. Bump your ISO up too high and you loose detail and get noise.

So here’s a little trick I picked up. Set your exposure compensation down a stop or two. You’ll under-expose the shot but the detail will be there. Back home you can push the exposure back up in post processing the RAW file.

I got this little guy hand held at ISO: 400, Exposure: 1/45 sec, Aperture: 8.0 with -1 stop set. It works!

Getting more out of your Digital SLR

first.last@gmail.com (Joe O'Brien) — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:05:19 -0400

I plan on posting more on some of the features that those of you with digital SLRs should learn how to use and get off of that blasted full auto mode… however, let’s start with a basic thing: RAW.

If you’re not shooting RAW, that’s an easy one to turn on. If you’re nervous about it, most cameras will let you set RAW + JPEG and you can at least have the option of the power of RAW files. Granted, it will take more storage on your card but it’s worth it. Trust me… here’s a good article on RAW vs. JPG.