whaack

The computer's case is divided into three sections. First there is the main room, the spacious center that contains the motherboard.

There is a space below for the PSU.

And there is a gap for routing cables between the mount for the motherboard and the back of the case.

I began disassembling by trying to take out the right fan.

I unplugged its power cable from the motherboard and then went to undo the zip tie that held it to other cables. I tried to properly unlock the zip tie, but after 30 minutes of frustration I just snipped it with scissors.¹

Removal of the right fan requires removal of the front panel. But the screws holding in the front panel are over tigthened. When I try to unscrew them I start tearing the grooves in the screw. So I was unable to remove the front panel, and thus left the fan in its spot. I went on to the other fan; I unplugged its power cable from the motherboard and unscrewed its 4 screws.

Next up, the RAM. I laid the computer on its side so that there was no chance of the sticks falling down as I popped them out.

After taking out the RAM I started to unplug everything from the mobo.

First, the main power supply cable.

Then the cables for the front panel lights.²

The front panel cables enter into the main room, exit through the top into the cable storage section, and then enter back again into the main room at a lower point closer to their destination on the motherboard.

Next I unplugged the CPU power supply. The cable entered the main room from the bottom and climbed upwards through a gap in the space between the GPU and the motherboard. The GPU does a good job tucking in the CPU's power cable. I will need to remember to plug in the CPU power cable before installing the GPU, because you cannot pass the head of the cable through the gap between the GPU and the motherboard.

Next I unplugged the cable³ that was connected to the mobo under the GPU.

Then I took out the GPU. There was one thumb screw that attached it to the back panel. After undoing the screw, I popped the GPU out of its slot just like RAM sticks.

The cable on the bottom left was for the audio jacks for the front panel.

Next I unscrewed the PSU. One screw was stuck like the screws in the front panel. But I had to get the PSU out. I used a flat head, and I pressed the screwdriver hard into the bar of the philip's cross with the least dammage. With a lot of normal force I was able to get it to turn. When I took the screw out, I learned that the difficulty came from it being the wrong screw.⁴

With all the motherboard's cables unpluggged and the PSU removed, I embarked on removing the mighty heat sink. This took some time. There was a lever I had to pull to release the pressure on the latches that hold the heat sink to the mounting bracket. Even once the pressure was released and the latches were unlocked, I had trouble unhooking them. There were various video guides online on how to remove the heat sink, but they all said "it's easy" and then skipped ahead without showing how they unhooked the latches. If you shake the heat sink aggressively you will stumble upon the way the latches unhook. But if you are trying to do the job cautiously, it is not immediately clear how to get them undone. The correct method is to push the latch on one side of the heat sink towards the heat sink so it pushes out the latch on the otherside. Then once you have one side unhooked you pull the heat sink in the other direction.

Next I cleaned off the thermal paste on the heat sink and the CPU. As mentioned in the logs, at first I did not have a solvent to properly remove the thermal paste. I bought 90% ethyl alcohol; I could not find the 99% isopropyl BingoBoingo recommended. I scrubbed and scrubbed forever with cotton swobs and coffee filters.

I cleaned the CPU while it was still locked into the motherboard. There is no better way to have that delicate part held firmly in place. If you spill a drop of solvent on the motherboard you can wait for it to evaporate, no problem. If you dammage a pin on the CPU, you're fucked.

The last step was to unscrew the motherboard. I felt a bit silly doing this. I had no other place to store the mobo, so I knew I was immediately was going to screw it back in. The process took a bit of time, because once again there were problems with some of the screws.

The reflected light on the CPU's pin array was beautiful.⁵

The stripped case.⁶

1. I may have been able to get the zip tie if I had a bobby pin. I was using a screw driver head that was not tiny enough. [↩]
2. I am not 100% certain of each of these little cable's function. I will have to investigate when I open my computer back up. [↩]
3. This cable was for the USB slots on the front panel. [↩]
4. Thank you supplier who shall no longer be named. [↩]
5. The result of my camera work does not quite capture this. [↩]
6. Except for that fan... [↩]

Yesterday, the first ships set sail accross the sea of IRC Networks to four small islands: UniBG, ShadowWorld, QuickFox, and OptiLan. The channels on these networks were empty of human activity. Most of the rows in my log db contained botspam such as

Now playing on Radio Mega-Hit: >50 Cent - Candy Shop (Feat. Olivia) (Pro50 Cent

I also attempted to dock 23 bots at DalNet, a larger network. But after the 4th or 5th bot connected, they all were kicked off the network w/ the message:

The maximum allowed connections from your host 200.100.50.25 has been exceeded.

So for the bigger networks I will either have to rotate through their channels or obtain a few more ip addresses.

**

There are two tasks I'm working on. The first is the channel-snagger, which keeps an updated list of all channels for all networks on a best effort basis. The second is fleetbot, the ircbot extension that keeps a set of bots logging the channels in that list, also on a best effort basis. Ideally channel-snagger puts the channels into a queue that fleetbot will draw from to assign channels to bots.

I. channel-snagger.lisp

Below is a list of (networkname, num_channels) for the 200 networks I found with at least one channel.

(freenode 12975)
(Frozyn 7182)
(EFnet 5070)
(DALnet 2712)
(OFTC 1874)
(synIRC 873)
(euIRC 719)
(IRCHighWay 579)
(FreeUniBG 465)
(P2P-NET 354)
(EuropNet 351)
(Mibbit 341)
(MindForge 307)
(IRC.tl 296)
(GIMPnet 286)
(SwiftIRC 278)
(SlashNET 272)
(GeekShed 269)
(PTnet 266)
(IndoGaul 238)
(AllNetwork 238)
(Aitvaras 202)
(2600net 185)
(DarkMyst 185)
(GeekNode 174)
(AnthroChat 153)
(Recycled-IRC 146)
(MagNET 122)
(UniBG 117)
(EnterTheGame 109)
(Tweakers 103)
(IdleChat 100)
(tchattons.com 99)
(Evolu.NET 99)
(Chattersworld 98)
(ForestNet 90)
(German-Elite 87)
(Otaku-IRC 86)
(VirtuaLife 84)
(SurrealChat.net 84)
(AnonNet 83)
(Chattersweb 78)
(Coolsmile.net 75)
(Gotham 74)
(DSNnet 72)
(OptiLan 66)
(Zoite 62)
(DejaToons 60)
(Sinsira 59)
(MagicStar 55)
(Apropo 54)
(SKYROCK 53)
(ForeverChat 53)
(TwistedNet 52)
(ShadowFire 52)
(IRCstorm 52)
(Immortal-Anime 52)
(DarkVoltage 52)
(GigaIRC 50)
(Chat-Solutions 47)
(Buddy.IM 46)
(SiberChat.Org 45)
(IrcWorld 45)
(Abandoned-IRC 44)
(Subluminal 42)
(Hub4Ever.Org 41)
(Xerologic 38)
(TripSit 38)
(BrasIRC 37)
(ScoutLink 36)
(DigitalIRC 36)
(BSDUnix 36)
(Anynet 35)
(LunarIRC 34)
(Global-Irc.Org 34)
(ForumCerdas 33)
(Netrusk 32)
(WNet 31)
(out-dated.net 31)
(GreekIRC 31)
(P2PChat 30)
(BrasPort 30)
(LUGS 29)
(IRCsource 28)
(MaddShark 28)
(ChatIRC 28)
(LichtSnel 27)
(ECNet 27)
(IRCnet.gr 26)
(Andromeda.Fr 26)
(NFNet 25)
(AustNode 25)
(PSIGenix 24)
(PowaNet 24)
(PC-Logix 24)
(SoylentNews 23)
(interlinked.me 23)
(Chatters 22)
(Blafasel 22)
(QuickFox 21)
(AlphaIRC 21)
(ShadowWorld.Net 20)
(ZwergenIRC 20)
(SA-IRC 20)
(Everchat 20)
(CakeForceUK 20)
(RisposteInformatiche 19)
(oz.org 19)
(mircphantom.net 19)
(IRC2 19)
(ChillNet 19)
(ChatIrc.net 19)
(tm-irc 18)
(MeFalcon 18)
(KernelPanic 18)
(Omninet 17)
(FDFnet 17)
(Albnetwork.net 17)
(Absoluty-IRC 17)
(FreshChat 16)
(Cognet 15)
(swissIRC.net 15)
(IRCFreakz 15)
(homo.net 15)
(ChatLounge 15)
(AfterX 15)
(TransAdvice 14)
(PurpleSurge 14)
(Italian-Amici 14)
(GreekChat 14)
(EntropyNet 14)
(IRC-Mania 13)
(Griefplay 13)
(Futuragora 12)
(Crippler 12)
(Chaterz.nl 12)
(Blitzed 12)
(UplinkIRC 11)
(SomeNet 11)
(PhatNET 11)
(Teepi 10)
(Striked 10)
(SceneCritique 10)
(RelaxedIRC 10)
(IRC-Ban.de 10)
(420-Hightimes 10)
(Station51.net 9)
(StarLink-IRC 8)
(RelicNet 8)
(ExodusIRC 8)
(Pilgerer 7)
(paranode.net 7)
(FyreChat 7)
(chatnets 7)
(BoredIRC 7)
(onzin.org 6)
(SoundsNWaves.net 6)
(KewlFun 6)
(D4RCnet 6)
(Black-Cell.net 5)
(IRDSI 5)
(GTAXLnet 5)
(DynastyNet 5)
(byxnet 5)
(BSDnet 5)
(AsylumNet 5)
(UKChatBox 4)
(RootWorlD 4)
(PIRC.pl 4)
(Genscripts 4)
(eXolia 4)
(Eagles-myIRC 4)
(degunino.net 4)
(BDCHAT 4)
(Ceviz 3)
(XeroMem 3)
(OSPnet 3)
(Langochat.net 3)
(ircHax0r 3)
(Fewona 3)
(Do-Dear.com 3)
(AureAWorld 3)
(DarkerNet 2)
(UnderMind 2)
(Snyde 2)
(SceneP2P 2)
(Powers.cl 2)
(MauriceRadioLibre 2)
(dreams-fr 2)
(DALNetwork 2)
(zeolia 1)
(kyunet 1)
(EsperNet 1)
(Canternet 1)
(AtomicEdge 1)

And here is the script I used to acquire the channels for these networks.¹
For every network I:

1. connect with an unauthed nick
2. wait to receive the network's RPL_WELCOME-MESSAGE
3. request a list of all the channels with /list
4. wait for the RPL_LISTEND-MESSAGE, timing out after 35 seconds

I ran into a few errors related to connecting: 'BADHOST, 'USOCKET-TIMEOUT, and 'USOCKET-CONNECTION-REFUSED. I also saw an error from issuing the /list command

"You must be connected for at least 60 seconds before you can use this command."

I may want to try grabbing channels from different linknames² to see if I can connect to the networks that threw USOCKET errors. I also need to do another scan for networks where I wait 60 seconds before issuing /list.

There are some big networks³ missing: IRCnet, Undernet, QuakeNet, Rizon, BSDUnix, Chatzona, IRC-HIspano to name a few. There are also discrepancies from the data I've collected and what's listed on netsplit.de. Netsplit.de lists EFnet having 9000+ channels but my EFnet responded to my /list command with only ~5000. It is possible this discrepancy is due to a large variance of number of channels on a day to day basis.

II. fleetbot.lisp

Before trying to connect the fleet of ships to a network I gave a look through the lisp cook book page on threads. The one tricky bit I did not see in that guide was how to do proper error handling. I'm surprised that a guide on this was excluded. From my experience dealing with threads often means dealing with file i/o or socket exceptions.

I learned that a thread cannot signal an error to its parent thread, so any error handling must occur inside the function that is passed to make-thread.⁴

;; handler-case is the basic "try-catch" tool of common lisp.
;; it takes an expression and then a list of error-clauses.
;; if an error occurs in the first expression, handler-case searches the error-clauses for a matching error and runs the corresponding code.
;; more details can be found here: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-conditions-and-restarts.html

;; incorrectly handles error because handler case is defined outside of the child thread that throws the error
(handler-case
  (sb-thread:make-thread
    (lambda () (error 'simple-error)))
  (simple-error () t))

;; catches error correctly since all error handling is done inside the child thread
(sb-thread:make-thread
  (lambda ()
    (handler-case
      (error 'simple-error)
      (simple-error () t))))

The biggest TODO item is to figure out a way around the maximum connections per host limit. Networks usually drop me after I connect more than 3 bots. So with a 120-channel-per-nick limit that means I can only log 360 channels per ip. The connections-per-host is likely on a per server bases rather than per network, so I could conceivably connect to 10 different links which would bring me to 3600 channels per ip. This is an ugly solution since when an individual server goes down I will miss logs from channels assigned to that server.

Some other items on the TODO list:

• obtain the max-channels-per-nick for every network
• learn about file descriptors + sockets. Look into the Select (2) syscall error
• figure out the Socket error in "connect": EINTR (Interrupted system call) [Condition of type SB-BSD-SOCKETS:INTERRUPTED-ERROR]
• log when a ship joins or leaves a channel

Lastly, a note on my methodology. After speaking with trinque and diana_coman and doing a bit of reflection I realized I have a common Common Lisp problem. My reasons for using the language are essentially that I think it's in fashion.

CL+emacs+slime lubes up a workflow that is painful with languages like c.⁵ Instead of using this to my advantage once my program is well thought out, i've been whackin' away: testing half-baked-functions as they're written, tweaking knobs randomly until something appears to work, patting myself on the pack for functions that do work, etc. etc. Going forward I will focus on scoping out the problem and fixing my own misconceptions before putting anything into the repl.

1. The function populate-networks-with-channels takes a plist of networks from the channel-snagger and attempts to insert into that plist a list of channels with key :channels. If no channels are found, the value of :channels becomes a symbol representing an error. [↩]
2. A linkname is the hostname of an individual server on a network. [↩]
3. Big in terms of reported number of users and channels, but as I saw the reports on netsplite.de may be wildly inaccurate. [↩]
4. This makes sense. The main thread continues executing and leaves the "try-catch" block when the subthread gets spawned. So if the error were to be caught in the main thread, then it would have to schedule the catch clause at some random point further in its execution. [↩]
5. The process of testing a function you wrote by sending it from the file you're working on into a repl. [↩]

I'm taking the time to write about shrysr leaving, not for the sole purpose of passing judgement,¹ but to reflect on my own situation and what I think about the cult aspects of younghands and tmsr. I can't discuss shrysr's departure without sharing my thoughts on the rating changes with asciilifeform. I said previously that I wasn't going to speak on that subject, but what can you do.

So to begin with shrysr, I believe during his last conversation with diana_coman she correctly assessed why he wanted to leave. I had internally experienced a flow of thoughts that mirrored the reasons diana_coman accused shrysr for packing his bags. My thoughts went something like ~ diana_coman has got me off my ass, helped me settle into a nice apartment, motivated me to get my hours done in the saltmines, prevented me from making bad investments after nights of drinking, helped me organize my schedule for 11 weeks straight, pulled me out of the haze of pot, put me to work on an interesting project, helped me acquire a personal computer, given me better methods to become bilingual, read all my articles and commented on them, etc. etc. But now there's nothing to stop me from walking away. I will continue my life at a much higher comfort level, and I can enjoy that comfort while dropping the hard work and getting back to surfing and weed. And I have the perfect excuse - asciilifeform got excommunicated unjustly, and I just won't stand for that! I entertained this thought, but let it pass. By acting on it I would be simultaneously betraying diana_coman and working against my best interest.

So I see shrysr's decision to leave as selfish² and stupid. He's cashing out early and leaving diana_coman to eat a loss of time invested. Based on my own experience and what he said himself about receiving 10x the attention from diana_coman than from those he paid, I believe he would develop more at DCU than anywhere else. In sincerity I wish him the best of luck on his journey, I hope that he works harder than ever and blogs about his success.

But I do not see that happening. His website looks great now and has a handsome picture of him in some lab gear, but his blog has been lacking new content since he left. As far as I can tell, he has given up a path to meaningful and interesting academic work to twiddle css parameters until he makes his site shiny enough for him to get paid six figures of monopoly money.

The excommunication of asciilifeform is a more complicated matter. I have tremendous respect for him, and the situation has left me in quite a knot. I believe his side of the story and had I submitted to training under him, which I considered, I would likely be on the other side of the fence.³ He built tons of infrastructure and worked loyally for mp and others, and seeing him tossed to the side after his effort makes me believe it naive to become attached to any relationships within tmsr.

The only way I reconcile his having been tossed out is by hanging onto the idea that tmsr is only a place to grow and the moment the derivative of one's graph of progress over time becomes negative, that's it - no matter the max y value achieved. I am most cautious and aware of one point asciilifeform made, namely that mp picking up a bunch of noobs is perhaps his strategy to stay safely seated on his throne and keep the council well indoctrinated.⁴ There's not much I can retort to this, as it is true I trade my fidelity for a path to growth. I anticipate asciilifeform will call me a 'chained biorobot', and to some degree he will be right. But I would rather be a chained lion than an independent sand gnat, free to fly where I'd like --- until a gust of wind sweeps me to sea.

I don't doubt that shrysr leaving and running into the arms of asciilifeform is avoidance behavior. I think it is even worth gently reminding asciilifeform about his own prediction that leeches will come trying to make friends. Maybe now that shrysr is done sapping from diana_coman he'll see if he can get something from asciilifeform.

I do have doubts about the justification of asciilifeform's excommunication. As strong as those doubts are, I don't plan to use them as an excuse desert diana_coman and younghands. I hope asciilifeform respects that I took an oath and doesn't ban me from his chan for it. But I will see myself out if requested because I understand he sees diana_coman as chained to mp, and I would follow diana_coman's orders to leave his channel should I be so instructed. I have grown under her guidance, and I don't plan to start making exceptions to my pledge. Diana Coman keeps me "hypnotized" because she has this habit of giving advice that is in my self-interest to follow.⁵

1. Although I will. [↩]
2. Misguidedly selfish. [↩]
3. The fence asciilifeform predicted would exist. [↩]
4. There are various other warnings asciilifeform's made that keep me on my toes. For example, mp is a talented writer with tits by his side. I don't question his ability to convince me of anything. [↩]
5. Even though following the advice may be painful in the short term. [↩]