Jan
12

Feeling Slow? Check the Load

By e; — Saturday, January 12, 2008

My phone (an iPhone) has been feeling sluggish lately. It took until today for the light to turn on where I said "Why don't I open the terminal and check top?" Load was around 4, and it was instantly apparent the culprit:

12796 gnuchess    31.7%  7:12:55   2    31   109  1.36M  1.47M
12538 gnuchess    28.0%  6:46:13   2    30   109  1.36M  1.47M
12116 gnuchess    25.8%  7:02:24   2    30   109  1.36M  1.47M

Turns out that if the chess app crashed it was leaving a gnuchess instance running (and running hard, apparently) under the hood. A couple of those had built up and were choking out anything else trying to hit the CPU. A simple killall gnuchess and I'm feeling much better.

Jan
05

... And Wet Here

By e; — Saturday, January 05, 2008

L.A. River after Rain

We got back into town Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday evening it started raining. It's been dry this morning, so I rode over to the river to take a few photos. You can see them as a set here.

Shot taken from the 7th street bridge, with the shutter at 1/4 sec to get the silky water. And, yes, it really was that brown.

Jan
01

It's Cold Here

By e; — Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Kathy in the Snow

Tomorrow morning Kathy and I head back to L.A. after a little over a week here in Michigan. We arrived to a snow storm and despite a little warming in between it's been pretty consistently cold with two good snowfalls. While it's always nice to see family, I'm good and ready to get back to California warmth.