Scott VanDenPlas

We ran into a problem with a coworkers machine that was rather difficult to troubleshoot. He has an Ubuntu desktop, and after rebooting one day, eth0 just totally disappeared. I had a hard time finding a solution easily, but I found an excellent blog post with a similar problem.

#grep tg3 /var/log/dmesg
[ 7.658871] tg3.c:v3.94 (August 14, 2008)
[ 7.659481] tg3 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[AP06] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[ 7.659489] tg3 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 8.525164] tg3: Could not obtain valid ethernet address, aborting.
[ 8.525248] tg3 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A disabled
[ 8.525279] tg3: probe of 0000:03:00.0 failed with error -22

After reading Peter’s post from above, we are most interested in this piece of code from tg3:

if (!is_valid_ether_addr(&dev->dev_addr[0])) {
#ifdef CONFIG_SPARC
if (!tg3_get_default_macaddr_sparc(tp))
return 0;
#endif
// return -EINVAL;
}

So why is our NIC returning a MAC of 00:00:00:00:00:00? Well, in our scenario, we ran a diagnostic and found out the EEPROM was corrupt. So despite the NIC working perfectly in every other aspect, returning an all zero MAC produced this error. Swapped it out for a different card, and everything seems to be better.

So if you are getting this error, check your MAC address… if it is all zeros, figure out why. Hope that helps someone else.

I had the pleasure of being a presenter at Ignite Chicago last week, so I took the time to talk about an interesting new project I am working on.

Here’s the video of the presentation:

And here are the slides, if you need a clearer copy:

Ok, last food posting, like I said, it was a busy weekend. I have recently become a huge fan of tempeh. I was never anti-tempeh, I was just unsure what to do with it… not to mention it is simultaneously amazing and disgusting (there is fungus actively growing on it, and looks a lot like it shouldn’t be there). Here’s what you need:

Tempeh (we used a wild rice tempeh for this)
Can of black-eyed peas
2 onions
5 cloves garlic
Dinosaur kale
1 tomato
3 ears grilled corn
olive oil
salt
pepper

Dice one onion, brown it in olive oil in a large stock pot. Dice the garlic, throw it in when the onion is starting to brown. Cut the dinosaur kale into thin strips, toss it on top of the onions/garlic. Pour the entire can of black-eyed peas, water and all, into the pot. Dice the tomato, throw it in too. Stir, Cover, Simmer until the kale is soft.

We had grilled corn in the refrigerator from the day before, I cut it from the cob and set it to the side. I then cubed the tempeh, and diced the other onion. In a sautee pan, I browned the onion and tempeh cubes. Add the corn to the stock pot and allow it to come to temperature (it is already grilled, it just needs to warm). Give the corn about 5 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste, then lay the tempeh/onions on the top of the mixture.

I wish I had a better picture, this one really doesn’t do it justice. Perhaps I will try to replace it tomorrow, and also post about the Cauliflower/Seitan dish to the right.

I do not title this blog post lightly. I am not kidding, I have not experienced flavor like this, and will most likely be making my sauces like this from now on. I bucked the sauce making trend on this, leaving both the seeds and skins on our tomatoes. It turns out, this was a good idea. What you will need, with almost zero measurements… not because I am a dick about it, but because everything is to taste:

8-10 ripe tomatoes
Olive oil
salt
pepper
An entire head of garlic
1 onion
Fresh basil/oregano

First, cut the tomatoes in half and toss them in a bowl with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then, light up a charcoal grill, get that sucker SCREAMING hot. Roast the holy hell out of those tomatoes. You want them to get charred. Don’t worry, they are full of moisture, the skin will mostly char leaving the flesh soft and juicy. This is why it is important to leave the skin on, it holds a solid metric ton of flavor. It will look something like this:

I cooked them cut side down first so they didn’t just melt into the grill, then flipped them and roasted the skins on them. Scrapped them off, threw them into a big bowl. Simultaneously to this, Beth was slicing large slivers of garlic, dousing them in olive oil, and cooking them in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. She then sauteed up a diced onion, to which we added the roasted tomatoes, the garlic/oil mixture, and the aromatics. We simmered this down, creating this:

When in doubt, use simple ingredients, grill it on charcoal.

Ok, so we went cooking crazy today, so I apologize for the crazy amount of food postings headed your way.

Two weekends ago, we went up to the belly of the beast aka Door County. Apparently we hit them right at the cherry harvest, they were everywhere. We ended up getting 2 gallon zip lock bags of sour cherries for $6, and had no idea what to do with them. The farm we bought them at recommended we look into making cherry bounce (as did my in-laws).

I had no idea what cherry bounce was, and this apparently makes me a slight traitor to my country… because in my further research, this drink is as American or probably MORE American than apple pie. Hell, even Martha Washington had her own favorite recipe:

“Extract the Juice of 20 pounds of well ripend Morrella Cherrys Add to this 10 quarts of Old French brandy and sweeten it with White Sugar to your taste—To 5 Gallons of this mixture add one ounce of Spice Such as Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmegs of each an Equal quantity Slightly bruis’d and a pint and half of Cherry kernels that have been gently broken in a mortar—After the liquor has fermented let it Stand Close-Stoped for a month or Six weeks—then bottle it remembering to put a lump of Loaf Sugar into each bottle.”

Well, we didn’t have 20 lbs of cherries, nor the 10 quarts of cognac… but we came up with our own recipe:

2 gallon bags full of cherries
1.5 liters of vodka (Grey Goose)
1.5 liters of brandy (Christian Brothers VSOP)
4 cups sugar
4 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
2 glass jugs (thank you Carlo Rossi)

We made a simple syrup with the water and sugar, bringing the water to a low boil and disolving the sugar. We then split the cherries between the two bottles, added the syrup, added the cinnamon sticks, then poured the alcohol over the top… one bottle with the vodka, the other with the brandy. We then sealed them up, tossed the contents around a bit… and now we wait. Every couple days we’ll give them a toss to keep them well mixed. Here are the results:

So in a couple weeks/months, we should have something amazing to drink.

I wish we had thought of selling this happy pepper, but it was super tasty.

I hope the next one we cut open has the elusive winky frown ;(

It’s that time of year, the congressional break… where our highly respected representatives in Congress come home to their district to be screamed at by angry coordinated mobs of republican operatives, attempting to manipulate the true sentiment of the American people. The sad truth is that things like this are highly effective. They are dramatic, they make the news, everyone sees them. It is somewhat brilliant actually. It got me thinking, what could stop these manipulative astroturf GOP hate mobs?

And the answer is very simple: join them.

The idea is this: you take the hate, you take the rage, and you take that mob right into crazy town. Imagine the following scenario. You are at a townhall meeting with your congressional representative. A mob of rage just floods into the room, and they start screaming about socialized medicine, the government putting its greedy inefficient hands on our precious insurance companies, and all of us drowning in taxes. This is your time to shine, and you join right in. Here are a few suggestions of what you can yell out:

“Why aren’t we investigating the Jews and their connection to 9/11?”
“It just isn’t right, our founding fathers were white and we are white, how can this African citizen claim to run our country?”
“Obama is a racist, this is just another attack on white america!”
“Why are we distracted by health care while Mexicans are flooding into this country, carrying drugs and defiling our women?”
“This is a Christian nation! I will NOT take orders from some Muslim jackass!”

If you have the balls to yell racial slurs, then go for it. It is actually likely that someone in that mob _agrees_ with your sentiment, they may even take it further. Then step back and check out your local news. With any luck, your voice will make it on the air, and the entire mob’s mission of distraction turns into a psychopath filled room of chaos. Have fun.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel with Harper, Brian Gorbett from Microsoft, and Sumit Nijhawan from Infogix. Brian did a great job of summarizing the panel over at Port 25. If you have time, you can check out his video here:

sitting on a open source panel from brian gorbett on Vimeo.

There is a rumor that more video will be posted soon.

Nice work Craig, this needs to be shared.

My Grant Park Obama Rally Experience from Craig Shimala on Vimeo.

Drudge just cracks me up. Check this out:

So you think, wow, this is _really_ tightening up toward the end here!

Until, of course, you check Gallup’s website:

He is only pulling his data from the traditional model, and is completely ignoring the exact same poll that has Obama up by 7 points. I wonder why that model is necessary? Oh right…