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:

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 ;(

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…

Amazing.

McCain – “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”

McCain – “Worst mistake of my life.”

The best part of this is that the Senate Ethics Committee did not pursue any possible ethics breaches in McCain’s delayed reimbursements to Keating for trips at the Keating’s expense, because they occurred while McCain was in the House… so they lacked jurisdiction. So you would think that perhaps the House would have jurisdiction? Wrong. The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct said that it too lacked jurisdiction, because McCain was no longer in the House. I am not kidding.

See the entire site here: http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

Call out John McCain for who he is.

As promised in this post, here’s the video of the Thingamagoop in action.

Threadless Bleep Labs Challenge from Threadless.com on Vimeo.

Nothing but respect, a mouth full of chew, and a mountain dew bottle half full of urine.

Simultaneously to our doorbell breaking at skinnyCorp, I discovered the amazingness that is Bleep Labs’ Thingamagoop.

I thought it would be fun to replace our doorbell with a booping beeping crazy synth-robot. I came up with a really simple, quick hack to get the robot connected to a wireless doorbell button that could really be used on any battery operated device. First, we needed some sort of signaler to trigger the robot. I purchased a wireless doorbell for the hearing impaired (any will do, I used the Sonic Alert DB100). The DB100 has a base with a single AC outlet that will turn on and off 5-10 times when the remote button is pressed. Perfect.

Next, we had to convert the robot to work on AC power. I went to Radioshack earlier this week, picked up a 9 Volt battery snap, a 9 Volt AC adapter (any will do) and a 2.1 mm DC female coax jack. I soldered the 9V battery snap to the DC jack, and connected it to the thingamagoop. Then I plugged in the AC adapter to the doorbell base. I just found that Bleep Labs actually sells the pre-made adapter to get the thingamagoop working on AC, so go buy one.

Next time you get a chance to swing by Threadless, make sure you say hello to Boopers the Doorbot. Video coming shortly.