in reply to Always be learning - how a leaky pipe made me appreciate Open Source

I know how you feel after trying on and off all last week getting SDL, Perl_SDL and some other libraries up to the most current snapshots on my Debian box.

Lot's of confusion and groping but finally get it to work. Then I bump up my nvidia drivers to the latest and now it needs to be reinstalled after every reboot.

After much head scratching, log searching, it appears the nvidia init.d script unlinks one of the modules as it shuts down. The frustrating part was it's not logged anywhere. Thank goodness for the "immutable" flag.

Once everything works, it works great until you need to change something that's near the bleeding edge. Then shudder.

Funny thing though, I actually worked in plumbing supply in the early 90s. I still don't trust plastic pipe for anything but drainage. The first generation of plastic pipe (Polybutylene) was a disaster. Had the nasty habit of bursting quite often and usually when you weren't home. It lead to a bunch of class action lawsuits against Shell Chemical and to it being discontinued after 1996.

Not sure how that fits into the analogy :)


-Lee

perl digital dash (in progress)
  • Comment on Re: Always be learning - how a leaky pipe made me appreciate Open Source

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Always be learning - how a leaky pipe made me appreciate Open Source
by talexb (Chancellor) on Feb 07, 2006 at 13:21 UTC
      Funny thing though, I actually worked in plumbing supply in the early 90s. I still don't trust plastic pipe for anything but drainage. The first generation of plastic pipe (Polybutylene) was a disaster. Had the nasty habit of bursting quite often and usually when you weren't home. It lead to a bunch of class action lawsuits against Shell Chemical and to it being discontinued after 1996.

    I followed the 'crimp then test' procedure without fail for all of my joins; only twice did I get bad crimps, and both those times I knew they were bad, because I couldn't finish the crimp, and had to reach for the hacksaw. Now I know what order to do the crimps in, it's obvious -- just like copper plumbing, build as much as possible away from site, and just like Perl, build and test 100% of your work.

    This pipe is rated to 180 or 200psi, and house water pressure standard I'm told is 50psi, so assuming my crimping technique is OK, I feel pretty good about how this installation is going to hold up.

    Alex / talexb / Toronto

    "Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

[reply]
      I'd imagine after the Shell debacle, that any plastic pipe would be getting a whole lot more scrutiny both internally and externally.

      I think the problem with the first wave was the metal sleeves and that the plastic weakened when exposed to some minerals commonly found in water.

      It was never available where I live (MA), the codes here are some of the toughest in the country, so no first hand experience. The only question I'd have with the newer generation stuff is how it does in the cold. Winters here can get ridiculous. I've snapped off vehicle armrests by putting my arm on them in a cold snap and ripped off more plastic car door handles than I can remember during cold snaps.

      -Lee

      perl digital dash (in progress)
[reply]

        Pex will expand and contract with the cold, however it's not break proof so some care still needs to be taken but it does hold up well in the cold.

[reply]

In Section Meditations