After an hour or so with Google, I discovered this page, which gave me some clues on what the source of the problem was. Here is how I hacked it into working:

bash$ sudo apt-get install liblogkit-java
bash$ cd .netbeans/6.7/lib
bash$ ln -s /usr/share/java/logkit.jar .


Some of the standard Web Application modules seem to assume this jar file is available, and it does seem to be included in Sun’s bundle of NetBeans, but Ubuntu, for some reason, doesn’t make it a dependency or include it in the classpath that NetBeans sees. My commands install the missing Avalon Logkit dependency and then put it somewhere that NetBeans can see it. Meanwhile, I’ve reported it as bug #509255 on Launchpad.

• Finished all the Arabic classes my local university offers.
• Got my GCFA Certification from SANS. That should add a second line of consulting income, if I market it..
• Grew a successful garden.
• Got more comfortable with people.
• Built my own TV antenna.
• Traced the Ruppert family history back a couple more generations.
• Improved the energy efficiency of my home with some weatherization and some LED lamps.
• Became more frugal as my employer stiffed me again on cost of living and my retirement investments tanked.
• Learned more virtualisation technologies.
• Began to get involved with the local Ubuntu community.
• Spent more time with my family.
• Got my transmission and timing belt on my car replaced.
• Replaced my faucet and some plumbing in my kitchen.
• Improved my landscaping in front, hopefully to distract from my seemingly cursed lawn.
• Completed my role as Administrative Overseer on my church board.
• Supported local farmers with a CSA from Wyllie Fox Farm.

It’s important to make a list of your accomplishments and struggles so that you can remember them later. It’s easy to fool yourself into believing your time just passed without anything meaningful coming of it, but by stopping and being mindful of what has happened, you end up with something to be thankful for. I may follow up with a list of goals for 2010, but we’ll see. It’s easier to pick them retrospectively than to chart a course into the unknown. Still, there’s something to be said for accountability, even if it is mostly just an illusion.

Happy New Year all.

Over the last couple days, I’ve been going over and over the instructions here , but every time I would try to boot into it, I’d get screens and screens of various kernel panics with stuff like xen_check_events or xen_force_restore, and xen_remap_exchanged_ptes. After many hours of Googling, I discovered a note about panics taking place when the CONFIG_HIGHPTE option was set. I unset that option, and now the XEN hypervisor boots flawlessly. Finally!

So if you’re trying to play with the xen hypervisor under Karmic Koala, here’s the value you’ll need to make sure is not set:

->Processor Type and Features
-> [ ] Allocate 3rd-level pagetables from highmem

Once you build your kernel without that, it should work according to instructions. I also hardcoded the root path under kernel options, but I don’t know if that’s necessary.

Edit 12/15: I noticed that after I installed this I still couldn’t get Xen to actually load a guest without crashing the whole system, so I guess I need more than this to make peace with Xen. After a month of playing with it, I’ve given up on getting a working xen setup for now, and am focusing my energies on LXC/libvirt.

I had a fun time today. An old friend who I once let stay with me returned to church today. It took me most of the service to remember his name! I hadn’t seen him in a few years, so my brain had put his name into storage, and I had to wait until my mind found the key to where it was kept. First his first name came to me, about twenty minutes into the service, and then his last name came ten minutes later. Finally, much later, I uselessly remembered his middle initial. It was fascinating how I had completely forgotten it, yet was able to recall it over such a long period of time. I couldn’t even begin to guess the biology of how that all works.

I went down to visit my family after service. They live a good hour or two’s drive out of town, all the way into another county. There is no mobile phone reception out there, because it is so remote. It’s out there far enough that the road near our house isn’t even paved yet. It’s a gorgeous drive, all through farm country, past horse farms, dairy farms, forests and logging operations, big plastic yuppie mansions, little dilapidated trailers and so on. It’s also in a colder climate zone, so it’s like driving back in time a couple weeks. There was still snow on the ground in places.

I am so thankful for the family God gave me. I could have been born to any family in the world, but I was placed in mine. They’re all good smart people, with practical skills and lots of creativity. With all of the bad families and broken families out there today, that really means a lot. We hung out for a few hours, guaranteeing I wouldn’t get any homework done tonight, but it was worth every minute I spent. I got there just in time for my parents’ first skype call. We talked with my youngest brother, who is still in college. Next holiday we’ll probably try to connect to my aunt and uncle who still live in New England. But that’s one more skill my parents have picked up as they approach retirement age.

My father was using the last of their winter squash today. That was perfectly timed, as the spring greenery should start coming up soon for them. None of the vendors at the local farmers’ market seem to have been able to produce squash that would last more than a couple weeks in my basement storage, but my father’s squash lasted as long as I kept them for. I don’t know why that is, but I was impressed to see one on their counter tonight, looking as fresh as it was on the autumn day it was harvested.

It was hard to leave to go home, but I always try to leave before dark so that I don’t have to worry about hitting big game on the way home. Deer tend to move about at dawn and dusk, and hitting one at highway speeds can total a car, if not kill the driver. I was lucky. I didn’t even see a deer, but I did have to stop for someone’s escaped goose who thought it would be a good time to hang out on the warm pavement. It’s a good thing I’d already slowed down because of the boneheaded yuppie in the late model Toyota that was tailgating me for a mile before. I slow down for busy farms anyway, but the unsafe behaviour of my pursuer made me slow down slightly more, making the difference between a somewhat urgent but comfortable stop and slamming on my brakes at the last minute. Sometimes even life’s annoyances can be blessings in disguise.

OK, maybe I will say something about cliquishness and exclusivity: I don’t understand it. I’ve never needed a particular person to be around in order to be happy. Even when I’ve been in serious committed dating relationships, I’ve always been able to find fulfillment in whatever group of people I happened to find myself with. I guess in a way I feel sorry for people who live lives so limited that they never try anything new, who stagnate in the company of only those people who think exactly as they do. I’m thankful I’m a recovering nerd who always hung out with whoever would have me, because now I’m that “whoever” to anyone else who may need me.

So, today I feel kind of connected with Jesus. He was that “whoever” guy to a lot of total freaks. In fact the only “presentable” “important” people we read about in his life were the people who ended up betraying him. So, in that sense, I’d have to say that this was the best Good Friday ever.

My inner bean-counter is screaming about the two hours of television. I might as well be an executive returning from a business trip with receipts for an all you can eat caviar bar and a whorehouse. My vocab tonight, by comparison, took just over an hour to enter. If I hadn’t made the extravagant “time purchase” of two hours of staring at the television last night, I could have been done with my Arabic vocab and could have spent tonight studying it or working on one of the eleven assignments. Or is that not true?

I was pretty exhausted last night, and pretty burnt out from two hours of class in the afternoon. It’s doubtful I would have gotten the vocab entered in only a bit over an hour, if I’d attempted it last night. Chances are, it would have taken two hours easily, and with a lot of mistakes. Meanwhile, I would have been soured on the whole study thing and probably wouldn’t have bothered to do any of it tonight, if I only had an hour to spend on it, and would have ended up worse off than I was by taking the time out to unwind. But did I really need two hours, or would one have sufficed, allowing me to get to bed early and rest my tired brain?

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Even God, master of the protestant work ethic, demands that we take one day out of seven to relax and unwind and spend time being thankful and unburdened. Jesus would frequently take time out of his speaking/miracles schedule to go unwind and check out nature, or pray, or catch up on some sleep. Laziness, or sloth, is a sin, but you could also argue that overwork is too. We’re only human. The time to smell the roses isn’t just when we’re weeding under them or rocketing past them on the riding mower. It’s good to stop from time to time and enjoy something with the same purity of focus that we spend on our work.

I may have squandered two hours last night, and probably an extra one for lunch today, but in the long view of things, I’ve probably more than broken even. Things are still in working order.

Meanwhile, I’m only a third of the way through making the flash cards I won’t have time to study this Easter weekend, and haven’t even begun to review the eleven assignments my Arabic teacher decided to give us, or study for the test on Wednesday. And now two friends have called to beg up rides to tomorrow night’s Bible study, because the guy who normally drives them has decided he wants to do something else. At least I can honestly say that I haven’t felt unneeded or bored in a very long time!

So, my Arabic homework is not done, and my house isn’t as clean as it could be, but I know how my family is doing. And I lent my church key to some friends who needed a quiet place to pray. And I talked with another friend who is feeling under the weather, and we encouraged each other about the great times we’re going to have this summer, and this month. So, though my to do list would beg to differ, I got everything done today that I needed to.

I also got caught up with all but the last three exercises of the twelve assigned to us last week. And I did my grocery shopping, and picked up coffee. It’s great being able to catch up with things that have been piling up. I even got a chance to watch some TV.

None of that compares to being able to sleep in until after 8am. Cashing in a vacation day is worth it just for the rare experience of being able to wake up rested on a weekday. What a difference!

Today, the weather got unexpectedly nice, and I was able to go outside and walk around my yard a bit. I emptied out some old planters, sat in the sun for a few minutes, and discovered that my violets are in bloom. Inside the house, I discovered new shoots on my winter savory plant. Winter savory is like a fruitier version of thyme. My mother swears by it in her bean soups, and is always asking for more plants since she seems to use hers to death. If I remember correctly, mine is a cutting from hers, which was a cutting from one of mine that I killed. If that’s true, it will be fun to give her a cutting of a cutting of a cutting this spring. But in the meantime, it’s always exciting to see new growth on a plant that’s been dormant for months. Unexpected blessings are great kindling for hope.