Cream Ale And Cider

My friend Chili turned me on to this delightful mixture...Cream-Ale and Cider, equal parts. It is presently my new favorite drink.

Pour in the cream ale as you normally would, but stop halfway. Then pour in the cider. Let it foam and then settle. Drink. Drink. Drink. When glass is empty, repeat all the previous steps.

Delightful. I'm going to have to stock up!

Delinquent

I've been terribly delinquent again in keeping Fever Head current. Further attempts at stress reduction led to: ignoring the computer except for quick email scans, having multiple gatherings/booze-ups with friends, catching up on much-needed house work, et cetera. Little was done online, and quite frankly I enjoyed it.

Smacky and I spent last night at the neighborhood association meeting. I had hoped we would vote on the proposed revisions to the Deed of Restrictions. Unfortunately, the vote was derailed because yet again we are stuck endlessly discussing ONE clause of the whole deed, which affects at best less than five people, but who endlessly complain and argue without proposing anything meaningful. Add to those few the people who crawled out of the woodwork for the vote, despite having ignored a year's worth of meetings about these revisions, and the night was essentially a wash. Ahhh, politics. People and politics both suck.

It makes me wonder what I was thinking when I offered to run for Trustee-At-Large for this year's elections. Essentially a tie-breaker vote, the TAL position would let me get a feel for what an officer of the association does, without jumping in over my head. If elected, I'm not certain if I'll continue past the first term, but I figured I should at least try. I'm one of the younger people in the neighborhood expressing an interest, so maybe that will bring a little life to things. Who knows? I guess I'll find out in October if I won the election.

Before I go attend to other duties this evening, I thought I'd share a link. I WANT GECKO FEET! I WANT GECKO FEET!

Web Of The Day #12

DIY Parts
So you're a geek. Perhaps you're also a pack-rat. If you are like me then you are both, and your house is a graveyard of old electronics, computer components, and miscellaneous "stuff." (Note, I refuse to say the word "junk." Nothing is junk if you or someone else might have need of it.) But sometimes you just HAVE to clear some space, lighten your load, et cetera. That's where DIY Parts comes in. It's a virtual geek swap meet. Post your stuff. Read others' stuff. Trade. Give. Take. Whatever. Cool.

Ebert Gets Medievil On Their Ass
Sure, most of us probably think Roger Ebert is an over-inflated gas-bag. Sure, most time you just ignore him. But you have to read this article. Ebert totally destroys the makers of a film. Why? Because he tried to be nice and just give it a "zero star" review with a smattering of rhetoric. They responded with a public letter questioning his review. At which point, Ebert respond by publishing their letter, and then following it with an excoriating screed against them that would wither a granite statue. Wow.

Roberts Not Scary -- Just Creepy
So far Roberts has survived the historical combing of his record. At most it turns up a strong, procedural attorney with love for the law, willing to argue points of law that he may or may not personally agree with. A tongue-in-cheek remark here or there. So far, not entirely scary even if his politics are not what I want for the O'Connor seat. However, this news of his "interviewing" for the O'Connor seat while presiding over a critical "War On Terror" case...it just doesn't sit well with me. Sure, he may claim no conflict of interest. Sure, there isn't a "clear" conflict of interest. But this is a little too suspect to ignore.

Scientists Say They Can GROW Meat
Ummm. Not sure how I feel about this one. Ok, it might be great for the environment and our long-term health. But it is still rather creepy. A lot more creepy than organic/less-toxic farming and slaughter. A lot more creepy than eating less meat in general. In general...cool, but creepy.

Good Science Saves Lives
Water. Very important to all life. Clean water is even more important. Not one, but two, small, efficient water purifying devices. Clean water. Yum!

Finally Over

Months of stress, headcaches, and angst have come to an end. This past Saturday was my best friend's wedding. The drive there was peaceful enough, the ceremony was tortuous (Catholics really seemed determined to make you suffer to attend your loved one's matrimonial proceedings), the reception was OK, and every building involved was at least 80 degrees or higher. Not fun environs when wearing pounds upon pounds of wool around your waist, an undershirt, a dress shirt, a tie, and a coat. Ugh. I was swimming in my clothes before I even got to the bar. But the lovely young bartender mixed the LITs strong, so the day became survivable. We drove home after it all, bathed, and collapsed in the air-conditioned safety of our home.

I feel as if I have swum from the bottom of the ocean, lungs bursting for air, chest caving in from the pressure of the water, only to finally breach the surface and be able to breathe again. I want to laugh, weep, scream, and yell. I want to collapse in exhaustion. I want to dance a jig. I want to relax. I want to move. I want to withdraw. I want to go out. I want to be numb. I want to feel pain.

Mostly, I just want to spend time with my friends and family. To decompress from the hell this summer has been. To eat, drink, and be merry, for I never know if I will have another tomorrow.

Web Of The Day #11

French Scientist Uses Genius To Save Lives
This is good stuff. A scientist not only creates a product that helps solve an ongoing problem with starvation in children, he does it in a simple, straightforward, cost-effective way. A simple collection of nutrients in the right delivery package, less likely to spoil than milk (take that dairy political action groups!), and can be administered by the parents rather than over-worked out-numbered doctors. This guy deserves a Nobel Prize, and a round of drinks from everyone on the planet.

Plastic's "Perfect Album"
I purposefully did not go through my music collection to try to answer the question of a "perfect album." I can, however, provide a few without even thinking about it:

PJ Harvey - Rid of Me: Raw, emotional, visceral. You can almost hear the nervous breakdown. Played on headphones, you feel like you are in the room with the band, thanks to Albini's incredible recording and production. Recorded in two days, mixed down in a handful more, it is a two-week masterpiece of hard-hitting emotional roller-coaster.

The Cure - Faith: One of the Cure's tightest and most impressive albums. Start to finish a memorable and amazing dive into the somber surreality of Smith and Co. The Holy Hour followed by Primary is among the best album openings of all time.

One Hectic Function Down, One To Go

Made it through the bachelor party in one piece. The stress about it all abated later in the week as the day approached, and the day went pretty well considering all the hard work that went into making it happen. We had a fun time, chatting, reminiscing, eating, drinking, playing cards. Low key, but fun.

We finally parted an hour or so before dawn. As I dropped into bed I was grateful that one source of stress was now behind me. All that is left is the wedding this Saturday, and then I can finally relax.

Not Dead Yet

Life has been incredibly busy of late. So busy I barely have time to spend on the computer much less spend any time posting here. My best friend is getting married in two weeks, I'm hosting his bachelor party at my house in a few days, projects at work are in crunch mode, and the house was so badly a mess we spent more than a week getting it presentable for this weekend's company. Blah. I hate being this busy. At least I'm not this busy and miserable.

Today was fun while at work. I pulled a shorter day after working 24 hours in the prior two days. Most of that time was spent doing edgy "fun" stuff. Big-time admins will know what I mean...the kind of work you do on a production system where if anything went wrong, you'd be standing before the man with no plausible defense. The kind of thing that is standard, but atypical. Like...moving production data around between disks in real-time to migrate to more standard disk configurations. I made 200GB of data move from non-standard-configuration disks to 200GB of standard-configuration disks all in a few hours. I defined the new disks, advertised them to the server, brought the new disks into the production group, mirrored the production volumes from the old disks to the new, broke the mirrors, and removed the old disks from the group and then the system. All of this as a real-time during-business-hours break-fix so we could then replicate that 200GB of data over 500 miles away and still meet project deadlines. Yum.

It's days like today that make being an admin fun. Normally, what we're doing is glorified user-space stuff. We setup a few accounts. We write a script. We run a command that needs admin privs. But sometimes, you get to do something "fun" that gets down into the thick of it, where you get to approach a big problem with your years of skill, hash out a plan, and implement it without the full safety net. There were a few moments today where I got a bit twitchy and wished I had waited for change documentation, change control, prevetative maintenance windows, et cetera...but for the most part I was smiling the entire time.

A little danger can make a dull administrator's day. We just don't want that EVERY day. Heh.