Author: cdwan

Man, I answer a couple of support questions and all of a sudden they’re all like “OMFG, you’re really, really answering mail right now! We have a bunch of totally new feature requests that we’re going to phrase as bug reports in the hope that you’ll spend the whole day rewriting major portions of your code to address them! Please please please please please?”

It’s nice to be loved, and it’s nice to know that people actually use this stuff … but I sometimes see the wisdom in just letting the phone ring until it stops.

I’m sitting in a Chipotle, beginning to digest the tortilla wrapped mound of gluttony that I just ate my way through. This Chipotle is next to the “Short Pump” mall, just across the street from the Starbucks where I spent the morning slamming through 33 support tickets. All praise real high speed internet. It’s worth two hours on the road sometimes.

Went for a run yesterday, and then hit the punching bag for a while. Then, my dad and I spent some time clearing paths in the woods. Today, he’s back at work for a half day.

The suburban world is pretty weird, having been out in the country for a few weeks. Some of the amenities are nice and all … but how can this many people *possibly* live this close together?

Planning a quick run back to Providence for the first part of next week. I miss my spouse and cats … and I need to see the house. Probably Sun – Wed or so, then back here.

The beach house is as beautiful as ever. Somehow it seems more poignant and filled with memories now.

Thoughts on the beach

Here’s a fairly horrifying opinion piece in the NY Times about maternal health in the developing world. Kristof’s numbers are that:

* A woman in Ethiopia has a 1 in 14 chance of dying in childbirth during her life (7%).
* Worldwide, the rate of *injury* during childbirth is 20 times the rate of *death* during childbirth.

If you’re at all interested in such things, it’s a decent read.

Greetings from the beach. My dad and I decided that instead of moping around the house, we would mope where we can see the ocean.

Actually, there’s not all that much moping going on at all.

Nyah nyah.

We found a whole trailer full of family stuff this afternoon.

My dad and I were busily sinking 4x4s in the hopes of suspending the heavy punching bag and getting a workout. It should be noted that digging post holes through Virginia red clay is plenty of a workout, all by itself, as is toting lumber and mixing concrete. Anyway, we wanted to find the bag … and my dad remembered that it was in the trailer they used to move stuff down from DC to here.

We opened up the trailer, and it was full of boxes. Many of these boxes said things like “old family photos.”

Yep, so now I’ve got eight banker-boxes sitting on the table, here in the schoolhouse, looking at me. I decided to take a look through them:

* naturalization certificates from the late 1800’s
* Photos of my grandfather, in his 20s.
* Pictures of my great, great grandmother … cooking something on a stove.
* A letter of introduction from a parish church in Prussia … which my ancestors carried across the ocean with them in the hopes that it would be of some good with the Prussian community in Detroit.

Now I’ve got the scanner out, and I’m plugging through a few of them. I dunno … it seems that the paper is going to fall apart pretty soon here, but if I can go digital then these things will survive at least a little longer.

Vignette:

There was a strange little orphan of a card in the mailbox yesterday, with no stamp. It said something like “I noticed all the sympathy cards, and the people coming and going, and I asked at the store up the street. I’m so sorry for your loss. Sincerely, Rhonda – your mail carrier.”

Now *that’s* country.

Drove to NASA today. 2.5 hours. Turned a 60TB SAN into a 90TB SAN. Found a way to move 10TB off an old and decrepit piece of storage hardware. Ate too much chinese food. Waited for the damn data transfer to finish. Ate too much sushi. Drove back to the farm. Another 2.5 hours. Sat in the hot tub. Glass of wine. Sleep now.

Okay, I must advise you to *not* watch this. It’s a mind virus. It infects your brain and spreads through your psyche, leaving you gibbering and useless … and giggling at inappropriate moments. Plus, it includes both profanity and sexual innuendo.

Should you decide to watch it, and if you happen to want them, here are the lyrics, be warned, they are vile and crude.