I have a one-cup coffee maker for afternoons when a whole pot would be (a) overkill (b) temptation.
I just made a cup, but forgot to put the cup in the machine, so the coffee went all over the counter instead.
I’ve only done this twice before, once when I was 20, and once when I lived in Minnesota.
In both cases, a nap was very much in order. I think that the same holds true here.
Back from our travels. According to my calendar, I’m not leaving town again for nearly 14 days. Thank the Gods.
We stayed in a hotel last night to provide some space to Z and M after the baptism. They were still host to Granny and other family, so we sort of slid out under the radar. While the futon was plenty comfortable, the hotel was even better. The baptism went well overall, even taking into account the part where redmed bonked Dani’s head on the baptismal font, causing her (the baby, not my wife) to scream bloody murder at the front of the church. If you expect anything other than this when you bring a baby to a 1.5 hour church service, you are fooling yourself. Therefore, my expectations were met and I was content. The post party was fun too. We hung out and said “we’re the godparents” a lot.
It was excellent. On Saturday, Matt (dad to my goddaughter) had a spare ticket to the Michigan game, so off we went while redmed cooked six quiches and a torte with Zoe.. I hadn’t been to a game in perhaps 7 years, and it was a great time. Go blue, and all that.
Today, we headed to Manchester to meet up with Kim and _earthshine_ as well as to meet their kids Micha and Ari. The kids are adorable. As we pulled up, they started yelling from the porch: “Are you daddy’s friends?” It was really good to renew and update the friendship. Plus, they make a mean eggplant parmesan.
I’m vaguely irritated to have learned only upon our return that rev_e and logangray had a party on Saturday. Here, we just hung out at Arbor Brewing Company instead.
In unrelated news, there’s a new Evanescence album due to be released in Oct. I’m not too proud to say that I dig their stuff. It combines “crunchy guitars” with “passionate alto, rockin’ out”.
The Crocodile Hunter was killed by a stingray while filming an underwater documentary. Crikey.
In other news, the baptism went well. As expected, bringing a bunch of children into a church and then pouring water on them is not the best way to have a quiet and solemn ceremony. Still, it was really excellent to spend some time hanging out with Z and M.
Today, lunch with _earthshine_ and family, and then the airplane again!
On the left side of this page is the most creative music video I’ve seen in ages. Makes me long for the 80s. At least so far as music videos are concerned. Hey, wasn’t Osama Bin Laden our friend then? Weren’t we at war with Russia? No no no, we’ve always been at war with Bin Laden. We’ve always been friends with Russia. What was I thinking. Cool video though. Thanks TK.
Trip apparently went well enough that NASA wants to hire me for another batch of work. One trip a week? For six weeks in a row? I’m getting a little tired of this. Even rock stars need some downtime.
Headed to MI this evening. There until Monday. W00t.
I’m in a Starbucks in Hampton, VA. A woman in army camo just came in and ordered 12 shots of expresso in a large cup.
The thing that disturbed me was that the staff saw her coming in and knew that this is her regular order.
Wow.
8:40pm. Actual temperature in the low 90s. Dense, thick humidity. Cloud to cloud lightning is near constant, providing a stroboscopic illumination for my journalling, here on my third story balcony in Hampton, VA. Radio claimed that the “heat index” hit 109 today.
Spent my day training programmers. Revving them up, really. Whipping them into a frenzy of cluster-using, computing rage. It worked. I think that it worked really well. People seemed to enjoy the session, and I had more audience members after the lunch break than before. If things are going badly, then people tend to bail at lunch.
Spent my evening hanging out with a submarine officer who did his job interview with Rickover himself. Dude had some good stories. We griped about Bush, traded dirty jokes, and talked computing and power generation infrastructure. At the end of the day, he’s also the one who determines whether the people who decided to hire me get performance based bonuses. Good times.
His Rickover story: Apparently, he went to his interview and got there early. Like, 6am early. Got placed in a room with 50+ other potential nuclear submarine people (nucs). One guy in his group apparently went in and was asked “why do you want to drive one of my submarines?” The answer “to serve my country, sir.” Rickover looked at him and said: “Great. Pick up the flag by my desk, go over, and wave it out my window. I’ll tell you when to stop.” He then proceeded to interview other candidates while the dude was waving the flag. It’s not clear what was said after that, but said candidate did not get the job. The guy I was hanging out with, did.
The cluster seems to work. We’ll find out more tomorrow. The mission for tomorrow is twofold: Train the system administrators, and ask really hard questions of the stakeholders who will decide how to use the system. I think that the latter will be more fun. Questions like “When both of you have a deadline to meet, who gets precedence on the machine. Questions that local folks would have trouble asking … but since I’m leaving tomorrow … it’s all good.
I can feel the thunderstorm starting to move through, the pressure dropping, the cool air displacing the hot. Soon, the wall of water.
How is it that I’m on the way to achieving Marriot rewards Silver level in under a month? Is that a bad thing?
Back in Hampton, VA. On the road on the way in, I saw two aircraft carriers docked in the shipyard. God damn but those are big weapons.
Ate at my new favorite sushi place in Hampton. It’s low key, the sushi bar is in the back, and they serve good fish. I’ll be back tomorrow.
The race / class divide is very clear in the south of VA. White people go out and eat at restaurants, black people serve them. Koreans work at the Japanese owned sushi place. White people stay in the hotel, black people work the night shift at the desk. There are a few exceptions … but they’re notable for their scarcity.
Now, back to trying to slap my 190 slides into something with less words and more pictures. I don’t want my audience to die of boredom.
