Category: Uncategorized

Every New Year’s eve is different. This one started off right, by destroying any document in the filing cabinet that I couldn’t come up with a damn good reason to retain. There is simply no reason to keep more than one year’s worth of utility bills, bank statements, credit card bills, or suchlike. It was also gratifying to destroy all record of my abortive DSL relationship with Verizon, as well as the crap from Bally’s, and some temporary credit cards from various stores … all since closed out.

Mounted the external sensor for the weather monitoring station we received for Christmas. I decided to hook it to what I thought was a massive callous on the maple tree in our yard. Apparently it wasn’t all callous because the thing has been weeping from the spot where I attached the sensor. I’m such a softie that I feel awful about this, even though I know that the tiny mounting screws aren’t going to hurt the tree in the long run. Go, go, anthropomorphic powers.

My new phone is the best! I picked up the new Motorola RAZR V3c, and it’s amazing! The little bluetooth headset is comfortable and functional, and I can voice dial with the phone in my pocket! The voice dialing is particularly impressive. I used iSync to dump my entire contact list into the phone. That part was standard Apple user bliss. “Hey, there’s a phone here that I can communicate. Do you want to synchronize your contact list and calendar with it?” Then I started looking for a way to record the names I would use to dial various numbers. That’s not how it works. It uses some kind of voice to text thingamabob to guess which name I said. I’m amazed. I tested out some of the more difficult names on my contact list (Dagdigian, Mukherjee, Van Etten, …) and it nailed them all flawlessly. For people with multiple numbers it asks “mobile, work, or home?” I then say “mobile,” and away we go.

Ah well. Off to the party.

Intel sent me a brand new machine for benchmarking. I plugged it in and got a system error about “processor speed mismatch.”

I got on the phone with the hardware guy that they’ve assigned to me, and he asked right away if I had both power supplies connected. I said “no.” He said that the system will throttle the CPUs if only one power supply is connected.

While this is good to know today, it also would have been useful knowledge a month ago, I think.

Also: I tore my jeans on the sharp metal corners on our racks in the machine room. Wah. Cold breezes up the pants for me on the way home.

Just pushed out the first release of the report I’ve been working on for what feels like my entire life (or since October, either way). It’s around 33 pages of dense gobbledygook. I have new sympathy for those of you who have subjected yourself to the thesis writing process. It sucks. Hopefully they’ll go “hooray! It’s done!” and not “very interesting, but you must do *these billion things* before we gush enthusiastically and honor your invoice.”

Today I’m imaging servers in preparation for the class I’m teaching next week. Flying to BWI on Monday evening to teach on Tuesday and Wed at the NIH. This is a pretty cool thing: One of our customers really wanted a class, but couldn’t afford it himself. He sent a note to some list within NIH telling everyone that they should bring me down … and 10 people signed up. Woot!

At karate last night, I got punched in the face by a 20 year old woman who was back from school for the holidays. It was a total accident, and she was suitably embarrassed and apologetic. I have *got* to start keeping my guard up though.

Made sauerkraut last night as well as four heads of green cabbage = 10 lbs of shredded cabbage. Mixed with salt, placed in a large crock. It’s burping and fermenting happily now. Supposedly it does this for 3-4 weeks, and then I preserve it. Either that or it goes horribly sideways and becomes compost. Either way, cool by me.

Also, rigged up the remote sensing weather station that we got for Christmas. I haven’t had a chance to mount the sensor outside yet, so right now we’ve just got warning about how cold it is in the bathroom, which we can see from the bedroom.

Listened to my Nano on the subway today on the way in. It rocked.

Back to my workout routine, and it hurts.

Went to the climbing gym for the first time in four months today, and now my arms are wrecked. I haven’t lost too much skill or balance … that part seems to be a permanent benefit. The loss is in grip strength and arm power. Over and over, I made the right move, but was unable to “stick” it. At least my climbing buddy was also in poor form.

Pictures from Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I’m going to put my mouth where my money is.

We’re investigating opportunities to go help out the critically under-served (and no, this doesn’t involve volunteering at a really busy bar). Turns out that having an Ob/GYN along opens all sorts of doors. Everyone needs redmed‘s skill set. I’m convinced that I can make myself useful somehow. So far the requirements we’ve figured out:

• Short-ish duration. We want to start with a week or so.
• We want to follow the State Department’s advice in terms of not going places where we’ll get killed or abducted.
• The program can’t require me to provide Christian ministry. I’m all good with being in a group of Christians, and with being part of a team that includes ministers and does ministry work. They just need to be able to accept that I’m not there to pray, preach, or convert. I’ll swing a hammer, but I don’t preach their gospel.

Suggestions?

OMFG.

My visceral hatred and rage for Verizon has been mollified, just the tiniest bit, by what just happened.

what happened

I’m feeling lethargic and overstuffed. Two straight weeks of travel, interspersed with holiday partying and missing my regular exercise have taken their toll. There is also the fact that we’ve eaten no fewer than five cheese plates in that time. Each one was remarkably good, and they all seemed like a good idea at the time … but wow. Five cheese plates in two weeks.

On the other hand, the partying with the family has been good. My brother in law and his wife showed up last night, bearing many gifts. The haul this year includes:

(more…)

Stayed up until 3 in the morning last night talking politics with my father in law. I learned that I spend *way* too much time reinforcing my own opinions with people who agree with me, and far too little actually trying to understand the point of view of the folks who hold different opinions from mine. Around 3 in the morning, we came to an important agreement, that staying up any later would be foolish.

Today was wonderfully mellow. I took one and a half naps, read in my books for a while, played with the household budget and the retirement plans online … and then went to the candlelight church service. Overall it was a very nice ceremony. We sang *all* the songs, lit the candles, greeted each other, and generally performed the ritual. There was an odd moment when the preacher made reference to the Bill O’Reilly thing about “Happy Holidays” when I wanted to yell “STOP WHINING!” but I refrained … which is better all around. Blend in, don’t make waves, be positive. redmed introduced me to a guy from her high school class who is now a falconer for the department of parks and recreation, and was in charge of using falcons to clear out the pigeon problem at the airport. Yes it’s true, there is a job that rocks harder than mine.

Many thoughts bumping around in my head, but the rum-filled-nog that my father in law served us is driving them away. He must have put a half bottle of the stuff in our four glasses before anyone noticed and said “wow, that’s pretty heavy on the pour there.” By then, of course, it was too late. We had no choice.

Merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.