Michael Steele

I'm moving to http://lagerhead.blogspot.com/

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Just wanted to put up this link to an article I wrote for SALUG showing some of the uses a UNIX Systems Administrator has for the AWK programming language.

Probably not interesting to non-technical types.

From Byte Magazine in April of 1995: The AeroComm GoPrint.

This was a wireless print server that I installed for the Catholic Office of Religious Education in Mobile some time between 1995 and 1998, while I worked for Computer Technical Services. Another uninteresting story about ORE is that about two years ago, I found out my first grade teacher was working there...

At any rate, these little things were cool. In 1995, they could create a small, server-less printer "network." You'd connect the base station to the parallel port on your printer, and connect a unit to the parallel port of each of your PCs. It seems like you could connect up to 6 PCs at the time. The thing knew how to spool print jobs from all 6 PCs, and keep them separate. Not only that, but the thing worked with DOS! Keep in mind Windows 95 had just come out, and was not being widely adopted at this point, so you could forget about networks. If you wanted a network back in the DOS days, you were most likely talking about Novell, and that was a very costly option a small office like the ORE could just not afford. Back to the point.. the damn thing just worked. No muss, no fuss.

The only printer sharing we'd done prior to this, was one of those crappy A <--> B parallel switch boxes hooked up backwards. The box normally worked to switch 2 printers to 1 PC. By plugging 2 PCs and 1 printer, users were able to switch the printer back and forth between themselves. If you were on PC A, and the switch was set to B, your print job just landed in the bit-bucket. As I recall, DOS didn't do much to check that there was actually a printer on the other end of that parallel port...

This was WELL before 802.11b had ever been heard of.

In fact, if I'm not wrong, this was before I'd ever even set up a network before... Let alone even heard of a print server. So, this thing was cool, and way ahead of its time. I don't know if it sold very well. I think it was pretty expensive, but still much less than buying a server for Novell, licensing the software, buying ethernet (or Token Ring... eww) cards for every PC in the place, having cable drops made, and paying someone to put it all together.

Here's a pic of one of the client side devices.

"Holy crap! Run! RUN!!!!"

If you're worried about how much money the oil companies have recently made, or the fact that they're making record profits, don't. There's something else you should be concerned about even more.

Even with the recent supply and distribution problems caused by the hurricanes, the "windfall" profits the oil companies have made amount to an average of $0.10 per gallon of gasoline sold in the US.

Ok, fine. 10 cents per gallon. It may be more than the 8 cents or whatever they were making before.

The thing that blows me away is that on a national average, the federal, state, and local taxes charged for every gallon of gas sold amount to more than $0.46. That's almost five times what the people who actually MAKE the stuff get! What the hell?!

Let's say you were selling ice cream cones for $3.00 a pop. And say it cost you $2.44 to pay your employess to make, distribute, and sell your ice cream cones. That would leave you with $0.56 cents of profit. Except that the government (who had absolutely nothing to do with the production of your ice cream cones) holds out their hand for $0.46 cents of that... Why would you even want to bother making ice cream cones any more?

Now, in reality, the oil companies are not paying these taxes. They are added to the gallon price you see at the pump. So the ice cream scenario doesn't quite wash, but I wanted to tell a story about ice cream cones, and this seemed like as good a time as any. Either way, before you start complaining about the greedy oil companies, you should first be mad at the local, state, and federal taxes that have been approximately 5 times that greedy for years.

One of the recurrent themes I've noticed about democrats is that they complain about greed a lot. Greed isn't illegal for the most part, unless someone statisfies that greed through illegal means (like embezzlement, etc...). However, {elected} democrats and even some republicans have used it as a tool for years... Get the poor and middle class to vote for them by claiming that they'll punish the greedy rich. And of course, they'll do it for good reasons... like... I don't know... welfare programs... So, they want to soak the greedy rich for "a good cause."

True conservatives differ significantly from this. Even the poor and middle class (where I am) among us. That is because poor and middle class conservatives know that greed is an excellent motivator. Some day, they wish to become the greedy rich. We think greed is good and acceptible, as long as two conditions are met. The first rule being that you don't do anything illegal. Greed on the part of corporations is also fine, as long as they don't break rule number one. Corporations provide jobs for people who would otherwise have none. Enron broke rule number one, so they get punished.

The second rule is that while greed is good among individuals and corporations, government greed is inherently wrong because government doesn't actually produce anything. This is not to say that government is useless. Only that (in Ciba parlance), they are not a profit-center, they are a COST-center. When I worked at Ciba, the IT department was always poorly treated because they did not produce any profit for the company. It mattered little that the IT department provided an essential service, when time were tough, the cost-centers were always put under close watch before the profit centers were. The government also provides essential services. But at Ciba, the IT department still managed to get away with just about anything without being fired, and we didn't have an annual budget of $6 trillion.

I found http://www.cityfreq.com that gives some pretty cool listings of radio frequencies used by various businesses and organizations around your town. Using my Yaesu VR-120, I've picked up quite a few in and around Huntsvegas.

Yesterday, after four years of on-and-off looking in boxes and bags packed in haste to move from Mobile to Huntsville in January of 2001, I found my Yomega Wing Force Yoyo. I call it the Great Masher because it is made from aluminum, and is freaking heavy. I've hit myself in the head with it enough times to know.

Less than five minutes after finding this thing, that I have legitimately been looking for since we moved away from Mobile, I got a phone call. North West Airlines had found my luggage. In Omaha, NE. A city I have never been to... Not even to change planes. They got it on the next plane to Hunstville, and now all of my missing stuff has come back to me. It was a harrowing 32 days, believe. Among other things, my CD case was in there, packed FULL of CDs, DVDs, and software. I'm really glad to have it back. Last weekend, as a sort of therapy, Amy and I went to Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsborough. All unclaimed luggage in the US allegedly ends up in this place, for sale, to the general public. It is definitely worth a trip. It ended up being quite therapeutic for me, because a lot of people lost much nicer and more expensive things than I did. Granted, now that I have my luggage back, everything is ok anyway.

The other curious thing, is that some how, this place ended up with the Hoggle puppet from Jim Henson's Creature Shop used in the Movie Labyrinth, although he looks quite rough now.

Found a decent article about the place here.

Sigh...

http://nyc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/150975/index.php

Then, there is this git.

This reminded me that I almost started a fight with a hippie at Huntsville's premier hippie-food store for wearing this T-Shirt:

I guess that's what I get for wanting good produce. Lucky for me, I remembered that this pratt's mother probably still dresses him.

It seems to me, that if you're that ashamed to live in the place, you'd go somewhere else. You know, somewhere your hippie conscience could allow you to live in peace without feeling that you're a hypocrite. Except the niggling little truth that there isn't a scrap of land on this ball of mud that hasn't been conquered by this group, routed by that, and Emperialized by the other. I mean, do you really think that the "Native Canadians" already just happened to speak French when the frogs arrived? Hell, do you think the frogs spoke Latin when the Romans arrived? (I don't know if they did or not, actually, I just really doubt it.)

No. There's nothing for it, except to move to Antarctica. There's never been a war there. The people have never been enslaved. None of that pesky "big business" (that by-the-way gives millions of people jobs world-wide) to deal with. Hell, I'm pretty sure you could set up a government to collect taxes and provide socialized health-care to everyone living there! You don't even have to worry about a place to live... Just build an igloo, and let your happy conscience warm you, heart-and-soul.

This brings me around to another one of America's great social injustices... Guantanamo Bay. For some reason, the American media still hasn't gotten around to informing us that every single detainee currently being held at Guantanamo Bay has received a hearing before a military tribunal. We are now starting to hear politicians (mostly on the left, but you never know what McCain wil.. wait... all from the left, of course) demanding that we close the prison. As the Guinness advert says: BRILLIANT!

The answer is simple. Close the prison, and release all of those evil cretins... in Antarctica! On second thought, they'd probably just end up dhimmifying the penguins (see here and here ... coming soon to a country near you...) and decapitating the hippies. Not to mention the lack of anything useful for them to blow themselves up trying to destroy.

Our history is not always something to be proud of. Ann Coulter argues that slavery is the second worst chapter in our history, ranking right behind abortion. What our government (and people) did to many American Indians wasn't our finest moment either. We sometimes get things wrong. This shouldn't be surprising, unless you are an idiot. But our value to the world, and our contribution to the world make this country the envy of the world. The fact that in 229 years, BILLIONS of people have lived free, happy, and productive lives makes this country great. The fact that we provide more food and aid to the poor and starving in the world than any other country proves that we are a responsive and responsible people.

So, to all of those who are ashamed of our country, our president, our history, our heritage, I encourage you to follow your conscience. Don't just live your life pretending that dissent is the most patriotic thing you can do. If you can't stand living as a hypocrite one day longer, please go and find somewhere else. Once you grow up, and realize that this is the greatest place to live in the world, you will find us still here, waving our flags, proud of our country, and protected by the brave men and women of our armed forces.

May 8-12 Newark, California: SunUP Network Forum

Wednesday

SunUP didn't start until 09:00 today. Missed the shuttle bus. No big deal. The campus is only a few miles from the hotel. Got delayed in toll-booth traffic for a few minutes. Drove straight to the right building, no wrong turns. This place is MUCH easier to get around than New York.

The first talk this morning was about the Sun-Fujitsu relationship. Basically it amounts to a way for Sun and Fujitsu to trade some technology for a few years, until they can find a way to screw each other. Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggy" until you can find a big stick.

Then came the Solaris 10 migration "Lessons Learned" session. This was possibly the best talk of the conference. Some of the highlights were:

• Most applications experience a performance gain simply by upgrading to Solaris 10.
• The IP Stack has been rewritten to vastly improve performance.
• A "Container" == A Zone + Resource Management.
• "Whole Root" local zones!!!
• All Zones in a domain share the same process table. So a fork-bomb in any local zone will crash the global zone. I knew this already, but it is nice to see Sun admit to it.
• Memory leaks in a local zone can also take down the global zone. I didn't know that, but I suspected.

It would be nice if Sun were actually able to get Zones to be as fine grained and self sufficient as LPARS on an IBM mainframe, but they have a LONG way to go.

This would have been the most appropriate discussion to bring up some of the gripes I had about Solaris, but it didn't seem right to voice them to the guy who migrated his datacenter to Solaris 10. It would have been REALLY nice to have had access to an actual Solaris Engineer.

Then we talked about the new DIMM replacement policy. Most sites like to replace DIMMs that are throwing Correctible memory errors, under the assumption that soft errors will lead to hard errors. Sun did some research, and found that 70% of these correctible errors were replaced on 'suspicion' of being bad. They collected 800 of these DIMMs that were throwing correctible errors, and ran them all for 5 months under heavy load. They found that at the end of that 5 month period, they didn't have a single non-correctible error (read system panic). I know that we replaced a LOT of them on our E10k machines in the first two years I was here.

The new policy is to replace a DIMM only if it has thrown 24 errors over 24 hours. I'm not sure how this meshes with the new Memory Page Retirement functionality that was introduced in Solaris 10, then back-ported to Solaris 9 and Solaris 8. It seems like MPR would retire pages of memory (essentially a "bad block map" for RAM) before they hit that threshold of 24 in 24, and you'd never see enough errors to replace a failing DIMM. They had a customer testimonial, and the guy said that they don't bother replacing a DIMM until the memory error is logged as persistent. That is how we've treated them for the most part over the last few years, anyway.

Sun also suggested the new cediag. This new and presumably useful tool does not ship with the OS, but instead the 5.0 version of the explorer package. Talking of which, why isn't explorer part of the OS by now??

The only choices for technical break-out sessions were "Capacity Management" and "Disaster Recovery." I stayed for the DR discussion. It wasn't very useful unfortunately. That being said, I'd like to see more break-out sessions next time, particularly ones with Solaris engineers.

The next discussion was on Time Dependant Reliability (snooze). The guy giving the talk was so far above the heads of the audience it wasn't funny. The crux of his argument was that MTBF is a poor tool for reliability analysis.

The last thing we did was to plan the next meeting. Hopefully, it will be at Sun's Broomfield campus. Fat Tire is plentiful near Broomfield because the brewery is less than an hour away. I've done the tour, and quite enjoyed it.

Wednesday night, I had dinner with Stephen. As good as it was to see Shannon, it was better to see Stephen because I did get to hang out with Shannon and So Jung over Christmas. Stephen, I hadn't seen since one week before I got married, very near five years. Stephen didn't have long. Something about Google working him to death, I suspect. Still, it is incredible to me that with real friends, the passage of time evaporates when you get together. It has been eleven years since high school, and it just didn't matter. I really appreciate that, since it reassures me that I made the right choices in friends so long ago. We ate at the same steak place I had eaten at on the first night. I had two Lagunitas India Pale Ales which claim to be made with 65 different malts and 43 different types of hops. That is incredible. Needless to say, the first one was so good, I had to have a second. Stephen had to leave early, but it was so good to hang out with him that I didn't care. Hopefully, I'll get to go back some time.

Thursday

Got up at 09:30. Checked out at just before 10:30. On the I880 toward San Jose. I only missed one turn going into the airport, mostly due to construction around the airport. Flight was supposed to depart at 12:15 PDT. We had to wait on the plane at the terminal for an hour, while they fixed the plan with duct tape. Seriously. Ok, ok... so the problem was that one of the overhead bins came unhinged, and they had to tape it closed. I really didn't think I'd make my flight from DFW to HSV, and I was certain my luggage wouldn't. Fortunately, I got to the gate just as boarding was starting. My luggage also made it to HSV unharmed. All-in-all, long, boring, and full flights, but safe ones. I got to Huntsvegas at about 20:15, made it home by 21:00.

May 8-12 Newark, California: SunUP Network Forum

Tuesday
Set the clock for 06:30. Then 06:45. Then 06:50. Amy called 06:46. Got up. At least I didn't have to iron anything.

Got the shuttle-bus to Sun's Menlo Park campus. Like everything here, it was beautiful. Nice view of the bay and of the mountains. Nice green trees. Just like everything here.

Signed in with about 50 or 40 other people. They had packets on the table with everyone's names on them. When you got your packet, they handed out Mikasa crystal wine stoppers in the shape of grapes. This is wine country, I suppose, but that was the strangest schwag I've gotten since EMC handed out toe nail clippers in 1999. Once you got in the door, they had a table full of circa-1999 Sun Blueprints books for grabs. I snagged 6 different ones. A nice addition to the book shelf, but they are all hopelessly out-of-date and mostly useless.

This was a long freaking day. We started at 08:30 PDT, and didn't really stop until 18:30 PDT. By about 15:45, I was ready to start throwing things. Really, people. If you have this much junk to cover, make it a three day conference!

As a result of the long time sitting, I began to think of ways Sun annoys me.

1. Solaris excluded, Sun isn't any good at making software. They have a lot of tools that are either half-finished, half-useful, half-tested, or half-assed in some other way I haven't listed yet. Worse than that, they have a lot of products with overlapping functionality, and don't really seem to understand the concept of code reusability. I really wish they'd get their act together, particularly with systems management software. They spent probably three hours out of the day, showing off several new offerings that they were really proud of, but were nothing more than an extension of the current mess they have (or in a couple of cases, completely new messes. One dude told us about this new program going by the moniker SMC. I don't remember what SMC stands for in this case because Sun already has at least three other products called SMC.

2. Product names. Is it Netscape Directory Server? Or maybe iPlanet. Or maybe SunOne. Uh... how about Java Directory Server? Sun Management Center (SunMC, not to be confused with Solaris Management Console: SMC) apparently used to be called Symon. Netconnect is now being renamed into two different products (that only half-work at this point). PLEASE stop renaming things. Or at very least, remove all of the old names from the documentation.

3. Java AWT(Abstract Window Toolkit)/Swing. It is old. It is slow. It looks like it has been beaten with an ugly stick. When most people say "Java sucks!" they are talking about AWT/Swing applications. For some reason, Sun has chosen to make all of their systems management applications with Swing, rather than native tools using C and probably GTK (since they are now shipping Gnome). These apps look like they were written in 1989. They are way too slow to be useful to anyone. They only work half the time. If you need to update the Java Virtual Machine on your box, they probably won't work at all. If you need to run them over a remote X-Windows session, the best thing to do is forget it. Curiously enough, Sun are not the only guilty party here. Veritas has recently perpetrated this with their NetBackup admin client. I think that Apple did it right by providing a Java interface into Aqua. As a result, you can write Java apps that at least look like native applications, though they may not always behave like native apps. From what few I've seen, they actually perform like native apps too. What Sun should to is to hire some GUI designers from Cupertino to work on a replacement for Swing (which was a replacement for the AWT), or just freaking license the Java + Aqua layers. Yeah, right. I know that UNIX is predominately a text-oriented system. I am fine with that. However, if you're going to provide GUI tools and force us to use them for some tasks, PLEASE make them useable.

   In a lot of ways, I think that Apple has ruined things for other UNIX vendors, by proving that UNIX can look good and be functional.

4. Could you guys please make better LDAP server and client configuration tools?! This is one thing Microsoft has got right. It is really easy to configure a secured Active Directory server, and connect clients to it, without ever passing clear text passwords over the wire. Replication to redundant servers is apparently not very difficult either. They have had this working well enough since NT 4.0, and you haven't. Period. If system administrators can manage to figure out exactly what documentation they need for the Directory Server, it is possible to get an LDAP server running, with clients authenticating to it in probably about 48 hours if you've never done it before. Now try adding TLS. Good-freaking-luck. We don't need to go dinking around with ten different tools for creating self-signed certificates, etc. You should assume that:

   1. We need Transaction Layer Security by default. These days, it is NOT acceptable to pass clear-text passwords over the wire, unless I specifically tell you to.

   2. Unless I tell you differently, self-signed certificates are OK. Ask me if I have a "Real" cert, and if not, CREATE A FREAKING CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY. Make the admin tools smart enough to push the proper trusts out to the clients when I initialize them. Instructions for working with self-signed certificates that say things like: "Open the Netscape Web Browser" are NOT ACCEPTIBLE. This needs to be automated, easy, and above all needs to "just work."

   3. pam_ldap needs to be smart enough to allow RSA key authentication for password-less logins over SSH. You might be able to talk me out of that one. It would at least be nice if a system administrator could allow that for specific accounts.

   4. Kerberos integration should be documented and as easy to implement as it is on Windows (nearly invisible).

   In other words right now, the Directory Server that ships with Solaris is just a tool. Sun needs to evolve a little bit by providing the tool integrated with the design, configuration, and deployment tools to make it useful quickly.

5. Jumpstart needs to be updated to be smart enough to use DHCP. There NO excuse for this. And "Go download JET" isn't a good answer either, unless Jet both grows up and gets shipped with the OS. Again, this needs to be automated, easy, and just work. We have to use this tool often, and have committed significant time into customizing it for our environment. We shouldn't have to dance around RARP any more, since DHCP has been the standard for at LEAST 10 years.

The patch management discussion nearly drove me over a cliff. They are trying to make better tools, but it looks like they are worse and that is really a shame. I can't imagine that people are going to want to use these tools unless something dramatic happens. If Sun are planning to charge for these tools, I will laugh.

The most interesting quote of the day was "You cannot manage availability. Availability is a result." That is simple, but quite profound, and I'm glad they are thinking along those lines. Also interesting is the statistic they gave of the % chance of a system administrator inadvertently causing an unplanned outage: 1 in 200. So, every time I log into a machine, I have a .5% chance of causing down time such as accidentally rebooting production instead of a development machine, etc. Excellent.

Over all, I left the first day of the conference a LOT more agitated than when I went in. Hopefully I will get some opportunity to provide input (read vent) about some of these things tomorrow.

We did get a chance to tour the iForce center today. That was pretty neat, but I already have an E25k, and they could have done the tour in 20 minutes instead of more than an hour. It got old fast.

I skipped the free dinner, in favor of going to the Apple Store in Palo Alto. It wasn't worth the time. I was very disappointed in it, as the Mac Resource in Huntsville is way better than this place. Ate at PF Chang's in Palo Alto. Had the Orange Peel Shrimp and a Fat Tire. All I ask of life is a plate of shrimp(or maybe oysters) and enough Fat Tire to choke a goat. Maybe one day, New Belgium will expand enough to be able to ship to Alabama. For that matter, maybe one day Alabama will change their beer laws to make that worthwhile.

Got Amy a present, then headed back to the hotel.

May 8-12 Newark, California: SunUP Network Forum

Monday
No required SunUP events today. I think most people used today as their travel-day since Sunday was Mother’s day (thanks again, Hallmark). Woke up at about 8:00 PDT/10:00 CDT. Let me tell you... It was nice. I still haven't gotten used to DST, so I felt like I was taking my hour back.

Got all of my ironing for the week done. This is always a PITA, but at least it is done now, and I won't have to worry about ironing anything else until I get home. Got out on the road. Took US-101 into San Francisco. Crossed the bottom deck of the Bay Bridge, then turned around and headed back into SF on the upper deck. That was a really nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, etc... Drove around down-town SF for about 30 minutes... Seen one city, seen them all, and what do you know... It looked JUST like it does on TV.

I'd killed enough time. Now it was 13:00, and time to head to Monterey. I didn't bring/buy a paper map. But I got good directions from Google Maps, plus I had the GPS. I'd done a good job of route planning, making sure to go through Cupertino. I quickly typed in "1 Infinite Loop" into my Garmin eMap, drove there (there is a REALLY nice looking Target just around the corner), and took a GPS waypoint in the parking lot of Apple Computer's main campus. It was really a nice campus. Didn't have much time, so I didn't dally. Back on the road.

Talked to Sutton about 15 minutes out of Monterey. Great timing. Monterey/Pacific Grove was absolutely beautiful. Seeing Sutton again was awesome. It is amazing to me that it has been more than 10 years since we went our separate ways, and when we get back together, it is like nothing has changed. Shannon and I have each traveled a boat-load of miles on a lot of different roads since high school. Despite that fact, I still regard him as a brother.

Shannon, you have an awesome wife who understands you. I know that because I can see it. Not many people have that, but I can tell you from experience, that it makes life enjoyable and worth living. Brandon, you'd better be taking notes.

Shannon took me on a brief but very productive beer hunt. Didn't find the Stone Vertical Epic that I was looking for, but they had Fat Tire (and New Belgium Abbey). I know that I'm going to Denver next month (it is a traveling year, after all), but I just couldn't wait. I know that there are many good California beers that are worth my time (I bought a bottle of Lagunitas something-or-other that is still in the rental car). But when New Belgium brews are available, I just can't help myself. Fortunately, I restricted myself to $15. It was difficult, but I managed. We also discovered that Shannon's dog, Judith, likes dried banana chips. I doubt that our feline would be so inclined, unless someone's making fish-flavoured bananas now.

Also of note was the really cool tree in Shannon's front yard that had purple flowers and orange leaves. I wish I knew what kind of tree it is because Amy would love it, and try to plant a dozen of them.

May 8-12 Newark, California: SunUP Network Forum

This is turning out to be quite the year for travel. I guess that is a good thing because it certainly makes life more interesting. However, it tends to generate a lot of extraneous paperwork, particularly when traveling for work.

Sunday
Not much here. I had a 12:55 flight from Huntsville to Dallas, to San Jose. Had weather going into Dallas, but landing wasn't too bad. I found out that the Scurvy Pirates make really good nerve-calming music leaving out of Huntsville. I'm kind of strange about flying. I usually am pretty freaked out during my first take-off on any given trip. After about 10 minutes in the air, I usually calm down for the rest of the whole trip. Somehow listening to "Worse Things than Dying" helped this time.

To get myself into the California state of mind, I dug up all of the California songs on my iPod at 35,00 feet. Ok, there only turned out to be two. Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Californication" and the Dead Kennedy's "California Uber Alles." Fitting.

The approach into San Jose was ridiculously "entertaining." I've had worse landings, but there were a couple of pilots sitting behind me cracking wise the whole way down.

Got my luggage, and drug it out to the shuttle-bus stop.

Douglas Adams wrote somewhere in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, something about having that inner twinge that lets you know just exactly how far you've gone from the place of your birth, and in that instant, experiencing some small part of the vastness of the Universe. On Earth, he wrote, most people don't really notice it because you can never be more than 36,000-odd miles from your birth-place at any time. Regardless, while waiting for the bus to the rental car place, I got the twinge. It isn't unusual for me. It was just a small matter of wondering why (oh, why) did I make the decision to take 10 hours out of my life, to go careering across the sky at 35,000 feet in a pressurized metal tube, and end up 2000-odd miles from the relative comfort, safety, and routine of my home. What possessed me to do such a thing, and why the hell am I here, when I could be at home? Douglas Adams fans would probably answer: "Excitement, Adventure! Really Wild Things!!!"

I got to the rental car place, and secured an upgrade... I'm a careful driver, but I don't consider compact cars to provide much protection in the unlikely event of a crash. Besides, it was only a couple quid more per day. I ended up with a Camry (grey) that came fully equipped with a Sirius radio. Ahh... right at home then. I found the hotel very easily, after only a 20 minute drive (and only one wrong turn). GPS is a lovely thing, and I don't think I'd ever like to travel without one ever again (ever).

Found a steak joint across the road from the hotel. Had a nice NY Strip (medium, thank you), and my very first draft Sierra Nevada. The bottled version is good, but this was awesome. Google maps tells me that I am less than 200 miles from the brewery. Nice.

Amy found this today. I guess that it is possible, but I really don't believe it is. Regardless of the fact that in the late 1800s, the Coden area used to be a resort, the Mobile side of the bay has been known as the "Working" side of the bay for a long time. Also, I doubt that there is much that the developers can to to change the water from muddy brown to anything moderately resembling a pretty blue or lovely green, and ceartainly not "crystal clear."

April 9-10 Oak Mountain State Park, Birmingham, AL.

Tony Cowan was in Birmingham for a Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia event on Saturday. He was planning on staying the night so he could hang with Robb for a while. So, I suggested the we just camp out in the park. Bought a cheap 8'x8' Coleman tent the night before... $38 at Wal-mart. Excellent. I haven't been camping properly since I was about 16. It was LONG past time to do it again. Got to the camp site just at dusk. Got the tent set up, but it was too dark to go dinking around for fire wood. Went to the little camp store, and it was $5 for a bundle of about 7 or 8 bits of split log. I only bought one, which was enough to get the fire started.

It ended up being me, Tony, and a guy called Zack from Mobile. Robb show up after he got off of work... around 9 PM. Knowing that the beer in the metal cup thing had been so successful before, I brought 3 litres of my brown ale. That stuff should be gone soon. All of the Scottish Ale is already gone. So we drank some beer, grilled some food, and poked the fire for a few hours. By midnight, all of the food was gone. So was all of the firewood and charcoal that I had packed with me. The camp store was closed by 9 so, we were pretty much out of luck. Robb had the bright idea to go to a grocery store to find some. We had talked just a few minutes earlier and discovered that both Tony and this Zack guy used to work at Delchamps. So, someone suggested that we go to Delchamps for firewood. Then Robb made the quote of the night: Unless you're driving a Delorean, we're not going to Delchamps.

Then again, maybe you had to be there.

We found a place open, but they didn't have any proper fire wood. They had charcoal, but what we needed was light. And charcoal isn't renowned for burning brightly. We settled on a couple of those freaky firelog things. Turns out, they were just what we needed. Three of them burned all night, and threw enought light to see by. The campground rules said "no open fires" but there didn't seem to be anybody paying attention to that. We also didn't pay much attention to the no glass bottles rule.

Robb ended up leaving at about 3:30 AM. It was a nice night, so I just layed my sleeping bag out on the picnic table. This was the first time I've used one of those mummy style bags. It was a bit clostrophobic for about the first 10 minutes. Then I started to get cold, and it was fine. The bag is rated to -10 F, and I now believe it will take it. Sweet.

At about 10:00 PM Saturday night, Amy's dad called, so I just called her and told her to call him. Apparently, her grandmother had fallen and broken her hip. So, she called me at 7:00 AM Sunday. I got up, broke camp, then drove home. It was a good trip, and I really enjoyed catching up with Robb and Tony again. Now that I have all the gear, I'll probably go more often.

Dear Moby,

Please just shut up and play your music. It is very entertaining, but there is no need to prove to the world how stupid you are.

Regards,

Everyone.

March 24-27 Grand Rivers, KY

It has been a while, but I thought that I would write about it anyway. March the 24-27, Amy and I took a short and much-needed weekend trip to Kentucky with Brandon and Miranda. It couldn't have been a better trip. We got a cottage on Kentucky Lake, at a place called Lighthouse Landing. LL is in Grand Rivers, KY, and is located at the north border of the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. This is really the first time Amy and I have taken a weekend off to go anywhere other than Mobile since we moved to Huntsville.

LBL is a great place to go. The park is huge. It took us over an hour to drive through the length of it. We got to see many different types of wild animals... Bison, elk, deer, turkeys, skunks... All I can say is that Bison are freaking huge. The first one I saw was from a distance, and I just thought he was a particularly hilly part of the terrain. I was quite surprised to see this hill stand up and walk around.

We left from our house on Thursday morning, drove to Nashville, then got onto I-24. About 6 miles from the TN/KY border, Brandon called back and wanted to stop for an early lunch. He saw a Subway sign, and headed for it. When we got to the Subway, it turned out to be one of those Subway-in-a-gas-station thinggies that I typically distrust. In the process of ordering, we worked-out that some weeks previous, this particular deli had severed all afflilation with Subway. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the worst meal of the trip. Fortunately, no one got sick.

We got to Lighthouse Landing about 3 hours and 20 minutes after leaving home. The place is sort of 3/4 marina with %25 cottages and RV campground attached. The weather was still just a little too cold for most people at that point. Which means that it was perfect for me, and had the side-effect of keeping most of the people away. We also got a good discount on the cottage.

The cottage was about the same as staying in a fully furnished extended-stay hotels. The kitchen came fully equiped. Stove. Microwave. Toaster. Coffee Maker. Freaking dish washer. There was some wicker furniture, a table, a bedroom, and a bathroom on the bottom floor. The top floor had a bedroom and a foyer with a pull-out couch. You could have easily had 6 people stay here without too much stepping on of toes. Most importantly, there was a very nice Weber "One Touch" grill outside, which we used regularly.

The first thing Amy wanted to do was to go check out the Bison. So, we did, and killed most of the afternoon driving around the park, checking things out. Brandon and Miranda took their bikes out for a ride instead. We met back at basecamp at about 4, then drove to Paducah, KY for food, since none of us had packed any. We ended up eating at Applebees for some reason. After that, we hit up the Wal-Mart for things to grill over the next couple of days. Left Wal-Mart, and went on a beer hunt. Selection was rather limited, but they DID have Chimay White, so I can't call it a bust. I got a bottle of the Chimay, Brandon got one too, plus a couple of Sam Smiths (one IPA, one other I don't remember).

Later that night, we fired up the grill. We ate brats, and drank good beer (including my brown ale and abbey ale) from metal camping cups I had brought. Man, it was great. The weather was cold enough to keep those metal cups and the beer in them cold and quaffable. Perhaps I'll have people harass me about wasting Chimay white with brats around the grill. All I can say is that it was damn good beer, and I'll probably never forget the experience. The only problem is that we drank it all up the first night.

Friday we went horse-back riding. I hate horse-back riding. There is something about the smell of horse crap and hay that I find... disgusting. It cost way too much money, and the horses... well just put it this way, if the horses had been donkeys, you would have described them as "sad assed." They had been taken care of, but were just really old and slow. I took great delight in making mine walk through the mud when ever he tried to walk around it and pin me against a tree. Fortunately, the saddles were western, not English... so I didn't fall off.

More grilling Friday night. Dry county. No beer run. I really liked that Weber grill. I think I'm going to buy one. I actually managed to get grill marks. Excellent.

Brandon and Miranda left Saturday morning because they had peeps coming into town for Easter (maybe peeps wasn't the best choice of words). Amy and I went back to Paducah because she wanted to go the big fabric store. We got there only about 20 minutes before they closed, but she wasn't disappointed. The place was huge, and her eyes lit up as we walked in. I wish we would have had longer to stay there. It was painful for me, but she was digging it the same way I dig poking around a record store for hours.

Did more beer hunting in Paducah. Jackpot. Found this place called "Proof Brothers." Too bad Brandon had left already. Came back with many beers, including but not limited to:

1. Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (INCREDIBLE! Scored a 97 in the latest "All About Beer" Magazine I had seen before going)
2. Anchor Brewery Old Foghorn
3. Unibrou Terrible
4. Bellhaven Wee Heavy (Very good too)
5. Scotch de Silly
6. Ommengang Three Philosophers
7. Fuller's Vintage Ale (Looking forward to this one. Only 90,000 were bottled. Mine is #66000-something )
8. Stone Brewery 8th Anniversary Ale
9. A four pack of historic beers from Scottland, including "Alba -- Scotch Pine Ale"

They had many more, and I could have spent HOURS and thousands of dollars there. Fortunately restraint prevailed.

After that, we drove across a very scary bridge over the Ohio River into Illinois over US Hwy. 45. We ended up in a place called "Metropolis." They had posters and statues of Superman everywhere. Truth be told, the place was more like Smallville than Metropolis. It was entertaining for about 2 minutes.

Easter Sunday. Packed-kit and headed home. Took about an hour and a half longer because we drove down through the park. Did I mention that place is huge? I think we'll probably go back in October. I'm already saving my pennies for the next beer hunt.

So, I was at work this morning, cleaning my French press coffee pot at the sink. Here is a picture of it.

So, I'm standing at the sink, rinsing the thing out, and this guy comes up and asks me if I'm cleaning a fishing pole.

Uhhh...

Feeling quite good today. I probably shouldn't be, since Chrysler just charged me $80.08 to replace a freaking $2.50 fuse. I probably won't do business with this dealership again... punks.

The other thing is that I have to work all weekend. They're shutting off power to the data centre. I have to go in tomorrow to help shut-down about 80 systems, then back in on Sunday for the restart. We usually do this at least once per year. At least this time it is not during Christmas.

The reason I'm happy is that I was contacted by a recruiter that works for Cisco Systems. This isn't some head-hunter looking to fill an opening at Cisco, the guy is actually a Cisco employee. Looks like I'll probably get an interview for a full-time Cisco gig in Nashville. I'd prefer not to have to move, but if the money is right, what choice do I have? I'm hoping when/if I interview, they'll tell me that I can work from home, but will have to travel to client locations in the South East.

It is really enjoyable to be talking to people about a job when I'm not in the spot of "needing" one quickly. Most of the jobs I've left have been ones I really wanted to get out of soon. I still like my job here, so I can play the game with Cisco on my terms, and not feel like I've really lost anything if I don't get it. At any rate, I'll certainly get some practice for negotiating future jobs. And if I do get it, great. Cisco is on the list of the top two or three companies I'd like to work for, and probably second only to Sun Microsystems (if they'd ever get their act together).

...mahnamahna!

Bought Mark Levin's new book, Men In Black yesterday. It is about the Supreme Court exercising a lot more power than they should be. And they're appointed... for life. I haven't read much of it yet, but so far it reads like a horror novel.

I've also updated my web page. There is a link on the left side of this page, up near the top. I added some pictures of when MedFlight landed in my back yard, along with my list of UNIX tips that probably won't make any sense to anyone but me. However, it is a good place to stash it for when I need it in a hurry. I've also put up some of the Garage Band songs I've been dinking around with.

I haven't done this yet, but I'm planning to put up some links to a few Bash shell scripts that I've done that have proven to be useful to me. Maybe a few perl programs too, though I'd be embarrassed if someone who knew what they were doing looked at the perl ones. Particularly the perl programs that I have who end up outputting nothing more than a bash script.

I'm in the process of writing several longer essays to post here. I haven't finished any of them yet, so I'm trying to fill space with some insignificant junk (THAT TREE IS FAR AWAY!).