I found it refreshing that it occurred to me that I could put up my last post with the notion that someone else might be spared some headache later on down the road. I had it drilled into me at Google that the less you say online about anything work-related, the healthier your career would be. Sure, the official party line is "we're all openness and puppies and happy geek sunshine", the reality is much different when it comes to blogs. It didn't help that a new employee got canned because of his blog right before I started there. That set the mood for sure. And it instilled a little paranoia.

The official blogging policy (yes, there is one; I suspect it got put in place about 30 seconds after that guy was fired) is a strange document to read. When I first got there, I naturally wanted to post news, thoughts, stuff, etc, since people said they were interested and were always asking questions (many of which I couldn't answer). And by "post stuff", I mean in a very careful way: no posting secret stuff, financial stuff, private stuff, etc. But after reading the blogging policy, I realized that I should really not post any stuff at all.

Almost every paragraph in the blogging policy has the "written by an PR flack, approved by a corp lawyer" feel about it. And almost every section is heavily qualified. Sections start off with stuff like "While we realize that you want to share your thoughts about Google with the world on your personal blog, and while we -- as a company -- officially support that, we also realize that people sometimes say more than they intended..." (Or some such; it's been a while since I read it, and I only read it that once, so that isn't a direct quote or anything). Bottom line is that it's carefully written so you come away thinking that they aren't saying no, but they aren't exactly saying yes either. You ask yourself "Can I still write in my blog?" and take the policy's answer as a "yes", and it's all on you if you post about something besides the family vacation.

Basically, for work things, they say you can talk about what you had for lunch, but not who you had it with, what was discussed or for how long, etc. In other words, you can talk all you want, as long as it's about nothing at all interesting (which, I suppose, ought to suit most blogs just fine). Who wants to read a post about "Today I ate with John Doe #7; we had the quail's eyeballs and duck confit"?

So I could put up a blog post saying my name, title and the group I worked for, but I couldn't say anything about my job, as 97% of it dealt with proprietary stuff the names of which aren't even public knowledge. And there's nothing at all wrong with that. They have every right to restrict the flow of private information outwards. But the overall tone of the blogging policy there seemed very "Oh, hey, if it's not much trouble, consider just not posting anything at all, OK?"

For all the openness at the company, they are intensely and fiercely private. There's so much press (well, used to be, I guess) about new products and such that they were absolutely petrified about leaks. They have a very, very carefully crafted public image, and do not want anyone from inside contradicting that. Again, fair enough, and no hard feelings; I had no problems with their policy. But the net effect is that this site withered on the vine, as did my urge to write about anything personal. I had considered shutting it down entirely. If it weren't for the few times I had searched through it to find something, I probably would have. I wasn't afraid of losing my job, per se, it just that it was far easier to say nothing for no risk. Since work touched a lot of my life -- and why I was living in the bay area to begin with -- saying nothing meant that I wouldn't inadvertently stray into an HR/PR minefield.

Anyway, shortly after I thought "Hey, there's no other info on the web about that weird error, maybe I should put up a post about it!" came the thought "I wonder what else I could have written down that would have been helpful or interesting later?" I expect a few things.

Hopefully someone finds that last post useful. I know I get a lot of hits from people searching for stuff like that I've posted in the past (had a few emails thanking me, actually). I'll try to do more of it. (And I'll also try to get the comments thing back. I know both of you are just itching to leave comments...)

...it's Christmas Eve and I'm at work. I want to poo in someone's stocking. That is all.

That would be me! Because I just got a call from the Scottsdale Gun Club and the ATF has approved the transfer papwork for my suppressor and it's ready and waiting for my tender embrace. It's a Christmas miracle!

I've got 16 minutes until I can reasonably get out of work, and I'm itching to run home, grab my Sig, and go straight back to the club to pop off a few (now much quieter) rounds.

Grrr.

The minutes are, like, totally not going by very quickly...

I know how I can pass the time. Searching the interwebs for a threaded barrel for my 1911A1!

We just bought a new house! Woot! Tess has the pics up on her flickr account.

I really want to move in...

There's a small bright spot to my week: one of the patents from my work at a previous employer has been granted.

I had to update my internal resume at work as part of the annual review process (and doing so has been on my OKRs for nearly two years, so I figured I might as well get it done) On a lark I checked the status of the patent apps that got put in way back in 2000. One of the apps took, I guess. So I added it to my resume. I guess it looks good on your record, or if you change jobs or whatever.

I was responsible for designing and then implementing all the server-side pieces of that system, in case anyone was curious. It was a hell of a lot of work, and we did it in mere months. A couple weeks ago I was digging through the closet for something, and I found the original design documents I wrote for the ad server. I'm not sure why I kept it, but it made for a funny read. It was all so serious. :-) But that's good I guess, because a lot of content from my docs was used in the patent application. Now that I read through all he exhibits, it's been pretty well lawyerfied, though.

Anyway, I'm an official inventor now.

I turned off comments yesterday. I think they'll stay off for good this time. The spammers had found me, and I was getting about 250 spammy comments a day. Not a big deal, since I had to approve comments before they appeared on the site, but that meant I was getting those emails, and then I had to log in periodically and sort through them all, make sure there wasn't a comment from someone I know, and then delete the junk. That's kinda like work.

So no more comments. Even though blog spam doesn't work (at least not as far as Google is concerned; spamming links to blogs doesn't improve PageRank in the slightest, and may in fact even harm it) those assholes just wouldn't leave me alone. And it wasn't like I was getting a lot of "real" comments anyway (I think I peaked at like 2 per month).

Maybe one day I'll put in a captcha system again, but for now if anyone wants to tell me something just send me an email.

I went pig hunting this weekend. Me, my dad, our dentist friend Roger, his son Brad, and two of Roger's friends Chuck and Johnny. We went up to a ranch near Los Banos, CA, about 90 minutes from the house. Dad flew in, and we drove down to meet the rest of the gang who flew down in Chuck's plane.

Man, that was a lot of hiking. We didn't do much the first day, but the second day we covered around 12 miles. We were hunting with dogs, and once they get a scent and tear off, you have to follow them, no matter how far they go. And if they manage to corner a pig, that's got to be your animal.

I wound up getting a 600 pound pig, way deep in this huge patch of manzanita. The guide called earlier today and told me that I will have 250 pounds of meat. That's too much pork for just one fork, so I'm going to be sharing it for sure.

I put up pictures from the pig hunt on picasaweb. I put comments on the pics, so the whole story is there.

It was quite the adventure, and I am as sore as I've ever been.

I've had this idea for a long time that I'd own a boat. Every time I've been on the water, I've loved it. Sail boats, power boats, launches, big cruise ships, I've enjoyed all of it. I like all the special tricks and the little doodads and the different way you have to think when you're on the water. And it's like a little hotel that you can take with you. Hell, I've even had a fun time when it's just staying on board and never leaving the slip.

The trouble is that I've never really known anyone with a boat, so I've never been able to get familiar with it through practice. There's a lot to learn adn I never knew where to start. I've bought a few books, but it gets geting boring when it's so esoteric. But you can't just get in a boat and head out, like with an RV or whatever. So that's been an issue.

I recently came across Club Nautique, and that looks like a perfect way to solve my maritime ignorance issues. In particular, I had my eye on their Basic Cruising Trawler Course.

They take you out for two days in the bay and teach you everything you need to know to skipper a 30 foot yacht. You learn knots, navigation, rules of the road, and a hundred other little conventions that would probably never occur to you. Afterwards, they will let you rent boats from them without having to also rent the captain. That makes it a private trip, and therefore 1200% more fun.

One trip I'd like to take is a weekend cruise up the river to Napa. They also offer a similar trip, but on a bigger boat. I think I'd like to go out on my own for a bit and then when I get good enough, make a 3 day weekend out of it. The idea is that I'll get the course under my belt, charter a bare boat a few times and get to know the bay. Then I'll go on more adventerous cruises. But first, I'll be happy enough just to not get in the way of some big-ass boat loaded with cargo containers or something.

Another course I want to take is the Coastal Navigation Certification one. Take that, get my cert. I'm pretty good with maps from back when I had to make them in school, and the geometry isn't that foreign, so I think it'll be pretty straightforward. Besides, you get to spend 3 days out on the water. Talk about having a fun time learning!

Anyway, Tess and I both signed up for the basic course. Come early August, we'll both be skippers. If we decide that cruising is the thing we like, craigslist has some pretty nice deals on boats...

I saw the Father of the Internet at work yesterday. Yeah, for real. He was giving some sort of press conference outside my building. I'm talking about Vint Cerf, obviously.

Today, I got to hear Al Gore speak. For real! He came to talk about his new documentary. He basically went through the next interation of the presentation that was the basis for the film.

I have to say that he really is an engaging speaker. Funny as hell, too. (He introduced himself as "The former next President of the United States".) And the guy's got a darn good grasp on science and a fairly analytic mind. (He was ad-libbing about some slides that he had added to his presentation just that morning to try out on us, and described one chart as depicting "sort of a step function". This wasn't something he had memorized; he knew what he was talking about.)

At one point, he was talking about how much he gives that particular talk, and how each time it's different. He said his favorite time was on a houseboat in Tennesee. He recounts it like this:

So there we were at midnight on a houseboat in the middle of a lake, about 40 drunk rednecks, all completely saturated in Pabst Blue Ribbon. And someone makes the mistake of asking me what I think of global warming. So I opened up my 17'' powerbook and right there on the foredeck went through the entire presentation I'm about give to you here today with them, all still drinking as I went along.

Let me tell you, these people were not primarily Democarats, and not typically aware about environmental concerns. But at the end, they realized the importance of the crisis ahead of us all. After it was over, one of them told me that he never thought about global warming, and said: [In thick "southern" accent] "Well, day-yam... I had no fucking idee-er it was so important..."

Hearing a former V.P of the U.S. drop an f-bomb using a hillbilly accent in front of a few thousand people was very amusing.

His presentation was an eye-opener for sure. He said that one of the main reasons he ran for President was that he believes that it will take policy to effect real change. He said that having someone in the White House aware of the issues and able to act quickly and decisively on them was, he felt, of paramount importance to the entire planet (the U.S. is repsonsible for some 35% of the world's greenhouse gasses, and by Gore's reckoning stands the best chance of showing how real change can make big differences).

There were a few sideways comments about the current administration, and the debt it owes to oil and pharmaceutical companies and the like. Everyone laughed. I felt sort of sad. Our President probably can't spell "global warming", much less think about way to act on it, and here's this guy who's pretty much been devoted to it since 1978 and he never got a shot to "save the world". That's a lofty goal, and I believed him when he said that he felt like he had a moral and social imperative to make life better.

When we got back to the cubes, my coworker was fuming mad. I thought he got bad news on the phone or something. When I asked, he launched into a tirade about how the silver-spoon C student we have for a president is such a sham. Here's this guy that can really engage you mentally and the guy we got instead is basically a high-functioning moron working at the behest of a few influencing businessmen.

But it was a good talk, and I'm glad I got to see him talk. I love the talks at work, and sometimes marvel at the quality of speakers we get. It really is one of the best perks we've got. Heh heh... Yahoo got Tom Cruise and his space-alien antics, we get Al Gore and some really meaty scientific data. Seems about as fair assessment as any of the differences between them and us... :-)

Well, it's over. Or, rather, just begun. The old stuff is gone, buried under uncountable efforts from lots of folks pulling 80 hour work-weeks -- and from some very bewildered and haggard old-timers putting up with the ruffians in their midst. All manner of interesting integration (both technical and otherwise) has taken place in the last 6 months. It's been both exhausting and rewarding being part of such a close knit team with a singular purpose, and I'm sure I'll remember all this stress fondly. "That which does not kill you..." and all that. All I really want to think about now is sleeping in and unpacking my house.

Well, it took a few weeks, but after seeing about two dozen houses for sale (and having had an offer on one be rejected), we found a house we like and put in an offer which got accepted. Well, that's not exactly true; our counter-offer got accepted. There was a competing offer alongside ours, but the owners liked us and so they said if matched the other offer they'd sell the house to us. We had met the owners on Saturday, when we stopped by with our realtor. They took us on a tour of the place, showing us this and that, and they were very proud of their home. I guess we made it clear that we wanted to live in that particular house because of what it was, not simply because it was a good deal (the house had been on the market before, and had the price reduced by $50,000 this time around, making it far and away the cheapest house in the neighborhood). The owners are pretty cool people.

We went back to get another view last Sunday during the open house. Tracy took some photos while there. I made some notes on them so they make sense.

It's a funky place, for sure. It's definitely not an avergage tract home, and has an interesting sort of history as well. Apparently, it was designed and built by a company called Anshen and Allen (who are still around, by the way). They built 20 of these space-age, modern homes in 1956 in Sunnyvale, CA as a sort of test of the open floor plan design they came up with. I could almost hear the Martin Denny soundtrack coming out of the place when I first walked in.

Anshen & Allen were later hired by Joseph Eichler to design homes for his company. It's from A & A that Eichler got his famous atrium design, though the house we bought doesn't have the central atrium Echlers are famous for (nor does it have an Eichler's infamous radiant heating: galvanized steel water pipes cast right into the concrete floor, which are famous for leaking).

Though I've never heard the name before moving to the Bay Area, Eichlers are pretty well-known up here, and special enough that they have their own website devoted to them. There are even realtors who specialize in selling Eichlers. I read that there are something like 11,000 of them in the Bay Area, with 10% of them in Sunnyvale. I'm glad our home isn't an Eichler.

Our realtor made a little bit of a face when showed him the listing of the house we'd found. He said "Well, this is probably an Eichler..." and I think he was waiting for our reaction. When we had none, he asked us if we'd heard of them. After saying no, he explained what they were: a modern, open floor plan home, designed to be built cheaply. Aside from the leak-prone hydronic heating (you never want to hear the phrase "then you have to jackhammer the floor" from your realtor), Eichlers also feature inside and out wood paneling and a lack of adequate insulation in the roof. The atria and multitude of windows, when combined with the R8-ish value of the ceiling's half inch of fibreglass insulation, made for a very hot/cold/drafty house. Further, the lack of drywall inside made for a less than fire-resistent house. Dave the realtor said that Ecihlers were known as "eight minute wonders". He explained that this was the approximate time is took an Eichler to burn to the ground should it catch fire.

The house we bought has raised hardwood floors, drywall, and a decent roof. I'm glad about the floors, especially. I want to replace the electric cooktop with a gas one. That means running a gas line from the fireplace to where the stove is. While not impossible in a concrete slab home, it's way easier with a raised floor. Running ethernet and speaker wires is easier, too. I think our floorplan is a better deisgn than the layouts of the Eichlers I've seen online. I think we'll have more useable space in this one.

There's a lot of work to be done on the new house, but there was with the last one, so nothing new there. Tracy came up with the idea of putting up panels in the vaulted ceiling. We can't decide what color the beams should be painted, but the baby blue and green have got to go. Covering them both up with wood is a good idea. I foresee a sore shoulder in my future.

Anyway, we move in October first. Can't wait to get out of this apartment we're in.

My last entry wasn't totally accurate. Or lacked information. Or both. What have I really been up to? I've been getting a new job. A new-new job, I mean.

I can't really talk about my work or my company very much, but in a nutshell I took this latest job to help get some proof-of-concept stuff done, help out with some automation here and there, and bring some online advertising geek experience to the table. I do a little of whatever, basically, and lately I've been helping get the company sold (like the rest of the folks, you just do whatever needs doing; I'm fine with merely sitting there if that's what it takes to keep the process moving forward). Later this year is when I start doing some real heavy duty work, and I'm looking forward to it very much. It's nice to stretch yourself mentally. Makes you feel alive...

I didn't mean to be so cagey about my work the past couple months, but I've been more than a little reluctant to say or write much of anything about what I do, for obvious reasons. Since I tend to write about my life, and much of that life either is or has been taken up by work, I have little to say anyway -- even if I had the gumption to write anything. But I won't be talking about my new job at all here (or anywhere else, most likely). I want to keep a record of the move to San Jose/Santa Clara/Sunnyvale/who-knows-where, though, so the non-work stuff I'll write down for sure. That way the San Diego, Phoenix and Oregon folks can read the happenings if they want to. I'm sure Tracy will write down all sorts of good stuff, like she's been doing with Indy and the recent bout with diabetes.

Anyway, there's the big news.

UPDATE: We got slashdotted today.

In case anyone was wondering what's been happening, that's pretty much saying it all right there.

There is a reason I don't talk about work very much here. I wish I could; I occasionally have experiences I'd like to remember in detail later on. And I probably could write about non-work stuff here during works hours. My company couldn't care less that I'd write here, as far as I can tell. But in the end, what I do wouldn't be too interesting for any else but me (and only then a few years later, when the fresh, higher-texture memories have popped the old ones off the stack).

And writing about work stuff can come back to haunt you later. I learned that lesson once, and once is enough.

Hell, I don't even write about non-work stuff anymore because I'm such a pussy I haven't even hit this site from work. Not even once. I'm still probationary (until the middle of March), and assume that all outbound Net access is logged. I work for a log analysis company. I'd log Net traffic for new hires, so I assume they would too. So when get home at 7pm, the last thing I want to do is recall some funny web site I saw -- which I likely wouldn't have seen in the first place (viz.: my unwillingness to browse non-work related websites, my general paranoia about being new, my desire to get lots done to impress the new boss, etc.).

Anyway, I've been hugely busy lately. I got hired for and put on a fairly high-profile project, one I'm solely responsible for, and so I've been wanting to get it done before it was needed. As it happens, I got it put into production just today. We'll see if it runs successfully tonight. If so, I'm going to be getting it done a lot earlier than it was needed, and can talk to the other engineers and find out what else I can do to help them.

But no detailed work talk. No good can come of it.

Former President John F. Kennedy passed away today.

Sad.

I wish I had a website somewhere on which I could post vaguely-interesting tidbits. If only...

OK, so it's not news since basically everyone knows, but I quit my job at UCSD last Friday. It was time to go , and a new opportunity presented itself.

They cancelled all of my current and future software projects when the guy who hired me left last May, got rid of flex-time and work-from-home for the whole department, started moving me into system administration, and generally became unbearable. Since we've had our new supervisor, I'm the second one of seven people in my group to leave. And I've had two other people ask me if they can give me their resume. It's not a very happy place right now. Besides, I haven't had a raise in over 4 years (indeed, I took a small cut to come to UCSD). It also doesn't help that the new boss sounds exactly like Lumbergh from Office Space -- and is generally uninformed about a great many things. Although he's a really nice guy and has his heart in the right place, it would have been difficult to work with him in the long term. He has the depth but not the breadth, and it's started to show lately.

But really, there's no hard feelings or animosity or anything. It's just time to move on. And I let them know that in my resignation email. Although I haven't had the courtesy of a reply from the head of the department, my understanding is that they recognize that this new job is a better fit for me.

The new position is more development type stuff. More thinking about ways to get things done, doing special projects, working with fairly high-profile companies in the process. It will make good use of my past experience, and will also be a huge challenge as well. I'll really have to stretch on this one -- and I'm very much looking forward to it. It's been a long tme since I actually had to think while at work. Then there's the nice new chunk of change I'll be earning. And the benefits are free, so I will no longer have to pay nearly $200 a month in various fees. It doesn't quite make up for the last 4-5 years, but it's a good start. In the end, however, all I really care about is doing cool work.

I feel like I'm back in the game. Like with the contracting work I did last winter -- there's a need, an urgency, you don't get at a government institution. That I've been sorely missing.

So I got off my ass and finally got the pictures of our Halloween 2004 party online. Toddler took some of them early on so we got some atmosphere shots of the decorated house (so Tess could see Wy's superb decorating job). Sadly, the camera was set wrong for most of the pictures, so there were a lot of blurry ones.

I should annotate the ones which were taken after I broke my finger. I do know that this picture was taken partially as evidence of what I had to wobble with.

The third (and likely last) annual Halloween party went off ok, in spite of the conspicuous absence of Tess (and the her sibling, in-law and nephew). The World Famous dogs were a hit, as were the margaritas, of which nearly 5 gallons were consumed. That's amazing when you consider the generally low turn-out this year. I had only one small sip when tasting the initial mix; tequila's not really my thing. Without Todd and Wy I'd have never been able to make it. Wy's mad decorating skillz made for a really spooky atmosphere. I'll post pics later.

And in the spirit of "it's not a party unless something gets broken", I wound up fracturing the middle finger on my left hand, right by the middle joint. It hurt Saturday night and felt weird Sunday, but then again every time I've broken something I could never tell until the next day whether it was cracked or merely abused.

Add to the ER visit the memories of the random (non-married) couple who (probably) hooked up in our 2nd guest bedroom, and I'd say the party was a rousing success! Two scoops!

So check this out: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1125528.

Yes, it's what you think it is. A boobies post I submitted to Fark which got accepted. It's a Klingon boobies post, no less. I had to make my first one count I guess. Read the comments towards the end, though.

Anyone got video of Conan talking about the site I submitted? I'd love to hear about his Klingon chick fetish...

I got back last night from having spent almost two weeks in Phoenix, helping out around the house while my father was in the hospital. He was close there for a bit, but he pulled though. At least he's not going to lose his leg.

I've found that when I go to PHX because there's a family member in medical trouble, it's important to have something to do mentally. If you don't occupy yourself with some personal timewaster, you'll wind up rattling around that big empty house like a pea in an empty cereal box. It can drive you nuts. Hell, that house at the best of times can drive you nuts. So I tried to stay active and not sit around moping.

To that end, one of the things I wound up doing was building a new PC for my uncle John out of old parts he had laying around. UJ knows that it's too easy to get morose if you've got nothing to do, so he took a couple days off work and came over to hang out and distract me. After we built his PC, he suggested that we go out to Scottsdale Gun Club and do a little shooting. Any chance to get behind the Thompson is one I take -- same as for a chance to hang out with my uncle. Both at once is a double bonus.

I've had problems with my Thompson wherein the screws which hold the rear site onto the top of the frame continually come loose, so I used some red loctite to set them in permanently. Even though it's a fixed site I assumed that it would still change the aiming point of the gun, so I was keen to do some shooting as accurately as I could. Here's my second to last target:

(I should note that this target was made while shooting from the offhand position.)

The gun is shooting a little to the left, which is why my group tends toward the right a bit. I was overcompensating slightly. But 30 rounds fired and one hole in the target ain't all that bad. Especially considering I don't wear my glasses and 40 feet is a little past my myopic range of vision (the trick is to aim for the middle of the black blurry spot).

My last target was a human silouette, and it had this 3" orange dot at center mass. I had two full 30 round magazines to go through, and UJ was already packing up. So I sent the target out to 30 feet and tried to shoot out the orange area for lack of anything better to do with 60 rounds. I didn't know it, but UJ was watching me the whole time while he swept up brass. I shot out all the orange except for this one little sliver and when I turned around, UJ yelled (in his best faux carny voice) "Too bad, son... you almost won the stuffed bear on the top shelf! Step right up and try again!" The guy at the next lane down was also watching (the lanes are separated with lexan) and he was cracking up too. I almost dropped the gun from laughing. Maybe you had to be there...

Anyway, I'm glad I went and lent a hand. But I'm awfully darn glad to be back to normal life.

I happened to see a comment on my entry about The Filthy Critic being gone saying that Filthy's back. Well, he's back!!!! For real!

Happy day...

Looks like someone submitted my Henry Earl Real-Time stats page to Fark. w00t. Love the traffic. Seems that people like the page, too. So that's cool. I just did the page because I was home sick one day, whacked out on cold medicine and bored. So it's good people are getting some amusement out of it.

The server is holding up really, really well too. The stats page is a PHP script (not a very complicated one, but dynamic nonetheless), and the server has been doing about 330kB/sec in traffic. Well, it's settled down a bit now: it's hovering around 110kB/sec. Seems to be holding up just fine. I'll add in some more detailed numbers when the web server stats analyzer runs at 1am.

UPDATE: I just re-ran the stats package and we've had a little over 45,000 visits to the Henry Earl stats page in the last 24 hours. We had a maximum network load of 728kB/sec outbound traffic, and that's been holding steady at around 20kB/sec for the last couple hours. Behold the power of Fark, indeed. On a related note, I can definitely say that I'm happy with my hosting company.

One of my last entries was about the Gopher Manifesto that I archived. Now it's on wired.

Jeez...

It took over 30 years (I'm serious), but I finally got my hands on a Thompson M1 SMG. I've been wanting a tommy gun since the days of Combat and 12 inch GI Joes. My brother Trey used to horde the tommy gun and dump the M1s on me and Shawn. He knew I'd trade him stuff so that I could get the M1. He always had the tommy gun somehow.

I finally got one for real two weeks ago (actually, my brother got one that I can use when I'm in Arizona; more on that later). One happier camper you cannot find (even though my gun isn't like the old ones, it's still made by John Thompson's company, and is as real as you can get for under $15,000).

It's weird... When people (like, at work) ask you what it is you're looking so happy about when they find you staring off into the distance, they don't think of World War II and the unmitigated cajones of the people who served our country when you say that you've finally realized your dream of owning a piece of history by buying a Thompson SMG. They think -- and you can see this in their eyes -- that you've got some sort of Chicago typewriter obsession, drum magazine and all. And that you keep it in a guitar case, probably next to your zoot suit. Who gives a squirt about some criminals!? This thing literally helped free the Western World.

Yeah, so it was used by some crooks here and there for a couple years. It was also used extensively by the IRA in the 1930s, and nobody remembers that. It was used a lot in WWII. So when I'm found staring wistfully into space, I'm actually thinking of being out in the open holding a piece of history, not stuck in some drafty castle of an office building typing away on some nearly relevant project du jour, trying not to sneeze from the mold infestation.

Not to belabor the point, but I've wanted to know how a Thompson sounds, how it feels, what it looks like, where all the parts are, what it looks like inside, what it smells like... and so on. I've been wanting to know that since I was around 6 years old. And now I finally do. I'm like that balding guy who finally gets a Corvette in his mid life. Except I'm slightly younger than midlife, have all my hair, and have a tangible piece of modern history instead of the desire to impress teenage girls with ersatz virility. I get to wonder about guys on D-Day when I'm out in the woods with friends, they get to curb-sneak Filipinos in Mitsubishis when they're at the mall. To each his own.

My first impression? It's really fucking heavy. I put that swearing in there on purpose. The guy it was purchased from remarked at my grunting when first picking it up and said "Yeah... it's like a sack of phone books... that's one fine chopper...". He was right. It weighs like 13 1/2 pounds. Unloaded. Each loaded 30 round stick magaine weighs like another half pound, or there abouts. Heavy. It's a .45 ACP round after all. I'm no bodybuilder, but I'm no small guy either, and it would have sucked to carry that thing and it's ammo all over Europe. I now have even more respect for the men that did. Even after I wrote that I stopped to wonder...

My second impression is regarding the number of sharp edges on it. There are a lot of them. I still have the healing scars of some 6 cuts just from taking it apart. Every corner is very sharp. Andy says I need to get it "beburred", and I might. If I was to carry it into battle (especially if I was to come out of a plane), I'd almost certainly have taken a file to at least the areas around the magazine well/trigger guard areas. Everywhere around the grip needs a little rounding or you need a few Band-Aids.

The wood, by the way, is amazing. It's not like a "war gun". It's nearly German in it's craftsmanship and attention to detail. But the gun is also very hard to use. The bolt handle (the thing that allows you to pull the bolt back and put a bullet in the chamber) is really hard to get a hold of. You can kinda see it here. See the bolt handle? No? That's because it's very tiny. Maybe my hands are too big for the gun, I don't know. But Trey and I came up with a solution in using a 6" wood dowel that you can stick into the hollow end of the bolt handle to charge the weapon. Combined with some very very strong springs (the Thompson works on a straight blowback principle, so the springs do all the work in reloading it), it's a hard rifle to use the first time. I'm going to order a replacement bolt handle and then extend it about 1/2 inch using some hardwood and a piece of aluminum tubing (I don't want to weigh the bolt down too much becuase I don't know what weird wear that might cause on the insides of the gun).

The recoil is minimal at best. The gun's very heavy and it shoots a pistol cartridge, so you can do the math there. The stock takes some getting used to, but I like it. Loading a magazine was odd the first few times but then became very strangely natural shortly thereafter (you basically hold the magazine in your left hand, using your left thumb to push the mag release up while inserting the new mag; your right hand stays on the pistol grip, holding the gun). I have 4 magazines for it, but I have five more on order. I need to get at least 40 magazines, however, and maybe some spare springs, followers and floor plates. That's not excessive, 40 mags. I plan on owning the gun for at least 50 more years, and mags get a lot of use. Furthermore, the gun is useless without them. You need to have some you never use (hopefully ones which have never been used) just for posterity's sake.

Hmmm. I've forgotten where I'm going with this, as I've written it in bits, over the course of a week. I haven't had much time to waste with personal nonsense since I got back from my trip.

Oh, the sound. Yeah, it is like a typewriter. Take a look at this video of my Uncle John shooting it. It has this mechanical sound to it -- kind of a clacking noise. It's hard noise to describe, but sounds pretty accurate on the video (minus the sharp 'crack' of the gases which push the bullet out of the barrel breaking the sound barrier). I can totally see where they'd call it a "Chicago Typewriter" when shooting it in full-auto mode. Which is something sort of funny about seeing someone shoot a Thompson: that need to shoot fast. The first time anyone shot it, they eventually just started pulling the trigger as fast as they could. Here's me getting in on the act. You can kind of hear that typewriter noise in that video as well. (You can also see the dowel trick Trey and I came up with.)

While pulling the trigger really quickly is an irresitible, but it's actualy a very accurate rifle (carbine, whatever). The first few magazines I put through it were aimed, though, much like with Uncle John in that vid above. UJ did pretty darn well with it, too, but then UJ is something of a marksman in the first place (as he's said before "a rifle is only as accurate as the person using it"). That water jug was pretty far away in any case.

I took some items from work to do some "ballistics" tests. One of my co-workers, Dave, gave me this slab of resin to shoot. It's the same stuff they use for chemisty lab table tops. Thick, heavy black stuff. I was talking to him a few weeks back about shooting bowling balls, and he remebered that he had this sample chunk of resin left over from somewhere. He wanted to know what would happen if you shot it, so I did. It pretty much shattered into lots and lots of pieces. I recovered two of the larger bits, and they fit back together like puzzle pieces. I decided to bring them both back to him so he could see the aftermath. They even have some spalling from an impact. Dave's got the chunks in his office and seems farily proud of them.

Dave also gave me a non-working IBM hard drive to "test". It's one of those faulty Deskstar models every calls "Deathstars". We've had a lot of them go bad and they've generally caused more than their fair share of headaches. So I shot one with a Tommy gun.

Here's the front view. I was aiming for the center of the upper circular part. I was a little low, but that was only like my second time shooting it. As it happened, I hit it in just the right place, through the drive controller. The bullet went right through the electronic "brain" of the drive, just missing the drive platters (the phonograph-like disks where all the actual data is kept). So you can see lot of stuff insdie the drive if you look closely.

I've been staring in there off and on looking at all the bits (it's like a cutaway of a hard drive) for a while now, so I decided to try out my new camera's macro lens to see if I could get some intimate photos. You can see the guts pretty well in this picture. (You can see the edge of the drive platters at about the one o'clock position in that hole.) It's a pretty big hole. In fact, all that peering into it gave me an idea. The hole's about eyeball sized. So I grabbed a mirror and took a self-portrait of me looking through the hole. Because I couldn't quite see the camera's LCD display in the hand mirror, I took two eyeball pictures. They turned out to be eerily similar, and were just begging for an animation. Big Brother is watching you.

Sadly, the new gun lives permanently in Arizona. I can't own it in California because it has a pistol grip. What complete and utter nonsense our fine Democratic senators Boxer and Feinstein have wrought. Actually, I don't even own it; I just borrow it when I go shooting with my brother. But it's mine in spirit and maybe some day I'll get to live in a state that won't mind me owning some history. At least my dad can get some use out of it.

That was certainly a lot about one thing. Yeah.

Also on that trip, Andy brought his new toy: a former Israeli military Browning 1919A4 machine gun. Never having seen/felt/fired a crew-served weapon before, it was quite a hoot. We shot it a lot. In fact, everyone but UJ got a chance. Here's a vid of me having a go. It's really pretty darn accurate, even when doing the twitchy finger thing required of all full-auto weapons hobbled in semi mode. We were pretty well saturating a small clearing on a hillside a 1/2 mile away and getting consistent groups. I think it's because the whole thing weighs so much. It would bounce up when fired, but come back down pretty much where it was. I told Andy that he needs to get some sandbags and pile them up on the legs of the tripod. Next camping trip will see "an emplacement" I'm sure. I was sort of fascinated by the mechanism and how the action worked. Andy and I spent a few minutes going over everything inside. The links were really cool. I even got artsy and took a desktop wallpaper pic of them.

So no updates for a while, then 50K of nonsense about a shooting trip. Next entry will be short, promise.

Henry Earl has made the national media. w00t! I'm not-so-famous:

Local media outlets jumped on the wagon next. Now there is a Yahoo group dedicated to him; there are blogs boasting real-time jail stats and all 52 of his mugs (some of them animated), online forums where readers swap stories and recent sightings around town.

See what a day at home with the flu, some cold medicine and a little Perl will do? Success is the brew those ingredients concoct, I tell you! Pure success! I'm going to crack open a beer and drink to Henry right this very minute...

(BTW, the start of the second paragraph in that MSNBC article seems strangely familiar...)

My three brothers and I participated in a first this last weekend: The four of us all did something together, as a group, without a parent or other relation with us. Just us guys. We went and saw a taping of the TV show "Friends". And we had a really amazingly good time.

It turns out that my brother Mickey somehow got to know Courteney Cox. They got to emailing one another and a few years ago she invited him to come see a taping of the show, as her guest (as opposed to "a member of the studio audience"). He got to sit right down at stage level, mere feet from the set of the Central Perk, and pretty much in on the filiming action. He's been going back every year for like 5 years now, and he usually takes three family members with him (they offer seating for four people total on the floor there by the stages). This year, he took his brothers.

We got all met up at a hotel in Burbank Thursday night and then around 2pm Friday, we drove the three-odd miles to the Warner Brothers lot. Once we got there we all had to show ID, in order to get these personalized passes. The passes were imprinted your name, the valid dates, who you were a guest of, etc. Like a backstage pass, I guess. So when we pulled up in Mickey's handicapped-equipped minivan they gave us some seriously weird looks and asked us all to bust out IDs. Well Mickey, being a quadraplegic in a wheelchair, doesn't have a driver's license. He has an ID card, but at Shawn's suggestion we gave the security guy Mickey's sheriff's badge. Mickey is an honest-to-goodness Special Deputy Sheriff of Maricopa County. No shit. The security guys searched the BMW in front of us, and were doing a real good job with the Lexus next to us, but waived us through. They didn't even look in the windows, much less open the doors. Good call on the badge-flashing, I thought.

We weedled our way through the soundstages to Stage 26 were Friends is filmed. Not knowing where to park, the security guy at the door radioed in and told us to park in Marta Kauffman's spot. Which was right next to the door, because she's a co-creator and producer of the show. Very surreal. We were getting seriously stared at by now. We had to ditch our cell phones before we could go in (we decided to leave them in the car since we were right there) and while we were digging them out, one security guy asked if we had any cameras. I said that there was one in the backpack attached to Mickey's chair. He said we should probably just leave it in the car "just in case". Cameras, he said, are strictly forbidden, and can get confiscated if they find them. So I dug Shawn's camera out, in a fairly flashy way, and put it in the glove box along with our phones. See, what nobody (not even Mickey) knew was that I had sthased two cameras in his backpack.

We all had to pass through a metal detector, but the metal of Mickey's chair would always set it off no matter what he had in his pack. So he could mule in a camera no sweat -- as long as they didn't search him. I was banking on the very popular and completely unreasonable subconscious reaction that many "healthy" people have about people who are in wheelchairs and who also exhibit some sort of deformity: that whatever they have is somehow contagious (or that the afflicted person is very fragile). It was a risk, sure, but I was banking that the security guys wouldn't want to get very close to Mickey or his chair. I was right, and we snuck in my new camera -- which was partially purchased just for this occasion.

Our new camera, as it happens, also takes video. And it'll take as much video as you have space for. So I purchased a 64MB SD card for stills and a 256MB card for video. I was taking another risk: that after filming I'd be seen as just another VIP type with a camera (I had seen digital pictures of Mickey's previous trips, so I knew that you were "allowed" to have cameras after the filming was over). I figured I could use the small card to get pics of Mickey with his friends (no pun intended) in the cast, and then sneak in the big card and just walk around with it while it shot video without anyone knowing. Because even though they don't mind still cameras (if you know the right people), they would get seriously pissed off about me taking video. But I decided that the chance to get Mickey interacting on the set was worth the risk. I mean, it's not like I plan on selling bootleg behind-the-scenes Friends videos or anything. It's all about Mickey, 100%.

There was another "special" group attending the shooting (a teenage girl with the Make-A-Wish Foundation), so we only had two seats down on the floor. Which meant that one person could hang with Mick and the other two had to slum it up in the seats. But we got assurances that we could switch off between takes. It was annoying, but it worked out. If anything, it made the rest of the audience kind of curious about us. But as long as one of us got down there to pimp out Mickey and make sure he was taken care of, it was fine by me. I'd have sat on the floor if need be.

It so happened that I was there with Mickey when Courteney Cox came over to say goodbye. This was towards the end of the night, after all he secnes were done. She apparently had to leave for a prior engagement, but wanted to tell Mickey that he should come back before filming is done (they have only seven episodes left to film). Mickey balked at first because Courteney's secretary said that he could come to this one taping and that's it. Courteney said that he could basically come to the rest of them if he wanted, but then Mick said he had preaching commitments and such. I wound up elbowing him and we worked it out that if Courteney will arrange for us to come, we'd work things out on our end for sure. We wound up talking for about 15 minutes, and she actually refused to say goodbye to him, and insisted that he has to come again to get a goodbye.

Courteney is a complete sweetheart, and it was nice seeing her and Mickey chat. In fact, it was interesting seeing her talk to him, because it threw into stark contrast the difference between him and the Make-A-Wish girl (and even the people in the audience, who are basically totally ignored). She was treated specially, sure, but Courteney was talking to Mickey as a friend. The difference was night and day. It was sort of mind-blowing once it occurred to me. It was too bad that she couldn't stay, though.

Right before the shooting was done (which took about nine hours; a long shoot, I understand), we all managed to get down on the floor with Mickey for the last take. Actually, we arranged that because just before the last take, Jennifer Aniston came over to say hi to Mickey (I'm serious: he's not just "a fan" -- these famous people really like him and go out of their way to hang out with him, like he's the star or something). When Trey (who was down with Mickey) introduced us all (recall that the cast completely ignores the audience, and she lookedreally surprised to see us), she said that we should all come down. So she told the security guy to let us down, and there we were. We hung out for about ten minutes, chatted, and took some pictures (she called one of the prop people over with a Polaroid camera). She even volunteered for a one-on-one picture with Shawn.

Seeing Mickey with Jennifer Aniston was prIceless. The boy was just agog. She's also an extremely nice person, and it was terribly sweet that she came over to say hi. She's also one of the most "touchy" people I've ever met in my life. When she gave Mickey a hug, she went digging in his chair to get her arms around him. That's not something most people do. And when she shook my hand, it turned into a fairly robust hug. Mind you I'm not complaining in the slightest, my personal space hang-ups notwithstanding.

After it was all over and they started herding the audience out, I arranged with the one security guy for all of us to hang out for a while and take some pictures. I had noticed an Asian gentleman photographing his family on the Central Perk set, so I figured we could bust out as well.

We mostly got pictures of us in the Joey's apartment set. The set dressing there was hilarious. Bottles of Jagermeister sitting next to baby formula on the coutner, and so forth. I managed to get a picture of the coffee table, which had condoms next to baby toys. I also got a pic of Mickey with Matt LeBlanc. Mickey has a somewhat stunned look on his face, but he was getting really tired. He was also starting to get sick, so that didn't help. But Matt told Mickey that he should come watch a taping of his spin-off show "Joey", so that was nice. Come to think of it, one of the writers (who is just in love with Mickey) is also a writer and producer of Joey, and he said he'd work it out so he could come as well. So the odds are good. We decided that it would be cool to see a taping where Courteney was guest starring.

I wound up getting some good movies to go with the pictures, but I can't let anyone see them. I put them up so that Mom could download them and keep them on Mickey's computer, but after that they are getting removed. That's at Mickey's request. Getting video was touch-and-go for a while, though. A few times I caught the head security guy giving me the stare, so I pretended to fiddle with buttons and whatnot. I would also occasionally switch to still picture mode and use the flash so that it looked like I was taking stills. I figured if caught I could always play the role of "new camera, owned by doofus" without having to stretch too much.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of details, but a lot went on that night. And this is already long enough.

Last Tuesday was surreal. It started off like any other morning, although it was a little hazier outside, and the smoke smell was really strong (even indoors with the windows and doors all closed up since the fires started).

About 12:30pm I went downstairs to get some lunch and noticed that it was remarkably darker outside than it should be. And it was very dark inside. Our house is south-facing and normally very bright. Then I saw the pink "shadow" on the floor.

That's the nearly full-on noon sunlight. All it could muster was a dull orangish-pink glow. It was surreal enough that I decided to grab the camera and take a pic. I wound up walking out the front door to see what the sun looked like first hand, and I had the camera as well.

This picture was taken right on my front walkway (you can see the outline of my roof's
tiles on the left), looking right into what was left of the sun. About an hour after that picture was taken, you couldn't even see where the sun was.

Anyway Wednesday was much better.

Turns out that Tripping the Rift is being made into a series by the Sci Fi channel. It even has an IMDb entry. Stephen Root is back as Chode, but they have Gina Gershon playing Six of One instead of Terry Farrel. Either way, that's just super cool news. (And if you haven't seen the original short, do yourself a favor and download it.)

There was a big earthquake in Japan today (well from the persective of my time zone, it happened tomorrow morning, but you get the idea). The story says it was a 7.8, but they're now saying it was an 8.0. Which just sucks regardless. Damn.

The NOAA/NWS issued a tsunami warning as well. Waves up to 8 feet high will hit parts of Japan. If you look closely at that warning, it says that La Jolla, CA (which is about 10 miles from my house) will not have a tsunami warning, but that waves caused by the quake will hit at around 11:36pm. I'm seriously tempted to drive down there and see if the surf looks any bigger. I mean, how's that for global perspective? You can sit there contemplating a major distaster half a world away while watching the effects right there at your feet.

UPDATE: The USGS has a really cool image of the time it takes for the waves to move across the ocean.

I'm wondering what I'll do for movie reviews now that the Filthy Critic is dead. Even though some of his reviews were a little gratuitous, they always seemed to be right-on. If he disliked something, then I typically disliked it. If he liked something, more often than not, I thought it was pretty good too. And his reviews were pretty amusing. He certainly had a refreshingly original concept of telling it like it was. When something sucks, it sucks. (Take a look at the "Quote Whore of the Week" sidebar in the lower right of his site for a quick comparison between Filthy and a "normal" movie critic.) He said over and over again that Hollywood makes crappy movies because they have no incentive to do anything besides make money. I never thought about that until he brought it up. I always thought quality automatically meant success, but I guess not. He felt that everyone (Hollywood as well as critics) kept this not-so-secret arrangement alive with smarmy insincerity, or outrigth deception. So when he reviewed a movie which sucked, it got one honest finger. I can respect that.

Is Filthy really dead? Yes. And no. I did a little searching during lunch. The main thing I found was this interview with Matt Weatherford, Filthy's normal alter ego. It was apparently given on August 13th, 5 days after Filthy died wobbling down the slow lane.

I never knew Filthy's real name until I read that interview. It's nowhere on his web site. So was Matt dead? A little more searching leads to Ben Garvey's web site (which also links to the interview above; I would have rather been to Ben's site first and gotten it all out of the way in one shot). Ben emailed Filthy's cronies at bigempire.com about Matt. Turns out that Filthy is indeed dead, Matt not so much.

I'm glad that no non-virtual people got hurt, but I'm also sad that I won't get to see what Filthy thinks about the latest movies.

That was certainly fun. I had my hosting provider move us to one of the new servers. And I had all manner of problems.

For some reason, register.com was still doing DNS for this domain. That's not how it was supposed to be. I'm about 95% sure that I made Hurricane Electric authoritative. I mean, it does no good to ask them to move us to a new server (which obviously will have a new IP address) if they can't change DNS as well, right? I finally got it sorted it. I'm sure the changes haven't stopped propogating. Someone in Korea will get an error. C'est la vie.

The new server runs Apache 2.0. This is nice, but things like server-side includes and CGI scripts work differently. The format of htaccess files has changed a little bit. The database access has changed. Stuff like that.

It should be working now, though. Let me know if you see some busted, ok?

I'm the proud owner of new debt. I mean, a new car. Well, I mean "SUV", not car. A Toyota 4Runner to be exact. Yeah, I actually bought an SUV. It's no worse than the Jeep Cherokee I used to own. And the new SUV gets better mileage than my truck did. It's actually classified by the EPA as a "low emissions vehicle". But who cares about the Earth, eh? I wanted features.

It's a nice ride. I got the plain vanilla SR5 four wheel drive model with the V6. It has a surprising amount of power. Runs like a stripped-assed snake, as my dad would say. It's got the goose. I splurged on floor mats ($180) and a roof rack ($220), mostly because they were already "included". Options == w00t for me. It's "Galactic Grey", which looks vaguely blue at night.

It's actually pretty damn nice, even though it's only the "base model". It has power windows/locks, lights that dim and such, cruise control, a multi-function display, climate control, ABS, traction control stuff, dual AC vents, CD player with surround, trahs bag holders, keyless entry, automatic windows, eight-way adjustable seats (with lumbar!), locking center differential and a bazillion more things that don't come standard on other mid-range SUVs and which I've not yet played with. I'll not want for buttons to push, lack of DVD touch-screen notwithstanding.

The ride is really quiet, the seats are comfortable, and I feel like a full-on yuppie. This is the fanciest car I've ever owned (and the second that didn't leak when it rained!), and I'm glad I got it. With Tess's help, we got it at just over invoice and with a loan at 4%. And a free alarm system. And a 75,000 mile warranty. It took three trips to a dealer to get that kind of deal, but it all worked out in the end. I'm not paying all that much more than I was on my old truck, and I won't be paying on this one for much longer than I would have been paying off the truck. We got a fair deal, and I feel good about it. Yeah, it's not the Sport edition, but that's fine. I can deal without high-end suspension systems for daily driving. I just didn't feel right buying the Sport model. That seems frivolous, this seems practical.

We discovered a good trick: Whenever you go to buy a new car, get a good loan from your bank or credit union first. And don't tell a soul about the pre-arranged loan. Just tell the sales guy that you want to deal with the final price of the car, not payments. Tell them you don't care about payments, only the final amount you'll be paying for. Negotiate that final amount and nothing else. Then when you get to the finance guy after making the deal, tell him you need an options contract. You get to see the finance guy's eyes bug out. Then they try to work a deal for you such that you pay them interest instead of your bank. Basically, you get a free extended warranty if you want it. He has to do some jiggering to get you a good rate, but it means you have to buy more "stuff" from them. They make more money than they otherwise would because the loan is through them. Works for me. Sounds like a win-win. I'm not going to have to pay for any repairs whatsoever for as long as I'm paying off the loan on my new car. And that extra coverage is essentially free. Last year I paid $800 to have the fuel system on my truck flushed. I still had four years worth of payments to make and I was already forking out big cash for repairs and upkeep. That sucked, no pun intended. Not anymore. At least not for the next six years.

Oh yeah, I must mention Gunny, our salesman. We bought from a guy named Jeff, a retired Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. We hooked up with him on Monday night when we first went to the dealer, and we both liked him a lot. On that first night, we couldn't make a sutiable deal, and we wound up having to tell him that we were sorry we couldn't find come to an agreement. We said that we'd like to look at less expensive models, but since it was late (10:30pm at that point) we'd have to come back. I could tell he took it personally (but I didn't care all that much; business is business).

Gunny is kinda new at the car selling thing, and he has a earnestness that is somewhat infectious. He's honest. I know that sounds like bullshit, but he is. The other salemen don't seem to like him, and that seems like a good sign. He's actually not a very good salesman. I mean, he couldn't convince me to buy anything, but he's really good at facillitating a purchase. For example, gunny is severely long-winded. I made the mistake of asking him where the term "gunnery sergeant" came from and it cost us 20 minutes. Salesmen walking by hearing him talk would roll their eyes. It's almost like you can hear them think "Just farking close the deal already!" Tracy was thinking the same thing. I was happy to chat with the gunny... :-) In fact, I'm glad he got my money rather than those bag-lickers over at the first dealership I went to. I guess that's part of what makes you feel good about spending a lot of money on a big purchase like a car. At least to me anyway. I felt like gunny was fair with us and he deserves to make a little on the deal.

We're going to PHX tomorrow and then to my parents' cabin for the Fourth. I'm looking forward to the road trip. New car smell the whole way... :-)

Here's an update to my last post. It's official:

"Already, both houses of the Legislature have agreed on $80 million in additional cuts to UC, and there are Republican proposals to cut several hundred million dollars more from the University. We are continuing to make an aggressive case in Sacramento for the University's needs, but it is increasingly apparent that the next few years could be very difficult ones and that much more significant budget cutting may lie ahead."

Super duper. They have payroll for July 1st (which I already got) and August 1st, but September could be dicey if no budget is passed. And it'll probably get even worse in the next few years! Neat! It's like S4R all over again (except a devious salesmen and an incompetent CEO aren't at fault). I never thought working for the government would be like working for a start-up.

So last night I saw this story about California's budget crisis. Freaked me right out. Since I work for the California state government and all. You know... that. They told us not to expect a raise this year. And I heard tell that "there may be some pay cuts". Heard single-digit percentage type of numbers. Lovely. Thanks! Enron is the people's steward, Gray Davis is a lover of male farm animals.

In this morning's monthly meeting, the director of our department said that very shortly (I'm not sure when) the unions would be holding a vote on whether or not to unionize our department. The success or failure of this "everyone has equality, nobody has freedom" initiative is based on percentage of votes cast, so apathy costs the free thinker. The general consensus around the room was something along the lines of, "well, maybe the union will protect our wages from the cuts" (that's a near-direct quote). Uh huh. And maybe if they cut one job, the rest can stay at their current salary. Or get a meager raise. Kill one guy in the lifeboat, the rest eat free -- for a while. Who gets to go first? I say it should be a union member. For the good of the whole group, mind you.

They all seemed to really like the thought of being unionized. It made my skin crawl. Want to make a Libertarian anxious? Tell him they're going to unionize his workplace. It was all I could do not to swear out loud. I can't stand the government worker mentality. It's an infuriating herd-like thing. They all look at the one in front, like birds or something. Or ants or bees maybe. I can't be part of the collective. I won't pay dues or go to meetings. There's just no way. There is no way I will ever join a union. I'd sooner find new work.

If you wondered wether or not June 2^nd was a special day at all, wonder no longer. You'd be surprised at what all has occurred on this day:

1823 Ashley's fur trappers attacked by Indians, war begins
1886 Grover Cleveland first U.S. president married in White House
1896 Guglielmo Marconi patents the radio in Britain
1912 Universal Pictures founded
1920 Eugene O'Neill wins Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon
1924 Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all American Indians
1943 Actor Leslie Howard dies in plane crash
1944 United States begins "shuttle bombing" Germany in Operation Frantic
1953 Queen Elizabeth II crowned monarch of the United Kingdom
1954 McCarthy charges communists are in the CIA
1965 First Australian combat troops arrive in Viet Nam
1985 R.J. Reynolds and Nabisco merge
1987 General George Doriot dies
1993 Apple suit against MicroSoft dismissed
1993 Interactive television first tested
1997 Timothy McVeigh found guilty of Oklahoma City bombing

There's a humungous load of famous people who share today as their birthday. To wit:

1535 Pope Leo XI, Pope
1715 Herman-François Delange, Composer
1740 Marquis de Sade, French novelist
1806 Isaac Strauss, Composer
1835 Pope Pius X, Pope
1840 Thomas Hardy, English novelist/poet
1849 Paul-Albert Besnard, French painter
1857 Edward William Elgar, Composer
1864 Ransom Olds, Father of Oldsmobile
1875 Charles Stewart Mott, American philanthropist
1876 Hakon Borresen, Composer
1899 Royal Beal, Actor
1904 Johnny Weissmuller, Actor
1907 Dorothy West, Journalist/author, (Living is Easy)
1915 Walter Tetley, Cartoon vocalizer
1916 Betty Furness, Actress
1921 Alexander Salkind, Film producer
1929 Chuck Barris, TV game show producer/host, CIA operative?
1929 Frederic Devreese, Composer
1930 Charles Conrad, Jr., American astronaut
1937 Sally Kellerman, Actress
1940 Christopher Bernau, Actor
1941 Charlie Watts, Musician
1941 Stacy Keach, Actor
1942 Marie Cheatham, Actress
1942 Barry Levinson, Director
1944 Marvin Hamlisch, Composer
1945 Bob Benrit, Musician
1948 Jerry Mathers, The Beaver
1950 Toni Alessandrini, actress
1951 Steve Brookins, Musician
1954 Michael Steele, Musician
1960 Kyle Petty, Race car driver
1971 Tess, Teh Funny
1978 Nikki Cox, Actress
1982 Jewel Staite, Actress

If you're so inclined, you can find a much larger list of who fed and who ate it on June 2^nd. The ones above are just the more common names. But still, it's not a bad haul for a birthday: two Popes, Tarzan, the Beav, more musicians than you can shake a stick at, and the creator of the Gong Show himself, Chuck Mothergrabbin' Barris. Yes, it was a good day.

Happy Birthday, Tess!

I went and got myself a new side project. I know I need another not-for-profit project like I need a hole in the head, but I really like Synergy. And its author, Chris Schoeneman, is a nice guy.

So what does Synergy do? It's basically like a software KWM (keyboard video mouse) switch. Normally KVMs are these boxes that you run sets of cables to from other computers and then you can select which computer you want to use on the box. But they are pretty expensive and the cables are a real pain. Synergy solves that by using client and server software components.

You set up the server (the machine with the actual, real keyboard and mouse and monitor) software to lay out where you want the screens for the clients to go, and then you tell the clients what server to connect to. They all talk over the network, and when you want to switch over to another computer, you move the mouse in that direction. For example, if I have my linux fileserver client set in the server to display at "the top" of my Win2K server screen, then moving the mouse off the top edge of my Win2K desktop switches over to the Linux fileserver screen. It sounds weird but it's actually quite intuitive. If you have more than one machine that is normally always running, then it's real handy.

Anyway, I happened to see an article inb Linux Journal about the software, went and looked at it, liked it and then noticed that in his to-do list, Chris listed a windows installer as something he needed. I was bored at the time (late one night), so I went and found my copy of InstallShield and built an installer.

It's nice to be able to give back, in whatever small way, and I hope it helps someone.

Today Tess and I went up to see Luke Carter Smith, my new nephew. Mom is doing fine (thankfully), as is baby. Tess and I got a bunch of really good whiffs of baby head smell (she got many more since she held Luke for most of the time we were there). Nothing smells better than one-day-old baby head. It's rainy day in the desert smell raised to the power of puppy breath multiplied by morning coffee and added to freshly cut wood. Yep, nothing better.

I made a New Year's Resolution. It's 1600x1200.

I'll make a decision about what else needs to improve on my birthday.

Well, we finally got a TiVo. I had been slightly resisting the notion of getting one, since I think they are expensive and I don't watch enough TV to make it worth the cost. But more than a couple times this past year, Tess and I have caught ourselves saying to one another "You know, if we had a TiVo, we could pause that show..." or "If we had a TiVo then we could have watched Six Feet Under even though we went to Phoenix this weekend..." So I guess having a TiVo is perhaps most helpful if you don't watch a lot of TV. Or you have a busy schedule with which those few shows you like don't coincide. Or something. A TiVo makes a nice gift, especially for those who find themselves waffling on the matter.

One more barrier to entry into the world of Digital Video Recorder ownership was the fact that you need a phone line for it to use. My TV is way over in one corner. I have cable, power, and 3 10/100 CAT5 drops back there. I don't have phone. My house, in fact, has only 2 phone jacks and the one closest to the TV sits on the other side of a sliding glass door. I didn't want to run phone line over the wall, and I can't get into the ceiling. I also don't want any more conduit on the outside of the house if I can help it. They say that you can buy a wireless modem (not, apparently, a wireless phone jack) if you don't have jacks nearby. Anyone who has been in my house knows that I need another wireless device like I need another project on the back burner. I'm running short on plugs in my house to boot.

The only "real" solution would be to crack open the case of the unit, add a NIC, and plug it into my existing 10/100mbps network. That means voiding the warranty (possibly before I even knew if the thing worked or not), ordering the kit over the Net, hooking it all up and hoping. It just looked like too much trouble to go through in order to have the ability to get that show I missed because I was traveling one weekend or had to work late or whatever.

Well, the Series 2 TiVo (the most current one) has USB ports on the back. That opened up some possibilities. I did some investigating. Turns out that the Series 2, it was rumored, has built-in (if "unsupported") support for various USB-to-Ethernet adapters which can plug into these ports. So Tess and I asked for TiVo for Christmas. I figured I could hammer out the networking issues when/if it came (this was last summer at some point) and I collected all the links I'd found into one place for safe keeping.

When it came time to unbox the TiVo yesterday, I had to go get an Ethernet adapter. I didn't know what kind to get. After looking through the links I'd saved, I realized that I'd never looked for a supported products list in my earlier research. (I suppose it never occurred to me, at the time, that one adapter would be supported when one other one wasn't; I also wasn't aware how many chipsets there are for USB Ethernet adapters.) After some time googling, I couldn't find a reliable list of supported adapters. I did find some long-ish lists of product names and such, but none of them had the same information. One list had a certain product, but two others didn't and so forth. I couldn't even pick one to link to, in fact. Figuring that the union of those lists would yield a supported adapter, I went to Fry's and picked up a Linksys USB100TX 10/100 USB Network Adapter.

I set up the TiVo last night. I figured out where it all was going to go, what unit was on top of what other one (we have a big 48" TV and we just put the various components on top of it: an A/V receiver, a DVD player, a cable box, an AudioTron and an Apple AirPort), and I got it all arranged so no one item will cook another. Then I realized that I was about to use up the last of my 3 Ethernet ports on my wall jack (the AirPort and AudioTron taking up the other two). Something about this really bugged me. But I had an idea.

I happened to snag an old 10mpbs hub from my brother Trey when I was at my mom's store over the holidays. A whole box full of aging network gear had come in, and he was going to donate the lot (the kind of people that shop at my mom's store don't buy "antique" computer hardware -- even if she had someone able to test it all to make sure everything worked before it went out on the floor). I rifled through it all and grabbed and clean-looking, rackmountable hub and some new patch cables (one can never have enough cables or wire). I was going to use it for network sniffing and testing and such (since it was a hub and not a switch), but because nothing in/on/around the TV takes up much bandwidth (the AudioTron streams MP3s which are sampled at only 128kbps; the AirPort runs 802.11b, which tops out at 11mbps -- a speed which is still much slower than most of the Internet sites it'll be used to view and not much faster than the top speed of the hub) the answer seemed to be clear: plug everything into the new hub behind the TV. I'd be burning an outlet, but I'd have a nice networking setup. After looking at the hub again, I realized that it had a surface mount kit on it, not the rackmount kit I thought it had. That made the decision all the more clear. I went and grabbed 4 wood screws and a drill and mounted the hub right onto the frame of the window behind the TV.

So I plugged everything in all over the place and turned it on. My previous research told me what I needed to do to get the TiVo to use the USB NIC instead of the phone line: when it came to set up the dialing properties, I told it to use a dialing prefix of ",#401" (no quotes). By the way, that is entered with "Pause Enter 4 0 1". I still gave it my phone number and area code and everything though -- it wouldn't continue without it. But that was all I need do, according to what I had read. (The advice was correct, as it turned out. But I didn't know that last night.)

So before I hit "Select" to have it start to go out and grab its update, I went over to the TV so I could see the lights on the hub and the NIC, with the latter having no link or activity lights at all. There was link on the hub, but nothing on the LEDs on the actual NIC. My heart sank a bit. For a moment I thought it was asking a little too much for someone who has never even used a TiVo to be able to get it set up using an unsupported, hypothetical network system using possibly dodgy parts rather than it's built-in modem and a phone line. I hit select anyway and went looking for the phone cord and phone jack splitter I had bought just in case. I didn't know if I'd like having a phone cord draping over my vertical blinds, but I thought I could maybe just plug it in once a week or something and tell it to update manually or something. What a disgusting, manual solution. The thought made me not want to have a TiVo at all; if it couldn't do Ethernet then it was of no use to me.

While I was getting the phone cord, it had apparently made some progress. The on-screen message said that the initial setup would take 10-20 minutes, but I had only been turned around for maybe 90 seconds. No network activity was present, but it was clearly doing something. Did the fact that it did whatever it had to do really quickly mean that it got out and grabbed the data over my fast cable modem link and didn't need to take the 20 minutes a phone line would need, or did it mean that it couldn't do anything at all network-wise and had decided to punt? There was no way to know, so I kept moving forward under the assumption that magic TiVo bits were very stealthy and didn't tickle NIC or hub LEDs. After it did it's initial processing, it said that it had to go out and grab actual programming information, so it could tell us what channel were what and so forth (meanwhile I'm still wondering if maybe it couldn't get out on the Net and decided to use some fallback setup config instead). It said I shouldn't use the phone for the next 45 minutes to an hour, and that it would take around 8 hours to process information thereafter. So I decided to keep one eye on the on-screen progress info and the other eye on the hub's lights while it did it's network thing.

After watching a while I still couldn't see anything on the adapter's LEDs, but after a bit the hub lit up like a Christmas tree. Maybe the USB adapter's LEDs need software support that the Linux-based TiVo wasn't giving it? Who cares. Success was at hand. We had achieved operational TiVo satisfaction as the unit was, in fact, getting on the Net sans modem or phone line. And it was doing a really good job of getting on the Net as well. I starting poking around in the system information menus and saw an entry for "System Status" or "Current System Activity" or something like that. After maybe 30 minutes of it doing it's thing, it was 41% done. Figuring that what should have taken like 3½ hours took only about half an hour, the whole process should have been done in 75 minutes or so (unless it had to do internal processing on the data it was grabbing, like decompressing gzipped files, building databases/indexes, etc.). I was going to figure out what the theoretical transfer rate was but I decided to get a beer instead (math and beer usually being mutually exclusive for me; if you're curious: figure a maximum estimated transfer of 40kbps for an analog modem, divide by "about 8 hours" and compare the actual time it took to move the file(s) to my TiVo -- which I didn't finish timing due to the beer, but which was "about an hour and change").

So we're essentially all set up. I'm not quite sure if I like the TiVo's menu or not. I told myself that any new interface takes getting used to. I also have to fix it up so that the TiVo remote can work the TV volume and whatnot, but that's easy. I can't wait to record Good Eats (of which I've seen perhaps half of the available episodes, even though I actively and consciously try to make time to watch it on the weekends), Conquest and Mail Call.

The only thing bugging me is that my A/V receiver now has a supremely annoying hum in it (it actually always had a bit of a hiss, but only when it was turned way up and was on the AudioTron input). It's a plain old 60 Hertz hum, but it happens when I listen to the AudioTron input, the DVD input, etc. And it's "sub-cyclical" as well: there's a "pulsing" to the hiss with about a one second period. This is with the TV's volume on mute. The only thing different is that I now have a TiVo plugged in to the same 120V leg as the receiver. I'm going to shut the TiVo off and pop in a DVD and see if it's still there. If anyone with more of an electronics clue than me (about 80% of the US population, probably) has any ideas, I'd love to hear any advice you have to offer...

The pictures from our London trip are online. We have pictures from four different days:

- 11-25-02
- 11-27-02
- 11-28-02
- 11-30-02

Note that the pictures might not have all been taken on those days. The dates are merely when we dumped the images form our camera to the laptop. Well, we usually copied pics at night, so all the events happened on or before the date on the web pages.

Also, you might notice George and Perky the travel bug in quite a few pics. They had many adventures around London and are going to get their own page real soon, so stay tuned.

The Gopher Manifesto, which used to be at http://www.scn.org/~bkarger/gopher-manifesto/, is gone. So archived a copy from Google's cache.

Turns out that William Shatner is going to be leading a team in the "world's largest paintball game." My favorite quote from the article:

"I suggested to the guys running the game that I wanted to lead like a leader, right up front," he says. "And then they did the mathematics for me. There are 2,000 people minimum, hopefully more, so that means approximately 1,400 people are all trying to shoot me. Because, like a prize elk, they want my antlers on their wall. Multiply 20 or 30 paintballs a second times 1,400, and that's how many are coming my way. You know, leading at front may not be the best idea."

I couldn't possibly express in words alone how badly I'd like to sneak up behind Shatner and shoot him in the back of the neck.

Although he's like a year older than my dad. I don't know how I feel about plugging an older guy. It doesn't seem all that fair or sportsmanlike. Still, it'd be awfully nice to make him duck a lot, or maybe just wing him in the leg or something.

I gave up cigarettes (finally) about a year and a half ago, on my birthday. It was a present to myself (and to Tess). But as Jake once said, you know I gave up cigarettes, but I didn't give up smoking. My friend and former co-worker Martin the Macedonian gave me a Cuban cigar not too long ago, as a thank-you for setting him up with a job lead which turned into a job. I fear it's going to be a downhill journey from here on out. That was a good goddam cigar.

I've always thought of cigars as a camping thing: they weren't that great (think wood-tipped, sitting in a tackle box for 3 years), but not that bad when you can sit around the fire and spit at will. The reason why I never really liked cigars was that I never had a good cigar, until recently. I once had a Macanudo (don't remember what kind) at Donovan's Steak House in La Jolla, but that's about it. It was very tasty, especially after a USDA Prime ribeye and a bottle of 1997 Casa Lapostolle merlot. But everything that night was tasty (ought to have been for what it cost) and the quality smoke got drowned out by the quality of everything else.

This last Sunday I had a Don Capitano Churchill (from Ybor City, cigar capital of the world, apparently) that I got from a newly married bride whose reception I had attended the day before. Some relation to her had a box of them and was passing them out with much fanfare. She doesn't like cigars but felt obligated to take one, owing to their hand-carried-from-far-away-lands nature. She surreptitiously gave it to me, and I smoked it after a big dinner (steak again this time, oddly enough) with Tess's parents Sunday night. It was a very good cigar. There's something about a nice thick steak and red wine and good cigars. The Don Capitano wsn't as good as Martin's Cuban, though.

These two events, coupled with Martin's gift of a cigar sampler from his humidor have given me a taste for cigars. And not just any cigars, either. Good cigars, like the kind from a store where you have to walk into a special room to get them. I've recently tried buying some from regular (grocery/drug) stores, but they aren't at all good. No, I need a certain kind. The Cuban kind, one particular brand. Martin may as well have just given me crack. Now I not only need to go to a special store which has a special room, I need to go to a whole different country to do it.

I found a shop in Tijuana called La Casa del Tabaco which sells Ramone Allones Specially Selected Robustos. I don't know how much they cost down in TJ (I emailed them but haven't heard back yet), but they aren't cheap. I'll also be keeping an eye out for counterfeits while there. Although the shop has a good reputation, based on the searches I've done, you never know. The fake Cuban cigar trade apparently flourishes in Tijuana. Luckily, I have the band from my original Ramone Allones to use for comparitive purposes. It may seem like a lot of hassle to go through just to get a cigar until you realize that it takes over an hour to smoke one of the damn things. A box of 25 represents something of a committment.

I emailed Martin to see if he wants to trek on down to TJ this weekend. If it turns out that the cigars are $300, then I'll just order the Dominican Gustosos and call it good. In fact, I might just buy one of those anyway to see if it's the same. If it's close to the Cuban one, then I may just stick with that. They say that Dominican cigars are better than Cubans these days because all the quality left with the embargo and rise of Castro. I don't know yet if that's true.

I still want to go down to Mexico, though. Even if I don't buy any cigars, we'll have a nice day trip no matter what. I've never seen TJ, and niether has Tess. We've been meaning to go for like five years. And now, thank the maker, we may have a reason to go on a semi-regular basis! Joy!

I'm going on a camping trip the weekend after Labor Day. The cigar-around-campfire situation will be much improved.

My uncle John sent me this link to 9x18mm ammo gel tests. When on long road trips, I've taken to toting around a PA 63 Makarov due to its compact size, reliability, and inexpensiveness. (If I have to get something siezed, I'd rather it not be my Sprinfield Armory P9 or my Thompson/Auto Ordinance 1911A1. Those go to either my grandkids or a case on a wall somewhere.) I was never sure about what ammo to use, though. I'm using FMJ surplus. It didn't do too well form the looks of those tests.

See, I want something that will stop in a 2x4/drywall combo after going through an arm or a leg or a neck or something thin. That might sound sick but you have to think about these sorts of things. If someone comes into my house late at night and doesn't knock, I have to protect my family. Protect means securing all weapons against misuse, but it also means no collateral damage. It's dark, there's a guy throwing a cinder block through your front window, they have knives, they're coming up the stairs, and won't leave when told to. You have to either throw down or be a victim. That's no choice at all, except that it might be (in my mind) if I thought my .357 hand cannon might go through an interloper's chest and through a wall and into my wife. I'd hesistate, and that isn't good.

Anyway, we (thankfully) live in probably the best neighborhood we could live in for our area and the possibility of the sanctity of our home being violated is nearly infinitesimal. Still, I should be sure. Best to order a box of Hornaday or Barnaul and be done with it. Or just carry the Mak when on the road and have the 1911A1 available when at home. Or both at home, even. The more the merrier, I say. I'm ten times better with a .45 than a Mak anyway. It's a little big for Tess to shoot, though. Here's a plan: give the Mak to Tess and then get a lefty .45 for me to go with my righty. Full-on John Woo might be the way to go. And I get 14 rounds. Me, in my undies, plowing down the staircase blazing away with both hands like Bruce Willis would deter any nighttime burglar. Hell, me in my underwear would probably scare them enough, no guns needed.

Yeah, I need a pair of stainless .45s: one right-handed, one left. That's the solution.

I was in Phoenix, AZ this weekend hooking up a good friend with furniture. He just bought a house in Temecula, CA which has, not surprisingly, significantly larger overall internal dimenions than the one bedroom apartment he used to occupy. A predictable side effect of this life change is that he has excess volume which is occupied solely by normal air. He wanted non-air to fill said space and I didn't want him to have to go deeper in debt (he also has a 14-month-old baby girl and a wife who can only sporadically work) just because he has to increase air displacement in his house. Since my mother owns a retail store with 26,000 square feet of clothing and furniture, I felt that not helping him was tantamount stealing virtual milk from his baby's future. I don't know why people pay $1,500 for a sleeper sofa, I really don't. So helping him out was an easy decision, and one I was glad to make. I'm always up for helping out those who I know will appreciate it. I'm also glad my mom was kind enough to sell, at cost, furniture and housewares to a person she'd never met before, purely because I asked her to. She's a good person and has unwittingly helped out three other good people.

That wasn't the only reason I was there in PHX, though. I had to take Tess there because she is driving, with my mother and my sister-in-law, to Las Vegas for the ASD/AMD rodeo (which I'd been to several times in the past, both as an exhibitor and a normal attendee). The ASD/AMD show is the most surreal environment I've ever been in, sober or not. In fact, I'll go out on an easy limb and say that one needs no intoxicants in order to be entranced, amazed, bewildered, appalled and frightened by the ASD/AMD show. I just realized that the range of emotions I experienced when I first atteneded the show occurred in that exact order. Clearly, the show has imprinted itself into my hindbrain. I'll let Tess explain it all when she gets back.

And that wasn't the only reason I had to actually drive to PHX, though. I've been helping my mom at her new store, building various back-end computer-related parts or working a hammerdrill and a sledge hammer. More drill than server, not that I'm keeping score. What's good for the body is good for the soul. Anyway, I took two 40GB drives I had laying around (which I was going to sell on ebay, but figured mom could use) and build a RAID1 web and Samba workgroup server for the store. I was going to use the parts from an old dual Pentium II 400 machine they were using at their last store. It has nearly a gig of RAM, and would make a great fileserver. Since she also has static IPs through her corporate DSL line, the box was also going to be pressed into duty serving web pages, with Samba making it easy to store things (securely: RAID1 is mirroring) from a Windows share. I got the box working, but not with RAID. One of the drives must have fallen or something, though. It reported itself as having 7000-something cylinders, 255 heads (weird number, eh?) and an inordinately large number of sectors. I was going to figure out what exactly the reported geometry must have been (since the size was reported as a proper 40GB, just like the other one) but I'm too lazy and tired and I don't care anymore. I'm going to find a good deal on storage and try again some time soon.

Anyway, that was the last 38 hours. I've been gone and doing for 5 weekends in a row. I just want to sit. Next weekend is no plans (although I'd like to get a little paintball in; my Matrix is getting more expensive all the time, when you value it based on the number of times it gets used per year of its functional existence divided by its total cost). Tess's parents are here for a week, which will be a fun alternative to going to another city.

And now, I'm going to drink a beer and play a video game and not think or say anything for at least two hours.

Oh yeah, the title of this post relates to what I was going to write about but completely failed to mention: Tess's 2001 Honda CRV has an exceptionally smooth ride at 105 miles per hour.

Tess recently wrote about our weekend jaunt to the "Lobster Capital of Nebraska", Nebraska City, for her family reunion. I'm going to chime in about that trip, for no reason at all.

We saw (and caught) lightning bugs. They're really strange. I didn't have my glasses, so when they were winking on and off, it was hard to focus on where they were at (one wink blurry, the other sharp). It's like when you look at something reflective, and one eye catches a shine from something else in the reflection, but the other doesn't. Apparently, you can squish the lightning bugs, and the guts glow. (I suppose there's some sort of enzyme or something which causes the bioluminescent reaction, like two binary chemicals? I'm imagining the inventor of cyalume seeing lightning bugs and coming up with his product. No glow unless you mix the two chemicals. It's safe to say that squishing the little beetles is a way to have them involuntarily mix their chemicals.) No glowbugs were harmed in the making of our vacation, by the way, and as we were leaving Sunday morning, Tess released the one (very confused to be awake in the daylight) bug she had caught the night before. All she wanted was a tiny chuckle throughout the night, I guess.

We stayed at the Leid Conference Center. It was a nice place, and an ironic place. It was built to serve "a resource for the National Arbor Day Foundation members, other conservation-related organizations, teachers, forestry professionals, and any other organization or company wishing to use a centrally located, high quality, and reasonably priced conference center". Its construction involved the most real, natural, interior hardwood I've seen since my youth in Pinetop, AZ. I'm talking cut logs on every flat surface, and everything held up by whole peeled trees. It was a Paul Bunyan wet dream. You can kinda see it in this small picture. Everything in that pic which isn't glass is wood. So I couldn't help but laugh a little (OK, a lot) when I found out that it was built for the Arbor Day Foundation, on the Arbor Day Farms. It's like PETA having a meat packing plant for its headquarters and meeting spaces.

I know this may sound improbable, but I've always wondered where Arbor Day came from. Really, I have. When I was a kid, I had this Peanuts cartoon book about holidays and Arbor day was one of them. Snoopy and Charlie Brown were planting little trees. It was the first time I'd heard of Arbor Day. You know when you hear about something that apparently everyone else has known about, but mention of which has somehow escaped you, how you get that feeling like you've been asleep too long? It was like that. Anyhow, I got to see where it was invented. And I think I know why it was invented, too. From the looks of the conference center, I can see how it's completely reasonable that the only holiday one could possibly imagine after constructing the center would be one involving the planting of new trees.

Here are some more factoids which are nearly completely useless: The guy who came up with Arbor Day (and who was probably no slouch with a saw himself) was J. Sterling Morton, of Morton salt fame. Apparently, Nebraska has a lot of salt in it's geological makeup, although it's no longer mined commercially. We got to see Morton's farm. They rebuilt it. You know when Arbor day is? Well, that depends on which state you're in. If you wanna join in, you can get 10 free trees with which to do so.

So environment aside, I had a great time meeting all of Tess's relatives. I especially liked meeting Little Ivan, who -- despite having Tourette's Syndrome -- owns and operates a worm ranch. No kidding -- I learned all about worm ranches from him (I'm not giving away the secrets, either; if you want to know what a worm ranch does, then google it). He's an interesting guy, and if half the people his age had half his determination in spite of adversity, this country would be twenty times the economic powerhouse it is today. Tess's cousins (aged such that they could easily be mistaken for aunts) were extremely cool. We stayed up "late" Friday night and they were all taking time out to knock back a cocktail/beer or two. It was fun being there with them for the pregame show, getting a little one-on-one time. Earlier that day, I got a very manly and mostly-encompassing hug from Cousin Bill, an ex-Marine and a hilariously nice guy. I tried to dig into the hug and reciprocate as much as I could, and I think it was well-received. I should have him asked what aftershave he used. It was quite sexy.

I got to see Nebraskan food, which apparently exists as a condiment to gravy of various types. Nothing like a big helpin' of gravy seasoned with a little fried chicken and corn. It really hits the spot on a warm summer evening. I got to see apple trees, which I had never seen before (even though I did some field camp mapping trips in and around Willcox, AZ, where they grow quite a few apples). The ones we saw were scraggly little things, with the tallest being about 8-10 feet tall. I looked up apple trees on the web and the ones I saw were pruned shorter than normal. The apples were tiny green ones and not fit for eating. We saw corn and soybeans, too. Lots of it. I'd seen soybeans before, but not corn. I wanted to get out and walk around the rows just to see what it was like, but I never did. Maybe another day.

I also learned that on Sundays in July between the hours of noon and 5:30PM, Omaha is essentially a wasteland. If I ever have to direct a remake of Omega Man, I'm filming it in Omaha on a July weekend. Tess and I had 6 hours to kill (we hitched a ride from Nebraska City to Omaha in the morning; our flight left at night). We decided to rent a car, partially because Omaha International Airport has no lockers for personal items. Explain to me how an "international" airport can do anything but hang its head in shame when it doesn't even have basics like coin-operated storage lockers. I think it's putting on airs. Omaha is, geographically and culturally speaking, probably the farthest away one can be from anything international and still remain in the continental US. Next time I'm there, I'm looking for an international flight. I bet they don't have any (or only enough to claim the title "international").

We drove around downtown aimlessly for an hour or two amidst endless one-way streets (found the art museum and the high school, and even took a picture of the "Mutual of Omaha" building and one cool looking old house), until I hit upon an idea. I recalled seeing a lot of mention of the Cornhuskers, and I remembered that this was a college football team. I figured that Omaha, being the largest city in Nebraska, is home to this team and therefore the college for which they play. I further assumed that in spite of its predicted "Go Huskers" nature, the college might be the one place that has anything open on Sunday which might appeal to a young and hip (heh heh) married couple with a few hours to kill and a free rental car. So I fired up the GPS, found us, found the mall on the map, found the mall on the GPS, and got us properly oriented. Tess (who was driving the rental) steered us down the proper one-way road until we came to the mall. We went inside and looked around before deciding on a plan.

Omaha is actually an interesting place, and I learned a lot of about it from the cross-section of the people at the mall - at least as far as appearances and local styles are concerned. For example, I learned that, statistically speaking, if you are a male between the ages of 16 and 28 and you live in Omaha, you have a 87% chance of having a mullet and a 61% chance of wearing Lee brand jeans. If you're a female otherwise matching that demographic, you have a 47% chance of feathered hair parted in the middle or a 51% chance of having your bangs hairsprayed into a sheer wall rising up from your forehead. You also have a 74% chance of finding yourself wearing blue eyeshadow (and if so, a 24% chance of that being your only makeup). Either sex has a 67% chance of having arrived at the mall in a car with a dreamcatcher hanging from the rearview, with 97% of the cars sporting some sort of red "N" somewhere (the chances that you have a "I bleed Husker red" sticker was undetermined but observed to be high).

After sampling the mall and its inhabitants, we got some coffee, bought some books, had lunch, and headed back to the airport so we could wait for our flight to Denver. We got to Denver, got home and then prepared for the traveling the next coming weekend.

Well, that's about all I can dredge up as far as thoughts on my trip. In general, I liked everything and had a swell time. I'd go back in a heartbeat, and am looking forward to seeing Tess's relatives again.

Well, this is it: I'm really famous now. Big time. I've got my name in the BogoMips Mini-Howto. And not just once, but twice. Scroll down to the listing for the "AMD Athlon/1330" or "Crusoe/400" entries (or search for 'wrhodes').

I wasn't going to do this, but why not... Here's what a BogoMip is:

Quoted from the Internet, origin unknown but brought to the attention by Eric S Raymond esr@thyrsus.com, and Geoff Mackenzie freon@dialstart.net, there is an humourously illustrative definition of BogoMips as "the number of million times per second a processor can do absolutely nothing."

On a more precise basis, from Lars Wirzenius' wirzeniu@kruuna.Helsinki.FI mail of 9 September 1993, explaining Bogomips, with additional detailed information by Alessandro Rubini, rubini@norgana.systemy.it, and by Wim van Dorst:

`MIPS is short for Millions of Instructions Per Second. It is a measure for the computation speed of a program. Like most such measures, it is more often abused than used properly (it is very difficult to justly compare MIPS for different kinds of computers).

BogoMips are Linus's invention. The kernel (or was it a device driver?) needs a timing loop (the time is too short and/or needs to be too exact for a non-busy-loop method of waiting), which must be calibrated to the processor speed of the machine. Hence, the kernel measures at boot time how fast a certain kind of busy loop runs on a computer. "Bogo" comes from "bogus", i.e, something which is a fake. Hence, the BogoMips value gives some indication of the processor speed, but it is way too unscientific to be called anything but BogoMips.

The reasons (there are two) it is printed during boot-up is that a) it is slightly useful for debugging and for checking that the computers caches and turbo button work, and b) Linus loves to chuckle when he sees confused people on the news.'

BogoMips are being determined in /usr/src/linux/init/main.cloops_per_sec is used in several drivers for more serious purpose. The actual delay function udelay() is in assembler, and therefore each port has its own definition in /include/asm/delay.h. The loops_per_sec variable and the udelay() function are used in numerous drivers, see:

cd /usr/src/linux #or where else source is located
find . -name '*.[hcS]' -exec fgrep loops_per_sec {} /dev/null \; 
find . -name '*.[hcS]' -exec fgrep udelay {} /dev/null \;

The BogoMips calculation loop for the non Intel CPUs is similar but not the same, because it is programmed in another assembler language. BogoMips is however the only portable way over the various CPUs (Intel-type and non Intel-type) for getting an indication of the CPU speed. Even CPU clock speed is not available on all CPUs.

When I got my new Athlon 1.33GHz, I did two things: a kernel compile (using defaults) and a BogoMips comparison against my older Athlon 600. The difference between the two was exactly what one would expect. So then I got curious and looked up another 1.33 Athlon on the BogoMips Mini-Howto's comparison table. The speediest Athlon listed was like a 1.2GHz or something. So I mailed my BogoMips number to Wim van Dorst, the author of the Mini-Howto, and basically told him that mine was bigger than anyone else's, and he must put it in the listing so others may bask in awe of it's sheer girth. We had a little email exchange that was pretty amusing. The innuendo couldn't be kept up long, though.

A couple months later when I got my Gateway Connected Touchpad from ebay and finally got Midori to build for it, I sent in my number for that (since he didn't have any numbers at all for the Crusoe CPU in that machine). This time I said something about how mine was not only bigger, it was the only one, blah blah blah. So he put that number in there as well.

My 15 minutes have been serisouly whittled down now.

So my Linux on a cash register hobby page thing was on Slashdot. Way cool. I have no idea how the guy that submitted it found it. He might have been searching google for Linux POS systems or something and came across it. I was up in Phoenix visiting my folks when I decided to borrow my mom's PC and check the haps online. I nearly spit coffee out of my nose when I saw my site on Slashdot. I didn't think my project was terribly novel, but I got some positive comments. Slashdot had some blackout/protest thing directed at it that week, so maybe they were hard up for new or something. They certainly seemed to put out a lot of news items during the week. I thought it was interesting to see the "/. effect" firsthand. My provider stayed up nicely.

I got about 35,000 individual visitors in a couple days time. The page hits have trickled off to about 4000 a day (I usually get about 400-500 per day). I had people from Slovenia and Malaysia and the Russian Federation and every other continent besides Antarctica stopping by. I had a Qualcomm person or two come by as well. And my 404 page got quite a bit of notice as well. I don't have a 003.html, so the pics are "out of sequence". Quite a few people noticed this and started requesting the "missing" page. It might have been in the Slashdot comments too. I forget.

The best part was the email I got. I had 40-something emails from people, all of them very nice. I answered every single one of them (and I can be real bad about letting emails languish, so I made a conscious effort to respond to them all). Some people had bought used POS systems like the one I have and wanted info on them (one fella in particular was in deep need of help, and I sent him a bunch of links as well as info on the unit). Another group sent me POS links, had info about the hardware, and the like. I have some really great pointers to stuff and I'll post them here tomorrow or thereabouts. The last group of emails was along the lines of "nice hack". The LED-on-a-stick was especially popular, and I got some emails asking what plans I had for it. Not sure yet. Yet another future MG post.

The comments in the Slashdot post were pretty damn amusing. Tracy got a kick out of a couple of them in particular. Most comments were of the "this ain't no big deal" category. They're right: it really isn't a big deal. I'm just doing it to have fun. I like taking stuff apart. I only took pictures because I've got a handy thumbnailing script and I wanted to show Trey the progress so I annotated the pages. Besides, how was I supposed to know what the things were made of? For all I knew, they had StrongARM CPUs in them. And it's been fun getting the LED-on-a-stick working. I didn't mind the harsher comments. You can't please everyone all the time, especially when you aren't trying to please anyone at all.

Oddly, since little project became "famous", I haven't done squat with it. I brought a cash drawer back with me, so I'm going to hook that up soon. It's on the floor right now. I did yank out the Voodoo3 card and put in an old SoundBlaster AWE16 I had, but that's not hardly progress. And there's these guys with a LCD display daemon project who are writing driver support for my LED-on-a-stick (and those like it; apparently my model is fairly common). I'm going to help them beta test. So stuff'll get done. Trouble is, I discovered the HTML::CalendarMonthSimple perl module and had to write a database-driven event calendar right quick (it even has my birthday in it). I'm gonna use it as the base for the web site for my parents' cabin. Yet one more future MG post. I'll have to write more often I think. Oh yeah, I even submitted a patch for the module which allows for table cell font resizing.

All in all a very amusing situation. I really wished I would have put the URL to the cash register on the web too. I have apache logging to the printer. I'd have loved to be able to save that receipt.

My mom bought a bunch of cash registers for her new store. The registers were very new, and she got them for like $30 each. A great deal, when you consider that they came with 14" Optiquest monitors. They are nice systems I guess. I don't have a lot of experience with cash registers, never having worked in retail. But they have all the normal cash register-ish stuff: a steel platform where the cash draw sits (and which holds a smallish keyboard), a thermal receipt printer, a monitor, and a little LED-display-on-a-stick thing which shows people how much their total is.

When I was out in Phoenix last weekend, my brother Trey and I got to talking about them. Turns out that he has the job of building these registers into point-of-sale system for the new store. Kind of a daunting task. I mean, what are they, little embedded StrongARM deals running QNIX? He had one in his car and I went out to look at it. To my surprise, the "cash register" was basically a wee little tiny PC. So I had to take one apart. Trey let me have one of them to play with and I brought it back with me. Tracy was very polite when I told her that I have a cash register for my office.

I did a Google search and found the manufacturer's product page. Sadly, my unit doesn't have the keyboard with the colored keys, just a cheap Taiwanese one. And I don't have the barcode scanner. So I hooked up my Cue:Cat instead. How could I have a cash register and not be able to scan things!?! And the Cue:Cat has been sitting on my shelf waiting for a project anyway (although I once wrote a perl script which decodes it's input, that doesn't have any real world applications -- not like a real working cash register, anyway).

Oh, and I didn't get the cash drawer. They were buried in my mom's warehouse and I was in a hurry. But I'm going to get one next week when I drive out again. And why do I want the actual cash drawer? Well, if I'm going to help build the POS system, then I need to get the drawer part working. And I found the little port on the printer (called a "kick-out" port) that opens the drawer, and that gave me an idea: I want to have my cash register checking my main POP account. When I get mail, I want it to print the message's headers on the thermal printer and open the cash drawer (the drawers have a loud bell, so that'll be a good notification).

Last night I started taking the cash register apart. I started documenting my progress and took some dark pictures as well. I'll add more pictures and pages as I go along. I also dumped this file out on to a page there so I can continue to scribble stuff down in a coherent place.

I realized that I hadn't ever posted anything about work. Bummer. Or maybe not. It's very twisted, my work.

My original boss left for something stable (and bully on him, because he's got needs -- like wanting a life finally). The boss I was supposed to have (nobody told me I was reporting to him, but he was VP of Engineering, so I figured he was next in chain of command) was laid off today. Oh yeah, he was also a founder of the company. And he's known everyone -- personally -- at work for years. But that doesn't matter. My new boss is taking it all in stride. Which is good since he used to live with my original boss, but is now renting a house from my old boss. If that sounds weird to you I can explain: it's weird. We have more soap opera before 11 am than most companies have all year.

I'm not sure how I'm taking it. I've been there 11 months and we've had 5 rounds of layoffs. I'm amazed I'm still employed. And I'm always wondering how bad it has to get to make me a debit column on a spreadsheet.

Best to have more than one iron in the fire, I think...

We had an earthquake in San Diego at about 11:55 pm on October 30th, 2001. It was a 5.1 magnitude, and the epicenter was in Anza, CA. I felt it quite a bit. The water in my glass visibly moved, and my computer monitor shook noticeably. It went on for quite a while, but I can't guess exactly how long it was. According to some seismograms I found, it lasted for over a minute. It was fairly disturbing, but also intersting at the same time. However, I probably would have felt better if I had been on the ground floor of my house.

I decided to save the seismograms I found, since they update automatically. If I didn't save them then the "snapshot" would be lost. They are from University of Arizona's seismometers. I added an explanation of what each graph is.




This displays the broadband vertical data. This is basically a "recording" of all the frequencies "heard" by the seismometers. The typical range for earthquakes is 50 Hz to 0.001 Hz. The frequencies are measured by their period, with one second being 1
Hz.




This displays the long-period data which will clearly display large (magnitude greater than 5.5) earthquakes. The long period waves are those with periods greater than 10 seconds -- the powerful ones. This graph will show the really big quakes very well since all the short period (or high frequency) stuff is filtered out. You don't want to be around when there's a big squiggle being recorded
on this graph...




This displays the high-frequency (short-period) data. This will also record mining activity, underground nuclear testing, and the like very well.

That's all I could find from UofA. If I still lived near the Gould-Simpson building, I'd be able to go in tomorrow morning and grab a real paper seismogram. I used to have one from the Northridge quake and one which showed a Soviet underground nuclear test taped to my fridge.

---

I nabbed some really cool maps from TriNet.




Intensity: This is an intensity map. I think it's purpose is to show people how far from the epicenter (which is the yellow star) a quake could be felt. So it's basically a Mercalli Scale map I guess.




Peak Ground Acceleration: This shows how much the ground accelerated in the area near the quake. The more acceleration, the bigger the quake (and worse it is, naturally).




Peak Ground Velocity: A map of how fast the ground was moving. Like the map above, the more it was moving, the more intense the earthquake.




Spectral Response: Honestly, I've got no idea. I'll go look it up online, but I included the map now because I thought it looked pretty cool.

The last thing I nabbed of the TriNet site was a guide for newscasters. It has the specific stuff about this quake, and it's incredibly funny.

---

Chris Grout (a coworker) found some info about the quake on the Caltech USGS web site. Their site was overloaded, so I could only get to one map.




This is a map of all the earthquakes recorded for a certain periods of time. The one I felt is the big blue square. The little red squares are likely aftershocks. You usually see either foreshocks or aftershocks in little swarms like that. For reference, my house is about 15 miles south of Escondido.