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GRAFFITI -- November 09, 2009 thru November 15, 2009>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
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November 9, 2009
No Post.
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November 10, 2009
1711 - I'm having trouble getting caught up. Maybe it's just being on call this week - I tend to sleep more lightly when I know I need to be responsive to the phone making noises. Work was work. Last night, in between doing the bills and backups and trash and supper, I managed to get three small batches of El Salvador Finca Kilimanjaro roasted. I'll let you know how it is over the next few days. That's from Sweet Maria's, I'd point at the actual page for the bean, but the stock was small to start, and the site's just gone non-responsive for me. Better luck for you, I hope. If you start roasting your own coffee (and you should, it is *so* worth it), then you can't do better than start at Sweet Maria's. SRSLY.
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Can you tell I'm remembering Herb Caen at the moment. There's a reason: I wanted to make mention of one of the other luminaries I briefly met at LISA '09 last week: Ben Rockwood. No, Ben isn't a cute chick with a pink wig. But he's bright, well spoken, and passionate about his Solaris. I had a chance to speak with him about using ZFS on root partitions ... he's spoken on that topic before. But read the blog if you're interested in Solaris. Yeah, Big Admin will keep you going for days and months, but Ben gets cool stuff in front of your eyes right now. Like ZFS deduplication. Yum.
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Today? Just another day. Ciao!
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November 11, 2009
Veteran's Day
1549 - All of our veterans deserve our respect and pride, they sure have mine!
I've been doing a bit of work-work, a fair amount of school work, and an errand on this dreary Veteran's Day. The errand was taking Molly to the vet for a blood draw and nail clipping. Yesterday's forecast gave the odds at no more than 30% chance of rain. Turns out that the water-to-air ratio today is a constant 30%. Oh, alright, I exaggerate: we've only had four tenth's of an inch of rain since dawn, but it drizzles continuously with brief, sharp rains. From the looks of the radar, some of the slightly heavier stuff is likely to push into our area within the next three hours or so.
Now I think I'll work on the thesis question and the research proposal for my last Writing 101 paper. Ciao!
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November 12, 2009
Nope....
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November 13, 2009
1219 - Frankly, last night is a blur. I got home, I worked on stuff, I brewed roasted coffee. But it doesn't seem that I accomplished nearly enough to account for the 5 or so hours between arrival and sleep. I guess I did, though. Wednesday night was interesting. dc.sage had its first monthly meeting in a good long while: a presentation by Theo Schlossnagle on the subject of Scalable Internet Architectures. Very interesting talk, enough so that I bought the book last night. Cthulhu knows when I'll be able to read the damned thing, but I'll be ready when the moment arrives. More later if there's more to say, today. Ciao!
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November 14, 2009
1802 - The good thing about writing on the subject of computers is that I can just wing it. That is, I write well enough, and can organize my thoughts and the structure of the paper suitably. Then, I can go reference hunting and find something quoteable for each major part of the paper. Or (and this is the fun part), I can find I knew something wrong, and learn the right thing AND get a useful quote out of it. So, in that fashion, I've written 1252 words, just under five pages, on the topic of CPU technical advances in the last 25 years, and have six references cited. It probably won't be a 100, but it'll hopefully be an 'A'. I've printed it and I'll set it aside for a day or so, then read it, and swipe through the edits. Finally I make sure that the citations match today's version of the APA style that the school seems to be following. Then I can turn it in. All that's left is the final for this one, on December 7. Ominous, that. I still have to write a research proposal and thesis question for the Writing 101 course, but I'll leave that to tomorrow.
Today's Norris quote: "Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun." Heh. That came after I saw this: "Chuck Norris can parse HTML with a regex." The context for that, courtesy of a tweet from Joel Spolsky.
Speaking of Twitter, I've been turned on to two, count'em, two different musical talents via tweets. The first was Jonathan Coulton, who was brought to my attention by Wil Wheaton (the guy who did an episode of Leverage recently). Then, yesterday, Robin Sloan drew my attention to Pomplamoose. I *like* their style, and her singing, quite a lot. Apparently they broke a nightspot in SF last night. Like so many cool things on the Internet, Nataly and Jack are +10 for happiness, and -7 for productivity. If you intend to get something done this evening, don't follow the Pomplamoose link. Let me repeat: I love Nataly's voice and Jack's off-kilter instrumental talents.
Now, it's time to feed the mutts. Ciao!
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November 15, 2009
2025 - Argh. Last night, I needed to do a DNS update. I did, and cleared out some old junk DNS entries ... okay, one-too-many old DNS entries - the wildcard is actually used for a number of things. I don't like it, now, but it was easiest to just put it back for the time being. Later on, I'll explicitly add the entries I want, and clear that again.
After shopping and more schoolwork today, we went over to Linda's place. I did some caulking for her, and then we went over to Ledo pizza. Back home to feed the dogs a little late, and now I've got to give them their 8 PM treat. Yeah, they can tell time, when it counts. Back in a few ... Ah-hah! The last hundred pack of evening treats is off the shelf. It's time to visit Rawhide Direct, and pick up another thousand munchy rawhides. Compared to the local retail prices, this has always been a great deal. I think, this time: Bacon! And that's done.
I find myself waiting, with many others, for the President to decide the future course of our activities in Afghanistan. Iraq is a fairly done deal now, it seems. And as Jerry points out, so is Afghanistan. We only have to figure out how to extricate ourselves without hurting our friends, if possible. It would help if there were clear, feasible, strategic goals. In the meanwhile, our fine young men and women fight and die for the needs of the nation. I am proud of and honored by you all! Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
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