March 2006 Archives

Some people have been waiting for this for some time - and it's been a long time coming. The original South Florida Dubs site design was really intended as a stop-gap measure, something to put up while I finished the actual look of the site. After all these months, that design is finally complete.

I went through several false starts in the process of coming up with this design, and tried a couple of different styles. Finally, I'd been saving a specific design for one of my personal websites, but decided that it would work for this particular site. All said and done, the goal was sleek and elegant, which I think was achieved.

A sneak peek will be available soon, although the new design should be live soon enough. I'll update with a link either way.

I got this in an email from Jimbo. I've heard some of them before, of course, but taken all together, it's not bad at all.

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I
may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the
hell alone.

2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and leaky
tire.

3. It's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your
neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.

4. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be
promoted.

5. Always remember that you're unique. Just like everyone else.

6. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

7. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.

8. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their
shoes.

9. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

10. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and
he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

So the Powerbook has been acting up lately. It's normally such a well-behaved young lady that I rarely have anything to say about it except "I love my Mac." However, time is starting to take a toll on the old girl. How do I know this? Well, just a few days ago, the Airport card crapped out.

Now normally this isn't a big deal. Airport Extreme cards are what, $60USD? Most 802.11G wireless cards are about that price, or cheaper. One might imagine that an old Apple 802.11B card would be *super* cheap. Yeah, not so much. This would be the first time I've ever seen hardware *increase* in value. $170USD for a replacement card. That's right, almost $200 for an old "B" card. I'm thinking... no.

Sometimes, you just know when it's time. And right now, I think it might just be about that time. It's totally okay, though, there's no enmity or bad blood. In fact, it's been three years of dedicated work, lots of good times and harrowing times, and everything in between. I'm just looking forward to some new experiences, some growth, and (of course), more good times. In the meantime, I do what I do. And that's the joy of it.

Today wasn't terrible, although I definitely feel a bit of the ol' stress. K likes to say the ol' salesman's motto "You're only as good as what you did yesterday, not a month ago, not a year ago." That's great, except in my world, success can be (and usually is) measured in terms of months and years, so it's not as applicable as you'd think. Unfortunately, The Powers are all salesmen. Great, just great. It's amusing, though, how once you've achieved expected goals once, suddenly you're expected to achieve those goals ever faster. I wish it were that formulaic!

Phew! Two missions tonight... one, I must get S some coffee. It's important that she be caffienated properly on work evenings such as this one. Two, I must find Namco Museum for the PS2. S has a great little unit that contains some ancient ROM of the original Pac-Man, which is fine and all, but not when I know full well that there exists in the world a licensed version of the original Namco ROM on a PS2 disc. It contains not only Pac-Man, but Ms Pac-Man... and Galaga! Let the good times begin! I'm excited - even if it is a total throwback. 14 classis 80's games. 20 bucks. That's a buck and a bit per game. I spend well over that every time I go to Boomer's to play any of these (if they happen to have them... we even go on trips down the Turnpike to the Service Plazas just to play Ms Pac-Man).

So, totally worth it. And it'll bring a smile to S's face. Ahhhh yes.

...can't trust that day. And so, migration to the new host begins. I'm (understandably) not fond of this process - it's a pain in the ass on a good day. It's seriously not going to impress me...

Which reminds me, I need to export the *entire* photo gallery database. ::sigh:: I'm almost inclined to leave 'er be and try to... hm. Actually that's exactly what I'm going to do...

Gentlemen... Behold! I have a plan!

In the meantime, it's Monday. I walked into the office today dreading what might have broken, blown up, imploded, or otherwise ceased functioning over the weekend. These guys don't even work a full day on the weekend - a half day on Saturday - yet somehow there always manages to be *something* that is irreparably, irrevocably, irreconcilably destroyed by the time I roll in on Monday, coffee in hand, goosebumps on my arms in anticipation of what awaits me.

Good thing I'm not an IT guy, or I'd be in some serious shit, eh? I've just kind of come to terms with the fact that my department just has to bite the bullet (or the keyboard, as the case may be) and deal with the everday IT issues. It hampers the rest of the work-schedule, of course, and is extremely inefficient to have to task-switch so much (something I learned all about at Think), but I've also learned to minimize the damage done (i.e. wait until there's a ton of crap gone bad, and then send monkeys out in force on 'search and repair' missions...)

It's all fun and games until someone drops a hand-grenade. None of those yet today, thankfully, but it's only 10am. Early still. The demons have only just begun to stir...

We had *such* a meltdown yesterday, the stuff of nightmares. Okay, it totally wasn't really. An Access database took a shit, and the boss-people looked around, squinted their eyes, brought up fingers of responsibility (and blame)... took careful aim...

And then I wandered by. "Hi" I said, "what's up?"

So they fired. They opened their maws wide, teeth gleaming, fangs dripping blood, and roared "Fix!"

Identifying the issue was a simple matter, the screen screamed its text at me "I hate you! I hate you! I'll swallow your soul!" Luckily I had garlic, a cross, and a wooden stake. I dodge bullets all the way down the hall to the server room, a fortified hole where a geek can control the universe or take a quick nap. The server room also happens to house the server, which has attached to it the Almighty Backup Device.

I recited the incantations, waved my arms around mystically and with purpose, popped some smoke, and restored that which was once lost... oh, relief flooding my body, starting deep in my stomach and spreading out to my fingertips, fingertips tapping the keyboard and mouse to check the restored file and ensure that my evening was indeed over, and prove once again that I am the devilishly charming hero I see in the mirror every morning.

No such luck! The file sizes didn't match! The database wasn't backed up, because it resided on a workstation, and workstations didn't fall under the protective umbrella of our extremely large and impressive backup tapes. Sweat broke out on my brow. I started to run.

So, journalling. Blogging. Publishing thoughts, thinking out loud. Whatever.

There's a lot of things I don't want to forget, memories that I'm sure would come back to me if I chased them down hard enough, but I think I'd rather write them down as a I remember... it makes for an amusing enough story. A bit broken, lop-sided, limping along with a pain in its right hip from where it got kicked too hard. Taken individually they might make for interesting (or at least amusing) reading... taken as a whole, I don't think there's many (if any) people who can make sense of it. But that's part of the fun, I think. You can throw out really obscure references, tiny little scraps of whatever that someone who's reading it might think "hey... I remember once..." and the cycle begins again.

Ran into this joke/email. I thought it was amusing enough to share... and since I'm not especially fond of passing emails around. Anyway, here it is... the Texas Chili Contest. Those damn Texans... they're all half-mexican anyway! ;)

Texas Chili Contest:
If you can read this whole story without tears of laughter running down your cheeks, then there's no hope for you!

*Note: Please take time to read this slowly. If you pay attention to the first two judges, the reaction of the third judge is even better! For those of you who have lived in Texas, you know how true this is. They actually have a Chili Cook-off about the time the Rodeo comes to town. It takes up a major portion of the parking lot at the Astrodome.

The notes are from an inexperienced Chili taster named Frank, who was visiting Texas from the East Coast:

Frank: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The Judge #3 called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Budweiser truck, when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted."

I added 4 new albums to the gallery today. Well, actually, it's 3 albums and a handful of pictures that I strapped into an existing gallery. Here's the breakdown:

In "Climbing Trips" I put up pictures from the Orlando Comp and the Miami Comp (Southeast Showdown). The Miami Comp has a few pictures of Shaunna climbing, a couple of me climbing, and a lot of pictures of the whole group just lounging around. Which we did a lot of. The Orlando Comp album has some pictures, but they're not climbing pics, nor are any from the actual comp. In fact, I don't think any of the pictures were taken in Orlando at all. Some from the trip up, some from the trip back, and some from while we stayed in Gainsville with Brad and Suze. Amusing, yes, yes... very much so.

In Get Local I posted up an album with Devin's new (albeit short-lived) mohawk. It looks great, too! Super badassed. But his work would flip out and fire him if he showed up with it (too bad) so he has to shave it down. Very unfortunate. This could've been a whole new Devin. Chicks dig that shit, fareal.

Finally, a handful of pics were added to the Binked The Curb album. Just a few shots showing how my car squirts oil now. Well, it did, at least. Right now it's in the shop (where it's been for over a month now, with no end in sight.) I called them for an update, which was pretty straightforward. "When do you think the car will be ready?" "Ready? Uhm... I don't know..." "You can't give me a guess?" "Well, we're waiting for suspension parts... but no, I don't know."

Ahem.

Well, whatever works. As long as it gets fixed.

So run into the gallery, check out the new pics, check out the old ones. There's some pretty amusing stuff, leave comments!

Tonight is going to be messy. Just a lot going on. I want to go to the gym and climb (been working on a 5.11) but my fingers feel a little tight and I'm just plain exhausted. I want little more than to just curl up and sleep. It sounds so nice...

But wait, there's totally a good reason for it! And it's related to climbing, so that should be exciting. For *some* people at least...

I'm setting up a sort of 'events calendar'... more like an 'events list' than a calendar. Something about the calendar interface never really struck me as intuitive, so I'm just going to skip it and make it a kind of list of upcoming events. What events, you'll ask? Why, climbing events, of course!

After noting that people are immensely disorganized about going on climbing trips (including me, of course) I decided that the best way to correct this would be to establish some sort of... system, if you will... to organize people despite themselves.

This system won't be open to just anybody (at least not at first.) I mean, anybody will be able to access it and view the trips, but only registered 'members' will be able to post to the events, and only I will be posting up new events. At least at first. I'd like to expand it once it gets rolling, but for now, it's just intended to give me a place to post the trips that *I* plan on going on, and have people sign up if they're down to come with. Later on, it'll be a place anybody can post up a trip/event, relevant details (such as lodging, plane ticket prices, carpooling instructions, etc) and have people sign up for those events too. But like I said, that's down the line.

Right now, I just want to concentrate on making it work. Which, in and of itself, can become complicated.

So, on to the extra-geeky stuff. I'm thinking I might use this opportunity to make this my first Ruby application. Doing it in PHP was my first though (and probably the easiest way to do it) but I've been itching to apply a little practical Ruby to the repertoire, and this seems like a good opportunity. That won't make it as marketable a tool, I suspect, but it's for fun and convenience, not for money, so it's hardly a factor.

More then, as it comes. In the meantime, I've set up a forum (phpBB) to take care of immediate communication issues. It's nothing fancy, but it'll do the job in the meantime.

Phew! My geek gland is throbbing!