All Sorts Of Busy

Warm salutations, Humanity.  Of late, there has been much to occupy me, and much to celebrate.

Back in October, I traveled by aircraft to the desert city of Las Vegas, to attend a bachelor party in Jahndo's honor.  There were 11 of us.  We stayed at the Monte Carlo, and a good time was had by all, especially the majority of us who did well at the craps table.  Myself, I didn't warm to craps, and preferred to play poker.  I lost money, but not a lot of it.  Friday night we went down to Fremont Street in "old Vegas."  That was a blast.  The only low-light was that I was just a few pounds too heavy to ride the 800 foot zip-line that runs down the street.  (Note to self:  TREADMILL, FATTY!)

The bachelor extravaganza went on the following day and night, but I did not stay in Vegas for the second half.  I flew home Saturday morning and attended Kayrin's wedding.  It was very nicely done -- a small outdoor ceremony officiated by a friend of the couple, followed by drinks and and excellent dinner.  Malallee and I are eager to have the newlyweds over to our place for a meal sometime soon; with mutually busy schedules, we haven't seen as much of them lately as we would like.

On election night, my home theater projector crapped out.  As Malallee and I were watching the returns, I noticed that the brightness of the picture kept flickering.  As I changed channels and switched to different input sources, desperately hoping that the effect was coming from the station itself, my cable provider, or my cable box, the projector finally went dark altogether.  Then a tiny wisp of smoke came out of it.  I, in a rare attack of naive optimism, decided that the lamp unit had burned out, and ordered a replacement.  When it arrived a few days later, I installed it, remounted the projector to the ceiling, and turned it back on.  The new lamp didn't light, but the rest of the projector did, with flame and sparks shooting out the sides.  I guess it wasn't a burned out lamp after all.

A couple of weeks ago, my parents and my sister came to stay with us for a few days, mostly to shop apparel for my niece-in-progress, who is due to arrive in April.  Aside from the shopping and the perhaps unhealthy amount of eating (TREADMILL, FATTY!), I went with my Dad to the classic car museum, because he's into that sort of thing.  It was a pretty good weekend.

Malallee was unhappy with some recent organizational changes at her job, so she went looking for a new one, and found it.  She's starting the new gig after Thanksgiving.

This past weekend, we flew to Boston for Jahndo's wedding.  A nice weekend.  Boston is a nice city, with nice restaurants.  We checked out the New England Aquarium (where I was disappointed to find all the sharks and rays had been removed so the tank could be treated for a parasite), and ate at a great little family run Italian place, and a couple of good Irish pubs.  The only thing I didn't especially care for was the hotel.  Not that there was anything wrong with it, it was just absurdly overpriced.  The accommodations were clean and comfortable, but no more so than at a Holiday Inn.  I expect a bit more luxury from a place whose (completely average) breakfast buffet costs $30 per person.

When we got home I installed the new home theater projector.  Well, installed isn't the right word -- I temporarily mounted the projector in such a way that the picture appears on the screen and is watchable, then ordered a proper mounting bracket for it, because the homemade one that the previous homeowner ginned up to mount the old one won't work for the new.  (Just to be clear, it is an impressive homemade mount -- but it was obviously custom built for the old projector, and its limited degree of adjustability is insufficient to get the new projector aligned with the screen).  For now, the picture takes up about 70 percent of the screen real estate, leaving vast and unequal regions empty at the left, right, and top.

I am shocked to realize that our week-long trip to the Dominican Republic is coming up in only a month.  Egad!  Not prepared!

Things Which Recently Happened:

Malallee had a car accident while we were on our way to meet some friends a the drive-in, damaging her car to the tune of 6K.  The next day, while she was using the Hail Mary as a substitute, it crapped out on her and I had to go pick her up on the UltraZekuHyperMegaSpeedCyberCycle.  So a few days after that I bought a 2005 Mini Cooper, which I have taken to calling the Green Goblin.  (Guess what color it is).

We went to my parent's lake cabin the weekend before this past one, to see my sister and brother-in-law, and niece and nephew while they were in the region.  Brother-in-law was on leave from active deployment overseas.  A good time was had by all, except possibly our dog, who was stressed out by the long car ride, constant exposure to new people, and my sister's three much more rambunctious dogs.  She developed terrible stress-induced diarrhea upon our return home.  I had to clean it up.  It was unpleasant.

I collected payment on my first invoice, which makes me say Woo Hoo!  Going independent was the smart move, and I love it so far, but waiting 6 weeks for the money to come to in had me stretched thin and stressing about it.

For some reason, there have been a lot of toads in my yard recently.  They amount to a most unwelcome distraction for the dog when she has dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.  Her need to chase small things that hop away in terror trumps her need to void the bladder.

We had breakfast with friends at the OPH yesterday.  I ordered and ate the apple pancake, which is approximately the size and consistency of a pie.  This is why I weigh more than I should.

Stay The Course

Greetings, Humanity.

Everything is good here on Planet Zeku.  It is another gorgeous day outside, and I had a nice ride to my workplace on my recently overhauled UltraHyperMegaSpeedCycle.

It spent just under a week in the shop, getting new front and rear tires, a sparkplug, it's valves cleaned, and all its fluids replaced.  The catalyst for bringing it in (actually having it brought, as it died on me) was that it needed a new battery.  All the other stuff needed to be done because I recently passed 10K miles on it. . . not bad for less than five seasons of exclusively in town driving!

And man, was I thrilled to get it back -- I drive the thing all the time and it has never really had any major problems, so I kind of didn't notice how it gradually lost it's oomph.  Until one day I had a bunch of work done and now it suddenly runs like it did when it was brand new!  The difference is quite noticeable.

The workplace, by the way, is not the one I was referring to last time I posted.  That gig fell through.  I was told it was a done deal, and given a start date, but something went sideways on the business end of it, and the project never started.  I should be deeply upset about that, having turned down a nearly-as-awesome offer to take that gig, but I was very lucky and found myself still able to reverse course and accept the position that I'd turned down, so in the end, no harm done.

Furthermore, I'm really impressed with this job so far.  The team here is excellent, and the technology is a good mix.  I've been able to get acclimated very quickly, and the culture is great -- all business with regards to the important stuff, and completely casual with regards to shit that doesn't matter.  Plus, there is free soda, which given my caffeine habit is as good as getting an extra buck an hour. :)

My new office is in the tall pointy building just down the street from one of my previous jobs.  I'm on the 12 floor, half-way up the tower, but that's plenty high enough to see an awful lot from the giant windows in the break room.  I can see no fewer than three places I used to work from here.  And the complex has a couple of great places to get lunch.  So I'm pretty happy with both the job itself and the facilities.  Plus, you have no idea how good it feels to work on a genuinely capable workstation again, after using woefully underpowered and overburdened laptop at Ginormous Healthcare Conglomerate.

So basically, things are awesome.  I'm looking forward to a long weekend of staying right here in town over the upcoming holiday, even though going to work would hardly feel like an imposition right now. 

Gaps in Continuity

You know how sometimes you get all excited for the new season of your favorite television program to start, and then when that first new episode of the season finally airs, they've skipped forward like three years from "when we last saw our heroes," with no information given on what happened in the intervening period? And then suddenly Apollo is fat and Chief Tyrol is married to that bitch that shot Boomer?

I hate that. Anyway. . . Hi.

I'm not working this week -- in between gigs. My project at Ginormous Healthcare Conglomerate was scheduled to last another month or two at least, but a few weeks ago they abruptly announced that they were suspending all activity related to the government contract that my project was related to. Apparently, they've realized that it may take quite some time yet before the legal wrangling over that deal abates and it becomes a real, for sure thing. So, they asked us to spend two weeks tying our software up into a neat little package, and they are going to shelve it and resurrect it if/when they have the contract well and truly won. Hence, Friday was my last day.

Oddly, having a contract canceled early only serves to remind me of how lucky I am. Lucky to be in an industry that always seems to have work available, and lucky to be good enough at it that I don't have much trouble getting it. I remember the first time I got laid off, when I was a young whippersnapper back in aught three. I was out of work for a total of six weeks, and I spent every weekday morning of that period (8am until noon minimum) at my desk, sending out resumes with cover letters, doing interviews when I could get them, and scouring the job listings on sites like monster.com. And in the end, the job I ended up taking was at a significant pay cut.

Isn't like that anymore. Now, work pretty much comes looking for me, and my biggest problem is trying to decide if I should decline an excellent offer because I think I've got a better one on the way. That, and the fact that I have to keep pushing myself to live up to it so I might someday deserve to be so lucky.

Anyway, I'm starting a new gig on Monday, and I'm excited about it. Partly because I know who I'll be working with, and partly because it will be the first gig I take on as an independent, instead of becoming someone's W2 employee. I am officially the president and CEO of Zombie Eradication Technologies Intergalactic.

Okay, that's not really my company's name. That's what I wanted to name my company, but Malallee talked me into choosing something a bit more professional.

We went camping a few weekends ago, our first outing since we got Kaylee. (Changing topics now, folks, try to keep up). The main reason for the trip, besides an excuse to burn things and cook over the flames, was to see how well Kaylee would behave, and how we would get along with her staying in our tent. We have other camping outings planned for the summer, including later this month with a sizable group, and we wanted to know that the dog wouldn't be a problem.

People, she was awesome. She handled the tent just fine, and didn't make any noise to annoy the other campers. She chilled out and relaxed when leashed to a ground stake, was delighted to go hiking, and didn't have any problems with the fire. She's a great dog.

We went to my parents lake cabin for a long weekend over memorial day. The weather was kinda cool and very windy for most of our time there, but it did get quite nice for a handful of hours Sunday evening, so I was at least able to get in a nice long swim. Most importantly, we finally found the key to keeping Kaylee quiet and calm on the very long car ride to ND. We got something from the vet and drugged her. Best Decision Ever.

Jumping Ship

So, I gave notice this morning that I will be leaving my job at the end of the week. I start a new one on Monday.

I think this gig is going to be a good fit, because I'm a little nervous about whether or not I am good enough for it. I always have these doubts when I start a new job, and they always prove to be unfounded. Apparently, I actually am pretty good at what I do. But if I didn't get a little nervous about it and have a stress dream or two, it would probably mean the job isn't worth taking.

I have mixed feelings about leaving my current position, which after all, I left once before only to return 6 months hence. The people I work with are still a great bunch, and if the project I were ostensibly working on would ever actually get off the ground, it would be a cool system to build. But the analysis paralysis that has set in here has left me without very much actual useful work to do most days, and I'm not a dragon who can be happy getting paid to stare at a wall. So onward it is.

In other news -- I'm very worried about Mezoez. One day last week I picked her up and found that she seemed to have lost weight very suddenly. I can't say a lot of weight, because she doesn't weigh much to start with, but proportionally it was very noticeable. She also seemed lethargic, not her frisky self. I put her into a separate cage from Oboe so that I can better monitor her food intake; sure enough, she isn't eating anything. I've been force feeding her a little bit of soft food the last couple of days when I can get her to open her mouth, and this afternoon I'm taking her to the vet, where she will stay the night.

I have no idea what the problem could be; I keep having to remind myself that Mezoez is nearly seven, which makes her fairly old for a domestic ferret in the U.S., and that she has in a sense been on borrowed time since she had an adrenal gland removed a couple of years ago. Still, I'd rather she stick around a while.

I Should Have Just Built It Myself

I found the problem with my Mac Pro's network connection -- it was indeed a bad ethernet cable, and thus easily remedied. However, I'm still getting very poor throughput between that machine and the NAS, and the connection seems kind of bursty.

Ugh. Tracking down the exact nature of the problem is going to be tedious. And if it turns out to be the NAS device itself, that makes three big failures for the product. 1) The built in DLNA server doesn't work. 2) The transfer speed is too slow.

And 3) The company's support website is utterly worthless; the supposed downloads or updates for the plugins are nowhere to be found, and their "e-support" system requires me to register my product, starting with a dropdown list that doesn't actually contain my product as an option (lists NS4300, NS4300N, DS4600, and NS4600N for example, but no NS4600) and continuing to a form that requires 3 or 4 different identifying numbers from the box.

When I get home tonight and have those numbers handy, I'm going to try getting them on the phone. If they can't fix the DLNA issue, I think I'm going to have to return the damn thing. It will be severely inconvenient for me to do so, and create a major pain in the ass project for me to build a new media server myself, but I'm sick and tired of shit that doesn't work.

I smell a very negative Amazon review coming.

Media Server Malaise

I am having technology problems that complicate my other technology problems.

I have been trying to use my new network attached storage device to stream video to other machines on my network, and it isn't going well. For starters, I tried to play video files stored on it from my Mac Pro, and the performance was abysmal. I could access the files, and start them playing, but the video was choppy, and would lock up for several seconds at a time. It was as if I wasn't getting GigE network speeds. Naturally, I wanted to blame the new device, and I tweaked it's ethernet settings a few times without getting any improvement.

Then I stumbled across the real problem: the Mac Pro is only connecting to the network at 100baseTX. If I change it to force 1000baseT, it loses its link. I don't know why, and I have only the vaguest idea of how long it has been crippled like this -- it's the kind of thing one would only notice when trying to move data between the Mac Pro and another device on the wired network, and I just haven't done that in several months. I am 90% sure that it was working in my old house.

So that's Mystery Number One; why can't the Mac Pro do gigabit ethernet, when every device on my LAN is capable of it? Maybe it's connected to the switch with a crappy ethernet cable?

But I figured now that I know the Mac Pro is the problem, I'll just move on and try to access video files on the NAS using my XBox360. That, after all, is the desired primary use case. Unfortunately, when browsing to the NAS device from the XBox360's video library, none of the video files show up. The NAS has a DLNA server running on it, and that service is clearly active; I can access it and see the directory structure, and playing music files works perfectly. But none of the video files are visible. The same files, if copied to another PC on my network that is running PlayOn DLNA server, can be played successfully from the XBox.

So that's Mystery Number Two; why is the DLNA service on my NAS not presenting any video files to client devices?

Finally, perhaps in desperation, I tried to play these files over the network from one of my home theatre PCs, just because I knew that its gigabit ethernet link was working. I wasn't able to play them due to codec issues in windows media player, and didn't have another video player installed on that machine yet. I think I tried to mount an ISO image of a DVD that was on the NAS and play that and I think I got choppy playback from it, which would once again call into question the network speed of the NAS itself -- but to be frank, by this point my memory of what I did and didn't try is blurry and blended. I could just be conflating my attempts to play an image from the Mac Pro with my attempts to play the image at all from the theatre PC and mixing up the symptoms.

So that's Mystery Number Three; is the network speed of the NAS itself performing to expectations? I'd like to confirm that before anything else, but since my other machines either can't see the files, can't decode the files, or are known to have a network issue on their own end, I haven't really even been able to perform a valid test yet.

What a clusterfrack.

October

Lo, I return to you after many a postless week. Hearken unto me, therefore, and hear my many tales.

Yeah, yeah, okay; I'm not that interesting. I have been keeping good and busy though!

In September Malallee's sister brought her family to visit for a few days. Although ferret Oboe got a little bit too much attention the first night and became pretty stressed out for a while, it was a nice weekend. (Mezoez gets off easy because the kids know she's a biter). We went to the Renaissance Festival on one of the nicest days of the year, I think. Sunny, cool but not chilly, no wind to speak of, and not much of a crowd. Very nice.

We went to Jahndo and Megara's housewarming party, way the hell up in the northern fringe part of the metro, and held one of our own. Both events had lots of food. I seriously need to work out more.

We visited Door County for our first anniversary and had a very pleasant time. We rented bikes and rode the trails through the state park, took a ferry to Washington Island for a few hours, and visited a number of orchards and wineries; at one of them we found a lovely little high-top table and bar stools for our eat-in kitchen. Malallee had been having trouble finding a table she liked for that spot, so this was serendipitous.

I still haven't restored full capabilities to my media center since moving into the new house. The server hosting most of my DVD images had crapped out a few weeks before we moved, and the PC that I used to have connected to my TV for view them (as well as other things, like Hulu and iTunes) couldn't be connected to my projector for lack of a grounded outlet and an available input port.

Getting things set up again has been a long road; my initial plan to restore the media server by moving the RAID card and hard discs into an older machine that I had sitting around went up in smoke when I plugged that machine in and the power supply threw lightning at me and made loud snapping sounds. It was about 8 inches from my head when it did this, and it made my ears ring for a while.

So, abandoning that plan, I ordered a dedicated NAS device to host the RAID array, and set about the task of copying all the data off of the existing RAID, so I could put those hard discs into the NAS. Since the server hosting the RAID was broken as you'll recall (bad motherboard), I ended up sticking the controller card into one of my little theatre PC boxes, and snaking the SATA cables from it back over to the hard drives, which were still housed in the broken server machine (It wouldn't boot, but I just needed it to power the drives -- the machine that I stuck the controller card into wouldn't have had the wattage). Then I copied the entire contents of the raid onto a set of 400Gb drives that I had lying around, which took several days to accomplish using a USB drive dock.

When my NAS arrived, I promptly set it up and installed the wrong drives in it. I used the 400Gb drives that I had just taken all that time to backup my data onto. I had to start over, and copy it all again.

Then I set the thing up using the 1Tb drives as I had intended, and since then I've been restoring all the data from those backup drives. This too, is taking forever.

Which brings me to a rant: What the frack is it about copying a large set of files that windows explorer and OS X finder find so damn difficult? Anytime I select a large set of files, say a few hundred Gb worth, and try to copy them, it gets partway through and then starts throwing errors and stops. Yet if you drop into the terminal on OS X and simply use cp -R, everything is fine. And using copy or xcopy from the command prompt on windows usually works much better too, though still not very well -- when it is copying a large set of files and encounters a transient error with one of them, why can't it just restart that file and keep going? And if they are going to insist that I invoke the same command again, why can't I set a flag to tell it to skip the files that already exist at the destination? Fire and Rain!

I know there are tons of programs I could install specifically to make copying files work, but I shouldn't have to. The fact that third party tools for copying files from one spot to another are so prevalent is a testament to how fracked up the OS is.

I ended up having to write a script.

Anyway, once the data is all restored, I will be playing around with the NAS device's integrated DLNA server. Although I have obtained a smart HDMI switch and grounded outlet adapter to let me hook up a theatre PC to the projector, I may not need to. It is looking like I may be able to just stream everything to the XBox360.

In other recent developments, we adopted a dog. She is a year old, and supposedly a dachshund / corgi mix. I'm not sure if that covers all the branches of her family tree or not -- she doesn't have short legs, and in many ways looks like a miniature german shepherd.


Her name is Kaylee. She has asymmetric ear rigidity -- the right one stands up or straight out, while the left one is floppy. It's very cute.

She's settling in pretty well, and Malallee and I are pretty happy with her. She's turned out to be a very well behaved dog, considering she has had no obedience training and is still sort of a puppy. And she's pretty nearly housebroken too, which is a big plus. (We had one accident, but that was our fault in not recognizing that she needed to go out).

The only problem she has, really, is that she still has major separation anxiety. She cries for a while when we leave the house, then freaks out with excitement when we come home, and she seems to get a little anxious whenever Malallee and I aren't both in the same room with her. That being said, she's very friendly, likes to play, and knows when it's time to settle down.

She is very interested in the ferrets whenever they move around in their cage, but not unhealthily so; she just sits and watches them, curious but not particularly aggressive.

Altogether, I'm impressed, and glad we adopted a dog instead of getting one from a breeder or pet store.

Monocotyledonous Maintenance Engineer

Yesterday I started up my lawnmower and ventured into my yard, the first time I have made this trip with an intent to accomplish work.

My new yard is bigger than my last one, and the lawngistics are more complex. Trees, roots, and lots of little bumps and valleys to navigate, plus there are the twigs and small branches that fall from the canopy. It ended up taking a while, and I did not particularly enjoy it.

While I was out there slaving away under the yellow face (It BURNsss usss, Preciouss), I had a depressing epiphany: cutting the grass is my archetypical labor, drudgery itself distilled to an elemental form, and doing this mindless, soul sucking chore is my real job. Software development pays the bills, and takes up significantly more of my time. But it isn't really labor. I don't sweat. I don't feel the same kind of boredom that I do behind my pushmower. Cutting the grass though; that is the chore that I'm stuck with, the burden I have borne since my human dad thrust it upon me at the age of eight, the tedious recurring thing I am forced to do with my weekends, dammit. At 32 years old, I have been a mower of lawns for almost a quarter of a century, and in another 30 years or so, after I am supposedly retired, I will still have to mow the fracking lawn.

I am Sisyphus, and grass is my boulder.

Crap.

The Natural Consequences of Moving

I am a being in the grip of opposing forces. Caught between great slabs of moving granite that scrape and rumble as they grind laterally past one another, I endure the torsion and wonder how much shearing stress my mind can endure.

Today marks the passage of the first week in our new house. I have, on the one hand, a protracted catalog of the numerous improvements and acquisitions -- each quite insignificant when considered individually -- which I crave, to address the various shortcomings and unrealized potentialities of this new dwelling. I have on the other hand. . . nothing at all. Where my money used to be.

And so my docket of home improvements burns a hole in my hand, sending sharp electrical shocks into my palm that travel through the nerves of my arm to my spinal-cord, where they trigger a reflexive action that induces my other hand to reach for my wallet. As a result of some measures I have taken to curb my spending, the wallet is also electrified.

My hair is standing on end.

Despite being slowly ground into a fine organic jelly between my warring motives to get everything just right and to recover from the massive financial blood-loss that is moving, I nonetheless managed to achieve several further acts of settling in this week.

For one, I unpacked the office. It still has several little piles of cables and equipment that rightly would be stored neatly in labeled containers on a shelf in the basement, but I'll get to that. For now, they are organized little piles, and that's enough.

I made use of my fish tape to run an HDMI cable from the media center to the projector, following the same route taken by the existing component cables, which allows me to connect both the cable box and the XBox 360 and forgo the irritation of swapping out the connection manually when I switch from one to the other. (Can you believe I suffered under that yolk for 6 whole days?) I was exceedinly pleased that the process of running this cable went so smoothly. After the difficulties I had running CAT6 in my last house, built circa 1894, this was a breeze. What a difference 60 years makes.

While I was doing that, I dropped a couple of CAT6 lines to the media center as well. This week, optimistically, will see the other ends of those lines connected to the office, and to a server rack in the utility room.

Additional feats: installed a water filter on the kitchen tap, put together the second ferret cage, and retrieved our ancient, decrepid treadmill from the rented storage space.