Category Archives: General

Hmm, where does this one go…

by srhuston

Pine Barrens Express 2006

Well, yesterday was a lot of fun. David N0YMV and myself left my house around 11ish, and headed down to the NJ Pine Barrens for the Pine Barrens Express Road Rally. For those that don’t know, a road rally is where the drivers have a course defined for them (a series of instructions consisting of speed, distance and what turns to make at intersections or other road information instructions, but *no map*) and have to complete the course in a certain amount of time. They leave the start point about one minute apart, and they’re timed at various checkpoints along the way. There’s also a dinner break in the middle, since the event starts around 14:30 and didn’t finish until about 22:00. David and I went down to volunteer for communications during the event, and there’s quite a bit to do – plus, you become one of the members of the checkpoint crew, watching as these vehicles go by and grabbing their time and car number to write on the list. It’s usually a lot of fun, and this year was no exception.

Edit 20061119 @ 2024UTC: Uploaded the whopping two photos I took to the gallery – find them here.

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by srhuston

Daylight Stupid Time

Seems it’s that time of year again – time to set the clocks back this Sunday. However the folks at Dreamhost have brought up the interesting (and maddening) problem of what Congress thinks will save everyone so much energy and make all our lives easier.

Instead, it will likely cement the fact that I hate changing the clocks twice a year, especially since now I’m sure I’ll have some devices which were previously smart enough to do it on their own, and I’ll have to “correct” them anyway.

I still think Gallagher had it right – “If Con is the opposite of Pro, is Congress the opposite of Progress?”

by srhuston

Oh Goodie!

Looks like spammers have found the site, and are relentlessly hitting it with comment spam.  Maybe if they had half a brain (they never do, why else would they engage in this kind of crap) they’d realize that the stuff they’re posting goes as far as my moderation inbox and gets deleted.  Oh well… you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

In other news, I’ll have photos from the wedding I attended this weekend up in the gallery soon.  I don’t have that many, unfortunately – they requested there be no photos during the ceremony, and during the reception I was chatting with so many friends (and only really saw the bride and groom once, which was of course after I took the cameras back to the truck) that I only got some photos of the folks at our table.  And while I’m uploading stuff, I should probably upload the ones of a previous wedding I went to, where I did get quite a few shots off – they’re in iPhoto on the laptop, just never made it up to the gallery.  Stay tuned; maybe if I bring the CF cards to work with me I’ll sort through them there today.

by srhuston

Geek Code

In searching some websites today, I came across someone’s Geek Code, and realized it’d been awhile since I updated mine. So here it is if you care:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GIT d-(--) s: a C+++()$ USBIL++++$ P---(+) L++++$ E--- W++$ N+ o++ !K w--(---) !O M++$ V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++(+++) t+(++) 5-- X-- R tv+() b+ DI++ D+ G e h---() r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Oh, and if you don’t want to decode it by hand, copy and paste it into either of these websites: http://www.joereiss.net/geek/ungeek.html or http://www.ebb.org/ungeek/

EDIT 20061006 0409UTC: Sorry, realized that WordPress tried to do funny things to multiple dashes in a row.  It should be correct now.

by srhuston

Fun With ROT13

So every now and then, I’ll get some idiot who doesn’t know me and tries to start a conversation with me on ICQ or AIM. Usually these idiots either try to get personal information out of you, or just want to “be friends”, probably so they can try to come over and marry you or something. Either way, they never take ‘no’ for an answer. So awhile ago, I started having some fun instead. Since I’d tried telling them to bugger off and it didn’t work, I figured it might be interesting if no matter what they say, my reply was unintelligible. So I went for it :>

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by srhuston

Teach Your Children Well

Saw something that bothered me on the way into the parking lot at work today. Some idjit on a bicycle, with one kid on the back of the bike and another following on a little scooter/bike thing (looks like a bike without pedals, guess the kid’s feet hit the ground for power). They were approaching a crosswalk when I saw them, and got off their bikes – which is good, you’re supposed to dismount when crossing a street from everything I’ve read/heard. However, the next part is what pissed me off. There was a car in front of me, and myself, the only two cars anywhere near the intersection. And the idjit walked out in front of the car ahead of me, with kid in tow.

It’s one thing when ****tard pedestrians do this – I take pleasure in not stopping unless I’m actually going to hit them, and either way informing them that “look both ways before crossing the street” doesn’t mean so that you get the license plate of someone who doesn’t stop for you when they’re approaching the crosswalk and you step out in front of them. I’ve said this before: vehicles must stop for pedestrians *IN* the crosswalk, not those that decide to walk across the street when there’s traffic, and just assume that everyone will stop for them ’cause they’re now in the crosswalk. That’s just plain stupid. But this incident bothered me for a whole different reason. This jackass is teaching his son, “Look.. if you want to cross a street, just get off your bike, and then walk across. See those cars? They’ll stop for you, they have to. It’s the law.” I hope for this kid’s sake his father gets mowed down by a truck that can’t stop due to another law – the law of physics – and this kid learns, however hard a lesson it might be, that you should look both ways and make sure there’s no traffic before crossing the street.

by srhuston

At Least I’m Not Them

The folks at Dreamhost, which is the provider that runs this site, have had a bad month or two. Between router problems, power problems in their datacenter, and people whining about how their baby sister could run a network better then these folks could (sorry, I doubt it). But, with their last upgrade in their datacenter which entailed a rather expensive chunk of Cisco gear, I saw something I haven’t seen in awhile on both of my shell accounts:

zagnut:~$ uptime
19:12:38 up 34 days, 14:35, 4 users, load average: 1.28, 1.46, 1.40
[laurel]$ uptime
19:14:11 up 3 days, 4:40, 4 users, load average: 1.78, 2.31, 2.34

I guess when you’re used to seeing the load averages anywhere from 100 to 300, seeing it below two is kinda scary. But it also shows just how much network issues were causing problems (if I had to guess, and I do since I don’t work there, I’d say NFS issues due to processes deadlocking on I/O).

Whatever it is/was, good job nailing it down. Now go sleep. I don’t think any of you have in at least a month.

by srhuston

It’s Not Late, It’s Early

Went to sleep last night with my back hurting (and unfortunately it still does), and woke up at four something this morning.  Went downstairs to get something to drink (which I’d thought about the one or two times I woke up before that) and figured I’d sleep until 7 when my alarm went off.  But I was still awake when Stephanie’s alarm went off at around 5, so I just got out of bed instead of trying to go back to sleep.  I love it when I happen to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle, ’cause I feel pretty well rested and not groggy or anything.  And as a side benefit, I’ll probably get to work early enough that even with taking a lunch break I’ll leave at 1600 and that’s still early enough to shoot straight down Route 1 without much hassle and traffic.  Go me.

Now if I can get to bed at a decent hour tonight, and repeat this tomorrow, that’ll be nice.  But we’ll count that bridge when it’s hatched.  Or something.