| Wired Effect |
[Jul. 3rd, 2008|09:27 am] |
During a pre-thunderstorm run yesterday the bf and I were discussing web development suites for rapid deployment. His group has been trying to decide between Perl based Catalyst and Python based Django. A few coworkers know but dislike Perl, so they are wary about it, but another coworker already make a successful mock up of what they want with Catalyst anyway. Normally this wouldn't be blogworthy, but this morning I noted that the front page of http://www.wired.com links to a Webmonkey how to guide for using Django.
Their choice is now clear. Django must be avoided at all costs. Wired stories are great for inspiring wacky futurists (kudos to Cory for doing just that) but their hype is almost never useful in the here and now. |
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[Jul. 3rd, 2008|08:34 am] |
Shazam is permanently barred from the Hobbit House. Malcolm loves superbeings as much as the next dog (that's why he sniffs me constantly), but he hates thunder even more. He tried to spend the entire night in the basement. When we carried him upstairs to bed he sulked so we compromised by letting him crash on the ground floor. The weather interrupted his normally scheduled walks so we wanted him near the door so he could take a stroll when his bladder demanded.
Speaking of the dog (as if I speak about much else these days) he's getting a lunchtime visit from pookie's stepdad next week, so if I can just get Andy to check in on him in the morning and Jamie to check in on him later in the afternoon all will be well.
Anyway, I'm back to studying up on everything at the U. I've been informed that my grasp of the neat things you can do with exit conditions in shell scripts and Perl is lacking, so I'll try to bone up on that. I also need to learn more about the particulars of the university's implementations of AFS, TSM, and Kerberos. I know in general how they all work, but until I get to drain the brains of some local experts on the specific quirks I'll be useless for on call. I suspect that this is why /*nix$/ has trouble competing with Microsoft. MS is evil, bloated, and awkward, but it is also relatively standardized and so it is pretty easy to replace support people. |
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[Jul. 2nd, 2008|08:10 am] |
In anticipation of the paper's completion I picked up a nice bottle of scotch at the grocery store. Smokey notes just don't do it for me so I looked for one with a smooth and sweet taste. Unfortunately the editing ran into the wee hours so the bottle remains unopened and untasted.
I've been keeping the weekend open for camping, but those plans aren't set in stone. I'd be content hanging out with friends in town. |
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| Owies. |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|07:55 am] |
The bf spent most of yesterday trying to complete final edits on his paper. This meant that the dog felt a little neglected. I hadn't realized that would be the case, so I decided to stick around in A2 to say hi to friends and run with Rich. It was a great run, but it didn't prepare me for the canine angst awaiting me at home. I thought he just wanted to take a pee outside, but it turns out he really wanted to run and wrestle. Once he lured me a couple blocks away from home he tackled me with the Crazed Clawed Hyper Dog maneuver and left me with more lacerations than the typical Laurell K. Hamilton character. I tried the whole bag of tricks to get him to calm down (freezing, lowering myself to his level, looking him in the eye, telling him that this actually hurt in a serious tone, etc.) but only grabbing the leash an inch away from the collar worked. *sigh* I'm obviously going to need to reserve my energy for afternoon runs with the dog.
My next wound appeared at 1am. I had felt something crawling on me and when I twitched to get it off the creepy crawly thing bit or stung me. The pain lasted about 15 minutes. I resisted the urge to get light, ice, and a bandage because I didn't want to wake up the bf or the dog. A few hours later he nudged me so he could go outside and I took a closer look then. I still had no idea what got me but it didn't leave a stinger in me and healed up fairly well. I told the bf and he'll spray the upstairs to discourage the critters. We'll also take a look at the windows and see if we can seal them up better.
Despite the temporary loss of hit points, life is still good. I've been entertained by comics from the Whedonverse (Angel 1-8, Buffy 1-15) and the Dial H for Homo comic podcasts. Work is intriguing and the new carpool is delightful. |
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| Rescue |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|06:48 pm] |
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The bf and a neighbor did some dog whispering this morning to get an uncollared beige boxer settled down. I contributed to the effort by guiding our own dog back home and then returning with a spare collar, leash, bowl, water, and snacks. Pookie looked up the local non-emergency number on his iPhone and asked for animal control, but they don't work on Sunday. The cops promised to investigate eventually, but we'd seen this dog walking the streets and getting torn up for the past few days and didn't trust them to handle it. Once the dog was calmed down the neighbor offered to take him in. Hopefully he's been chipped and we can find out his history on Monday. |
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| NSFW Muffin |
[Jun. 29th, 2008|03:58 am] |
Here's a slightly NSFW nude profile shot of actor Jamie Davis from UK Cosmo back in 2005. He's my favorite muscle twink from Footballer$' Wives, Hex, Sarah Jane Adventures, and so on: http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd51/daedal2007/jamiedavis2.jpg
The things one finds when one tries to innocently google for the complete run of a Doctor Who spin off... |
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| Behooved |
[Jun. 28th, 2008|06:48 pm] |
Dear Whovians,
Yes, I know that the next episode features all of the little Whos (UNIT, Sarah Jane and company, Torchwood, Rose, etc.) banding together to tackle big bad (wolf) Davros and that the episode is both amazing and WTF. Be that as it may, I won't be able to see the glorious thing until the bf stops hogging bandwidth to stream his war shows. Flip your sonic screwdrivers to transmit and beam some love my way, OK? |
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[Jun. 28th, 2008|12:53 pm] |
The rain has been encouraging me to stay inside and bang away at my regex, vi, awk, and sed skills for work. I'm still making a fair number of dumb mistakes, but I'm catching them quickly. I'm also treating each task a bit like a game. Sure, there is a lengthy manual way to accomplish each step, but there's also a much shorter and more elegant solution out there, too and those are worth more points. In a perfect world the load of donuts I picked up this morning would be slowly doled out as rewards to myself, but they were too delicious to last.
The bf has work to do as well (editing a paper for submission), but he's much better at procrastinating than I am.
The dog is being a good sport. As long as there isn't much thunder he likes the rain and mud. |
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[Jun. 27th, 2008|08:01 am] |
All is right with the world. I broke in the building gym and shower this morning. The Bowflex adjustable dumbells were a little weird, but I'm adaptable. As an added bonus my kung fu conservative coworker (imagine if pookie were straight) was also getting in a morning workout so I felt pushed to do more than usual to defend my liberal manliness.
Even better, both the dog and the bf have mellowed a lot. We are no longer in doggie Gitmo hell at home. Malcolm is once again running a few miles a day with us.
Anyway, it is time that I return to my UNIX guru training. Speaking of which, kudos to the folk who wrote vitutor and vilearn. Those suckers have been fantastic at getting me off of my cheatsheet. Btw, the group was burned in the past by emacs and GUIs aren't always available, so vi it must be. |
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| Minor Updates |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|07:53 am] |
- Hypermiling strategies do seem to be paying off for me. By driving a little slower and less aggressively I'm now getting 36 mpg out of the Civic.
- The new office is mostly in shape. I've got a few O'Reilly books on the desk, some tools, some pens, a stash of emergency work out gear, a stash of emergency snacks, and a plushy Cthulhu to monitor the whole set up. I'm still waiting for a nameplate, a physical mailbox, a mounted whiteboard, and voicemail but I can live without all of those.
- Dog training has gotten weird. The bf thinks that Malc has been overstimulated. To get him to respect his humans he's getting a few weeks of restricted movements and no window privileges. Essentially pookie has sentenced our puppy to a canine Gitmo for his own good. Could it be that Shrub has been getting his advice from dog trainers instead of political scientists all along?
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[Jun. 24th, 2008|06:06 am] |
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Day one went well. I've processed a pile of paperwork and now have access about half of what I'll need to actually do work, although until training is done I won't need to worry about the other half. The laptop is looking reasonably well configured now although I'll probably still be adding apps forever. I'm probably not going to have much time for blogging or much to complain about in a blog anyway. |
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| Fences |
[Jun. 21st, 2008|03:56 am] |
Yesterday afternoon a couple of Conan types assembled a rather slapdash picket fence around the corner house that will never sell. I'm not sure if the ugly thing was meant to make the place look more family friendly since it now has a pre-assembled child corral or if it was an overreaction to my occasional use of the lawn for frisbee.
It is a shame they didn't spend more time at it. The pair of barbarians could have easily been Falcon stars. The eye candy made my mid afternoon run a lot more fun. |
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[Jun. 20th, 2008|07:04 pm] |
The bf's latest revelations about dog training are that there's more to it than dominance and submission and positive and negative reinforcement. The new theory is that dogs and humans coevolved to hunt large mammals together. Under this evolutionary psychology influenced theory, dogs shouldn't think of humans are tall dogs and humans shouldn't think of dogs as hairy, mute, sources of unwavering love. Instead we need to think of each other as hunting partners and to think of walks and sniffing about as elements of a hunt.
Anyway, he took Malcolm into the woods again and Mal really did seem calmer after.
While they did that I picked up my new laptop for the new job and got started configuring it. I actually put a shirt on when it was time to pose for a new user icon. That's how serious I am. |
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| The Kindly Ones |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|11:14 am] |
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In lieu of cake or other traditional tokens of affection, various coworkers have been recommending paranormal romance beach fiction for me on my way out. This is exponentionally better. Today I've learned about Sherrilyn Kenyon's The Dark Hunters books about vampires blessed by Artemis who take out unblessed vampiric daimons and Mary Janice Davidson's Undead series and others about supernature in suburbia. I already knew about Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld. |
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| Reminder |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|10:35 am] |
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My Sprint contract expires July 31, 2008. |
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| Squee! |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|07:03 am] |
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I'm halfway through the True Blood pilot. It's Alan Ball's take on the Sookie Stackhouse Southern vampire books and it is sexy and geeky and insightful and all around fantastic. |
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[Jun. 19th, 2008|05:53 am] |
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Camping was canceled thanks to reports of weekend thunderstorms. That means I've now got a blank three day weekend. I'm going to try to hit A2 so I can retrieve and configure the laptop. It would also be nice to see Brandon when he's in town. Otherwise I'm up for suggestions. |
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[Jun. 18th, 2008|02:06 pm] |
I just realized that the week has filled up again. Tonight we've got dinner plans with the relatives and we're going to measure their SUV to see if it will fit the desk. If it will we'll be using that tomorrow to move the desk over. If it won't then we'll need to rent a truck and we'll still try to do it tomorrow. The weekend will be consumed by camping.
The outdoor showing of Hairspray happens tonight, too, but with the cold and the other obligations I'll probably skip it.
In new job news my new laptop arrived. If I had the time I could get it early, but I'm looking all booked up. It is the 17" beast, but my J. Peterman leather post carrier bag should be big enough for it. I also ran over to the 12 Oaks on my lunch break today to get a neoprene cover for it and to see if there were any sales on business casual clothes. I know that wearing slacks instead of jeans or shorts makes a guy overdressed in university IT, but sometimes I feel the need for preppy drag. Besides, I've only got a single pair of khaki slacks that aren't torn or stained. Express came to the rescue with an impressive end of season sale.
By the way, I do have two outstanding concerns hanging over my head that might make the camping trip a bit stressful. First off, one of the identifiers I need is lost in a bureaucratic snafu. IT and HR are blaming each other as to why the ID can't be assigned. I think I've left voice and e-mail messages with the right people, but until they reply back I won't know if the problem will be solved before Monday or not. The other worry is the plumbing. The plumbers are now scheduled to try to repair the sewer on Thursday, but it is unclear if they will be prepared to dig if the initial fix doesn't work. My nightmare scenario is that the quick fix won't work and we'll be unable to use any water for days or weeks. The bf is too busy with work to make sure all of our bases are covered. I've been making calls for him, but I'm also worried that I'm not reaching the right people. |
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| Jarheads: Make Love not War |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|09:22 am] |
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File this one under "so common it is barely worth mentioning." A certain friend has been sending me text updates about a marine pal of his who is just desperate to start making out with guys when he gets off base. I think this means that a threesome with a marine is about the most patriotic thing a civilian can do. If you have a yellow ribbon and you aren't "taking one for the team" then you are just a poseur. |
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