Tag Archives: Life

One Photo, Multiple Uses

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I sent this photo to Dave several years back, as part of my initiation into the EGC Style Council.

The pic was taken by MLB, while she and I were en route to Martinsville for a NASCAR race. We always take the Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, or both on our way. We like the scenery, the history, and the general slower pace of the SD and the BLP. The picture was taken at one of our must stop places on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Since then, I’ve used this pic for:

  1. The tbbsLand favicon
  2. My comments gravatar on sites that support them
  3. My FriendFeed and Twitter pictures.

The Red Hat Summit starts on Tuesday, 9/1, in Chicago. MLB and I are heading there; she’ll visit with some Chicago friends, whilst I soak up technical tips and network exchange resumes with peers.

This year’s Summit has its own networking site, as well as the usual Twitter/Friend Feed/Facebook bolus. I registered on the Summit site, and got another use of the photo for my Summit site. As I uploaded it, I thought what the hell, I’ll just take the EGC shirt there as well, and wear it on the streets of Chicago.

One more clothing item to pack, but small potatoes compared to the checking out of the electronics required for such a venture.

Geek is, as geek does.

-k-

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Bristol, Baby!

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I’m hard-pressed to pick my favorite NASCAR event of the year. The Daytona 500 wakes me from my winter NASCAR drought, the Brickyard is iconic, the Coke 600 is a Decoration Day classic.

But, for slam-bam balls out racing, Bristol is hard to beat. 500 laps. 36o banked concrete. 165000 fans. Under the lights. Saturday night.

Only way to beat that is to add a few beers, and some good spareribs. Oh, wait. We’re doing that here at tbbs WorldHQ.

Enjoy the spectacle! Racin’ the way it oughta be.

-k-

New Miles Leader

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My regular daily driver, a 2001 Saturn, just turned over 107000 miles a day or two ago. This makes it #1 in MLB and my “cars with the most miles driven” category.

The ’01 actually eclipsed the 106K+ miles of MLB’s ’98 Saturn much earlier, but since I couldn’t remember the ’98′s exact mileage, I decided to wait until the aught-one had exceeded 107K to lay claim to the miles title.

It still looks good and runs all right. Not sending in a monthly check to GMAC makes it look better and better.

As much as I get excited about new cars, and as much as certain Ford1 models turn my head, I can still say, Long may the Saturn live.

-k-

1 The Great American Car Company

Nothing Fake about It

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From the Frederick (MD) News-Post, linkage provided, the fact that it may be broken tomorrow notwithstanding:
Fake 911 calls lead to charges

This story details the actions of one Bryan Paul Blanchard, who apparently had a habit of calling 911 and leaving the phone off the hook because he “needed someone to talk to.”

I don’t defend Mr. Blanchard; I won’t address the obvious contradiction in calling anyone and leaving the phone off the hook because you “need someone to talk to.”

My quarrel is calling this a Fake 911 call. The calls were made, and went through, right? Maybe it was a frivolous 911 call, maybe even a harassing 911 call, but whatever it was not a fake.

We are, however, talking about Maryland. Maybe that explains it.

-k-

Wiki-Top

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As documented here, $DAYJOB is detracting from my blogging a bit. I pour most of my vim and vigor into the now required Daily Status Report. I arbitrarily added a couple of sections to my DSR; Observations, Mood, and Thought for the Day. These sections are used for unsolicited editorial comments, at least some of which have been well received by my Overlords.

Lest this turn into one of those posts lamenting my lack of posting, I really have something to say this time.

I’ve also switched from TicklerWiki to DokuWiki for the production of the DSR. TicklerWiki is based on Tiddly Wiki. Any of the TW family has the wiki entirely contained within a single html file, which is makes portablilty trivial. Just copy the file to a thumb drive, transport it, and use it anyplace you have a web browser. No web server, just file -> open, and you’re wikified. And it was a great ride, until a few weeks ago when the TW file got unaccountably and unexpectedly truncated. While TW’s auto-backup feature mitigated the impact of this, I decided to implement a new platform.

Enter DokuWiki. Requiring a web server and PHP, DW is only slightly more involved in its setup. However, DW stores all the wiki pages as plain text. No Postgres, mySQL, or any other database backend needed. Plain text. An old Unix graybeard’s dream come true. The entire wiki content can still be transferred to a thumb drive for portability. So, I stood up a webserver on localhost, fired up DW, and I was off and running.

As I started doing the DSRs on DokuWiki, I realized that DW had many more uses. Now, my entire day’s activities live in DW. Examples:

  • Someone emails me new IP addresses for remote systems that need to be reconfigured next week. Create a DW entry with the new information pasted from the email, set a task to do the reconfig on the proper date. Come go time, call up the task, cut and paste the new network info into a terminal window, and rock on.
  • I have tons of downloaded PDFs,many with cryptic filenames. Create a documentation namespace, upload them to DW, with appropriate annotations, and read/retrieve as required.
  • Draft project plans/implementation How-Tos, etc in DW, export them to html, and distribute as needed.
  • The many DW plugins available for formatting code, bash shell sessions, etc, make it almost fun to do documentation.

My enthusiasm for DokuWiki precipitated a skunkworks project to use DW to update our aging knowledge base system. And skunkworks projects are the most fun of all.

-k-

SysAdmin Day, 2009

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SysAdminDay

It’s the 10th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. My company is taking us to lunch tomorrow at Famous Dave’s, who is celebrating their 15th year of Smokin’ Hot Ribs & Ice Cold Beer. My company is nice like that.

Unfortunately, this being a lunch and all, the Smokin’ Hot Ribs will have to suffice for tomorrow’s event. My company is also pretty savvy; with our current crew, they realize the cost savings of ribs over beer.

Still, I’m looking forward to an afternoon of in-cubicle loginess tomorrow afternoon. Pork Fat Rules!

-k-

Runaway Mule

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One of my co-workers1 is evidently on his annual two-week sabbatical to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. I say this, based on a careful analysis of my server access logs and my Sitemeter reports2, which reveal a sharp downturn in accesses from his home 20, and an elevation in hits from around the OBX.

And I hope he has a blast. My only regret was that I didn’t get in my order for him to mule me back some Pigmans Bar-B-Que sauce. MLB just checked the larder, and we’re well-stocked. While the Pigman’s online store still consists of a call us for orders page, we can still keep our sauce supply intact.

So everything is right with the world. When my boss arrives back one week hence, I need to put on my Chief Morale Officer hat, and welcome him back in the proper manner.

-k-

1 My boss, actually. Bosses who are actually co-workers are rare; if you are so fortunate to be in such a situation, be thankful.

2 This analysis takes about a minute a day; having a low/no traffic site like this place makes analysis easy. I prefer to think that I take a deep, personal interest in my readers; they are, after all, a discerning lot, with impeccable taste in blogs.

Memorable Potables, #1098234

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A co-worker dropped a couple of bottles of Jefferson’s Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout by my cube a couple of weeks ago. This is a stout, aged for 60 days in Jefferson Reserve Bourbon barrels. I’d waxed semi-poetic about Jefferson Reserve small batch bourbon previously. Based on my fondness for the bourbon, my co-worker suggested I try out the stout.

Firstly, I am not a beer snob by any means. The industrial, US big name beers, cold and within reach, have brought much joy to watching sporting events, grilling food, and listening to country music.

Secondly, I rarely drink stouts. When I’m in the proper frame of mind, I’ve been known to enjoy some of the finer products of the brewer’s art.

So, last night being steak night and all, I opened the first bottle, and carefully poured the dark nectar into a pint glass1 to enjoy a pre-dinner libation. And what a treat. The bitterness and heaviness I’d previously associated with stouts was nowhere in evidence. While more robust than the common lagers I’ve been knocking back for decades, this stuff was creamy and aromatic. The hint of the bourbon was unmistakeable, and there was a subtle hint of chocolate in the finish. MLB had a little sip and pronounced it to be primo.

I wouldn’t kill a twelver of this watching NASCAR races, but man, for pure enjoyment, it was excellent. One reason one doesn’t swill this is that it has ABV 8%. Stout, indeed. It needs to be savored at the proper time, and in the proper manner.

It’s hard to find around here, apparently. But, in case my coworker makes any more excursions in search of it, I’ll have a few bucks to pay him for whatever he’s willing to mule back for me.

Oh, and I slept like a baby last night. ABV 8% has its advantages.

-k-

1 Said glass being etched with the Red Hat Shadowman logo added a nice touch.

Truckzilla

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A truck, and truck is an understatement, has left Norfolk VA, enroute to Martinsville VA. A big deal? Yep, here’s a link to the picture1. These trucks are delivering a forging press to the RTI Manufacturing Company facilities outside Martinsville. Three trips will be required to deliver the whole press.

According to this article from the Henry County Economic Development Commission:

The tractor-trailers are 225 feet long and 16 feet, 5 inches wide, according to Heath and VDOT. They are about the size of three normal tractor-trailers and have a combined gross weight of up to 551,000 pounds, they said.

Man, that’s 2/3 football field length. It’s also very good news for the Martinsville community, a beautiful area which has taken its share of economic lumps, most of which predate the recent general economic upheaval. RTI Manufacturing will employ around 150 at the Martinsville facility. This is great news for a part of Virginia that I really love.

Still, I’m glad I’m not stuck in traffic behind that truck.

-k-

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1 Not sure how long the link will last, being from a newspaper and all.

Appealing

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I’ve documented MLB’s recent frightening, successful surgery. The recap can mostly be found in this tbbs archive link. MLB and I aren’t ones to either grouse about our ailments, nor to recount the details of our medical history to the world, but it’s mainly all there anyhow.

My employer-provided Blue Cross/Blue Shield has come up shining in terms of coverage; hospital bills1 have been settled, the miscellaneous charges for pharmacies, specialists, et.al., have all been settled and paid in full. Net cost to us: $0.00.

Until last Thursday. The BCBS settlement for the surgeon arrived, a tad north of $14K. Attached was a check, for around $1500.00, which the surgeon gets. MLB will deliver that check tomorrow. BCBS codes indicated that the charges presented were over their allowed amount for the procedure. Bottom line is, that we are potentially on the hook for around $12K for the surgeon’s services.

MLB called BCBS earlier today, and explained the situation. The BCBS lady was helpful, and explained how we file an appeal on a claim. We’ve drafted the appeal letter, and those papers go out via snail-mail2 tomorrow. My employer’s HR was very helpful; I’ve filled them in on the details; to the extent they can, they offered their support in getting this claim paid.

We can pay the $12K or so, if that’s how it sugars off3. I wanted to get this on the record, though. And for the record:

  1. Repairing a duodenal rupture is not elective surgery.
  2. Under emergency conditions, treatment for the above affliction can not be shopped around.
  3. Probably, the treatment for the affliction would not arise in other than an emergency condition.

I’m not railing at my employer, BCBS, Reston Hospital, nor the surgeon. I’m simply documenting. While I’m documenting, I pointed out to MLB that the surgeon’s fees were enough for two funerals.4 . I then quickly mentioned that if we wind up owing the $12K, we’ll pay it. And be thankful we can.

I’ll keep y’all posted.

-k-

1 To the tune of nearly $45K

2 Tough to imagine, eh?

3 That would jam up a few projects; we’ll deal with that.

4 My gallows humor stays with me at all times