I've been sitting and watching Pingwire.com for the last 20 minutes. It's a semi-realtime feed of pictures posted to Twitpic (used to post pictures to Twitter).
Some of the photos are definitely NSFW, so be careful!
7.13.2009
7.08.2009
How Do You Know?
How do you know when it's time to put down the iPhone Solitaire game you've been playing?
When you're awarded a "trophy" for having played over 10 hours in total.
Yeah.
Yow.
I gotta find a better hobby...
When you're awarded a "trophy" for having played over 10 hours in total.
Yeah.
Yow.
I gotta find a better hobby...
7.07.2009
Ugh
A USA TODAY/Gallup poll confirms that 71% of Republicans and 44% of Independents have their heads firmly planted up their asses:
When it comes to a potential presidential run, the USA TODAY poll displays both Palin's strength in the Republican base and her weakness among the swing voters who usually decide national elections. Republicans by 71%-27% say they would be likely to vote for her if she ran for president in 2012, while independents by 51%-44% would not.
7.05.2009
Shiraz Grille
I'd read an article on MLive about a new Persian restaurant, Shiraz Grille, opening in Grand Rapids, so Grace and I checked it out this afternoon for lunch.
Wow!
We started with the Sampler Platter #1 (Hummus, Dolmeh, Kashk Bodemjan, and Maust Khiar). The Hummus and Maust Khiar were excellent. I'm not much for eggplant, so that didn't do much for me. The Dolmeh were good, but I wasn't much for the occasionally sour taste. Grace loved 'em.
We decided to try the Koubideh, I got the beef, Grace did the chicken. Excellent choices! The seasonings on both were tasty. The saffron rice was a hit with both of us, I liked the dill rice that Grace wasn't as fond of.
The exterior isn't much to look at, tucked behind the Shell station on the northwest side of 28th and Breton. The interior was gorgeous. The article mentions that the owner brought back most of the art from his trips to Iran.
Good stuff, highly recommended!
Wow!
We started with the Sampler Platter #1 (Hummus, Dolmeh, Kashk Bodemjan, and Maust Khiar). The Hummus and Maust Khiar were excellent. I'm not much for eggplant, so that didn't do much for me. The Dolmeh were good, but I wasn't much for the occasionally sour taste. Grace loved 'em.
We decided to try the Koubideh, I got the beef, Grace did the chicken. Excellent choices! The seasonings on both were tasty. The saffron rice was a hit with both of us, I liked the dill rice that Grace wasn't as fond of.
The exterior isn't much to look at, tucked behind the Shell station on the northwest side of 28th and Breton. The interior was gorgeous. The article mentions that the owner brought back most of the art from his trips to Iran.
Good stuff, highly recommended!
6.30.2009
Things That Shouldn't Need to Be Explained
A horrific article in The Telegraph about a man who used a pair of NAIL CLIPPERS to circumcise himself.
"This is something we would advise men never to attempt," a medic said. Seriously? Do we really need a medic to call that out for us?
My legs snapped crossed just reading the headline... YOW!
"This is something we would advise men never to attempt," a medic said. Seriously? Do we really need a medic to call that out for us?
My legs snapped crossed just reading the headline... YOW!
No!
And I thought Crocs were the be-all-end-all of hideous footwear. Apparently Vibram wants to one up them...
I guarantee some jackass will be wearing these at the workplace in the next month...
I guarantee some jackass will be wearing these at the workplace in the next month...
6.29.2009
Time to Stockpile?
Ya know, I never really understood the "Obama's comin' for mah guns!" crowd, but if the FDA is seriously considering pulling Tylenol and Excedrin from the shelves, I might have to start doing some stockpiling of my own...
6.25.2009
Dropkick Murphys
Grace and I headed out to the Dropkick Murphys show tonight at the Orbit Room. Excellent show, we had a great time!
One thing I have to wonder about is whether there's actually any real value in getting to the front row at a show like this. I think those people spent most of the night tossing crowd surfers to the security guys. I don't think I'd be very happy up there -- I didn't come to the show to be put to work. After watching a few of the girls get passed through, I'm not really sure what the appeal is... unless you LIKE having random strangers grab your boobs and ass, what's the draw?
They closed out the show with I'm Shipping Up to Boston (about a sailor who's lost his leg) and they pulled a kid from the crowd that actually HAD lost his leg -- he "danced" the whole time with his metal leg bent backward at the knee, hopping around a stage and having a great time. Very cool!
Anyway, here's the song you probably know:
6.20.2009
Not Even Close
I've never lost a mobile phone, but the idea that I can locate it mine if I manage to misplace it or even wipe it completely if I really lose it was enough to get me to buy a 1-year subscription to Mobile me.
One of the cool features in the new iPhone OS 3.0 is a method to Locate My Phone. This uses the GPS chip inside the phone, along with either WiFi or the AT&T 3G network to determine its current location. So, I thought I'd test it out..
From the map, my phone appears to be having a very good time wandering the scenery around Zion National Park and Colorado City.
That's a long way away from West Michigan, where it's currently sitting on the desk next to me...
One of the cool features in the new iPhone OS 3.0 is a method to Locate My Phone. This uses the GPS chip inside the phone, along with either WiFi or the AT&T 3G network to determine its current location. So, I thought I'd test it out..
From the map, my phone appears to be having a very good time wandering the scenery around Zion National Park and Colorado City.
That's a long way away from West Michigan, where it's currently sitting on the desk next to me...
VMware vSphere 4 / Veeam Backup 3.1 Followup
We experienced some drastic speed problems trying to backup our ESX 4 virtual machines with Veeam Backup. Where we'd previously had backup speeds around 40MB/sec for a full backup and easily 3-4x that on the follow-up incrementals, we were now stuck at 20-30MB/sec for ALL backups.
A quick post on the Veeam forums, and a week's worth of troubleshooting and test later, we're finally back to backup speeds that we previously saw. One further change yielded even better overall performance.
Here's what we know:
We use a Linux / Samba server as our backup target. It's a whitebox 16-drive RAID50 array connected to a 3ware 9650SE controller. CentOS 5.3 is installed on the box and we've done no tuning to the box (no TCP settings, no Samba settings, etc).
The VCB Backup mode in Veeam can be configured to backup to a Samba share just by entering the typical \\server\share. When we backed up using that method, we found that after the data portion of the backup had completed there was a long hang as logs and config files were transferred. The larger the guest, the longer the pause.
That pause DOESN'T seem to happen if you use Direct to Target mode.
In this mode, add the Samba server and point to a file system path on that server (so, /mnt/backups/veeam). Once that was done, the hang was completely gone.
We're using the EVA Management server (a required server if you're using EVA SANs, and largely doing nothing useful) since it had Fibre Channel HBAs already installed in it.
After all of this was done, we're now seeing full backups being completed at around 85MB/sec (gigabit ethernet is the bottleneck at this point), and incrementals are finishing up at around 120-200MB/sec. The speeds vary because of the various amounts of unused disk space in the guests.
Veeam does a terrific job with both their product, and their support. The product manager was one of the first people to respond in the thread and got us doing useful tests that narrowed down where the problem was. Seems we're all waiting on VMware to fix it or announce "that's the way it is", but it's not really something we're too concerned about any longer.
A quick post on the Veeam forums, and a week's worth of troubleshooting and test later, we're finally back to backup speeds that we previously saw. One further change yielded even better overall performance.
Here's what we know:
- Backups that use Service Console agents are throttled by the Service Console disk reads. Any time you go through the service console, you're going to top out at 20-30MB/sec
- VCB backups using the SAN are extremely fast if you've got the backup storage speed to handle it.
- Use Direct to Target mode in Veeam Backup to workaround some Samba/CIFS issue that Veeam's still trying to fix
We use a Linux / Samba server as our backup target. It's a whitebox 16-drive RAID50 array connected to a 3ware 9650SE controller. CentOS 5.3 is installed on the box and we've done no tuning to the box (no TCP settings, no Samba settings, etc).
The VCB Backup mode in Veeam can be configured to backup to a Samba share just by entering the typical \\server\share. When we backed up using that method, we found that after the data portion of the backup had completed there was a long hang as logs and config files were transferred. The larger the guest, the longer the pause.
That pause DOESN'T seem to happen if you use Direct to Target mode.
In this mode, add the Samba server and point to a file system path on that server (so, /mnt/backups/veeam). Once that was done, the hang was completely gone.
We're using the EVA Management server (a required server if you're using EVA SANs, and largely doing nothing useful) since it had Fibre Channel HBAs already installed in it.
After all of this was done, we're now seeing full backups being completed at around 85MB/sec (gigabit ethernet is the bottleneck at this point), and incrementals are finishing up at around 120-200MB/sec. The speeds vary because of the various amounts of unused disk space in the guests.
Veeam does a terrific job with both their product, and their support. The product manager was one of the first people to respond in the thread and got us doing useful tests that narrowed down where the problem was. Seems we're all waiting on VMware to fix it or announce "that's the way it is", but it's not really something we're too concerned about any longer.
Friday Fun
I gave Sprint one last chance to have a Palm Pre in stock this afternoon, something they apparently still can't manage. They're not even sure they'll be restocked at any point this week. So, I stopped at the Apple store tonight and picked up a new iPhone. Very nice!
It's probably a good thing I picked it up, too 'cause we needed it to get crossroads to escape Holland. We headed to dinner at the Holland IHOP around 9pm in blinding rain. Lynn decided that I'd be the one to drive us home, since it was just chaos with light flooding across some of the roads, including US-31.
The IHOP is next to the Felch Shopping Center (yep, that's it's name!) and the parking lot to the shopping center had easily a foot of standing water in some spots. I talked Lynn in to driving through them, but it took some convincing.
By the time we finished dinner, the rain had let up. The US-31 off-ramp at Byron Road was completely closed, and for good reason. There was probably 5 foot of water under the bridge. We headed toward downtown Holland hoping to find a way back home (heading in the wrong direction, but hoping to find a different way to get back to I-96).
We pulled over into a parking area to pull up a map on the iPhone, then made our way to College, then to 16th street.
That was an incredibly B-A-A-D decision. What should have been a quick 10 minute turn, head north, turn, head home instead turned into a good 45 minutes of heavy traffic and heavier water. Holland was UNDERWATER (we didn't hear any news about it until we got home and checked MLive).
At one point, we headed down a desolate 14th Street to find a way around some other jackassery that was going on at a railroad crossing. We quicky found out there was a reason it was desolate... While the near end was just a couple inches of standing water, it was 3 feet deep at the other end.
Let me just take a moment here for two observations:
We're cruising through the deep stuff at MAYBE 5 mph, headed toward the end of the street. Lynn is telling me to turn around. It's a two lane road with cars parked on each side. Forward is the only viable direction. I think I explained that to her patiently, but I can't be totally sure about that. I know in my head I was screaming "WTF good is that going to do?!" At no point did those words ever escape my lips.
Near the end of the street, there were two abandoned cars in the road. One facing in each direction. These people... they're compact cars, how did they think they were ever going to make it?! Even with 9" of ground clearance and 36" of water clearance (the air intake sits high in the FJ), I got a SLIGHT bit nervous that we'd be paddling with our arms out the windows to get out. We plunged on, weaving between the two dead cars and making a right-turn toward higher ground.
The truck had no problems. The engine never skipped a beat and all four wheels pulled us through without a thought.
We finally got around the deep stuff and headed toward higher ground, finally made it back to 16th Street and crossed US-31 (yeah, right back where we started). From there, it was easy.
After going through the deep stuff, I was totally giddy. If Lynn hadn't been in the car, I'd have gone back and gone through a few of those streets again, just for fun. Laughing like a school girl the whole time.
I LOVE MY TRUCK!
It's probably a good thing I picked it up, too 'cause we needed it to get crossroads to escape Holland. We headed to dinner at the Holland IHOP around 9pm in blinding rain. Lynn decided that I'd be the one to drive us home, since it was just chaos with light flooding across some of the roads, including US-31.
The IHOP is next to the Felch Shopping Center (yep, that's it's name!) and the parking lot to the shopping center had easily a foot of standing water in some spots. I talked Lynn in to driving through them, but it took some convincing.
By the time we finished dinner, the rain had let up. The US-31 off-ramp at Byron Road was completely closed, and for good reason. There was probably 5 foot of water under the bridge. We headed toward downtown Holland hoping to find a way back home (heading in the wrong direction, but hoping to find a different way to get back to I-96).
We pulled over into a parking area to pull up a map on the iPhone, then made our way to College, then to 16th street.
That was an incredibly B-A-A-D decision. What should have been a quick 10 minute turn, head north, turn, head home instead turned into a good 45 minutes of heavy traffic and heavier water. Holland was UNDERWATER (we didn't hear any news about it until we got home and checked MLive).
At one point, we headed down a desolate 14th Street to find a way around some other jackassery that was going on at a railroad crossing. We quicky found out there was a reason it was desolate... While the near end was just a couple inches of standing water, it was 3 feet deep at the other end.
Let me just take a moment here for two observations:
- One, the FJ Cruiser ROCKS in deep water. We cruised right through every flooded street with no trouble at all.
- Two, my wife SUCKS in deep water. She completely and totally lost it in panic. I think she may have been wheezing at one point from the panic.
We're cruising through the deep stuff at MAYBE 5 mph, headed toward the end of the street. Lynn is telling me to turn around. It's a two lane road with cars parked on each side. Forward is the only viable direction. I think I explained that to her patiently, but I can't be totally sure about that. I know in my head I was screaming "WTF good is that going to do?!" At no point did those words ever escape my lips.
Near the end of the street, there were two abandoned cars in the road. One facing in each direction. These people... they're compact cars, how did they think they were ever going to make it?! Even with 9" of ground clearance and 36" of water clearance (the air intake sits high in the FJ), I got a SLIGHT bit nervous that we'd be paddling with our arms out the windows to get out. We plunged on, weaving between the two dead cars and making a right-turn toward higher ground.
The truck had no problems. The engine never skipped a beat and all four wheels pulled us through without a thought.
We finally got around the deep stuff and headed toward higher ground, finally made it back to 16th Street and crossed US-31 (yeah, right back where we started). From there, it was easy.
After going through the deep stuff, I was totally giddy. If Lynn hadn't been in the car, I'd have gone back and gone through a few of those streets again, just for fun. Laughing like a school girl the whole time.
I LOVE MY TRUCK!
6.18.2009
Ultra Slow-mo
Very cool demo of a soon-to-be released HD broadcast camera able to do 1000 frames/sec:
I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.
Nice End to a Story
First, the guy has a warrant issued for his arrest for the creation of a barrel monster. Now he's got lots of fans, and the construction company wants to pay him to create another!
6.15.2009
Blu-Ray Review: "My Bloody Valentine 3D"
We couldn't get the included 3D glasses to work. Dunno whether we were sitting too close or too far away, but all we got was ghosted images. After 10 minutes we said "screw it" and watched the 2D version instead.
It's a cheesy horror movie, and that's about all you should expect. Boobs? check. Weirdos? check. People doing things that they wouldn't do in "real life"? check.
It was an entertaining hour and 43 minutes, but probably not one we'll ever watch again.
Luckily, we've got Gran Torino and Transformers still on the pile. I'd hate to think we COMPLETELY struck out on the buying binge this weekend...
It's a cheesy horror movie, and that's about all you should expect. Boobs? check. Weirdos? check. People doing things that they wouldn't do in "real life"? check.
It was an entertaining hour and 43 minutes, but probably not one we'll ever watch again.
Luckily, we've got Gran Torino and Transformers still on the pile. I'd hate to think we COMPLETELY struck out on the buying binge this weekend...
6.13.2009
Should I Be Concerned?
This plastic packet was inside a package of summer sausage that I finished off yesterday. When I read it, I wondered whether it was safe to leave it sitting on the desk. Would it absorb all of the Oxygen in the room?
I opened the window just to be safe...
If you happen to hear about an oxygen shortage on the west side of Michigan, you'll know the reason!
6.12.2009
Playoff Beard
I jumped on the bandwagon a week or so late for the playoff beard this year, but I'm sort of happy with the results. It's no Zetter-beard, certainly can't compare to Cleary, but at least it's more than Crosby (though, he's got the Cup, so I guess he's probably happy with that trade)...
The PLAN was to take "before" shots, then try out a bunch of funny styles. The REALITY is that I screwed up with the clippers before I even got to start on the first style... Yeah, my boy band beard got completely screwed up before I got it shaped. Sorry...
That razor felt really good cleaning off the stubble. And from the looks of the pictures, it's time to cut my hair too!
The PLAN was to take "before" shots, then try out a bunch of funny styles. The REALITY is that I screwed up with the clippers before I even got to start on the first style... Yeah, my boy band beard got completely screwed up before I got it shaped. Sorry...
That razor felt really good cleaning off the stubble. And from the looks of the pictures, it's time to cut my hair too!
6.06.2009
Observations from a Road Trip
Just some a few observations from a road trip across the state on Saturday afternoon:
1) The left lane is for passing. If you are traveling at the same speed as the car to your right, you are not passing. Please move to the right lane.
2) Michigan drivers are apparently orange/black color blind. The road construction sign 2 miles ago said the right lane would be closed. Why did you wait until your front bumper was against the cones marking the closed lane before attempting to merge into the center lane? (I yelled at one person this afternoon for being a dumbass)
3) Twix do not travel well. I had a Twix sitting in a bag on the floor that is now a once-gloppy, now-solidified chunk of formerly chocolate/carmel/cookie goodness. I didn't even try opening it. On the other hand, Necco wafers suffered no such transformation. Yay Necco wafers!
4) Surfing the Internet at 80 miles/hour is a neat trick. Rebooting servers at work while traveling at that speed is even neater.
5) Sprint screwed up the Palm Pre launch. We stopped in to two stores around 2pm. The first hadn't even received a Pre shipment, the second was sold out. By comparison, I was able to walk in to an Apple store and buy an iPhone the day after their original launch without any problems at all. Yesterday, the Pre would have been in my pocket (if they had them in stock). Today, I'll wait to see what Apple does for the next version of the iPhone. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to AT&T. Heck, they might even make MORE money from me if they have those home WiFi/3G units so I have coverage at home...
1) The left lane is for passing. If you are traveling at the same speed as the car to your right, you are not passing. Please move to the right lane.
2) Michigan drivers are apparently orange/black color blind. The road construction sign 2 miles ago said the right lane would be closed. Why did you wait until your front bumper was against the cones marking the closed lane before attempting to merge into the center lane? (I yelled at one person this afternoon for being a dumbass)
3) Twix do not travel well. I had a Twix sitting in a bag on the floor that is now a once-gloppy, now-solidified chunk of formerly chocolate/carmel/cookie goodness. I didn't even try opening it. On the other hand, Necco wafers suffered no such transformation. Yay Necco wafers!
4) Surfing the Internet at 80 miles/hour is a neat trick. Rebooting servers at work while traveling at that speed is even neater.
5) Sprint screwed up the Palm Pre launch. We stopped in to two stores around 2pm. The first hadn't even received a Pre shipment, the second was sold out. By comparison, I was able to walk in to an Apple store and buy an iPhone the day after their original launch without any problems at all. Yesterday, the Pre would have been in my pocket (if they had them in stock). Today, I'll wait to see what Apple does for the next version of the iPhone. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to AT&T. Heck, they might even make MORE money from me if they have those home WiFi/3G units so I have coverage at home...
5.28.2009
Wow!
I logged in to Flickr tonight to take a look at my daily stats. What can I say, sometimes I get to the end of the Internet and need something to entertain me for a few minutes.
Most of the time, I log around 40-50 views per day across the 3900 photos that I've posted. When I looked tonight, my heart damn near leaped out of my chest!
The chart tracks the number of views you receive each day. The values on the left are earlier in the week, the spike is the last two days.
Further down the page lists the number of views for each photo:
Holy crap! My two year old photo of Sun Ming Ming suddenly became REALLY popular (at least that's a lot of views to me!). It's tough to tell what's caused the huge spike, because all of the views come from Yahoo's Photo Search. Ahh, that explains it: Sun Ming Ming was a member of the Eastern Conference champions in Japan's basketball league. Their playoffs just ended!
Looks like yesterday was a busy day too:
The top photo now has over 6200 views:
Most of the time, I log around 40-50 views per day across the 3900 photos that I've posted. When I looked tonight, my heart damn near leaped out of my chest!
The chart tracks the number of views you receive each day. The values on the left are earlier in the week, the spike is the last two days.
Further down the page lists the number of views for each photo:
Holy crap! My two year old photo of Sun Ming Ming suddenly became REALLY popular (at least that's a lot of views to me!). It's tough to tell what's caused the huge spike, because all of the views come from Yahoo's Photo Search. Ahh, that explains it: Sun Ming Ming was a member of the Eastern Conference champions in Japan's basketball league. Their playoffs just ended!
Looks like yesterday was a busy day too:
The top photo now has over 6200 views:
5.23.2009
VMware vSphere 4 Install
Finished up the majority of the work to upgrade our main data center from VMware ESX 3.5u4 to vSphere 4.0 last night (and early this morning). Just some quicky notes about the experience:
- We somehow ended up with a per-server VMFS partition that contains the esxconsole guest. Dunno whether we missed something during the install, or whether it's supposed to work like this.
- We completed the upgrade on release day, installing on two hosts connected to a FC SAN.
- Had problems using either Update Manager or manual installations of the VMware Tools on all of our Windows 2008 guests. 32-bit and 64-bit, Standard and Enterprise all had weird Windows Installer failures that caused us to "force remove" the old package before installing the new versions. We copied the Tools installer package to a temp directory, ran "setup /c" to forcibly remove the old one, then ran "setup" to install the new ones. Windows XP, 2003 and CentOS 4 and 5 all worked fine without any weird hangups.
- Upgrading the Virtual Hardware took a little bit to figure out how to accomplish. VMware's got a good video about how to do it, but the menu item doesn't show up for the guest until you shut down the machine. Would be better if the choice was simply grayed out so you knew it was there but unavailable while the guest was running.
- Upgrading the Virtual Hardware seems to take non-C: drive disks offline on Windows. They're easy enough to bring back online, but it's a little freaky to see they're gone and hope to hell you didn't just toast the corporate Exchange Mailboxes.
- Update Manager install and configuration was quick and easy, it's the first time we'll use it. We only set it up for VMware updates, we use WSUS for Windows updates and do the Linux updates by hand.
- Had to call VMware to get our licensing straightened out. Dunno what the issue was, but the Indian call center handled it quickly and we're ready to do the other data center once other issues get worked out.
- Looks like vSphere 4 does a little better on memory overcommits. Total memory usage was around 30GB/server on the old version, about 22GB on the new one.
- Distributed Power Management is no longer experimental. We've used it all along, never had issues with it. vSphere seems to want to talk to the HP ILO boards to do the power management in the new version, which is different than just doing Wake-on-LAN like the previous version. Seems to work just fine, though.
- Veeam Backup 3.0.1 doesn't like vSphere 4.0. We ended up turning off the VSS support on the backup jobs in Veeam to get them to run without warning. They're saying an update should be available in a couple weeks.
- Installation of vSphere on the hosts is quick and painless. We did it using an ISO connected to the Virtual Media applet of the ILO boards on our HP DL380 G5's. Using the Virtual Media applet slows things down a little, but I didn't feel like dealing with burning a CD.
- Overall, good stuff!
5.15.2009
What To Do?!
What the heck am I supposed to do with my evenings when there's no hockey on? I've been spoiled the last couple weeks with games every night. Now I gotta wait 'til Sunday for a Wings fix?!
At least the Wings/Ducks and Canes/Bruins games were better (closer) than the Caps/Pens game 7!
At least the Wings/Ducks and Canes/Bruins games were better (closer) than the Caps/Pens game 7!
5.03.2009
Ugh
Borked up some commands on my home file server tonight and lost 3TB worth of stuff... Photo library, gone. Software backups, gone. DVD rips, gone. I'm gonna cry now...
4.23.2009
Osgood's Trying To Kill Me
Detroit finished up the sweep of Columbus tonight, but not without 60 minutes of drama. I dunno what was up with Osgood in the 2nd period, but that was SCARY!
Is it just me or is it getting tougher to figure out whether a score came in Baseball or Hockey? 6-5 tonight!
Is it just me or is it getting tougher to figure out whether a score came in Baseball or Hockey? 6-5 tonight!
4.15.2009
Never Thought It Would Happen To Me
I logged onto the website for my Apple MasterCard tonight and found three pending transactions for $119.40 each to People PC Internet Service. Since I have Charter Cable for my Internet service, that's just not even within the realm of possibility.
A quick call to my "Relationship Manager" got the charges taken off and a new card on its way.
I'm pretty careful about where I go plugging in my credit card, so I'm not sure where that one got picked up. But, I've gotta say Juniper Bank (they handle the Apple credit cards) does a GREAT job.
A quick call to my "Relationship Manager" got the charges taken off and a new card on its way.
I'm pretty careful about where I go plugging in my credit card, so I'm not sure where that one got picked up. But, I've gotta say Juniper Bank (they handle the Apple credit cards) does a GREAT job.
4.12.2009
4.07.2009
Glad It Wasn't Me!
Just after starting the drive home tonight, I got to witness a great car accident just ahead of me.
The southbound lanes had the green light and the car just ahead of me was getting close to the intersection. The car in the northbound left-turn lane decided he'd try to make it through before the southbound car, but ultimately failed.
I couldn't tell whether the southbound driver didn't see the guy turning in front of her, didn't care, or just smashed the gas and decided to plow into him at ramming speed. For the record, I think mashing the gas is a GREAT response -- teach 'em a lesson for trying to jump through the traffic!
Whichever way it happened, the southbound car got the rear quarter-panel of the turning car, parts went spraying everywhere and there was even a nice puff of steam from the likely-punctured radiator.
I smooshed the brakes to stop. Can I just say that anti-lock brakes take all the fun out of slamming on the brakes? There's no screeching to a stop, skidding to the side just a little bit to add a bit of flair, and the stop happens in a hurry! The laptop went sliding off the passenger seat, but no harm done.
I waited for a couple seconds for another car to pass me, then continued on my way. I could see both people out of their cars in the rear view mirror, so everyone was okay. The young lady driving the "ramming" car looked a bit confused, but that was probably from the air bag.. those things are stupefying!
It's times like this that I wish I had one of those dash-mounted cameras like the cops. That would be SOOO fun to watch the replay over and over again.
I think my next car will just be a big junker that I can use to punish bad drivers vigilante-style... Drive through a red? SMASH! Try to squeeze through traffic on the left turn? SMASH! Forget to pay attention when turning right on red? SMASH! I'd probably have to get one of those brush guards for the front too... Driving 65 in the left lane? BUMP. BUMP. BUMP. Oh, that would be SOO much fun!
The southbound lanes had the green light and the car just ahead of me was getting close to the intersection. The car in the northbound left-turn lane decided he'd try to make it through before the southbound car, but ultimately failed.
I couldn't tell whether the southbound driver didn't see the guy turning in front of her, didn't care, or just smashed the gas and decided to plow into him at ramming speed. For the record, I think mashing the gas is a GREAT response -- teach 'em a lesson for trying to jump through the traffic!
Whichever way it happened, the southbound car got the rear quarter-panel of the turning car, parts went spraying everywhere and there was even a nice puff of steam from the likely-punctured radiator.
I smooshed the brakes to stop. Can I just say that anti-lock brakes take all the fun out of slamming on the brakes? There's no screeching to a stop, skidding to the side just a little bit to add a bit of flair, and the stop happens in a hurry! The laptop went sliding off the passenger seat, but no harm done.
I waited for a couple seconds for another car to pass me, then continued on my way. I could see both people out of their cars in the rear view mirror, so everyone was okay. The young lady driving the "ramming" car looked a bit confused, but that was probably from the air bag.. those things are stupefying!
It's times like this that I wish I had one of those dash-mounted cameras like the cops. That would be SOOO fun to watch the replay over and over again.
I think my next car will just be a big junker that I can use to punish bad drivers vigilante-style... Drive through a red? SMASH! Try to squeeze through traffic on the left turn? SMASH! Forget to pay attention when turning right on red? SMASH! I'd probably have to get one of those brush guards for the front too... Driving 65 in the left lane? BUMP. BUMP. BUMP. Oh, that would be SOO much fun!
3.28.2009
Religious Wackos in My Back Yard? It's More Likely Than You Think!
NPR story about the Quiverfull movement seeking to breed their own Christian army.
And OF COURSE it had to be Michigan...
Ugh.
And OF COURSE it had to be Michigan...
Ugh.
3.26.2009
HP SAN Support (still) SUCKS!
As I'd posted before, we had a meeting with our district Mission Critical Support manager from HP about the complete support failure we experienced during our February drive failure.
The important thing to keep in mind about this meeting is that it wasn't prompted by the "official" HP complaint we'd filed, nor some internal metrics that pointed out the failure, but because I'd bitched out the HP SAN blogger about their terrible support.
During that meeting, I took quiet a bit of abuse from the Mission Critical Support guy about how the 24x7/4 hour support contract really just means they'll have a TECH on site to diagnose within 4 hours. Seriously, I need a tech to come out to tell me the orange light on the front of the drive means it needs to be replaced? They can apparently take their time getting parts, because that area doesn't seem to have any Service Level Agreement at all.
The support manager assured me that they he had done some investigation and were ordering parts for their supply depot so they'd be available when someone in Michigan experienced a failure.
I was assured we wouldn't be getting this run-around again. He was so sure he gave me his cell number and a request to call him if anything came up.
That meeting took place 12 days ago.
Fast forward to tonight...
10:45pm, drive fails. We get a notification that it's gone toes up, so we call in a support ticket to HP. Since it's late, and I'm lazy, I ask that they deliver the drive Thursday morning rather than Wednesday night because I didn't feel like making the hour long round-trip to the office.
About 1:15am, we receive a call from HP saying they didn't have any drives within 100 miles and they'd ship us one for delivery on Friday.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
So, I call the guy. He sure sounded sleepy when he answered. :)
I explained the situation. He said he'd check into it and try to get us a drive for Thursday.
We've owned the SAN for just about 6 months now. In that time, we've experienced a 25% drive failure rate and a 0% support success rate.
How is it that I can get my drives shipped to me in 2 days, but HP can't seem to stock their own closets in 12 days?
The important thing to keep in mind about this meeting is that it wasn't prompted by the "official" HP complaint we'd filed, nor some internal metrics that pointed out the failure, but because I'd bitched out the HP SAN blogger about their terrible support.
During that meeting, I took quiet a bit of abuse from the Mission Critical Support guy about how the 24x7/4 hour support contract really just means they'll have a TECH on site to diagnose within 4 hours. Seriously, I need a tech to come out to tell me the orange light on the front of the drive means it needs to be replaced? They can apparently take their time getting parts, because that area doesn't seem to have any Service Level Agreement at all.
The support manager assured me that they he had done some investigation and were ordering parts for their supply depot so they'd be available when someone in Michigan experienced a failure.
I was assured we wouldn't be getting this run-around again. He was so sure he gave me his cell number and a request to call him if anything came up.
That meeting took place 12 days ago.
Fast forward to tonight...
10:45pm, drive fails. We get a notification that it's gone toes up, so we call in a support ticket to HP. Since it's late, and I'm lazy, I ask that they deliver the drive Thursday morning rather than Wednesday night because I didn't feel like making the hour long round-trip to the office.
About 1:15am, we receive a call from HP saying they didn't have any drives within 100 miles and they'd ship us one for delivery on Friday.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
So, I call the guy. He sure sounded sleepy when he answered. :)
I explained the situation. He said he'd check into it and try to get us a drive for Thursday.
We've owned the SAN for just about 6 months now. In that time, we've experienced a 25% drive failure rate and a 0% support success rate.
How is it that I can get my drives shipped to me in 2 days, but HP can't seem to stock their own closets in 12 days?
3.21.2009
Geek: $5 Programming Words
Jeff Atwood had a nice post at Coding Horror today about $5 Programming Words. His point was that while they sound self-important, they have a very real meaning and reason for being used.
I wanna take a slightly opposite view... sometimes people use the $5 word just because they're an asshole.
Case in point: About a year ago, we were ramping up to do business with a very large new customer. We visited their facility to get a feel for how our product would be used. We met with their production people, accounting, purchasing, and one of their IT people. Now, since I'm an IT guy, that's really where my ears perked up and I got interested. I like seeing the production side, just because large scale production facilities fascinate me. But, when you get down to it, a beautiful data center is what really turns my crank.
Unfortunately, this guy was waay over-selling himself for the task at hand. And the realization came about because of one phrase: "locality of reference".
He used it to describe the frustration his users had with their ERP system. When I asked about the reasons behind the user frustrations, he told me it was a problem of "locality of reference".
What. an. asshole.
The simple explanation was that their ERP system was hosted somewhere in Texas and they connected to it via T1s from Ohio. It's largely a web-based system, but they're probably shoving 100-150 people across that connection to do their daily work. The simple answer is "the latency on that connection pretty much guarantees that the user experience is gonna suck."
I'd have accepted a lot of answers... Bad decisions from former management to outsource the running of their ERP software, budget constraints that prevented them from upgrading the connections, cost of breaking the outsourcing contract and hiring staff to run the ERP system in-house, or that they were still investigating WAN scalers to minimize the problem.
No, this guy decides he's gonna use the big words and try to baffle people. Locality of reference...
I had to chuckle when our CEO nudged me after that meeting and told me that if I ever tried a phrase like that I'd be back on the production floor. Despite my sometimes frequent complaints, I do appreciate that I can't get away with $5 words.
I wanna take a slightly opposite view... sometimes people use the $5 word just because they're an asshole.
Case in point: About a year ago, we were ramping up to do business with a very large new customer. We visited their facility to get a feel for how our product would be used. We met with their production people, accounting, purchasing, and one of their IT people. Now, since I'm an IT guy, that's really where my ears perked up and I got interested. I like seeing the production side, just because large scale production facilities fascinate me. But, when you get down to it, a beautiful data center is what really turns my crank.
Unfortunately, this guy was waay over-selling himself for the task at hand. And the realization came about because of one phrase: "locality of reference".
He used it to describe the frustration his users had with their ERP system. When I asked about the reasons behind the user frustrations, he told me it was a problem of "locality of reference".
What. an. asshole.
The simple explanation was that their ERP system was hosted somewhere in Texas and they connected to it via T1s from Ohio. It's largely a web-based system, but they're probably shoving 100-150 people across that connection to do their daily work. The simple answer is "the latency on that connection pretty much guarantees that the user experience is gonna suck."
I'd have accepted a lot of answers... Bad decisions from former management to outsource the running of their ERP software, budget constraints that prevented them from upgrading the connections, cost of breaking the outsourcing contract and hiring staff to run the ERP system in-house, or that they were still investigating WAN scalers to minimize the problem.
No, this guy decides he's gonna use the big words and try to baffle people. Locality of reference...
I had to chuckle when our CEO nudged me after that meeting and told me that if I ever tried a phrase like that I'd be back on the production floor. Despite my sometimes frequent complaints, I do appreciate that I can't get away with $5 words.
3.18.2009
Addictive!
Holy wow!
The "Puffs Plus with the Scent of Vicks" tissues are friggin' AWESOME!
I don't have a cold, but Grace does. She picked up a box of these things. They smell sooooo wonderful! I've taken to just shoving my nose into the top of the box and inhaling deeply.
Man, I love that smell!
The "Puffs Plus with the Scent of Vicks" tissues are friggin' AWESOME!
I don't have a cold, but Grace does. She picked up a box of these things. They smell sooooo wonderful! I've taken to just shoving my nose into the top of the box and inhaling deeply.
Man, I love that smell!
3.16.2009
Quickie...
This one will likely get me an earful at the office, but ah well...
The GVSU shooting. I dunno whether we'll ever get the whole story on this one, so far there's just too much weird info floating around that just doesn't make sense at this point.
Like, what possible thing could an UNARMED 19-year old college stoner do to make a riot gear-suited SWAT (WMET, whatever) member feel the need to pop him in the chest with a Glock? The only thing I've ever seen a stoner get worked up about is a microwave burrito. Was the kid making a move for the cop's last Bear Claw? DROP HIM, Danno!
Can someone explain why the SWAT was serving a warrant? At 9pm? Through the sliding glass door? Would no one let these guys in the front? They couldn't call the building super to unlock the friggin' door?
Was it some sort of clever ruse? Like they were pretending to be a pot buyer at the sliding glass door? How'd that work out, fellas?
Inevitably, you've now got both sides lawyering up. The kid's family has hired Fred Dilley, because, God knows, without a well-dressed guy taking 30%, we'll never have truth and justice!
The Ottawa County Sheriff's department won't release the name of the police officer. They've put him on PAID ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE. (I hope my employer has the same policy if/when I pop a cap in someone!)
The cop's union rep is now telling him to NOT answer investigator's questions because he might incriminate himself. Way to be helpful, asshole!
Want an low-cost way to avoid incriminating yourself? DON'T SHOOT AN UNARMED STONER! (I'll take PayPal or Cashier's Check for payment. Leave a comment and I'll send you the address.)
The State Police are doing an investigation that'll take a couple weeks. The Sheriff's department isn't investigating yet because the State Police are investigating.
What a complete clusterf*ck. Of course, since this IS West Michigan we're talking about, I'm in the MINORITY in thinking that the cop was POSSIBLY in the wrong for loosing a round on an unarmed. 19-year old. stoner. college student.
Yep, apparently "pot smoker = valid target" in this neck of the woods...
The GVSU shooting. I dunno whether we'll ever get the whole story on this one, so far there's just too much weird info floating around that just doesn't make sense at this point.
Like, what possible thing could an UNARMED 19-year old college stoner do to make a riot gear-suited SWAT (WMET, whatever) member feel the need to pop him in the chest with a Glock? The only thing I've ever seen a stoner get worked up about is a microwave burrito. Was the kid making a move for the cop's last Bear Claw? DROP HIM, Danno!
Can someone explain why the SWAT was serving a warrant? At 9pm? Through the sliding glass door? Would no one let these guys in the front? They couldn't call the building super to unlock the friggin' door?
Was it some sort of clever ruse? Like they were pretending to be a pot buyer at the sliding glass door? How'd that work out, fellas?
Inevitably, you've now got both sides lawyering up. The kid's family has hired Fred Dilley, because, God knows, without a well-dressed guy taking 30%, we'll never have truth and justice!
The Ottawa County Sheriff's department won't release the name of the police officer. They've put him on PAID ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE. (I hope my employer has the same policy if/when I pop a cap in someone!)
The cop's union rep is now telling him to NOT answer investigator's questions because he might incriminate himself. Way to be helpful, asshole!
Want an low-cost way to avoid incriminating yourself? DON'T SHOOT AN UNARMED STONER! (I'll take PayPal or Cashier's Check for payment. Leave a comment and I'll send you the address.)
The State Police are doing an investigation that'll take a couple weeks. The Sheriff's department isn't investigating yet because the State Police are investigating.
What a complete clusterf*ck. Of course, since this IS West Michigan we're talking about, I'm in the MINORITY in thinking that the cop was POSSIBLY in the wrong for loosing a round on an unarmed. 19-year old. stoner. college student.
Yep, apparently "pot smoker = valid target" in this neck of the woods...
3.11.2009
HP Support, continued
The HP Support issue seems to finally be making some progress. The internal complaint I'd made had no effect, but chewing out an HP Storage Team blogger seems to have gotten something shaken loose. Still, two weeks to get a response to an irate customer?
We received an email tonight from the Midwest Mission-Critical Support Director to setup a meeting for later this week.
Will be interesting to sit down with the guy and hear the HP story. I'm sure we're in the wrong, and just expecting waaaay too much from poor HP...
We received an email tonight from the Midwest Mission-Critical Support Director to setup a meeting for later this week.
Will be interesting to sit down with the guy and hear the HP story. I'm sure we're in the wrong, and just expecting waaaay too much from poor HP...
3.07.2009
3.05.2009
Scary Meijers
I had no idea the Scary Meijers was over 50 years old.
Link to a story about the Planning Commission fights over plans for constructing a new store on the site.
Link to a story about the Planning Commission fights over plans for constructing a new store on the site.
3.04.2009
If You Aren't Already
If you aren't already reading dooce, you should start your addiction with today's entry.
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