New Arrival

I could have just stayed awake.

Lia Joy Phillips, our newest grandchild, appeared about 5:30 this morning - all 8 pounds 7 ounces. 

She has the normal appendages and such, is noisy at times and quiet at others, and I am sure she will lead our Elizabeth a merry chase from time to time.

Another miracle at which I can marvel.

Happy Birthday, Lia!

Never boring around here

It's almost midnight - and the phone just rang.

Our daughter is in labor - only several days late, but a couple of days before they would take her in and induce her. I'm too old for the excitement I think.  Another new life is coming.

I remember when this daughter was born - I was there.  I am at heart a simpleton, theologically speaking - but the day she was born, I was present for a miracle - the birth of a live child, and as far as miracles go, it is the only one I ever needed.

But I had a few other miracles that day, too - I gained an understanding of the reason recovery from a surgical (C-section) delivery seemed so tough.  I watched the doctor cut her open from hip to him, then stick his arms inside up to (it seemed) his elbows to pull out the daughter that had decided she wasn't coming out any other way.  I got to watch the very first hours of this daughter's life, and literally see her grow, change and gain strength.

Now, there's a granddaughter coming. By the time I get up in the morning, she might be here.

Of course, we are getting snow now, supposed to be continued through tomorrow evening, just to keep life interesting.  Happily, my son-in-law has a Subaru, which is good for a trip to the hospital - and since this child is number two, you might think he'd be used to it - but I'm sure he's going nuts anyhow, and will be asleep on his feet by the time we get there tomorrow. 

Merry Christmas to all.  I guess I ought to get some sleep....

But it's something good, a thing to be celebrated - a new life!

Merry Christmas

I know, I am early - but I heard about something this morning.

I have heard of folks giving kidneys to other folks.  Today I learned that I know someone involved in such a case.  Without being too specific, a husband happens to be a match for his wife's brother - tested as a last resort when there were no matches - for whatever reason there's a match.

Surgery should occur before Christmas is actually here.

This is giving of oneself in its purest and most personal form - what Christmas should be all about.

Quite literally, it is the gift of life.

Snowy Saturday Morning

I woke up this morning and looked outside to see the first real snow of the year. I had heard there might be a dusting - but if this is a dusting, I don't want to be around when it snows in earnest! The Weather Bug on my TeeVee says it will go away tomorrow and we'll be back to motorcycle weather on Monday, but I think I'll wait until it arrives before uncovering the big Kwacker.

I hope this is better tomorrow morning, or our parking lot at Church will be a disaster, and there will be more choristers than congregation - but we'll be there anyhow.

I had a laptop from a friend most of the week - it got infected, and was a beast to clean up. I had hoped just to get lucky, put in a new drive and scan the old one and have it clean up, but it was not to be - after a couple of hours with the recovery CD's and scans, I swapped the drives back and it was still not right - something had been altered that Norton could not find, so I ran a repair on it, then spent more time finding my friend's data and putting it where he could find it. He will have stuff to reinstall, but at least I found all his data and pictures. I had intended to take it back to him today, but I think in view of the weather I'll take it to him at church tomorrow since we'll both be there.

Other than that, it was a quiet week - a couple of small chores for The Queen, otherwise major cleanup on the music collection, and some remote server maintenance for other folks occupied my time - and I also found a few e-Books I had not read in many years, so I read them, too - some vintage Heinlein juveniles and such.

Now I have server stuff to do, the downstairs computer to make work, the upstairs nedia center computer to make work, so I guess I ought to get about it.

Have a good Saturday.

Thanksgiving

I know, it's been over for almost a week - but today is the first time there has been time to think about it all that hard.

I've been alive almost 68 years - and I guess, considering the number of dead people I know that I should be most thankful for that, and I am. I'm grateful that I can still work and that there are folks that value what I can do.

I've been married for almost 42 of those years, and can still remember the good old single days, and have to concede that they weren't all that great. My wife is a very patient lady, and puts up with a lot, but she's still here, and together we have three good kids, some grandkids and will have another before too long. I can still be musical under the direction of my wife, and enjoy the experience.

I'm still riding my motorcycle, and proved this past Sunday that I can still pick it up if I need to, not that I wanted to know that....

I'm grateful for our families - for our parents who are long gone, for values they instilled in us, for experiences involved in growing up in a small town, for siblings and cousins aplenty, for summers in the Pittsburgh area with cousins and friends, and for shared experiences with neighborhood friends.

I'm grateful for all the ladies that have entered and left my life over the years, even though sometimes things ended badly - each taught me something of value, and I cherish the memories of all of them. I'm particularly grateful to my wife - she has put up with a lot over the years, and has been supportive through good times, bad times and truly horrid times. I am not a perfect person, and she has grown pretty good at overlooking that fact.

I am grateful for having served in the Air Force. My enlistment may have been triggered by a fear of the draft, but the experiences, education, and travel that that four years brought were a large piece of my education and maturing process. I enjoyed what I did in the service and would go again in a heartbeat. I appreciate our troops, support them, and get a wee bit irritable when I hear them denigrated - those who speak ill of the Service as a career and of those who choose to make it a career are fools at best. I recommend to everyone exiting high school that consideration be given to a term of service. I went in at 19, was single and rather aimless, and it gave me experience and purpose - and taught me at least 200 things I never in my life wanted to do again!

My gratitude for family influence gets greater with each year - and as I grow older I am amazed at just how much my father and grandfather knew that mattered - and how much many better educated people knew that didn't matter. My brothers and I each went our own way and survived the experience, learning all the way, and we are still civil to one another. I wish one brother was on the east coast instead of where he is - as we grow older we find it harder to get together on any regular basis, although when we do it seems that conversation picks up where it left off, and the time between meetings disappears.

My father and his brother were two very different people - and I am grateful for having been able to get to know both, even though Uncle Bob was in California, and we were not. I have traveled for work some of the places I have been employed, and family that wandered to California have always welcomed me when I was able to get to their area. Uncle Bob was the person who introduced me to Disneyland, a time I'll never forget, when I had first returned from a prolonged stay in Germany.

The time in Germany was something I'll not soon forget - learning the land, the people, the language, and exploring on my motorcycle. There are people I met there who are still with me, even though I've not seen them since 1966; learning experiences that could not be repeated anywhere else, and lessons about people and places that I carry with me.

All in all, it has been interesting so far, and my gratitude goes out to people without number who have helped me, counseled me, commiserated with me, taught me things, introduced me to exotic foods, different languages, and other ways to look at the bits that make life interesting, and to my various family members, without whom it would have been really dull!

Thanks, all of you - you have helped shape what I am today - take credit for the best parts, and blame the worst parts on my humanity.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Doing What I Do

I'm an info systems specialist, who does odd jobs for a living. I'm one of the people who, when asked "Do we have this information and can we get it in this form?" says yes, no, or I'll look into it.

I've been in Info Systems since the late 60's, and one thing that is becoming more apparent each year is that everyone knows things and presumes that among the things known is how something has to be done to be effective.

More and more, when someone wants something, that someone will take up a lot of time telling me what to do and, often, how to do it. Nobody any more tells me what it is that they hope to accomplish, which would go a long way towards getting an optimum result.

Where I work, most of our data is stored in Oracle - partly because one of our major systems is purchased and was written to use Oracle, and partly because it is a good product, with a long life and a solid company behind it. It is also reasonably easy to use when I write stuff in the language I use most of the time, and while there is a lot that I do not know, I understand how stuff is stored and have written enough code that I can usually do whatever is needed if the data exists in any rational format.

Just an example - I was asked to strip down a Personnel database and a Mobile Phones database so the bosslady could load the resulting files into Excel and use Excel to find out what phones were in use by people who weren't our employees any more - so we would know to turn them off. A couple of fields from one and a couple of fields from another, creating two files.

I had designed both databases, and knew they could be tied together in retrieval, so I did what was asked, and in one file added one field from the other database, giving one of the files all the info needed to avoid writing the Excel program. Then I thought some more about it and wrote an extract to create a file showing only phones assigned to people who were gone.

In the end, the person who actually had to use the data was as happy as a clam to get only 79 records to deal with instead of 800+ with only some labeled as needing attention. The person who originally directed that I do this was dismayed to see that there was no longer a need for the Excel program to do the comparison - but ran it anyhow and it worked, and it verified my results. I'd've had it two days earlier had it been clear what we were trying to accomplish - which was to find out if we had any cell phones assigned to people we no longer employ.

Then this morning I found that there was to be an inventory comparing our vendor's data about who was using what phone to ours. I found that wity minimal massaging I could download from the vendor site a detailed statement, parse it and pass it against our equipment and personnel databases and come up with a list of mismatched names - reducing the number of records to be examined from 1400 to around 200 - but this time I was asked if there was a way to take the vendor data and validate it against our data.

I guess the message here is if someone is going to be doing something for you, rather than let your preconceived notions of the process guide the request, explain what the desired result is and let the professional pick the methodology. If the pro is a pro and needs more information, you'll get more questions, and if no more questions are needed you'll probably get a happier result a lot faster than if you try to guide the methodology.

Enough of my grumbling. Have a good evening, y'all.

On aging

I am 67 years old. I don't feel old, but each month it seems that I know someone else who is now dead, and I don't like that at all.

I'm all out of uncles and aunts. The ranks of cousins are slowly diminishing, and parents are long gone. High school classmates are going, and friends from Air Force days are dying - some older than I, and some not.

I guess my uncle's death got to me more than I realized. I knew he was old and had lived longer than anyone expected, but it was still a shock to know that he was gone - particularly a few days after talking to my wife about taking time for a trip to California to visit him, deciding that I had to do it before the year ended. In the past year I have sung at more funerals than in the five years that came before this past year - and it is a trend that disturbs me greatly. The only up side is that none have been for any of my kids....

As I was riding my motorcycle in to work this morning, I was thinking about my next high school class reunion, which is being organized now and should occur next year sometime - and it will be our 50th. I don't want to miss it, and I hope that we get a really good turnout. I volunteered many years ago to get a database of the members going, and have located a good number who were missing - but there are still ten or fifteen members that nobody has seen since graduation - and nobody knows if they are alive or dead.

The motorcycle seems to give me time to think about stuff that just never comes to mind when I am elsewhere. I'm glad I still have one and happy still to be able to ride it and hold it up, although I've reached the age where it is really hard to pick up if it is laying on the ground. I hope I can continue to ride for more years - it's almost the only solitude left to me, and gives more pleasure than I can explain, and I don't know why, because I go to work the same way whether in the car or on the bike - but on the bike I arrive more cheerful and relaxed.

I digress - it's late and my brain wants to shut down. I think my own mortality is beginning to impinge upon my sense of self. I mean, I know we all have to go sometime, and I am sure if my health goes to hell in a big way I would prefer to be gone rather than to stay around and use up resources and space - but I am still working full time and no way ready to consider that that might be all there is. There are too many places I've not seen, too many interesting people I've not met, and too many memories neither written nor shared, and, of course, too many amends unmade. I guess maybe I am getting old, but I sure don't have to like it, and I don't.

Maybe I ought to just hang it up and go to bed for today. Tomorrow is another day, there should be no rain, so I can motorcycle tomorrow, too, and I'll feel better when I've done that. So I'm gonna take this train of thought and stuff it under a pillow, get on my CPAP mask, and sleep.

G'nite, all.

Veteran's Day

I know, it was Wednesday, and it is now Friday - but it has taken a little bit for all this to percolate to a point that I could talk about it.

I saw a T-shirt in a catalog today - it said:

Home of the Free
Because of the Brave

and it made think a bit, about history, about the military, about veterans I have known, and about this great nation.

My uncle just died - the last in my family of his generation. He was a soldier in World War 2, and a POW in some Stalag in Germany. He was a hero - he didn't start out to be a hero, it was thrust upon him, and he accepted the duty. He was seriously mistreated as a POW, and never thought he'd live to the age of 90, but he did.

Veterans are special people - because they understand something about commitment that is no longer taught in schools. Uncle Bob was a depression kid, and knew hard times. He was a gentle man who worked with his hands - an artisan if you will. He did many things I never knew about, and he never would discuss his POW years with me. He thought that his life was more than just that period of confinement, and he was right to a large degree - there was more to his life than just that period - he had a wife and two daughters who were and are in their own right special people.

My father was not in the military - but he was a valued member of the team in Berlin that held up one end of the Berlin Airlift. If you don't know about the Airlift, shame on our educational system, because it was a part of what cemented our friendship with the German people, and served to underscore our commitment to what would become the cold war.

But for this generation, we might well be speaking German (or Japanese) now.

As time went by, it seems that patriotism has become passe, or even unfashionable, and love of country has been replaced by love of self.

The activities at Fort Hood, and the subsequent statements by our so-called leaders are beginning to worry me. We are forgetting from whence we came, and we are busily being apologized for by a set of leaders that doesn't seem to have learned history.

I am myself a veteran, although a cold war vet and not a "real" war vet. What i and those with whom I served did was not well known - indeed up until recent years it could not be discussed as it was classified. I am proud of my service, proud to have done what I did, and proud to have known many others who did the same sort of work, and did it very well.

I saw a bumper sticker that said "If you are reading this in English, thank a Vet."

Veteran's day must stay Veteran's day and not be diluted by being named something else. If we permit that, then the veterans have died in vain. History is not irrelevant. It must be known and taught, otherwise we'll get to do it all again. We have to stop coddling those who would do us violence, and start once again calling things what they are, not what we wish that they were.

Meanwhile, think on those veterans of yesterday, and the vets of today - they are doing things that need done for all of the rest of us - can we not at least show them respect for that?

Shooters, Fanatics and Political Correctness

Am I the only person in the world who finds it odd that our president urges caution, and urges us not to assume anything about the Fort Hopd Shooter, yet he himself went off not even half-cocked at that cop in New England who confronted his pal, mr gates (lowercase purely intentional)?

What am I failing to understand.

First of all, if ever there should have been a backlash against American Muslims, it should have been about the day after 9/11 - and it didn't happen. Unlike some folks in other places in the world, we do not permit ourselves the luxury of mob rule, and the American Muslims among us are far more likely to be good Americans than they are to be Jihadisti.

Does anyone else recognize the irony in a guy who is born in the USA of Jordanian parents calling himself a Palestinian? There's a red flag right there that got ignored for too long.

If there was any doubt about his intent, the choice of weapon (a pistol with magazines up to 30 rounds available, firing ammunition designed to defeat the vests of law enforcement personnel) and location (the place overseas troops go to turn in their weapons) should dispel any doubt about his intentions.

I am naturally suspicious of folks whose primary allegiance is to other than this great nation - particularly those who would be citizens and accept the benefits that that citizenship confers. I am suspicious of those who identify themselves as something else first, and then American. I am not German-American - I am American and if anyone cares my ancestry is German.

I am also suspicious of those who come here and then expect the nation to remake itself in their image. Come on, folks - if the place you left was superior, why did you leave? If, for instance, you consider us to be weak folks and think Sharia law is more appropriate, why did you not seek out a place to land where that is how things are run? Can it be that our ease acceptance of others causes some to think we are weak?

I have lived in other places for extended periods as a consequence of military service - but ultimately I returned home, because I am an American, and being something else required alterations in feelings and custom with which I was not wholly comfortable.

We need not fear unreasoned backlash against any group, but we do need to fear being so politically correct that we are afraid we'll piss someone off. That's cowardice, and it sets our values to whatever outsiders would have, not what we ourselves hold to be true.

Fort Hood was an act of terrorism on American soil. It took advantage of a number of circumstances peculiar to America, and it is time that we stopped trying so damned hard to be 'understanding' and called it what it is, Terrorism. Terrorists are, in my opinion, at their best when three days dead.

On rights, on earning rights, and on responsibility

I wish I could take credit for this, but I can't - someone else put me onto it. It's worth reading.

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock , did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom. When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

'Ms. Cothren, where're our desks?'

She replied, 'You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn the right to sit at a desk.'

They thought, 'Well, maybe it's our grades.'

'No,' she said.

'Maybe it's our behavior.'

She told them, 'No, it's not even your behavior.'

And so, they came and went, the first period, second period, third period. Still no desks in the classroom.

By early afternoon television news crews had started gathering in Ms. Cothren's classroom to report about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of her room.

The final period of the day came and as the puzzled students found seats on the floor of the deskless classroom, Martha Cothren said, 'Throughout the day no one has been able to tell me just what he/she has done to earn the right to sit at the desks that are ordinarily found in this classroom. Now I am going to tell you.'

At this point, Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it.

Twenty-seven (27) U.S. Veterans, all in uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk The Vets began placing the school desks in rows, and then they would walk over and stand alongside the wall. By the time the last soldier had set the final desk in place those kids started to understand, perhaps for the first time in their lives, just how the right to sit at those desks had been earned.

Martha said, 'You didn't earn the right to sit at these desks. These heroes did it for you. They placed the desks here for you. Now, it's up to you to sit in them. It is your responsibility to learn, to be good students, to be good citizens. They paid the price so that you could have the freedom to get an education. Don't ever forget it.'

By the way, this is a true story. (Click on this link if you want more information: http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp .)

Please consider passing this along so others won't forget that the freedoms we have in this great country were earned by the Veterans of the United States Military.

This lesson is no longer taught in schools, and in many places the military is ridiculed as the last place for those who otherwise might be homeless. The notion that the military is a place for losers is belied by the fact that we still speak English - had our military been other than dedicated, we might be speaking German or Japanese right now. All the talk by the appeasement monkeys accomplishes very little unless others recognize that there is intent to follow through on all promises of reaction.

In the last few days, we have remembrance of events in the world - the wall in Germany coming down and 9/11 here on our own soil.

It's also a time for remembering heroic efforts like the Berlin Airlift which helped keep a city from starving, and convinced the Bear that we were sincere in our wishes that the city stay at least partly free and its occupants not be starved into submission. It was thought to be an impossible task - our military personnel and civilian personnel showed that not to be the case.

We have lost most of that generation, but a few remain. We must be certain never to lose the memory of those heroes of yesteryear lest we repeat the actions that brought about the need for them.

/dismounting soapbox

Monday, another damn beautiful day!

It's a great day for a motorcycle ride. Alas, it is also a day during which I am obligated to work, or at least to put my face in the place.

It's also a sad day. I learned this morning that my father's only brother died late yesterday, the last of his generation within our family. He was 90, and a World War II Stalag survivor, and I wish that I had been able to be there when at last he felt like talking about his experiences there. I had hoped to visit him again one more time, but have had no excuse to travel to the west coast in quite some time - and before I could organize a trip, one of the prime reasons for the trip left us.

This has been a hard year for older folks among us. My brother's mother-in-law and my father's brother died within weeks of each other, and with them died some very interesting recordings of personal history.

Uncle Bob was 90 - an age that he never expected to reach, as his health had been impaired since his return from Europe and the war. Upon return, he joined his wife in California, and we were to see each other only seldom throughout the years, although it seemed when we were together that the conversation picked up from yesterday, and that we knew each other well.

We have only one relative left from the generation of our parents - both my wife and I have lost just about everyone from that generation, and we now have no place to go to learn of events from that generation's time except for books (and of course Google....) We have never known, and hopefully our children will never know the adversities which this now nearly departed generation faced over its lifetime - indeed we are not equipped even to imagine some of the hardships that particularly the veterans faced and overcame. We are aware that the world is a better place for their efforts, their bravery, and their unwillingness to settle for second best.

I fear I wax philosophical. At any rate, Uncle Bob has left the earth, and in leaving has left a hole in our lives that cannot be filled. Over time the edges of that hole will get chamfered and be less severe, but the hole itself will remain. Hopefully the next world has the rewards he earned and that he can enjoy them.

Sunday

It is Sunday, and I slept through church, but stayed here at home to do it. There were several things I had that I wanted to do today - but it is 72 degrees out, the sun is shining, it's November and I'm going motorcycling!

Should be a perfect day for it - not too much wind, and few clouds. The only question is, really, where should I go?

I think maybe I'll know when I get there.

Have a truly wonderful day!

Honor

Apparently there's a lot about being a Muslim that I don't understand.

In Arizona, a father used his Jeep to run over his own daughter and the mother of her American boy friend. His daughter was comatose for several days before dying. The murderer fled the country. So much for honor - an honorable man would not have killed his own child and then run, but stayed and stood for his principles.

Her sin that called the family honor into question consisted of deciding to marry whom she pleased, to get a college education, and make use of social networking used by most Americans in that age range - in other words, become too westernized.

Children are neither property nor are they pets, to be killed out of hand at the whim of a parent (unless, of course, they are not yet born...) and that one who comes here from another land has done so little of the homework as to believe that such an action is proper simply boggles my mind.

Apparently, however, the Powers that Be have decided that it necessary that we softpedal this behavior in order to avoid causing offense to folks who by their very behavior are not civilized, and are not therefore owed any special consideration.

From the reading I have done over the years, this sort of behavior is not something that the Prophet would have either encouraged or applauded - it is the mullahs that have encouraged this sort of barbarious behavior.

Now, if folks that live in Iraq want to behave this way, it is not necessarily any of my concern - they find it OK, and we are not required to take such action if we live among them, nor are we required to approve. We are, however, required not to interfere if such actions are in accordance with the law of the land in that part of the world.

Normally, Americans are a pretty tolerant bunch. We don't however allow such actions to be taken as a matter of law.

As a father, I can state without fear that many of the things my children have done would not have had my approval had they asked, and some might well have embarrassed me, but none dishonored me - the reflection is upon the adult doing the deed. I don't believe in collective guilt, and at some point my children stand or fall on their own. If they ask for my opinion, they get it and if they ask for my help in an endeavor that is not dishonorable they'll get all that I can give.

But once a child is an adult, there is no more that I can do - they then have their own identity.

I wonder - had that child been a son, would that so-called man felt free enough to kill him, or are sons more valuable? I think I know the answer, and it pleases me not one damn bit, because it does even more to devalue women.

At some point a stand must be taken, and such people must be held accountable - and folks who would join us here in this great nation have to understand the rule of law - and understand that such behavior is intolerable in a free nation.

I sincerely hope that that barbarian father is caught and returned to face the justice he has denied his own daughter.

Fort Hood

For some time now I have been waiting for a terrorist act on US soil. I think it finally showed up. Now that our leadershit is busy apologizing for us to all the available tyrants and despots, I expect there will be more - the natural result of appeasement and attempts to stall off a confrontation that only gets worse when delayed. Think what you will of George Bush, his actions kept the terrorists offshore - and now that the anti-Bush is in place, the terrorists are assured that if they act the only thing they'll reap will be more apologies and "understanding."

Make no mistake - the Islamic terrorists have only one plan - the elimination of anyone who finds Sharia law to be anything less than ideal. Ladies, get used to being cattle again, because that's how they like it. They are not interested in compromise, and their understanding of understanding is not agreeing to disagree, but capitulation.

One of the things that frightens these folks so about us is that we are a pretty tolerant bunch - they don't understand that folks who have disagreements do not have to kill one another over them. They feel that one of our strengths - the willingness to learn about others and adapt - is a huge weakness, because in the process of thinking there are folks who might be swayed to a point of view other than that with which they grew up - in short, they fear folks who think their own thoughts and are guided by them. They'd rather be surrounded by folks who don't think at all but do what they're told.

In that regard, they have a lot in common with Nancy Pelosi, although she'd be the first to go if they were in charge because, as you know, she is a mere woman, and woman can't be educated and are suitable only to keep the house, do what their husbands decree, make babies and take abuse.

I am no fan of warfare, but I believe that sometimes it is the only thing that works - appeasement only delays it (read the history of the World Wars for a set of good examples of this) but absent a regime change in the recalcitrant nation, appeasement eventually results in devaluing of the mores of the nation doing the appeasing, or its subjugation.

I am also slowly coming around to the belief that one of the qualifications for higher office ought to be prior military service. Most of our leaders today have no understanding of the military, and are inclined to treat it as if it were a gang of thugs, stupid at best. This is not the case and we have been proving since the war in Viet Nam that when the military is run by dithering civilians, people die unnecessarily. We are about to prove it again in Afghanistan - the President dithers, the generals are left holding the bag - insufficient resources, no direction yields dead soldiers who did not need to die. This is unconscionable unless you subscribe to the belief that the military is composed of folks better left out of the breeding pool.

Enough. In summary, I think Fort Hood is only the beginning. I'd like to be wrong. I think our Commander in Chief is in over his head, and innocent soldiers will die. I think that Congress has no credibility at all because they won't subscribe to the health plan they are going to try to force on all of us and won't make their plan available to all of us. I also find it stupid that they will fine us and jail us for not taking their "Health Plan" which will cost more and deliver less than I paid for years buying my own private health insurance.

And, if anyone cares, I did serve. I am a Viet Nam era vet who served four years in the Air Force Security Service.

Have a nice day.

Elections

Interesting results not far from us. Things to come?

I just heard about the Fort Hood shooting, and have to wonder how it can be determined that it was not an act of terrorism?

All this done by a shrink no less, apparently because of horror stories his family told him, or some such utter rubbish. Ought to send the SOB to Gitmo....

I'm angry. I'm also angry that he'll probably be found to be schizophrenic or somesuch and will never serve a day in durance vile.

I'd better go to bed, before I get really pissed! It was really miserable riding home this evening - I hate it when Daylight Savings goes away, and it is dark when I go out on that roof, find my motorcycle and start it up to go home. I feel so much more tired when it is already dark at go-home time. Tonight was cold, and between rain showers - I didn't get wet, but the streets were snotty and so were the commuters....

G'nite, y'all. Tomorrow will be better.

Wednesday's Ramblings

Furlough day today - A special day, granted by the Police Department and the City of Baltimore, during which I get to stay home and not get paid - which is not necessarily wrong, but is something I would prefer to have a way to arrange from time to time, but can only arrange when decreed by a higher authority.

The city can direct that I take a day off without pay - but there is no easy way for me to take a day off without pay without incurring raised eyebrows and questioning looks. And sometimes I'd like just to take a day off, even if it meant not getting paid for that day, just to save vacation and sick leave for times when I really was relaxing or sick.

Today I had Grandfather Duty - drop off and pick up a grandson from private school, as nobody else was available to do this, the school is close to home, and I had a furlough day I had to use. I didn't get much else done because of timing, but I did arrange for transport for said grandson with alacrity and timeliness.

It's not that I don't need money - the stuff gets away from me faster than I can believe - but once in a while I'd like to choose not to earn on a given day. I'd like to retire, but with the best of will I can't see it happening before 2012 or so and maybe not then if I can keep on being productive. I like what I do, and am not ready yet to hang it up - I'd just like to take a motorcycle or mental health day once in a while, unpaid and not open my future employment to question.

So today was a furlough day, and I stayed home, and got some stuff done on the server; made some space, created some ISO images to mount instead of burning to optical media, things like that - and clean up some space, standardize some MP3 tags - I guess I got a lot done.

But what I didn't get done that I ought to have done instead includes dragging some cat5 up into the living room because wireless is not fast enough for my media center PC, replace VISTA on this machine with XP because at least drivers for XP are available and reliable, and loading the VISTA that used to be on this machine onto the IBM IntelliStation that is waiting downstairs for the last half year for me to get around to getting it turned on and working.

I should also have gone outside and pumped up the suspension in my Honda so it won't fall over in the carport, and checked the tire pressure on the Kawasaki and the Volvo. Maybe I should take another furlough day tomorrow and do those things, since it won't be long before it is just too cold for me to want to go outside and do things like this.

I'm missing choir tonight for my once-a-month Ramblers meeting. I get there all the time in the summer, but in the winter it is tough because it comes on Wednesday, along with choir rehearsal. I married the choir director, she has expectations....

So it's time for the first Bones fix of the evening, then it is off to Ramblers, then back for more Bones. Then sleep then work.

Just another day, I guess.

I forgot why I started this; getting old, I guess, so I'd better wrap it up.

Y'all have a good evening.

Government Budgeting Problems

I have the good fortune to work in a relatively large city as an employee of the Police Department. This means I fall under civil service, and when the city is running low on money, they give us days off without paying us.

I understand how that happens, and this is not a polemic about the fact that these things are necessary, but it is an expression of wonderment at the procedures used.

Here, there were three levels of furlough for civilians -

1. Earnings up to $50k - 5 furlough days
2. Earnings up to $100k - 8 furlough days
3. Earnings over $100k - 10 furlough days

The days were to be taken whenever, and the deduction, instead of occurring during the cycle in which the days were taken, was spread over the balance of the payroll year.

Someone who thought that the folks in range 1 probably need everything they make, and was more interested in getting a bunch of Fridays off than in getting rich, offered to take those days as added furlough days allowing the other folks whose days he was taking to avoid losing money - and in the process save the city more money, since his pay was in range 2 of the furlough groups.

The offer was made, but it went nowhere. No explanation was offered as to why the city wanted not to take the opportunity to save more money - it just could not be done.

The individual involved did try to do something good for his fellow workers and for the city, and the offer was not even acknowledged, nor was a reason for the impossibility ever offered.

How it can be that a city so troubled that it can't make a payroll without hacking away at the number of days of work its employees has can afford to fail to double the savings in one small area is beyond me - but it did happen just as I describe - I was there.

Free Lunch

I've been watching this health care thing, and have finally had my gutful.

First off, it looks to me like Congress believes that we're either serfs, fit only to be taxed for their giveaways, or perhaps retardates, too stupid to think for ourselves.

In either case, I resent their inferences.

The avowed intention of all too many in congress is to take away from me part of what I work for to give it to someone else. What does that do to my incentive to excel? I can tell you, nothing at all. I can also point to places like what used to be East Germany, what used to be the Soviet Union, among others where the government ran everything. It didn't work well. Maybe everyone (except, of course, the ruling class in the otherwise classless society) got the same gifts, benefits, or accommodations, but they weren't great, and if you wanted better, there was nowhere to go.

The latest incarnation of the Health Care bill has left in it all the crap that turned me off to it at first , to wit:

• The Death Panels (not so named, but it amounts to the same thing - rationing care, and determining by committee (of mostly young folks [which, to me, is anyone under 60])) when the extended care for an elderly person is no longer worth the cost - something which families tend to be able to determine right now
• Forcing insurance companies to take folks that would otherwise not be insurable - I know, this is a kinder, gentler thing - and it is also what is accomplished by open enrollment periods.
• Fining or penalizing anyone who might decide that being uninsured was an acceptable risk. This will impact only us serfs, as the rich guy can afford either to be insured or to pay his own bills.
• Exempting Congress form all the requirements of this 1,990 page document allowing Congress to keep its own superior system for which, of course, we are paying.
• No checks on citizenship before enrollment - which means that some of my money (and yours, too) will go to procure benefits for folks who are not here legally.
• The requirement that benefits be offered by businesses now too small to afford them - which means that some places will close, and some jobs will be lost.
• The absolute refusal to place any limits upon lawyers, even so trivial as to insist that, when they lose they pay the other side's costs, one place that England got something right. Of course, most congresscritters are lawyers, so I guess my surprise is misplaced. The end result will be fewer doctors, and lawyers better paid than the folks with which we would trust our lives.
  

The Current Occupant has the colossal gall to assure us that there will be no added cost to the consumers for all this added "Service" since they'll be killing off medicare waste and fraud - quite probably by redefining what constitutes acceptable quality of life for old folks like myself until we are all dead just before Medicare qualifications allow its use.

This used to be a free nation, where personal responsibility was prized, and a way of life. It is being turned into England, a gimme nation. If I wanted England I'd be there, not here.

When all choices are made for you, they are no longer choices - and you'll learn that thinking about choice is frowned upon, not proper, and antisocial. Is this what you want?

I don't want my money to pay for illegals, regardless how 'kind' it might appear to be. My ancestors played the game as it was defined, waited in line and came here legally. They were poor but they grabbed the opportunities and made better lives. The choice to do this is gradually being taken away from you in the guise of kinder, gentler, caring government.

BOHICA and TANSTAAFL come to mind - principles that are learned in a hard way and once learned generally are learned when it is far too late to fix the root cause.

The way things are going, in another ten years or so this expression of my opinion will likely get me locked up. Think about that, folks.

I'll have more to say later. Meanwhile, I would encourage folks to visit Townhall.com and read at least anything that Thomas Sowell has to say.

BTW - for those that may not recognize my acronyms,

• TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Things As A Free Lunch
• BOHICA - Bend Over Here It Comes Again
• BTW - By The Way

Have a pleasant balance of the diurnal episode.

I'm back, and profoundly irritated

Well, it has really been a long time. I've been thinking I had stuff to say, but forgot just where I put the area I had set aside in which to say things - and since I had already lost other blogs, resolved not to start another, but to wait until I found this one, which I did today.

In the coming weeks I expect I'll have a lot to say, not all of it very nice. Some things are giving me a huge case of the redass, and I'm gonna have to talk about it. But not today.

I've been having fun with my home network and with Windows Home Server. I know I don't often have anything to say about Windoze that isn't at least profane, but this product is really pretty nifty, relatively easy to use, and is doing Good Things wherever it is installed.

I've also become more security-oriented, and have resorted to VPN connections for everything outside my own servers.

But right now, I'm headed for bed.

It's been a while

Sorry, I've been out of sorts for a bit. I ran out of Prozac, and decided that I'm just too damn mean when depressed to write anything useful. When I was no longer out, it got busy, and then my lovely wife and I took a road trip last week down to South Carolina (Charleston to be exact) to attend a reunion of members of my old military unit. Since the unit existed for around 30 years, there was no certainty that anyone would be there with whom I had served, but we went anyhow, just to see, and to meet folks with whom I had been in touch on various duty-specific forums for the past several years.

Much to my surprise, my wife asked if we would be driving or flying and indicated a desire to travel by car. Since she normally doesn't travel well, I was more than ready to drive even though I already had plane tickets (discovering afterwards just how damn hard it is to get rid of them and get back money.) She got to thinking about travel hassles, and the fact that I hate to fly any more, and decided to try a road trip - and it was a really good trip for both of us.

We broke the trip around Emporia, Virginia, staying in a Hampton Inn at a ridiculously cheap price for first-class lodging. When we woke up and had breakfast, it was a relatively easy day to get us into Charleston - it took time, but traffic was light, the scenery good and the weather pleasant. We let Gertie Garmin guide us, and let the cruise control keep the cops away, and just relaxed, stopping when it pleased one or the other of us.

Gertie Garmin is what we called the GPS that I purchased for her some time back. This was the first trip with that sort of device, and I have to say it was a great addition to the stuff we already were taking with us. The 760 model allowed all our cell phones to be bluetoothed to its hands-free facility, the alternate routes worked and were decent - all in all I cannot imaging going farther than ten minutes without at least having it turned on with traffic alerts enabled.

I did meet one guy I knew at the reunion, and met others with whom I had chatted, but whom I had never met - and lots of war stories got told. It was great! I was particularly pleased to see the one guy I already knew, as I had heard that he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer several years back, and since I know the cure rate on that to be abysmal fully expected to hear that he was not with us any more - and was both surprised and pleased to hear from him that he'd be there. I was doubly surprised to see him when I got there using an artificial larynx - after beating the esophageal cancer he ended up with it in his throat, and lost his thyroid and larynx to it - but a more ready-to-go guy I have not known. He's 71, has had all this, and is more lively than ever! I had never met his wife before, but knew she had to be something else, and was not disappointed - although I was surprised to note that her German accent had been replaced with a Buffalo, New York accent!

My wife was surprised at how well she seemed to fit - there were some folks younger than us, but not many, and lots older, although they were uniformly old in years but not in spirit.

I was in what the Air Force called Security Service - it was an intelligence operation that had had its personnel described as a tightly knit group of loosely wrapped people - which, on reflection, I found to be fitting and proper.

We played tourist, took a mule-drawn carriage trip around old Charleston, which I expected to be a deadly bore and my wife expected would get her motion-sensitive gut - and we loved it - the guide was great, the city beautiful, the info plentiful, the pace slow and relaxed - just a great way to spend part of an afternoon. I have to admit that without Gertie Garmin I'd've never found the mule stables. We also did an excursion boat harbor tour, and while she went, she wasn't as relaxed because of the motion of a boat upon the water, and afterwards reaffirmed her wish never to go on a cruise - even to the point or telling me I could try to get an old flame to join me and leave her at home. I of course declined....

We took two days to come back, the second day stopping by my brother's place in Lorton, Virginia, and then stopping off to visit our baby and her baby and husband, finally getting home pretty late and really tired - but it was probably the best week for us in years.

Those who have served ought to do a reunion once in a while - particularly in these times when the military is held in such low esteem - it can reaffirm that the time was not wasted, that the duty did matter, and that the folks with whom one served were indeed crazy, but dedicated, caring, and good friends all around.

We'll be going to others as they are scheduled.

That's all I have for today - y'all be well....

Drivers

This is a rant - so those not inclined to read such might as well just give it up.

I don't understand why a person would pass on the right on a ramp after coming from the expressway and not entering, then jam his way back in one car further up. It isn't like that few milliseconds will make a damn bit of difference when he gets there (wherever there happens to be) and it endangers him and those around him.

I don't understnad why it is that when nobody is behind me at all in my lane that someone just has to pass me in the lane next to me only to slide in in front of me where there is not really enough room - making me slow down. Some days I wish for a paintball gun full of yellow paintballs....

It's not legal to shoot at these sorts, or even to make angry gestures - and it doesn't anger me except for the part that threatens my safety - but some of these folks shouldn't be permitted to reproduce (if indeed they can without three helpers....)

I see all sorts in the morning on the way to work. Soon, I'll be seeing them better - I always seem to see better from the saddle of my motorcycle than I do from the chair inside my Volvo cage - something about glass and pillars, I guess - or maybe it's the air rushing by.

Watch Wild Hogs again last night - I needed some laughs, and it supplied some. EVERYONE ought to see it, but not take it too seriously - although the guys do resemble some fellow riders.

Suddenly I don't feel like ranting any more, so that's all there is for this one. I feel a political rant coming on, but dunno if it'll show itself today or not.

He's back!

I did not die. I did have a birthday and another anniversary. My lovely wife and I are working on year 42, having put year 41 to bed. Congratulations are not in order, at least not until we get to 50 years. But, having finished 41 without any really deep scars, we might well be good for another 15 or so.

I have a small confession to make - depression has got more of me than usual and I have not felt like writing anything except for rants - and those, once started, degenerated fast into unreadable nonsense, so I decided to just hold off on everything until we got more sunlight, I could get out the motorcycle, or the depression magically Went Away.

Well, the days will be getting longer this weekend, I got the motorcycle out today and, having little to do at work once I arrived I have been amusing myself rebuilding my media server at home - resupplying it with music, TV shows, movies, and other things that will turn one's brain to cottage cheese, or so Alec Baldwin would have us to believe. But what does he know? He just plays various people in movies.

I did rediscover today on the way to work just how the presence of a motorcycle brings out blindness, deafness, abject stupidity and outright homicdal behavior on the part of cagers (which is what some of us call folks who go about in their steel cages but choose to call them automobiles.) The pipes on my motorcycle are so loud right now that they would cause folks to fall out of windows if exercised in a big way on a narrow street - but cagers seem not to be able to hear them. Another wonder of the world, or the times.

Speaking of the times, everyone around here is scrambling to get hold of some of that stimulus money to go out and Buy Cool Things that would Make Policing Easier/Better/More exact pick one or several. Most of these things are not things planned for, but ways of using the money so nobody else gets it. Kinda like the kid that has a large box of candy and doesn't wanna share - so when he's had all he can possibly eat, he throws the box on the ground and pisses on it. I need a couple of monitors, but we can't spend less than enough for about 257 monitors - and we don't need that many so we will get something else - and I will eventually get good and pissed and go out, spend $200 or so and buy my own monitor. This isn't how it is supposed to work, but I have got used to paying for my own upgrades, if only to be able to get useful work done. My colleagues, at least those under Civil Service wonder why I bother, particularly since I'm a couple of years past what they figure to be retirement age, but as long as I am here I try to earn my keep once in a while.

Tell you what, though - fiber optics to the home is the greates things - HDTV to as many sets as we have, and internet that is so fast it would probably burn copper wire to an ash. It is almost impossible to use all the bandwidth - unless, of course, you know about binary newsgroups - and even then the only way to use the bandwidth that fiber supplies is to go out and get a newsgroup robot (NewsBin being my favorite) and invest in a premium newsgroup supplier (GigaNews being the one I use) and try to get a plan with no limits on data accumulated - otherwise you'll go through the maximum 25 igs or so in a couple of days, leaving the rest of the month for to withdraw, or to spend one hell of a lot starting next month (and next month(and next month)) just to get your fix of binaries again. Of course, if you do go unlimited, you'll be spending your life somewhere burning data to DVD - or you'll buy a new terabyte drive each week or two until your spouse meets you at the door one evening with a package holding another new drive and saying "WhattheHELL has got into you?"

But it is fun, and keeps you busy and out fo the beer and snacks while it lasts. It even makes it possible for your wife to watch Professional Bull Riding and Dog theBounty Hunter without your profane commentary. EVERYTHING has its positives.

I'm losing my train iof thought here, so I think I'll pack up and go home. I'll try not to stay away quite as long next time. Be well, y'all.

On aging

One of my least favorite things is the topic of this rant - getting old.

It is something I am doing, albeit just about toally without any grace.

This week, I turned 67. The next day, my wife and I marked the end of our 41st year of marriage. Frankly, I have no explanation for how either of these milestones was reached. I guess I'm just lucky. Somehow I have survived all these years, and my long-suffering wife has found it neither useful nor necessary to kill me.

I am still working full-time - retirement is a happy thought, but it is not going to happen, at least not this year. For one thing, I don't know quite what I would do with myself, and for another the cost of retirement is a definite modification in the direction of moderation of lifestyle - and I am not quite ready to become moderate - I still like to do things that cost money, and my retirement income will be perhaps 30% of my current income - not impossible, but definitely sparse. I must have thought I'd never get old - I definitely did not do much of a job of planning for it. And no, I have no advice for those who've not yet entered their dotage on forestalling my discoveries. As is the case with so many other events in my life, I recognize where I have arrived, but have no idea whatever how I got here.

So I'll work a few more years, put away money, draw my social security because I can and bank as much of it as possible, and when I've been married 50 years, maybe we can both retire and enjoy what years remain in some retirement community like the one into which my parents retired lo these many years ago.

Life is, however, pretty good so I have no complaints. Have a fine day, y'all.

The bug bit me

I've been down with some naso-respiratory bug for the last week or so. Usually something like this gets me once a year, and I really don't get better, I just get less lousy over time until after a while I stop noticing just how crappy I feel. Usually I go back to work before that, because being at home, the things I am not doing weigh heavily on me.

While at home I got the home network server back alive, using Windows Home Server - and along the way have made most of the available mistakes, because instead of reading the book,, I built a server based on what I know about other windows servers - and this pup is different.... But I managed to emerge with something that seems to work well, satisfies me in terms of recoverable redundancies, and still has enough to be tweaked that I'll not get bored for a couple of months or more.

I cam back to work today, and so far have managed to do nothing at all useful - there were no requests for me, nobody called and demanded something (except that I move my car, about which more later) so I spent the bulk of the day doing the Windows Home Server research that I should have done before starting the build.

I also discovered that I have managed to trash something in my router setup, and will have to put it back to factory defaults this evening and then let WHS reconfigure it so some other stuff will start to work.

I did get my binary robot working - and if you are lucky enough to have the Verizon FIOS connection, you can fill up all the disk space in the known universe far faster than you can categorize what is being pulled in there. I started it up one night, told it to scan the binary newsgroups for Eureka, Hopalong Cassidy (I'm old, so sue me!), Highlander and a few other old TV show episodes - and filled up a 250 gig drive before I got back to check it a day or two later!

I have to learn how to make the filters tighter on Newsbin - or I'll end up deleting 80% of what I pull down. But I guess that isn't a bad problem to have.

So for tonight, I have to get out the book and get web services started so folks can find the place again - and so that I can get in from work and watch what's going on.

I also have to get some other stuff working, or else get myself decommitted from it. We'll see which happens first.

One of the nifty parts of WHS is that it will back up PC's on the network - so I also have a few laptops at home to start backing up. I'll have to record NCIS and watch it later...

I was hoping for a few motorcycle days this week - but it looks like disappointment will be my fate. Maybe next week. By this time next week, I'll have turned 67, and will be starting my 42nd year of marriage to my first (and only) wife. We'll probably celebrate the following weekend, since the days involved are some of the busiest for both of us. Celebration will no doubt consist of dinner and a return to watch the bull riders, although maybe a movie instead - if I can find anything we'd both like to watch - or maybe we'll do a movie night at home, since I have a couple on the DVR that have been there since almost this time last year waiting for a night when we could watch them together without one or the other of us going to sleep. As we get older, energy tends to run out earlier in the evening.

More folks here at work are departing, some I am certain under duress. Alas, some of the departed are those that should have been kept and elevated to better positions - but I guess that's a universal truth, and I've been watching it happen here for a long time. I'd like to work through 2012 (or maybe a bit longer if I can) if only to increase pension amounts, but I'll go earlier if Phyllis decides to retire, too. As long as she works, I might just as well work and soak up the money. Besides, I still want to get that sidecar for my Honda, and maybe get a new cruiser to replace the big Kawasaki before the days for buying those toys are eaten up by reality. I'd kinda like a new Harley - but I'm not holding my breath.

It's within an hour of going-home time, so I'd better get some real work done, or I'll think badly of myself.

Have a good one, y'all - more on WHS tomorrow or the next day.

Tuesday

A week ago I left the office early, feeling rather ragged.

I was right - today I am starting to feel human again. About once a year or so a respiratory bug gets hold of me and shakes its head and bounces me around.

I did see a doctor who prescribed Amoxycillin, which I have taken and continue to take, although I have no real reason to think it has done anything except make my stomach unhappy with me for a time. Mostly I have slept - in my bed at night, then in my chair in the living room during the day. I have always been able to sleep, but when afflicted with some bug or another my sleeping ability increases exponentially. My usual signal that the bug has left is that I can get bored in my chair with my computer on my lap, and not fall asleep and drop it on the floor. I know the but isn't finished with me yet because I still can be sitting here and suddenly note that an hour or more has passed, or that I suddenly really need to get up and go to the bathroom.

Being sick sucks, and it sucks worse as I get older because it stays around longer. For a week now I have not been back downstairs to beat on my Home Server project, although I have gone after the machine using Remote Desktop, it just isn't the same as being right there and putting my hands on the things inside it. Maybe this evening I'll go and do some of that.

I had my annual eye exam this morning, only about two years late. I need new glasses (what's new) and grumbled a bit at the doc who told me that he was in the business because it was a human fact of life that the lens in one's eye stiffens with age, requiring continuous changes to correction, thus assuring him of a lifetime of clients. I thanked him for the educational information, and we proceeded onto more important conversational items - he told me about his new Harley Davidson motorcycle, and I told him the tail of my getting hit last year on mine, whereupon he told me of a similar incident that he had on his. Funny how much stuff there is to share sometimes.

I'm thinking tomorrow may be the last day for staying home. I did start the motorcycle the other day and do a couple of errands on it - and tomorrow is supposed to be perfect motorcycle weather, so if I feel like going out tomorrow, I guess I'll have to feel like going back to work on Thursday. Maybe in the next life I can plan better and be independently wealthy by the time I reach this age.

I need to go and find some lunch. This is a good sign; when I feel really rotten I don't notice missed meals, so I guess I am getting better.

Have a good day, y'all....

Wednesday

I missed choir tonight - whatever respiratory thing is going around I seem to be getting, and it showed up today with earache, scratchy throat, and general malaise.  I feel lousy - achy, headachy, tickle cough - just crappy.

I don't deserve this - and so I am visiting a doctor tomorrow to see if it needs an antibiotic or patience.  I'm hoping for an antibiotic, because if I get a good slug into me, I'll be able to keep a commitment to sing in another church with our daughter, Elizabeth - if it's a patience thing, she might get to do a couple of solos instead of a couple of duets with me - and she'll have to pick them on Saturday.  She's perfectly capable, but I do so enjoy dueting with her, and we don't do it all that often.

Feeling crappy will also keep me from Sammy, our newest grandchild - and he always makes me feel better.  So tomorrow I'll dog it in the morning, visit with the doctor in the afternoon and then decide what Friday will bring as far as work goes.  

I have spent no time downstairs - Arnold is behaving but I need to get bumping on the mail, web and FTP server aspect(s) of what it has.  I also have to get into the router and convince it to play nice with Home Server - and I am still waiting on RAID cards to get the array working before I cover it up and start ignoring it.

I should do the taxes this weekend, and hope I feel good enough - they need to get done, and I fear the feds are going to get a big piece of my butt because I started taking Social Security.  The money has been nice - it killed off some old credit card debt, but I didn't reckon with the Feds taxing it on me.  Being old is not all it is cracked up to be - trust me on that.  I have a feeling I'll have to work even longer than I thought before retiring - unless I want to adopt a monastic lifestyle, without motorcycles, computers, fiber to the internet, etc.

Speaking of fiber - if you can get it and you use the internet, especially for file transfers or remote work, you'd be silly not to do it.  I put a bunch of stuff on one bill since Verizon has my cells as well as my landline, internet and TeeVee - and their fiber internet service is so fast that it is hard to saturate it.  I put up my favorite robot and started rebuilding some of the stuff I lost in the last big drive crash - and pulled something like 30 gigs off the internet in less than 24 hours (binary newsgroup service mostly, using GigaNews as my supplier, NewsBin as my collection robot, and using all 20 connected sessions) and had NewsBin showing throughput between 18 and 19.2 megabytes per second, on a connection rated at 20 megabytes.  Bloody amazing - and even with that extreme internet load my HD televisions continued to work just fine - and it all comes in over one little piece of glass fiber.

And to think that I can remember when a fast print device for a network was an IBM Selectric that ran at 134.5 bits per second....

I should be going to bed, but I'm staying up so my wife can sleep.  I have to take some nyquil, and will probably sleep with the TeeVee tonight and off and on tomorrow.  Hope this bug, whatever it is, goes away fast - I don't much feel like feeling like this for the next week or so.

Goodnight all - tomorrow will be better.

Home Server Doings

Y'all are probably bored with this, but I'm close to done with it. Arnold the Windows Home Server is once again alive - I have learned a few more things that I didn't know (funny how that seems to come up - something gets screwed up, and I learn something that I didn't know before, usually after breaking something I thought I knew all about.)

Now, I have four out of the five big drives that I thought were dead back alive, but the RAID adapter that was supposed to run the new SATA drives and get me the fault-tolerant storage array that I wanted so that when the next drive croaks, nothing gets lost - that's what RAID arrays are all about) apparently is toast, so I have to go and get another one.

So right now, Arnold is alive with old drives, and I am learning how to make him useful (which may take the rest of my life) and get the music database repopulated and reloaded, and get the media streaming stuff working throughout the house again. I will use one of the old drives to liven up the robot to get the music collection reestablished, and when I get a new SAT RAID adapter and get the RAID array working, I'll make it part of the storage pool, and gradually retire / relocate the old drives into less critical locations - or at least put them to uses that aren't likely to have a bad effect on the overall network.

One of the reasons I write this stuff is to help me be sure I know whatthehell I'm about to do. Sometimes I find I do, sometimes I don't - but the writing always helps.

On another topic, I was off today - I ended up working Saturday here at home, and Sunday night got called in until the wee hours of this morning, getting home again around 4:30 AM. It isn't as easy as it was when I was younger, but it is a part of what I do, to be prepared to take the off-time to correct. I spent some time today looking in and rechecking what I had done, but it was all good.

I think now it is time I went to bed - the morning comes so early, and I have to get one grandson to school before I can take myself to work. I thought that by the time I hit 60 life would be calm and boring, but I reckoned without the help of my children, who have conspired to keep life ...interesting... for Phyllis and myself. Both sets of parents are gone, so we find ourselves in the position of venerated elder authority and foolish parents whom you can't take out without being embarrassed - sometimes both at the same time. It'll keep us young and/or nuts.

I'm going to bed. Next rants will probably be less about hardware, and more about Things of the Heart. Be well, y'all.

I should have gone to bed earlier.

Last night, that is - I stayed up nearly all night working on Arnold, and discovered this morning that while I was asleep he lost his mind. Motherboard will not allow a boot. Maybe it is time to just break down and buy a damn server and be done with it.

I hate it when things go wrong repeatedly. I thought I had it all ready, and then I tried to add in the RAID array and everything turned to poo. I did not even watch the Super Bowl for sleeping this afternoon, not that it would have made a difference in whatever the outcome would have been. I think maybe tonight I'll swap in the last motherboard and see if it turns to crap again, or if this time it actually does something useful. My patience is waning, and I need to get this server built and working to go forward with the streaming entertainment for the house.

Technology is wonderful stuff, but it has made life rather more complicated than it used to be. Before cell phones there was such a thing as privacy, and quiet time. I'm old enough to remember the time before television - radio was something that required a lot of thought and imagination - but it was actually pretty good, and my imagination was at least as good as that of many screenwriters in the early days of TeeVee. Then there were the obligatory trips on Saturday to the movies, the weekly serial (Sky King, Tarzan, RocketMan and others) that always ended in a cliffhanger to suck you into coming back the next weekend. Several of us from the neighborhood, aged 5 to 8, would get on a bus each Saturday, armed with the price of admission, bus fare, and a soda, and go to the matinee to get our weekly fix. We went by ourselves, rode a bus for 20 minutes, went to the theater alone and returned alone, and nobody ever worried about us because it was safe for kids our age to do those things.

Times must have changed a lot.

What has this got to do with Arnold, the recalcitrant server? Damfino - I think I'm rambling.

Now, it's time to go downstairs and have at Arnold some more, and see whether he gets turned on or turned into a target for my pistol....

Be well, y'all

ARNOLD Lives!!!

It's 4:45 in the morning. I must get up in 5 hours. I did not go to bed when I thought I might, instead I mauled Arnold a bit more, and he is alive.

The RAID array is not even being seen, but the server is alive and working, and even letting me introduce it to my laptop! Will wonders never cease?

Now all I gotta do is get the data off the old server's drives, then get the RAID array working, then make it available, then take out the old server drives and reserve them, and then, well, probably go to work, dammit!

Weekends should be longer.

Happy Sunday, y'all - it looks like the motherboard is good, and will hold the load.

Home server rant continues

Alfred is dead. I killed him. I enjoyed it - the SOB just would not behave. Old motherboards sometimes make life hard, and this one just wouldn't continue beyond ten minutes after bootup.

I reused the case, so Arnold looks like Alfred, but isn't - there's an AMD dual processor motherboard in there, and Home Server is rebuilding as I write. After that, it looks like I scrambled the SATA connectors to my RAID cage, so I can look forward to around 30 hours of RAID array formatting during which time nothing will get done. After that it should be clear sailing and I can start rebuilding my music and video databases for the home network.

If, on the other hand it is still unstable I shall call RAID a bad job and go to conventional storage. I don't want to do that because it is so hard to recover a loss in a terabyte or so of music and such. Some days you eat the bear, other days you're his lunch.

So now it is waiting time. I guess I'll know more in the morning before I head for church.

But I did take a break this afternoon and call an old friend on the phone - one I've not seen since around 1972, but whom I have known since the late 50's. He's a bit older than I am at 75, but our lives have touched several times over the years, both here in the US and during the time I was in Germany, as he was a teacher in a military dependant's school while I was serving in the Air Force and we spent many pleasant weekends wandering around Germany, sampling wines, and generally being single and carefree. I don't recall if we returned at the same time, but he went home to Minnesota and I ended up here in Maryland. We got together in 1972 when I drew a trip of a couple of months to Minneapolis for schooling, but after a few weeks I decided I should bring my wife out, so visiting got somewhat curtailed.

But we've stayed in touch all these years, sharing memories and other friends, and it is a little hard to think of him as being 75 yet I know that he is every bit of that age, just as I am every bit of almost 67 - but those numbers seem unreal to me. I promised myself never to grow up or to get stodgy and set in my ways and I think I've been moderately successful at that - but my knees hurt, my shoulders creak like an old maple tree, and I can sleep wherever I happen to be. But I still love to motorcycle (although I no longer love it enough to go out when it is below about 50 degrees - and I used to ride all year round regardless of temperature) and to go and see things I haven't seen yet.

I just looked at the bottom of my screen and it is now February. It just kinda sneaked up on me. I hate it when that happens! But after February comes March, and by mid-March the weather is getting good for riding once again, and I can count on more and more motorcycle days.

Tomorrow I have to get going on our taxes - it is my least favorite yearly task, and when I can retire I get to do less. Near as I can tell, retirement will come sometime around the age of 74 for me - but maybe not then. I have the rare good fortune to like what I do, and as long as someone will pay me to do it, I might just as well. We still have one of our kids with us, and a grandchild, so the responsibilities will not decrease until she marries and leaves, or maybe just leaves.

Somehow life did not go the way I thought it would when I was young and still knew everything. The path is still changing, and it is anyone's guess where I will end up (although some of the more fundy-oriented folks I know are sure that they know) or when.

It's funny where life goes. I was born here in Baltimore, then moved to Hatboro. From Hatboro I went into the service and went to Texas, Syracuse, Texas and Germany. I stayed an extra year in Germany; I don't recall just why although I have been told a German girl might have had some influence, and when I returned my family was back in Baltimore, so I came here and despite grand ideas of taking a company move or something like that I have been at this address for 36 years. I do a number of things that were too far-out for even science fiction when I was in high school, trying to imagine what I would be when I grew up.

So, what have all these years given to me as revelations?

1. Hatboro was a pretty good place.
2. Going to college to please someone else is a waste of time.
3. Military service, properly managed can be educational and even fun.
4. No matter how hard I tried, Germany made beer faster than I could drink it.
5. Speed limits are a revenue-producing tool, not a safety enhancement.
6. Getting married is easy; staying married is hard.
7. Riding a motorcycle will teach you lots about paying attention and being gentle.
8. An hour at the pistol range will clear your head better than a week at the ocean.
9. My children will do what they deem fit. They do not have to make my failures good.
   
10. When your state is altered, your competence to determine your competence Goes Away.
11. Music is wonderful, and cannot be explained - you get it, or you don't.
12. Living in a foreign land, learning the language, is more valuable than books
13. Foreign languages are different - and you must never translate an idiom.
14. I think I'm rambling. Again.

Now I have to go downstairs and look in on Arnold, then get some sleep. Tomorrow is already here, and I must be musical in just a few hours.

Home Server Part 2

Well, I have become less cheerful - Alfred is fighting me every step of the way. I finally figured out that I had to just let the RAID card do its format and leave it alone - for something like 38 hours! Large disks take a while to stripe, I guess. Hope I never have to replace 1 - it'll take 15 hours just to rebuild, during which time probably nothing else will do anything.

I finally got the RAID right, and started the maintenance tool to add the disk capacity - and Alfred went nuts and refused to talk to me. I have a bad feeling that I am about to get to scrap his motherboard, and demote his function to a single-processor machine that I have laying around doing nothing,which will tick me off as I have a couple more multiprocessor motherboards, but just don't feel like doing one of those agonizing swaps today, although I may change my mind. I really need to get this pup working and stable, so I can get the rest of the house's computers to cooperate and play nice - and start rebuilding my music library.

If anyone wonders, RAID is not what we use to kill software bugs - it is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - which means that it takes a bunch of cheap disks and rearranges the way data is stored so that the failure of one disk in the array will not result in complete loss of data. Really clever idea - the net is less space that is useful, but less likelihood of all of it getting to be useless at once. Unfortunately, I had been watching RAID arrays built with relatively tiny disks, and it didn't seem that it took that long to recover when a disk failed. I am using disks 50 times as big as what I used to watch, and forgot that things would take 50 times as long to recover and rebuild. We live and we learn.

So for now I have a server that works, albeit not well, and is useless by virtue of its refusal to talk to anything but itself. Time for a restart, I think. Time to put that old monster out to pasture. Time to put Alfred down.

Time to start building Arnold. I'll keep y'all apprised....

Cheer up, self!

Well, color me a little less displeased with myself, and add a shade of feeling silly. I finally got around to starting the build on the big server in the basement - and realized that I hadn't even remembered its name properly - in my last post I called it Arnold, when in reality its name is Alfred. I think it knows, and hates me for it.

The first Home Server install stalled on me - I didn't have the RAID array properly done, and got an hour into the install and the damn computer stalled and refused to do anything except sit there and grin at me. Well, I couldn't stand for that, so I cleaned it off, got the RAID array properly configured and and restarted the installation cold. It got going, and I walked away from it, secure in the knowledge that it will either go on properly, or I'll go downstairs before I go to bed and have yet another reason to hate MicroSoft and its software.

But I did look at the other 3 machines down there, started up the two that are not run normally and they seem healthy, or at least the hardware does. One of them has a nice DVD writer with LightScribe that I will transfer into the IBM machine I got last year and haven't used yet - may get to that by the weekend.

I'd love it if we got a hard freeze - it would keep me home (I brought my laptop home tonight just against that eventuality,) so I could work tomorrow here if I had to, rather than go out in the old Volvo and play on the ice. I don't mind a couple inches of snow, but ice on the roads gives me the crawls.

By the weekend I should have the server built, the new mail services running on it, the 2 terabyte shared storage array usable throughout the house and be ready to start on phase 2 - starting up the IBM super workstation that I got for me, getting the DVD writer installed and maybe even getting the three older machines shut down, cleaned off and ready for disposal. That'd please my wife a whole lot. She's a real dear about my slowness to do stuff, but she does have a limit, and I really don't want to know where it is.

I started working with the beta version of Clarion 7, which is the development tool I use to do most of my programming, and it is a major change for me, but I like what I see so far. I also have to get going with Clarion# (I bought that for me - 7 is for the office) and within the coming weeks may actually make some progress there, if folks at work don't break a bunch of stuff in the meanwhile. I need to upgrade my high school class database and put it on the new web server as soon as I can get to it, hopefully before the next reunion (which will be the 50th - the thought of which makes me feel old!)

Speaking of which - I am looking forward to the 50th and I have our 41st anniversary coming up - believe it or not, one woman has put up with me for 41 years and is still here! It can be done.

Well, I have to go downstairs and check on Alfred - see if he's still being built or if he's choked again. Tomorrow is Wednesday - choir rehearsal if the weather cooperates, or a day working at home if the weather decides to be horrid. Of course, I won't know which it is until after I am awake and walking around tomorrow with no chance just to go back to bed. There's just no justice....

Have a great day, y'all!

Aging

I am getting old. Actually, I think I already got old, and somehow managed not to take note of the fact as it was happening. I have another birthday in a few weeks, number 67. In another three years I will be 70. My grandfather was old at 70 - I am not ready to be old, but I'm almost 70.

Phyllis and I had dinner with our youngest child, her husband, and their 6-month old - and we had a great time. It was a relaxed pleasant evening, with lots of laughs, some supplied by a cheerful curious baby and some by silly adults. There is something about spending time with our daughter and her husband that makes gloom go away. I'm depressive by nature, and after some time with Liz, James and Sammy my whole day seems brighter. For one thing it is impossible to be anything but happy and silly with a happy baby. For another, our youngest child is so great with us, her wonderful husband and the rest of the world.

I guess one thing that helps is that with her in command of her quarter of the world, we can relax secure in the knowledge that the world is a better place with her and her husband in it - and the child is just a bonus.

For myself, I should open a chapter of the Procrastinator's Society just for me - I am so far behind in just about everything that it is really not good for depression. I have a bunch of computer hardware cluttering up my house, some of which arrived a year ago that I have not yet assembled and put to work, and it needs done. My part of the basement is a disaster area, needs stuff cleaned up, thrown out, upgraded, overhauled and generally sterilized, cauterized and replaced. I need to do it and do you think I can get my arse in gear to get started? I dome home at night, and end up in front of our (admittedly lovely large LCD HD) TeeVee, read mail, write things once in a while and generally become immobile, eventually going to bed, and get up tired in the morning to go to work. I can't retire, and really don't want to yet, but my energy lever is subterranean these days, and it is pissing me off!

Maybe tomorrow I can at least get that RAID array into Arnold (all my PC's have names, and Arnold is the big server downstairs that does the mail and such....) and get Home Server loaded and get the network restarted in a functional manner.

But I did get some neat stuff for when I get It together - some good wireless toys, a print server or two (USB) that will make some of our remote printing and scanning awhile lot more flexible - and a few things that are just neat toys that I'll have fun with.

The weather is supposed to turn to absolute crap - I should have gone out on the motorcycle last week on the one warm day, because between snow and frigidity the weather is conspiring to keep me off the bike. Doesn't help that my knees are at least 30 years older than the rest of me, either....

Maybe I'll take off a few hours Wednesday and go over to see Liz & Sammy - and let the baby make me laugh some more. I forgot or maybe never noticed just hos delightful babies can be - when we had them around here that were ours, we were too busy trying to make sure we did things right and that everything was in order - with Sammy, that's Liz and James' problem - we can just enjoy Sammy, make faces at him and laugh with him.

I guess I'm not so depressed any more - at least until the weather report comes along in a few minutes.

G'night, y'all.

WE had an inauguration!

This has been an interesting week to work in an interesting place. I work in a police department, and this week we had holidays, new almost-presidents making speeches, crowds downtown to look at the new almost president and (perhaps) listen to what he had to say, and then to wave at him as he got back on the train to Washington, DC.

The next day, Washington, DC turned into a crowd scene worthy of Cecil B. DeMille - and some of our cops were there, including the motorcycle guys. Even with electric suits, I imagine they were plenty cold....

I have been through a number of inaugurations in my life, and I don't recall one so well attended, so well secured, or so flashy. Lots of people, secure in their jobs now for a time had a lot of things to say. Included in those things were glittering generalities, promises that will not be kept, expectations that will never be met, and lots of feel-good stuff, positive-sounding, but somehow giving me at least the feeling that the folks there were determined to look out for me and mine regardless of my wishes, and convinced that they already knew what was best for me and mine regardless what we might happen to think about what they think they know.

I have been distressed about all the time given to a black man who is our next president. I saw a man who was properly elected and frankly, to me, he looks more Arabic than black, and anyhow I had truly hoped that we were beyond the point that simple appearance qualified or disqualified one for higher office.

Now, I am not wholly convinced he was the right choice - but he's there now, and it is part of my job to help him all I can, in whatever way I can to excel - because if he does things well, my life goes well. Nothing like a little enlightened self-interest here. Frankly, I was and remain impressed by Mr. Obama - he is obviously bright, speaks well, does his homework or has good people to do it for him and he listens well to them, and either is sincere or one hell of an actor - and I prefer to believe that he is real.

I don't have a clue what the future holds for the nation as a whole. I'd like to think that it will go on and that we as a people will grow to be better than what we are. In many respects, even though he wasn't my choice, I'm pleased that he was elected - his very election proves that most of us are beyond a particularly ugly point in our history (although I have to tell you, Colin Powell would have had my vote in a New York minute) and that we as a people are growing in understanding and in tolerance (or at least most of us are and that's the best I can hope for.)

So we are once again embarking on an adventure in this great nation. We do this each four years, and I would wager that nobody gets exactly what they want or expect out of the four years that follow - but it will be interesting, educational and occasionally scary and at the end of four years we'll either throw him out or put him back for another four years - and hopes and expectations will be dashed no matter which way it goes because there's no way for one man to deliver on all the promises, particularly once he starts interfacing with legislators who have pork with which to woo votes.

Meanwhile, the nation will muddle through and things will change - sometimes for the better, sometimes not. It has been written that a nation gets the government it deserves and I'd like to think that we're headed for a good patch.

I'm not fond of socialist programs - and in Europe, which apparently some think is the source of all that is good, the folks are finding that socialism costs too much and delivers too little.

I get upset at treating illegals like citizens, particularly when they become thereby entitled to breaks and programs that citizens don't get offered. Maybe I'm old and cynical, but free lunch draws parasites - and Europe has been busily proving it for decades.

I don't believe that we can do anything good about terrorists by appearing weak - and yet that is exactly the posture that many would have us take in its face. That way lies madness. Predators will take a weak victim if available, and terrorists are nothing if not predators - preying only on the helpless, shrinking from anything resembling a fight.

But I have faith that somehow we'll be all right. We live in the best place in the world to be, and it will only get better. And no, I'm not whistling in the dark - if I were, I'd be headed either for Germany or New Zealand.

My misgivings notwithstanding, I think I'll watch a while - I could always get a nice surprise; it wouldn't be the first time, and surely won't be the last. It's what keeps life interesting.

The one thing that is certain is that things will change. Have a nice day, y'all.