Work gets in the way

On Tuesday, we found some pretty catastrophic issues.

One of my servers, that runs batch processing, which I have been trying to get people off of for more than a year and a half, passed away on Tuesday. I spent several hours trying to get it running, to no avail. (Disk failure)

There were a number of people impacted by the fact that the box wasn't there anymore, but so far this week, I have had a hard time being sympathetic. I have been telling them to get off for a long time, and finally they got the proper motivation. I did have someone in my office foaming at the mouth about the fact that something wasn't working, and he was supposed to leave on vacation in 2 hours, but he was #6 in line at that point, which I think got him more worked up. I had another person that it took 2 days for it to sink in that the machine was not coming back, I couldn't copy his files from the old box, and he put his stuff in the wrong spot, so we didn't have a backup of it. Fun for him.

Over the weekend, we discovered corruption in the redo logs and archives of a large number of our databases. We also had 2 applications on other boxes with corrupt data. All signs point to the old SAN they were running on having a problem, but the HP SAN guys are still scratching their heads trying to figure out what happened. This SAN was slated for mothballing later this year, I have been working this week to move things off. It takes a long time to move so much data.

Long boring work rant over.

Downtown Sampler Platter

Yesterday and today was the 2nd annual Downtown Sampler Platter. Tara and I went today. (We ditched the girls.) There were a few less restaurants this year, but the food was good, and I got pretty filled up.

I hav e to say, the best things we had were they little fajita from Los Hermanos, and the Chili Cheese Fries from Tommy Burger.

Next year, we will try to remind the people who last year asked us to remind them about this one. (But we forgot.)

Thursday night Age of Empires beating

We took our Age of Empires lumps from Rob and Brian again tonight. I guess we'll have to re-evaluate our strategy again. (Although I think my strategy of getting Rob's attention and having him attack me didn't work out the way I thought it could have.)

After the first game, Drew, Rob, and Brian bowed out. (I suspect Rob and Brian were bored.) Dave, Dad, and I played a game again 1 expert computer, which we won.

Anyway, stay tuned for next week, when we try again.

Visiting the Pulminologist

Yesterday I decided it was time to stop ignoring the bad cough I have had for the past 3 weeks, and go see someone about it. It always got worse at night, Tara doesn't like it at all.

Anyhow, yesterday, I called my doctor's office. The scheduling lady told me I could get in to see him in 3 weeks. I didn't want to wait 3 weeks. She offered to let me see the new PA. I asked about the new PA, she said something about the fact that if he didn't know something, he could give a referral. I got ticked off and declined the appointment.

I asked around at work, Dave P had a doctor he liked around the corner from work. (A witch doctor, I suspect.) That office offered to let me in to see him in 7 days, which was a better offer, but not quite good enough. (But I might still think about switching to that guy.)

Anyway, I talked to Drew, he suggested I go see the pulminologist that got him straightened out a few months back. I called over there, they had an opening for today, which was the best offer I had so far, so I took it.

I went in today, the first thing they did was a spirometry test. The technician said I had a very large lung capacity, and asked if I was a swimmer or a runner. My thought was "Do I look like a swimmer or a runner?", but my response was "no." The test didn't show any asthma symptoms. (In fact, the tech thought the results were very good, even if I still had a cough to go with it.

When the doctor came to poke me, she looked at the test and started talking about lung capacity also. I told her I had a BiPap, and it was set to 11.5 over 9. She was sort of impressed. (And it sounds like they do sleep apnea stuff there also, so she was curious about where I went, who ordered the tests, that sort of thing.) Anyway, I guess what we are saying here, is that I'm either full of hot air, or a big windbag.

The doctor thinks I have acid reflux, like Drew. She gave me a prescription for the same medicine that's been helping Drew out.

She also gave me a thing that listed the different types of things that could help stop acid reflex. My list of things to do:

• Elevate the head of my bed 2-6 inches - I'm not sure I want to sleep uphill, but we'll see.
• Avoid certain types of foods: spicy and fatty foods, tomato and citrus juices, chocolate, and colas. I'm OK with the chocolate and juices, but I wonder what's left when you leave out the spicy food, fatty food, and Dr. Pepper. (Sounds like my potato and rice diet.)
• I'm not supposed to lie down for 2 hours after eating or drinking. I guess my 11pm dinners are now out of the picture.
• Eat smaller meals - I plan to start using one of Ruth's plates. I guess "mass quantity meals" are out of the question.
• Lose weight. She actually circled this one. Then she made out a referral for me to go see a dietitian. Then she told me I should really lose some weight. I'm sure she didn't say that to Drew...
  

The tooth Fairy has been slacking off

Tara pulled one of Kate's teeth on Saturday. The new one had come in, the old one had been pretty loose for a month, and they were competing for the same general space.

Yesterday, Kate complained that the tooth fairy hadn't come. I told her the tooth fairy must have been busy.

Turns out it must have been some sort of Tooth Fairy union-mandated holiday. The tooth fairy didn't even think about taking care of things last night. The tooth fairy snuck in this morning when everyone else was busy doing other things and took care of the business at hand.

For the curious, at our house, the tooth fairy brings half dollars in.

Restaurant Review

I got a double barreled birthday meal day yesterday. For lunch, Drew took me to J Dawgs for lunch. I had a polish dog. It was good.

For dinner, Tara tried to take me to a couple of different places, all of which kind of didn't work out until we stopped at PF Changs. I had the Yunnan Dali Chicken. The waiter indicated it was their hottest dish on the menu at the time. I liked it. (I end up getting something from the specialty menu nearly every time I go there. The waiter said that they rotate the specialty menu every 10 months or so, the next one will be Cantonese. I don't know if that's the case or if he was just making it up on the fly.)

I ate Tara's leftovers just now for lunch.

Thursday night game time

Age of Empires

Drew, Dave and I played against Rob and Brian. Rob and Brian made short work of us.

Afterwards, We planned to Do a 4 on 2, adding an Expert level computer to help us out. Drew ran off to put Anson to bed and appears to have missed the message. We ended up playing 3v3, and got creamed again. Drew took the opportunity to try to figure out how Rob and Brian get built up so fast. (He didn't get it figured out...)

Anyway, I think we needed Dad there.

Dance Festival

Every year on the last day of school, Kate's school has a dance festival. Each grade gets up and does a musical dance number. Last year, the kindergarteners did the Jello Dance. This year, the 1st graders did a dance number.

Last year, I had trouble zooming in to get the picture of her taken. This year I had my new tripod with me to stabilize the camera while I zoomed in. You can see the pictures here are pretty clear, even though I was a little further away this time.
We got there last year early, the other girls went nuts because the thing took so long. (Lots of annoucements, thank yous, etc.) This year, there must have been fewer annoucements, and Tara thinks they had less musical numbers. (Only one per grade.)

Dance Festival

I'm not sure why the quality from YouTube is as bad is it is, but here's a little bit of video of the dance number.

22 years ago today...

I was siting in the front room of the house playing Defender and Donkey Kong on our old (it's old now, at least) ColecoVison. We had that front sun room in the house in Buffalo. It was ki nd of nice sometimes, when the screens were in and you could sit out there. It was kind of cold sometimes when it was the middle of the winter. (But the freezing temperature didn't stop me from sitting there before school playing a round of Donkey Kong...)
There was also the time I dropped the bowling ball down the front steps and took a chuck out of the bottom step. And the time I accidentally flung the bottom of a clarinet and hit Amy square in the head with it. And the time I was being tormented by Drew on the other side of the large plate glass window and put my fist through it.

Maybe the front room wasn't all that fun after all...

There was that crawl space in the basement with the treasures from the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, and 70's...

Tara, Mom, and Rob called today to wish me a happy birthday. They all seemed to call at bad times. I feel kind of bad, I really didn't have time to talk to anyone. Work had my blood pressure up, and Rob caught me in the 2 minute break between stake meetings. Rob promised to whip me in Age of Empires tomorrow night, which I'm more than happy to oblige him in.

Tomorrow I start annoying my coworkers with one of the birthday presents Tara got me. More on that later. The girls got me just what I wanted - new dress socks.

Starcraft 2

I was oncall, and down in the data center all day. The Ops guys couldn't stop talking about the thing this morning. (I'm glad it was a slow day for them, even if I stayed busy...)

Anyway, I guess Starcraft is still huge in Asia. They have game play conventions and all kinds of stuff. They announced the sequel at a starcraft playing convention last week.

I didn't like Starcraft all that much. The biggest reason was the color schemes they had on a lot of their maps. I had a hard time seeing things, I ended up having to always completely and totally mess up the color settings on my monitor to play the game. One of the guys in the apartment complex (Heisiuki Watanbe) absolutely loved to play. He would be at my apartment at all hours playing the game, rotating through different people. (I think he was here in the ESL program, so his class schedule wasn't heavy, really, but I'm not sure.) I would sometimes come home at 2am, he would be playing, and would be ready to play me for a little while. By then, I think he had been playing for 6 or 8hours sometimes.

Anyway, it doesn't look like there is anything radically different about the new version. Better graphics, a few more types of characters, that sort of thing. It doesn't look like the overall color scheme has changed. Also, I didn't like the Zerg civilization. They were basically bugs.

Anyway, my very early review: I'll pass.

Chores

For Family Home Evening, we talked about chores. We made new chore charts for the girls to try to help motivate them. (We are in the 'motivate' stage right now. That's before the 'plead' stage, followed by the 'threaten' stage, and so on.)

On the charts, I put a section for pulling something out of the chore jar. We populated the chore jar with a bunch of different chores. I got a picture of Cinderella for the chore jar, and was explaining to Emma that I put Cinderella on the jar because she had to do chores.

Emma's response: "Yeah, but she didn't want to do them."

Sometimes it's hard to argue with the impeccable logic of a nearly 4 year old.

Restaurant Review

Chuck-A-Rama

For lunch, we went out to eat. (Except for Kate, who was still in school.) Today's lunch (and this Friday's dinner) was brought to us courtesy of the "Mom and Dad birthday money fund." Thanks, by the way. Ruth and I got the cards in the mail today.)

Anyway, we sat down to eat, I ended up spilling an entire glass of drink into my plate and all over the table. The girls seemed impressed. I couldn't find the waitress, so I used about 20 napkins cleaning up. The waitress eventually came and took my plate away.

Since the place was a buffet, this didn't phase me too much, I just went back and got the same stuff I had just poured stuff onto. Shortly after, Tara spilled her drink all over the table. I was just glad I didn't have my laptop anywhere nearby. The girls started eating Tara's ice that was all over the table. The waitress came back, and offered to get us lids for our glasses so that the girls couldn't spill them anymore. That was the right response, I think...

The food was good, the girls seemed to enjoy it, and we got done just in time to get Kate from school.

Instead of getting the girls all kinds of dessert, Tara got them slurpees. (They have a slurpee machine there.) The girls really, really liked them. We have a new go to item for cross country trips. Give them a Slurpee, they'll be happy for hours.

Birthday Party

Tara threw a birthday party for Ruth and me today. We had a bunch of people come over and hang out. Overall, I think it was a pretty successful little thing. We have a bunch of leftovers, if you are hungry, come on over.

It's just a cooler now. And not during the day.

Our swamp cooler is dead. The pump is fine, that's only 4 years old. The motor is fine, it's only 2 years old. The basin where the water sits is no fine. It is rusted through in a large number of places.

I went up there this morning to work on it, and ended up sealing a number of holes, some larger than a pea, one nearly the size of a dime. When I put water in to check for seaworthyness, a number of little holes were found.

We can still use it in the evening when things cool off to blow air into the house, but sometime soon I need to get a new swamp cooler for the house. For now we will all hide out in the back room.

Really fast connection

I have had 2 hits to this page from someone using an OC3 speed connection. This is a very fast (compared to most) fiber connections. OC3 is supposed to be at 155 Mbps. My connection at home is 10Mbps. My old cable modem was 6 Mbps. I think DSL is at around 1.5 Mbps, but I can't remember anymore.

I can only assume this was a server in some data center somewhere. They don't have those speeds to residential lines, do they? Who would want something that fast, unless they had some sort of business in the home.

Google Analytics reports that the connection came from the US, but the City and State were not set. The machine that hit the page was using Windows and Internet Explorer. Not much else can be said about the connection. I suspect the government. (NSA is just checking up on me.) I won't worry about it until it starts happening a lot, and some unmarked van with no windows ends up parked across the street from the house.

Breaking my games

I've been playing with Age of Empires tonight, trying to get it to play my own music when the game plays. Right now, in the game selection/setup screens, (all screens before the game actually starts) I have it playing "I Feel Free" by Cream. Not a bad start, but I would like the game to play anything from a particular directory it finds. (It seems to do just fine with mp3 files) I'm not sure that it will work, and I am certain that it will end up being unsupported if anything goes wrong.

Tara is friends with a lady in the ward whose brother is one of the Age of Empires developers. Maybe I will have to strike up a conversation with her and plant an enhancement request. (And she told Tara if they made any more of these, she can get me a copy, but she'll likely move out of the ward by that time...)

Anyway, if I can't get the music to work, I may go back to creating funny game taunts. Tara's current phone ringer is "Tara, please answer the phone, it's me, John."

Game Time

Age of Empires. (What else)

Dad, Dave, and I played a Free For All game with 1 hard level computer. For a while, the computer had some sort of deep abiding hatred for me, and kept trying to wipe me off the board. Fortunately, this didn't happen. I ended up putting the thing back in it's place, and then took care of Dad and Dave.

Afterward, Dave and I played against 2 Expert level computers. We ended up winning, but I think it was mostly because the random map was the Amazon, and we set our defenses to not allow the computers to cross.

Afterwards, I did several hours of prescheduled work. People sure don't want me taking things down during the day to work on them...

Are you cooing my bird?

Yesterday after the fun walk, we were all standing around waiting for the prizes to be given out. (I have never won a prize from that thing) Some (much older than her) guy came up to Tara and started talking to her. He was a little too friendly, I thought it was someone she knew, and thought about interrupting when he walked away. After, Tara told me she thought it was someone I knew. Had I known it was a complete stranger, I would have asked him if he was cooing my bird.

Today we were at the mall letting the girls get Tara a Mother's Day present. Some dude at a cell phone kiosk tried to strike up a conversation with Tara on our way in and our way out. What the deal? Have I become invisible? Do I suddenly look less than intimidating? (Which would mean years of work wasted.)

I'm not sure how Tara feels about it, I guess she should be flattered. It's been a while since I had any guys hitting on me, (It hasn't happened since Rob left town, come to think of it...) but I'm sure my reaction would not involve flattery in any way shape or form. (And never really did. The reaction was always much different and stronger. And to tell you the truth, hasn't happened since I left the San Fernando Valley.) Your reaction to this paragraph should be "So anyway...."

Tara has a cell phone

Finally. Now I can find her, assuming she answers when I call...

The guys at the cell phone desk on Costco didn't inspire me with complete confidance. I'm going to have to call Verizon on Monday to make sure I get the employee discount and all that stuff.

Anyway, she's got a new Pink Razor, 450 minutes a month, (which should be plenty for her) and it came with a car charger, an earpiece, and a nice leather case.

Call me or her if you want the number...

Fun Walk

Today was one of the regularly scheduled fun walks on campus. We took our newly acquired double stroller with us, and put Mary and Emma in it. Because of construction on campus, they ended up marking out a different route than normal. They ended up having us go up the steepest hill on campus, which was quite the feat pushing Emma and Mary in 90^o heat.

We ended up getting done this time before they ran out of bananas and cookies. This is something new for us. We also completed our 5th (out of 5) walk for the year, and earned a very nice UnderArmor^tm shirt.

It was nice.

The Birthday is coming

Tara blew the lid off her plans for mine and Ruth's birthday today. She wants to do a party, and invite a bunch of people over.

Get this - (Which I think is great!) It will be a 2¹ and 2⁵ party. Ruth is turning 2 and I am turning 32. Since the having the ages match up to one being a power of the other is such a rare thing, I am all for celebrating it.

It will also be the Grand Opening for our play set, people can bring their kids and let them go to town. We'll have some BBQ or something. Anyway, it's a week from tomorrow. Mark your calenders.

Successful Bocce Tournament

Our little tournament at work ended today. I designed the trophy myself.

Preston (who I had as a #2 seed) and James (who I had as a #16 seed) played each other for the championship.

{Preston is on the left, James on the right} It was a close match, they kept tying each other, and only getting 1 or 2 points at a time.

James ended up winning. As you can see, he's clearly excited about his prize. (Please ignore anything you can make out on the whiteboard behind us.)

It's funny, I ranked him #16 because he was the only student in the tournament, and he had never played Bocce before. Now everyone wants to have a 2nd tournament, and expand it through all of our engineering department. They plan to put together a 64 player tourney, post it results on our website, and get it done before the Summer BBQ. I may have started a monster. (Although I doubt they will be able to come up with as good a trophy and the one I made...)

Game Time

Age of Empires.

Dad was on a plane, and we couldn't really find Drew, so Dave and I tried to play us versus 6 hard computers. This was a mistake. We were quickly dispatched.

After that, Rob showed up. We played 3 player Free For All. This too turned out to be a mistake. Rob made short work of us. We had a 20 minute treaty period, once it was over I took a small army over to visit Rob's town, but it turned out he had a large army sitting there waiting for me.

After Rob and Dave left, it placated my ego by playing against 3 computers, on an easier level. I beat them as expected.

Mersenne Prime Number Seach

I've started doing the search for very large prime numbers again. This is something I used to do on my machices 9 years ago, but stopped about 7 years ago. I had it running back in the day on my desktop, and was working to get it going on a couple of old DG/UX (Data General) machines, when I had a little problem with someone else doing stupid things with the "SETI@Home" search software on new production machines.

By the time I had stopped doing factoring, I had only checked 10 numbers for primality. They have discovered 6 very large primes since I stopped. The numbers they are checking now are very, very large; but computers they are using to do the checking are now very, very fast.

I've got my laptop running checks now. We'll see how things go.

Bocce Tourney Update

So I played the 2nd round against Rod. I ended up picking Rod apart 17-3. It was a really quick game.

I played Preston in the quarterfinals, he ended up kicking my trash. I lost 16-7. I ended up giving him a couple of points by knocking his ball closer.

I didn't really want to be the one winning the tourney anyway...

Shifting Zodiac

I don't know if anyone has ever looked at my profile on this thing. I have been listed as being 250 years old for some time now. (birthdate: 5/23/1756) The profile lists a chinese zodiac designation and Western zodiac designation. For the 1756 birthdate, I was listed as Rat and Gemini. Tonight I changed my birthdate to 5/23/1066. Suddenly, besides being 940, I am now a Rat and a Taurus. See for yourself. I don't understand. Did someone map out where the constellations were a thousand years ago, and in May, the sun beat a path through Taurus? Did the calander get messed up somewhere along the line? Or have the constellations changed their locations that much through the years? Or does the leap years we do really mess those sorts of things up? (As if it really matters.)

Desktop Tower Defense update

I can now nearly consistantly get to level 79 of "The 100". I can do this with 3 different board layouts. I am very close to getting past it (and I think that would take me well into the mid 80's) with the layout I used here.

Just in case you were wondering...

Panacea

I went to work yesterday thinking I was having problems with allergies. Things got worse the later in the day it got, so I figured it wasn't just allergies.

To combat the bodily invasion, I used my oft proven formula: Hot Salsa and Cordon's Horseradish. (Plenty of horseradish) I figure that I can make my blood completely inhospitable to whatever virus was making me sick.

It worked, at least somewhat, I don't feel nearly as bad today as I did yesterday...

Game Time

Ticket to Ride

Tara - 138
Dad - 130
Mom - 102
Me - 102

Utility Bill

On our latest utility bill, we were listed as a -400 cubic feet water usage. (April is the month they stop estimating and start reading again. Last month at this time, we had a 0 cubic foot listing) They refunded the water charge, but we still had the monthly "Customer Service Charge". On top of that, we paid a 4% City utility fee. We paid $6.10 for -400 cubic feet of water. We also continue to pay $11 for the sewer service...

Something sounds funny here.

The Bed Bully

When Ruth was still using a crib, she used to go in Emma's room and stake her claim on Emma's bed. When we moved Ruth out of the crib, we gave her that bed Emma used, and got Emma a different bed to sleep in. Now, occassionally, Ruth will try to claim Emma's new bed as her own. It's easier for her now that they are in the same bedroom. Tonight was one of those nights. Earlier, Tara chased Ruth out of Emma's bed. It looks like it didn't take completely. Ruth seems to be insulating Emma's head for her.

Maybe we can fit all these girls into this house after all...

Free Comic Book Day

Today was Free Comic Book day. In past years, we have taken the girls, but the store was all out of their free comics. This year, they did things a little differently. They had each comic on the desk, but the pile of them was behind the desk, and they were handing them out. They had a "6 comics per person rule."



We ended up with a number of them. (There were 7 of us there) The girls seem pretty excited about it. We got:

• Little Archie
• Unseen Peanuts
• Bongo Comics
• Transformers
• Nexus
• Legion of Superheros in the 31st century
• Donald Duck
• Mickey Mouse
• Iron Man & Hulk
• The Amazing Spiderman
• Love and Capes
• Amelia Rules!
• Gumby
  
• Comics 101

Book Report

Reality Conditions: Short Mathematical Fiction
Alex Kasman

This was sort of an odd little book. It's a book of short stories, all with a mathematical topic or twist or some sort of thread. I liked a number of the stories.

The author gives a short little paragraph or 2 at the end of the book for each story, talking about what's real and what's not. My favorite quote from back there: "I do not really believe that learning about these mathematical subjects earlier would allow us to teleport our bodies from room to room..."

Tara asked me if I liked the book as I finished. In the room was her, my parents, and myself. The thought that came to me was that I liked the book, but I was the only one in the room who was likely to appreciate it...

Completed.

Dad came over yesterday, we finished up the play set. The girls really like it. Anyone can feel free to come over to play....

Somoas Ice Cream

Dreyers (or Edys, depending on where you are) has in the past done Girl Scout Thin Mint ice cream. This year, they have added Tagalog and Samoas Ice Cream flavors.

Samoas are dangerous. Whenever I have a box of them, they open up, and disappear in no time. Sometimes they just all fall into my mouth, in no time flat. (And then I feel a little funny 10 minutes later.)

Somoas Ice Cream is just as dangerous. It's really tasty. Just like crumbling up the cookies into ice cream. Luckily, there's only a 1/2 gallon here.

Age of Empires

Dad, Me, Drew, and Dave against 4 expert computers.

It took a while, and it looked for a little bit like the computers had too much going for them, but we eventually won the game...

Bocce Tourney

I started a Bocce tournament this week at work. Not being there all that much this week, I hadn't gotten my game in yet. We played today. (I played against Vince, but most of you don't know Vince.) Vince went up 6-1 against me right away. I got a little worried for a while, but ended up tied it up at 6, then tying it up again at 11. The score was 14-12 me, I ended the game with a 4 point round. Just in case you were wondering.

The Giant Erector set is nearly complete

I played hooky from work all day today to try to finish the project for the week. I now have everything done but the monkey bar/swing combo, and the chimney for the roof. The monkey bar thing is really a 2 person job. There weren't 2 people available, and it was dark, and I need to make sure it gets level, so it's going to wait.

Not having swings on the thing didn't really stop the girls. I told Emma she couldn't get on the thing until the slide went up, and when it did, she went to town. She's very excited all around. Had we not forced her off to get in the car this evening, she would still be on it even now. She's very quickly gotten very good at climbing the rock wall.

I put Ruth up on the 2nd level, she was not amused.

Nearly as easy as building with tinker toys

I'm now nearly all the way through step 6. (Of 24) The thing's stability was greatly increased in the last 45 minutes of work. I've been surprised at how much time during the past 2 days has been wasted on searching for the right piece of wood in the stack...

Girls girls can't stay away. They really are excited about it.

Visiting with "The Dr."

Ruth really likes her Dr. Pepper.

In other news, Emma tells us that tomorrow is "Emma Appreciation Day."