Journal of a Sysadmin

Short bike

Around a few blocks past my work (had to drop in), and home. All in all it was a nice ride although short and slowish.

Total Time 00:19:50
Total Distance 7.75 km
Average Cadence 86 rpm
Average Speed 23.4 km/h
Odo 1187 km (from 1177)
Max Cadence 113 rpm
Max Speed 39 km/h

When I arrived home, missy and I went for a 30 minute dog walk as well. It was a good day all said. I really need to start using my bike comp. every day when I ride to work. It would have easily added an extra 100km onto my odometer…

The booty list

So what did I get for christmas this year?

• Flow MK2 bindings. So far they rock
• Base layer warm undershirt
• Wind River fleece pull over to replace my aging purple fleece
• This beautiful and really really cool egg poacher (I love poached eggs on english muffins)
• A journal with runes and a dragon on the cover from the kids. This will only be used for the most imporant journal entries that we never want to lose
• Some herbal tea, pringles chips, and two bite brownies. Brownies and chips are already gone of course =)
• The day (or 1/2 of it at least) snowboarding at Nakiska
• Most importantly, a new little baby on the way

My christmas was so good I don’t remember ever having a better one.

Christmas day snowboarding

So, since we did the present thing on Christmas Eve and we had a single lift ticket for Nakiska that had to be used before the end of December (we bought it last year) I took my new bindings and my board out for a test run. The new bindings are Flow Mk2, which are these bindings with a large single tounge over your boot and the back folds out to allow you to put your boot in the binding. When you put your boot in, you fold the heel up and lock in a catch.

I was skeptical at first but compared to the Duke bindings I got with my board these things are awsome. They lock you onto the board and it feels just excellent to ride.

Nakiska was an ice rink first thing in the morning. It would have been much better to wait until 11am or so to start but I was there at 9 and did two runs before 10am. I had my edges tuned (they were really bad) and went up again. The tuning helped but when the sun started to soften the top that’s when it really started to get good. I did about 6 runs down North Axe and was finally really starting to get the idea of transitioning both sides while at speed. It was good, and I was having an incredible time.

Don’t know if that’s what did it but I ended up catching an edge. I went down and in doing so managed to pull a muscle in my lower abdomen (OUCH, I had no IDEA it could hurt that much!). After sitting there for 15 minutes, then asking someone to get a ski patrol down and letting them check me out it was about 45 minutes to even decide I could make it down the hill under my own steam.

I did, it was fine (they were worried about internal damage that could lead to bleeding, fortunately that wasn’t an issue). I drove home and have been taking it easy since then. I’m hoping it’ll be good by Thursday because I want to do Sunshine on Thursday all day. I was having such a blast yesterday before I got hurt I can’t wait (I want to run out to COP right now but Jaime gives me stink eye every time I mention doing anything =).

Thursday will have to be soon enough, and it looks like sunshine might be fresh snow by then too =)

WooHoo!

I almost forgot. I wanted to write down a few of the things I saw this day. I wanted to write them down because they seemed singular, although I know if I timed it right the same image would be there. It’s more then that, it represents single moments in time that will never come again.

• The cresent moon over Mount Baldy. On the way south on Hwy 40 you go around Mount Baldy. While on the north side of it driving south west the cresent moon was visable on the stepped part of the mountain to the west. The sky was blue and cloudy, it was about 8:45am.
• Wind and rain in the mountains while there was snow on the ground. I was riding up the silver chair and it started to rain a little. The air of course; crisp, cool, clean, smelling of evergreens and dampness. I love the mountains for that smell, it is easily as memorable as the smell of the ocean on the west coast.
• Feeling of floating over the snow the first time I figured out how to carve on my snowboard. My version of carving at this point of course is likely a jerky, clumsily executed pull back and forth of the board but, to me who had never experienced that before, it was so cool.
• Warm west wind blowing the trees around and the clouds past at 75km/h.
• The way people ask if you’re ok when you’re down, making sure that some one helps you if you need it. In so many ways, human kind can pull through their brutish, unfeeling, uncaring, jealous, sinical, obsesive distain for one another. If only our leaders could see this.

Just a few observations.

A Christmas Announcement

Christmas this year was wonderful. Christmas eve was for opening presents with the kids (they went up to their mothers house for christmas this year) and everyone was really happy with their presents. I got an egg poacher and bindings for my snowboard as well as some other things of course. Full details to follow later.

The best part about this year, and I haven’t really told that many people yet so this is my big announcement.

Jaime is going to have a baby in July (27th is the due date). We’re going to have a little bundle of joy and I couldn’t have a better gift this year then knowing that everyone is healthy and happy right now.

Jaime, I love you and I love that we’re having a baby.

A decent digital audio player, buy one!

This is a company we need to support.

Samsung (of all companies) is making a DMP (digital media player) that supports the open standard Ogg and is a USB mass storage device. Firmware still has to be done via a windows interface, for now…

We bought s YP-C1 for one of the kids and it seems to work really well with Linux.

Oh, and it doesn’t support the DRM stuff that other players are starting to support.

ugh, ouch, omg it hurts, and other such christmas party bits.

So, as my beautiful wife has pointed out on her journal, last night I made a complete and utter fool out of myself for what I want to be the last time.

We went out, had a wonderful lunch, and I drank far more then the body can withstand.

The evening culminated in me hugging my supervisor (I’m told, a bit fuzzy on that part), heaving until my chest and stomach ached, very closely mortally wounding a very good friend (sorry about the nail squirrley), and waking up feeling like I’d been run over by a rather large smelly honey wagon. Yes folks, jhb had to sleep with that last night.

I guess I said it last night and again this morning and a few other times today. I have decided I need to stop drinking alcohol. I know it’s going to make for far more boring parties that I attend, but in the long run it will be better for everyone, mostly my family.

I don’t actually have a problem drinking you see, it’s the stopping once I’ve started that I have a lot of problem with. Seriously, and I don’t know why, but once I start I can’t seem to stop until it’s either all gone or I fall down. That I’m pretty sure is a serious problem, so for her sanity and my health I’m going to stop.

I hope it won’t be too hard (not like I get the shakes or anything) and based on how much I can drink we should be able to get the house paid off faster.

Muscian questions copy protection

Perfect example of the self serving mega corps.

A musician states in this New York Times article (free login required):

To be clear, I certainly don’t encourage people to pirate our music. I have poured my life into my band, and after two major label records, our accountants can tell you that we’re not real rock stars yet. But before a million people can buy our record, a million people have to hear our music and like it enough to go looking for it. That won’t happen without a lot of people playing us for their friends, which, in turn, won’t happen without a fair amount of file sharing.

As listeners we don’t want it. As a systems administrator I wouldn’t want this software on a machine on my network. Musicians have not asked for and can not really use this software.

DRM software serves one single purpose. The large mega corporations which control the music we listen to think it will drive money into their hands. They no longer control the means of distribution and they want to fight that until the end.

I hope the end comes soon.

Thank you to the New York Times for having the balls to publish this and to Damian Kulash Jr. for writing it. Flakey name for a band (OK Go), but maybe I’ll have to check it out anyway