Ugg, some how my 'don't do any Wordpress formatting BS' plugin failed utterly,
and rewrote all the posts with wordpress formatting. Went through and
manually removed the code cruft and republished. Easily fixed, just tedious.
Hopefully the config changes I made will prevent it happening again. *sigh*
*crosses tentacles*
Was a very good day. Even if it started off with a profound sense of
exhaustion this morning. I think I woke up a half dozen times in the night,
I know my Fitbit step count looked like I'd gone to the mailbox twice in
the night (which was welcome, as I was behind). Got clean and motivated,
Amythest swung by and we headed to the Dallas Museum of Art for some
Roman history.
Mary Beard is one of those historians, who not only gets all her historical
ducks in a row, but can make a dry subject very lively. I've seen her on
TV a few times, and read some of her work. She also gives a good lecture.
Basic stuff, mostly about how her new book is about how defining 'Roman'
changed repeatedly over the course of the empire. Fun bit, she had a
Roman woman's epitath on the display, from near Hadrian's Wall. The woman's
name, her status as a freed slave, that she was from a tribe further south
in England, and that her hubby was from Palmyria in the Middle East. Those
Romans got around. But before she started explaining it, I was picking out
the Latin. The name, that she was an ex slave, her age at death, that
Palmyria was involved. My Latin, while still nothing resembling more than
a passing nod, is better than it was 10 years ago. Go me. The rest
was basically how we can't just say 'Ok, that's Roman history, finis'. What
we know, what we understand, how we interpert it, changes as time passes,
and as we change. Which I'm in whole hearted agreement. In the Q/A she
answered a few high brow questions, as well as stateing that besides
Mary Renault, her favorite historical fiction writer is Lindsay Davis,
of the Falco Roman mysteries. (I recommend them too.) Then we broke
for the book signing, which me and Amythest passed on, due to the huge
crowd. We instead went to our favorite bits of the DMA, then headed
to the car and back out of Dallas. (Btw, if you're interested, Professor
Beard's new book can be found on Amazon/B and N/other bookstores. S.P.Q.R.
I'm pretty sure if you like history, you'll enjoy.
We got in contact with Nymaz, and met up to see 'Spectre' in the theaters.
I'd heard some less than stellar reviews of the latest Bond flick, and
I kind to have to agree that it wasn't great. Solid enough, but nothing
spectacular. Unless you're talking about the title sequence. Which was
full of tentacles and girls and more tenacles, and tentacles with guns...
I was a very happy cultist. I also blame Charles Stross for no longer being
able to watch a Bond flick without thinking 'But what would Bob Howard do ?'
Seriously, Bond would be so much more effective with a Warrant Card, a
Tilligast resonator and a iPhone with the OFCUT suite. (If you have no idea
what I'm talking about, well Google 'Charles Stross laundry', buy some of his
books too.) 3/5 dry martinis for a decent Bond flick, 5/5 perky tentacles
for the title sequence.
(wow, call me the book pimp today)
The three musketeers talked about the NYC trip next week, I dropped Amythest
off at her car, and I came home and wrote this. I'm zonked, and probably
will make a very early night of it. Not too early, as I'll just be skewed
off kilter tomorrow as well, but no 2am movie marathons tonight. Will
probably catch up on TwitterBook then go to bed with a book. Not sure
which one, the Mythos story I was reading today, Templar fanfic-history,
my copy of the above mentioned SPQR (got the ebook). or something else.
Oh lord, I probably should write a book randomizer for the Kindle app for
nights I have no decision making skills. For now though, it's the
interwebs and creepy Lovecraft music til bed. And this got long fast,
so night night all.
If you're new to the using of Git, I highly recommend
Git Immersion. It's about 50 pages
going though the basics of Git. I've been using git to get files for years,
but never got into the minutia of things, since I never had changes to push
back to the repository (end user, not developer). But since every job posting
I've seen in the last 6 months has Git, or something similar in practice.
as part of the desired skillset, I decided I needed to learn to do more than
'git pull'. So if you want to grok git, this is the place to do it.
Well it's Friday, and I'm awake. Been awake for a while. As usual lately,
I had weird dreams that I really couldn't tell you if they were good or bad.
Lets just settle on weird. Got an email from my agnate sibling, he's
probably not going to make the scattering of the parental ashes. Haven't
heard a peep from the uterine sibling. Which, is kind of a good thing,
if I don't have to deal with her that's a lot of stress off my shoulders.
To be honest, if I don't have to deal with either sibiloid, I'll find
this much easier to deal with. Amythest and Nymaz will be much better
company. *sigh* I guess we'll see in a few weeks.
Spent yesterday doing stuff, including finishing a Git tutorial, and hanging
out with Amythest to go over getting around on the trip. She was happily
amused at the fact I was excited about the trip. And I guess the anxiety
and worries about travel are getting pushed out with the idea of how much
fun I'll have, and how good it will be to visit 'the old home'. And
the sea nut in me is very glad to get to see the Atlantic again. Maybe
some deep ones will meet up with us at Jones Beach...it's not that far
from Innsmouth as the mackrel swims.
Today is a not much of anything day. I'm not anywhere near 'with it' today.
But we'll see what comes up. Big plan is tonight's marathon of Friday the
13th flicks, IX, Jason X (in space), Freddy vs Jason, and the remake.
Machete time will be had. The rest of the day? I have some project
foo, probably some trip foo to work on as well. Plus my usual Friday
build fest, maybe a quick visit to the store and walking too. Tomorrow
is the lecture at the DMA on Roman history, which should be good. Then
the usual Sunday. Should be a decent weekend.
So yeah, that's about it for now. I'll call this a post, and I'll get to
working on geek stuff. Catch you all later.
And it's Wednesday. Woke up an hour before my alarm, wide awake. Decided
to go walking. Got most of my daily steps in, but ran out of steam before
I could hit goal. Came home, did some organizing and reached out to the
sibiloids about scattering Mom and Dad's ashes. So I had to figure out
which beach and where. Emailed Agnate Sibling, and texted Uterine sibling.
And promptly had a minor anxiety fit. It's amazing how much ability they
have to mess with my head, when I really care so little for them. *sigh*
Oh well, it's done.
I'm done a few other random things, working on honing my Git skills,
since every job seems to require knowledge of Git. And while I use it
often to pull testing/beta software down to build and use, I've never
actually made commits and pushed them back up. I R not developer, but
given how version control is in everything now a days, I need to be
slightly more proficient, or at least able to fake it.
I've also pulled apart my satchel, and repacked the things I'd need for
the trip. Basically pulling out everything that the TSA would frown at,
and the stuff I just don't need (cables, the USB drive collection, etc).
Need to revisit the TSA website to make sure all is still good. Definitely
have to remember to leave my multitool at home, both because of the TSA
rules, and because of NYC's rules in regards to knives. Oh well.
Decided to fire up Vincent Price and 'The Pit and the Pendulumn' as comfort
flick. (Yeah, I'm weird). I also rebooted my systems, kernel update
yesterday. Basically I'm trying to knock down the other low hanging
fruit on my TODO lists, and making new ones for the trip. *sigh* Oh well,
that's life...a cunning designed series of shell scripts and flat files to
run my existence. Oh well, it could be worse...I could run on Visual Basic.
*wink* Ok, catch you all later.
Tuesday is going better than Monday. Woke up out of some really weird
dreams...and promptly forgot the details. Did the usual morning routine,
went walking and to the store, came home and started work on stuff for the
NYC trip. Verified a couple things with the nice lady at the hotel, then
fired up Amythest's trip plan and Google Maps and started figuring out how
to get around the Big Apple.
Assuming the weather cooperates, we'll mostly be walking. Most everything
we're going to do is in Manhattan, and within a mile or so of the hotel.
The Met and The Museum of Natural History are on the other side of
Central Park, so that will probably be bus. Bronx Zoo is obviously a
little further away, but that's what mass transit is for. So lots of
walking, and I'll probably be installing whatever app the MTA recommends
on NecronomiPod for the rest. Really though, this should be cake.
Will need to channel my inner New Yorker between now and the 21st, and
break in my new boots. But I have time.
Not much else for today at the momnent. Probably should hit the showers
soon, start looking human for dinner tonight. Probably be good to walk
away from the Desk of Doom (tm) again, and come back and randomly pick
something else to do. Probably dive into the insanity of next year's
health insurance. *sigh* Oh well. Catch you all later.
Not doing so well. Sunday would have been a good, quiet day...save I had
a major anxiety spike while plotting NYC trip stuff with Amythest. Whelmed
fox is whelmed. I calmed down, and we had a decent afternoon of watching
'Arrow' episodes. I have a laundry list of stuff to plan out for the trip.
Came home after tv and laundry, read for a while and crashed.
I slept ok, no horrible dreams. Woke up...and just faded. I haven't gotten
anything really done, a few chores here and there. I've tried to get
more important stuff done, and I've utterly failed every time. Couldn't
even get walking done to any degree. I've pretty much being running in
neutral all day. *sigh* Hopefully I can find the clutch and get things
into gear tomorrow.
In other stuff, Uxía the laptop is giving me issues, yet more wireless issues,
this time at Amythest's place instead of home. I'm thinking of leaving
Uxía at home for the trip. Depends on how much I think I'll need to
write up stuff while I'm gone. I'll have NecronomiPod and Cthäat Aquadingen
(phone and tablet) with me, but typing on Android isn't something I want to
do brain dumps on. *sigh* I don't know...there's going to be a lot to
talk about trip wise, and probably there will be some epic brain dumps
after taking the parents to the beach. We'll see what I decide come
next week.
Tomorrow I have dinner with some friends. Will try to get the calls made
and stuff organized tomorrow before dinner. We'll see. On that note, I'll
catch you all later.
Had a good day. Woke up this morning out of odd dreams, and actually
felt like leaving the house for once. Did some geek work this morning,
figured out the Dagon reboot issue from a couple of weeks ago (boot cycle
seems to want to try the USB drive array first, but didn't bother giving an
error about it. Turn off the array after shut down, turn Dagon back on,
all is well.) Talked to , headed on up by way of
Fry's Electronics...I'm looking at replacement mice, and was hoping they'd
have a selection of new Logitechs to test, but nothing really good. Oh well,
it's not a need, just a thought. Then I headed on to hang out with
and . Oh, new cool thing, their
dog, Freddie barely barked when he figured out I was there, and then he
came right up for his pettings and started making this odd little whine.
I thought he was upset about something, but no...that's the noise he makes
when his humans show up. So I'm offically adopted. *warm fuzzies* He's a
Good Dog (tm).
I'd picked up a couple of Redbox flicks, 'Trace' a soso horror flick about
why EVPs can go horribly wrong. Then 'The Lazarus Effect' which I'd seen
before, but they haven't. Still a good watch. Also watched a few 'A
Haunting' episodes which were mostly background noise to us shooting
the breeze, with occasional commentary. I got home about 10, and I was
in a random mood for the Blind Spanish Zombie Knights Templar, so I started
up 'Tombs of the Blind Dead'. Crazy 70's eurohorror at it's 'best'.
Besides that, I'm just kind of vegging. Will probably go dive into a book
after this movie is over, or I might watch the 2nd flick in the series.
We'll see. I have lots to read, and I am kind of tired. Tomorrow is
Amythest time and laundry, with a side of trip planning. Yay for quiet
Sundays with best friends. Catch you all later.
Trying to be productive tonight, or at least getting low hanging fruit. So
far I've gotten the following done.
I figured out the upgrade for the Fedora desktops has a flaw, the X
configuration breaks in some kind of weird way. I've verified this twice,
tried rebuilding the VM's video drivers, and that failed. So I'm going
to try building Fedora22 from scratch and seeing if I can build it then.
Maybe later tonight or tomorrow.
I've updated all the server VMs, with the latest 4.3 kernel on one.
Working on the Ubuntu/Mint desktops now. Nothing too fancy on them, though
Linux Mint should have the latest Mate desktop in unstable shortly, looking
forward to playing with it.
The plan for the trip to New York is to bring Uxía the laptop. I'm
not sure how much internet access I'm going to have while in the big city,
but if I do have access I want to have all the tools I use on Dagon. So
I've configured my CLI clients for LiveJournal, Wordpress, email, and
IM. Not that I plan on spending much time on any of them, but I want to
have the options and the ability. I still need to test email and IM, but
they should just work...config files are the same. I normally can hit
everything via ssh to Château Innsmouth, but since I'll be gone a week,
I'm planning on shutting everything down here to save my electric bill.
And I've been meaning to have Uxía setup to do everything I do at home,
just in case.
Speaking of NYC, I reserved a rental car for taking my parents to
the beach. I thought about using public transport, but since it's not
summer, the buses to the beach aren't running. Also, it gives us some
flexibility about getting there, getting back. Also means I don't have
to rely on relatives, which given my issues was really not an option. Was
fairly easy to do, and while it's kind of pricy, it's dealable. Especially
if it lowers my anxiety about the trip (which is pretty high).
I'm looking at changing Hydra's VM management software from VirtualBox
to KVM+QEMU. VirtualBox is rarely used in a corp environment, especially
for servers. So I've cloned the two VMs on Hydra, installed the software,
I just need to make the changes and see if I can import the server VMs
back. If not, I can import them on Dagon while I work things out. I've
always meant to use Hydra to host the servers, and I can always use more
experience with KVM.
So that's what I've gotten done tonight, I still have a huge laundry list
of things to do in the next week. But I'm not feeling as discombobulated
as I did earlier today. Catch you all later.
Huzzah for Friday. Not a great Friday, woke up out of sorts. Even if I
had mostly good dreams. Made myself go walking, then stopped by the store
to get a couple of fill in the gap items. Made step goal by the time I got
home. Got some more feedback on the resume foo, things I need to do or
come up with. Stressor, thy name is resumes.
Since I'm in a funk, I started up 'Harbinger Down' as a comfort movie.
Yes, giant monsters eating a ship full of people is comforting to me.
I also started the great Fedora upgrade of the assorted desktop VM,
I've updated the 3 server VMs running Fedora with little or no issue.
So I write a couple of quick shell scripts to do the upgrading for me.
So far, I've only got one issue with it, and that's fixed by adding a flag
to the update command. I have 5 Fedora desktops, and it's a big update so
it's going to take a while. Oh well, it will keep me out of trouble.
No plans for the weekend, I should probably do something socialesque,
but right now I really just want to be here at Château Innsmouth doing
things that work, or at least I can fix easily. So maybe a weekend of
monster movies, geek stuff, and Cthulhu ? It really all depends on
how I feel tomorrow. For now, I'm just going to run with things the way
they are. Catch you all later.
