/dev/zero

We woke up a little late on Thursday morning and missed the continental breakfast served by the hotel, so we followed Martin’s suggestion and walked up the street to one of the bakeries in Chinatown and bought two buns each. From there we walked further up the street to Cafe Greco for coffee to go with our buns.
I had booked our tickets for Alcatraz online last night, so I knew we didn’t have to worry about it being sold out. We had plenty of time to get down to Fisherman’s Wharf. While enjoying my cappuccino at Greco, a Muni bus drove by indicating it ended at the Wharf. Perfect! We crossed the street, caught the next bus and the driver let us know where to get off for Pier 33.
When we got there I was a little disoriented. Pier 33 is NOT where I’ve always left for Alcatraz before. Apparently Blue & Gold (or Red and White) lost the concession for the Alcatraz ferry and the launch point has thus moved. It’s now operated by Hornblower, though the boats just say “Alcatraz Tours” on them and have the NPS Alcatraz logo.
On the way out to the island, there were a couple of British ladies in the seats in front of us (London east end, by their accents). One of them decided to go out on the deck on the bow to get photos. Her timing couldn’t have been worse (or better, depending how you look at it). She stepped through the doors just as the boat cleared the break water. The Bay was running about 2 - 5 swells and she caught the first wave over the bow full in the face. She came back in looking like a drowned rat. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt and had no coat with her. Going out to Alcatraz without a coat is a no-no under the best of circumstances. Now she was all WET and had no coat! Her friend or sister or whoever she was got a good laugh out of it. Luckily she seemed to have a sense of humor about it to.
The tour of Alcatraz was a little different from the last few times I was there. They’ve changed it up a little, putting things in different order, adding a few things they didn’t have before, taking a few things off. Good to mix it up now and then.
They’ve restored some parts that weren’t open before and have a new bookstore down stairs. And lots more souvenirs to take home. At least the sales go to restoring more of the island.
Upon returning to mainland, we hit Pier 39, I bought Kestrel a fleece to wear so I could get my coat back, then we got some dinner.
From there we walked down the rest of Fisherman’s Wharf to the Maritime Museum and park and up to Ghirardelli Square for some ice cream and chocolate. And they NERFED Ghirardelli Square! They no longer have all the cool sundaes they used to have. Gone are “The Rock” and “The Golden Gate”. They’ve just got “hot fudge sundae” and “warm brownie sundae”. The only item with character left on the menu is an “Earthquake” milkshake.
After walking around Ghirardelli Square, we caught a cab back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Day 3 posted later.

Off to the airport around 0500 for 0645 flight. Found a decent spot in long term parking and trundled our bags through the rain to the shuttle bus depot. Found the first bus there would take us right to our terminal and we were off.
Since we had a few minutes to kill before boarding, we found a “grill” open two gates down and got some breakfast. While sitting there eating breakfast I looked at our boarding passes again and realized it wasn’t a few minutes to boarding, but a few minutes to take off. Quick closed the lids on our breakfasts and hussled back to the gate, onto the plain and got our stuff stowed.
Nice flight. Every passenger gets an LCD screen in the back of the seat in front of them and the cabin crew are very friendly.
We arrived in Denver with plenty of time to make our connection, 2 gates over. When we hit the ground at SFO and were allowed to activate mobile phones again I called Martin to let him know we were down and taxing, but that since we had to check luggage after all, just meet us at baggage claim. We got down the escalator from the concourse at the exact same moment he came up the escalator from the parking garage. Perfect timing!

Drove up to the City to get checked into our hotel, only to find that they don’t start checkins until 1500, and it was only 1100. However they graciously offered to hold onto our luggage for us. We left our luggage with them and left again with Martin. A leisurely drive down the coast to Santa Cruz to say hello to Godmoma and pick up Martin’s spare car (with a stop for lunch at The Flying Fish Grill). When we got there we found that the spare car wasn’t quite ready (it was in the paint shop and they need to fix the drivers door handle). We hung out with Godmoma. We headed back up Highway 1 to San Francisco. stopping to photograph some kite surfers. Back on the road and by now it’s 4, 5 o’clock PDT and I’ve been up for 27 hours. I start drifting off in the car. Mostly wake up as we pull into the parking garage just up the street from the hotel; We get there, get checked in, up to the room and OH. MY. GOD.
It’s the Sugarluxe room. Painted in all kinds of garish shades of pink, turquise and chocolate pudding brown. Luckily we’re only here to sleep.
I change my shirt and shoes and we head out for some diner. For the first time in 4 YEARS I eat real Chinese food and IT IS GOOD! I mean come on, Chinese food in China Town. Then we head up the street (and by up, I mean UP. And up. And up.) to North Beach to get a cappuccino and tiramisu.
Wander back to the hotel, plug in devices needing to charge up, post this blog update and crash.

Tomorrow: Alcatraz, Fisherman’s Wharf, Fort Point.

Leaving for the airport, bound for California, in the next half hour.

Now passing through Salado.

Getting drowsy at the wheel. Time to stop for a beverage.

Passing throug Waco.

On the road to Austin.

All quiet on the western front…Yeah, haven’t posted in a while. Been so busy…

Really hating my job. I am SO ready to be rid of ${POE}. I’ve been waiting for a promotion I was promised since Sept. I got the pay raise in mid Oct, but am still doing the old job, which I hate, with no change on the horizon. They can’t seem to hire people fast enough and they need to hire like 3 people in order to replace me.

Meanwhile, I’ve started doing consulting with . I flew out to San Diego this last weekend and did a job for a small company involved in mobile messaging. Was very fun. Got to play with some new (to me) technologies (ethernet interface bonding, HA failover with heartbeat, load balancing (not new to me, but the piece of Cisco kit being used, 11501, is). Was on the go the whole time. I took off at 15:30 from DFW on Sat, landed 16:30 at SAN (two hour time difference), got the car from Avis and met the client outside the data center. Got a bit of orientation with the client, then we looked at their gear. I’m not too impressed with the data center they use. Very lax about security (they never bothered to ask for my ID when I first came in) but they have some strange security rules. Many other customers in that data center make the cabling at ${POE} look good, which is really saying something. The data center didn’t even have the second ethernet drop in the client’s cabinet activated, per contract, until after the client emailed them this weekend. And THEN they never responded to the email, just fixed it silently.

I was intending to take lots of pictures of beautiful San Diego to post to the blog, but ended up not having time to take pictures, or even SEE beautiful San Diego. Landed after dark, was on the go the whole time, took off after dark.

I did get ONE picture, which I haven’t offloaded from the camera yet.

(Un-cropped version)
(I gave my email address to her uncle, standing behind her with the baby, in case her family wanted copies of these pictures, but I never heard from them.)

I’m back.
OK, I’ve been back about 36 hours now.
Not that most of you noticed I was gone.

Next time I have to go to Houston I’ll just drive. Travel time by Southwest Airlines from DAL to HOU, including getting a ride to DAL[1], allowing for security, waiting for boarding, waiting for shuttle to hotel from HOU, crack-head shuttle driver, is about an hour longer than it would have taken to just drive. Return trip was the same, sans crack-head driver, since we just took a taxi, whose driver had a bit more clue where he was going. And big cajones[2].

The hotel[3] was not the nicest I’ve ever stayed, but it was very nice. It was easily the nicest bed I’ve slept in. I must acquire a set of bedding like theirs. Mattress pad, nice sheets, top sheet, pad, another top sheet, nice comforter.
No vent fan in the bathroom, so all the mirrors (and my glasses) got fogged up. Who ever heard of a hotel/motel that doesn’t vent the bathroom?

The conference was, over all, a waste of time. Their “beginner track” was too basic. “Installation”, “Configuration” and “SSL” scheduled for an hour each, were done in 10 minutes. The “advanced track” covered “Advanced troubleshooting”, mySQL, Anti-spam and php. “Advanced Troubleshooting” was simply “How to use strace”. Gee, how informative. mySQL covered “why you shouldn’t upgrade to 4.1 unless you REALLY mean it”. PHP was “don’t install 5.0. Really. Just don’t.” All of them were presented by a guy who started each presentation with a rundown of his resume (as if we were supposed to be impressed that he was a “senior technician” with one of the vendors at the conference before he came to work for cPanel.) His anti-spam presentation basically amounted to “make anyone who sends you mail prove their a real person by blocking their mail until the respond to your auto responder” and “RBLs suck. The people who run them are evil and clueless.”[4] Obviously he’s been using the wrong RBLs and doesn’t know how much the “prove that you love me” technique just pisses people off.

However, it was two days off work, with pay, some good meals and socializing with other industry folks.

Yesterday, I met up with for a while. Turns out the place he’s staying here in Dallas is just the next apartment complex over. Afterward I came home and got ready for a pool party at Amythest’s, with her sister, and other DFW Ufies. Shared that bottle of wine I bought a couple of weeks ago at the wine tasting and watched a silly movie.

So far last night / today I’ve made progress on Project X by getting Open-LDAP installed and successfully added an entry to the database. Next I get to configure Qmail to authenticate against it.

[1] Since ${poe} was too cheap to pay for a shuttle. REALLY cheap, since we were going to need a shuttle at the HOU end anyway.
[2] Got in the exit lane for the freeway interchange, which came to a complete stop. So he got out of the lane, slammed on the gas, passed everyone waiting to get on the interchange and cut right back in at the very last second.
[3] If I ever have to travel on business and the person arranging the travel forgets to PAY for the hotel again, I will hand them my two week notice. Going to check into a $300/night hotel and being asked for MY credit card was not fun. One call to the boss and he took care of it with his card, but he had to fax them both sides of his credit card and drivers license.
[4] With FUD like “All it takes is your competitor forging headers once to get you added to a whole bunch of RBLs” and “You have to pay each of them a ‘bribe’ to their pet charity to get off their list”. Guess he’s never heard of rfc-ignorant, ORDB, MAPS-RSS, MAPS-DUL, SORBS, DSBL…

I will be traveling down to Houston for a cPanel training seminar next week. I arrive Houston Hobby Wed evening, 19:30. Return Fri evening 20:30. I’ll be staying at the Westin Galleria.

Anyone down in Houston want to get together for dinner Thurs evening, or even late Wed?

I got back from Taos, New Mexico, last night. It was exactly 20:00 CDT (UTC -5), when I took the key out of the ignition and closed the garage door behind me. We left Taos at 06:15 MDT (UTC -6). Total travel time: 12:45. Total distance: 746.3 miles. I drove about 200 of that, from just east of Amarillo to Vernon.

I’ll do a more complete write-up of the whole trip later. I’ll probably back-date the entries, to cover each day of the trip.

Our accomodations in Taos, The Abominable Snowmansion, were truly abominable. The shower was tiny, the floorboards under the linoleum were rotted out and you had to be careful turning on the hot water lest you scald yourself (I’m not kidding - the water was seriously hot enough to cause serious burns. Someone is going to get hurt some day if they don’t turn it down.) It was hard work. I got very dirty. I have boots and pants that are not fit to be seen and will disappear into the back of my closet until next year. And I’d happily finish my laundry, throw it in my bag and go back tomorrow.

Sat., 10 July - Meet at the church at 06:30, meet most of the rest of the mission team: Ann, Christine, Jessica, Stephen, Vance, Jeff and Alic, our new associate pastor, load up the van and leave for Taos. Approx. 12 hours later, arrive at The Abominable Snowmansion and meet up with the rest of our team: Bud and Carol, our team leaders who arrived two days earlier with all the food. I drive about 265 miles of the outbound trip, from just east of Amarillo to Las Vegas, NM. Unload the van, eat dinner, some of the team heads off to the pow wow; I go to bed.

Sunday, 11 July - Up for breakfast, off to Sunday service at El Pueblito UMC where our contingent of 11 is about 1/3 of the congregation. Back to the Snowmansion for lunch, then off to the pueblo to attend the last day of the pow wow. (Pictures later) We left early, around 16:30, 17:00, but the pow wow lasted until about 21:30. I had a beutiful hemetite necklace made.

Mon, 12 July - Early start, off to the pow wow grounds to help dismantle the arena. Lunch provided by the indians. With our help, get the arena dismantled in about 12 hours. (They’ve tried leaving it up all year, but someone started torching it every year, so they have to take it down every year after the pow wow and put it back up the following year.) I leave with Carol to help get dinner ready. That evening Jimmy, one of the tribal elders, drops in on us at the Snowmansion to say hello. He invites us to visit him at his ranch just up the road. He takes Stepehn with him to show him how to get to the ranch and where the keys to the gate and his cabin are.

Tues, 13 July - Finally we go onto the Pueblo grounds to do the work we came here to do: this year, more work on the Garcia house. We arrive to find that the floor has been completed since last year and some of the plastering. We get to work on completing the plastering and painting all the walls. We knock off early that day to return to the Snowmansion and get cleaned up, then drive out to la junta point, at the Wild Rivers Recreation Area. Dave Gomez, our liason with the Pueblo, his wife Vera, their son and daughter-in-law and their son join us for a wonderful dinner. After dinner the Gomez family returns home and we have communion service, then return to the Snowmansion.

Wed, 14 July - Back to work on the Garcia house. Dave drops in to say hello. Much painting and plastering is done. Jeff decides not to work that day. The electrician drops by to take a look at the rooms that need to be finished, then leaves. Myra Gomez’ (the woman who will be moving into the house when it’s done) brother drops in to check out the house and say hello. He lives right next door, but has never so much as waved at any of us, on this trip or any prior. Bud and I have a long conversation with him about this and that. The electrician comes back with his crew just as we’re leaving. Bud, Carol and I relax on the back patio of the Snowmansion to watch the thunderstorm over the mountains before bed.

Thurs, 15 July - More work on the Garcia house. Late in the day Bud sends Vance, Christine and Jeff off to the Headstart facility to get started on prep work to pour a new concrete floor for their storage shed. Benito, the supervisor of last year’s mission team, drops in with Harold (Jimmy’s son and the tribal sherrif) and Harold’s deputy to have a look and say hello. Most of us go out to the Rio Grande Gorge while others go to Old Blinking Light for drinks. Those of us who went to the Gorge return to the Snowmansion. Some of us change clothes and join the others at OBL.

Friday, 16 July - Finish up plastering and painting the Garcia house while Vance, Kristina and Christine finish the prep work for the concrete floor at the Headstart storage facility. Jeff, who has refused to do any real work since Tues, is detailed to Carol, who puts him to work helping make lunch and dinner. Clean up our work area, scrub the floors and head back to the Snowmansion to get cleaned up and eat lunch, then we get to explore the historic Taos Pueblo (Pictures later). After the pueblo, we join those who chose to skip the pueblo in town for window shopping, then back to the Snowmansion for dinner. After dinner I pack up my things, then join some of the others in the lobby where Stephen and Vance are watching Christine and Jessica play chess. The ladies get upset with their kibitzing and walk off in disgust, so Vance and I finish their game. The ladies come back and play cards at the table while I kick Vance’s butt at two more games of chess.

Sat, 17 July - Up very early for breakfast, then we hit the road. Arrive at the Church about 19:20, unload the van, I get home at exactly 20:00. Unload my car, drop everything in the living room, undress and head straight for the pool and shower. It feels good to take a shower where my elbows aren’t constantly banging the walls and I don’t have to worry about burning off my skin.

More detailed descriptions of each day later.