/dev/zero

Well, after the great Saturday I had (see previous posts), I got back to the parent’s house very early Sunday morning… but not early enough for them to not discover I never made it back home Sat night. Oops.
Apparently they left for church earlier than usual to go to Sunday school, so my car wasn’t in the garage when they left.
I joined them at church where, it being Father’s Day, the UMM were throwing their thrice annual breakfast, so I had a hearty breakfast before worship service. After service Mom and Dad went to visit a church friend in the hospital and I went back to their place to take a much needed nap until they got home.
When they got home I then spent the next few hours helping Dad put the last of my brother’s stuff¹ into one of the DoorToDoor pods. That was my Father’s Day present.
After, we got showered then the three of us went out to dinner. We discovered our favorite TexMex was closed for the day. Bummer. So we went to LaW instead. Very good choice. We brought home leftovers. And I paid for dinner². We brought home leftovers.

1 And I told Dad “Next time (my brother) tries to give me crap about being a man in my 30s living rent free on my mother, I’ll remind him of all of his shit I had to move out of the house for him”. Dad pointed out that, on top of that, at least I wasn’t a man in my 30s living rent free with my parents, with my wife…

2 Dad observed it was the first time I’d ever picked up dinner for them.

OK, so in my last post I mentioned that I owed Amythest a thank you.
asked if I “hooked up” with her. No. Though Amythest is a very dear friend, we discovered years ago that the chemistry just wasn’t there. Very good friends is all we’ll ever be.

Recently, while visiting on his trip though Texas, larry made the observation that the thing he finds most attractive in a woman is when they’re attracted to him.
Larry, I couldn’t agree more.

I must remember to thank a a certain redhead.

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?