Random Access

Saturday – 28 January 2017
Happy Chinese New Year!

Another week comes to a close. Between being sick earlier in the week, having a vmware host decide to go on break – and take a few servers with it – in the middle of a workday, and the political shenanigans that have been going on here in the U.S., I can honestly say that I’m glad to have it in the rear-view mirror (or back-up camera, for some of you).

This isn’t to say that the week hasn’t been without its bright spots. Thankfully, there have been a few.

Stray Toasters

• There’s a Wire Above Manhattan That You’ve Probably Never Noticed
• Everblock
  That’s right: Life-sized, LEGO-like building blocks. This could be both fun and dangerous…
• If You Have a Twisted Sense of Humor, It’s Probably Because You’re a Cool, Chill Genius
• Last weekend, Team DiVa spent the night at their grandparents’ house. On the way home the next day, they were telling us about some of the things they did. This included recounting one of the episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that they watched. They told how a “dragon-chicken” (not to be confused with a dragonmouse™) had attacked the ponies’ village and “turned some of them a different color and made them freeze.” This struck a chord with me and I did a quick search on Google for “dragon chicken my little pony” and it returned this picture:
  

  The “dragon-chicken” in question.

  I showed it to the ladies and they confirmed that it was, in fact the creature from the cartoon. A cockatrice. Thank you, Magic: the Addiction Gathering.

  

  © Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast

  “Dragon-chicken,” by the way, became this week’s favorite new word.

• How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case
• I’m going to lump this next block of links together:
  • I was a “Terrorist B*tch”: Dispatch from Trump’s America
  • Comic Folk React to Trump’s Grabbing America by the Immigration Policy
  • Outraged about Trump’s executive order? Donate to these nine organizations.
  • Peter’s Choice
  • Trump Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself
• This Gaming Dice Soap Has Actual Dice Inside
• She turned her dad’s 50-year-old FBI file into a stunning work of art
• I learned new-to-me things about The Band’s The Weight this weekend.

And that’s all for now.

Namaste.

Monday – 16 January 2017
It is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States.

On this Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service, we reflect on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. through a national day of service across the country. Share your story of service throughout the day on social media using #MLKDay and follow the impact on all of our official accounts.

This year, I’m borrowing an idea from a former coworker, that will allow us to not only do something in/for our community, we can do it with Team DiVa: We are baking brownies and delivering them to the officers at the local police station. And, we are again seeing things for donation, as service to our community.

If you’re a parent of a young child and looking for a way to help them learn about Martin Luther King, Jr, I once again recommend Brad Metzler’s I am Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ordinary People Can Change the World).

Please take some time to reflect on the day and what it means and how we can work to bridge the gaps between us to build better relationships, a better country, and a better world.

Never, never be afraid to do what’s right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society’s punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wednesday – 11 January 2017
Yesterday was a troubled day. I was of ill humor for the better part of the day, thanks to external forces.

I resolved to bend. Not break.

I also had a seemingly all-too-rare John Stewart moment (1, 2):

Some bridges need to be burned.

Reflecting on that, I even carried the thought further: Some bridges need to be burned – not only to keep you from going backwards – to keep others from dragging you back.

I also realized that in some cases, I don’t just want or even need to burn the bridge, I want to do it so the bridge burns and those on it are purged in the cleansing fire.

I’m not looking back, but I want to look around me now.

Despite being overcast and rainy and this morning’s comedy of errors – I overslept, spilled a LOT of water on the floor while trying to change the water filter in the refrigerator, and spilled a bit of coffee on myself right before leaving home – today has been much better and I’ve solved a work-related problem that contributed to Tuesday’s irritation. These are wins and I’ll gladly take them.

Stray Toasters

• This weekend, I stumbled across the Wisconsin-Purdue basketball game and decided to watch it. About 1/3 of the way into the first half, Vanessa came in, sat down, asked what I was doing, and who I wanted to win the game. I explained that I wanted the Boilermakers to win and why – I went to school there. She was so surprised/excited by this, for some reason, she raced out of the room to tell Diana. Mission accomplished, she came back and watched most of the game. Enthusiastically cheering when Purdue scored, not-quite-booing when the Badgers scored. Diana came in for a fair portion of the second half. It was great. We might have to attend a local game and see if that holds their interest as much.
• Sometimes, working with  a view of the mountains and the airport’s take-off/approach path doesn’t totally suck.
  • Last week, I saw Southwest Airlines’ Maryland One landing. Sure, it’s not really a little slice of home, but it was close enough for me. It surprised me, though, as I didn’t know that SWA was still flying unique liveries like that. I’ll have to keep an eye out for others.
    

    picture (c) Smithsonian Institution

• Stan Lee – and other guests whom I wouldn’t mind seeing – was just announced as coming to Salt Lake Comic Con FanX in March…
• #AlwaysForward
• Everything really is awesome: The Daily LEGO Project finds the whimsy in everyday objects
• The Jackal
• I’m almost done with Dragonflight, the first book in the “Dragonriders of Pern” series. I’ve been enjoying it, despite a few questions I’m sure that almost any Pern-related wiki could answer… but I’m hoping that they play out in the story.
• 5%
• I can find music by Yoko Kanno and/or “a band called The Seatbelts” on Spotify, but neither of them are Cowboy Bebop-related, unfortunately.
• I might play with my trains a bit this evening…
• …there might even be whiskey involved.

.eof

Friday – 06 January 2017
Not that this really comes as a surprise to anyone, but I love my kids.

Taking over one of my coworker’s desk…

Last night, after nearly freezing to death in the arctic tundra snowblowing the driveway and sidewalks, I talked with Team DiVa about their day and school and if they had any homework. “Fine.” “Good.” “This friend…” “We read…” You get the idea.

As they were getting ready to do their reading – and it still kind of blows my mind at how well both of them are reading – Vanessa commented that she couldn’t find one of her homework sheets. Being kids and not always the most keen detectives, I asked her had she looked in a couple of places: her backpack, the living room, the dining room. She said that she had and still couldn’t find it.

::: face begins contorting into a mask of despair :::

I told her that I’d help her look, and I did. And, she was right: Nowhere to be found. For the sake of clarity on my part, I juxtaposed Vanessa’s homework sheets with Diana’s. Lo and behold, Vanessa was missing one. Well, damn.

* cue: “MY WORLD IS ENDING” crying jag *

I looked at the sheet in question and had a minor epiphany. I told Vanessa not to worry, we’d make sure that she had her homework. I took a couple pictures of Diana’s homework, then I headed downstairs. I fired up PhotoShop and imported the pictures, did some (rough and crude) edits to remove Diana’s answers, and printed the pages. Triumphant, I returned upstairs!

Vanessa looked at the sheets, looked up, and said – as only a kid could or would: “The sheets aren’t supposed to be purple!” (Because I didn’t worry about color-correcting the pictures, there was a bit of purple tint to one of the pages.) This, too, almost led to tears. Sara and I assured her that her teacher would still accept i – even if it was the “wrong” color – she just needed to do the work.

Begrudgingly, she accepted this answer and did her homework… but she still had doubts that we actually knew what we were talking about.

Kids. Go figure.

Thursday – 05 January 2017
Welcome to 2017 (five days after the fact…)! So far, my fingers have cooperated in correctly typing/writing “2017,” when writing the date.

Long story, short version: Christmas and New Year were good…

…even though I had to come in to work on the last day of my break to – literally – flip a switch. Twice.

At ridiculous o’clock on 02 Jan, I got a call from our NOC saying that they’d lost the heartbeat for our fax server. (Yes, fax. Yes, 21st Century. *shrug* Don’t ask me.) I said that I’d try to access it remotely… at a reasonable hour. After the sun was up. And the office was closed on the second, anyway.

Sometime later in the morning, I logged in and tried to access the server. No go, Flight. That meant that I had two courses of action:

1. Go in and reset it,
2. Let it swing until Tuesday morning.

The problem with Option 2 (which would have been my preference) was that our finance department actually receives invoices via fax. So… Option 1 it was. I somehow managed to convince Sara and Team DiVa to make an excursion out of it. (This turned out to be a “good” thing.)

Went to the office. Went into server room. Flipped switch. Flipped switch again. Left server room. Called the NOC to confirm that the alert had actually cleared. Got ready to leave.

Got the building lobby and realized I’d apparently left my house and car keys upstairs in the office. *sigh*  Fine. I asked Sara to get the girls in the car while I ran upstairs to retrieve them…

…only to find, once I’d gotten to my office’s elevator lobby, that I’d left my badge in the office, as well.

::: braincramp :::

Fortunately, there were a few people from our finance department in the office; one of them let me in. I went to my desk to get my badge and keys, only to find them suspisciously not… there…

*grblsnrkx*

Yep, I’d locked them – badge-locked, of course – in the server room. Resigned, I headed back downstairs. Fortunately, we’d taken Sara’s car and she had her keys – my car and the key to it were still at home.

Ridiculous, but it makes for a good “At least you didn’t…,” laugh-at-yourself kind of story.

Other than that, things have been kind of quiet. I’m good with that.

Oh, and it snowed last night. About four-ish inches in the valley. It made this morning’s commute “fun.” And by “fun,” I mean “slow and annoying.” On the plus side, it did make the air a little less chewy.

Stray Toasters

• By way of Mike (and supported by the Council for Better Driving): How America Got Addicted to Road Salt – And Why It’s Become a Problem
• After a fitful first attempt many years ago, I’m currently reading the Dragonriders of Pern series.
• #LifeInIT
• I’ve been on a bit of a Crüxshadows kick the past few days. This is not a complaint.
• SR-71s were made to go fast, right…?
  

  • 

    SR-71 “Blackbird” at Hill Aerospace Museum

• It looks as though The Magic School Bus will be returning to screens, via Netflix. Team DiVa will be happy to learn of this.
  • I might have known this at one point, but was recently reminded of it: Little Richard did the theme song for The Magic School Bus.
• Speaking of Team DiVa…
  

  #TeamDiVa2011, doing their best @originalfunko impressions. #Batgirl #WonderWoman #popfigures

  A photo posted by Rob (@shadorunr) on Jan 4, 2017 at 6:06pm PST

• moider
• Watch Justin Lin’s Live-Action ‘Jetsons‘-Inspired Commercial

And, that’s a wrap for now.

Namaste.