Random Access

Friday – 21 April 2017
Another week comes to an end.
And, apparently, it’s been a month since I dusted off the trusty blog. I really need to get better about this…

In short: It’s been a good – and eventful – month. The highlights of the month include, but are not limited to:

• Going on a business trip.
• Surprising my parents by showing up on their doorstep on the first leg of the trip.
• Meeting some new coworkers on the trip.
• Getting to visit with my uncle towards the end of the trip.
• Coming down with some travel-related bug that had me down for almost a week.
• The start of baseball season and the O’s getting off to a great start. Hopefully, they’ll keep some of this momentum through the season.
• Meeting a Twitter and Facebook friend.
• TRAINS!  Well, getting to head up to the train.. museum(?)… and one of my favorite train shops.
• Traveling to Boise to visit family and friends over Easter.
  

  Sara, Team DiVa, and Grandmother – Easter 2017

• Watching Team DiVa hunt for Easter eggs while we were gone and seeing their surprise at discovering that the Easter Bunny had apparently left Easter baskets for them at our home while we were out of town.

I’m sure that I’m leaving more than “a couple” things out, but all-in-all, it really has been a good month.

Stray Toasters

• Free Posters Celebrating Mighty Women in Science
• The Cult of Ignorance in the United States: Anti-intellectualism and the “dumbing down” of America
• 11 Stereotypical Roles Offered to Black Men in Hollywood
• I’ve been doing (almost) daily coffee pictures on my Instagram feed for the past few months. Friday, I posted this picture:
  

  Fearless Defenders

  which was 100% inspired by the cover of The Fearless Defenders #1:
  

  

  Fearless Defenders Vol. 1 #1 (c) Marvel Comics

  I don’t think that I can really claim not to be a comics/action figure geek – as if that was possible – but I was rather pleased with how it turned out.

• Have An Airline Complaint? Don’t Call the Airline – Tell the Department of Transportation
  • Airline Quality Rating
• The Incomparable Difference Between Whitewashing and Racebending
• These Rare Color Photos from the Second World War Are Incredible
• 13 Things LEGO Bricks Taught Us About Life
• The KKK and Baseball History

And with that…

So Long, Farewell, Goodbye.
(Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, not “The Sound of Music”)

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.

Friday – 17 June 2016

Last night, while running some errands, I picked up a couple of “squishy balls” for #TeamDiVa2016.

Balls, spikes and all…

The girls “found” them in the car this morning, on the way to school. Apparently, they named them on the way to school:

• Vanessa named hers (purple) “Fluffy,”
• Diana named hers “Fluffy Puffy.”

As you might imagine, the names have gone through a number of permutations since this morning.

Kids. Go figure.

Saturday – 05 March 2016
I like sleeping in as much as the next guy. Being the father of twin four-year-olds, however, opportunities to do so is rare. (Granted, I can often extend some weekend sleeping by letting Team DiVa play Starfall or color on the iPad for 30 or so minutes…) This morning, I slept in until 10:30. It was glorious. It was also very necessary.

Yesterday, I was up at 7:30, worked all day, went to rehearsal, and came home… only to get a call from our monitoring company, saying that a system wasn’t allowing users to access shares and files. I wound up having to go back to the office at 11:45 PM. I didn’t get home until almost 3 AM. By the time I got home, I was completely drained.

The drawback to sleeping in was that I lost a couple hours of my day. At this point, I’m considering that a necessary evil. On the plus side, I was awakened by little girls who wanted me to take them outside to play. If you need a reason to get up and start the day, that’s a pretty damned good one, I’d say.

I got up, had a quick bite to eat, grabbed a shower, and took the ladies outside. They “chopped down trees” with axes (curved branches that had fallen off the corkscrew willow). They played on their balance beams. They put up an obstacle course with cones. And, they “climbed” trees… with a little help.

Learning to climb trees

This picture was taken a week or so ago, but you get the gist. The sheer joy they had from “climbing” in the trees made getting out of bed worthwhile.

Namaste.

Thursday – 11 February 2016
Today was supposed to be #NoBadNewsThursday. It started that way. About a hour-and-a-half into it, however… not so much. One of the servers at work decided to try a new trick:

• It was powered on.
• It could see – and transmit to – the network.
• NOTHING on the network could see it or any of the traffic it generated.

And, to make things even more interesting: This was tied to a production (as in “manufacturing”) system. So, it was “kind of” important.

To quote Dr. Sam Beckett: “Oh, boy…”

I – and a couple of network engineers – troubleshot it for about an hour before we came to the inescapable conclusion that it was not a network problem. Digging into things a little further, I saw that it was pending a reboot. That didn’t solve things. Next up: Check its updates queue. There were a few sitting there that needed to be run. So I let ’em fly. Reboot 2: Electric Boogaloo. Nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. It started rolling back the updates. (That’s usually not a good sign.) I checked update error messages when it came back up and saw that they failed because the hard disk was full. As in “Zero. Bytes. Free.” There was a good bit of cursing on my part, to be honest. Then it was a dive into the storage array and VM systems to make space appear. Then present it to the server. That all worked. Then I tried the updates again. Lo and behold, they all went through with no problems. (There may or may not have been a few “Amens” and “Thank yous” that went up at this point.) And, almost automagically, networking traffic all worked again. I verified with one of the network guys and an end user that all was right with the world again… and it was. Selah.

Part of getting through the day included being taken to lunch by networking vendors. It was not only a good change of pace, but it brought my day back from the Precipice of Doom.

After work, I picked up Team DiVa from daycare. Home. Dinner and dessert. They even got in almost 20 minutes of Disney Infinity playtime before it was time to start bedtime prep. Selah.

Carve Away the Stone
I’ve made halting steps at getting back to the gym. Last night, I considered going… then I opted out, because it was damned cold outside. I did, however, still manage to get in a bit of a workout, courtesy of my dumbbells, Swiss ball, and a couple of suggestions from YouTube. Was it quite the same workout I would have gotten at the gym, no. But, I wasn’t just sitting on my duff doing nothing, either. I’ll call that a win.

Stray Toasters

• Every so often, Heaven, by Live works its way into my head. I have to say that it pretty accurately sums up how I feel about these two little ladies: 
  Here’s the second official video… and here’s Ed Kowalczyk doing an acoustic version, as well.
• In “WTF News” from the Land Behind the Zion Curtain: All-male panel in Utah votes to keep sales tax on tampons
  There are so many things wrong with that headline…
• Copyright trolls who claimed to own “Happy Birthday” to pay $14M to their “customers”
• Can you see these freaky dot patterns?
• In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the final trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice
• The History of Marvel’s No-Prize
• I enjoyed The LEGO Movie (as did most people on the planet). It’s common knowledge that I’m a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes. So, it kind of goes without saying that I’m “most likely” going to wind up watching the next LEGO DC movie that comes out (in a couple weeks), Justice League: Cosmic Clash, as the LSH founders are making an appearance.

Alright, that’s it for now. I think I’m going to catch up on a show or two before calling it a night.

Namaste.

Monday – 18 January 2016
Today 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.

The venue where I have normally done volunteer work is closed today, so I’m spending it with Sara and Team DiVa, talking with the girls about Dr. King and his work. Some of the ideas and concepts are a bit broad for four-year-old comprehension, but we do the best we can to break it down. We also found a great book that helps explain Dr. King and his mission, in language that kids can easily digest: I am Martin Luther King, Jr. (Ordinary People Can Change the World). I can’t recommend this enough if you are looking for a way to introduce your young children to Dr. King.

Sara and I are also taking some time to go through our things and set aside items for donation – service to our community.

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.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Namaste.

Tuesday – 10 November 2015
Sunday evening, as we were heading home from dinner with Sara’s parents, Vanessa started coughing. Well, “coughing” may be a bit of an exaggeration. It was more of a “cough-like throat-clearing,” but she’s been doing it for a few days.

I said to her: “Vanessa, can you stop coughing…?”

Without missing a beat, she replied: “I can’t control my coughs, like Elsa can’t control her ice magic.”

Not only did my four-year-old daughter shoot me down, but she did it with a perfectly apt analogy.

Sara and I are either totally winning at this whole parenting thing… or we’re in a whole lot of trouble.

Tuesday – 08 September 2015
Today is the fourth birthday of the “Va” of Team DiVa!

The Birthday Girl

Happy birthday, Cupcake!

Monday – 07 September 2015
Today is Labor Day – and I labored far longer than I had planned today – but, more importantly…

Today is the fourth birthday of the “Di” of Team DiVa!

The Birthday Girl

Happy birthday, Little Bean!

Tuesday – 25 August 2015
Today is my “Monday,” due to staying home with a sick little girl (and a non-sick one) yesterday. I thought that I might be able to squeeze in a bit of work, but opted to just hang out with them. And, in my humble opinion, that was the best call. We had a fun day. And, last night, we assembled a play castle for them.

Over the weekend, we also took them on their first visits to a trampoline park (for a friend’s birthday) and to the “planet museum,” as they have taken to calling the Clark Planetarium. Both were fairly big hits, although Vanessa was definitely not a fan of the “motion” in the movie – Perfect Little Planet – in the planetarium dome. To be fair, I don’t suffer from motion sickness, but I could easily understand how someone could succumb to it while watching that film.

Stray Toasters

• The Ravens lost to the Eagles this past weekend. At least it’s still pre-season…
• Disney Infinity 3.0 drops this coming Sunday.
• Last year, Amtrak announced their “Amtrak Residency” program. Marco Werman, host of PRI’s The World, was one of the writers who was chosen to take part in the project. Here is his write-up of the experience.
  • I just noticed that Fables writer, Bill Willingham, was also chosen to participate – this is his tale.
• An Atheist and a Mormon Debate What Does It Mean To Have Faith

Namaste.

Thursday – 18 June 2015
Today is #NBNThursday, but it is also my sister-in-law, Melissa’s, birthday!

And, I just found out that she’s coming to town and will be joining us for this year’s Run Through the Lavender 5k. Win-Win. She’s a bit of a runner, so she’s going to make the rest of us look bad not as good. I think I can live with that.

Workout
I really didn’t want to go to the gym this morning. Then I remembered that it was a leg day. #neverskipalegday. So, off I went. At first, I wasn’t going to do the elliptical, but decided to get five minutes on it, to get a little cardio. Then I found that the smith racks were all in use, so there went my squats – I would rather have a spotter if I was going to attempt squats with free weights. Today’s routine:

• Leg Press: 3 x 8 x 120 lbs
• Leg Press: 3 x 8 x 100 lbs
• Leg Extensions: 3 x 8 x 80 lbs
• Leg Curls: 3 x 8 x 80 lbs
• Calf Raises: 3 x 8 x 120 lbs
• Calf Raises: 3 x 8 x 100 lbs

Stray Toasters

• I think that “threenager” is my favorite Sara-ism for describing Team DiVa.
• If you have the opportunity to pick up a copy of Long Distance, by Thom Zahler, do it.
• Tuesday night, I went to screenings of some of the short films made for this year’s 48 Hour Film Project, including the one I was in: Dr. Bill’s Discount Sychaiatry. (“Yes,” the misspelling is intentional.)
  

  Some members of the cast and crew of Dr. Bill’s Discount Sychaiatry

• By way of Coworker Brad: The History of the Carlton Dance As Told By The Legend Himself, Alfonso Ribeiro
• I love the sheer joy of this little girl while flying with her father: First Aerobatic Flight Lea
• I had an epiphany last night: I could move the girls’ videos off my iPad and onto theirs.
  Why it took me so long to realize that, I have no idea.

Namaste.