Monthly Archives: February 2011

What do you do?

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“What do you do?” asked the fern of the gear.

“I spin.  In spinning, I turn others,” answered the gear.  “What do you do?”

“I drink in the sunlight from the sky and the water from the earth.  I change the light into energy and the dirt into food.  I spread over vast fields, and penetrate deep forests.  I feed some animals, and when I die, I will return nourishment to the earth for those that will come after.”  The fern stood tall, pride showing.

The gear thought as it spun.  “Sounds complicated.”

“It is miraculous!  I am a product of untold changes over untold years.  I will pass that on to those that come after, who will also change, becoming perfect for the world in which they live.”  The fern shook its leaves, thrilled with its perfection.

The gear thought again for a time.  “I came from a factory.  There are many others, exactly like me.  We spin, and in spinning, turn each other.”  It thought again as it spun.  “I perform the task for which I was designed.”

The wind blew through the fern’s leaves, tickling them.  “Hee!”

The gear spun, and in spinning, turned others.

She calls it Nikki Love Day

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My wife is not a fan of Valentine’s Day, saint or no saint.  She is, however, a HUGE proponent of showing people that she loves them.  I woke up to the bright pink sock monkey over there, as well as the card.  The kids got sock monkeys, too.  Even though my wife thinks they’re creepy, she practically bathed in the smiles that the stuffed buggars brought to our faces.

And yes, I’m proud of still having enough of a kid in me to be overjoyed by the gift of a stuffed animal.  I mean, seriously.  SOCK MONKEY!  How can you NOT be thrilled?

WARNING: Here there be geek!

She also got me this, which I am enjoying immensely.  While I do dig mice, trackballs need no extra space in which to move around.  It is very comfortable, and my wrist has been thanking me.  I don’t even have to bring up how cool the lack of ridiculous dongle is.

I’ve been talking a lot about Windows Home Server.  It doesn’t dig actual server hardware, which I find odd.  It does run just find on a broken-down old laptop with no battery, connected to a 1TB USB HD.  It takes its time during the initial backup, but does what it’s supposed to do.  It also, after some driver trickery, reliably serves print jobs to an aged color inkjet printer.

Compared with getting a Linux server up and doing the same thing reliably, this has been painless.  Now, if my Windows vs. Linux maxim holds true, I will see problems later on.  In my experience, either operating system presents battles.  With Linux, all of the swearing and hair-pulling comes at the beginning, when you’re trying to get it to do what you want it to do.  With Windows, it comes later, as errors and problems creep into the software.  In any case, Home Server’s mechanism for adding the USB hard drive to its data store took two or three whole clicks.  Just awesome.

It feels good to know that all three PCs in the house are backed up in case of hard drive failure.  Because, you know, that NEVER happens.

END GEEKERY

I feel that there is more to say, but I don’t seem to have the words.

The Saga of Stuck

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The total number of cars that have gotten stuck in the snow on my street in the last 24 hours is bordering on ridiculous.

We’re a dead-end residential street which is less than a block long, so we don’t get much attention from the plows.  When the big storm hit last week, we were snowed in for three days, because we simply couldn’t get our cars out of our driveway, let alone down to the (plowed, salted) cross-street.  Once the plowing was done, there were still several layers of compacted snow and ice left behind from the earlier snowfalls, melts, ice storms, etc.

So, as time went on, that snow and ice and slush got churned up, slowly making our road nearly impassible all over again.  This culminated yesterday.  A small car got stuck in our driveway while trying to turn around.  By the time I noticed, it was rocking itself out of being stuck, which was good.  Later on in the evening, a car got stuck badly enough that a local police officer stopped to render aid.  Eventually, the vehicle was released from its snowy prison.  Then the police car tried to use the driveway of an empty house to turn around.

That police car was stuck for about two hours.  Half of the neighborhood was out there trying to get it free.  Eventually, they decided to get a tow.  I mean, even in winter in Michigan, tow service is lickety-split for the police.  So, what does the semi-size flat-bed tow truck do when it tries to turn around in our driveway to get a better angle to free the cop car?

That’s right, it got stuck.  Apparently, the snowbank created by my shoveling and by the one plowing was too much even for this monster of a truck.  It was a half an hour of tow truck rocking before we noticed that the flashing lights of both the tow truck and the police car were gone.  So, what happens when both a police car and the tow truck sent to free that police car get stuck in a residential dead-end street?

It gets plowed.  Again.  In the middle of the night.

My wife was able to get the van out and over the mini-snowbank created by the plowing, and she only left a few pieces of plastic behind.  Our neighbor’s Honda was not quite so lucky.  (We have a shared driveway with our next-door neighbor.)  So, bright and early, (for a second-shifter) we were pushing and shoveling once again.  So, to sum up, since yesterday afternoon:

  1. Saturn-ish small car, stuck in my driveway
  2. Nameless sedan, stuck across the street
  3. Police car, sent to rescue nameless sedan, stuck halfway in driveway across the street.
  4. Tow truck, sent to rescue police car, stuck halfway in my driveway
  5. Next-door neighbor, stuck in my driveway

As a final note, freeing cars is as much exercise as straight-up shoveling.  Who needs a gym when you’ve got winter?

Advice from a Michigander

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Blizzard, Take 2I cannot tell you how inspired I get when I listen to the Flobots.  Whether it’s on 88.9 the Impact or on Pandora, every track I hear makes my chest fill up with hope and confidence in my ability to change the world.  This feeling, this is essential.

We’re getting hit with a second round of severe snowstorms.  I didn’t even think about the weather as I left Lansing, because while the clouds were low and dark, there wasn’t a hint of snow.  I made really good time in my commute, until halfway there, when I hit a wall of snow.  I made it just after my start time, thanks to several stretches of 25-mph travel as I-96 and I-696 parted ways.  I’m just hoping that the salt (non-salt?) trucks don’t run out.

I don’t think that I’ve gotten around to sharing my good news in my little bloggy corner of the intertubes.  As you know, Bob, my wife is pregnant.  There’s been a parasite in there sapping her energy and destroying her appetite (one-two punch!) and, recently, kicking her square in her bladder.  And, now we know what gender the little bladder-destroyer is.  I’m going to have a daughter!  This, apparently, explains how different this pregnancy has been from the boys’ hormone-induced trips through candyland.

Any tips on how to best improve my sword and/or warhammer collection in the next twelve to fourteen years for maximum date intimidation factor are more than welcome.  >:)

I’m back to reading about The Boy (he HAS a name, you know!) in Eyri, whenever I get a few spare minutes to rub together.  I’ve rated and reviewed the new Dark Tower graphic novels over at GoodReads, and they were well worth the read.  By the way, so is The Magic of Eryi.  I plan on doing a full review once I’ve finished.

In geek news, I’m starting to think that attempting to install Windows Server Home Edition on actual server hardware might not be the best route.  On the flip side, the quick restore CDs for Hunter’s PC have been shipped.  I’ve got my fingers crossed, as there is some small doubt about whether or not they’ll like or reject the PC’s BIOS entries.  Two slightly different models of that machine, one with a v, and one without.  So, like I said, my nerd-Dad fingers are crossed.

Today, I leave you with some advice from a Michigander:

Don’t drive like an idiot.  I don’t want to end up in a ditch.