half a cat

Indeed it is! What stink am I talking about ? It’d be the cigarette smoke, stale beer, motorcycle exhaust, fried food and a good dose of the sticky-icky. With the wonderful wife safely on her way to Oh! Canada, I ventured out for some good old fashioned male bonding.

JW & I hit up the Herkimer for some vittles and a little pre-gaming of adult beverages. The food was quite good, but an appetizer would have helped to fill us up - portion sizes are not obscene and thankfully normal. Who knew! They’ve also got a great selection of German style in-house brewed beers. I can’t remember ever seeing local Kolsch or Alt Bier on tap anywhere. Very nice. The night starts getting interesting when the dude next to JW just waves hello and starts talking to us - not rude or anything, but the guy was a little off. Thankfully JW was in a mood to chat with the guy, or I’d have just been an arse and ignored him. Sometimes you just want to enjoy your beer without the extra mental anguish of having a conversation. (Women take note….) Hrm - perhaps there is some subtle body language or mental telepathy that allows men to sit around drinking and watching a baseball game to communicate without actually speaking. Perhaps we are somehow gifted after all.

From there we headed to the planned destination(s) for the night - Whiskey Junction & The Cabooze. I’ve always wanted to head down there - it is supposedly one of the better biker bars in the area. It is, but oh so much more! The bars are on opposite ends of the block with nice large harley parking lot and open-outdoor-air-but-tented-roof bar, grill and tons of picnic tables. The outdoor area joins up with a bar called The Joint and The Cabooze. It was really cool just hanging out at a picnic table - drinking, telling lies and the mutual pauses in the conversation to appreciate the sound of Harleys rolling in and out. One nice thing about riding a Harley, I can get to the bar and park directly in front.

The Whiskey was fairly dead - they had a pretty good blues band playing and several pool tables. I’ve lost that lovin’ feeling when it comes to shooting pool, hopefully more trips to bars will cure that. It will be rough, but I think in the end it will pay off.

The Cabooze… well that is where things get interesting. JW & I headed over there once Jason and his buddy arrived - thankfully sparing us from playing another unfortunate game of pool only to find those guys at the pool tables in the Cabooze… I’ve never really seen a trendy kinda hippy bar next to a biker bar. One would think you’d get some broken and battered hippies out of that - but all was well. Maybe it was too cold (50F) for hippy pounding ? Cabooze is a pretty cool place - hugely cavernous inside with a triple tiered bar-slash-table setup so that drinking and watching the bands can be done from the safety of a bar stool. In the back by the pool tables there is a room with a locked door and marked “Private Party”. I’m sure it was private but there was less traffic to the bathrooms. It might have something to do with the pungent aroma of that certain something - good lord it was ridiculous. Perhaps that explained our desire to get cheese burgers, tater-tots (tots !!!) and tubed meat in a bun at 1am.

And really, no night is complete without watching someone boot. They have nice large garbage cans near the bathrooms. These are the industrial strength grey ones with handles - you know, to give you something to really hang onto while barfing up $40 of booze. The bouncers were pretty cool about it - just wanted to make sure the dudes buddies got him home, I think they even called a cab for them, the poor bugger Hippies are nice.

Well, one nice cool-ish ride home and I collapsed into bed, doggies grateful to be inside. I slept like the dead until ~10 am and now my underwear clad self is contemplating leaving the sanctuary of the sofa and my blankie for food and maybe even a shower. One must prepare for a full day of football and Nascar T.V watching properly.

I was sitting at the kitchen counter the other day poking away on the InterTubes when I got an ear scratch. So I dug in there with Mr Finger and gave it what-fer. As I was withdrawing said digit, I felt something like a hair or string — not an unusual sensation when you live with 2 dogs and a wife. It didn’t come off. No, it wasn’t glued there by some evildoer as a joke. No, it wasn’t just me needing a haircut. It was attached - alive if you will. Yes folks, I had long ear hair.

SONOFABITCH!

A quick trot to the bathroom to examine the situation left me screeching and humbled. I not only had one long ear hair — and not the feathery crap you get on the outside. No sir, this was a full out infestation of 2 inch hairs growing out of my ear canal. Correction, both ears. Thankfully I’ve got my 42-in-1 electric hair shortening kit nearby and fully charged, so removal wasn’t a problem.

Now, I’m convinced I’m not old enough to be experiencing this sick twist of nature just yet, so I’m on the hunt for some sort of environmental trigger that is causing this mutant growth. It can’t be beer, no - God isn’t that mean; maybe it is the lack of coffee - I’ve recently tried to move away from it & to the weaker-on-the-speed scale soda; Damnit, I’m stumped. Life is a cruel cruel mistress.

I know — I’ve not posted in a while. You’ll have to deal!

Anyways — just wanted to show off the evidence we actually got married in the Caribbean:

The Mrs has good details here. I’ll be uploading more photos soon too.

Update: Click the photo for the rest. We’ll add more as we get them from Mom & Aud.

If you can handle a tapeworm story, venture within. No, not mine.

I shall henceforth not be eating steak tartar ever. EVAR.

I’ve managed to update some long lingering photos:

• The Summer 2006 Huber Wedding

• New Garage & Brewing

• D.C 2006 Trip

Hrm — perhaps a few quickies as well

• Turkey Day was a 3h drive “Up Nort” to one of Moms sisters’ places — very nice spread and a great meal. Marinated wild turkey…mmm! That is a long drive for a meal though…
• Long weekend - so nice. I’m refusing to even turn the work laptop on. This is driving me a bit nutty, but I’m dealing with the withdrawl symptoms nicely.
• In Vino Veritas: Gotta get the Cab/Merlot bottled this weekend — by next Oct with 10 months in the bottle, it should be damn good.
• Lots of good news on the Cray front. This is a huge validating win for us and really should help move Cray back to the front of the pack, if not breaking away from the peloton someday entirely, for real HPC offerings. Wankers with your “clusters” need not apply. By-the-way, anything below a 30TFLOP system now immediately registers as “small” with me — I know, a bit snobbish — deal with it.
• The year of road trips starts in under 30 days. Oy. We are driving back to MT with the dogs for Christmas — I’m praying for a smooth trip both ways. If all goes well with the dogs, we’ll be repeating this trip 4 times next year — 3 weddings and then Christmas. If all does not go well, we’ll be repeating the trip with the addition of drugs for the dogs. Modern pharmacology is not without its benefits.
• Boston - I’ll be there Saturday May 26th through early morning Tuesday June 2 for the Liza’s wedding - I’d love to catch up with a certain Herr Schwan & McDonald provided they can be troubled to drink beer.
• The Violator: Just go watch. This, Ladies & Gentlemen, is my future brother-in-law. I couldn’t be happier.

And how!

So — for those of you dying to know what I desire for the upcoming holiday gift giving season — I’ve decided to take pity on you and offer up some suggestions. Stray from the list and you get into the “it is the thought that counts” territory, to which I will respond “perhaps you should think harder next time”. Happy Holidays!

• Flanel pants or scrubs; size large
• Fleece jacket - columbia or north face style; size large
• Long sleeved button down shirts - 17×35 or size large;
• Caribou Coffee
• Cookbooks!
  • Mario Batalli
  • Rachael Ray - shup, they are quick meals!
  • Greek Food — Cat Cora ?
• The previously mentioned 0,5L german (Rastal is a good glassmaker…) beer glasses
• Magazine subscriptions
  • Popular Mechanics
  • Economist
  • Weekend Wall Street Journal (really a newspaper, but hey)
• slippers — the kind with good soles
• jeans - 34×34, but play nice with my pride and go for straight legs — nobody likes a male camel toe.
• Gift certificates to northern brewer for beer stuff.

That was the best t-shirt seen in the recent trip to Philadelphia.

So - wedding updates for the abnormally nosy or just plain voyeuristic:

• Location: Leaning towards the old Depot at Oscar’s in Billings — sight unseen yet, but it sounds neat.
• 2nd Best Man (As I’m the one doing the marrying, I should be the Best man) : Kris
• Groomsman ..mmm, gonna have to come up with a different title there, that sounds like they should be making a horse pretty. Not that I mind that comparison. Marcus,
• Master of Ceremonies: Lou Becht. Seriously — is there anyone better for the job ?
• Date : Oct 6 2007. Wow. I have a wedding date.

So — what else has been going on ? Work. Then some work, and a bit more work, I took a poop, showered, slept a bit, then a ton more work. I might have done some more work in there somewhere. Oh yeah — then there was that one day that I worked a lot. Then I mowed the lawn — cause lawn’s don’t talk

I’ve been working on a “Lustre issue” at Sandia - nights, days, and weekends for ~3 weeks now. This is right after the 2 weeks of Army fun and 3 weeks of ORNL fun. Results: ORNL upgraded to the largest open science in the U.S., narrow-cased the Army with one of the other engineers on the File System team here at Cray, and Sandia’s issue #1 fixed and issue #2 being worked way below Lustre. There are a lot of folks who I should thank for either showing me more about Lustre or helping me work out other interactions and issues with the XT3. I’ve already done so personally, so I will protect the innocent here.

BTW - I saw an IOR perform writes at 34 GB/s on Lustre. Holy @#$@#! For the supercomputer illiterate - that is like throwing 8 DVDs across the room every second. Yeah, we got some mother@#$ing performance on a mother@#$ing supercomputer.

Oh yeah, and one very exhausted and burnt out Nic. I’ve gotten some very nice emails from mid to senior level managers about my work, and the freedom to take the time I need to “work from home” and regroup. Have I mentioned how much I love working for Cray ? I have been really working hard to make sure I am making the most of this opportunity. I really am starting to feel like I can move more and more into being a real “developer” on Lustre and I think I can move into a technically senior position in a few short years.

Well — I’m going to have another beer and pass out. I think tomorrow is clean the office, sleep and make beer day. Maybe I’ll mow the backyard too. Anything could happen!

I’m making salsa. I’ve finally gotten enough produce out of the garden to move forward on this. I’ve got regular tomatoes, roma tomatoes, bell peppers and jalapenos. I’m going for a fake Pace picante type thick salsa — chunky and scoopable. I hate watery salsa. Haaate.

The recipe:

• 1 15 oz can of Crushed Tomatoes or Tomato Sause (jury still out on which is better)
• 15 oz of water
• 2 medium tomatoes, cored & diced
• 3 medium jalapenos, seeds removed & small diced ( this is mild, more for hotter )
• 1 onion, small chop
• 1/3 cup vinegar (100% needed for canning)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 bunch cilantro, leaves finely chopped
• 1/2 lime juiced - fresh only!
• salt to taste (1 tbsp or so)

Optional:

• 1 15oz can sweet corn (drained)
• 1 15oz can frijoles negros (drained)

Mix everything but the cilantro and lime into a 4 qt sauce pan or larger (it’s going to boil). Add at least 1.5 tsp salt now. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 35-45 minutes or until thick. After 30 min, taste and add salt if necessary. While still hot, add chopped cilantro and lime juice. Stir together.

Canning - yes we are going to actually can this. It can then safely sit in the pantry or be given to folks as gifts.

Equipement needed:

• Large kettle with lid. 20qts or so — the best would be the blue enamel ones.
• Jar carrier or perforated vegetable steamer
• 2-4 wide mouthed pint jars - depending on optional ingredients used.
• Lids & rings for jars.

Heat water to ~180F and soak lids and rings - be careful to make sure they stay separated.

Fill kettle ~1/2 - enough that when jars are submerged, water is pretty close to covering the tops, if not over them. Bring kettle to boil - this will take at least 20 min.

While the salsa is simmering, wash wide mouth pint jars, dry.

When salsa is done (let it cool for a bit to make sure it tastes o.k) - funnel into jars, leaving 1/2″ space at the top. Wipe jars with damp paper towel to make sure the lip is clean. Seat lids and tighten rings until finger tight.

When water is just starting to boil, submerge jars - making sure to top off with more boiling water until the jars are submerged. Add the water at the sides of the kettle, do NOT pour directly on the jars. Boil for 20min, take jars out with jar clamp or heat proof rubber tongs and set on towel to dry. You should hear the jars “pop” as they cool — that means a good seal.

There you go — nothing special, but should be somewhat close to Pace (yes, New York City). I’m no great salsa officianado, I just wanted fresh homemade stuff that is healthy. Something easy to do, yet rewarding — a gift for family members.

Someone already mentioned the event — but I’ve risen from the ashes to confirm it: I’m gettin’ hitched. Yup. Me. Yessir - married. No, you go ahead and take a few minutes to let that sink in. Oh the ring — sure right over here.

Now then - hi I’ll spare the details of the proposal, ring, etc - Portana has done a much better job of that stuff. Besides — my job is just to puff out my chest and smile. I do want to reafirm just how lucky I am — I found a girl that can put up with me and who I have fun with everyday. We actually get along riduculously well - some have referred to us as “book ends” - the irony that we are both a bit dorky right there on the surface. It is quite blissful to think I have found that person who will tolerate me for eternity whilst plotting my slow and eventual death behind my back with my family - every guy should be so fortunate!

The phrases “I’m engaged”, “I’m getting married”, and “my fiance” are becoming more comfortable - but they don’t warn you that after you ask the Big Question that you change how you talk. Little things… It is kinda amusing talking to my two groups of friends - the Montana folks that are almost all married already, some with kids; and the folks from Penn - just starting or finishing the Ph.D, only one of which I know is engaged. You can imagine that some are “great, about time!” and others are “holy @#$@, whaaaa?” This should be a good bachelor party. Blantant hinting: I remember some drunken Lumberjack games (no not the “I’m a lumberjack and that’s O.K” song type…), and some glowstick frisbee for one; I’m thinking along the same lines. Note to those not from MT - you can use a shotgun to “chop” down a tree, but make sure to attack a tree of appropriate size - otherwise you end up with 2 boxes of shells, a sore shoulder, and a tree that is oozing and dripping sap on your tent because you forgot to move very far away before trying this.

Oh, you want to know when ? So far — and this data is a bit TBD — we are thinking early October 2007. Super simple, yet elegant. Lou will be officiating a Quakerish ceremony in a barn type structure, food along the lines of a pig roast and free booze. I think we are going more for a relaxing country wedding type event — without the dirt & hot wind Then again — this is all subject to change.

If 2007 sounds like a familiar year for weddings, put down your electronical information organization device. The ones I know of are: Sister #1 (ranked in age, not favoritism - I swear!) is early June 2007, Sister #2 (ok, yeah I like the other one more - j/k) is August 2007, Liza is the same weekend as Sister #1, A cousin here in the TC is late June 2007. It is official — I’m starting to get to that age where all you do every summer for 5 years is attend weddings.

I’m sure more will be said on this as we get the event actually finalized and planned, but for now I’m going to go bask in the glory of being engaged!

This is almost the perfect weekend — almost because the weather is doing a nice job of being crappy. I tink it has been in the 60s and overcast all weekend. The bonus to this of course is a lot of time spent testing the finer points of Quantum mechanics - specifically that of whether two materials ever actually touch. In this plane of existence I’m speaking of my ass and the sofa. The evidence is not quite conclusive, but the dents in the cushions seem to indicate that I have a significant electron cloud which is impacting the atom spacing in said cushions. That is the beautiful thing about Heisenberg’s principle. I know exactly where I am but no idea of where I’m going. Or do I Shrodinger the whole mess and only really know which atoms are my ass and which are from the sofa by observing the separation ? Wouldn’t that be a kick — if one could somehow take electron energy transfer from the sofa to become more energetic? Hrm — it seems that may already happen in reverse, given the propensity for sofas and napping. Is my sofa going to spontaneously combust some day from the absobtion of so much energy ?

Anyhooo…. Most of the weekend has been spent watching World Cup games. I’m not planning on watching all of them - Tivo only has instructions to record the England, U.S, and Spain games. I may have to alter that if any of them go tits-up before the elimination round. I have had two consecutive mornings of coffee, sofa, blanket and el World Cupo. Currently Mexico is trying to convince Iran to bring their “war faces” next time. I’m hoping to see one of my 3 teams make it far enough to get me interested in the final games. I do find myself really wishing I had HD TV at this point - but only with a HD Tivo. Soon, but must pay off other bills and purchase a house.

Speaking of said house…it is looking like time to re-evaluate the finances and determine exactly how much of my income I really want to spend on a house payment. From the initial look at the current rates of exspenditure, I won’t be able to afford a house that I really like. Boogers. I’d really really like to get a nicer house because I don’t fancy myself moving in the next 10 years again unless something really strange happens. Yes, I like my new job that much

Speaking of said job (and here starteth the rantingseth) - I’m starting to get a bit miffed at the old job, where I started to think that I wasn’t bright enough or skilled enough to do actual Lustre hacking — network, kernel, disk layer, super-complex distributed networking programming. Yes, I’m not going to design the next great filesystem, but I really am starting to think that I can make a pretty good swipe at debugging and understanding the code base. Time will tell It just pisses me off that someone or worse yet — myself — convinced me that there were limits to my skills in this area without actually exploring them.

Ok - the old elbow is starting to kill me here from some retarded furniture re-arranging last night. Just a final note to those Right Coasters - I’ll be in Philly Jun 30th, July 3rd-4th and in D.C July 1st-3rd. Be there or get sprung.

Cheers!