half a cat

Fug….fug….FUG. What a day, hell what a week. Work has been sucking a bit of the life out of me this week — just stressful issues with testing and such. Kinda one of those weeks where you look at what you got done on Friday and say “gee, that almost is visible”. I think there should be a large mark on my forehead by now too from all the of the head-against-wall whacking.

But I digress… TGIF! So — it has snowed every day this week. Snow makes me a happy man. I’ve got a fireplace, a dog, a canoodling gf and ample quanities of food & booze. It is gonna be a good night I’m looking forward to a nice slow-brained evening, possibly getting hammered flat. I could do it, I swear. This weekend is looking up - I’m on the hunt in the house here for my Christmas Tree decorations…I’m really hoping I got those in the move. If I find those, gotta get a tree — something about that smell. You people with your fake trees and fake holidays — BAH!

The “group of us” is heading up to RockDodge town for a night of drinking in a small town. Why? Someone needed to burn a gift certificate to a hotel up there…and the rest of us are going too. Not staying in the same room though, I don’t like anyone that much There has been promise of snowshoeing on Sat, and I’m sure I will freeze, fall over, get snow in very unfortunate places and have a generally fantastic time.

Well — here is to you and your weekend, now get the fug out of my way, I’ve got time to waste!

Greetings — it is alive again! I took a break like so many other people have as of late. It must be the late-summer-taking-vacation-blues. The last week and a half have been a cornucopia of things happening - Harley trips, work fun, family happenings, partying, friends visiting from out of town, and the odd things that life brings up. So in true lazy git fashion, I bring you the bullets!

• Lou! Awesome visit. It was fantastic to reconnect with college memories and stories again. It turns out we had a ton of fun in college…I thought so! Playing golf was fun and I don’t mind losing by 40 strokes when I play the best game of my life. Yes I can count those on my toes, but I only lost 5 balls this time! New record — it sure beats having to buy and entire box to go out. BTW - did you yack up the pizza too? I soiled some poor peoples’ gutter while out walking the dog. It turns out that barfing up pizza looks the same now as it did in college — remember that one? Thankfully this time the cheese did not hang on the chainlink fence… Note to the masses: never, ever, ever beer bong a Yuengling after you just bong’d (new verb?) half of a box of wine. Note to self: you really are an idiot.

• Portana! Great ride to the Bozo, despite the coldest temps of the summer. It is amazing what leather will do as a functional piece, not to mention that whole wearing-leather-feeling-sexy-thing. It was the first trip I’ve actually felt like a Harley “road-dog” — you know the folks all leatherd up with copious amounts of baggage tied down with bungee cords. I’m soo looking forward to many more of those trips, especially to Sturgis, Jellystone, or some romantic get away. Your friends were a kick, but I think we agree on how life and its paths are funny like that. Too bad the Jellystone trip had to be junked, but 9h to Denver is looking to be a LONG day. As always, you steal my heart without meaning to!

• Liza! Nice job in Turkey — you have no idea how proud some of us are of you. It seems like only yesterday we were drinking at the ‘Dog every Thurs or traveling to Ohio to watch you kick heads. Congrats! I’m going to post a few photos, just cause you are that cool!

  • 

• Pooperbook: finally into the shop. Yay! It turns out the harddrive was standing on the edge and needed to be replaced. Booo! Hopefully (and I say this with finger, toes and testicles crossed) it is the fix that was needed, cause that whole crashy-crash thing is getting to be boolsheet.

• On vacation. In the last 2 weeks, I’ve taken a total of 5 days of vacation, and not a moment too soon. I was becoming extremely burnt out on work and the hectic pace of life that is here in MT was not helping me to recoup. I’ve managed to do absolutely dick last week as far as cleaning or anything of merit is concerned, but boy did I have fun being a sofa cushion. Today I’m on a super cleaning streak (well once I stop writing to you bastages): the office, file papers, bird cage (they are getting given away, I forget to feed them), floors and laundry. I also need to get bottles for beer and a few other errands. I’m actually looking forward to having a clean office, even if it means finally unpacking several boxes. Tomorrow will see the lawn mowed, edged, and weed & fed. It is bad when you have more cottonwood trees next to the house than grass — enjoy the rain today my friends, for tomorrow you will DIE.

• Harley, etc. Ok, so $119 USD for an oil change is freaking ridiculous. Granted I only have to do that every 5K miles, but at the current rate that is one or more per year. I should mention that there are 3 oils that need to be swapped — engine, tranny and primary, so not all that bad considering they are all synthetic too. I still need to get the rest of the 5K mile service done too. I saw a Screaming Eagle Fatboy at the Belgrade shop on the Bozo trip — it had the new 200mm rear tire and a bunch of other goodies. Yes, I am trading in my bike when the 200mm becomes standard equipment on the regular Fatboys. This will probably happen the same year that my 3 (or is it 4…time to dig through the paperwork) extended warranty expires, so good time to move up. It will probably cost me 3-4K out of pocket to do the trade, given the need to get the Stage 1 and pipes for the new bike and get a few paint booboos repaired on the old bike, but well worth it I think. Yes folks, I have a girl that loves to take the Harley on long road trips and then go out for a romantic night. I win!!!!! Sorry ladies, I’m taken now (you had your chance) and this one can sooo kick your butt. Probably mine too. On the road trip note — I think a windshield is in the near future. I can do the 2h or so to Bozo at 85mph no problem, but if there is any bit of wind it really takes the stuff right out of you. For those of you thinking I’m a pussy — bite me. I was of the same opinion (windshields are a tombstone for your sex life) until we hit wind coming back from Bozo. Reality has a way of smacking you right in the head & neck. Look at all the road warriors out there (not those fake assed ‘trailer-it-to-Sturgis’ dentist types). You will find windshields and some funky getups. Message being: be yourself and get a windscreen, they help. On a related note — the Chatterbox folks have given me some hints on getting the unit to function better with no wind noise. We shall see.

• Family. Mom — can’t wait to make pickles tonight. Nothing like homemade pickles! Melanie — good luck in the UK! Remember to use the pub cash! Jeff - take care of her and make sure she is done freaking by the time you leave. Also - get ready for hunting season, it should be a good time. Gack, I have to get tires for the truck before that and to replace the existing ones it is a re-cock-ulous $152 USD a piece. That is 30% of the purchase price of the damn thing — but if I am going to bitch about that I should mention the gas prices. Ouch, in the butt and stuff with sandpaper condom. It hurts. Allison - congrats on the new job, amazing what you get yourself into. Good luck with your new place in Bozo and school this year, I will be up to visit! We should go skiing too…and get a fake (oh quiet Mom…) so we can get out and tear it up a bit too!

• Work. It is official — I’m a travelling whore. The whore part was existing, they just put me on planes now. I’m riding the bike down to Denver, well really Boulder is what I’m hearing on the grapevine, Monday. 552 Miles, 8h15m at posted speeds. With stops, I bet it takes me 10h to get there, but boy am I going to enjoy that. Who knows what I will be working on starting Sept 1st, but it really doesn’t matter. I think I was fretting about the ORNL thing, but really it isn’t that bad and I could use the 2 extra months to kinda dig my mgmt reputation out of the gutter. It is mostly my fault, that whole consistent communication thing, but hey! I am learning. From talking to my boss , a very refreshing take on things was made and I feel better already. Thanks dude! I’m kinda hoping that I get to fly to ORNL at least once more — I need the miles for a free ticket to England to visit the sister.

• Money. I think bills are actually gaseous objects. It seems no matter how much you make, the bills seem to fill up all existing paycheck space. Thankfully I am getting near paying off one bill and with a little help from work in the salary department, I should be able to start squishing credit cards. Wee! The goal is to get everything but the Harley and student loans paid off in the next few months. Then to start saving for a house purchase. I need the tax break and the equity if not the fun of owning one’s own place. I really want to buy this house, but I’m not going to pay more per month than I am for renting it…so I might be looking at downsizing. I didn’t really want to do that, moving sucks and all, but the more I think about having less monthly expenditures, the more happy I am. Of course the new place will have to have a great fireplace, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher, garage, etc. I’d really like to have a gas stove again too — cooking on it is so much better.

• Blog links: Ok, time to add a few more of my regular haunts. Portana was added a while back, now we are adding nitefire, hempler, the hillarious P (xmasbaby), jeff, and davem. Greetings from your referrer logs!

Well folks, I’d best get at the cleaning here, or I will sit on my arse all day and get nothing done. Laters!

Ahh… so I’ve been MIA for a few days from the whole blogisphere. I’ve really been getting good work done at CFS, so been directing the creative and expansive juices in that direction. Given that…time for a few shorties:

• Black Eyed Peas - sexy - sultry -georgeous lead singer. Mmmm, tasty — her, Gwen Steffani and a ..well let’s call it a good time had by all. Oh yeah, their music is pretty darn good too, been jamming all morning. How is it that I am actually listening to main stream pop culture music? Am I losing my discretion ?
• Great American Hillclimb. Good times, I will have to explain the fun after this weekend, as I’m just not going to do the stories of yesteryear any justice. So far it has been a bit of cat herding to get all the friends on the same page, but I think we’ve got the plans lined out. Rough plan is to get there at 6.30am to setup the double truck & canopy venue, bust out the steak & eggs on the grill, start drinking (DUH!) and get things situated before they start launching. Loooots of drinking. Lots.
• England - only two weeks until the sister and the niece fly out — I’m so happy for you!
• Back, back, back at the ORNL. I’ll be in TN again Aug 1-6, good times. Things.move.fast. This is supposedly the second-to-last trip I will make there under the current contract, but I can’t see how the contract would end now — to many things to be done. The good news is that after 4 more trips, I will qualify for Elite status on NWA — free first class upgrades and 150% miles. Oh yeah.
• Coding is fun - I’ve gotten to do some again this week at work, turns out I’m still good at it. Thankfully I’m not a completely useless “suit” yet.
• New motorcycle helmet. Modular, super comfortable and full face protection. I can’t wait to ride on the highway with this thing, I won’t have a super sore neck or bugs implanted in my face after riding at 100mph! I know, what a wuss, but have you ever hit a dragonfly at 100? How about a cicada? Didn’t think so! Them buggers hurt.

Well I’m getting bored now, so I’m going back to work so I can get to the gym and head out for a lovely dinner date, nothing like starting off the weekend the RightWay(tm).

Just dropping this in because I’m having a good Monday at work, will qualify why later:

Update: Ok, now for why I wanted that shirt yesterday. This last weekend was a complete lazy-fest.

Saturday I woke up lateish, did the lawn mowing and a bit of yard cleanup. I then had to think about what to do for the rest of the day — thankfully Kris helped me out and I then spent the rest of the day on or near the Harley. I picked up sister Melanie for a house-sitting run to the west end, then off to McKenzie River Pizza for a few brews and lunch. Yummy says I. We stopped by Mom’s shop to chit-chat a bit, then dropped Mel off and headed to Kris’. A few more brews outside wandering around the place attempting to avoid She-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but Kris wanted to ride the bike so I headed for the sofa and the 64″ DLP. I zonked out for an hour or so while he had his fun, we both win! That night was an adoption celebration shindig at the Morse’s, followed by a good drinking binge on the patio at Tiny’s Tavern. Jager, DuckFarts, and a liberal application of beer did a Nic good. DD: Thanks!

Sunday - of course, I was well hung. I spent most of the morning and early afternoon snoozing on the sofa and chugging fluids. NAPCAR provided the 20min bursts of between nap entertainment. Nothing like taking 6+ hours to watch a 3 hour race. Sunday night — made some bread again, been ages since doing that. It was a bit on the oogly side and a bit dense side, but boy! was it tasty. Makes good toast too. Early to bed, quite late to rise Monday morning.

Now — with all that said, Monday morning I felt like a champ. I was able to really get cracking on a few work things and it looks like the trend is increasing for the rest of the week. I think I’m pretty well over this mini-burnout. I should be doing REALLY well after a few nice long Harley trips I have planned for mid August and the long weekends of vacation I have scheduled for then. Sooo looking forward to the 6 hours or so ride from here to West Yellowstone through Yellowstone National Park.

A few weeks ago, I added some pictures to the Gallery:

• Bogart is getting big
  • 
• Rest of the muddy truck pics
• Chicago from the plane during the Knoxville to Minneapolis leg.
  • 

It is such a Friday. IRC is usually a means for verbal jousting about technical mistakes one has made, or for discussion and collaboration in the search for creating new mistakes. At any rate, I needed to share this one…

[brian] there is
[brian] new relationship sex: everyday, then comes
[brian] newly marred sex: 3x a week
[brian] married 5 years sex: 2x a month and then
[brian] hallway sex: where passing each other in hallway you each say to each other “fuck you”.
[brian] that usually comes right before divorce.
[brian] well, divorce or murder, depending on your perspective on solving problems.

Smell that? Yes friends, that is the smell of a Friday afternoon going right out the window with my ambition and motivation. I now need to decide whether I start drinking or napping now.

So, most people know that I work from home, well I am at ORNL in TN now…but anyways. I generally enjoy working from home a ton, but I’ve started to realize the deficiencies of the methods of communication we use on the internet. This really only became obvious quite recently and amusingly enough had nothing to do with work — I was chatting with someone who I really have great conversations with, the nice deep, insightful and mind expanding kinds that are so much fun and was feeling a bit frustrated in being limited to a chat window. In retrospect, I may have started along this train of thought after working in an office for 3 weeks with people again — it is amazing how fun that really can be. I’ve heard the reasoning that the time savings from not getting ready and commuting into work are real benefits in the work-from-home category. I’ve always been quite lucky and lived within a short bus ride or walk from work and haven’t added that into the list of pros. I even keep catching myself thinking ‘boy, wouldn’t it be nice…’ while working from home. It is probably general laziness…but that is sooooo another post.

So, yeah, the real point is that I realized how chatting via email or IRC/AIM/Yahoo/MSN is so limited. I think they work ‘OK’ for technical work, but the more I get involved with project management where the needs are more on a personal and not a technical level, that the comms used really lack the ability to fully communicate The Messsage. I’d like to think that I am pretty good about communicating on a personal level with people when I am face to face, but when it comes to email or chat, that level of connection, mutual understanding, or whatever you’d like to call it, seems to really go missing and I feel like either I’ve not gotten the point across or that the other person(s) have not acknowledged that I have. Who knows, this might just be my brain craving more personal interaction and showing it by disliking the non-personal interactions.

I have found that voice conversations are pretty good for most things, especially as far as communicating raw data or discussing something is concerned, but the rhythm can be difficult to find and the conversations can get quite skewed towards one person talking more than the other, as there is no out of band (body language) way to change that.

On a slightly related note, I believe someone made the comment “Honestly, what year is it again?” in reference to some sort of technical project that did not go as expected. This whole chat thing has me thinking too — why hasn’t the technology for this really exploded ? Or has it, and has been seen in the last 5 years, the USA is just lagging behind the tech acceptance curve ? For instance, you hear all about these crazy Japanese or Finish people who use these nifty G3 cell phone features every day. Perhaps if the US had a better (read cheaper, faster and generally less sucky) broadband solution, perhaps we would have a higher incident rate of video conferencing or similar conversation applications ? Speaking of which — has anyone ever used an iSight ? I’m really quite expecting that for most anything I want to do it will be either Windows or Apple based, as Linux solutions tend to interoperate pretty poorly. I’m so willing to be proven wrong though. I’m also curious as to how well using a webcam type thingy will do for Yahoo or MSN type chatting. Hrm, food for thought, that is.

Well, its another Friday! Woot! What does that mean in real terms ? It means that today is the end of a long week of work, abusing myself in the gym and sleep deprivation. So in the spirit of good humor, here are some random thoughts on Fridays:

• Why does it always have to be the best weather of the week on Friday ?
• Working 4 days a week would be so nice. I could start drinking in earnest Thursday.
• Does the word ‘Fri’ indicate something? It sounds a lot like ‘fried’, as in ‘dude, I am totally fried’.
  • For those German speaking folks, also quite similar to German ‘Fri’, meaning ‘free’(as in beer, not speech).
• 2 hour lunches are contagious. You take one (or three) of them in one week, and then having just an hour for lunch on Friday seems like a crime against humanity. Besides, doesn’t everyone need to watch MythBusters to clear the lunch nap fuzzies ?
• Shit. I have to go to the gym tonight. Yes, it is going to hurt, but it does a body good. F@#k you, milk people and your marketing drones.
• To drink or not to drink? If I decide to go all out on playing ‘Hide the Bourbon’ with the liver, I will be hung as all heck tomorrow morning and won’t get anything done before noon. If I don’t drink, what the heck am I going to do, clean the house!?
  • To those of you thinking ‘Why don’t you just drink in moderation, say just have a few?’, I would like to respond to with this link
• Always nice when the co-workers break out the Pimpbot 5000 links.
• Girls are fun.
  • Guys - if you have a good girl, keep her, at least until she goes insane. Then run like hell. Hold on, hold on — I am saying nothing bad about women in general, just if they do go insane, you don’t want to be in range of the event horizon. Most likely there is something retarded that you could say, and given our lack of ability to say the proper thing at the right time, we will say anything that comes to mind, and viola you are running for your life.
    • Editors Note This is not reflecting any recent personal data (quite the opposite really!) I’m just attempting to be funny.
  • Girls - don’t judge us by the masses. Most guys are lacking critical brain function and don’t appreciate you. However, the rest of us (yes I include myself. bite me!) are relative gems and deserve an ever so slight break once in a while. We are, after all, the weaker sex
    • Yes, Tom Cruise is cute, but see what kind of bat-shit-crazy he has gone over Katie Holmes ? God, I must be a sap, but I wonder what Nicole Kidman thinks of all this?
• The votes are in. Christians 10, Lions 1;

I think I’ve gone off the nutty end of things for long enough! Happy Friday!

And for those of you e-voyeurs curious what this weekend, in all it’s probably unbloggable glory looks like:

• Telling the alarm clock to go have sex with itself. Unless you are getting up to run.
• Mowing the lawn. Not necessarily all that fun, but if your yard consisted of a 15′ square brick patio, you’d be excited too. Besides, I get to play the ever so fun game of ‘how-many-dog-turds-can-the-lawnmower-pick-up-with-the-bagger-so-I-don’t-have-to-by-hand’.
• A surprise BBQ for someone…happy b-day!
• Mud bogs perhaps ? Quite tempting, “I’m just not sure if I will have time”.
• Harley. Oh, how I will miss you! So let’s celebrate by abusing you and the laws of physics.

Oooh, 3 days in a row! …and all the ladies scream ‘Oh Nic, you are just a mental stud!’ Ha! That’s right, I’m packing heat and not afraid to use it! Seriously though…I know sarcasm when I hear it On a completely random tangent: Does anyone ever click on the links I include or let the mouse hover over those links? You just might want too

Work…so yeah, work. I am off to the great cultural haven of TN on Sunday again. I’m much less excited about being gone for a week this time, I’m having way too much fun here in MT. To be honest, it really feels like summer just got started and that I’m starting to move on where I want life to go in the next year or two. Now we are going to hijack it for a week (for work!!). It really isn’t that bad, but the summer keeps seeming shorter and shorter. The project I am working on is still pretty cool, and I am enjoying the limited number of things on my horizon for it. It turns out you can work and have a life at the same time, and life can be fun! Anyways..back to work (yes, I’m just a bit distracted today…) So, my role in this project has turned a bit of a corner, and I am going to blather on and geek out for a bit on it, mainly to get my thoughts in order..

So, it started off as a pretty typical ’support’ engineering consultant. Mr Consultant, please get systems X, Y, and Q up and running, test them, and see where we stand for stability and performance. Ha I say! No problem, whack-a-doodle & presto! This went all fine, thankfully. The XT3 is a big sexy pile of hardware, but no where near the X1E. It behaved pretty well, and I’m looking forward to seeing that 15GB/s I/O throughput number in the next month or two. Shhh, but that just might be a world record…sssssh! So, now that we have demonstrated decent application benefits on a small scale (one app saw 10X improvement), we are moving forward with a broader scope of small scale testing to show the benefits of putting Lustre into production on Jaguar. Jaguar reboots so often, in the 1-2 times a day range, and takes so long to reboot, that adding a pile of service nodes to the equation tends to slow down the whole reboot process. To wrap it all up — basically we need to show the gain that offsets the pain of adding these service nodes and Lustre startup to the reboot cycle.

Now, onto the fun bits. I suppose I should have registed this earlier, but the nature of my consulting to ORNL needs to change to be more of a ‘Project Manager’ rather than a support engineer. What is the difference you ask ? Well, first off, I need to be much more visible and start producing the usual status, progress and update documentation. This really is a critical piece, as I can do all sorts of organization and get people to do the ‘real work’, but if there is no representation and dissemination of that info, well, nobody but me will know that. Not good. I am OK at managing people, and dealing with the logistics and technical details of a large plan like this, but staying focused and on track with it all is not my strong suit. Some of you may remember last summer…ugh. Hrm, well really this is much better, as I know what I am driving towards, and the projects have a fairly defined scope and plan already. There will be a bit of a struggle to change the dynamics and perception of those at ORNL that I am the ‘go-to guy’ for the Lustre storage there, especially since I am working remotely 3/4 of the time. The changes are pretty significant to make, but can be described pretty simply as ‘taking ownership’. It’s mine, and I will cry if I want to!

So, all in all, not that tough to really do, just needed some thinking through for what it all means. Ahh, right on cue, there is a problem to diagnose on the test system…excellent

Hey look, Nic has managed to not write anything here in a few weeks again. I guess I am not that active writing here when there is so much to do elsewhere… So, what have I been up to? Lots I tell you, lots! So, in usual form, watch out for flying bullets.

• Work.
  • Wow, what a month. I am continuing to enjoy working for ORNL. As I am attempting to work right now, I’m going to try and not blather on for eternity. If I talk about it, I’ll be forced to not do anything today…again.
• Working out
  • It turns out that Svelte Nic is being a bit more reluctant than I anticipated. Getting old sucks. I’ve since switched gyms to Evolution. I’ve switched mainly because I sometimes need folks to drag me to the gym and the availability of work-out buddies changes during the summer.
  • Evolution kicks ass. Period. Also, drinking protien shakes is lots less painful than it used to be. They even taste good, not like the shredded cardboard of yesteryear.
• Softball
  • Since the move back to Montana, I’ve gotten to do 10K things I’ve been missing for the last 6 years. We are playing city league co-ed ‘D’ league. So far we are doing pretty well. I’m having a ton of fun!
• Girls
  • Ahh, the dilema. How much do I tell, given that some of them might just stumble across this site? I think it more fun to keep y’all guessing…
  • The Lions made an early run and attempted to suck the life out of me with a nubile young decoy, but I managed to fend of the attack through the use of my you-must-be-able-to-at-least-appear-interesting-for-the-first-date defense. The Christians seem to be coming back, with an exquisitely crafted import with a seemingly Siren ability to lure me into beaching my raft. It is quite surprising to see this new level of tatics being used in Billings, it was refreshing to meet similarily equipped warrior as myself. I might just have to revise my reporting to a more positive light, war leaves something to be desired for reporting, but hey, I’m having fun with it, so just go along for now.
  • Alive after 5 proved to be a target rich enviroment. It was fun to see people I’ve not heard from in years, as well as those people I got introduced to.

I think that covers most of the interesting bits, well ok, I’m sure I am forgetting lots of stuff, but I’m lazy and need to work.