A Short (Stolen) Winter Poem

Winter

SHIT! IT’S COLD!

Share on Facebook

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

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

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

Just a few tiddle bits I should share with you unwashed masses:

• As previously mentioned apple pies were made. For the guys out there — if you get to help, a 3/4″ spade bit on a cordless drill makes the best apple corer I’ve ever used. It also helps keep some semblance of testosterone in the process too. Some of the best apple pie ever.

• Phil inspired me to pick up the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich . I do believe I’m at least a month into reading this book, and have finally reached the 1000 page mark. I think I’m probably plateaued on how much information I can absorb. I have reached the part of the book where the concentration camps and associated details, and I wasn’t prepared for the level of detail that this amazing book offers. I literally think my brain was overwhelmed with the anquish and raw depravity those Nazi bastards (I had to calm it down) inflicted on millions of people. What really caught me off guard was that it wasn’t just the Nazis as I traditionally thought of them — government officials and military people, but the businiess community too.

• Fall is here in MN — bite me Fall. If you are going to be 19F in the morning, at least toss me some frickin snow.

• I should receive the full set of kit I need to start kegging homebrew early next week, I’m a happy man. How can you go wrong with making beer quicker and with less work? That is a huge win, win, burp!

• Christmas is < 2 months away — same for my birthday. You should already be shopping, I’m not that easy to find gifts for. Some suggestions:

  • new cold weather capable motorcycle jacket, gloves, or pants
  • 0,5L Beer glasses or steins. Ebay is a great source. Don’t get the ones with metal lids – I’ll just get drunk and knock out my teeth, not a sexy move.
  • Hrm, stumped myself — see, I’m hard to shop for.

• Work continues to do well. I just might get to be a kernel hacker yet. Ha!

Share on Facebook

It is official – Jeff Gordon is a little pussy bitch. I’m just sayin’…

In a story about “rough driving” during the last weekends NASCAR race:

Earnhardt said his warning, which came shortly after Gordon made his comments on television, was a result of bumping in the turn. He backed off from then on even though he never felt anybody was in danger. “There’s so much grip my mom could drive these cars,” he said. “There wasn’t no way I was going to spin nobody out. I guess it made Jeff Gordon a little nervous.”

It is pretty easy to like someone who responds to “you are being too rough” with “my mom is tougher than you, shorty”. Can you smell that ? It just might be some of that good ol’ fashioned testosterone creeping back into NASCAR.

Also — Vickers: You are one Fructis commercial from becoming a short-fruity-hair-wearing-no-talent-driver-goat-fucking-prison-bitch. Learn to drive please. You are on my list now too. It is just whether you rank below Robby Gordon or above Kurt Busch (Rubberhead) that I’ve yet to decide. Enjoy the company

Share on Facebook

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!

Share on Facebook

I took off from work a bit early yesterday – was going to sit on the sofa and finish up the day working from home. As it turns out, you really do have to have your SecureID to get the VPN all setup. Whoops – back to work we go. It was a nice day so I decided to load up the dogs into the pickup box and give them a little treat ride to work and back. Now — I should note that this was Sammy’s first truck ride. She was a bit skittish about getting into the truck, but once I got Bogart in there, she knew what was going on and let me plop her right up.

So… we start cruising up to work with me watching the box in the mirror just to make sure she isn’t freaking out, etc. 10 minutes go past and she’s wandering around checking things out (Bogart is standing on the wheel well with his jowls flapping in the wind as usual…good dog!) – O.K Sams, no worries — good to go. Riiiight. Just when I thought things were settling down — nothing to be alarmed about, Sammy takes a two hop leap and jumps out of the truck at 55 mph.

“Shiiiit” was the first thing I said. Pretty sure about that. I’m stomping on the brakes (much to Bogarts skid…thump chagrin) and seeing Sammy tumble down the highway shoulder and into the ditch. I stop the truck, run around — thinking that for sure Sammy is either toast or really badly screwed up. I see some furry thing in the distance hop around and I gave her a call – she makes a beeline straight towards me. We get back up to the truck, and she flies into the front seat — me noticing she landed in some ripe assed poo somehow. Great, so now I’ve got a truck cab smelling like 30lbs of crap and a freaked out dog ejecting hair everywhere.

The return home was uneventful, and Portana took the lead on getting Sammy washed up. Bogart got happy fun bath time as well – two clean dogs! Total damage to Sam – a half dollar size road rash on her bum and some scraped up knees. She’s pretty stiff and sore this morning – moving around O.K but not setting any land speed records.

Goofy Dog.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

This will be short and sweet. Albuquerque sucks. The food was pretty good – but the town is just dingy, dirty, and unkempt. So far my best description is a “West Philly of the Southwest”. BTW – the people I did meet and interact with were very nice and quite humorous. Thankfully they have the internet there and I can just work remotely next time.

Share on Facebook