I got stung by a bee.
Last Friday.
While driving 65mph on I23.

The a/c in the truck doesn't work (needs a new compressor). It was hot. The windows were down. I was wearing a tank top. There was something I couldn't clearly see on my arm. I jerked it to make it go away.

It left behind the stinger, so it must have been a bee. I never heard it, but then the cd player was cding and, ya know, windows open at 65mph. I never saw a body, but my truck is of course a pigpen, and the wind might have blown it right back out a window.

I had to pull over. My arm was on FIRE. The sting was about 4" above the elbow. The whole upper arm swelled up huge(r) and got hot. It burned from shoulder to fingertip. The sting site itself looked like a crater. I must have knocked the bug off of me while it was still stinging me, tearing up my arm.

I was worried about anaphalaxis. I was stung once before, as a kid, and it swelled up HUGE. And was on my throat, which scared everyone. And they say if you get a reaction as a kid, it can be worse as an adult.

No death. Just searing pain for about 15 minutes. Then less searing pain.

When I got into the office one of my coworkers borrowed an ice-pack from someone in another group who keeps one around since she had knee surgery. After an hour or so it was down to a dull roar.

The little area continued to hurt until Sunday morning. It wasn't until this morning that the bruising and crater-ness was gone from the sting site.


I put the stinger on a piece of tape. It's stuck to my monitor at work.

On Thursday, while at work, I realized my left leg (aka "the bad leg") was having some problems holding weight and that I was leaning on my cane more than usual. I chalked it up to "That stupid bad leg."

Friday morning I could barely walk, let alone stand. The left leg would barely hold any weight, if any. Try taking a shower while standing on one leg. It's not easy or fun.

( Cut not only because it's long, but because of one four letter word that for some reason extra-offends some people )

This stupid place cannot get weather right! The forecast called for rainy & scattered thunderstorms. There was one thunderstorm this morning about 6 am. I didn't see any lightning but heard two big booms of thunder.

THEN THE FRAKKIN SUN CAME OUT! AND STAYED OUT UNTIL IT WENT DOWN!

I've been missing good thunderstorms something fierce. There better be more of them this summer, or I'm going to get mad at someone!

I'm not sure who yet. But I'll get mad at them!


In unrelated news:
( usual health whines, nothing really new here )

Earlier this week I was BSing online with beth910. She was waiting for a bus. It was cold and rainy and she was bored. And she was jonesing for a grilled cheez sammidge.

Now, if you know Beth at all, you know that grilled cheez sammidges are one of her staples of life. Apparently she and her fiance argue about the proper way to make one, but that's a whole other ball of pickings-on.

She had first started saying she was hungry, so I told her I was stuffing pretzels through the IntarTubes. Then I started telling her that I had shipped her a grilled cheez sammidge. No, I really did. She of course thought I was goofing about. But I'd forgotten that I'd done so until she mentioned one. I really had sent her a grilled cheez sammidge!


Today she told me she got a package from Woot, which she'd been expecting. Except it came with a bonus T-shirt! And, she said, I'd never believe what food was on the t-shirt.

I said, "I TOLD YOU I WAS SENDING YOU A GRILLED CHEEZ SAMMIDGE."

She said she'd wondered how they knew she liked grilled cheez sammidges, and how they knew she was a small.

This is the shirt I sent her. When I saw it, I just had to do it.

Penguins vs. Red Wings!?!?!

WHO DO I CHEER FOR?

augh.

- discussed going to the Meatball Mecca (IKEA) with jss1113.
- punted on the idea.
- after mega doses of coffee and advil, changed mind.
- after picking up jss, quick trip to Sears for hand tools. Spine and legs both try to fail spectacularly. also FAIL at finding a power screwdriver. Managed to make purchase without falling down (literally).
- Drive to Canton (94->275->exit on M153/Ford Rd. about a block away from destination)
- Meatball Mecca:
o semi-pissy wheelchair with Moose pushed about by jss (he's always enjoyed pushing me around.)
o jss hoping to find furniture: FAIL
o moose find more shelving: SUCCESS
o moose needed pins to hold shelves inside cabinets: FAIL. Was given the WRONG THING, but didn't realize it until it was too late to go back.
- Dinner at Outback (reasonable chain cow; jss was in the mood to raise his iron level)
- Return trip the way I've been before (M153/Ford Rd->M153->14)->Moose Apt, where jss kindly unloads crap from truck.
- Returning jss to JSS Apt, started driving weird -- nearly missed turn, in wrong lane down 2 lane (not major) road, etc. Pinned it on stupidity + exhaustion until I remembered feeling shaky at home [and had dismissed it as tired] and realized my blood sugar was low. Pulled up to JSS Apt, checked: 109. (while this is technically a "good" number, it was definitely going down.) Ate the last of the bag-emergency-sugar.
- filled gas tank at Meijer (cost of filled tank == cost of dinner for two at Outback. OW.)
- still felt shaky, so went through MickyD drive-through for a hot fudge-alike sundae. YUM.
- Back to Moose Apt. Much better, though have that wonderful post-hypoglycemia headache.

And, speaking of pushing me around, jss insisted I write today up here. If he hadn't been so incredibly helpful today I might not be so accomodating :-P.

...and the speaker is Al Gore.

pnelson: "Someone should show up with a sign that says, 'MANBEARPIG'"


AHAHAHAHAHA YES! SOMEONE REALLY SHOULD!

I AM TOTALLY SERIAL!!!

Do me a favor. Read this article before moving on through the "read more" link:

http://tinyurl.com/esd4q

It's an article on the Wall Street Journal. I promise it's 100% safe for work. It's about people using mobility scooters.


( Once you've read that, read more... )

[For the 3 of you who have missed the stupidity, short snapshot, as I get it: At Penguicon, some people started grabbing women's boobs, but only after getting permission first, and dubbed it an "open source" project.]

For one thing, I pegged that Ferrett guy as a total jerk ages ago. I used to read his LJ and comment regularly, and then we got into about ... well you know my hot buttons :). I quoted fact, and articles, and presented a litany of, ya know, actual medical journal articles. His response was something along the lines of, "Well everyone knows different so you must be wrong, I don't care what your facts state, this is my LJ and I get to say how it goes, so you're WRONG WRONG WRONG!"

OK, fine, it's his LJ. It's not like I chose to argue about something he posted about regularly. And, really, I didn't "quit in a snit" over just one thing. But it became clear that his self-claimed "open mindedness" only went so far.

So I'm not surprised that he'd be part of such a stupid stunt and think there's nothing wrong with it. [I'm not counting any of his half-waffled post-posting comments, either.] And I've only read his one post, only because of all the links to it. I'm not going to link to it here, but it shouldn't be hard to find. his lj id is theferrett.

That said:
- Penguicon was the weekend of Spring Carnival. The irony is that Penguicon is held not far from Ann Arbor, but I went back to Pittsburgh for Carnival.
- Not only did a few people I know from Pgh go to Penguicon instead of Carnival¹, but there was at least one "special guest" I really wanted to see there: Peter Salus. Peter is a computer historian, writer, and all around nifty guy who loves playing the role of Gentlemanly Curmudgeon. Of course, now I want to know if he grabbed any boobies.²
- The terminally grumpy part of me wonders if I'd gone, but only if I'd gone as myself (not a representative of some other organization), and someone had asked me such a thing, how much blood would have been left on the floor.
- others appear to have suggested that the proper response is something like, "Only if I can grab your crotch." That would imply that the requestor had a crotch worth grabbing (and/or persona worth touching). Even clothed, the potential grossness here is just nauseating. And, for real? I prefer to do my groping in private, preferably with someone I care about.

In 100% complete seriousness, I close with this: I read an article on the Jezebel website today where they took to task other famous-people websites for misogynistic bullshit. Just read the name of that link and be horrified.

"Lookism" is still a big seller in the mass media. It's not *just* about gender. It's not *just* about sexuality. It's not *just* about body-size and body-issues. Fat, thin, tall, short, gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, feminine, masculine, androgynous, changing, staying the same, "good" cause or "bad" cause or "no" cause, whatever, it's still all big targets. And there's still a long, long, LONG way to go before we're past it.



¹While Spring Carnival is technically a Carnegie Mellon thing, I've met many people over the years who were taken to the midway by their parents when they were kids and now take their own kids. It's CMU, but it's also Pittsburgh.

²I *know* without asking he didn't participate in any such thing. But the idea makes me giggle.

I think Jack Chidester was road rallying when cars were like the Flintstone-mobiles. He was well into his 80s when his health forced him to stop rallying -and, sadly, put him in a nursing home. He'd been a multiple-time national champion, and his idea of a "sissy rally" had so much going on that my brain would melt.

[In a generic TSD road rally, you're looking to execute an instruction such as "Right at Smith" and also using special rules to determine where you go until you can do that. With a Jack rally you were ALSO looking to do either one of two OTHER instructions and there were often also logic within logic traps. Argh!]

The man was a frikkin genius. He'd come up with stuff that would make you alternately laugh and want to kill. Someone just reminded me of the time (no pun intended) he got people with a clock trap - a literal timing trap!

Even though the general instructions for most TSD rallies tell you, "Set your clock to the official rally clock at the start point," a lot of people who own their own radios that can get WWV will just use that. By having the official clock 100 100ths of a minute off from WWV, he guaranteed the people who did their own clock-setting got (at least) 100 points until they figured out what was going on. Sneaky, sneaky.

Jack would catch you in little things like this, then yell (in a laughing, genial manner), "Read Your Generals!" I learned to scour the general instructions multiple times because of him.

(He'd yell at me, and then I'd yell back, "Look, man! I've killed a lot of old people in my time!!" I doubt he got the reference, but it made him laugh anyway.)

A few months ago, before I moved away from Pgh, one of the rally club folk put on a rally that had it's mid-point break in the home Jack was living in, to celebrate his birthday. I really regret not being able to make that rally.


Jack's official obit.

I'm starting to get morphine brain, even though i've been careful not to take more than 2 pills in a day


It was 5 years ago that my leg first got so badly infected that it's completely impacted my life. I nearly lost it at the beginning of my two week incarceration in the hospital, and the first week in there was total, total hell: high fevers, either getting morphine and not being able to piece together three words in a row or screaming in pain (literally) because the morphine had worn off, the leg unable to hold any weight so being catheritized (or whatever the word is) and unable to get up, having people visit me or call and not being able to hold a coherent conversation. HELL.

Five years. And it looks like my leg is trying to celebrate.

On top of all the other crap -- the low fevers, joints aching in that "there's really ground glass in there, right?" way, short of breath from too much walking, unable to sleep at night from the pain, too weak and tired to do the errands I need to do, etc. etc. etc. it looks like my leg has reinfected itself. Again. It's *very* swollen, about twice the size of the other leg, beet red and warm.

SO far my temperature hasn't cracked 99.5. If it starts climbing over 100.5 I'll... figure something out. At absolute worst, an emergency room. There's also an "urgent care" center not far from me.

I have a line on a new doctor, I just have to call and schedule an appt.

This better settle itself out, or I'm cutting the goddamned thing off myself.

Not really serious. Just something (er, someone) frustrating, compounded by extreme joint pain. Yes, I'm in full-blown lupus joint screaming hell -- my first week at work. Isn't stress GRAND?! Thankfully I have the truck; if I had to wait for buses I'd be screwed and then some.

Andrew ($new-boss) has some "issues" calling me Moose, but fully recognizes they're *his* issues. I came back from a 1pm meeting with HR today (general departmental orientation -- yes, the department is big enough to have it's own HR branch!) to find a giant 5' reindeer in my chair. When I pointed out a raindeer isn't a moose, the culprits said they'd almost bought an inflatable moose head until the giant reindeer caught their eye(s).

Meanwhile, back on the mofeen again tonight. (as well as last night, and most of Sunday. UGH!) Hopefully my prescription insurance will come through soon so I can send away for the expensive 24-hour mid-level stuff which seems to abate things when they get this bad. I need to contact the Pain folk in Pgh anyway, to see if they can refer me to someone/place here, should do so tomorrow.

Also for tomorrow: apologize to frustrating someone about being a total bitch at him, and then trying YET AGAIN to explain that telling someone, "I think your patch might not work right, here's why I did it this way" is not "picking a fight" or "starting an argument" or whatever. He's a nice guy, but has a bit with the passive-aggressive stuff.

I gots no INTARRWEBS at home until at least Wednesday. That's when Covad is scheduled to install, but, cripes, I haven't gotten the modem yet. (I think. I haven't checked at home today. maybe it is here!).

Today i got a new bed (not the greatest quality, but not total crap) for the "guest" bedroom, and a new futon for the fu-couch. Delivery -- Thursday. That means I'm sleeping on the fu-couch until then. GUK. (actually, i am seriously thinking Cheap Motel tonight. Hrm.)

Tomorrow: Yelling at the rental office (esp at the rental chick who told me my carport space was "right in front of your door!" Not only is it NOT, but most of the carport spaces aren't identified, as they're supposed to be. We are not amused.

Then visiting Great Lakes Coffee & Chocolate, a coffee house & chocolate shop, with free wifi. Yum? I am SOO DOOOOMED.

Also, I think: visiting the huge Asian grocery that's in the former car dealership. The one with the live frogs and turtles. Yum! :-P

Thanks to a roadtrip with bethlynn, which was filled with a lot of laughing, good food, and "yeah, that was the turn we wanted", I've found an apartment.

I'll be living on the far west side of Ann Arbor. The place is fairly accessible. There is a carport for my mythical vehicle that's right in front of the building. There's no cut out on the curb, but once I'm on the curb there are no further steps.

The living room & dining room may be a bit smaller than what I have now, but overall the place is bigger (1185 sqft vs. 850 sqft). There's a big storage area in the coat closet (which runs under the stairs that go up to the 2nd floor). The kitchen is partly open to the LR/DR area, and has a dishwasher and a big gas stove/oven. There are two bedrooms and TWO bathrooms. The bathroom attached to the "master" bedroom has a shower, not a bathtub. No more mornings fighting to get into a tub to take a shower! Whoo hoo!!

The rooms are generously sized so if I wind up needing railings or something there won't be a problem. The rent doesn't cover *any* utilities* though, so I'll be paying a little more than I'm paying now. But I'll have a washer & dryer in the apartment, central air conditioning, and a little patio all my own.

It's biggest downside is that there are gang-mailboxes, and mine is a bit of a walk from the front door. That, and it's in the middle of freakin nowhere :-).

I've just accepted a job at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, to help run the main campus AFS cell and do other damage as they see fit.

I start 4/7.

My future boss and coworkers seriously sold the job. Before I even formally met with any of them I had lunch with four of them (including the one I already know [Kula], the one I sort of already know [Simmons], and two others) and the conversation was full of obscene jokes and other fun stuff. (I'm still giggling about how someone's tire damage required "an expensive rim job.")

Over a day and a half or so we all talked each others ears off, laughed our heads off, and, hey, the future boss gave me a driving tour of the humongo UMich campus, telling me "I want you to want to work in Ann Arbor!"

It was my fourth trip to the city and I like it more each time. It's pretty, it's full of yummy foods, the cost of living is pretty reasonable, and it's only 5 hours from Pgh.

I'm terrified out of my gourd about picking up and moving, but I think I'm going to like it.

I was supposed to be on a flight to ORD (O'Hare) that would have gotten me there at 5pm, but when I was rolled up to the gate they were finishing boarding an earlier flight and said, "Hey, we have room, wanna go on this one instead?"

So I got to ORD at about 4pm instead. My flight to PIT was due to leave at 7pm, leaving me lots of spare time. But when I was rolled up the jetway, the guy pushing the chair asked the gate person what gate to take me to, and after typing for a few moments she said, "Oh, that flight's been cancelled." She moved me to the next possible flight with seats at 9:30pm (and, I found out later, upgraded me to "business class" or whatever United calls it).

So I called Hamster and had dinner with him. I got back to the airport at 8pm, and when the wheelchair arrived to move me to the gate at 8:30pm, we discovered that the flight was delayed until 11:10pm. Reason on the board: "Aircraft delayed."

At the gate, the official party line was that the plane for the 9:30pm flight had been taken out of service due to mechanical failure. A flight coming in from Dulles was due in at 10:45pm and that one would be taking us to PIT.

By the time they finally started boarding us about 11pm I wasn't the only one tired and grumpy. There were no power outlets at the gates, meaning I was bored out of my skull. The flight crew had shown up about 10pm and the pilots had gone wandering around outside on the tarmac (in the warm 10F Chicago night), much to the surprise of those watching. Said one of the more disgruntled passengers-in-waiting, while peering out the window, "Oh yeah, there he is. I think he just lit up a joint. He'll be nice and relaxed for the trip!"

That guy might have been right. By the time we were finally ready to start going, it was near 11:15pm. Remember this is CST. The announcement the pilot gave was absolutely hysterical. To get the full effect you have to imagine this being said with a thick Texas accent.

Among what I remember:
"We were hoping for same day service but that doesn't look likely anymore."

"For your entertainment pleasure, if you don't sleep, we do have windows on this aircraft."
(it was a 757 without any video monitors)

"Let's spend some of the CEO's money! It says here the flight time is 1 hour 3 minutes, but I bet I can beat that!"

and he finished with, "and thanks for flying United, we sure do need the money!"



I finally got home about 3 am. Sheesh.

2/07 (thursday) - fly to Hell-Ay via NorthWorst, who tries to strand me in MSP. See previous post.

2/08 (friday) - interview at UCLA Genetics dept., who says, "we'll interview more people next week and get back to you at the end of said week." also, again see previous post.
Have dinner with Pat & Greg and Bethlynn at a McCormick & Schmick's, and drink wine and generally relax and have a good time.

2/09 (saturday) - sit all day in the LOPSA booth at SCALE. "Are you a sysadmin? Do you play one on TV?" Hans, who is supposed to be "in charge" of the booth, is never there, always at a talk or another booth. Humorously, the "official" SCALE pictures have none of the LOPSA booth (despite the person taking pictures going out of his way to take them so that I wouldn't be in them -- it was that obvious) and about 5 of Hans at other booths, probly 'cause he was wearing a kilt.
Have dinner with Mario and Pat & Greg and Hans and Mack at a yummy Cuban place, for which I would give you a URL but it plays music (www.havanamania.com if you care).

2/10 (sunday) - sit half the day in the LOPSA booth, then give a "last slot of the conference" talk about OpenAFS. Halfway through half the audience started wandering out. Found out later that this is a common problem for last-slot-of-the-conference talks. Still sucked.
Did something for dinner. Damned if I can remember what.

2/11 (monday) - vegetated. Seriously.

2/12 (tuesday) - arranged for a late hotel check out, then had a phone interview with CSAIL at MIT from the hotel room. Checked out of hotel room, vegetated in lobby bar until Sister & Brother-in-Law showed up. Sat around, bs-ed for a while, then we went to dinner at "the diner that's in pulp fiction." The fried chicken was tasty. Then they dumped me at LAX for a 10pm flight.

2/13 (wednesday) - arrive in DTW at 05:soemthing after a very painful flight. for whatever reason, about halfway through, my joints started screaming so badly I was crying. After talking to the flight attendants, I take half a morphine pill (full is 15mg), due to the possibility that altitude might muck with things. 2nd flight leaves DTW at 07:30ish, take the other half the pill. Get into pittsburgh about 09:something. Take person stupid^Wnice enough to get me to breakfast, then home to collapse.

after a few hours, wake up and throw up all of breakfast. This and what happened at LISA leads me to believe that I cannot eat large meals and take morphine, as the morphine seems to exacerbate what is probably gastroparesis (neuropathy of the stomach). Some of the symptoms do match gall bladder issues (what I had been thinking, at LISA), but throwing up doesn't relieve gall bladder issues. Joy.

2/14 (thursday) - feel better, sleep more

2/15 (friday) - phone interview with UMich. The first thing they ask is a simple AFS question. My brain promptly freezes. They say, "We're more interested in how your mind works, how you would handle things you don't know. Where would you look up this information?" I said, "I dunno, how about MY OWN DAMNED DOCUMENTATION AND COURSEWORK I'VE WRITTEN?!?!?" The rest of the call is about this caliber.

in the early PM, jhutz decides he does want to drive to Boston after all. I make hasty crash-space arrangements and do laundry.

2/16 (saturday) after setting my alarm for 07:15 PM instead of AM, we get on the road at 10:00 instead of 09:00 as planned. *sigh*. I do all the driving and jhutz alternates between hacking on his laptop and futzing with the cheapass Belkin transmitter that will play my little iPod shuffle through the radio, if there isn't too much interference, which there is in any town with more than 12 people. Still, it mostly works.

We arrive at Cook House just in time to wish kcr a happy birthday and nibble on the remains of his squid (er, kraken) cake.

xiphmont and cfox most graciously arrange bedding for me (mostly putting out Monty) for the extended weekend. The stairs gave me some trouble (of course, by the day I left I'd finally figured out how to balance myself where to come down it like a normal person instead of practically on all fours. it's an old house and the rises are high and the treads a bit thinner than a current staircase would be) but nothing horrificly unmanageable without some help here and there. I get to spend time with them both, and some with Stella Dog, who learned quickly that I would play the "I will get that thing you have in your mouth eventually and then tug on it" game, and Denton the Rugrat, a wonderful, generally well tempered 14 month aged rugrat who seems willing to try anything - even "dancing" with a crazy person sitting in front of him - at least once, and some time with the other 3 house denizens, who seem totally sucked into the World of Warcrap. They used to be such nice, vital people, too.

ANYWAY

2/17 (sunday) - mostly vegetation, though I felt bad when I arose quite late in the day to discover that jhutz had not been able to go visit friends, as he'd insisted he was going to that day, so instead had dropped by CH unannounced. Dinner was at a chinese/sushi place with meh sushi, but the people who worked there were charmed by Denton and his truck. (as the place was pretty much empty except for us, he wasn't getting under feets and seemed to have a grand time.)

2/18 (monday) - email CSAIL and tell them I'm in town, ask if they'd like to meet with me on Tuesday. See if jhutz can stay an extra day. (if not, consider staying anyway and taking train home.) Send email to UCLA contact, as I hadn't heard anything. Go with Camilla & Denton to Eichin's annual Chocolate Party, despite feeling iffy. (Was coming down with a cold. Damn me for repeatedly forgetting to refill the vitamin bottle in the bag!!) A couple was there with a 4-yr-old girl who overcame her shyness to repeatedly a) give Denton hugs, which he was surprisingly (I thought) complacent about and b) play a run-around-the-house kind of peek-a-boo with me as I plonked myself in a chair in a corner. Unfortunately for the poor kid, I fell asleep on her. After a brief nap, we left.

2/19 (tuesday) - arranged to steal jhutz's car to visit CSAIL. Met with the managing boss, the two supervisor types and random people who kept wandering in to the latters' office, including The One Guy That Drives Everyone Nuts (every place has one, you know it). Two or so others came by, asked me some things, then wandered off again claiming to need to do work. TOGTDEN repeatedly came by, making me want to ask him, "So, when do you get work done?" but, ya know, interview. Was there for over 3 hours. Then went to pick up Mom, took her to dinner (at a chinese/sushi place in Framingham with yum! sushi), then back to CH and repacking and bed.

2/20 (wednesday) - drive back. late start. desire for breakfast turned into "find the IHOP on Rt 9 in Worcester". dinner in Buckhorn, PA made me just sick enough to need a restroom where 220S broke off from 80. Came out of the place (a fast food place) to see the moon eclipsing, so we sat there for ~20-30 minutes watching that complete. finally got home ~1-2 am or so.

2/21 (thursday) - mostly vegetation, with a side of email from UMich saying the group "unanimously" decided they wanted to interview me in person. Ha. Jokes on them.

2/22 (friday) - cold is at it's peak of snuffulupagusness. I talk to the UMich admin-asst type person and explain that flying requires two seats. They somehow agree to this. I stupidly realize after the fact that I should have just amtraked; even if i booked a room it'd still be cheaper than 2 last minute airplane tickets. and i'd still have to go through chicago.

still haven't heard from ucla.

Assuming I get two offers, the choice of UMich vs. MIT is a whole other post. Oy.

The future
Tomorrow -- Lunch with Nolans.
Sunday -- maybe road rally
Monday -- should start outline for the SAGE AFS booklet. will probably sleep.
{t & wed} -- laundry, packing, nervous breakdown
Thursday -- fly to DTW via Chicago. Flight leaves at 06:something. No clue how i will get myself to airport that early, will talk to night owls. Bah.
2/29 (Friday) - interview at UMich
Saturday - fly home

and, really, i haven't even started packing the apartment, knowing full well that i'm moving... somewhere...

I think I blew the interview. The lab has 3 post-docs doing the sysadmin work because it needs to be done, not because they know what they're doing. Their users all live on an Apple fileserver that's NFS mounted. 47T of a SINGLE NFS mount. yes, FORTY SEVEN TERABYTES. Cry. And the fileserver is unstable, they said, and crashes a lot, taking out all their user directories until they can get it going again.

I explained what AFS can do for them. I had some issues explaining the AFS concepts. I kept getting tripped up because they knew enough of terms like "volume" and "partition" and the concepts of things like Lustre and ZFS to get run over by naming clashes.

I expect that while they seemed somewhat enthusiastic about what I proposed to "fix" their lab (which was the point of the interview, they said, "This is what we have now, please tell us your proposal to make it better"), they didn't really understand what I was talking about. I'm sure someone will come along (and, likely, someone *local*) who will speak the right buzzwords about ZFS or Lustre or whatever, words they're familiar with, and they'll hire them, and they'll wind up with ... a 50T single mount NFS filesystem. But maybe it'll crash less.

Anyway.

Northwest is officially the worst airline ever ever ever. My flight here was PIT->MSP->LAX, with a physical plane change. After I was seated on the 2nd plane, they had some woman come on and tell me
- i was too big for the seat and was blocking the aisle
- i should have bought a 2nd seat
- other people "your size" buy 2nd seats all the time
- i should have known better
- i am incredibly rude and unfair to the people sitting next to me
- i should have known better
- they might try moving me to a window seat to see if there is more room (me: I'm disabled, I cannot get into or out of a window seat. This is not an option.)
- they overbooked the flight by 18 people and it was packed solid
- i should have known better
- "the plane is going to be late taking off, and it's all your fault!" (direct quote, i swear)
- i should have known better
- i'm going to be thrown off the plane and they will make me take another flight in the morning after i buy a 2nd ticket

After me telling them, "I've never had a problem before", the woman finally said, "I'm going to go talk to my supervisor and the pilot and see what they want to do."

After about 10 minutes she came back and told me that if I buy a 2nd ticket right then and there they'd let me stay on the flight, but I "had to sit in the middle and window seat". Once again I told her, "I'm disabled, I cannot sit in a window seat." Fine, she said, I could sit in the middle and *aisle* seat. She demanded my credit card number right there (and, in my fury of giving it to her, I forgot to get her name. Stupid me.).

They then took the two people who were next to me, moved them up further on the plane, and put some teenager next to me in the window seat.


In retrospect, thinking about it, I'm definitely going to buy a 2nd seat from now on. I almost always flight on off-hour flights and take a seat in the back of the plane, when and where it's less likely to be crowded.

However, apparently NorthWorst is notorious for cancelling any plane not packed solid so that by the end of the day, the flights are sardine cans and way overbooked.

One of the disadvantages to sitting in the way back is struggling to walk down the aisle with the stupid cane. It's about impossible, and I often wind up hurting something. If I buy two tickets, I can sit whereever the fuck I want (except the bulkhead seats, of course).

When I booked the flight, there was ONE direct PIT->LAX flight, USAir, $300ish. Since USAir has stopped PIT being one of their hubs, there are less direct flights, but the price of airfares has gone way down. Believe it. My indirect flight was $130. Round trip. Two ticets would have still been less than the direct flight.

I don't know what's going to happen on the way back. because I wanted to get to LA on time (for the interview) I didn't fight too hard about the whole "buy a 2nd ticket or we strand you here" bit, but I have no such constraints on the way home. If they demand I buy a 2nd ticket at LAX, fine. If they wait until I'm *on* the 2nd plane again, they're gonna get a fight. SouthWest got sued for $$$ for threatening to strand fat people midway in their trips, NorthWest is asking for trouble doing this.

Either way, the prez and brass of NWA is going to get a piece of my mind. I will tell them that their customer service sucks, that threatening to strand someone is not customer service, but that from now on I *will* be buying a 2nd ticket. Just not on their obnoxious airline.

Sittin' in the hotel bar, drinking coffee & kahlua, working on my slides. Which are not done. Of course.

But, still. Cuban food for dinner (yum). Seen lots of good friends so far, met some interesting folks.

I could like living out here.

A week from Thursday I fly off to LA to go to and speak at SCALE (the Southern California Linux Expo). Whee!

I've recently discovered that I booked the most retarded flights possible.

I leave Pgh at 18:30, to get to MSP at 20:20. Then I leave MSP (on a different plane, eep!, but at least same airline) at 21:10 to get into LAX at 23:00. Then I have to be somehow aliveish in the morning.

SCALE runs through Sunday night. I somehow thought I was leaving on Wednesday, but I'm wrong. My flight out leaves Tuesday at 22:00, gets into MSP at 05:00, then the next flight leaves at 07:30 and gets into PIT at 09:00.

UGH. What was I thinking? This is going to be a minor circus!

- unemployment runs out in 2 months.

- i have a "if you can get to Boston we'll interview you" from the group kcr works for. While I appreciate his efforts in getting me that far, I don't have $300 to drop for a plane or train trip right now. Where are those magical teleportation devices when you need them?

- I might have the money if I hadn't committed to going to SCALE, but that committment was made a while ago. I have the tickets. I have a hotel room, though I'm not sure I'm going to be able to actually use/afford it. I have committed to talking. I may be committing to teaching (doubtful, but if I can pull it together it will help cover expenses.) I have committed to help staphing a LOPSA booth. I simply should be committed.

- I'm not longer taking many of my drugs. I weaned off the anti-depressants; I seem no more depressed off then on them. I think I burned out on them months ago. Given that my cholesterol tests are reasonable, as is my blood pressure, I stopped those. It's expense I don't need if the meds aren't making a difference. [The tests were done with me off the drugs for over 2 weeks.] I can't stop the synthroid, which thankfully is dirt cheap. Metformin XR is "formulary", thankfully, but the 24 hour painkiller is not, so I've been taking more mofeen than I'd like. Oh well.

- I'm applying for jobs here and there, but not really pushing it. In reality, I'm going to have a hard time finding a job without contacts. Because I spent the last two years playing data entry clerk, I need to be able to play up my soft skills -- that I can learn quickly, that I'm good at documenting, that I can juggle multiple balls, that I can switch from OS to OS in the same day without breaking a sweat.

Headhunters are flat out -- they always say things like, "Change your resume to specify every operating system you used with each job and exactly which version of the OS and exactly how long you used it," which, if I even *knew* that kind of information, would only say things like "Your Solaris experience is outdated." Sadly, a hiring manager is going to want a Headhunter to be able to provide said information, to make sure they're not getting complete crap from the HH. But on the flip side, that means that someone like me, with the core skills but not the up-to-the-minute knowledge, will fall through the cracks. And, really, any hiring manager who *really* thinks "I need someone who used Solaris 10 yesterday and they can start work tomorrow and know everything right off the bat" is fooling only herself.

- Since I got my first two seasons of Babylon 5 back from farkas et. al. I started rewatching the whole series. It once again puts me in total awe, and makes me want to smack Ron Moore that much harder. The B5 commentary tracks have JMS talking about how he had the whole thing boarded out ahead of time, and while he had trap-doors for all the characters (if the actors left), he knew where he was going. Compare that to Ron Moore talking about the new Battlestar Galactica and saying, "Yeah, we weren't sure where we were going with this plot..." and all I can think is, if he screws up this upcoming final season, I'm gonna put *his* head on a pike and wave to it. Just. Like. This.



-

It's funky - apparently CrazyTracey's in the same boat -- up for 30ish hours, sleep for 15-20, repeat.

Leaving for LISA on Saturday. Woot!

& yes, I did change the layout of this thing again. Eventually I'll find one I completely like. Or figure out how to modify the layouts and just do my own [sheeeyah, that will happen].

No, really.

I let myself go from "dehydrated" to "seriously dehydrated" and woke up this morning with an occasional sharp, stabbing pain in my side. Wasn't long before I realized what it was -- this isn't my first pony ride.

Had I called the Dr. and (probably) wound up in the hospital, they would have pumped me full of IV morphine (which, mmmmmm, makes me understand heroin addiction) but they also would have pumped me full of nice icy cold WATER. By the gallon. Enough that I would be needing to pee every 15-20 minutes. [Seriously. I've monitored it, while going insane from lack of sleep.] I might have enjoyed the morphine but the lack of sleep would have made me 9000 times more miserable. So I was out to avoid this.


Fortunately, I had everything I needed to keep myself outta the hospital -- liquid and morphine.

The morphine didn't help with the already existing nausea, but I have anti-nausea pills for that. I had to take more than the usual dose of morphine to get the pain manageable, but it wasn't that huge a dose. I kept an eye on the dose -- if it wasn't enough to keep the pain down, or if my fever cracked 101.5F, I would call the Dr.

Fortunately, the stone passed about 8pm or so. My fever never cracked 100.5. The pain is all gone.

What a fun, fun day.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got a chance to play 1000 Blank White Cards. I've wanted to play for ages and ages. I was invited to a "game night" and beforehand bought two packs of 3x5 completely white index cards and brought them along.

After playing a couple of rounds of "Give Me The Brain" (which clearly affected some of the cards made later), we started with 1000 BWC. Unlike the original (website) version

- we used the whole card, not half. This gave more scribbling room.

- we used colored pencils. this a) gave more flexibility and b) allowed for color-based cards. (this was because I couldn't find a stock of good black pens where I got the index cards, but it worked out well.) We also used ballpoint pens. As the website suggests, you don't want to use Flair(tm) or other marker-type pens, because it'll just bleed right through the card.

- we never counted points. This because we were having too good a time to bother.

- we never got very exact about how many cards were actually in the deck. we probably used more than you're a "supposed to," but we didn't really care.


As I had no starter deck we began by making some cards. There was a lot of giggling as people suddenly thought of something and got to scribbling.

For those who haven't seen the site -- and you should go look -- you basically take a pile of pre-made cards, mix in some blank ones (unlike what the website says, if you use whole index cards you *can* shuffle the deck like regular cards), deal out 5 to each player, and then make the rest a draw pile.

To play, a turn is a) draw a card, b) play a card. You can play a card on yourself, on someone else, or on everyone. Blanks drawn are eventually turned into other cards. It's recommended that you don't do this during *your* turn, while people are waiting, but sometimes you just gotta....

As time goes by people start making up cards to play on the cards you've made. Sometimes you are trying to do a theme, but it doesn't always go as planned. It gets very insane and very silly.

A week after the first game, I played again. The first time there were 3 of us, the second time 6. Of the 6, two had never played before. It was so much fun that when we got to the end of the deck, someone insisted we keep playing cards in hand (officially the game ends when the last "draw pile" card is drawn), and 3 people later the person (who had had a blank) drew a "turn the discard pile into the draw pile" card. However after about another half hour people were getting stressy so someone drew the "end game" card ("if any player can name two tv shows that had episodes named "End Game", the game ends") which finally ended the game. Once again, nobody counted points.

You don't have to be an artist -- some of the cards are amazing, but I can barely draw and I made cards. (One of my cards is called, "I can't draw hands!!!" which was made after a "Rosie" card, and good for you if you get that. :-P)

I really want to scan some of the cards I have in, both ones I've made and others. If I can get my hands on a scanner for a while I'll put them up on flickr.

And if anyone wants to play... I have about 150 pre-made cards, and about 220 blanks, and a collection of colored pencils. The game requires at least 3 people. The website says "3-6"; I think you could play with more than 6 but it might get hairy with more than 8.

i'm so bad at doing this lately, but:


HAPPY BIRTHDAY legalmoose


YOU             ARE           OLD


p.s. LJ's "rich text" editor bites my ass.

[Since I don't have a tin-foil hat, I'm wearing my protective spoon.]

For those who haven't heard, I'm no longer in employ of CMU, after nearly 20 years. Please, no comments about that here; feel free to email. If you know of any Sysadmin jobs, or Hell Desk, or something along those lines, no matter where it is, please let me know. My current resume is at http://estherf.emurse.com/ .

Other recent updates:

- I drove to Boston & back with jhutz for a long Laborious Day weekend. I did most of the driving; he sat and hacked on his laptop, most of the time *online* via one of those use-cellphone-data-net thingies. While there I mostly visited with my Mom and spent a day with the Cook House & associated folk.

- after a small pile of muckups, LOPSA is on track to offer a day of training for OLFU, which will be the day before Ohio Linux Fest at the end of the month. Parter & I will be doing an ethics class, changed from strictly for system (and network, and user) administrators to include those who are "accidental" sysadmins -- those who let their buddies use their computer or network. [An example: What's your ethical responsibility when a friend is visiting and using your computer or network and you find he's been looking at kiddy porn? Well, after freaking out, I mean.]

- speaking of OLF, I want to have the pamphlet for OpenAFS done by then. Or at least some version of it. I still plant to Preach the Word of The Keenest Open Source, Secure, Distributed Filesystem. CAN I HEAR AN AMEN?!?

- Speaking of LOPSA, the board has decided that the lot of us putting on the training shall be the Education Committee. Yay, I'm part of another official LOPSA committee.

- Someone put up torrents of their VHS recordings of "Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys." It's never been released on DVD [or VHS, that I can tell]. It's horrible. I LOVE IT!!!

I'm nearly 43. Isn't it time I'm over the stupid crap of *early* cycles and cramps so bad I'm up all night becuase they don't respond to advil?

Of course, the longer the cramps go on, the less I sleep; the less sleep I get and the more *other* pain I'm in, the worse my joints get, until I find it's 8 am and I'm taking morphine.

I am full of hate.

Tommorow night's forecast is for 57F. MUST KEEP THINKING OF THAT
while I sweat myself to not-sleep.

YUG.

Anyone in Pgh who hasn't seen it yet want to?

Anyone???!?!

My Arch-Nemesis, Pigeon Bitch, has Finally Jumped On The LOLCat Bandwagon, and it is perfect.