Musings

For quite a while now I've been thinking, "Hey, I need to update my blog."  The rational, objective part of my mind reminds me, "You only update it when you're feeling down.  Why update it anyway?  There is no external benefit to it being updated."

Today I found someone else who started a blog with pretty much the same first post I did.  They hate blogs but are ironically starting one anyway.  Welcome to my world.  The universe loves irony.

This is also the first day of June.  June is an interesting month for me every year.  The third week of this month I will again venture to New York state and visit the ever-lovely Rochester.  Our annual business meeting with Kodak and Softworks Systems awaits.  It's boring as all heck, but I don't really have a realistic choice if I want to keep my job and maintain relationships.  Oh well:  I get paid, am always treated to real Italian food by Kodak, and I like to fly.  I suppose if nothing else I get a joy ride and authentic Italian food for free.  I will be taking video during my trip with the Canon HF S100 HD camcorder I purchased last year around Thanksgiving.

The week after my business trip is my SkillsUSA VICA trip.  Again this year I am to be a judge for the national-level Computer Maintenance Technology contest.  Fun fun.  It's a lot of work but always rewarding in its own right.  The event also provides a convenient opportunity for me to visit my brothers in the Kansas City area.  I fear what amount of money I am likely to spend at Microcenter.

Given these events, why am I always still so bored?

The Zombie Cleaver, My First and Only Sword

The tale of The Zombie Cleaver is sort of interesting to me.  There are no epic journeys ending in a mountain because of an evil ring, but when it comes to real life one can't be too picky.

Instead, I've always been interested by pretty much any militaria.  I like pistols, rifles, shotguns, bows, arrows, shields, kevlar, boron carbide rifle plates, chainmail, platemail, cannons, etc.  Add to that list swords and you can see I pretty much enjoy anything in that vein to some extent.  Some things I just appreciate, while others I'd like to own and/or use like a collector of any other type of item would.

Last Thursday, a long-awaited item finally arrived.  What item is that?  A sword.  I'd been debating its purchase for nearly a year, keeping a tab for it open in my browser so that I didn't outright forget about it.  Periodically I'd viewed the tab and considered it, but it was a low priority item when compared to more immediate needs like food, gas, and computer components.

Being a total novice, I didn't really know what to expect.  Would I be able to utilize it effectively, or would I instead launch my target flying through the air virtually unscathed?  Would I cut my own leg in half?  I knew some very limited information based on what I have seen on the Internet.  Some things are obvious but should be said to any beginner anyway:  plan your cut and plan its termination for when the blade either misses or passes through the target, step into your cut, wear good shoes, keep well-balanced, make sure nobody and nothing you care about is in the path of the blade (or beyond in case of weapon failure or loss of grip), it's not a baseball bat, oil after every use, and rust will set in pretty much instantly.  It wasn't much knowledge, but it was enough to ensure safety.  That is substantially more important than achieving an effective or outright impressive cut.

My first opportunity to try a cut was Friday after work since Thursday night I had been occupied with a church group meeting.  I had two water bottles that I'd drawn mean-looking faces on that simply had to be dispatched.  The absolute lack of technique and experience showed.  Despite the blade being a light 1.9 pounds, I had trouble gaining velocity.  Controlling flight path was also less than perfect.  The cuts were sloppy instead of smooth.  I walked away unimpressed with both myself and the blade.

Blame lied solely at my feet.  There was little sense in blaming the weapon for my own shortcomings, after all.  Saturday after lunch I took another shot at cutting.  Two more bottles were ready for slaughter--leftovers from the day before.  I had a go at the skinnier bottle of the two, and *slice*...a clean diagonal cut.  Quickly I found myself becoming more aware of the blade's position, enabling me to cut with it instead of simply swing it like a sharp-edged club.  I cut a second time and just barely missed cutting through the entire bottle.  Horizontally the blade had passed through the entire object without difficulty, but I hadn't cut "deep" enough to cleave the bottle in half.  My error resulted in a cut that was about a quarter of an inch too shallow.  Not bad for a novice, I thought.  What a wonderful way to spend the first weekend of spring with good weather.

It is curious how rapidly high carbon steel begins to rust.  It is essential for me to keep a cotton cloth in my pocket when cutting wet targets.  Immediately following a cut, it's time for a wipe-down.  Shortly after that, it's time for a coating of mineral oil.

Good stuff.  Some times some hands-on time with a piece of the past can really broaden one's appreciation for mankind's history.

Tuscan Night

I've seen Subway advertising the Tuscan chicken sandwich for quite some time now.  There hasn't been a driving reason to try the thing as far as I can tell.

That changed with Tuesday's trip to Subway.  Seeing as how I tend to be lazy and thus eat out there a couple times a week, the employees have become familiar with me.  They treat me more as a friend than as a customer, which is kind of nice.  All that is required of me for an order is a bread type and a meat.  From there they know it will have cheddar cheese, be toasted, have all available vegetables, and no dressing of any kind.  Furthermore, they know to ring it up with a bag of chips and no drink.

During this last trip, we started discussing which sandwiches we like.  They find it kind of strange that I order pretty much the same thing every time (either chicken or roast beef on honey oat or Italian herb), but I explained that I just never get tired of it and also do like virtually everything there.

One of them regards the Tuscan chicken sandwich as something really special, so I've decided to give it a try.  With any luck it will be something special for me as well.

Long Time, Nice Hat

I haven't posted in a while.  No, I'm not dead.  Tomorrow marks the day that I will receive four more Fujitsu 15K hard drives.  Yes, this is a nerd post.  =)  I'll have eight MBA3147RCs working together in RAID-5 for my boot and application partitions.  That ought to be interesting, though I'm pretty sure this PERC5/i is maxed in terms of throughput and latency.  R5 with four drives already raises my average random access time from 5.2ms to 6.5ms.

Oh well.  At least it's bigger.  It's not just bigger, it's 1TB of 15K space.  It's absurdo.

Doctor, Doctor

On Tuesday I finally went to the doctor with the hopes of solving my "problem".  Now, when I say "problem", what I really mean is "inability to use the bathroom regularly, sometimes for 1+ weeks".

Fair Warning:  The following story is about a personal problem you may not want to know about.  The phrase TMI might be appropriate.  Proceed at your own risk.

It's something I've always had to deal with, but ever since I got down to around 220-240 pounds, the problem has been increasingly hard to deal with.  I started taking fiber pills after a scare in June where I couldn't go for a week and felt like death.  Did they help?  It's hard to say.  All I know is that as of Tuesday, I hadn't gone for nine days--fiber or no fiber.  That sucks.

That afternoon my scheduled appointment which was luckily setup the week before came up.  I went, filled out the requisite newbie patient paperwork, and waited patiently for the visit.  After what seemed like years (but was really 5 minutes), they called me up.  A worker had me step on some scales (188.9 pounds--wow) and took my blood pressure.  It's a curious moment when they're reading your pressure and your pulse.  You know they they you're nervous since it must be registering that way.  They don't say anything.  Neither do you...

After that I was lead to a room where the worker asked me about my problem.  I detailed my...problem, albeit awkwardly.  After a few minutes of that unpleasantness, she left and said the doctor would be by shortly.  It wasn't a but a few minutes and he showed up.

After about five minutes of explaining my problem again with a bit more detail, he decided I most likely am suffering from IBS.  He gave me some pills and a prescription for Amitiza.  With a box of what he assured me would be quick relief (PLUS good regulation going forward), he sent me on my way.

Let me tell you something about Amitiza that you may not know.  It's something called a chloride channel initiator, and it's magical for people like me.  I went that night, I went the next day, and the day after that.  Heck, I'm a down right "regular" Joe now.

Thank you, Doctor.

Applebee's? Yeah Right

It's always funny how whenever the thought of an Applebee's trip comes up, something inevitably goes wrong.  In the past, it has been things like death in someone's family, lack of gasoline, bad tires, sickness, or quantum decomposition of the Applebee's restaurant itself.

This time, it was illness again.  One member of the Applebee's party was potentially sick last week.  To be safe, I suggested we wait until the weekend until we could be sure he was over his cough.  Our trip was planned for Sunday.  By Saturday, he was feeling like his old self again and I was happy for this.  I mean, who wouldn't be?  Steak burger.  'Nuff said, right?

Sunday.  I call the guy shortly before we should be heading out because I haven't yet heard from him that day.  Turns out his cough had come back like Bruce Willis with a vengeance.  Figures.  It's the Applebee's Curse, after all.

I suppose there is a bit of irony here as well, since by Monday it was clear what he had.  He had caught that cold going around in this community.  The irony here is that I'd already had it just a couple of weeks prior.  I wouldn't have become sick again if we'd went like he had offered.  Oh universe, how you hate me so.

A Little Bit of Everything

There's good news and then there's good news.  There's also some bad news.  Good news:  Some friends visited from Arizona a week ago.  We had a grand time--we went out to eat, watched a movie, and basically did all the things we used to do back in the old days.  It would be a nice group of friends for sure.  I think I even managed not to creep out one of my friend's wives (it's the first time I'd met her).  That's quite an accomplishment for a geek like myself.

Bad news:  One of them had been infected with some kind of turbo-infectious cold which the person then dutifully spread to every last one of us, unaware of their own participation since symptoms had yet to manifest.  We all got sick this last weekend except for the one who had it first.  He was sick a day sooner.  heh

Good news:  We're all over it now.  It was really quite mild.  It also gave me an excuse to chug orange juice.  I don't normally get a lot of OJ since it has a lot of calories.

More good news:  AMD's new 800-series chipsets are out.  Supermicro already has four boards available based on these new chipsets with more coming soon.  I am excited and will be buying one as soon as I can.  Hopefully it will help out my system's performance.  Hello, quad PCIe 2.0 x16 + dual PCIe 2.0 x8 (x4) + PCI + 16 DIMM motherboards.