July 2006 Archives

There's a satisfaction you get from knowing that you've done good work, that you simply can't recreate in any other way.

I had a former employer -- and I use this term loosely, I worked there for less than three weeks in between two jobs, and I was there for such a short period of time that it's not even resumé-worthy -- call me out of the blue this past Thursday. They were down. Hard. Their server was over at a data-recovery place, their RAID array (with the backups) was there too. The hot-spare machine wasn't actually configured right and didn't have data, it was pretty much every organization's nightmare scenario:

The data that is our business is missing, and if we don't get it back soon, we might as well just shut the doors and go home.

The question was, could I come down this weekend, stay in the city, and rebuild their servers while the data-recovery people tried to recover their data. I've become fairly good friends with one of the principals of this company after I left, and frankly I couldn't say "no" to him. His very lifeblood was on the line.

The initial "Data Recovery" we got from their recovery guy sucked. Not nearly enough recovered from the corruption. As I continued building the systems, their programmer started to investigate -- what data could he reconstruct from the remnants, reports, the various system detritus that was left around after batch jobs were done. The results didn't look good. Some of the patient data would be around, but there were also going to be crucial holes, things which could be reconstituted only by paying people who weren't supposed to get paid, and having the error reported to them.

Their data recovery place calls me in my hotel room last night, asking me "how to mount the XFS RAID-5 array". My heart sinks. The guy they've got can't even get this far? What the hell?

The programmer and I confer for a few, and decide we're going to yank the rug out from under the data recovery place. We get the RAID array back, and I start trying to talk to it. To make a long blog entry short, a minor I/O card replacement, and a rebuilt partition table later, and I've done in about two hours of labor what the data recovery people couldn't do in three days.

Now, make no mistake, the Wedding Fund has definitely gotten a nice contribution from this weekend's labor, and D is to be commended for running me down a spare set of clothes as my stay got extended from one night to two on short notice. But the look of sheer joy in the owners of the company as they realized that they were not going to be closing their doors after all... that is a pretty decent reward all unto itself...

Hell to the yeah, Iron Maiden's back. Their new single, The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg is available via iTunes Music Store, and it kicks serious ass.

It evokes the power, both in terms of vocals and writing, of the Powerslave era, and that's saying a lot.

I can't wait til the new album, A Matter of Life And Death, is finally released in September.

My crappy week just got a little bit brighter...

Item to check off: See the Cubs play a game at Wrigley Field.

Class ended early today, around eleven in the morning. When I got back to my room I caught up on e-mail real fast and then started thinking about "how I would spend the rest of the day". It occurred to me that at the beginning of the week, I'd been thinking about catching a game, but had vetoed today for some reason. I couldn't remember if it was because it was a day game and I was expecting to still be in class, or if it was because the Cubs were on the road.

Turns out, they were playing the Mets, at home. Ticketmaster told me the game was sold out, but throwing caution to the wind, I ran down to the train station and hauled my ass up to Wrigley. Turns out, it wasn't completely sold out. When I asked the box office person what the "best he could do for me" was, he happily took my cash in exchange for a field-level box seat. And there I sat enjoying the game until shortly after the skies opened up and rain poured down. Wanting to get back to my hotel before the trains were crowded with both Cubs fans and commuters, I took that as a sign, and so I bailed mid-game (something I could easily do since I had very little "invested" in the game, emotionally).

Wrigley is, frankly, a beautiful field. It's not the Stadium, that's for sure, but as one of the oldest remaining baseball parks from the first days of the sport, it was easy to feel the energy and history that fill that place.

It was just under a decade ago that I packed all of my earthly possessions into a rental truck, and moved my ass up to Chicago from Fort Wayne. I remember being so exhausted from it all that if it hadn't been for a really good friend showing up and kicking our asses into unloading the truck, it all might still have been in that truck to this day.

As I sit in my hotel room this evening, digesting a couple of dogs from Portillo's, it occurs to me how much I love Chicago.

I haven't got any intention of leaving Vassar. I can see myself working here pretty much until they throw me out. But at the same time, if I had to move to a big city, Chicago would be on the top of my list.

I know that's blasphemy, and I know it means I'd get to see a lot fewer Yankee games, but seriously... all you have to do is take a walk on the Lake to realize that Chicago has got a lot of... beauty, for lack of a better word, that New York is simply lacking.

New York is an exciting city, but it's not Chicago.

I just wish D wasn't working this week, so she could've come with. Would have been nice to show her around a bit.

I enjoy poker. But I'm not, by any stretch, a "great" player, nor am I naturally wealthy. Thus, when I play in anything other than a home-game, I limit myself. Either I'll enter into a multi-table tournament with a decent payout, or I limit myself to something like 2/4 Limit, or maybe 3/6. But, beyond that is simply outside my reach, both from a skill level along as well as from a bankroll level.

Thus, I was kind of sad that I didn't get to do anything at Hollywood Casino in Aurora. I had been out in the 'burbs visiting some friends, and on the way back I realized I passed (literally) right by the casino. It was convenient enough that if I didn't change out of the lane I was driving in, I'd've have continued back to Chicago. So I went in, got myself a players club card, pulled some cash from the ATM, and set off for the Poker room, looking to play.

I had two options... a single-table tournament with a $90 buy-in (oof), or, get this... 5/10 was the minimum spread.

I simply couldn't afford to bring enough cash to the table to play 5/10, and a single-table tournament simply doesn't have a whole lot of appeal at that level of buyin. It's too easy for a couple friends to stack the game, and the newcomer would never know. (In a multi-table, it's a lot harder to do that because people are constantly, randomly, thrown from table to table).

I couldn't even find a blackjack table that would have met my normal cash requirements... hell, even the Bellagio, that home for rich people, has $5.00 blackjack from time to time... the minimum I saw was $20 on blackjack which, again, was over my head.

So, in the end, I left my cash in my pocket and came back to the hotel, never having gambled a single dollar. I'm not sure if it's a testament to self-control (and, obviously, the fact that I am not a gambling addict *grin*), or if it's simply an indication of how poorly the casino services the customers.

Then again, since they've got lots of people all the time, I have to assume it's the former.

Another thing I noticed today was while driving the Illinois Tollway, it occurred to me that there are a lot of exit ramps that:

• Require exact change
• Have no attendant on-duty

So how are you supposed to pay the toll if, say, you're a tourist who has no idea in advance that you're going to need 80¢ here and 35¢ there? The Illinois Tollway page has this to say:

Failure to pay tolls will result in a Notice of Toll Evasion, where the toll plus a $20 fine is levied. Those who do not follow the due process outlined in the Notice could eventually face loss of license plate or driver's license through the Secretary of State's office. Video Surveillance cameras are located at all plazas to record toll violators.

Now, riddle me this:

Why haven't the tollway agencies and their "pass" programs (IPass, E-ZPass, etc.) worked together with rental car agencies so that people renting cars don't have to worry about tolls? Why couldn't I have a rental car that has an IPass box of some sort permanently attached and then, at the end of my rental, Hertz asked the IPass folks "How much has this car's tag been charged since the time he rented the car?" and simply add that amount to my rental bill?

You could even offer the option to disable the in-car IPass if you wanted, for instance for people who are renting a car, but who have their own IPass they would rather use (perhaps to take advantage of a lower-cost commuter rate-plan, or because they have a special "free access" pass like the one retired Thruway people get).

IPass would get their cut of more tolls, rental agencies' customers would be happier (and also, rental car companies would have less hassle to go through trying to track down renters of cars which were used in toll-evasion), and the tollways would likely have fewer offenders and thus also get increased revenue.

It seems to me that this would be a perfect synergy between the different organizations to get maximum value.

I haven't been blogging lately but today, I've had no less than two different things to blog about. It's hard to believe.

First... the nightmare of paperwork that happens when your rental car (rented on your personal AmEx) is hit by a cabbie, while you're not in it, while you're on business travel. Luckily, since the cabbie hit a parked car, the fault is 100% his (and, to his credit, he admitted so), so it's unlikely I'd ever be forced to pay a dime. However, if he defaults and doesn't pay, or his insurance balks, who pays?

• Me personally? Well, I don't think so.
• American Express' extended liability coverage? They say only whatever my personal auto insurance doesn't cover.
• My personal insurance company? God I hope not, I don't want to file a claim with them and have them ding my rates because some cabbie hit me.
• Vassar? The most likely option of all of those, actually, is that Hertz bills me and I get reimbursed from Vassar.

So while it may seem like that last option is the most likely, there's a maze of twisty bureaucratic procedures to go through to make that happen, I'm sure. Not looking forward to that, and so I really and truly hope that the cabbie's insurance pays up like they're supposed to.

More stuff in my next post....

From Larry King's Bush interview last night....

KING: Doesn't it hurt to say more people are -- don't like what I'm doing than like what I'm doing?

G. BUSH: Well...

KING: Does it bother you?

L. BUSH: Not really. I mean, the polls are just...

KING: But it's a sign.

L. BUSH: It's a sign, but it's not necessarily really what we see. I mean, when we travel around the country, when we visit with people, that's not what we hear all the time. When they're good polls -- I think I told you this the last time I interviewed with you, you don't see them on the front page.

I dunno, kids, maybe if you didn't force protestors to be several blocks away from you where you can't see them, and if your public appearances were actually open to the public and not just people who are known to support you, and if you didn't pre-screen in advance "random questions from the public" so as to ensure that they were going to be Bush-friendly... maybe, just maybe, you might see and hear something different from what you presently hear "all the time".

If you're going to surround yourself with yes-men, and only visit echo chambers, and use the Secret Service to keep dissenting opinion miles away from you, then -- go figure -- you're not going to hear much in the way of "dissenting opinion".

OK, so North Korea test-fired some missiles today. They, theoretically, could be outfitted to carry nuclear warheads. The world is in an uproar.

My question is: Why?

I question the whole practice of "non-proliferation" in the first place, I guess. You'll notice that the biggest supporters of non-proliferation are folks who already have well established nuclear programs -- the United States, Britain, Russia, etc., etc.

I believe that countries support non-proliferation not because they believe in a peaceful world -- if they did that, they'd destroy their own weapons as well -- but because the more people who have nuclear weapons available to them, the fewer people there are that they can push around diplomatically. Furthermore, there become more voices for third-world nations to have to pay attention to (e.g., a non-nuclear country pretty much has to do what a nuclear country says, because we can obliterate them if we wanted to... the more nuclear countries, the more people nuclear countries have to share that authority with).

People can mock MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all they want to, but here's the summary you'll keep coming back to with it, are you ready?

It works.

Right now, we are the only superpower left in the world. If the Commander-in-Chief of the US of A was to go off his gourd (and, to be fair, there are many people who would say that this has already happened, but that's a different discussion), we could obliterate the world and there's nobody who could stop us. Heck, with the dismal failure rate of Russian nuclear weapons, there's not even really anyone who could pose a retaliatory threat these days.

That, of course, is a position that we like. We can push people around, and they have to do what we tell them, because -- in the end -- we can raise their ambient temperature to several million degrees Celsius in thirty minutes or less. Given that option, people will cave. The best part is that it's so unspoken that you don't even have to flex those nuts to get the results. If you're a non-nuclear country, why bother going through all the hassle to reach an endgame you know will eventually be summarized as "we can kick your ass, so do what we say"?

I'm all for nuclear proliferation. I believe it puts countries on an equal footing, and requires countries to actually listen to one another. Can you imagine how the "Cold War" might have gone slightly differently if we weren't actually afraid of the Soviet arsenal? The realization that we were on an equal footing in terms of ability to inflict damage on one another forced us to communicate, to attempt to understand one another.

Likewise, a nuclear-capable North Korea, or Iran, brings legitimacy to the bargaining table. Like it or not the ability of a country to rain nuclear death on people commands a certain amount of respect. I wish it wasn't the case, but them's the facts, and until nobody has nuclear weapons (and let's face it, that genie isn't going back into the bottle, good luck with that), I respect the right of any country that wants them to be able to have them, so they can defend themselves equally against other countries that already have them.