vanderwal.net

Harried Holiday

This has been a hectic and food filled holiday season. The highlights so far (still a week to go) include a trip across country to spend an early Christmas with my parents and Grandmother and one of Joy's sisters. Left Thursday after work and returned across country Sunday (yes we are still living in the US and not England or the Netherlands, which would make a cross country trip a little more sane).

Tuesday after work (out at 1pm) it was a train up to NYC. Arrived in Manhattan's Penn station to 8 taxis and just three fares (asking myself if this was still New York). Arrive at Joy's sister and husbands apartment, change clothes and head to Bay Head Brooklyn for Christmas eve dinner. Dinner was great at the Joy's brother-in-law's sister's house, which included 6 or seven courses of stuffed mushrooms, seven layer eggplant parmesean (to die for), mussels in a dill cream sauce, jumbo shrimp in a tarragon vodka tomato cream sauce, marinated calimari and octopus salad, swordfish with a jerk rub and mango chutney, salmon en crote with a cream horseradish sauce with green salad, and Italian pastry assortment for dessert. We left in a new snow falling back for Manhattan after midnight.

We had a "toilet incident" that put us out on the streets of Manhattan at 1:30am Christmas morning looking for a plunger (the building could not locate the one they have for a 23 story building. We tried bodegas, one Duane Reed (wagged their finger at us for wanting a plunger and pointed us to the Liquid Plummer, which we purchased). We got back to the apartment to read, "Not for toilets" on the bottle. So we tried the building across the street, which had one for us to borrow and the maintenance guy would not take our $15 holiday gift offer (If we move to NYC we are going to look at the Mondrian just because of this graciousness, bless them). At 2:45am I was able to go to the bathroom, which I had been holding since Brooklyn as I thought I could hold it and I was being a gentleman and trying to be a gracious husband (this all may be reconsidered at a later date).

Christmas morning we woke at 9am or so and had coffee and eggs then opened gifts with in-laws. This was quite relaxing. We changed and went to go to church a couple blocks away. We prepared for the rain, but not completely for the torrential downpour, which had us soaked from the mid-thigh down upon arriving at the church. The services was nice and the modern architecture wonderful to look at as it cast great shadows and provided enjoyable plays with the light. After church we went back and changed to dry clothes and I helped a little with the rack of lamb (good to keep in mind it is 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes not 325 as well as stronger encouragement to keep the oven door shut -- broad cookbook like Joy of Cooking is a needed gift for that house or even for me to travel with. We finally ate wonderful lamb and mashed potatoes (appearantly they had their own adventure the previous day).

We were catching the 6 o'clock train back to DC, which was now going to be in a serious snow storm. We left the building and the wonderful hospitality to hop into a cab (yes the subway is down one long block and down a short block, but there was one or two inches of snow and we had wheelie bags). The taxi did fine until the mid-forties going down 2nd Avenue where stopping and starting turned challenging. We finally made it to Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. The train ride was quiet, but we did have to stop to knock ice off the bottom of the train.

Once home we have had a brother-in-law staying with us as their house is still undergoing serious remodelling (he moved back home last night). On Friday we had a wonderful dinner with friends at Local 16 on U Street, NW in DC. The food was quite good (the white bean soup was a little too salty, but the jerk chicken pasta and mahi mahi were great. This weekend has been a weekend filled of more errands than one could dream of (although Sutton Gourmet in Bethesda had a wine, champagne, and port tasting in their store on Saturday covering 35 to 45 offerings and I found a couple to buy and a few to add to my wish list that will make great pairings). I did get to use my new KitchenAid stand mixer to make a thin pear pound cake (out of Patricia Wells Bistro cookbook), which turned out wonderfully with a dollop of whipped cream scented with pear brandy on top. This followed a potato leek soup, which I have been craving and not made for a few years now.

Soon we are back off heading south to meet up with more parents and three kids and a brand new puppy. I may have hide for the month of January to recover.

Seasons Greetings

If I missed you, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and a general Happy Holidays to all.

Quiet time offers reading for IAs

Things will be quiet here for a few days. Go read the Boxes and Arrows and the equally great offerings at Digital Web. Digital Web is offering The Psychology of Navigation by Jesse James Garrett Persuasive Navigation by Jeff Lash Navigation Complex by Peter-Paul Koch. All of these articles are well worth the time to read, Jesse's may be my favorite of the bunch for personal reasons.

RIP Smokey

The Washington Post says R.I.P. Smokey the Bear. I hope this dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service is a failed effort. I really don't want to go to a Haliburton Yosemite Forest showcasing the one remaining tree and the "environmentally friendly" pavement.

Snow with a house

It seems snow has a whole new meaning when one is a home owner (actually the whole world sort of changes). Snow now means shovelling, which is preceded by picking a suitable snow shovel, and deicing (also requiring careful thought so to choose a product that works, but does not damage the environment -- meaning it damages the pocket book, but I would rather pay there than poisoned land and water). I shovelled a couple times today and diced once and I am rather sore. Time for a long Winter's nap.

We had just a little over 6 inches of snow today at the house. Joy is down, iced in, Raleigh, NC and not here to enjoy the white fluff. I really enjoy the snow and it one of the things that keeps me from moving back to the SF Bay Area (I love the seasons and eternal Spring does not cut it for me).

I am looking forward to a nighttime snowfall here. We have a good yard to sit in and take in the quiet of snow falling. When I lived in Arlington, VA I was right across the street from the Iwo Jima Memorial. When it snowed at night in Arlington I would wander across to the Memorial to look down the light-up Mall and listen to the snowflakes land and the only other sound, the flag waving. It was perfectly calming. I did not really venture out today around here as I knew there were chores and things to look after. Sigh.

Snow photos from Bethesda, MD

Photos of today's show at home are now posted (an updated set will be posted as soon as the software registration arrives). You can also follow the local road conditions through a traffic cam at Bradley and Wilson (we can see the traffic light through our backyard when the trees are bare).

Snowday and lessons on not caching and using static pages

It is a personal snowday as the U.S. Federal Government is open (so far), but on unscheduled leave. Oddly enough the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) status site does not have a no-cache setting in the header. This means you browsers, even your modern browser, will cache the page and require you the user to manually refresh the page. These pages may even be cached locally by ISPs and connectivity providers, meaning the information is not up to date. The page is rather light, with few graphics, but it is not a static page, meaning each page is generated dynamically, which requires more horsepower to serve the page. One days like today every Washington, DC area federal employee and contractor is hitting this page, as well as many DC area private sector employees (most DC companies are open if the Federal Government is open).

I thought most IT folks learned their lesson with the need for "dynamic" pages a year or two ago, but I guess not. Many previously dynamic pages are not dynamic on the back end with content management systems doing the same work they always have done, but building static pages. If the content on the pages is not changing often (this is a subjective term and can roughly defined as content changing ever few hours with heavy site loads are usually candidates for static pages) or are not serving parsable datapoints (tables of data that can have subsets of data selected for viewing). Much of the "dynamic page" hype was generated by marketing folks to non-technical types who made decisions on cool or manly mindsets. Many folks started actually thinking about the need for dynamic pages a couple years ago. Those that decided they did not need dynamic pages for all or even most of their site began to realize they could save on the heavier hardware needed to churn out everypage. These static output folks also found they could withstand much higher hit rates with ease. I have been in meetings with folks that were asking about stress testing site that were static running on boxes that were formerly running dynamic sites. Those of us that understood the processor savings knew this was a foreign concept and they did not understand the server would be able to handle twice to eight times the load previously handled.

Home sick

I am home sick today. I have only been awake 7 to 9 hours the past two days (not consecutive hours either). It started with what I thought was warding off a chest cold and turned into a minor chest cold with body and head aches. The coninually being tired has really been tough as family was in and I was cranky and really crashing hard when my batteries ran out. Last year broke my 2 and a half year stretch of not being out sick, which was a wonderful streak. Having a wife who is a nurse (not by trade at this point) makes the stay home or go to work decisions easier.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Desk built

We finally got all the pieces and have our new desk assembled and our stuff on them. I am so happy to have a window to look out while working on the TiBook (primary tool) and PC. It is about time.

DSL on its way

Flippin' finally!!! The DSL gateway is shipping!!! I can be a person again in only a few more days.

All in a view

I woke up rather early this morning and walked out to get the paper as the grey foggy sky was beginning to lighten. This really reminded by of last Spring in Monterey where I woke early and opened the blinds in the morning to look out at the grasses and trees wake to their new day and shake off the morning fog. I was able to write a lot and knocked out some diagrams that helped me think through some issues and possibly others too.

I walked back in this morning and went to our office and opened the blinds and found a similar flow. Having a window to look out that offers a rather quiet scene helps me think and work for some reason. When we bought our house and we talked about where the office would be set, I really did not care as long as there were windows and it would really help to have those windows look out at trees. I have much of my wish and this morning really reminded me of this.

During and after grad school I had a studio apartment and I set my desk (also served as a dining room table with the ever present table cloth on it) to look straight out a large picture window. When I lived there I was able to get a lot of writing done and it was during this time I started writing poetry (well over 100 in two years) and some short stories. After I moved I was staring at a wall. When Joy and I were married our apartment looked out at parking lot. Now I look forward to what may come.

Rob gets it right

I missed an important call last night, Rob was calling my cell phone from the SF Giant game just after they won the fourth game of the World Series. It was nearly 13 years ago when Rob and I had tickets to the sixth game of the Earthquake series, which is a game they never played. Rob learned his lesson and picked up tickets earlier in the series. Nicely done. I found my cell phone buzzing in my jacket pocket at midnight letting me know I had missed a call. How I would have loved to get that call. I need a phone that knows when to ring loudly even when I have it set to vibrate.

I am not a somebody I am a persona

... I am Terrance Austin. I am a persona.

arg

Today sucked at work. One of the worse parts of the job, but it is the job I have. Other than a great group discussion with a very talented team, it was a flat out very tough day.