Are We Having Fun Yet?

Catching Up, September 1-15, 2013

2013-09-15T23:28:40Z

The past half-month has been a bit of a blur, but it's been good for the most part.

We spent Labour Day as planned at the trailer in West Virginia. All five of us were there, kent4str, cuyhogarvr and me, along with co-trailer trash Jerry & David. It makes for a crowded trailer and not a great deal of isolated rest, but it was fun nonetheless.

cuyahogarvr and I stayed at the trailer for the rest of Labour Day week. Outside of some moments of stress because of a dead car battery --it had a charge but was just shy of its 7th birthday so it didn't retain enough juice to start the car-- I caught up on some rest and reading. More precisely, I caught up on some self-study, working towards my eventual Cisco network certification later this year. Still, I could have used a few extra days to fully recharge.

Work has been active. Our team has been distracted from large outstanding projects by a surge in daily problems-of-the-moment. Not realizing the wave of minor things would run on for days, we didn't prioritize our tasks properly and it cost us some time, but this week we'll be more aggressive about it: a couple of our team will be dedicated to simply addressing the daily minor things while the rest of us attack the outstanding big projects.

That said, I did get two major projects off my plate and a third nearly completed by this past Friday. I'm confident our team overall will be back in a very good position again with in a week.

Spare time will be at a premium this coming week: the Mainstream class with DC Lambda Squares continues for another two Wednesdays, even as a new Mainstream class for Chesapeake Squares starts this Thursday. I have a club night with Chesapeake Squares this Tuesday, then a six hour calling marathon, Mainstream through Challenge-1, with the Times Squares in New York City this coming Saturday. I also have a board meeting with the Mid-Atlantic Challenge Association Sunday afternoon.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to all of these projects but it will require some heavy lifting for the next two weeks.

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Vacation!

2013-09-03T16:42:34Z

I'm utterly delighted to report that I'm on vacation right now. While I've been at the trailer at Roseland Resort since last Friday, the vacation part didn't seem real until I set up the out-of-office auto-reponder for work. Now I'm blissfully plugging away on my laptop on my own personal projects without worry of distraction from more urgent work-related matters.

There were more than 750 people at the campground this weekend, a new record for the place. The staff are understandibly exhausted. The crowds were a little overwhelming for me so I was happy to stay close to or inside the trailer nearly the entire time. As an introvert, it's tough enough being available to the public, not to mention on a stage routinely, during weekdays: I come to Roseland to retreat from the world and recharge.

Nearly everyone cleared out of the campground on Monday. Currently, Wayne & JD are at their trailer, as well as the Bills in their trailer just below. Ron & Derwyn are here too, and another trailer further east of ours is occupied. That's the entire population of Rose Hill, our little neighborhood of the campground. There's perhaps a dozen other people scattered around the place. Wayne mentioned many of these remaining people were planning to depart today, further reducing the population. Yay for isolation!

I'm keeping busy though... I've finished four books, including a history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a political piece on South Korea, and two books on team management. I've finally found time to catch up on some computer-based training courses I have on my computer, working towards an eventual Cisco certification. I finished one on Xen virtualization (not Cisco-related), and another CCNP-level Cisco course on network switch management. I'll start the next course when I'm finished with this posting.

Tomorrow morning, cuyahogarvr and I are heading to Cleveland overnight to tackle some minor business. We'll be back Thursday morning. Mercifully, it's only a four hour drive to Cleveland from the campground so it's not a big imposition into our vacation time.

There really isn't much else to report at this time, largely because I'm working very hard to ensure there isn't anything to report. The whole point of a vacation, after all, is to relax and let go of the mundane headaches of life in the real world. You'll let me know if something comes up, right?

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Memorial Day Weekend

2013-05-27T14:11:22Z

I'm still at Roseland Resort at our trailer as I write this, continuing to enjoy the long weekend. Sadly, I'm already anticipating the end of the weekend: I could really use another 2-3 days of relaxing before returning to the real world but there are things which must get done this week and they can't be rescheduled.

As expected, I've gained 400lbs from eating 4.25 billion calories this weekend. That's the kind of thing that happens when you have (by design) nothing to do but nap, read and relax, doubly so if one is also procrastinating on some minor tasks. In this case, I've been putting off further study in pursuit of Cisco certification: it's not critical to work, but it's the sort of ongoing education which keeps a résumé looking somewhat current & fresh and the kind of project one takes on during spare time rather than in the heat of battle.

I took a little time this afternoon to use some spray sealant on the trailer roof, touching up the seams around the skylights in the front & back to ensure we have a weather-proof shelter. While the weather was chillier than normal this time of year --we had frost Friday night-- we've been cozy with our fully-fueled propane furnace. The tent campers around the resort were not so lucky but as near as I can tell, no one died of hypothermia. The next time we're here, it'll be the air conditioning getting the workout rather than the furnace.

The campground wifi hasn't been as robust as I remembered it last year but that may simply mean others have discovered it and are using more of the bandwidth. Still, it's more than enough to sustain videoconferencing, not to mention web browsing so I can't complain overmuch. Sometimes I think I have no reason to return to DC at all for days at a time.

This morning, kent4str and I return to DC while cuyahogarvr heads to Cleveland for family stuff. I do have a series of appointments this week for work & home, but as it's a short work week, it'll be relatively light (I hope).

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The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

2012-03-18T20:18:27Z

The past two days at the trailer have been wonderful for both relaxing the body and stimulating the mind.

We have two major projects now in the works, neither of which I can say much at the moment but hope to within a month or so. Brainstorming yesterday and again today has produced a lot of great ideas and refinements of possibilities. I need to do a tonne of research and produce a business plan for one, and handle some business operations stuff for the other. This is the sort of planning and research at which I excel so I'm delightfully busy right now.

Between the discussions, we've done some minor work around the trailer. Early this afternoon, we used a power washer and scrub mop to clean the exterior: the accumulation of dust, pollen and other environmental insults were obvious against the white panels. I'm amazed how much better the trailer looks now.

I've been playing with the campground wifi, learning what I can about it. We get about 700kbps download, 500kbps upload speeds, not a bad rate overall compared to either my mobile phone's feeble 1X data rate or the campground prior meagre wifi offering. Our home FiOS (25Mbps download & upload) has spoiled us.

Sure enough, logging out of the wifi service on my laptop doesn't allow me to log back in with my tablet or wifi-enabled mobile phone. Checking on other stats, I found that IPv6 is supported, the packet loss rate is high at 8-14% and DNS lookups are largely fine but the NAT node seems to have a potential security vulnerability.

I found time to sit in the sun for a brief period in the mid-afternoon. I regularly have commented that I have only two skin colors: fish-belly white and lobster red, and the transition between them is about 30 seconds. I'm trying to get small doses of gentle sun in the early spring so I can endure longer durations when needed during the summer. I also suspect my vitamin D production isn't what it should be since I spend so much time hiding from the flaming yellow ball of pain in the sky.

Memo to self: ebooks are a bitch to read in direct sunlight so consider having an audio book handy for the next time.

We return to Maryland tomorrow morning. *sigh*

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Trailer De-winterizing

2012-03-17T20:58:01Z

Another camping season at Roseland Resort has begun!

Actually, since the campground is open 12 months of the year, it's always been camping season here, but the trailer is not exactly comfortable in the depth of winter so we close it up in early November and open it again when weather & scheduling allow in the spring. Since spring seems to have come early this year, we de-winterized in mid-March rather than early April.

De-winterizing was a breeze: connect the utilities, flush the antifreeze from the lines, install the battery & propane tanks, power up the appliances and park our asses.

Roseland has changed a little since we left last fall. The rec hall has been expanded by about 50%, making it much more spacious and including a wrap-around porch. An ATM is now available for those who need quick cash. Internet access has been outsourced to WVHotSpot.net who has installed wifi hotspots across the campground: we can even get a signal inside our trailer instead of the machinations I employed to find an open wifi signal in the dining hall last year.

The wifi is a bit less than optimal for us geeks. One purchases a block of time as one would at an airport: $4/hour, $10/day, $15/week, $30/month, $50/60 days, $70/quarter, $100/half-year. Alas, the purchased account is tied to that single device and isn't transferable. If I purchase wifi access on my laptop, I can't logout and then login with my tablet. If anyone has an idea of how to work around this limit, let me know.

If you're reading this right now, it's because I purchased a day's wifi bandwidth for testing & evaluation. If only Verizon Wirless' 3G or 4G signal reached into these rural parts of West Virginia, I could use my phone's hotspot instead. *sigh*

While talking over schedules a few hours after arriving, we realized we don't actually need to dash home Sunday afternoon. After all, Michael is effectively self-employed, I telecommute and Kent is job hunting right now: what's the rush to be home & refreshed for Monday morning? Accordingly, we're going to stay at the trailer until Monday morning, then head home at our leisure. I can handle my regular work remotely from the back seat of the minivan as we trek across western Maryland for home.

I had a long nap this evening as I was still exhausted from a late night work shift. This probably means I'll be up half the night, but that's no tragedy: I have lots of reading material, a couple of writing assignments, a business plan to compose and some square dance choreography to create.

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Not Enough Hours in a Day

2011-11-08T17:16:56Z

Last Thursday, I did an all-nighter at the data center. It was scheduled maintenance, a complete site outage in which we would update our production software, upgrade the RAM in some servers, update the firmware in our storage array and shuffle some existing servers between various racks.

It didn't go exactly as planned.

While the RAM upgrades and software updates went well, there were some challenges. Two of the re-racked servers didn't reboot as they should. One had developed slight amnesia and couldn't locate its boot disk: that was quickly fixed. The other server's motherboard went bad but it was part of a cluster so we were able to run on reduced capacity until a replacement was installed Monday.

The storage array firmware didn't happen either. The upgrade process requires a fully functional array but as we were preparing to begin, we found there was a bad disk. Checking the logs, we found the array did try to tell us but because our service agreement had lapsed briefly while our finance dept quibbled about whether or not to renew it, the reporting mechanism which would automatically issue the work ticket was disabled. And while we did get a replacement disk before the night's maintenance window was out, we couldn't do the firmware upgrade while the disk RAID group was being reconstructed, a process which would take another 12 hours or so. sigh

I got to bed around 4:30am.

I nominally had Friday off work to recover. Later that morning, the guys placed me more or less vertically in the minivan and we headed to the trailer for the last camping season of the weekend.

The campground was very quiet: we had perhaps a dozen people attending. I had hoped the trees might have more leaves so I could photograph some fall foliage but they were nearly all barren, the bulk of the leaves taken down by the weight of snow the weekend prior. That snow had since melted away and despite that unexpected cold snap, our weekend was bright, warm and sunny. And I spent nearly all of it catching up on sleep.

I'm happy to report my Droid Bionic mobile phone works well at the campground in rural West Virginia. Having a working mobile phone and wireless Internet allows me to work from the trailer if I want a long weekend or need to deal with a work-related emergency. The campground is remote enough that most AT&T and Spring users have spotty voice access at best; while Verizon has better coverage there, not every model of phone can pull in sufficient signal to be reliable. My old Blackberry Storm worked well enough even if my old wireless broadband modem only worked if I was outside the trailer. It's a huge relief that my new phone and its mobile hotspot functionality seem to work solidly.

Winterizing and wrapping up the trailer was all very routine. It's always sad when another camping season comes to an end but we're planning to open early, possibly mid-March next year so the interregnum will be shorter this time.

We were home by early evening and the real fun began.

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Vacation Ending

2011-09-10T18:29:00Z

Today is our last full day at the trailer this vacation. It's been a fun eight days here and I'm a little sad we have to return to the real world Sunday.

We completed a lot of small maintenance jobs: resealing the rear window and bathroom vent, cleaned out the heating and AC vents and lubricated the slide-outs and seals. The barbecue propane tank needs to be refilled but we'll do that at home before we return in October.

I've nearly finished my must-read list... I'm forcing myself to complete the rest tonight.

The last day... sigh.

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Trailer Update

2011-09-08T13:06:38Z

So far, our week-long vacation at the trailer hasn't exactly been what we hoped. At the same time, it's actually everything I had hoped for. Contradictory, but that's life.

It has rained here. A lot. OMG, it has rained. For three days. By definition then, we haven't gone out hiking, sat by the pool or spent a lot of time lounging on the deck. There are probably only 10 people in the entire campground at the moment because (a) it isn't a weekend and (b) the weather, but that largely means fewer distractions. Besides, I come here to relax in a modicum of isolation, not to party all hours of the day & night.

We also discovered the trailer roof leaks in two spots, now repaired. PITA.

I had thought of using various quiet spots around the campground to sit and read but the rain has scuttled that idea. I could still curl up inside the trailer to read.

So far, I've finished:

MongoDB
What Bugged the Dinosaurs
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
The Presentation Secrets Of Steve Jobs
Deep Space Craft
False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World
Amazon EC2
Elastic Beanstalk
Google Power Search
Rabies
IPv6 Essentials
Migrating Applications to IPv6

I've also obtained Evernote for my netbook, my Android tablet and my Blackberry Storm and have delighted in porting my misc small notes which have accumulated over the years. I've also watched three movies via my tablet, made some updates to my web site (mostly about dates for upcoming calling gigs), begun organizing another square dance caller workshop chez nous for Oct 29, kept up with a tonne of email, updating my latest to do list and made some minor online purchases.

I haven't read as many books as I had originally planned but we still have five more days here before returning to the real world so there's opportunity yet to catch up.

Verizon is releasing my dream telephone, the Droid Bionic, to the unwashed masses today but I won't be in line unless I drive to DC immediately. While in Moundsville, WV, yesterday, I asked the salescritters what the odds were of finding such a model in the area: she said they probably won't see one for another six months. Seriously, how do people live out here? Lord knows how long I'm going to have to wait when we do get back to DC next Sunday. I wouldn't be surprised if they're sold out & back-ordered for a while. *sigh*

Update: I've been able to order my Droid Bionic online, transferring my existing number and grandfathering in my unlimited data plan, as well as getting a $50 purchase discount and keeping my employer's monthly discount. And by adding wifi hotspot functionality, I can cancel my mobile broadband service too! Unless there's a severe back-order, my new beast should be waiting for me when I get home Sunday.

Update²: My phone has shipped already! I just got the email with the tracking number. Yay!

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Vacation Reading

2011-09-01T15:53:56Z

Tomorrow morning, I'm heading to the trailer for a ten day vacation. I'm sure I'll be spending some time working on square dance choreo but I'm planning to spend the bulk of my time catching up on some professional development, technical skills and pleasure reading.

Here's a quick list of some of the eBooks I'm taking to read:

The Prehistoric Earth
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War
City of Fortune: How Venice Won & Lost a Naval Empire
Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Craft
False Economy: A Surprising Economic History
History of Scotland
Rabies
Thames: The Biography
The Ellipse: A Historical & Mathematical Journey
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People
Elements of Influence
Effective Selling for the Small Business Owner
Javascript: The Definitive Guide
Mobile IPv6
IPv6 Essentials
IPv6 Security
Hadoop Installation
Programming Amazon EC2
Programming Android
The Ruby Programming Language
Fundamentals of Python
4G LTE for Mobile Broadband

I have a few extras if time allows but this seems a pretty good list.

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