goolsbee.org, serving useless content from an undisclosed location since 1997
Many years ago, in a Bothell location far, far away, the df-tech geeks went out to the dumpster to “retire” some old gear. Damian recorded the event for posterity and it has even had a few moments of net-fame here and there.
Boy, it was fun.
(Thanks Damian for the link!)
Why I Host with digital forest
Thanks Glenn for the props! It was a bit of a stressful day, even though in reality the entire operation went off without a hitch. I really do have a great team. The best geeks a measly amount of money can buy! But seriously, they did a great job, leaving me to just relay the info out to clients via the support blog.
I know Glenn is happy customer. Last year he promised to buy lunch for my entire staff… something I have yet to actually pull off. We run in shifts 24/7, so getting everyone together at once is tough. I want to get us all up to the I.D. for a Dim Sum lunch or something… easy on Glenn’s budget, but fun for all of us. Glenn’s post is a nice reminder for me to start making that happen. Shawn’s got a meeting scheduled for the entire crew soon, maybe we can do it then.
When Bill Woodcock was last here, he commented that it is ironic that this business used to be all bout bits, but it has become now all about electricity and air conditioning. Who woulda thought?
That is the Moon, transiting the Sun, as seen from a million miles further out than Earth, via the STEREO-A spacecraft.
Beautiful.
I’m going to be doing some long-overdue upgrades of the software behind the scenes here this evening, so don’t be surprised if I’m down for a while.
Entertain yourselves with old rally stories at my old website: www.goolsbee.org
–chuck
There is a backhoe trenching in front of our building.
I make it sound all warm and fuzzy on our official corporate blog but like any network geek, I gotta admit backhoes make me VERY nervous. =\
Oh… and if they screw up… it won’t just be digital.forest having an outage… virtually ALL THE FIBER that goes between Seattle and everything south of us (Oregon, California, etc) is all right there in that bit of grassy median and the shoulder of Highway 99. We’re talking SERIOUS outage if these guys bork it. Thankfully they seem to be taking the job quite seriously… and carefully.
Windows expert to Redmond: Buh-bye
Microsoft’s marketing materials for a past version of Windows used the phrase, “It just works.” But the only computer that tagline honestly describes is the Macintosh. Don’t translate that in your mind as, “Yeah, so what, the Mac is easy to use.” Any new computing environment takes some getting used to. The easy-to-use aspect is nice, but not all that significant. When Mac users say, “It just works,” what they mean is that you spend more time on your work, and a lot less time working on your computer.
Bingo! Nice to see something I’ve been saying for… ever, validated once again. If you want to spent endless hours futzing around ON a computer, your best choice is honestly a Linux box. If you want to just get stuff done, go with a Macintosh.
If you want to spent your days swearing AT your computer, go with Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft tries real hard. They spend billion$ on thousands of programmers and flog them mercilessly to come up with every possible way to make Windows “cool”… make it “usable”… make it “work”. But in the end you realize that is exactly the problem. This is an Operating System created by commitee. Mind you, so is Linux, but it is made by a commitee that never sees or talks with each other.
MacOS X is really a INTERFACE, not an operating system. The OS underneath it is yet another UNIX variant, but the average computer user would have a hard time noticing that. It is an amalgam of NeXTStep and FreeBSD, both solid UNIX variants with a long history of excellent performance. What Apple has done is tweaked the user interface with all those years of knowledge and experience they gained with the Macintosh, from 1984 to 2001. OS X is hardly related to the “real” (or as Apple calls it in a sugar-water reference “Classic”) Macintosh that was shipped in 1984. Instead it is the tried and true, been in development since the late 1960s, UNIX, with an Apple created User Interface on top.
I’ve been managing UNIX systems of various flavors since 1989… SCO (long before they turned evil!), SunOS 4.X, A/UX, AIX, Solaris, NeXTstep, FreeBSD, Linux, Irix, etc. They have been great multi-user systems, perfect for their task, but what Apple has done is build a UNIX that is suited best as a PERSONAL COMPUTER. That is all about interface, and nobody builds better UI than Apple.
So… tired of fighting your computer? Tired of running the computing equivalent of bending over in the prison shower? Tired of running a spam spewing robot without your knowledge? Tired of cleaning up the mess of backdoors, trojans, viruses, worms, etc?
Get a Macintosh.
Many of you have noticed I haven’t updated the site in several days… that is because I’m on vacation. Once a year I visit my parents, who have had the remarkable foresight to retire to a ski resort. Yeah… tough life but I gotta admire their smarts for that! So we bring the grandkids and test the limits of my long-gone lateral meniscus on the slopes.
It seems that 4 straight days of fixed-heel skiing is all my knee can take anymore. I left the telemark skis at home this year to lighten our luggage load, and I’m paying for it now. The on/off alpine/telemark shift helps me last the whole week, but relentless fixed-heel skiing wears me down. I realize to many people this is completely counter-intuitive, but Telemark turns are much easier on my bad knee than fixed heel alpine skiing is. In alpine boots, every shock is transmitted into my knee as bone-to-bone contact. On tele’s impacts are transmitted through a bent knee… so it is far less stressful.
Of course, my toes are happier, as my tectonic shift from leather (Asolo Snowpines!) to plastic tele boots a few years ago leads to a yearly loss of a toenail or two. The suffering we do for fun! I still haven’t fallen for the overly Alpine, up to the knee Tele boots… and have a barely-over-the-ankle Garmont “touring boot” for my freeheeling pinhead ski style. I also have tele skis that are 200cm long… some Wolf Cold Smokes. I guess I’m a throwback to my 80’s tele retro beginnings. I still have my snowpines and 205cm Karhu XCDextremes in the garage at home.
The week started on old snow and sunshine and I was happy to not have the teles, and pin-skiing on hard snow is no fun really. But the powder arrived yesterday and I stare longingly at the free-heelers and banged my knee up so bad I had to take today off.
Back on the slopes tomorrow and I suspect you won’t see another word here until sometime next week.
Tough life, but somebody has to live it.
(oh, and I had to fix my parent’s wireless network… ugh.)
A footnote: I skiied a few days ago for half a day without poles. I found it a liberating experience! I tend to be a lazy, hip/foot focussed skier anyway due to my bad knee, and as such the poles become sort of useless. Telemarking for 20-some years has given me great balance and edge control (all alpine skiers should spend time on teles, or even snowboards, to truly learn edges and balance. I snowboarded for a few years back in the 80s.) so I can shift edge to edge without much upper-body fuss. I don’t do much serious mogul skiing anymore as the loss of all shock-absorption properties in my right knee make it excruciating. I can do it, I just can’t function for days afterwards! As such, I have found poles to be sort of plastic and metal appendixes… useless extra stuff hanging off the end of useful bits.
It was great fun to ski without them. I may continue to do so.