A Woman's Brain...
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
A friend at work sent me this. It was originally part of a joke but I'm just amazed at its complexity (click the image to watch it go)...
Posted byEric at 9:43 AM 0 comments
Polar Bear Patch... CHECK!
Monday, January 21, 2008
We did it! Last weekend I drove Alec and Wesley to Pedernales Falls State Park for a two-day sub-freezing camping adventure...
We packed the Mustang and headed-out Friday at about 5:00 P.M. This would be a quick hour-and-a-half drive to the park just outside Dripping Springs, or so I thought. I haven't traveled through the city of Austin in a while and totally forgot about rush-hour traffic. Three-and-a-half hours later, after a quick stop in the Oak Hill Subway for a few foot-longs, we arrived at cap site 14 in the icy dark. We pulled-in behind our camp mate's Ford F-250 full of firewood and made a plan.
"Tent first, boys; then we can unload our gear and setup the sleeping bags", I commanded my troops and they responded with a quick "Gotcha" in unison.
We headed back into the camp site about 50 feet from the road, searching for a good spot for our tent. I gave Alec final approval over our tent site as he has specific requirements for tent placement; in the woods but not too far and within sight of the road. We found a good spot among several large oaks. The ground was soft and free of rocks but had a slight incline to the left. We pitched our ten so that the door was facing our car and opened between two medium-sized oaks. That would make for a good entrance. We didn't bring a tarp to keep the entrance to our tent free from mud, we would just have to be careful and leave our shoes at the door.
Loading in our gear took a few minutes and we lined our mats and bags up across the tent's interior. The gear bags, cooler, food and our personal bags lined the perimeter of the tent. I immediately began igniting the lantern for light and warmth and once we were all settled-in, Wesley broke out the chess board. I ended up with my King and three Pawns to Wesley's King, Queen, Bishop, Knight and a medium-sized contingent of Pawns and forfeited with the onset of sleep. Wesley: 1, Dad: 0. I can honestly say, our chess games are slightly less than half a teaching exercise and the rest about me being surprised with the quickness with which he can size up the board, seeing potential moves and gotchas and easily squirming out of "Check" time after time.
The next morning, we awoke to frost and bitter cold. We were warm enough in our sleeping cocoons but once we hit the frosty air, a mad scramble for clothing layers and the bathroom began. Thankfully, the bathroom was slightly warm and provided a short respite from the cold.
Our breakfast consisted of donuts and orange juice and after a short defrosting in the car; we joined Pack 196 in the adjacent camp site for some scouting fellowship, Flag Football instruction, preparations for our trip to Enchanted Rock and some lunch.
The trip to Enchanted Rock took about 45 minutes. We arrived, parked, joined the Pack and began our hike to the summit. Enchanted Rock is basically an enormous mound of granite. At times, the face can be a bit steep but nothing the scouts couldn't handle. The hike up took about 15 minutes and we stopped several times to get a few geology lessons from scout master Kyle. We learned what Granite was composed of, how the mound formed and how it changes over time.
A quick call home to mom on the face of the "mountain" rounded out our Enchanted Rock experience. It was then time for the 45-minute trip back to camp and some free time with the other scouts.
That evening the scouts learned about a Dutch Oven and the style of cooking practiced by the early settlers. They helped make Pineapple Upside-Down Cake which we tasted around the camp fire later that evening while we listened to the history of the origins of the song: the Star-Spangled Banner.
Another sub-freezing night in the tent and we were ready to come home to hot showers, comfortable beds and our family.
The boys did great and are much better for the experience. They each earned a few belt loops and their coveted Polar Bear Patch.
I can honestly say that in the future, Alec and Wesley can use their experiences in the bitter cold as a reference and will know how to handle themselves if they find themselves in the elements. Obviously, a few more Cub Scout and Boy Scout trips where survival techniques are taught will be in order for total self-reliance. But, all-in-all, this experience was a great introduction to the awesome force of nature simple climactic changes can be and how important proper preparation is for survival.
Posted byEric at 12:58 PM 0 comments
Back to XP (and Mac OSX)
Monday, January 14, 2008
I've decided I've watched my poor little laptop strain through loading and running the Windows Vista operating system one too many times. I've rolled back my work machine's OS to Windows XP and have embraced Mac OS X at home.
It's not like I'm mapping the human genome (that's completed now, right?) or anything. Running SQL Server, Visual Studio and other development tools should not bring a machine to it's knees. Running Windows XP, I feel like is a lot more stable (and supported). Running WindowBlinds, I can even make my Windows experiece mock that of the Mac.
At home, my photo work flow and creative endeavors are handled by an iMac G5. It's a lean 1.8 GHz processor and 2 GB RAM and runs the newest Mac OS X (Leopard) with ease.
Posted byEric at 10:32 AM 0 comments
Storage Woes (cont'd)
I bought two promise ultra ATA/100 PCI controller cards off eBay, hooked all six drives to a franken-computer at the house, loaded Windows Server 2003 and began building a 1.25 TB software RAID. After hassling with the drives, turns out FOUR of them won't even pass the Seagate software drive selft-test. Looks like I got a batch of BAD drives.
I think I'll just cut my losses and use them for sculpture.
Posted byEric at 10:23 AM 0 comments
Storage Woes
Saturday, December 29, 2007
My LaCie Biggest F800 1 Terabyte RAID solution crashed and burned.
I corresponded with LaCie's technical support for weeks trying to get my problem diagnosed and fixed to no avail. The unit was out of warranty but they decided to send me a dual 500GB external drive array to smooth things over. Now I'm stuck with six 250GB hard drives and no way to use them without buying an enclosure, RAID hardware, etc. Using one drive as a spare, the five remaining should be able to provide 1 full terabyte of high-performance, safe storage.
Or I guess I could sell them on eBay.
Posted byEric at 6:22 PM 0 comments
Death Cab for Cutie
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Great band...
Posted byEric at 1:04 PM 1 comments
New Year Family Pic
Finally got around to taking a family picture on the steps of the new house.
This was the good one of about 27.
Posted byEric at 12:11 PM 1 comments
Snow 2007
Working from home this week. Most highways are frozen over.
Got "snow" last night; snow in that the ground what more white than mud-colored this morning. We've already run out of milk and toilet paper. That's a problem.
Posted byEric at 10:19 AM 0 comments
Natalie Kate
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Three days before Christmas, my wife gave birth to our fifth, Natalie Kate.
As with out others, she was born at home with a midwife. We called her as soon as we thought something was happening, which was a good thing as an hour and a half later, Natalie was born. It was a water birth (there pics are from her first bath 4 days later!). I caught her and handed her to Meredith and our eldest daughter, Madeline, helped cut her umbilical cord.
Posted byEric at 5:08 PM 0 comments
Code Development As Art
Friday, December 24, 2004
Art as science. Science as development.
I believe creating software systems can be so much more than an engineering effort. Algorithms, code formatting, performance, extensibility, re-use; all of these are dimensions of the creative aspect of programming and afford rare left/right brain engineers an outlet for the imprecise, the immesurable, the creative.
Sure, software systems should have utility. They should be created for a purpose, but in doing so careful attention should be paid to the most minute detail of their construction. From an obvious, technical perspective this is required. The system must function. The system must behave. It must respond to input and work the way the user works. It must be flexible and adaptable. However, to approach a software system's architecture from an engineering perspective alone, to design a human/machine interface via simply a flowchart and database ERD is to participate in the churn - the mindless rehashing of like systems created over and over again; systems that are doomed to disuse, never maintained and destined for replacement again and again.
Visual Thesaurus
Posted byEric at 10:00 AM 0 comments
