Once upon a time I swam about in music. It was playing it most of the time while at work, while at home, I used to research artists, groups and even songs. But over the years as I moved and my job changed I somehow drifted a bit from my music.
Its not that I stopped listening to it, not technically. Its not that I stopped liking it. It isn't I stopped buying new music. I stopped connecting with it and digging into it and hearing it and feeling it. Some songs do still bring up emotions and memories of times, places and events passed. My connection to my music has become more shallow than it once was. Sure I can still put a good play list together but not as good as I used to be at it.
I think its possible to rebuild my relationship with my music. I've already started to. I've been making it more convenient to listen to and listening more.
I first purchased a pro account at flickr in May of 2006. I needed to upload more than 200MB and wanted to have more than three sets. Well sometime in June of 2006 they gifted me a month for free "to say sorry". Then I renewed my pro account in June 2007 and in June 2007 they gave me a total of three free months a two month gift and a one month gift both "to say thanks". I had been thinking it was coming up/past on time for me to renew which is why i checked my order history, but I've still got another month and change left. Woo.
I'm not sure what they were thanking me for, but I'm thankful for their thankfulness. I'm also not sure why they were sorr, I can take a couple guesses as to why, as I have ranted a couple times when they have gone down.
To flickr's credit they have been much more stable and now when they have problems it may be site wide but it's not the whole thing is done for hours. It is usually just you can't get to some images or sometimes just larger versions of some images. I'm sure the design and time that went into the overhauls to make such a system scalable, functional and distributed would blow my mind, but it is working for them...
Some of my photos may get published in a book about Lane County that is going to be put out in a next couple months by the Register Guard. I'll be credited but no money changing hands, except for maybe from mine, for a copy or two of the book.
My profile over at Capture Lane County...
I used to run Cross-Country way back when I was in High School. One of the weeks of Cross-Country when we didn't have any meets our coach took the opportunity to push us all to the next level or something, this week was called hell week. It typically included a 10-12mile road runs, some intense interval work, a 2mile up hill with a 600-700 foot altitude change, a litter pickup.
Due to the nature of the works during hell week we got to have practices at diffrent locations than we normally ran. These hell week practices took us to the NW Salem area that was/is primarily agricultural. So not a lot of traffic and a lot to look at and observe.
While I didn't have a license and wouldn't for some time I had many friends who did and would like to go on random drives and explore, so we would go out that area of town as it had some pretty good roads to drive. At one particular area there was a large gravel pile.
One evening we met up with Scott who had gotten his Mom's Jeep for the evening. We went out for a drive. While we didn't set out to fine the gravel pile we stumbled across it. We all saw it and some of us weren't so sure. But it wasn't our Jeep so who were we to decide. Scott decided we needed to climb it. A couple of us got out and watched and were ready to go get help if he landed on the roof. He got part way up the side before sliding back or halting movement all together the gravel was too lose to climb at such a steep angle.
We would go back from time to time with Scott in the Jeep and anything else that had four wheel drive to attempt to master the pile. We tried from various angles in various vehicles. It was fun but we didn't ever get a vehicle to the top of the pile.
Had we actually done it we would have other problems like how to get it back down with out doing a noseplant or otherwise damaging the vehicle of the outing....
So at work today there was a rouge DHCP server handing out bad ip addresses on the test network today. Nobody could seem to figure out what to do about it. Within the last year or so we had one of the members of the team who is supposed to deal with that kinda thing transfer to another site. Had he been around I have a feeling the issue would have been resolved a bit quicker...
We had a couple emails asking people to help if they could or if it was their box who to get in touch with to help get it reconfigured. Right before I left I sent my suggestion of using the networking equipment, specifically the cisco switches to track down the port with mac address and figure out where it terminated and go visit that persons desk or just disable the port.
I am no Cisco expert but I was able to figure out the command to track down the mac address, which can also be done with a handy java based web interface...
Networking
I've managed to get my Cisco Access Point up and going. I think between Chris' network, servers and my network and servers we could support a mid sized business, maybe larger...
Car Compliments
After getting out my car when I got home a neighbor was getting ready to leave, said something along the lines of my car is awesome. I don't recall the exact quote.
Grandpa
Went to the cemetery today for a memorial or funeral type thing, I'm a bit confused as to whats what. Then on Friday there is either the funeral or a memorial service at the church for him as well.
Run
Did a 3.5 mile run. I was a bit slow averaging about 10 min miles but it was pretty hot out and I think ran out of sweat towards the end...
There was a pieces on the News about the Oregon Country Fair this morning. They are going to attempt to make it carbon neutral as well as make very little to no waste. They also highlight what they do for the community...
I have the great fortune of living in the same city that everyone associates the country fair with but it actually is about 20-30 minutes out of town, actually closer to Venita or Elmira. I see some of the vehicles around town that have their country fair parking stickers, stickers for several years in some windshields. Eugene and the country fair both being known for their hippie magnetism and quite a few of these hippies are still driving their VW min-buses or other not so eco friendly mobiles. Not to mention all the other hippies who haul in from god knows where for the fair.
So I think the fair it self could be carbon neutral. But as an event I highly doubt it... Again the hippies have a nice idea but it doesn't work. If they really wanted to minimize impact they just wouldn't do it, but their is money to be made, naked wondering to be done, drum circles to circle, dope to smoke, and a good time to be had by the hippies....
I found out last night that my Grandpa (Mom's dad) passed away over the weekend. He was 98 so it's not like it was completely unexpected, but still a bit of a surprise. My only surviving grandparent is his wife. I will be seeing her later this week...
I've managed to get my Cisco 871 configured. I'm sure I could still do plenty more configuration but its up its running and its routing which is pretty good for now. It is a pretty serious piece of equipment and slightly intimidating even when using the GUI interfaces rather than the CLI.
I've still got an access point to configure but for now I'm using my linksys wrt54-g for the wireless stuff...
So I've gotten myself some cisco networking gear. I've only got a foggy idea of how to work it all. The other issue is I've got is where to put it and plug it all in and how to setup the network with the new equipment. If this isn't geek problem I don't know what is...