The Twilight Report

2009-02-08T22:59:00

5 February 2009 12:11pm: Quarterly update means free lunch after. Always nice food too.
5 February 2009 04:21pm: Allison is whining because we don't have any spare hard drives to give her. It's getting annoying.
5 February 2009 05:01pm: I was just thinking Allison's behaviour would be age appropriate for my little sister... seven years ago when she was six that is.
5 February 2009 10:21pm: It will be good to spend a few days at The Point and not have to commute all the way to/from Wyoming every day.
6 February 2009 08:37am: Standing room only on the train. Nose to stinky arm pit.
6 February 2009 10:18am: I started saying ko again. It's weird.
6 February 2009 03:54pm: Mail server migration went off pretty much without a hitch but the connection to muse dropped out and now I can't update the DNS! *sigh*
6 February 2009 04:12pm: Got to muse. nullslice is now nullray. Your local DNS server may take a while to update.
6 February 2009 10:38pm: of course I spoke too soon because there was stuff I forgot... :/
Yesterday at 06:43pm: I am going to start saying "after now" again. It's like I pick up a camera and I turn into myself three years ago.
Today at 05:56pm: 65 dead in Victoria. How much longer before they stop saying "..since Ash Wednesday" and just say "deadliest fires in Australian history" :(

heatwave

2009-02-06T23:49:00

Tonight on the way home, Town Hall station was sweltering awful humid hotness on both sides of the platform like the innards of Hades in a bad mood. It does not bode well for the weekend when it is supposed to top off at 43 degrees in parts of the city^[1]. Since I got a train pass that goes out to Bondi Junction this week ^[2] I might go and hide in the mega mall with the AC for at least part of the weekend and maybe go see a movie.

I started writing this journal to keep my writing skills fresh. That was in 2004 and seems like forever ago. I didn't have any delusions of being some grate writer or anything^[3], but I think being able to communicate clearly is a pretty worth while skill even if one is simply a particularly cleaver monkey banging out source code on the keyboard. Then this year I started posting more photos because I've been taking more photos. Now I am thinking that balance is in order.

I am relieved at the ease of migrating my email server today. It took a long time to copy inboxes and folders and stuff, but the actual configuration and updating of the DNS MX records was a relative breeze. Since I ditched sendmail dealing with my SMTP server has been difficult but possible, a significant improvement over trying and impossible. The new server^[4] is going to save me a lot of money which is a good thing given that we are all going to lose our jobs and subsist on stealing gasoline in the desert using revved up muscle cars. I'm still losing money on it, which is okay, because I get a lot of utility out of it.

read it in mX so it must be true^TM
at the price of $3 more, which is pretty good because even one trip out there will save me money over getting a round trip ticket
...any more
Actually the new server is really three (virtual) servers, which is good because it builds some redundancy and backups into the system

I hope it's a long ceremony, 'cause it's gonna be a short honeymoon.

2008-01-15T11:04:00

Finally got paid. Well, exactly when they said I would, it just seems like it has been forever waiting. Also: it always seems like a lot of money when it comes in, but as soon as I start adding up the bills and taking out the savings it starts to approach zero. Tyler joked years ago that one day if he worked hard enough he’d be worth nothing. It’s good to keep your sense of humour when you are in debt. I am well past being in debt, but it still feels as though there is never enough. The future is a tangled mess in my mind right now.

Things that I did over the weekend:

Switched from sendmail to Postfix. Wish I had done it sooner.
Upgraded my file server to FC4. Ditto. Although AFS authentication doesn’t quite work anymore.
Set up a heterogeneous distributed compiler system using four computers, five processors, six cores and three different operating systems to build FC4 applications. Why am I doing this? So that I can issue commands like make –j 12 (dork) and expect good performance.
Went to Terrigal and floated in the ocean for an hour. The water was awesome.

By far the best use of my time was going to the beach. A big part of coming out to Australia was the idea that I’d be able to go to Terrigal just about anytime I pleased. Years ago I had this perfect moment there. There had been some files and it had been smoky for days. Then on the last day we were in Australia the wind cleared it away and I was at Terrigal on top of the skillion. The colours were intense. It was beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that anywhere else.

The Twilight Report

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heatwave

I hope it's a long ceremony, 'cause it's gonna be a short honeymoon.