by ·0 Comments

Team Interrobang runs off of a standard Dreamhost shared hosting instance that’s on a box that probably runs 2000 other sites.  This corner of the Internet is fine and adequate unless you do something to upset the apple cart like install a shoutbox, do a vBulletin update, or hit F5 too quickly.  I had thought I learned my lesson from a previous case where doing a vBulletin update cause the server to burst into flames but apparently the act of running a DB backup was enough to max-out the Triscuit that was being used as a processor within the cardboard box of a server we shared.  I contacted Dreamhost to have them cut the DB connections and learned “whenever we close the DB threads new ones are opened just as fast, there’s nothing we can do.”  Really?  You’re physically incapable of temporarily shutting down my tiny virtual instance?  The irony of this being brought about by a backup operation is what I found delicious.

So, I did what they were unable to do and closed each open DB thread by clicking the “Kill” button in phpmyadmin a little more than 400 times.  Not fun, but necessary.  Each time I hit this button, my internal homunculus put a tick mark in the “times I’ve wanted to drop shared hosting” tally section of my brain.   On the plus side, I was able to use iMovie to make a little Youtube video after not having slept for 28 hours.

by ·0 Comments

I was born 10000 days ago.  Hazaa.

10 years ago today I was getting ready to leave for Florida Sea Base, a Boy Scout High Adventure Base.  I weighted 320 lbs then as reflected by my medical form.  Today I weigh about 318 so I’ve managed to lose about 2 lbs in 10 years.  At the same time, in June of 2009, I weighted 420 lbs so I’ve also lost 100 lbs in a little over two  years.  Very small displacement, very large distance.

I celebrated this confluence by singing show tunes at the Ockanickon Scout Reservation Magic Tournament.  No one would join in Brotherhood of Man.

by ·0 Comments

Sleep did not come easily or lightly and I went to work around 3 AM returning home a bit before noon.  At home, my house was being purified by the sacred attendants of Merry Maids who were tearing a sanitizing swath through the second floor.  They were at their task, and my office was designed off limits, so I did what any reasonable person would do and distracted them with a missed spot in the master bath, grabbed my pillow from my room and slept on the floor of my office.  This would have gone smoothly but max was fascinated by having someone to sleep with on the floor, so excited in fact that he refused to lie down and kept walking in and out of my room, requiring me to open the door each time.  I think the housecleaning team became alert to what I was doing as each door open was met by a slightly more disheveled me with a few more carpet  marks on my face.

At the end, I had to cut a check and the service people left.  I shambled towards my bed, pillow under arm, but had trouble sleeping.  The smell of clean was keeping me up.  It smells nice.

by ·0 Comments

Dad: What did you do today?
Me: I made a bunch of prints for work.  I was going to do five but I ran out of pink  ink.
Dad: How much is a replacement?
Me: $12.97 for a 1/3 of a fluid oz or about $4500 a gallon.
Dad: What’s it made of?
Me: Well, four things, I think.  Pigment, and some sort of semi-aqueous fluid as a suspension medium.  The 3rd and 4th ingredients make up the lion’s share and are unicorn blood and profit margin.  I’m not sure what the ratio is though.

by ·2 Comments

Sneakers turns 16 this year (we got him shortly after Yitzhak Rabin died) and has aged somewhat gracefully for a cat.  He still stalks the night but is much more included to spend his evening sitting in a lawn chair or beneath or tiny Japanese maple.  He can jump from the floor to the countertop, although he doesn’t like to, and has no qualms meowing to wake me up to serve as his elevator.  He no longer picks fights or has gotten better at hiding as he no longer returns home with claw marks on his head or bloody patches but he can still be enticed to play along sometimes and attack a shoe lace.  But, over the last year, he’s started to pee on my father’s clothing.  I try to claim this is a sign of endearment and my father took these urine blasts in stride as he himself isn’t as young as he used to be and he himself having had his fair share of urinary issues though of late it’s become almost weekly.  A friend’s cat also started peeing on things and it turned out his cat was diabetic, requiring twice daily shots of insulin.  I brought this up to my dad:

Me: Dad, I think the cat may have diabetes.
Dad: Oh?
Me: Yeah, a friend’s cat started peeing on his things and it turned out to be diabetes.  I mean, it’d take a vet to do the diagnosis but I think we should take the cat in.
Dad: Ok, what’s the treatment course?  He’s been a good cat.
Me: It’s not much, just two insulin shots twice a day for the rest of his life.
Dad: Nope.  Put him down.
Me: You’re not even going to…
Dad: Not a chance.  Not going to stab a cat twice a day.
Me: What if we…
Dad:  We can put him down there.

Considering that Sneakers barely tolerates us in what he perceives to be his house, I have no doubt the answer would be the same if the shoe were on the other foot.

by ·0 Comments

Wanda needed an oil change so we took a lunch at Jiffylube during which I noticed a stack of adverts from Jiffylube.  Many retail firms ask attendants to collect address information which can be awkward.  This Jiffylube had a good way of dealing with that.

They can all vote in Chicago

by ·0 Comments

During the OSR Magic tournaments, the basic unit of monetary tracking is “the wad”.  It contains all the small bills collected from single sales and at the end of the event a portion is kept to use as change for the next week, usually $50 in ones.  When removing my laundry from the dryer today a few ones fell out.  I appear to have laundered 50 ones, taking them from their almost military perfection and send them to chaos as depicted below:

Makin' It Rain

 

As I folded laundry, ones kept falling out of  clothing and I pulled a few more bills from the lint trap and washing machine.  $44 made it back into the change wad meaning I still have $6 floating around in my shirts, pants, and drawers somewhere.  It’s like a scavenger hunt for things you already own!

by ·0 Comments

I’ve known Joe Naylor for probably about 13 years now and I count him among my closest friends.  He and I both enjoy topics of science and critical thinking and I appreciate his willingness to apply reason in cases where I don’t always.  For instance:

Me: Joe, what do you think of the idea that when one door closes another opens.
Joe: I think that means you have poor airflow within the room or structure.

Me: Well, what about every cloud having a silver lining?
Joe: That shows little familiarity with actual cloud mechanics.

So wise.

by ·0 Comments

Joe runs the computer at the Ockanickon Magic tournaments which allows me to run the floor and answer questions.  I really like this arrangement and Joe has at least not actively aired dislike for it as it seems to afford him quality time with current and former staff members as he tackles the amazing task of clicking things in DCIR and later yelling about match pairings.  Camp is a place where Joe and I are both deified and I say that with almost no exaggeration.  We are part of “The Great Old Ones” about whom legends are told.  “Did you hear about when Joe completed camp school without sleeping?” or “Terry once ran a session of Environmental Science that includes 114 kids and one of them was Al Gore”, these nuggets catalyze the rare case where I go from egotism (I’m awesome) to outright arrogance (I’m better than you and I have the evals to prove it).  Also, camp allows one to be a kid again.  Freed largely of the web of connectivity that permeates one’s normal social spaces the sense of ‘now’ comes much more down to who is in the room with you leading to non-standard conversations.

Dave Scherr: My track coach, Mr. Deyfuss said…
Joe: Your track coach is Richard Dreyfuss?  That’s awesome.
Me: That must be motivational having a recognized actor as your coach.
Joe: And I bet each week he chooses a different persona from which to grant wisdom.
Me: Yeah, like what if it were Jaws week and he wanted to inspire you with something.  “Imagine, you’re being chased by a shark.” he’d say.
Joe: “Who is in turn being chased by Roy Scheider with a harpoon gun.”
Me: “Who is in turn being chased by” what did he die from?  Cancer? “who is in turn being chased by cancer.”
Joe: “Who is in turn being chased by the march of scientific progress.”  That would be really inspirational.
Me: Dave, sorry, we cut you off.  You had a story?
Dave: No, yours was better.

by ·0 Comments

I woke at 3 PM after having a long night and longer morning with my only To Do items being “pick up bulk rares from Nick Coss” and “meet with Mike”.  There were a litany of lessor things to do but these were the ones that crossed over to “need”, the former task being necessary for camp and the latter for my probable sanity.

The drive to Nick’s was uneventful once I departed Feasterville as parades had inverted the standards of traffic with a thousand cars on every side street but with the Interstates and major road ways being largely clear.  I got to Nick’s a little after 4, we talked about cards, and birthdays, and Scouting and he agreed that he sometimes felt non-Scouts were morally handicapped.  I suppose this is arrogance but a less damning way of putting it is that Scouts seem to have a head start in terms of personal moral growth.  I talked about the difficulty of finding people willing to do work for something they claim to love and he talked about the quotidian squabbles over pseudo-justice in terms of things like splitting checks, getting people birthday gifts, knowing when to make a loan you’ll never get back, and the logistics of a backyard barbeque.

Mike said he’d be over around 6:30 and I met him at my house then.  I was in the kitchen making a raspberry ganache for truffles and we talked punctuated by bouts of silence as he thought and I stirred.  I felt the stirring added a kinetic quality to the silence but eventually my arm gave way and we moved outside to stare at a copse of pine trees as the sun set.  Again, we exchanged insecurities, semi-thoughts, and shoulder shrugs as islands within the quietude.  Later, I was still a spot peckish after eating a sandwich and we sat on my porch and ate strawberries.  It was now fully dark when the 4th of July fireworks started at the Dolphin Swim Club.  The show seemed nice but only a few crested the trees so there was little to actually look at.  Our chat had wound down, so, Mike and I sat there, listening to fireworks.

I wish all days were as productive.