Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ireland, day zero

In about 10 minutes, I’ll leave for the airport to go to Ireland. There I’ll be meeting with Lars, Ken, Noel, and Frank, to choose the talks for the upcoming ApacheCon Europe. We’ll be setting the schedule, and checking out the conference facility. We’ll also be hanging out with the Ireland branch of the Apache community, including Colm, Noirin, and Justin. Colm is the only one of these that I’ve met, so I’m looking forward to meeting them and seeing some of Dublin.

So, I guess it’s about time to go pack …

$15 digital camera

Today we went to Wal-mart to get film for Sarah’s trip to the zoo tomorrow, and instead found a digital camera for $15. Now, it’s not a great digital camera. In fact, it’s pretty icky. But for $15, it’s about half as good as the very first digital camera I bought 7 or 8 years ago for roughly 20 times that much. I’m looking forward to what her pictures actually look like.

Unnecessary hoops

I just activated Akismet, because spam has again reached unbearable levels. The reason that I didn’t activate it before is the absurd procedure that I had to go through to do so. In order to activate this plugin on my blog, I have to go to wordpress.com and sign up for another blog which I will never use, so that I can obtain a wordpress.com API key. I’m a little perplexed by the logic in this – to make one blog more usable, I have to go create another one? Who does this benefit? What is the logic behind forcing me to jump through these hoops? I mean, sure, it wasn’t a hard or complicated process, just really dumb.

So, anyways, for no readily apparent reason, I now have another wordpress site. Hope it doesn’t get innundated by spam, since I’ll probably never look there after today.

1001 books

This evening at JoeBeth I found a book entitled “1001 Books You Must Read before You Die.” Well, I wasn’t about to spend $50 on a list of books, so I came home and found the list online.

I find it a little suspect that they have 69 books from 2000 and later, but only 13 books from the 1700s and earlier. Oh, well, I’m a sucker for this sort of list anyway, so I’ll probably at least read through the list and see if I get any ideas of stuff I want to read.

Jeeps and fuel efficiency

Oh, yeah, there was something else.

This morning we went looking at cars. The price of gas has crossed that magical threshold where I have to start considering whether to get rid of the Jeep. I love my Jeep, but it gets 12 miles per gallon, which isn’t great. I have to start looking at vehicles that get better fuel consumption.

This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I have no car payment. So in order to get savings in fuel, I have to add a car payment. I’m not sure how much sense that makes. It’s all rather irritating.

So we looked primarily at the VW Beetles, convertibles. I think that we’ve decided that *IF* we have to get rid of the Jeep, that’s what we’ll get. We also looked at a PT Cruiser and a Mustang. Sarah didn’t like the Cruiser. We both loved the Mustang, but the gas mileage really isn’t much better, and they are pretty pricey.

I think we have decided to hang onto the Jeep for another year, and see what happens to gas prices. But the Jeep is also going on 9 years old, and I really want to have something that I can rely on, so maybe that decision will have to come again pretty soon anyway. 🙁

We looked at a Diesel VW Bug, and that gets crazy mileage. Apparently, according to the salescritter, US Diesel is far dirtier than European Diesel, and that’s why Diesel cars are so uncommon in the US. The US government, so keen on alternate fuel sources, and reducing our reliance on oil, are keeping these cars out because they produce more emissions, but they’re not encouraging the gas companies to clean up the Diesel.

I really hate our government sometimes.

You can always take more off …

We finally did some caching today, finding all four that we looked for. Unfortunately, they were all micros, or at least too small to have interesting things in them, so Sarah was somewhat disappointed.

I went to get my hair cut, and the barber (“hairdresser?”) was a little too enthusiastic. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had my hair this short since I was 15 and got that unfortunate crew cut. Oh, well, I suppose it’ll grow back. I feel a bit like a shorn sheep. On the plus side, I won’t have to comb it for a few weeks.

Meanwhile, not much else going on. Trying to write some conference presentations, and be somewhat prepared for my trip to Dublin next weekend. Nothing else planned for the weekend.

First day of Spring

Today is the first day of Spring. (Ignore what the calendar might have told you. You know how calendars are – deceitful, wicked things.) I know this by the unmistakable signs. Namely, that yesterday on the way home from work, I had the top down, and, more importantly, that this morning I am having my coffee out on the deck. Yes, it’s still a teensy bit nippy, but Winter’s hold has been broken, and warm days are coming. 🙂