Category Archives: Uncategorized

Obligatory airport joke


It never gets old, does it?

I’m in the Bluegrass Airport, yet again, on my way to ApacheCon. I’ve got all my talks ready, but I’m not yet in the conferencing mood, since I’m leaving my wife for the first time since our wedding, so that’s pretty hard.

It’s going to be a very full week — I’m giving two trainings and one regular conference session, and David and I hope to do at least one Feathercast per day of the conference, hopefully recording considerably more than that. But for the first time in … well, it’s been a while … I skipped the planning meeting for ApacheCon EU, and let some other folks handle that instead.

7 year old boys

I recently acquired a son. He has limitless energy, and … well, he’s 7. I’ve not had much experience with little boys, except from being one, which I thought was pretty cool, and then much later, observing them from afar and wondering how their parents had the energy to live with them.

I still don’t know.

We just sent home the last of roughly a million 7 year old boys who were over for a sleepover. Ok, 4, but, with little boys, it’s hard to tell the difference.

A few moments before they left, I walked outside to investigate what they were up to, and discovered one charming young lad holding a 1.5 liter glass bottle, cocked back like a baseball bat, about to whang it into the neighbors’ house, while all the other stood around extolling him on what a great idea it was to do so.

I find that I have a *lot* to learn about having a son. But I sure do love him.

Markmail

MarkMail is the latest cool way to visualize email on the many, many Apache mailing lists. Here’s a snapshot of the messages that I’ve sent over the last 8 years or so. Has it really been that long?

About 4 years ago, most of my activity switched to non-public mailing lists, which, I think, accounts for the abrupt dropoff.

Online mod_rewrite training

I’m considering doing online training on mod_rewrite, based on the book and the training class I’ll be doing next week. I’m still not sure what I should charge, or how I would go about marketing it. But I’ve got Moodle installed, and I’ve got a course outline started. So if you’re interested in taking a mod_rewrite course, let me know, and I’ll try to figure out what I’m going to charge.

Smoke signals

It’s gotten cold in the last week. Just two weeks ago, we were sitting out by a bonfire in the back yard, enjoying the last of the warm weather, and watching our pillar of smoke billow up into the warm air, as our neighbors sat inside, watching whatever it is they show on television these days, missing out on the final few moments of summer.

Smoke signals, take II
Nov 1, 2007

We send up a pillar of smoke,
a guide in this wilderness
of suburbia.

All around the masses watch
reality television, having not encountered reality
in years.
They drink lite beer,
missing the full bodied wine
of the real world right beyond
their back porch.

From afar, others may see
our pillar of smoke,
even as they send up their own.
From the top of this tree,
or that one,
we might see one,
two,
a dozen pillars rising
and know that
we are not alone.

Ode to a crystal pitcher

Ode to a crystal pitcher
02-Nov-2007

I was saving that
for a special occasion.
And so it sat, for years, unused in a cupboard,
hidden away for a special occasion.
Through the years of nothing special
it sat, and waited,
until it exuded the nothing-specialness
that had been blamed on it for so long.

But, like Neruda’s socks,
or like his fireflies,
putting it in a jar for long enough
is sure to kill it.

And I find, nowadays,
that pizza with friends,
or a cheeseburger with my Beloved,
is plenty special enough to warrant
the use of this pitcher.

After all,
I was saving it for a special occasion.

Halloween

I’m sitting in my front yard, waiting for the kiddies to come by and get their goodies. The costumes are *so* cute. Well, a few of them are just weird, but most of them are very cute.

I am dressed, rather unconvincingly, as a Maasai warrior, complete with spear, and nobody seems to be particular menaced by me. Dunno why. I’m far too modest to post photos and show everybody else up.