Month: September 2015

Seen on Slashdot:

You’d think 12 terabytes of storage would be enough for anyone.

Apparently not. My backup volume filled up last week:

So I bought a new eight-bay drive enclosure and eight 3TB hard drives. I just set them up and plugged into the computer. A few magic incantations with Parted and BTRFS, and now I have 24 terabytes ready to rock:

Next step: copying data from the old (full) array to the new (empty) one. Hoo boy– this might take a while.

As a follow-up to my post after seeing Jurassic World, I wanted to share this awesome list of questions someone had after watching the movie.

This evening my friend Amber shared a photo of an old poster on her Facebook page.

Amber is in the middle of the front row.

Here’s a story about that poster.

In high school, Amber’s brother Aron was one of my best friends, and I was at his house all the time for everything from a six-hour game of Axis and Allies to poker night to pinball tournaments. It was the party house. Amber was his gorgeous little sister, and as a joke I’d ask her out now and then when I happened to be over at the house. (Remember that in high school I was an acne-pocked nerd, not the handsome stud I am today.) She’d always have a reason why she couldn’t go out with me, so she’d turn me down and we’d laugh about it and I’d go play spades or whatever.

At some point during my senior year, she asked me if I’d go out with her. Apparently there was this group date or something, and she didn’t have anyone to go with, and I happened to be handy. I thought about it for a moment and turned her down. Hah! The tables were sure turned now!

Fast forward five years.

It was my senior (fifth) year of college, and my friend Andy went with a group of guys up to Mizzou to watch a basketball game. Mizzou was UMR’s big brother– the University of Missouri school everyone knows about– and they had a pretty good sports program. It was a little less than two hours to drive there, so now and again we’d head from Rolla to Columbia for something or other (to see the “big city”, that sort of thing). Anyway, he came back from the basketball game late that night with a poster of the Golden Girls.

What’s more, it was signed by a couple of the Golden Girls! I don’t know which ones– maybe half a dozen or so– but two of them were Amber and Jen (Jen is the brunette right behind Amber). Andy was going on and on about how hot those girls were, and how lucky he was to get their signatures, and wow Mizzou sure had gorgeous women, yada yada.

I casually mentioned that I knew Amber and Jen (Jen is Amber’s cousin and we’d crossed paths now and then in high school). Oh, and Amber had asked me out a few years ago and I’d turned her down.

Andy was flabbergasted. It was so funny to see how unbelievable he thought it was that I’d turned down this gorgeous girl for date… a girl he apparently would’ve taken out on the town without a moment’s hesitation. I explained the story and he deflated a little, but was still impressed.

That might have been the start of my nickname, “Big Dog”, but that’s a whole different story…

On my hike yesterday I had my camera in my jacket pocket, and after an hour of freezing rain and snow, my jacket was pretty much soaked. After returning to my car, I was alarmed to discover that the camera didn’t work. I suppose that wasn’t terribly surprising since it’s not made to be waterproof, so I left it out all day today to dry a bit.

Tonight I turned it on and was happy to see that the lens focused and it apparently took some pictures… but the screen didn’t work. A digital camera isn’t very useful without a screen, since all of the controls are there.

Figuring I had nothing to lose, I went to work tonight disassembling it. I removed a dozen tiny screws and pulled things apart, hoping that I could magically fix it. The interior was an amazing jumble of electronics squeezed into this little camera body.

With the parts strewn over my desk but still wired together, I inserted the battery and turned it on. The screen worked! I put everything back together, and now I’m back in business. Whew.

I wasn’t sure what to do on Labor Day, since I didn’t plan to work and the kids were doing different things. So I decided to climb a fourteener. I picked Grays and Torreys, which are supposedly the “second easiest” mountains to climb, after Bierstadt which Thom and I hiked last year.

My main goal was to see how I might do in a couple of weeks when I head up to Seattle for Thom’s wedding. We’ll be hiking ten miles into the North Cascades for a four-day mountain adventure, and Thom warned me that it’s a “tough” trail. If it’s tough for a guy who spends most weekends climbing mountains, it pretty much means it’s going to be crazy difficult for me! I figured a little practice might be in order.

I have a new pack, and I loaded it with a bunch of stuff that I absolutely didn’t need (like a tent) just to give it some weight and make it more “realistic”. I wanted to find out if the pack would work on steep trails.

I kissed Laralee goodbye and headed out. The drive to the trailhead is about 90 minutes, and there were a lot of people. It’s a popular destination, since both peaks are “easy” fourteeners. I had to park about a half-mile from the trailhead on a narrow rocky road, meaning my hike was a bit longer than it might have been otherwise.

Anyway, I got underway and started to climb. After a while it was obvious that the exercise I get playing ultimate and biking doesn’t really work the same muscle groups. Combined with the thin air (the trailhead is at 11,000 feet) I was breathing heavily as I went.

Up around 13,000 feet, the trail divides and you can hike to either Grays or Torreys. Here’s a view of Torreys, partially hidden in clouds. There was a big storm rolling in, and I knew I had to get up quickly.

I decided to do Grays because it wasn’t (yet) in clouds, so I took that fork and made it to the top. Here’s the view from up there:

Woo hoo!

After a few minutes on top to catch my breath, it was time to head down. Almost immediately, the wind picked up to about 20-25mph and it started pouring freezing rain. They were those little ice pellets that sting, especially in the wind. Both peaks quickly disappeared into clouds, and I could hear distant thunder getting closer. It was definitely time to get moving!

Obviously climbing the other fork to the peak of Torreys wasn’t an option. Here’s the view looking down the mountain– you can’t even see the trail anywhere.

I slogged through the freezing rain, which mixed with snow and left me pretty much drenched. My pack was awesome: everything inside stayed dry, and I could hardly even feel it on my back. I can check that off my list.

I found out that some of Zack’s Boy Scout leaders are planning a trip to climb Grays and Torreys this Saturday, and they’ve invited me to join them. Twice in one week? Hmm.

I just saw a guy with a t-shirt that said:

Which of course in programmer-speak is a “hip hip array”. HAH!