The Lone Sysadmin

• Brain Murmurs » Blog Archive » Band-Aids and Broken Arms
  I was just talking with a friend about the way we take consulting jobs, and how much we charge.
• Adobe Labs - kuler
  Help picking colors for web sites. Very cool.

Emacs, an editor I never use, seems to have a knack for making me feel like a complete and total idiot every single time I run it. I started it and I am not even sure why, my fingers typing those letters, apparently manifesting some type of subconscious masochism. Sixty seconds later I reveal the depths of my shame and frustration to Google:

• Do Enterprise Management Systems Dream Of Electric Sheep?
  (tags: Security)
• Bad Lingo: Blog-Media Clichés - Gawker
  I often write the way I speak but the trick is to know what works on a page and what doesn’t.
• Lussumo
  “…back with fewer features than ever.” I really like Vanilla.
• Google Blatantly Copies Yahoo!? (by Jeremy Zawodny)
  Google is going to have a tough time with their “Don’t Be Evil” slogan as they get bigger, if only because of moronic behaviour.
• WordPress Tiger Administration // Ordered List by Steve Smith
  Holy crap, this is a nice WP admin interface.

I don’t know why I do it, but I always volunteer to help friends move cross-country. After a day of rest & laundry from the SF trip I took off for New Orleans. We stopped in Memphis for a night to drink on Beale Street, which wasn’t very busy but decent nonetheless. 2100 miles later I’ve seen roller derbies and mind erasers, my Jeep needs an oil change, a new throttle position sensor, and a new window motor (it finally died… wide open, of course), and I know what the destruction looks and feels like, thanks to my friend Maitri’s tour of the decimation of Lakeview and the lower 9th ward. It’s a ghost town in those parts, and odd to be in a city where all that remains are the rotting frames of houses. Not even a house, sometimes, as the areas by the canal breaches were swept clean by the force of the water, leaving only a field now.

I find it hard to classify the experience. I don’t feel depressed but awed and stunned at the force of nature, by the shortsightedness and arrogance of people, by the experience of standing alone in the middle of the most modern ghost town, and by the feeling I had when I saw the first ‘X’ with a number in the bottom.

It’s two more days until I head to the Twin Cities to see friends, family, and just generally chill. I told my friend Melissa the other day that I long for January 2nd because it means I can stay home for a couple of months. I never thought I’d say it but I’m beat. :-)

In other news, my early New Year’s resolution is to write at least one system administration or virtualization-related post per week next year. I realize I’ve been slacking off, and I’m hoping I can get back to why I started writing this in the first place. Thank you to all of you that come here and read, link, and comment on what I say. My world grows smaller because of you folks (in a good way, not like that warp bubble that Dr. Crusher was caught in that time in ST:TNG). :-)

• Yahoo! Search blog: Enterprise search made easy – and free – from IBM and Yahoo!

“Who is Estella?” she says calmly, sitting back down on the couch after pouring two more glasses of wine for us.

Oh shit.

“My computer?”

“Yeah, the one I checked my email with. The icon on the desktop says ‘Estella.’”

“That’s what I named the computer.”

“You named it after a woman?” Surface calm dissipating, trouble in 5… 4…

“She isn’t a real woman. Have you read Great Expectations?”

“Dickens? A long time ago. You named it after a fantasy woman?”

“I wouldn’t call Dickens a fantasy writer. Estella was the girl who broke Pip’s heart. I always build my own home PCs, and they always find a way to break my heart. Seemed fitting.” See, I’m not a psychopath. Cool it.

“Does your laptop have a name, too?

“Yeah. ‘Dementor’, from Harry Potter. Floats around, sucking the soul out of things.” Maybe I am a psychopath… it’s still a good name.

“You get to name all your computers?”

“Yeah, they all need names,” I say emphatically.

“Have you ever named one after someone you knew?”

“Nope.

“Never?”

“Well, I did name part of a storage array after someone once. Nothing anybody would see publicly, though.” …and it was because of a conversation just like this.

“Who?” Saw that coming.

“Ancient history. Nobody you’d know.”

…pause…

“Will you name one of them after me?” Right on schedule.

“You may not meet the criteria. You’re a woman, no doubt, but are you dark, heart breaking, and fictional?”

…pause…

“Have you ever wondered why you’re single?”

“Never really had to wonder, no.”

My brain is fried from all the flying I’ve done in the last 24 hours, so I will stall by sharing with you this old SNL clip a friend sent me. I hadn’t seen it before.

These last three days seem like a blur. I haven’t checked my email, I haven’t checked the comments here, I haven’t even had my cell phone on. It’s been nice. Having just walked around the northern half of San Francisco, though, I think it’s time to let my feet rest and see what the world is up to.

I see I mis-marked one of my posts for automatic posting… going… going… gone.

As for my trip so far, my comments on Day 3:

- The Pork Store was busy, like an hour line, so we went over to All You Knead. Good breakfast, polite service.

- Amoeba Music still rivals Cheapo Records in Minneapolis. I found a number of CDs I want to listen to, like a bunch of older Peter Himmelman discs, in their clearance bins, all $4 or less.

- I collect canned meat, and this town is the bomb when it comes to weird canned, jarred, and otherwise preserved meats. A trip to the Sunset and visits to two Asian supermarkets along Irving and I now have ten new specimens. One is called “Crisp Fish” and is a bunch of neon tetra-sized fish in oil. WTF.

- The Pacific Ocean is still awesome. Good old N Judah line still goes there. Well, almost there. The bathroom at the end of Judah might qualify as “worst bathroom in Scotland.”

- The Magnolia Brewpub has decent beer, but the service is decidedly sub-par. First, I am not really used to being argued with by the waitstaff. When someone who is not my waitress takes our beer order and our waitress returns with three beers, none of which are right, the first words out of her mouth should not be “no, this is what you ordered.” No, really, I was here, you were not, and I know the Sara’s Ruby Mild from Prescription Ale, which I did not order. Second, it took three rounds of ordering, effectively nine tries, before she actually listened to us when we said we wanted the CASK version. CASK, not TAP. Third, we were just lucky to get a seat in the place, too. We put our name on the waiting list and asked the girl how long and where we should wait, and her reply was “oh, you can wait outside if you want.” She wrote “outside” next to our name. 25 minutes later we went in to find out what the holdup was, and they said they’d called our name but no reply. Yeah, no shit, we were outside, which is what the note said next to our name.

So anyhow, if you are thinking of going to the Magnolia Brewpub on Haight St., well, don’t. Or sit at the bar.

- In contrast, the Toronado Room had great service. The last time I was there one of the bartenders wasn’t so helpful, but the guy working Saturday evening was great.

- Ate Indian at the Punjab Kebab House. Decent. Spicier than the New Delhi Restaurant from Friday.

- Tried drinking at Edinburgh Castle but they apparently aren’t interested in serving customers. I don’t know what it is, but the bartender just refused to help anybody. So we went to the Irish Bank. The service was okay there, aside from a flubbed order, and we just decided to call it a night.

Notes from Day 4:

- The Packers rock San Francisco. By ‘rock’ I mean ‘own.’

- Reconfirmed: San Francisco Brewing Company has good looking staff. And good beer. Try the Emperor Norton Lager and tip the wonderful ladies well.

Notes from Day 5:

- The Pork Store has great breakfasts, if only because their bacon is perfect and they serve hash browns.

- Fisherman’s Wharf: boring & touristy in general.

- Walking out on Golden Gate: cool.

- Coit Tower: lots of freaking steps.

So there. Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.