Digital Choke Daynotes

 Monday, May 2, 2005       mail    link   the story

It's Monday afternoon, and I still have some complaining muscles.

Friday night Pam and I went to Lowe's and picked up some bedding plants. Saturday morning, I pulled out some old plants from the area in front of the house, then put in the new ones. Much bending, squatting, and digging ensued. Put in the drip irrigation, then spread some shredded bark as mulch/ground cover.

And the result looks quite nice. Except for the sore muscles: upper thigh, gluteus maximus, and shoulders. Still sort today. I walk like an old cowpoke. Got a hitch in my get-along. Sort of "Chester"-like.

But was pleased with the results.

Saturday afternoon I had one of my occasional atrial fibrillation episodes. It started around 4pm. Started out with a bit of skipping, then progressed to a fast but mostly regular beat of about 130 per minute. So I relaxed (sort of) the rest of the day. By bedtime, it was still running a bit fast, but converted to a normal range sometime during the night.

The result was a bit of more tiredness. I slept in until about 9:30am, then relaxed the rest of the day. Didn't move too smoothly because of the sore muscles.

The gang came over for dinner. We did the BBQ chicken dinner, which was quite good. The weather was nice, so the grandkids went to the neighborhood park after dinner.

Not much going on at work today. But watch out for the new "Sober" virus. Don't click on those attachments!

 Tuesday, May 3, 2005       mail    link   the story

A roundup of computer/information security issues (readers can find more details via their favorite news site; more info also at the Internet Storm Center ):

I spent some time updating our internal Information Security web site. Some of the info was a bit stale, and new content was needed.

And the muscles are complaining less today than yesterday.

 Wednesday, May 4, 2005       mail    link   the story

Clouded up today, light rain. A nice change.

Watched a new show on PBS tonight called "Viewfinder". The subject was the underground City of Sacramento.

Back in the 1850's, Sacramento (CA) was just starting out. John Sutter got the land grant, and built his "Sutter's Fort" on the highest point of what is now Sacramento.

Sacramento is bounded on two edges by the American and Sacramento Rivers. So the riverfront area was a natural magnet for commerce. The riverfront area because the central business district of Sacramento, in what is now 'downtown' Sacramento.

The problem was the two rivers. There were almost annual instances of flooding of the downtown area. So much so that there was an effort to move the state capitol from Sacramento to another area.

The local business people decided that they needed to raise the City. So they used Chinese laborers to build brick walls between the sidewalks and the streets. The walls were about 10-12 feet tall. Then they filled the street area with dirt. And told the local business owners that they were responsible for deciding whether to build the sidewalks to the same level as the street.

Some of the buildings were raised, but most owners eventually raised their sidewalks. The result is that there are many subterranean sidewalk areas that are now covered. The building's ground floor is now the basement.

Some of these underground sidewalks are available to the public. One is at the Firehouse restaurant in "Old Sacramento" (our historic area; there's a great railroad museum there, a good place to visit if you are in the neighborhood). In their downstairs level, you can see the original brick walls.

Sadly, most of those walls have been destroyed, although some are still in use as storage areas for businesses. But, with the exception of the restaurant, none are accessible to the public.

So the "Viewpoint" show host (Jack Gallagher) tooks us on a tour of the underground. It was quite interesting. A good story about it was done by a reporter at the Sacramento News and Review; you'll find it here. Another story from the Sacramento Bee is here; for access, user name and password are both 'barfly' (courtesy of "BugMeNot" site).

 Thursday, May 5, 2005       mail    link   the story

So, what were you doing this morning at 5:05am? Was there some sort of numerical fusion that you felt?

Not me. The alarm goes off at 6. I'll wait until next month.

Minor crisis at work today: the public web server died. The web guy decided to do a forced power off to fix some stuck process. Then a power on, but no boot. It was at the end of the work day, so decided to just let it sit in case it wanted to boot up slowly.

It was still dead this morning. So I set up an alternate page, with a "it's broke but we're working on it" page, and got the DNS server to point to the temporary server. In the meantime, someone else got working on it. Right now it's up, but booting off of a floppy disk.

This is a server that should have been replaced last year (or even before) as it is out of warranty. The owner thought that they could just extend the warranty because that was cheaper than buying a new server. Not a really good plan.

I've been helping out on the new servers that they finally bought, and the conversion plan to move content to the new servers has been put on a fast track. With any luck, it will be ready next week. And the old server will last until then.

But it's a good lesson to remember: you need to plan (and budget) for replacement systems. And a business continuity plan (that has been tested) might also be a good idea.