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Mellow Greetings from THE FUUUUTURE
Will (in Boulder, CO) and Sebastian (in metro New Jersey) wave hello from THE FUTURE in almost-actual size: I’m surprised how well videoconferencing — in particular, videoconferencing with the latest version of iChat AV — works. Like many managers, I’ve developed the habit of tuning out during conference calls, noodling away on something else and…
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I flunked apheresis yesterday
The picture at the right is a platelet pharesis machine sitting next to my chair at the West Chester Collection center of the American Red Cross — right behind Senora’s Mexican Restaurant and under Spirit of Yoga. Giving platelets is something I’ve been looking forward to doing once my commute to New York is over…
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Milking lesson at Seven Stars farm!
Last month, I wrote that we were looking for a milking trainer, so that Barb won’t be one of the Comedically Clueless about Cows at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Celebrity Milking Competition coming up this Friday. Barb has a hands-on approach to legislating (when she needed to learn more about the challenges of trash collection…
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First day of the new commute!
Last week, Kate and I drove up to NYC to pick up my Lucky Aeron Chair, which Digitas was kind enough to give me after I’ve been sitting in it for seven (eight? nine?) years. Like the UrbanFetch messenger bag, the Herman Miller Aeron chair occupies an important and nostalgic niche in boom-and-bust dotcom history…
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Ferris, how did this car get 250 miles on it while sitting in the garage?
The box I use to host this blog, plus my own instance of Confluence and Jira, is a humble-but-dedicated Linux server running CentOS 5, hosted by Serverbeach. Yesterday, I got an abuse report that a number of other boxes had been getting automated password scans — originating from my server’s IP address. Uh-oh! Had someone…
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Only NFL legend Rosey Grier will tell you how to sew a box pillow.
A Flickr photo of my NERD-lepoint pillow project got picked up on BoingBoing this morning, thanks to Wonderland and Craftzine. Yay, thanks Cory! On Christmas, Kate’s grandmother gave me a copy of Rosey Grier’s Needlepoint for Men, which is a real book published in the seventies featuring football star Rosey Grier, who apparently was a…
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Goodbye, Digitas!
In eight happy years at Digitas, I’ve been: a programmer analyst, a senior programmer analyst, a senior technology analyst, a technology manager, an associate director, and finally a vice president. I’ve been through rich years, when the Technology department filled two buses for a team outing to Bowlmor Lanes. And I’ve been through lean years,…
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Moments of grace through chicken hackle and bits of yarn
My mom says that my grandfather’s fly fishing and fly-tying hobby was “a pastime for men with exacting professions”, since it demanded precision, patience, and careful attention to detail. That care and patience would then be rewarded, at rare, fleeting, and magnificent intervals by the presence of the ineffable. The rest of the time, you’re…
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March of the UNSTOPPABLE AMAZON EC2 CLOUD GOLEMS
I run all my tikaro web stuff (blog, Jira, Confluence) off a single dedicated server that’s somewhere in, I don’t know… Tampa? Or something? It took me a while to get used to the fact that my server might be anywhere, and that I don’t know what it physically looks like. Actually, back in 1999,…
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Milking trainer update: ANP’s dad drops the science
Ex-colleague and exceptionally well-balanced overachiever ANP read my plea for a milking trainer, and responded by asking her dad, who is clearly an old-school, old-world badass, for some written instructions. Here’s what he had to say to her: “You know how to gesticulate to an “OK” sign, right? Do it now with your right hand.…
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