Well everything is on like Donkey Kong…
Lucero, The Circle Jerks, and more at the Fun Fun Fun Fest
LEEEEROOOOOY JENNNKINS
Yeah so I am huge nerd. I couldn’t care less without surgery. I am in a good mood and even the usual suspects can’t bring me down. The forecast is snarky with chance of snarky tomorrow.
So we went to the hospital tonight. Stop freaking out already nothing was really wrong and we knew it when we left. We went just because both of us have been feeling nervous as of late with all the tiredness, nausea, heartburn, and strange sensations. The staff was really great and didn’t even blink when we told them we had planned a homebirth. The nurse even suggested a midwife as a middle ground measure. The baby is fine, mom is fine, and now I have proof so I am better.
The hospital doesn’t do VBACs so our only chance of having one is waiting until she is in active labor to head there. This is no problem seeing as how the place is less than 15 minutes in traffic. It was even the nurse’s suggestion. She obviously didn’t approve of their policy of VBACs just from the way she spoke. I am comfortable with the place to be honest. I think we are going to take her suggestion and if I am all sorts of comfortable when the time comes we can always just finish here. Case closed as far as I am concerned. I wasn’t nervous as I usually am in medical facilities and they even said she might be farther along that suspected so it could be any time now. I am not crossing my fingers but it’s a nice hope. I would like to get this over with and I know that the loving wife would like that even more than I would. Of course the baby coming now would seriously drain us financially but we could make it. In a month we will be alright so either way is cool.
That’s a Phillip K Dick quote. The author of Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep. Just thought I would give the background for the quote.
(Read the article)
So I was going to do a tech entry but this caught my eye.
Whites Only Scholarship Creates Outrage
BOSTON, Nov. 22, 2006 — Joe Mroszczyk, president of the College Republicans at Boston University, admits he set out to stir up a hornet’s nest when he came up with the idea of offering a whites-only scholarship at the school. But he got a little more buzz than he bargained for.
“To tell you the truth, we didn’t see this coming,” Mroszczyk said. “The Drudge Report picked it up yesterday, and today I just finished a round of national interviews. It’s kind of overwhelming.”
All the media attention is focused on a $250 Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship offered by Mroszczyk and the BU chapter of the College Republicans. Applicants must have a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher; they must write two essays; and, here’s the kicker, they must be at least one-quarter Caucasian.
The application itself offers an explanation: “We believe that racial preferences in all their forms are perhaps the worst form of bigotry confronting America today.”
I agree with the stated explanation. Racial preferences in any form are bigotry. It doesn’t matter how much they claim to level the playing field they give preference to someone based on the color of their skin. The article goes on to say that the group is receiving hate mail and all sorts flak for this scholarship. It is no worse than the NAACP scholarship or any other ethnic group offering money to its own kind. It is only hated and making news because it is whites offering money to whites and Lord knows that we cannot allow that to happen. It is horrible and bad to give money to whites based on their skin color but acceptable for any other race. It is racism. It is not racism by whites but rather racism by those who would have this scholarship yanked.
I am not going to quote the whole article or go any farther into commentary at this point. I want to get people thinking and nothing more. This is a day of thanks and we should concentrate on that. However we should not forget that many people, regardless of skin color, do not have it as good as we and that we should help them no matter what. So what if someone wants to bring dialog by offering a scholarship for whites. If they are racist at least it can be confronted and if they are not then dialog about racial preferences is achieved. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Tonight’s entry is from my favorite band. This song has really put me in the mood for Thanksgiving with very little reason apparent in the lyrics or tune. Normally I would go very traditional and post Alice’s Restaurant and leave it at that. But this year I am very grateful for a lot of things. The short list is the new job, Seebs (for reasons I won’t go into), Jenn for still being my friend, my wife for being strong, my kids for being who they are even when they are way too much like what they are, the new job, Brandon for the car on loan, and too many other things to list. So here is a little Lucero and I hope that it inspires you as it has me this Thanksgiving eve.
I know that this holiday seems way commercial to some but to me it is all too often overlooked. We eat turkey, take a nap, watch football, and then go back to our lives. We are not thankful or grateful. Tomorrow might well be for some the celebration of horrible treatment of the natives in America but to me and my family it is a day to actually be thankful. I struggle with this to be honest.
I like my wife’s family. I really like her brothers a lot. I don’t much like her family on holidays and this year I am struggling with not being consulted about our holiday plans. I mean every last aspect of them from where and with whom we are eating to our method of transportation. I am feeling pretty bitter to be honest and hoping this entry will help me get it out of my system. I am grateful we have a ton of family to choose from for holidays and I mean that very honestly. I am a little upset that for five years we have done every thanksgiving and every Christmas save one since we got together with her family. I don’t feel like I have much choice to be honest and it’s not only that we accept every year when her family calls. There is more to it that I really cannot go into here but the wife knows about it so she will understand.
So I am torn. I have so much for which to be grateful and yet I am feeling a bit bitter. I only hope my loving wife sees this for what it is. I really want to be happy and joyful tomorrow so I have to get this out of my system tonight if I am going to. I know this isn’t much of a music entry as such. But the song is apropos and has made me a little less bitter.
Enjoy your turkey day tomorrow. Enjoy your family. Thank God for what you have no matter how little it may or may not be. Celebrate a day on which we give thanks. I wish you all well. Goodnight and Happy Thanksgiving.
Today is day two of the new cluster install.
66 blades with dual core dual proc Opterons
4 racks of 16 500 GB SATA drives
Infiniband for nas
more network cables than you should be allowed to shake a stick towards and every last foot of them run under the floor
Yeah it’s a huge project. And the next one comes in Thursday’s week. For those doing the math the total processing power available to the cluster is minus 4 blades for each rack for cluster masters and NAS/NFS masters thereby totaling around 232 processors with about 32 TB directly attached to the cluster. Not to mention the other team dropping in 100 TB which we do for every cluster and about once again every two or three clusters.
It’s been years since I ran cable for more than a connection or two and even longer since I ran anything under the floor. Of course we have a nice setup with tracks under the floor for cables, nice KVMs, high dollar switches, massive power redundancy. It’s pretty much top of the line for everything period and that is nice to work with. Of course if my crackberry keeps jumping off my belt and into the open tiles I will be getting a replacement very soon. It turns out that is the most common cause of the Unix support group’s crackberries dying. It’s sad that we will just have time to clean up from this install in time to receive the next shipment…
Work is still interesting. I didn’t manage to quit smoking but I only had 6 all day at work and two of those were at lunch. I am pretty stoked about that to be honest. I barely felt irritable at all. If I can keep that amount up for a couple of weeks I think I can actually quit. It is more impressive than it sounds. I am working ten hours a day right now with another hour for lunch because I don’t get paid for Thurs and Fri du to being a contractor. That wil change soon as well.
My second week is crazy busy but I seem to be fitting in well and I still like my job and my co-workers. I can’t honestly think of one thing to complain about save my sore body which is sore in places I had forgotten could be sore. I am looking forward to bed and waking up which is not something I am used to. I get comfortable in this job.
So it seems this is becoming more of a video thing but it’s really not. The best way to do justice to Cory Branan is live and the best live I can find is video so that’s why I am posting another video. Make sure to listen to the banter beforehand because it just makes the song.
Cory is a wildman that I discovered thanks to Lucero. I have met him in person, rode with him and a liberal law student to joints of ill repute, stopped a casino on the way home, drank fifty cent Schlitz, rode back to my hotel in his infamous mini-van and all without seeming like too much of a fanboy. I can honestly say if he was big time and still writing the same quality lyrics and music and there was never a chance to meet him I would still love his music. I don’t know how many artists I can say that about. I know that Maxine’s will never be the same and that the boys from Limbeck know how to party like rock stars and all thanks to Cory B. and his amazing personality. I almost hope he never makes it big because I would miss hanging out.
Anways….go buy his stuff. And while you are there grab some New Tragedies and get a head start on the next music post…
So it’s not an MP3. Just deal with it already and quit whining.
I wanted to comb my music collection and find something inspiring that I could share with you all. Something on which I could comment and have a little fun. Well that didn’t happen today. I found my time limited and my state of being awake in danger. I am going to post this video because the song kicks ass and The Hold Steady should be in everyone’s music collection. Their new album is amazing. The style of singing might take some getting used to but it’s such fun music and lyrics with some of the same characters re-appearing on different albums. The stories are unique and really hit home at times. It’s overall good pure rock and roll.
Ok enough of that. Enjoy the video and then go buy their stuff.
Nope not a CF entry. I am only doing one a week.
I started blogging when E/N was big. I moved into being a political blogger. I got tired of that and we have what we have now. I am thinking I will try to do a schedule. Not an entry a day or anything. I will still write about my life because I like doing that. I have a great wife and kids and a good job but don’t want to schedule writing about those. My goal is to insure that I make four posts a week total even if I don’t write about my life. So I am going to try the following schedule.
Sunday - CF Entry (until I run out issues to post)
Sunday - MP3 entry
Monday - Geek entry
Wed - MP3 entry
Friday - Current events
Of course I will still post my regular drivel but those goals should help keep me focused on writing. I have some fiction in the works but the story has sort of run into a wall and I need to discipline myself to write more frequently so that I can put that bastard in reverse and start writing on it again. This should help. So here in a little bit expect a new MP3 entry.
Seebs has been a thorn in the side of CF Staff for as long as I can remember. I used to dislike him to a very large degree. I harangued him every chance I got. You see Seebs is a bit of a liberal Christian and I don’t agree with most of his doctrine. The problem with all of this is that we lose sight of what Christian fellowship is all about when we decide someone else is so wrong that we have to essentially stalk them. I did just that for a little while but eventually I actually talked to him and found we had lots of things in common and I grew bored with the whole “Seebs is the ultimate enemy of Christianity” mindset. Of course that is hyperbole for those who don’t understand literary devices. And I grew to respect our differences. He’s still wrong about a lot of things but I suspect that I am as well but not as wrong as he is at least. All joking aside he is an intelligent person who cares about people very deeply. I don’t people he knows or family but merely people and just because they are human beings and nothing more. Even with all the things I don’t like about his beliefs he really shows Christian love.
Seebs and I were on staff at the same time over at CF. He didn’t last very long at all. He argued for openness and accountability which is apparently staff’s kryptonite. I will grant that these days there are more people on staff who think it would be a good idea but they are apparently clearing them out as quickly as they can. Of course most of these people are more liberal Christians but strangely enough some conservatives have come to realize the cover up and lies are no good and the antithesis of what Christianity should look like from the outside. This little piece is about the gossip that goes on under the guise of confidentiality when CF Staff gets involved which takes the form of secret tribunals.
(Read the article)
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