Personally, I feel much safer knowing that once something is designated as “suspicious” by our security professionals, it cannot become “unsuspicious” until it has been blown up.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution. Full story.

Apparently, duct tape and tin foil on anything is considered suspicious. I’m glad that my college days are behind me; there was always the risk, in college, of waking up wrapped in tin foil and duct taped to a pole. “I’m sorry Mrs. Smith, but your son was clearly suspicious. We had to detonate him as a precaution.”

Christianity has done some bad things in its time. The Crusades. The Inquisition.

Now this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wpAJMFpJQ
http://www.theway.org/Current/Mar07/Mar07Hi.htm

(Sigh. First they got it removed from YouTube. Then they removed it from their own site. Maybe the world is a better place without it.)

… and this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8

I think God is crying right now.

I just noticed that I haven’t written anything in a month. Pretty much my normal behavior. Naughty Spoonfighter.

If you’re curious, and you’re probably not, I’ve been very focused on a technical project lately. I have been trying to create a working Solaris Cluster* at home, in order to do some personal training in the technology, and to prepare for a cluster build I have to do at work. Initially, I was going to purchase a bunch of old Sun equipment (I did actually buy a SunBlade 1000), but I realized that this was going to be too expensive, and all I’d end up with would be a bunch of old computers that don’t do anything fun and break a lot. (Kind of like me.)

Still with me? If not, skip down to the part where I mention that I’m not going back to law school.

So, instead, I set about trying to create a cluster using virtual machines.** At this point, I have my laptop installed with Ubuntu Linux. It uses Sun’s VirtualBox product to simulate three Solaris systems: one will serve up iSCSI storage for the shared disk, and the other two will be the cluster nodes. Is this interesting to you? If so, you probably have a lousy social life. (Kind of like me.)

In case you haven’t already guessed, I’m not going back to law school. There’s a lot more to it, but basically, one year in law school helped me clarify my goals, and showed me that those goals are better served by building on the IT career I have already developed, rather than starting from scratch in a completely new field.

That said, I am trying to embrace my inner geek. I spend as much time indoors as possible, in order to develop an unhealthy pallor. I am reading fantasy and science fiction. I am playing with cluster, iSCSI, and virtualization technologies in my spare time. And, I have an account on World of Warcraft. It’s probably a good thing that I’m already married.

Anyway, that’s the news from Spoonfighter’s corner of meatspace. Have a good day.

* A cluster consists of two or more computer systems which work together to keep an application running at all times, even if one of the two computers fails.
** A virtual machine is a simulation of a computer system which runs on a real computer system.

Spoonfighter junior is two. I would like to say that he is growing like a weed, but he’s really short and is barely growing at all. So, really, he’s growing more like our lawn. Which is weird because we didn’t put nearly as much fertilizer on our lawn.

He’s not into food, so much. We’re so desperate to get him to eat that we’ll literally let him eat anything he decides to put in his mouth, short of black tar heroin. (It’s a pain in the a** to get out of his clothes.) Pretty much all he likes are donuts and hot dogs. And even to get him to eat hot dogs we have to lie to him and tell him that it’s the meat of some exotic animal. One time we cut the hot dog into long, curved slivers and told him that it was elephant trunk.

His favorites so far are silver back gorilla and baby seal. I don’t know what we’re going to do when we run out of endangered species. We’ll have to get creative, I suppose. “Look! It’s Kanga from your Winnie the Pooh book, remember? Nummy nummy!” (Wait, I’ve already used that one. Yes, I’m a horrible parent.) We recently took him to the zoo for the first time, and I wonder if he was thinking, “Oh, a giraffe. I love giraffe.”

You know, I like the zoo, but it would be a lot better if it was more like Costco or Sam’s Club. You’d go up to an animal enclosure and there’d be this little old lady wearing a hair net and holding a plate full of samples. “Here - try some of this snow leopard. It’s very lean, and it’s on sale today for $5.99 a pound.” Awesome!

The other thing that sucks is that the animals are all pretty lazy. Poke ‘em with sticks or something. Make ‘em do tricks! It’s hard to keep a little kid interested in a lion that sits around like it’s on welfare.

ME: “Hey, loooook! What is that? Is that a lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel, Daddy! Squiwwel! LOOK DA SQUIWWEL!”
ME: “Yes, that is a squirrel. But don’t you want to see the lion?”
BOY: “Squiwwel squiwwel squiwwel sqiwwel! Yay!”
ME: “HEY - I DIDN’T JUST SHELL OUT 80 FREAKIN BUCKS SO YOU CAN LOOK AT THE LITTLE BEASTS THAT GO THROUGH OUR FREAKIN GARBAGE. LOOK AT THE !@#%!^% LION!!”
BOY: “Bird, Daddy! LOOK DA BIRD!”

I didn’t actually yell at him. I’m really a good parent. When the lions didn’t work out, I bought us tickets for the little train that goes around the zoo. He was totally hooked and threw a fit when the ride ended. This presented a parenting dilemma. I didn’t want to reward bad behavior, but I couldn’t bear to see his sad little face, so I chose a creative “third way.” I slipped the driver of the train fifty bucks and told him not to stop. Then I went home and took a nap.

(Ha ha, I am so just kidding, Ms. Child Welfare Officer.)

A friend of mine works at a clinic where morbidly obese people have their stomachs stapled. Over coffee, the other day, we wondered if it wouldn’t be more effective to staple their mouths, instead? I mean, mouth stapling is cheaper, less invasive, and gets to the root of the problem a little more effectively. Click, click, click. “There you go. Call me in a month. Feel free to eat anything you can get through your nose.”

Tried fake tanning lotion for the first time.

Sweet. Now I don’t have to spend any time in the sun to look like I’m having an allergic reaction.

Finals start next week. Definitely not ready for them. I was a lot more prepared for finals at this point last semester. But I got the impression that a lot of the prep I did didn’t help me, so I’m hoping that my lack of preparation this time won’t hurt much.

Me.

1. Woke up late because morning class had been canceled.
2. Late getting out.
3. Missed bus.
4. Hung out at home until time to go catch next bus.
5. Got to bus stop and realized I didn’t have bus pass.
6. Drove to school.
7. Upon very late arrival at school, was reminded that second class had been moved into first class’ time slot, and thus I missed the only class I had today, making my 20 mile trek to Boulder completely wasteful and pointless.

%!@#$!^!

Meme’s are so, like, 2 years ago. But I haven’t done one yet, and my friend Alwen tagged me with one. So here goes.

7 random things about me you may not know…

1. I crave hot dogs. I put them in soup. I role them up in tortillas with a little cheese. I eat them cold. I will eat them until I feel like barfing

2. I hold a white belt in at least three martial arts. No kidding.

i. Kun Tao - A variety of Kung Fu practiced in Indonesia. (The teacher told me I’d earned a green belt in this one, but I couldn’t have fought my way out of an angry preschool with these techniques: so, I still think of myself as a white belt.)
ii. Muay Thai - Our school didn’t have belts. So my belt is still white.
iii. YMCA Karate - I have no idea how long I was actually in these classes, but somehow I missed all the belt tests. I was like totally the most fearsome white belt in the class.

3. I hate doing things I suck at. I grew up with modest talents in a number of areas, and got accustomed to being good at things without putting in much effort. It’s a curse, because later in life I have a hard time staying the course when things get hard. And everything gets hard, sooner or later.

4. I pierced my own ear once. It didn’t hurt at all, but I suspect that’s because I was more than a little drunk at the time. Sadly, I didn’t have an earring to put in the hole, so it was rather pointless.

5. I take one heck of a long time to finish a meme. Seriously. What’s my problem?

6. Pet peeve: People who keep large, aggressive dogs in their front yards. I’m running along, minding my own business, enjoying the peace and quiet of my neighborhood, when suddenly 100+ pounds of bad doggie charges out of nowhere and throws itself at me. Yes, I realize afterward that I’m perfectly safe on my side of the fence. But why should I have to wear two pairs of super hero underwear when I go running?

What really pisses me off are the people who only have four foot fences. Are you telling me that a 100 pound Rottie, moving at 25 mph, can’t clear a four foot fence? And don’t even get me started about the a__hole who uses some invisible sonic collar thing instead of a fence. The next time his wife decides to run her hair dryer and the toaster at the same time, some little kid is going to be puppy chow.

7. I used to play a pretty mean blues harp (harmonica).

—————————————————————-
Rules:
A. List 7 random things about yourself that people may not know.
B. Link the person who sent this to you, and leave a comment on their blog so that their readers can visit yours.
C. Post the rules on your blog.
D. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, linking their blog. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

I gotta give a plug to di.fm, an internet radio site which streams techno of various varieties free of charge. I love it.