My colo is disappearing tomorrow, so you won’t be reading this for a day or two until I get my new home sorted.
New virtual home
Mar 4th, 2008 by bwann
No more on-call! thrilled! excited! hurray!
Mar 3rd, 2008 by bwann
HARRRRRRRRRR, last stint of on-call coverage finished! No more on-call ever ever ever ever ever ever! Hello every third weekend, I’ve missed you!
Copper thief, extra crispy
Mar 2nd, 2008 by bwann
The other day we noticed our lights at the office flicker and the facilities people at the datacenter logged a brief voltage sag. It turns out there was a guy in east Austin who broke into an Austin Energy substation to steal copper wiring. Several articles report he got into live conductors, was hit with 80,000 volts and was engulfed in flame. Amazingly, the bastard survived (for now) with 100% burns to his body and he was flown to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Feb 25th, 2008 by bwann
In a fit of boredom I cleaned off my desk in my bedroom and migrated the Mac from the kitchen counter to it. While I’m still sitting here squandering life away, it feels a lot more productive. I think this is because this is how I started off spending my 20s, sitting at a desk in my bedroom until the very wee hours of the morning building my empire. I spent a LOT of time there. Shortly before I moved here, I had migrated to the diningroom table so I could watch TV. After moving, my Powerbook took over the kitchen counter. It didn’t get any more convienient than that, coming and going, perched on my stool, pecking away. Eventually I’d put a leg to sleep, then move to my chair. Here, the 120+ F degree heat would eventually roast my legs and I’d migrate to the floor or back to the kitchen counter. Suffice to say, that’s not a way to stay productive for long hours.
So here I am once again sitting in my old task chair and old desk, listening to old techno, all which served me well for many years. I feel ready to produce and I’m looking for something to do. I do miss having my spacious 20″ monitor, so I need to craigslist one.
I finally did it, I turned in my resignation today. It’s been a hard decision to make, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I’m giving up on over three years of familiarity and going to somewhere new to do different things. I vowed a couple months ago this would be my last year there, I just didn’t anticipate this new job coming up so soon. I think it’s going to be better for me, so I’m feeling better about it and a bit more relieved.
Feb 19th, 2008 by bwann
Thirty minutes in Mopac traffic this morning gave me more time to think than my eight hour roadtrip to Del Rio on Sunday afternoon.
I’m still alive. I was working in Amsterdam all last week. The weekend before I thought it would be a really good idea to stay up all night Saturday night (or was it Friday too?), sleep a few hours Sunday afternoon, then stay up all night Sunday night to get on Amsterdam time. For the most part it worked, I slept on a good chunk of the flight over and was ready to go when I landed.
The trip sucked. I worked long hours moving servers around all week which wore me out and built up a sleep deficit. By the end of the week I was pretty cranky, just wanted to curl up and sleep. Saturday was supposed to be my extra day off, but the schedule slipped enough to where I was working most of the day. I promptly went back to the hotel and slept until it was time to come home. Looking at my passport, I was there a year ago to the day. It was then and now cold, windy and rainy. One day I actually saw the sun!
I didn’t rent a car this time, I purely rode the intercity train, trams, and busses. I figured out the #40 bus line that will take me from Middenweg to Sciencepark, which took 1.5 km each way of walking out. By 22:00, buses only ran every 30 minutes so I wound up walking to the tram station every night anyways.
Friday and Saturday night I had to go to work early for maintenance, before the trams started running. The first taxi ride was pretty uneventful. The ride on Saturday was pretty annoying; when I got in, the driver told me he accepted credit cards. fine. Then he didn’t know where Sciencepark nor Kruislaan was, nor did his nav unit. Finally drew a little map and mentioned Middenweg which got the point across. When we arrived, he discovered he could only accept AmEx and Mastercard when I only had wallet full of Visa cards, no Euro, and only $100. He finally relented (what choice did he have?) and took me to an ATM in Middenweg. Good thing I knew the area.
One evening I had Indonesian food at Bojo’s, it was every bit delicious as I remember. I got in so late every night I didn’t want to burn two hours to eat, so the rest of my meals were New York Pizza and fries. I stayed at the Hotel Eden at Rembrandplein, really nice place; I highly recommend it. I booked some winter special and it was a good deal at like EUR 120/night. For work it was perfect since it was right on the #9 tram line. Otherwise, I didn’t make it outside of the square. Note for next time, a couple stops up at Praetoriustraat in Watergrafsmeer is a number of eetcafes. I’d gladly take pizza over schwarmarolls for lunch.
Full disclosure: I broke my nine month soda-free spree. At Telecity they only have a coffee machine and a Coca-cola machine. I failed to visit AlbertHein beforehand to smuggle in bottled water. I was so parched I gave in and bought a Coke (try chugging a hot coffee or tea, doesn’t work). I’m so disappointed that the counter reset. I only had one can and I’m back on the no-soda wagon.
I finally found my old DLJ brokerage statements of a small portfolio back in 2000. I’ve been trying to find out if they’re still anything there, but DLJ was bought by Ameritrade, who was bought by TD Waterhouse and it’s a pain to see who wound up with it. Most were bought right after the NASDAQ bubble popped but they still took a beating afterwards. Unless the shares double in value at some point, I’m still quite underwater. At some point DLJ started charging me a quarterly maintenance fee so my suspicion is that they’ve liquidated my shares to cover it and closed my account. Nevertheless, it’s still my money and I’d like to reclaim it.
Akamai Technologies (AKAM), bought at $59.68, currently at 34.60
Cisco Systems (CSCO), bought at 54.94, currently at 27.07
Metromedia Fiber (MFNX), bought at 25.50, went chapter 11 and is now worthless
RMI.net (RMII), bought at 3.05, went bankrupt in a spectacular manner
Williams Communications (WCG), bought at 34.37, went bankrupt.
Somewhere I had some Foundry (FDRY) but I was nailed by a margin call and had to sell it to cover.
I’m a couple months away from topping off my short-term savings account, then I’m back in the market for some long term buying. Hopefully I’ll be a little smarter about it this time around. As part of gaining clue, I’ve spent the past two days reading Berkshire Hathway annual reports and reading about the companies acquired. It’s some interesting reading. I wish all executives wrote in Buffett’s plain english style.
My truck has decided to quitely revolt against me. I’ve slowly been losing coolant over the past couple months. I finally took it to my mechanic last week. They ran a pressure test on it, couldn’t find anything but agreed it was going down. No obvious leaks, no stains around fittings or the water pump, nothing in the oil nor transmission fluid. Everyone tells me it’s probably the water pump venting tiny amounts of vapor, so before too long I’ll take a shot at replacing it. Three more payments to go on my truck, the bastard must last me another four years before I replace it.
I finally got around to eBaying stuff in my closet. Anyone want to buy a stack of Portmasters? A couple of Atari 2600s and a shitload of games? Or a bunch of Cisco VIC and WICs? Next up is my stack of Sun SPARCstation and Ultras. I’m in a giving mood too, anyone want any bath towels? Champagne flutes, wine glasses? A toaster? A roman chair workout stand? A fiber optic Christmas tree? Help me free up valuable cubic footage in my apartment! Come see me at Crazy Bryan’s Houseware Bazaar!
Family tree
Dec 9th, 2007 by bwann
It’s again 80 F degrees today. I’m sitting here with the doors open and the humidity makes me want to take a shower. Meanwhile, Michelle tells me it’s 27 in Bartlesville, they have ice and now a thunderstorm.
Alex has been working on his and Victoria’s family trees and has been able to trace Victoria back to the 1200s. This got me curious about mine, usually I’m so horrible about it so when somebody in my family says I’m related to X person, I have no clue how or I forget. I signed up for an ancestry.com account and started playing around. I figured it would be a ton of work involving a lot of courthouse inqurires, but I was surprised at how easy it was to get started. Their website links to several other databases including repositories of scanned census records, draft cards, and immigration records.
It’s turned out to be an interesting information gathering exercise. 140 year old cursive writing takes a big of eyeballing to read. I’m amused how old census forms actually have a checkbox that says “[ ] deaf and dumb”. My sister has already done a lot of work and seemed to be excited to help me out. We also found the work other relatives did, so I merged those in as well. Friday night I was up until 5 AM reading through records to verify links and googling various names to find more data, then I wound up putting in several more hours on Saturday.
On dad’s side I’ve been able to go back to the 1700s on both maternal and paternal grandfather side. Mom’s side has been harder. From what I’ve been told, her maternal grandmother was an orphan, and the paternal grandparent side dives into Choctaw tribal records. Fortunately we found out one of my uncles has already pieced together the tribal records for a few generations as a requirement to get our Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB).
Many people make assorted intriguing arguments the surname “Wann” could be English, German, Scottish, and even Swedish. On the Wann side, I am fairly confident in the pedigree back eight generations ago to William Wann, Sr, 1755-1820. William seems to be a dead end, as I’ve found many Wanns on message boards looking for information on him and not getting much. Everyone seems to agree he came from somewhere in Germany and died in Tenneesee. In 1777, he married a woman named Ann McGowan, a 2nd generation Scotish-American (her parents came from Scotland to Tennesee). They had many children, one of which married a 2nd generation Irish-American. So, I’m of German, Scot, Irish, and Indian descent.
Ancestry.com has a feature in beta that’ll find famous relatives. Most interesting is that Queen Elizabeth II (yes, of the House of Windsor) is my “9th cousin, 3 times removed” through my 11th great grandmother and her 8th great grandmother. I haven’t verified all the links yet, but it looks like it may hold water. Other interesting (alleged) relatives:
- Samuel Morse, 5th cousin 8 times removed, inventor of Morse Code
- Frank Lloyd Wright, 7th cousin 5 times removed, architect
- Emily Dickenson, 6th cousin 7 times removed, poet
- Helen Keller, 7th cousin 6 times removed, blind/deaf author
- Robert Boyle, 3rd cousin 14 times removed, chemist
- Fran Whittle, 10th cousin 1 time removed, inventor of jet engine
- Jane Austin, 6th cousin 10 times removed, author
- Millard Fillmore, 4th cousin 7 times removed, 13th US President
- Woodrow Wilson, 8th cousin 6 times removed, 28th US President
- Ronald Reagan, 4th cousin 5 times removed, 40th US President
- George Orwell, 9th cousin 6 tmes removed, author
ancestry.com offers this footnote: “Keep in mind–The possible relationship information we show is only as accurate as the member-contributed family tree information found in OneWorldTree. We are unable to verify whether these results are in fact accurate. Of course, that’s part of the fun of family history–digging into the research.” Teases.
Christmas tree drama
Dec 2nd, 2007 by bwann
There’s something wrong with the fact that while I put up my Christmas tree today, I had all the doors and windows open, then later the air conditioner turned on.
Stupid fucking series lights.
