Wanted: travel companion

Posted by Thomas Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:04:05 +0000

Must have the ability, the means, and the desire to see the world.
Must be up for eating some really good food.
Must have a sincere desire to better appreciate the significance of a different people, country, and culture.
Preferably female and single (and easy on the eyes).
Must be willing to do the tourist thing and have a desire to do as the townies do (when in Rome…).
I will indulge cultural things (like opera and theater), if you’ll indulge my photography habit.
Ideally an early riser, as I’m not the best at rising early (though I do think I have awesome jet lag avoidance skills).

For some time now I’ve had this travel itch. Going on the cruise was enlightening. Did you know you don’t just have to go to the Caribbean or Alaska on a cruise? They go to Hawaii, to Europe, around Europe, probably around to Asia, through the Panama Canal, and plumb around the world.

Specifically, I’ve wanted to do some touring of Europe. I’ve got a few contacts in Europe now, and honestly I’d think I could either crash on their couch or at least get the dl on where to stay and what to do. The Spain – On The Road Again series hasn’t done much to curb my cravings, nor did watching Walking the Bible. And now with Chad moving to France, and Rob soon to leave Japan, my mind continues to wonder to places other than here.

But, this becomes logistically difficult. Between what I’m sure would be my parents’ concerns of traveling alone, and much more the lack of desire to see the world alone (I have these visions of going and then proceeding to sleep the entire time), I am stuck.

And even if you could find someone who could get off work and then pay $$$, it’s not the simplest thing to find someone who is willing to just go and do. I realize now that whomever you’re traveling with needs to be of a like mind. Daylight can be awastin’, and if you’re not on the same page, then poor planning (or a lack of adventure) can eat several hours of possible sightseeing.

I have the ability, the desire, and the means right now, and I know that the older I get the harder it’ll be, and that if I don’t go, that I’ll regret it.

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ztop

Posted by Thomas Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:48:56 +0000

Dear Internets,

Please someone write ztop, an ncurses interface like iftop, but for zfs.

Requirements:

  1. show loadavg type averages (2s, 10s, and 40s) of read and write bandwidth
  2. show loadavg type averages (2s, 10s, and 40s) of read and write iops
  3. show cumulative read, write, and sum data transferred since program open
  4. show peak read, write, and sum bandwidth since program open
  5. show peak read, write, and sum iops since program open
  6. use explicit units
  7. extra points if you break it down by process doing the reading, writing and to where

kthxbye

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On the record

Posted by Thomas Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:04:20 +0000

I just want to go on the record on a couple of things. I’ve been meaning to mention these for a while, but I kept forgetting.

1) Global warming. I call bs on this one. I’m in the camp that the temperature is more dependent on the solar cycle than minor fluctuations we impose. I predict that it will get way colder over the next 5 years, and that the debate will not have moved one iota, as the environmentalists will continue to tow their line and will not be swayed, no matter how far the temperature average drops. It’s sad we can’t have a civil discourse about this.
2) Ethanol. Ethanol is dumb and just poor policy. No real alternative energy source should cause food prices to rise. Nor should it have to be super subsidized (unfortunately it will have be subsidized some, but the true alternative most likely will be the first one that’s lucrative).
3) Alternative energy. I say this isn’t the panacea that many people tote it to be. Aside from the obvious lack of base load, the lack of correlation between source locations and population centers, and the inability for any commercial entity thus far to have been able to sufficiently monetize it, I don’t think we should pour lots of money into it, as it’s honestly just not a good, cheap, long term solution.

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Taco Bell

Posted by Thomas Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:15:38 +0000

I was dumb and when I finally went to eat lunch at like 4pm forgot to take my wallet! Good thing I keep all that change in the console. The lady didn’t bat an eye when I paid her in exact change; $5 worth of quarters.

I’ve spent most of my day packaging up various l7-filter debs. I’ve been meaning to play with qos for forever, and was finally in the mood to fight with it today.

Oh, and distcc has to be the worst packaged thing ever. It absolutely requires you to specify acls (the –allow flag) restricting access, but only allows you to specify to listen on one ip. How’s that supposed to work? Apparently I have to listen on all interfaces, else I restrict myself to only 1 subnet. Like say when my hostname has an AAAA record, distcc pukes. I can’t add my /64 to –allow, so I have to listen on my internal ip. That’s well and good and all, but then what if I want to connect to localhost? Then I’m sol… It makes no sense.

Posted in Technology, Tweets | Comments Off

Christmas tix

Posted by Thomas Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:36:32 +0000

is kicking himself (again) for waiting a day too late to pick up his tickets for Christmas.

Posted in Tweets | 1 Comment

Link Post!

Posted by Thomas Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:01:41 +0000

I’m not one to usually do link posts, but here you go:

Apture sort of reminds me of pop-up-news, but without the automagic, pithy commentary.
Sweetcron is perhaps a step in the right direction. The next cool thing might be a foaf app that organizes your friends. You’ll need some decentralized way to request that someone be your friend.

I absolutely cannot deny that there might be something in this. But I call bs on the whole semantic web thing. I can imagine people finding information for a small subset of questions, and that even within that subset twitter should be able to find a revenue model. I doubt, though, that this approach would work in the larger search context. And, I still don’t get twitter (or ff for that matter). :( How has no one made the new hotness that competes with these?

And while I’m semi-ranting, why are there no standards for blog themes? Have I mentioned this before? Anyway, wouldn’t it be so nice if there were another xml feed that you could just xsl into a theme? Then any theme created for any blogging software might be able to skin your favorite blogging software…

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