I awoke this morning to knocking at my door. In my i’m-still-asleep stupor, I was excited, as I thought that it might be my new coffee table (oh yeah, I finally got the coffee table). I put on my robe (j/k I don’t own a robe) and answered the door. It was the police. Luckily I had [insert something here that would have been fortuitous in light of a cop showing up on my doorstep] the night before. He asked if I owned the Yukon (which I do of course). Someone had tried to break into it. They managed to crack the handle, but didn’t get into the car. They might have gotten spooked or something (who knows). Anyway, the car’s ok. I’ll need to get some estimates of getting it fixed, and most likely I won’t claim it on the insurance, so it’ll probably be out of pocket (yay!). I took some pictures of the damage this morning, so I’ll probably eventually post them.

In other news, I caught up on Lost on Friday night. I had finished season two some months ago and hadn’t been keeping up with season three. They were in a lull, so I picked up the first 6 episodes (that’s how many they’ve made thus far), and I’ll poke my head back under the sand for a few more months. I really do like watching them in groups (like I’ve done with West Wing and Scrubs), as it’s just so nice. I think that I’ve made some peace with Lost’s slow timeline. I’ve also decided if I were any of them, I would have snapped, and not trusted anybody, and just started killing anyone who messed with me. I really don’t understand what the others are afraid of from these people who crash landed. If they’re so sure of their purpose and their success, then they shouldn’t care about them. If their purpose is so pure, they should have no problems letting new people in and have those new people help them. It just seems like a cult or something. They have to hide and ethically justify what they’re doing for the greater good. It just doesn’t make much sense. But, if the story is supposed to last for 5 seasons, then it should be getting close to half way, which is somewhat of a comfort… like it’s only downhill from here or something.

I also’ve watched “You, Me, and Dupree” which was better than expected. Also, I finally watched “Funny Face”. I didn’t realize it was so much of a musical. Oh well, it was still decent. Having Fred Astaire in it should have tipped me off.

Do you know the best part of my first ride on the first day of the new year was, beside the 55 degree cold, the wind, driving 10 miles for a 5.6 mile ride, and accidentally riding past where I parked, adding an additional mile to the ride? The mid-ride dry heaves. Thanks, 2007. It’s going to be a good year.

When people ask me how long I’ve been here or how long I’ve been in Atlanta, I’ve started telling them that it will be two years in April. I guess that it’s been roughly 20 months now, but I like the other turn of phrase more so and 20 months doesn’t really mean much to me in terms of time. But every time I say that now and think about really how long it’s been, I cannot help but feel like it’s been two years of my life where I’ve accomplished nothing. I will be two years older. I was a young 24 when I started, and I am about to turn 26. That makes me feel old. I’m almost 26. No wife, no kids, no real sense of where I’m going, nor any sense of self accomplishment. Life’s not supposed to feel like this.

Clawing your way up the corporate ladder 101.
How to tell when your boss is an ass 102.
Ass kissing 201.
Selling yourself (and taking credit for other’s work) 202.
How to create a project for the sake of creating a project and sustain it for 6 months 301.
How to tell when to leave your job 401.
Looking for another job while still employed 402.

Unfortunately all of those sound like every self-help book ever written. I doubt they would actually teach you anything worthwhile, sustainable, or applicable to people’s real lives.

If you would have told me any number of years ago that I would be in favor of impeachment of a president, I wouldn’t have believed you. I no longer hold that President Bush is a steward of these many states and their people. I am of firm belief that he has in his own mind perverted and twisted his purpose and authority as Commander in Chief and is in fact subverting and eroding those freedoms and liberties he himself believes he is protecting.

I have recently read some of the surrounding commentary given by the founding fathers on the subject of the second amendment, in regard to the right to bear arms.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

I ran across a web page listing a dearth of quotes to the effect (as I perceived it) that the right was not granted out of the need for self defense by individuals or whatever tripe gun toter spout as legal grounds for their ability keep their weapons. I believe this right was granted as a guarantee of liberty. It was further proof that government is not to be trusted. The framers had just been screwed by their previous government and when a long train of abuses and usurpations … evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. This is the meaning. This is the reason. We are the government; We, the People. I believe our right of arms stems from this, that as a final and last resort, that the people would be equipped to take back what is rightfully theirs.

Things like this. Arguments given without context infuriate me. And these arguments of government seem very similar to many arguments of religion in my mind. The Bible is the written word of God. It is a Book, I dare say merely a book. What it represents is much greater than the sum of its many words. No one passage or phrase sums up its meaning. Yet so many arguments by ecclesiastical zealots hang solely upon one passage, one verse of Scripture. All too often the letter of the law becomes more important than its spirit. The Bible isn’t God, just as the passages together are not God. Only God is God. The Book exists to convey the concept, the proof that was and is, the relationship, the reasons.

I do not know if Bush should be impeached or not. For all my words here, I am not a lawyer. Perhaps he has lied to further his foreign policy agenda. I wouldn’t doubt that other Presidents have done the same. And other Presidents have undoubtedly ordered terrible things against their own people over these many years, but I doubt that any has done so with the brazen and blatant abandonment of personal freedoms and liberties as this President. Maybe I am wrong, but I hope that the Presidents before buckled to treason with more introspect than I believe this President has.

Give me liberty or give me death.

I guess that I have a post backlog. I have all of these disjointed thoughts that I feel warrant separate posts, but they’re all grouped together time-wise at the end of the Christmas holiday. So, if you’re reading this, be sure that you didn’t miss any new posts. :)

Oh, and I’ve been pondering going on the January Work Project. It looks like it starts Jan 6. It would be cool to take off for a week and jetset out, but thinking now, it’s a little short notice…

I really hate it when you dig down into some cool possibility, only to realize it isn’t possible. I’ve been playing a lot with Xen as of late. It’s really nice to be able to have another machine in a virtual sandbox. A while back I was talking with some guys from work about the possibility of using Xen in conjunction with AFS to create a very highly available compute cluster. Xen has the ability to migrate entire virtual machines from on physical machine’s memory to another physical machine’s memory, while the virtual machine continues to run and process stuff. It does not account for the “disk” associated with the virtual machine, which is where AFS comes in. AFS has the concept of cells, and the ability to move data on the server transparently to the clients. So it would seem that you could transfuse these two technologies to create virtual machines that would migrate around on various physical machines all transparently and automatically. But, here’s the snag. You can migrate Xen instances on the fly, but I don’t think there is currently any way to automatically fail over a virtual instance if a physical machines dies. And the same with AFS. You can migrate a R/W cell, and you can automatically fail over a R/O cell, but you cannot fail over a R/W instance. So, basically you can avoid downtime through scheduled maintenances, but can’t gain high availability through these technologies currently… :(

You can find for the time being all of my photos at http://chobas.com/original/. Hopefully it doesn’t become a crutch and result in lest posting on the photoblog…

I have more than a few artsy friends in the graphics/photography/video/animation field. Several have been in the real world for a few years, while others are just starting. It really makes me wish that we could all start a little consulting business. There are at the very least Amy, Tycen, Adan, Marc, and Nancy. They could all do the artsy thing, and I could do all the tech support/IT for them…

On the flight from Houston to Amarillo, I sat next to a lovely young blonde. We exchanged pleasantries a couple of times, such as how she was from Hereford and I from Canyon, her grandparents were picking her up, while my parents were picking me up, how she lives in not Miami, but Jacksonville, FL and I in Atlanta, that I worked for Google and that she worked for some mortgage/lending agency whose name I can’t recall. Small chit-chat like that, off and on. It was… encouraging, let us say. It was loud and I had some trouble hearing her (like the Miami/Jacksonville thing). I didn’t get her name or her number, but I guess that’s ok. It was a better conversation with some random girl on a plane than I’ve had, so, yeah…