Catching Up

There's not too much I care to say to catch up for two years of a busy life. I am still a Storage and BUR consultant working in the Enterprise Server & Storage arena... although I've moved on to work for another staffing firm since Summer of 2006.

In the interim, I've worked in Monroe, WI, Framingham, MA, a few quick trips to San Francisco, CA, Columbus, OH, Raleigh, NC, Boston, MA.... and found good beers everywhere.

Most of the time though, I've been working either locally or remote out of my home office. Coincidently, I am currently subbed back to the same end-client I was working for in Summer of 2006 and have just returned from three weeks back in my old haunts in Seattle. The middlemen are all different this time around... but most of the permanent BUR administrators I worked with last time are still there!

I've actually had a number of repeat customers in the past two years.... I guess that's a good thing!

The picture I put up for this posting is the same image I use of my profile... it shows me enjoying a hand-pulled IPA at the Elliot Bay Brewing Company in Seattle. I'll try to make weekly postings here with roughly the same regularity as my wife makes over on her BLOG at http://mansfieldknitter.blogspot.com and I'll try and get some new pictures up. I've cleaned up some of my favorite web links, leaving only those few I still monitor regularly. I'll add some in the coming posts.

Personally, both boys are still in School. Kevin is pursuing his Masters degree in Geology up at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK... and we're making frequent visits to him up there. Keith is doing well at Holy Trinity Seminary and is about to start his 3rd year in his long road to ordination as a diocesan priest for the Fort Worth Diocese. Prayers for his vocation would be very welcome.

That's all for today's reintroduction to the world of Blogging!

Historic Entries....

I took down all my BLOG entries almost two years ago. While I enjoyed playing with the BLOG, it seemed like a hollow pursuit as noone was reading it but me. In any case, sine the lovely and charming Debbie, (my wife of 28 wonderful years), has started BLOGing, I thought I'd resurrect this BLOG. The following are whose few entries I can find from two years ago... enjoy!

Homeward Bound - Covey's - Sushi Zone -

Wednesday night, (8/23/2006), I and my team members returned to Verazano's, (pictured), a really nice Italian restaurant just a bit north of us on the Pacific Highway. Last time, I had the Ravioli and was impressed. Wy wife has taught me that the best way to judge the competence of the chefs at an Italian restaurant is to order the Eggplant Parmesan. Is it bitter or mushy? No on both counts for Verazano's... Debbie would approve! And it was delightfully seasoned with a rich marinara sauce. For libation, as usual in Seattle you can count on a few good microbrews just about anywhere. I first enjoyed the Pyramid Hefe. I'd rate it at about 8 on a ten point scale.... stylistically it is a mild Bavarian with very understated fruit flavors. I then had a Mack & Jack's African Amber.... this wonderfully rich ale is available all over the place.... I'd rank it at an 8.5... and I'm going to have to brave the traffic some night and journey over to Redmond to visit their brewpub.

Thursday was a commute day for me. American Airlines had no issues today..... my flight was on time, and I actually had an entire row to myself. Being able to spread out across a couple of seats beats First Class any day! I hate to be in a hurry when traveling, preferring to arrive at the airport with a couple of hours to spare. As usual, I used the time to good effect.... the Africa Lounge at SeaTac carries 3 of the Mack & Jack's styles and their hamburgers are excellent. My pre-flight meal was washed down my a Mack & Jack's IPA (7.5), and an African Amber, (8.5).
There's never any rest for the techno-geek... despite the late hour of my return I dug right into a bit of Windows laptop troubleshooting. My youngest son, (just beginning his time at Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving... on the UD campus... has a sick laptop. It refuses to boot into normal mode, and has been sent home for fixing. I was able to apply 3 system restore checkpoints from "Safe Mode" but still couldn't resolve the issue. When I set his boot drive to do a full scan on the next reboot... it became impossiblle to get back into safe mode.... a quick blue screen flashes... impossible to pause or read... and the system resets... ad infinitum. I decided to just take the thing back to Fry's... it's got to be a hardware issue... I'll worry about it tomorrow afternoon.

I spent a half-day at the home-office Friday morning, finishing up my weekly paperwork and registering for the upcoming HP Technology Forum 2006 to be held in Houston from August 17 to August 21. This will be an excellent chance to make some contacts for my Professional Services firm and perhaps to buff up my credentials a bit. Plus the time off from my Seattle engagement will make for a nice break... despite the heat I'll have to endure down in Houston... I'm looking forward to it.

I closed out my timesheet early in the afternoon and headed over to Richardson to pick up my eldest son from UTD. He's schedulled his GREs for tomorrow at a testing center closer to us, so I'll be able to spend the weekend with him, (when I'm not playing with that sick laptop). We are tremendously proud of Kevin! His undergratuate work will be finished a semester shy of 4 years.... and he's already well on his way to a masters degree in Geology! Once home, we headed over to Fry's for a bit of fruitless discussion with their service department.
I absolutely swear.... never again will I buy a service contract on any system! All software issues are excluded... so I'm supposed to reinstall Windows myself unless I want to pay them to do it. I know darn well that no matter how much they charge... they won't expend any extra effort to rescue my son's existing data! Never before had I seen a Windows boot so corrupted that i couldn't even get to a safe mode or a command prompt.... I couldn't even get it to the point where it would run a scandisk... so I'm pretty sure this is a hardware issue. The service technician insists that a reinstall of Windows should be attempted first.
CDROM boot time.... a WinXP repair failed to change the symptoms of the problem at all. I started up a reinstall-in-place in hopes that I could rescue Keith's "My Documents". My spirit rebels at the thought of a reformat and reinstall despite assurances that all data my son cares about is backed up. (I know that this claim is likely just "blowing smoke" on Keith's part to avoid any of that "withering disdain" I have a bad habit of inflicting on my progeny when they display any form of techno-cluelessness.) in any case.... the reinstall-in-place attempt was obviously a waste.... it locked up several times. It appears to resume properly on a system reset... and SEEMS to make more progress but it takes several hours for the "Time Remaining" counter to drop by a few minutes. I'm beginning to wonder if Keith's boot drive is just incredibly fragmented and/or corrupted. This might explain the problem. We left the process running while we went out for dinner.

Don't get the wrong idea... I'm not in the habit of eating out every night... at least not yet anyway. But when I spend my week on the road, and the boys are now usually off on their own, it just seems necessary to celebrate when we ARE together. Since Keith was absent and we didn't have to cater to his underage libation restrictions... LOL... we took Kevin to the new Covey's Restaurant and Brewery http://www.thecovey.com/ in Fort Worth.
This is my second trip here and I assure you it is the very best brewpub IN Fort Worth.... well the only one actually. In truth, it's the best such venue in Texas.... please check them out... I wouldn't want to see them suffering for patronage!
I was busy enjoying the company so didn't take notes... so I'll only rank the beers I ordered full pints of. We started with the beer sampler.... all their styles were first rate. The current seasonal is a Scottish Ale, it is a bit too malty/sweet but the peat smoke is just at the right level.... I'll give it a 6.5. My second pint was the Covey Pale Ale... very delicate and flowery aromas and taste... a solid 8.0.

We shared several individual pizzzas. They were good, but i'll probably go back to the sandwich menu next time. Their entrees are all a bit upscale for a brewpub IMHO... but that fits their rather formal atmosphere.
Since we were on S. Hulen, we stopped at Borders. I wasn't tempted by anything new at the SF & F rack, but Kevin and I did talk Debbie into buying a card game by the name of "Munchkins". When I was Kevin's age I was quite a devotee of what were then sold as "Microgames"... I had most of their catalog and played them quite a bit. They used to advertise in Analog, of course. Well.... they are still around in the form of "Steve Jackson Games".

Kevin and I played several hands of Munchkin while I was baby-sitting the Windows reinstall. It is a very accessible, (easy to learn and play), parody of Dungeons and Dragons. The cards are hilarious! We resolved to get Debbie to try it tomorrow... and to pick up some of the expansion decks.

The Windows reinstall made very slow progress throughout the night... but kept having to be reset. I couldn't interrupt it to do a reformat-reinstall unfortunately. In the morning, while I was sleeping in, Debbie dropped Kevin off for his day of GRE testing... and she also took the laptop back to Fry's to "Give them a piece of her mind". She returned with a new loaner HP dv4000 for Keith to use... and the commitment that Fry's will fix or replace the old laptop, (also an HP dv4000 but of a 5-month old configuration already obsolete of course).
Fry's will just charge us for the reformat-reinstall should that be necessary.... or repair/replace the hardware if that is the problem. We'll find out. After a call from Kevin we picked him up... he already has his vocabulary and math section scores from his GRE.... it sounds like he aced them.... he'll have to wait to learn his scores on the essay portion. We headed to "The Sushi Zone" in Arlington to celebrate... (again... LOL). This is our favorite "bait shop" in DFW... highly recommended! No beer on tap... which is why I stick with the hot Saki!
Once home we played several more rounds of Munchkins... Debbie is a natural! I spent the late evening syncing my desktop system with my laptop, and loading MP3s in the Creative Jukebox Zen Xtra I bought last weekend to provide entertainment on those long flights.
Sunday was uneventful and relaxing. I learned that one of our friends from church is a longtime employee of my Seattle client. We talked a bit about the company... nothing I'd care to share on the web... LOL. More Munchkin in the afternoon... plus laundry and packing. Debbie prepared a fabulous feast home cooked dinner... roast pork tenderloin, fresh salad, garlic bread, asparagus.... I provided a Washington state Dry Reisling... label was "Covery Run"... excellent for a $6.00 bottle of winde... LOL. I'll have to stash another of their labels in my checked luggage on my next return.
After coffee and cake for desert, we returned Kevin to UTD and I got dropped off at the airport. We did stop at the Borders in Richardson and picked up one of the Munchkins expansion decks... "The Need for Steed". I should make up a jetliner steed card for the game... it'll probably be a few weeks before we can try the expanded game together. My flight was an hour-and-a-half late... so it was a long night... but I'm now back in Auburn, WA... and caught up with this BLOG. I do have some additional reading impressions to report... but that can wait.
What other "Steve Jackson Games" would you recommend?

Have Laptop - Will Travel!
Pictured is the cover of the latest colllection/reprint of Heinlein juveniles pubished recently by the Science Fiction Book Club http://www.sfbc.com/. I have been buying these steadily and rereading them. They have a considerable amount of nostalgia value to me... I finished this collection over this past weekend.
"Outward Bound" includes 3 of Robert A. Heinlein's last juvenile novels. The first of these is the excellent "Have Spacesuit - Will Travel". I actually bought and reread this in paperback form about a decade ago... back when I was introducing these to my own sons. HSS-WT is somewhat dated. Modern readers might not understand what a "slip stick" is. There are 1940s and 1950s cultural references like small towns with soda fountains, paper routes, soap company jingle contests, etc., which probably fail to resonate with young people today. The action and the characters are so engaging, however, that I expect just about anyone will be able to get past those issues. Highly recommended!
As an aside... concerns about dated material apply to a lessened extent in our household. I have my dad's old slide rules mounted in a shadow box and hanging in my office, (labeled "Y2K recovery kit - in emergency break glass"). Also, we spent a decade raising the boys in a tiny South Dakota town for many of the same reasons that Kip's dad in HSS-WT chose that lifestyle. Both my sons HAD paper routes and know full well what a soda fountain is!
"Starship Troopers" is the next novel in "Outward Bound"... also highly recommended. The novel bears very little resemblance to the movie! Hollywood took a few of Heinlein's expositions and twisted them into a fascist parody. The novel is all about growing up and what the REAL difference is between a child and an adult. It has nothing to do with age! Who grew up first... Juan Rico, or his father? Think about it!
The last novel is perhaps the most popular... but my least favorite... "Podkayne Of Mars". Engaging characters, but no plot to speak of. Heinlein's weakest novel in my view. Both endings, RAH's original and the conclusion mandated by his publisher are included here. Both are poor as the underlying mysteries and plot complications are left unresolved. There was an Analog serial last year which, I suspect, had to have been consciously modeled on this book... and improved on it... but only very slightly. Ah well... I don't want to dwell on the negative in this BLOG. As I've said, I know many who regard POM very highly. I'm now well into the November, 2006 Analog, (which just came in the mail on Saturday), and I'll soon be able to rave about it... great so far!
The flight back was considerably delayed by thunderstorms and waits for connecting flights. I spent the time in the airport gate lounge writing up the last BLOG installment and starting on this one. I am a road warrior, after all, and though I may now be checking my toothpaste... my trusty laptop, (an HP Pavillion dv8000), is always at my side. Should I ever have to start checking it on trips, I'll feel about how Kip in the above "Have Spacesuit - Will Travel" would have felt had he not had his spacesuit.... hence the title for this installment.... I'd feel useless!
It's not that I use it on the flight... there's rarely enough room for my knees and elbows... its that I couldn't perform my function at a client site without it. I could stop at a WalMart and buy toothpaste, underwear, socks, even a wardrobe for a few days. But I can't risk loosing all my data and my work. Yes it's backed up... but I'd be days getting, configuring and restoring a new laptop. It's not that I particularly fear that the airline would lose it... I fear the baggage handling! I've sat many times and watched checked luggage get loaded and unloaded.... it ain't pretty! Laptops are fragile!
And this past weekend, playing with Keith's sick system, just reinforces how many billable hours I'd loose should anything happen to my laptop. I'm convinced that IT consulting is absolutely dependant on being able to carry on our basic tools. The TSA could shut me down for days just by mandating that laptops are now a potential terror threat! (A thought too horrible to contemplate... I'm safe noone reads this BLOG... LOL). I suppose I could package the laptop up real well and overnight/express it... but i'M PROBABLY only considering that as I've never seen what happens to packages behind the scenes at FedEX and UPS... LOL.
On the brewpub front, I had a light day Monday and was able to ramble out in search of something new. I originally hoped to try Mac & Jack's up in Redmond but a bit of web research led me to the conclusion that retail sales are limited to kegs and growlers. There is a weekend brewery tour but I can find no evidence of a brewpub, tap room, or beer garden. I know they have a hefeweizen that I've not yet run across. Does anyone know of an ale house which caries all their styles? Their Amber Ale is excellent and is perhaps the easiest microbrew of all to find around here.
I ended up going downtown to the Elysian Brewing Company on East Pike Street. Parking was a bit sparse but a spot finally opened up right behind their location. The neighborhood has a bit rough.... so I welcomed a spot off the street. As one might guess from the name... the Elysian maintains a Greek motif. I couldn't help but notice the irony of that considering all the same-sex couples around me. (Stop it Rob! You're being crude again!) No matter... I'd risk a lot for good beer... and THIS was good beer.
As usual, I started with their sampler, then tried a couple of pints not included..... here's the detailed report as transcribed from scribled napkin notes:
Achiles Amber Ale - 8.5 - Smooth, Rich & Clear... the color of whiskey! Helios Helles - 8 - Bavarian styel hefe... good fruity flavors but still smooth and refreshing.Wise ESB - 7 - Copper ale - Crisp and refreshingly bittered. Almost a borderline IPA.The Immortal IPA - 7.5 - Only a bit hoppier than the Wise. Needed some more Hop aroma to be near perfect.Perseus Porter - 6.5 - Rich and Roasty... a touch overdone on the bittering hops for this style, IMHO.Dragontooth Stout - 8.0 - Lovely stuff, take their porter and add more malt right up to the point where you can taste a bit of sweetness and then stop.... almost perfect for a creamy british style stout.Elysian Fields Pale Ale - 6.0 - Aroma was just right, but it was rather heavily bittered for this style.
All in all, according to my tastes, one of the best line-ups of styles in Seattle! Almost across the entire range, however, they lean towards extreme edge of bitterness appropriate to each particular recipe... which might turn off some.
I'll close for this entry. Where can I find Mac & Jack's Serengetti Wheat on tap?