Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in okbanlon's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
12:26 am	02 January SITREP Middle is very brave - she's gone many hours without her push-button IV drug machine. If I were in her place, I'd have killed everyone in the ZIP code and burned the building by now. The hospital staff are amazing - they're juggling pills and drug interactions and O2 sat stats and reams of telemetry data to try and figure out a drug regimen that will let Middle come home. We did have one fairly alarming setback this afternoon, but I think I may have helped sort that problem out. The less said about that, the better. Running, shouting nurses are never a good thing. I hope Middle will come home tomorrow - she could really use some Cat Time and familiar surroundings. Special thanks to the House of C and to J - Youngest enjoyed spending time with C, and J's gift cake was AWESOME. Steady as she goes, then - one day at a time. I'll go in to work tomorrow, and see what's up. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
1:56 am	New Year's Day SITREP Huzzah, etc, whatever. Happy ****ing New Year! Middle is still in the hospital. They're working on a combination of drugs that will let her come home. She quite enjoyed a visit from the House of C this afternoon - she forgot all about her IV pain medication button, because she was laughing too hard. She wolfed down a double bacon cheeseburger, with a little help - I provided the extra hand as needed for a two-handed burger. No nausea - this is PROGRESS. On the home front, we think we've got things more or less sorted. I need to get milk and cat litter tomorrow, and we'll go from there. One day at a time - as always. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 30th, 2011
12:13 am	Definitive Guide to Recent Events (so far) Well, this latest round of hilarity began when Better Half and Youngest were hit from behind in traffic. Not hard enough to hurt them too much - just enough to pop the trunk on the car and burst a bag of holiday pistachio nuts. We should probably follow through on that - police report numbers, insurance questions, etc. At about two-something Thursday morning, we drove Middle to the hospital. Most likely in response to a high/low air pressure event unprecedented in the human habitation of the Front Range of the Rockies, her pain went out of control and we sought professional help. Yep - when you have to fight eighty-mile-an-hour winds to park the car, you know something's up. Fast-forward through hours of standing around looking stupid, and you arrive at a private room at a local hospital. Spend a few more hours listening to the entire building shudder in the wind, and you might find yourself with a very nasty case of cynicism with regard to the nearby medical professionals. I was cool, though - mostly. Almost completely, in fact. Last time I checked, Middle was asleep (finally), Momma was ensconced in a nice defensive position, I had recovered Momma's Tank from a repair area that didn't work out, and Middle's pets were fed. Medical staff: cool. Crew: cool. Pets: fed. We can do this. We'll survive - we always do. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
11:27 pm	Think Backwards, Son! We had a huge snowstorm - first one this season. The weather before had been oddly warm, so the trees did not get the clue to drop their leaves. So, my backyard tree (full of leaves) caught a huge snow load and decided to break a gigantic branch that landed neatly on my neighbor's Tuff-Shed. When I first saw the broken branch, I freaked - the break was at least twenty feet up the tree, and I had no idea how I would hope to get up that high and deal with it. Then, in the midst of my panic, I firmly told myself to THINK BACKWARDS. When I did, I realized that I could very easily prop my ladder against the shed, climb up on top of it, and use my bow saw to at least reduce the problem considerably. So, this morning, after almost being fully woken up by a tribe of wandering Baptists (they left literature), I saluted my neighbor and sprang into action. By the time her husband had returned with a chainsaw, I had tipped my ladder over the fence, clambered up on top of the shed with my saw, cut up the mass of branches, braced myself and given a mighty twist to the broken branch that caused it to snap off halfway up the tree, and only managed to almost fall off the shed once. Neighbor Husband was impressed, to say the least. He had been sweating over how to deal with that broken branch, and showing up only to find that I had dealt with the problem, cleaned up the mess, and was busily hauling the branches off pretty much blew his mind. Then, after hauling a huge truckload of branches to the drop-off site, I went to M's 90th birthday party. Yep - that's right - my friend M is NINETY YEARS OLD. We talked for a while, ate goodies, sang "Happy Birthday" to him, and so on. He had a blast! Later in the day, Better Half made "zuppa" (I helped, a bit) - the very best soup in the known universe. Hand to God - this soup will cure what ails you, raise the dead, cure cancer, and inoculate you against malaria. Oh, and - my automated process at work produced a perfect result, on time and on schedule. Life is good. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
11:57 pm	Lawdy, Lawdy! I spent most of the day today in Deep Hack Mode - in which I tune out, close my office door, and beat my brains out solving complex problems. In the end, I probably only wrote 200 lines of code - but those 200 lines will do the work of twenty offshore workers, perfectly, every night, every time, without fail. I like my lab machines - once I can figure out how to tell them to complete tasks one time, they're happy to perform every night. Yep, yep - I'm a very strange dude. But - you knew that long ago, right? (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 15th, 2011
11:19 pm	Another nasty little work puzzle Last Thursday, Something Changed. A fairly simple process that I run every night went a little strange and started failing for no apparent reason. And - I can't seem to make the damn thing FAIL in a controlled environment. Experts know that the scariest puzzles are not the ones that make the biggest messes - they're the ones that defy analysis. When you've been doing this work as long as I have, you understand that you don't get the easy puzzles any more - no, brother, this ain't no "turn it off and on and try again" scenario. I spent several hours this afternoon trying to track down this bug, and I'm baffled. I have added instrumentation to the regular scheduled process to gain more insight, and we'll see tomorrow if that sheds any light on the problem. In any case, I have faced many Kobayashi Maru scenarios over the course of my career - what's one more? (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 12th, 2011
11:53 pm	Smokin' and Jokin' on a Wednesday, as usual. Dinner service went well - we served up tray after tray of Shepherd's Pie, and the salsa (MY idea) helped a lot. At work, I observed many things, wrote a whole slew of brave email messages, Got Some Stuff Done In Spite Of People, and generally kicked ass. Took names, even. Here's a tip: if you're ever faced with a question like "Does Oscar really know what he's doing, or are we all irretrievably screwed?" - I'd bet on Oscar. Yeah, well. Modesty forbids further disclosure along those lines. Would you like a Ziploc bag of dinner rolls to take home? I can fix you up - we made way more rolls than all of us can eat. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
11:55 pm	Help! I'm trapped in a Marx Brothers movie! Yep, yep, yep. The California labs were shut down all last Friday and over the weekend for God knows what reason. That made for a relatively peaceful weekend for me {birds chirping, etc, apart from the whole TOW THE BROKEN CAR FROM DACONO TO WESTMINSTER IN THE RAIN thing). Monday morning, I stepped up smartly and Did A Thing. It looked good at the time. This morning, The Thing did not look so good. In fact, it STANK ON ICE. Oh, waily, waily - we had the Tapping of the Feets, the Folding of the Arms, and the Pursing of the Lips. I deftly delivered one Miracle, and then Another - to mixed results. At this hour, I think my software is equipped to deal with Things Done Either Way, Your Choice, Guvnor, As It Pleases Ye. Well, yeah. If anyone nearby has a program, game card, bulletin, or Magic 8-Ball, I'd appreciate a glance at it. I'm supposed to be the guy that knows what's going on, and I have no clue whatsoever. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 9th, 2011
11:30 pm	The End Of An Era By my calculations, I think I've been a newspaper junkie for about forty years now (give or take). I found my first Colorado job by subscribing to the Denver Post Sunday edition - I had it delivered to my mailbox, and I read it from cover to cover. Before that, I would fight all comers for a Dallas or Chicago or New York newspaper. Fast-forward a lifetime (as far as the kids are concerned), and here we are - I've lived in the Denver metro area since 1988, and I've seen the Denver Post go from a reasonably respectable metro newspaper to a pathetic fish wrapper full of recycled newswire stories. Seriously - when I was younger, the Denver Post was a decent paper. Nowadays, not so much. The Post finally won the subscription war against the Rocky Mountain News, but then the two combatants embarked on a JOA (Joint Operating Agreement) in which they agreed to merge and soldier on. Yeah. THAT worked out well, didn't it? Fast-forward some more - for months now, we've been subscribed to only the weekend edition of the Post. To be brutally honest, the only real value we've been getting is the TV guide and the Sudoku puzzle. Then, they removed the TV guide. Sudoku puzzles are cheap and widely available. My local dishrag newspaper that is delivered for free (with occasional pleas for volunteer payment) tells me more about things I need to know than this faint squitter of a shadow of a metro newspaper. I hereby declare the Denver Post to be an Abomination, a Stench in the Nostril, and an Offense. A pox on all your Houses, Denver Newspapers! Go Forth, and Get STUFFED! It's a damn shame, still. I used to really enjoy newspapers. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, October 8th, 2011
11:40 pm	Yeah, well... Today, I retrieved the Chariot (excuse me, the "Delta Flyer") from Dacono (look it up) and rode it to the shop in Westminster at the end of a tow strap attached to my truck driven by my darling Better Half. I had engine power - I had lights, heat, and boosted brakes. I did, however, have to spend the entire time with my foot buried in the clutch pedal. The Flyer was in some gear or another (I know not which), but the only way I could tow it was with the clutch fully engaged. That was fun. The mechanics will sort it out, I'm sure. Even with various assorted oddball mechanical failures, I think the Delta Flyer is a good deal. It's newer than any of the other vehicles in the Motor Pool by several years, anyway - and It's Still Worth Fixing. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 6th, 2011
11:41 pm	Twin F-16s and... a Sopwith Camel?!? I'm working to build the Perfect Beast - a Borg collective of lab machines that will work together to produce a combined result that will revolutionize human affairs, Maximize Shareholder Value, and scare the socks off anyone who tries to figure out what the hell I'm up to. Business as usual, in other words. So, after days of intensive testing, I've reached a conclusion. Two of my three machines are jet fighters - when I tell them to, they yowl down the runway, vanish in a cloud of exhaust, and break every window within five miles when they go supersonic. The third machine, however, is a little... different. "Contact! What ho, pip-pip, Bob's your uncle, and all that sort of rot. Wait a moment whilst I adjust my silk flying scarf and my leather helmet, there's a lad!" {brrrrrr.....} "I say, Lord Percy - isn't it delightful to see the hedgerows as one flies majestically overhead? What, what? Well, we should arrive at our destination some time this week, eh?" The jet fighters arrive at the checkpoint in thirty minutes flat. The Sopwith Camel arrives after running five times as long. This is not good. On Monday, I'll kick the tires and light the fires on a different third-partner machine. Hopefully, this other machine will run a little faster than the Camel. I'm somewhat notorious for coaxing extreme performance out of build machines (I am, after all, the guy who drove an entire rack of high-performance hardware into thermal shutdown failure - ON COMMAND, REPEATABLY - with an rsync script that baffled the field engineers), so I hope this next contender can get the job done. When it comes to build speed, I have only one directive - "FASTER!" I may wind up submerging the entire lab-o-ra-tory in liquid helium. That works for me. Throttles are provided so that I can slam them to the stops. So let it be written, so let it be done. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
11:40 pm	Utter Zoo and Stupid Puma Yes, well - today at work was ridiculously spasmodic. I think I more or less managed to keep everyone happy, or at least very confused. I'm good at that sort of thing. Then, there was the young, male (translation: "UTTERLY STUPID") mountain lion that wandered onto the university campus, freaked out COMPLETELY, and ran up a tree to alternately ogle college chicks and think "What the HELL was I thinking?!?!" Brave DOW personnel showed up to shoot young Simba in the ass with a tranquilizer dart, spend fifteen minutes waiting for the drug to take effect (translation: "try to pick up college chicks"), draw lots to see who had to climb the tree and dislodge the cougar, pose for the obligatory Great White Hunter photo op (cougar translation: "Y'all, I am SO STONED right now"), and haul the cat off to the woods. He was cute - only about a year old, about a hundred pounds. So, well, yeah. Dinner service went well - can't go too far wrong with grilled cheese sandwiches, home-made tomato soup, and bread pudding. Some time tomorrow, Winter should arrive with snow above 10,000 feet. Might be time to retire the short pants for the season - or, maybe not just yet. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 1st, 2011
11:20 pm	New basketball goal! Huzzah! Yea, verily - after swaggering forth some time after the crack of noon this morning, I watched TV for a while. I saw the last few minutes of the Air Force / Navy game, and was thrilled when Air Force squeaked past Navy in overtime with the extra point. Then, I watched most of "The Green Mile". Very interesting. THEN, I finally bestirred myself to do something actually useful and went shopping for a basketball goal to replace the screwball setup we had that finally fell off the roof and clocked Middle in the face. After solving the Evil Sudoku in the newspaper, of course. I found a goal I liked, consulted Better Half, and bought it. Enter, Stage Left, the Hero of the Day - Eldest! She dove right in with me, grabbed the assembly manual, and started feeding me parts and instructions. I fed bolts through holes and tightened nuts like a crazy man, swinging wrenches while she did all the thinking. We worked through the rest of the day and into the night by porchlight, and we did not stop until we had delivered "one each, basketball goal, assembled and ready for use". When Middle got home later, we triumphantly showed her the result - a basketball goal for her, a place for her to shoot hoops whenever she wants to. There is still some work to be done on the Overhanging Tree that is In The Way, Sometimes - but we'll deal with that tomorrow in the daylight. Oh, and, yes - there was a titanic train wreck last night at work, involving missed signals and bad communications and whatnot. After all the various players stopped shouting at one another and finally pushed the button that I carefully built for them days ago, everything seems to have worked out just fine. So - to recapitulate - my truck has fresh motor oil, Middle has a new basketball goal, my work miracle has delivered yet another perfect result, and we now have a baseline on the price of a four-man tent (ask me later). Me? Hey, man - I'm good. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
11:22 pm	Cooked up some SOUL FOOD! Awww, yeah - got home from work, stoked up the deep fryer, and GOT BUSY. Cajun Chicken, Yam Chips, and home fries. Various Offspring haunted the kitchen and stole Tasty Bits from one another, N wandered by and scarfed a plate-full or two, and everybody got stuffed to the gills. Next time, I'll have to cook up some collard greens on the side - but, maybe that's just me. Yum! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
11:54 pm	Book Review and Holy Terror So, I read a book and wrote a review. I dare not say that this review has "gone viral" just yet, but it is up on Amazon and one of my buddies is busily emailing it to everyone he knows. And, some other friends of mine have published it on their web site. It's cool - I read the book, liked it, and then decided that one afternoon a few days ago would be better spent writing a review than staring at the ceiling while trying to solve an "evil" Sudoku puzzle. I wrote the review in one shot, covering three pages of notebook paper with notes before I came up for air. Heh - "Jonathan Edwards is my HOME-BOY." (high-five to Pastor Steve). "Holy Terror" - ummm, yeah, that would be me. I have three machines at my disposal, downstairs in the lab. I have spent the past two days hooking them together in subtle and interesting ways. We have the technology - we can build a beast that is smarter, stronger, and faster than anyone else would dare to construct. Heh - I am, after all, the guy who wrote a set of scripts that drove an entire rack of state-of-the-art machines into thermal shutdown failure. Silly me - I just made them all work too hard. I'm just getting started. "Holy Terror", indeed. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
1:59 am	UARS is down - somewhere... The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) has re-entered the atmosphere, burned up (mostly - we think), and scattered various heavy clockwork bits over a rather large area of the Earth's surface. Here's the latest word at this hour from NASA as of Sat, 24 Sep 2011 01:16:50 AM MDT: NASA’s decommissioned Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. EDT Friday, Sept. 23 and 1:09 a.m. EDT Sept. 24. The satellite was passing eastward over Canada and Africa as well as vast portions of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans during that period. The precise re-entry time and location are not yet known with certainty. So - that narrows it down a bit, doesn't it? Could be Canada, or possibly Africa - or the Pacific, Atlantic, or Indian oceans. What a relief! So much for "rocket science", I guess. I mean, color me skeptical, but I would have thought that by now we could do a slightly better job than this with our ballistics calculations. Then again, this is the biggest thing that's fallen out of orbit in an uncontrolled descent in the last thirty years or so. It weighed six tons and was the size of a bus, and it was tumbling on its way down. That begs another question, of course - did it hit anything important to acquire that tumble? At one point earlier this evening, it wailed overhead at Portland, Oregon at an altitude of eighty miles, zipping along at 17,000 miles per hour. No time for a Starbucks coffee - it had a date with destiny. I know guys in the satellite business - and, these days, they carefully plan their fuel budgets for controlled descent when the satellites finish their missions. Over time, I suppose, we'll have fewer and fewer of these "Aw, shucks - it's dead, but it will fall in eventually and mostly burn up" moments. "Bravo!", I say. We have quite enough other stuff to scare us half to death without worrying about random showers of space junk. So, to wrap up - I don't need to worry about getting killed in my sleep by UARS chunks, and I probably shouldn't bother scouring my yard tomorrow for any shards or twirly bits that may have been shed by UARS as it sped to its fiery death. I might, however, need to brace for hordes of polite Canadians or irate Africans who demand to know why America blew beryllium chunks all over their real estate. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
11:08 pm	ORION! Hey, dude - it's nice to see you again. Autumn is coming, but that's all right - just another turn in the Circle of Life. This has been a long, strange year - nyet? We'll figure it out. We always do. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 19th, 2011
11:37 pm	Karmic Resonance, the Lazarus Wristwatch, and the Nature of Time I seem to be enmeshed in a state of karmic resonance with Anspach's Jewelry in Olde Towne Lafayette, Colorado. The last few times I've been there, they have repaired various items I brought them and refused to take any payment whatsoever. This is getting a little ridiculous - I don't know whether I should send them lunch anonymously or drag my next broken vehicle to them to see if they'll fix it for free. Anyway - if you live within 100 miles of Lafayette, take your jewelry business there. Tell them the Broken Necklace Guy sent you. That brings us to the Lazarus Wristwatch. I took it in today for routine maintenance - battery replacement - and, to the astonishment of all and sundry, my trusty Luminox wristwatch died on the operating table. I saw it, the jeweler saw it - we all saw it struggle mightily, advance its second hand in odd lurches, and give up the ghost. After ten to fifteen years of loyal service, it quietly coughed up a lung and dropped stone dead. Hand to God, people - that wristwatch breathed its last, shuffled off this mortal coil, rang down the curtain, and joined the Choir Invisible. This was a DEAD WRISTWATCH. "So, anyway," the Anspach's guy said, "I can't take a battery back once I've installed it. But, your watch is dead. So, there is no charge. If it magically resurrects itself, more power to you. I'll tell you that we offer a cleaning service for $150, but, frankly, that watch isn't worth that kind of effort." "True," said I, "and I appreciate your effort and your frank honesty. I only paid about $180 for it fifteen years ago, so its had a good run." Later, I saw that it was ticking along, quite normally. Just for grins, I set it to the correct time. Now, twelve hours later, it is spot-on, deadly accurate as it has always been, keeping time. Earlier today, when I thought it was dead, I delivered an epic Angry Old Man Rant. It's all Youngest's fault, really. When I stomped around the house, spitting and swearing, she said, "They can put a MAN on the MOON, but.." "DAMN RIGHT," I said. "They can put a MAN on the MOON, but I can't have a DAMN WATCH that tells me the TIME in the DARK because SOME DOOFUS declared tritium to be a NATIONAL STRATEGIC RESOURCE that we CAN'T HAVE any more because we've scaled down our production of nuclear weapons and TRITIUM BYPRODUCTS?!? My taxes pay for all this nuclear shit, and that's just WRONG." Deep breaths... online research... They still make Luminox watches that glow in the dark. I might buy another one still, because Lazarus the Watch has experienced at least one half-life and doesn't glow as brightly as he used to. The immediate crisis seems to have passed, however. If Lazarus keeps good time for the next couple of days, he'll probably do fine for the next couple of years. Maybe he just doesn't like jewelers (see above). Aside and apart from all the wristwatch shenanigans, I have decided that digital clocks and watches are an abomination, an Offence, and a Stench in the Nostril. Time is circular, cyclical, and resonant with the natural order of things. Chopping time up into decimal tidbits is wrong. Time is not a mathematical abstraction - it's an organic thing, measured in breaths and paces. It is not reducible by clever software. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 17th, 2011
11:36 pm	Woops - time warp! Also, a Big Dog. The previous entry should have been time-stamped for Friday, and I'm not sure where this entry will wind up in the grand scheme of things. This is left to the Student as an exercise. This is officially Saturday, still - 17 September 2011. I sallied forth to the jeweler to get Better Half's necklace fixed, then to the vet to get Middle's stitches out, then to the Community Festival to deliver Middle to the Dog Show. I'm not making this up, I swear. DAMN, that's a big dog. His name is "Morgan" - "CAPTAIN Morgan", to you lot. Most of the entrants in the "Small Dog" category scanned as "Appetizers" to this dog. Middle and I were ceremonially re-introduced to Morgan, chilled under a Shade Tree until it was His Turn, and then were called into action when Big Dog's owner had a seizure while Big Dog was on stage. Morgan was mortified at having missed the seizure, Middle and I helped out while the Momma helped sort out the Dada, and everything turned out all right in the end. I am struck by the serendipity of it all - my decision to swing by the Community Festival was driven by nothing more than convenient timing, as I am normally utterly uninterested by that sort of thing - but, as it turned out, Middle and I really needed to be at that place at that time. Heh - I'm a guardian - it's what I do. (Comment on this)
1:15 am	Various and Sundry Things Today was pretty quiet, all things considered. I set up the systems for tomorrow's build, then got weird and attacked a nasty puzzle in Austin. I'm sure some shower of idiots somewhere called for some heroics after hours for tomorrow's build, but I don't care. They do this all the damn time. "F*** 'em if they can't take a joke," I say. The Austin puzzle evokes mixed emotions. If I crack it entirely, I may wind up putting myself out of a job. Then again, it's a puzzle. As a consummate puzzle solver, I'd bet heavily that I'll find something to do, somewhere, that induces Puzzle Solving brass to keep me on the payroll. We'll see. I am that guy. You know - that one guy that you need, the one fellow that can work the miracles and make everyone else look good. (Comment on this)