No review of 2007 could go without mention of the extreme weather Raleigh experienced this year. It was an extremely dry year thanks to a Bermuda high pressure system that baked and dried Raleigh out. This year’s heat set a record with the most days with temperatures above 90 degrees F. November was Raleigh’s driest November on record, and August was Raleigh’s hottest month ever recorded.
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Happy New Year!
Today is the first day of 2008. It promises to be a very interesting year!
May everyone enjoy a safe, peaceful, and prosperous new year!
Highlights of 2007: Job changes
This year had an interesting number of job changes. I spent ten days in China for Raritan, during which I had a day that I recently wrote was the highlight of my career. Yet, I was getting a little tired of repeating the same spiel every day for four years when I did product demos. I decided to explore other opportunities and so talked to Zenoss on a friend’s suggestion. I was fortunate to receive an offer, one that I strongly considered for over a week.
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Highlights of 2007: Herndon High School Reunion
This year was the twenty-year reunion of the Herndon High School Class of 1987. It was held at a Reston hotel fairly close to the high school.
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In The Mood
When this album came out I was still in junior high school and just starting to appreciate Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant. This song always takes me back to that time. The lyrics are simple but even so Plant knows how to craft a song. I love the bridge in this one.
Check out the breakdancers in the video (and Plant dancing with them). That’s pretty much the last thing I would’ve associated with this song.
In The Mood
Robert Plant
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood for a melody
I’m in the mood
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Wasteful packaging
I got a cool LED book light for Christmas. It’s small, lightweight, and very bright: pretty much the way a booklight is supposed to be. The only real problem is the packaging it came in: it’s a huge, empty plastic box.
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Owie
What a way to finish the year. I’m aching today after spending hours working in the attic during the last few days. Now that the Christmas/Halloween decorations are ready to return to storage I thought now is the time to finally double the flooring space in the attic. Its turned out to be more work than I remembered.
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Panoramic photography
I really love hobbies or projects that tie together many of my interests. One project that does this is the field of panoramic photography. It touches on astronomy, photography, mapping, math, orbital mechanics, image manipulation, spycraft, open source, and good old-fashioned duct-tape engineering. Maybe even a bit of fame, too!
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Fun with VMware networking
I’m working from the in-laws’ house today, so I need to access the same networking stuff I do from home. I have Tunnelblick running OpenVPN on my OS X laptop to provide access to my home and office servers from here. All that works fine for my OS X apps but it doesn’t carry over into my VMware Fusion sessions. Those sessions treat themselves as independent devices and therefore don’t route through my VPN.
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Rain
Looks like we got a total of 1.06 of rain yesterday (midnight to midnight). Unlike other rains, I wasn’t able to capture any of it in Lake Turner as I’m in Virginia now.
There is a person in Garner selling 300-gallon plastic tanks, though, and I’m considering picking up another one. Can’t have enough rainwater, y’know.