On most mornings I would be thrilled to wake up after 8 AM. That kind of thing usually doesn’t happen once you become a parent, so its to be savored. Sleeping in this morning meant that I missed saying goodbye to my relatives, some of which hit the road before I was fully awake. I had also hoped to get in a group picture this morning but that didn’t happen, either. No group, no group picture.
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Pine Mountain
We’re in Pine Mountain, Georgia this weekend for the Turner family reunion. We’re staying at the Pine Mountain Club Chalet ..uh, “resort,” with a nice cabin right on the lake. The weather has been sunny and hot, with the exception of yesterday evening when afternoon thunderstorms cooled things down.
I am particularly enjoying this trip because I was last here the summer I met Kelly, ten years ago. I could not have imagined that the next time I would return I would be married and the father of two wonderful kids. The cabins haven’t changed but I sure have!
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Still The One
You know the Stephen Wright joke about the phone with no five on it? I feel the same way. Our cordless phone has ceased to dial 1. That means we can’t dial 911, or enter our bank or answering machine pins (both “1111,” in case you were wondering). Normal people would probably trash it and buy another. Me, I did what any self-respecting geek would do: I took it apart to see if I could fix it.
The electronic parts are fine. It turns out the problem is in the conductive rubber keypad. The 1 key’s pad is missing some conductor, which probably wore off over time. I’ve put in a note to the phone manufacturer to see if a replacement part is available.
In the meantime, don’t think because we don’t call you that we’re avoiding you, especially if your number has a 1 in it . . .
Drupal To WordPress Migration
I kicked off the new WordPress version of MT.Net late last night. I didn’t start out with the plan to do it but once I saw how easy it was I got hooked on it and didn’t stop until late last night.
I first began using WordPress back at my last job, where I updated a Lyceum server with news about the company. I like WordPress’s look. Drupal is a bit too complicated for a simple blog like mine.
The real key was the script I found on D’Arcy Norman’s blog. D’Arcy did the migration a few weeks ago and detailed it all on his blog. He made generous use of Panayotis’s detailed instructions, so it was actually a group effort.
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MT.Net Now On WordPress
For the past day or so I’ve turned my copious spare time towards moving my blog to WordPress from Drupal. Fortunately, there are plenty of good SQL scripts to move tables from one to another. Unfortunately, most scripts were designed for blogs with few posts to migrate. Thus there were precious few examples of Apache Rewrite rules to point old Drupal links to their WordPress equivalent. Most of the transfer time involved figuring out the proper Rewrite-Fu to make the switch as painless as possible.
I’ll explain all the geek details in another post. Time for dinner!
I’m Right Here
“Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.” Those are the wise words of Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney from All You Need Is Love, and its true: I must be right where I’m supposed to be. I’ve not been particularly enjoying this involuntary vacation, but I’m trying to make the most of it. Its not where I would’ve chosen to be but here I am. Imagine if life was always exactly what you expected it to be. Why bother living it?
Maybe I needed some adventure. I thought I had some adventure. Did I need more? I’ve said it would be tough to top my last job and that’s proving to be true.
Damn it. Sometimes I hate being right.
I spent this morning mowing the lawn, as I wasn’t available to do it this past weekend and won’t do it this weekend, either. Then I surveyed the garage and sorted through all the stuff in it. Then it was lunch with my former coworker, Matt. So many projects I’ve been putting off due to work commitments. Though I allegedly have time now, I still can’t get them all done. One’s tasks will expand to fit one’s available time.
Saturday will be one month unemployed. I felt confident the first week or two and had my confidence slowly lag until …well, today. Today I felt inspired. I’m going to find that awesome job or else I’ll create it for myself.
Fun with Xen
I spent my copious free time this weekend migrating my webserver machine to a Xen session. It was the first time I’d really taken a look at Xen, so things went a little slowly. Now things seem to be working as they should be.
Xen is pretty slick, I have to admit. Out of the virtualizers I’ve played with, like QEMU, vserver, and others, Xen is fairly straightforward. Performance seems pretty good from first glance. The tools is uses seem to work together well. My biggest stumbling block was getting the proper kernel configured for the guest sessions.
Out of this project I gained a good understanding of Xen and how to configure CentOS and Ubuntu Server guests in it. My next step is to migrate my webserver to a Ubuntu server session, which shouldn’t be too hard.
Damn it feels good to be a geek.
Rain, Finally!
I’m so very happy for a rainy weekend (even moreso that Kelly had the foresight to schedule Hallie’s birthday party indoors). Droughts make me worried. I think I’d rather have a hurricane or two than to deal with droughts.
I came up with a witty post Friday but didn’t get a chance to post it. I was going to hold the city hostage, threatening to withhold rain as long as I remained unemployed. With the inch and a half or rain we’ve had the past 24 hours, I lost my chance for the post. Joke or no joke, I’ve had the feeling that the rain drought and my job drought are cosmically linked. This rain is thus a good sign.
The rain drought has ended. My employment drought will end now, too.
Birthday Party For A Special Girl
Today we have the fifth birthday party for a special girl. Wisely, Kelly booked an indoor venue today. She’s pretty happy its raining since the law of karma means all future outdoor birthday parties will be perfect, too.
Little or no blogging today, ‘natch. Look for an update tonight, though.
Google Acquires Jeff Turner
The big news today is that Google Has Acquired Jeff Turner and the company he works for, Feedburner. Jeff thus becomes the first Googleer in the family – one of the lucky few to work for Google from here in the Triangle. (Hey Jeff, is a Triangle Googleplex in the works? Hmm?)
Anyway, congrats to Jeff, Feedburner, and Google!