When the frost is on the pumpkin
And the fodder's in the shock...
-- James Whitcomb Riley 1853-1916
Well, I reckon harvest is under way, but we've been sort of staying in town. Well, we
did go and stuff ourselves at El Arriero (Mexican restaurant) to celebrate the occasion
of Kathy applying for her Socialist Security that will start early next year. Don't
worry, her meager part-time salary won't go over the earnings limit....
Sad news
Speaking of which, although the college isn't in "grave financial trouble", there were
six people laid off this month. This is decidedly un-good, inasmuch as some of them
were some of our favorite people. Problem is that, although the student body increased
in size, revenue went down. Long story; I can explain if you really want to know.
Price of natural gas is up about 50% over last year, which is one reason the college
is having financial troubles, like projected $200K over budget for utilities; $50K
already and we're just starting the heating season. The
other major "hit" to the budget is health insurance costs up a like amount. We're
going to have a benefit cut (larger deductible, etc.) starting in January, which
will alleviate the problem a bit. Long story on that one, too. BUT at least they
were "upfront" about the situation, not secretive like some other places I've worked.
Prank report
To lighten the atmosphere, one of my (MY!) students scaled the steeple on
McClain Hall and was caught rappelling down. Guess they didn't do anything to him,
but I expect to see another rule in the student handbook next year. Wish he had
straightened the cross on top while he was up there. It's been kind of teetery
for several years. Mostly he was complaining because they confiscated his rope. He should be thankful he didn't break his head! (I know at least one of our faculty who did the same thing when he was a student here.)
Fun in the woods
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Filling the new woodshed
We had Fall Break, which is just a couple of days off, but the weather was simply
beautiful, like mid-sixties, clear blue sky and a slight breeze. We got two
cords of wood from CE National about a block up the street, of which I split
roughly a cord between Thursday afternoon and Saturday night.
Kathy loaded and hauled three pickup loads of small stuff, and the two of us went to
get the big stuff, like 100-lb chunks I could just barely get up onto the tailgate.
Kathy remarked that she didn't understand why they're called "her"nias, shouldn't
they by "him"ias? Had to use the chainsaw on half of them because they were too
long for the stove.
We've built a fire a few times already. CE National is going to build a small conference
center and they need room to stack more wood when they clear the area next spring,
so we're doing them a favor by taking it away. The guys from Epsilon Hall got the
junky stuff for the homecoming bonfire (complete with bugs), so the area is pretty
clear now. We got them to haul two pickup loads up from the natural area behind the science building. I sawed, one of them split about as fast as I could cut it up, and two of them used wheelbarrows to take it up to the truck. Then we got four more loads of junky (buggy) stuff from CE National and took it over to Epsilon. We feed them pizza, they haul wood. Good arrangement.
Progress on campus
As you can see from the photo at the top, they're really making progress on clearing the
area for the new Events Center, most of which is being paid for by local corporations
like Zimmer, Biomet and DePuy, the artificial-joint-replacement people. Current
process is to level the old hazardous-waste (asbestos brake lining) dump and put
8 inches of asphalt on top. To that end, a bunch of guys have been playing with
big yellow machines and Kathy's former office (Health Center) fell to the bulldozer.
Pity. Good friends of ours lived in that house for years. They took out tons of trees
but we couldn't have any of the wood because it might be contaminated. Well, I doubt
that the roots soaked up any asbestos, but we have our six cords of hardwood for this winter anyhow. They ground up the trees into chips and spread them around as a top layer over the waste dump and they're going to put 8 inches of asphalt on top to seal it in. Sounds kind of crazy to me, but that's government regulations for you. It will be a lovely parking lot for the Events Center, until the wood rots underneath and the pavement breaks up. Sounds like termite heaven.
Played our usual gigs at the retirement home up the street and at the Caffe Villagio
down by the canal. We'll skip November as it's just too busy. On Friday, we had an
audience of one, a handicapped fellow named Josh in his wheelchair. Well, two if you
count the gal behind the counter. There were a few others who wandered in & out. The
campus was like a ghost town; its little coffee shop was completely empty. I think most
(and I mean literally most) of the students went home for the weekend. Homecoming
was the next weekend and I think they all wanted Mom to do their laundry for two weeks.
Well it was a great practice session. Ron, the guitarist, made it on Saturday night.
Sprechen Sie Deutsch? I'm still sitting in
on the Beginning German class but don't really have time to study it properly. I
read the German news and listen to German radio over the Internet, and that helps,
but I'm not very good at declining verbs or is it conjugating? ("No verbs today,
thank you....")
Geek Stuff
We're making progress on building a Beowulf Cluster for a student project. Probably
that same student who climbed McClain Hall will be doing some work on benchmarking
machines with various processor types and speeds, and various amounts of memory and
such like, looking forward to him presenting a student paper next year. If he's still
here and hasn't done something even more stupid....
Replaced a fistful of triacs in the Christmas Tree control box. Kathy stopped by
Radio Shack to pick up a few more triacs and they'd never heard of such a thing,
thought she needed to talk to the cable company. Guess they don't handle them any more,
but jeez Louise they had them last year! Oh, well, lots of staff turnover. What this
country needs is a local electronics shop. Went back on Monday and sure 'nuff they
have been discontinued. At least the young man I spoke to did have a clue
what a triac is. Ordered $15.00 worth from Jameco. They got here Thursday. Better
quality, and probably cheaper, too!
The cable company?
Several of the boards like the one in the photo are broken. Way back when the control
box was in the warehouse in Lynchburg, it apparently fell and the computer shelf
broke off an inch or two of several of the boards. Slowly but surely I'm getting a
full set of boards functioning again. I occasionally have an intermittent problem
but I've found out that some of the plugs are no longer making good contact, so after
about twenty hours of tracing circuits I know where to look for the problems: either
the plug or a triac (try the plug first, it's cheaper). It's called "experience".
Call the cable company for triacs? I'll be scratching my head about that for a while. Somebody suggested "triacs" sounds like "co-ax" (coaxial cable). Triaxial cable? Maybe we have something there. Wonder what we could use it for, if we ever figure out what it is....
We're looking at that DVD about once a week, the one that Kriss made from my "home
movies" of the Musical Christmas Tree. This year we have ten electric snowflakes
about a foot across (after-Christmas sale last year). We'll probably cut down on
the number of bushes, but in any case I have to figure out how to get four or five
more circuits across the driveway. We'll probably use wire from some of the unused
cables since the snowflakes will go clear out by the street and wire isn't cheap
nowadays. We're plotting how to get them up into the trees. Maybe fishline and a
rock over a limb? Could be "fun" getting them down after a windstorm. "Electric Snowflakes" sounds like a New Age musical album, doesn't it?
FreeBSD is like a Wigwam. No Windows, no Gates, and an Apache inside.
...And then one fine Wednesday, the server ("my" server, the CIT machine) went down along with the backup server! Power outage about a week before started causing disk problems, and I ended up running the whole Web site from my laptop in my office, with the pages all on a DVD-ROM. Managed to disassemble the server, found the offending drive, a "certain brand" that's almost always been the cause of grief (for me) when a mission-critical application blows up. (E-mail me and I'll tell you the brand.) Replaced it with a Western Digital drive, managed to copy the students' work over before it totally died, then removed the junk drive and reconfigured the server. I was over there until about midnight then back at 8:00 AM working on the problem. Finally got everything running about noon Thursday. Oh -- in case you think it's just me, one of my students who works for a local orthopaedic company said that he had to go around and replace that same brand of drive in a whole bunch of machines because they were failing right and left. I guess I should feel better about it but somehow I don't. He replaced them with Seagate, an old reliable standby if you're not after super performance. (I can only type so fast anyhow....)
It's an ill wind indeed that blows no good. (Somebody famous said that.) With the system in pieces, colleague Rick Koontz ripped all of the wiring out of the equipment rack, tested and labeled (with colored electrical tape) the Ethernet cables, re-strung them neatly on the inside of the rack, and now it really looks professional inside and out. We had installed equipment piece by piece, and each time we did, there was another power cord and some more cables, and it just grew like Topsy. A year and a half later, it was looking like the nest of a small rat or large spider. A new KVM (Keyboard-Video-Monitor) switch helped mightily, so we have just one console that we switch between (among?) the assorted servers in the rack. We already had one, but the new one is mounted in the rack itself and has these really cool red and green lights....
A couple of students learned a few things, as did I, like how to make a script for fixing ownership of directories, adding users in one fell swoop with a text file, stuff like that. What takes so much time is when you can't be sure that the cables are working if there is the slightest problem: Could it be software settings? A circuit board? Wires? My imagination? Stupid mistake because I'm tired and stressed out? So neatness and methodical labeling takes a lot of the doubt from repairs. As I said, by noon or shortly after we had it up and running again thanks to a lot of help from my friends. Amazing thing was that I had installed BSD on the laptop as well as the other computer where the WD drive came from, so after a quick install and configuration, the Web server "Apache" came up perfectly. It was really weird, though, to tell Apache that DocumentRoot was /cdrom1; but it worked and that's what counts. And we gave the students some extra time to get their assignments done. (Oddly, they couldn't write to the Read-Only Memory -- DVD-ROM....)
And to close out the month
We borrowed a 12-foot stepladder from the college, which made the work of putting up the star relatively easy. One of my students came over and we stood one on each side of the ladder (steps on both sides, limit 375 lb) and up it went. I scrambled down and then up the other ladder next to the house and socked home a couple of screws. Much easier than last year. Good neighbor Lowell came over and helped with getting the frame in place, and after that it all went together like tinkertoys. Still have to run all the electrical cables and such but the computer end is almost ready for that and I have several weeks. Weather was just beautiful. And we played gigs at the Villagio the night before & after. On Sunday we both took two-hour naps after church.
Hope you had a good month. We look forward to programming a couple of new songs. Speaking of which, a customer on Friday night suggested Georgia on my Mind, so we managed to get it printed and did a not-too-terrible rendition on Saturday. Needs a couple of corrections and some arranging with doodly-oots but it's a good song.
Keep in touch!
