Category: Uncategorized

Its the start of a new week up here in the thin air, and as I sit here watching the sun come up over Legault Mountain with my cup of tea, I plot and scheme to try and find a way to spend more time here and less time in Denver.

Out my window Kalira’s filly yawns and stretches, very cat-like for a thousand pound critter, and patiently waits for her breakfast while Marshal naps on the back of my chair as I type.

It is such a peaceful place with the rabbits, foxes, hawks, deer, rocks and pine trees – I just wish I had more time to enjoy it all.

Today at work I get to attempt the impossible yet again. this time I’m building (out of some tin cans and string) a database that is faster than the one the State had built (over four years at something a bit north of what I will make take-home over the next ten years) for their ‘electronic poll book’.

See, I have to test this thing, which normally would be very easy… But the government doesn’t do anything ‘easy’, and this is a stellar example.

As we all know, each person gets one vote, and the poll book is designed to ensure this happens by containing a database of every registered voter in Colorado – which is quite a few – and checking them off as they vote. Where the problem comes in is that to test it, I can only use each first/last name one time and someone in their infinite wisdom decided that having search functionality was bad, so it has to be an exact first/last name.

So, I have to build a separate database that holds enough of the voter data so my test engine can get the data it needs over a 4 hour test, but this database also has to be able to support better speeds than the database I’m testing against so that I can find where it fails.

Yep. Just another day in my life.

As I sit here and think about it, I realize that every year the things I’ve had to test get harder and harder… Five years ago when I started doing this at work it was all simple web site testing and I got weeks to do the test, then the web sites started being corporate and requiring things like SSL encryption (a pain in the ass), SAP (a major pain in the ass), and lots of general hoop-jumping in 5 days or less.

Then came the application tests which require the reverse-engineering of client/server communications protocols and data and the creation of completely hand-coded test harnesses – and of course they want this done in 2-3 days.

Now I’m doing government stuff which has all of the pain in the ass of corporate testing *and* all of the custom test harness crap, but also throws in a scale that is an order of magnitude bigger and contractors…

I’m giving contractors their own special section in this rant because of all the things I have to deal with, they are by far the worst. Everything is highly secretive so they won’t ever tell me anything about what I’m testing, they spend all of their time figuring out ways to slip something past me so that the test is a guaranteed success (milestone payments are on the line usually), add days or weeks to things that should take hours, and are just generally a large pain in my ass.

So, yeah, this is sort of a primer on why I get cranky when I talk about my job.

Speaking of job, I have to head down the mountain to be the miracle worker. Have a great day out there folks.

Due to a pole fire on the 115kv line that feeds the 285 corridor, the local power company has the power turned off from Buena Vista to Morrison this morning. This of course includes Ravenwood, so we’re cavemaning things up here this morning.

Rmec, the power coop here says they’ll have the new pole up and everything running again by 10 or 11… So only a few hours of peace and quiet. 😉

Oh, this post was brought to you via the awesome powers of my iPhone and at&t, both of which seem to have a lot of battery power.

Saw the new Batman tonight. It was a company outing and as such it was a free show, so that right there saved me $9.75, which is nice.

Of course the company, being an entertainment-based company, doesn’t do movies small – so it was Batman on the 70mm screen at the Continental…

All I will say about the movie – to prevent any spoilers – is that the folks involved with the movie, in 2.5 hours, justified comics as a story telling medium and justified movies as an entertainment experience.

This is a ‘must see’ movie.

Things are starting to settle in here in the thin air.

As one would expect, there are certain ‘learning experiences’ with new roommates in that one has to learn to adjust to other folks ways of doing things. For example; I moved here for the peace, quiet, and to enjoy a bit more ‘rustic’ lifestyle that doesn’t include TV and can go for long periods without even electricity. I’m also a ‘bare essentials’ kind of person and, even though I currently own the most stuff I’ve ever owned, it is still just the essentials and maybe two cubic feet of ‘personal items’ that have no use other than to remind me of my past… Essentially three car loads, which means I’m getting soft in my old age.

Max on the other hand has this big box fan he runs all night for ‘white noise’ (that I’m slowly learning to sleep through), really digs TV and occasionally stays up past everyone else to catch some show/movie/whatever (and I’m starting to tune it out), and suffers serious withdrawals when the tenuous-at-best internet connection here is either slow or not working.

I did warn them, and even suggested things like the “Book of the Month Club”… 😉

Max is also a packrat… There are boxes of Max’s stuff in the garage, in the back room, in his bedroom, in the living room, in the round room, and even in my Jeep… And there is still more to move. There has been a couple of trips with Klaira’s truck, Zeze’s Jeep, and a trailer hooked to the back of Zeze’s jeep – at the same time – and there is still more stuff to move. 🙂

Zeze has been out of work for the entire week so far for peritoneal dialysis training, and the other IT guy I have was out Monday and will be out again today, which has had the effect of about tripling my already egregious work load. To make things even better, the universe has conspired against me and has once again made it so I have to run two tests for two different clients at the exact same time… One client I’m running a test for *finally*, after two months, got AT&T to set up their servers in the data center for test, so they have exactly today and tomorrow for test. The other client has very small windows available for test and those just happen to be today and tomorrow… Oh, and the other IT guy I have gave notice yesterday and I’m unclear on if I’ll get a replacement.

So there ya have it. As I always say; good, bad, it is always an adventure. 🙂

Are people really so dense that they need to be told what is dangerous?

Don’t answer that…

These new servers I got here at work (Dell PowerEdge 1950 III), of which there are 34, are festooned with warning stickers: Don’t stick your fingers in the fans, don’t monkey with the internals with the power on, don’t lick the power supply… Well, okay, that last one isn’t on there, but they do warn you that there is voltage in the power supply…

It reminds me of a question on a HAM radio test: “You should stick your hand into an energized transmitter: (a) Sometimes, (b) Always, (c) Never.”

But it is even more pervasive than this. On a package of CDs next to my desk there’s a sticker that states “Warning: This product contains chemicals which are known by the state of California to cause cancer in laboratory tests.”

So, only California knows this eh? And they have a warning sticker for something that *might* happen – if you eat an entire spindle of CDs. Of course California is a special place to begin with and I’m sure they spend ridiculous amounts of money on warning stickers there.

Then again, I’ve always espoused that they should remove all of the warning labels on everything and let the problem solve itself – but I’m also a crass asshole.

Went to the theater over in Evergreen last night and saw Hellboy 2.

It was a fun movie, but kind of disjointed – almost like the movie wasn’t sure if it was an action flick or a back story setup for Hellboy 3.

Doug Jones was awesome, as always, and his character “Abe” got a lot more script time in this movie.

Yesterday morning I was successful in locating the local laundromat and spent an hour or so there doing laundry and chatting with a few select ‘locals’ about everything from the weather to horses.

It is such a small community up here that I was immediately pegged as someone new because no one had seen me before. So, after finding out who I was and where I lived, I was immediately immersed in the local gossip.

See, that’s the role a laundromat fills; it’s not just a place one goes to wash their clothes, it is the community center and has cork boards full of people selling things, buying things and everyone who stops in has some piece of news for the community in general… This information is usually passed on via oral tradition from the owner of the laundromat: “Bob Smith was in the other day and mentioned that he and the other town council folks were going to be going over the old Jones place and that developer that wants to turn it into 400 $750,000+ houses.”

“Really? I s’pose I should go talk to Cathy then and see what her take is on it. After all she’s on the west side of the Jones property…”

“Yup. While you’re there, tell her that Marge at the post office has a signed letter for her. She can get it on her monthly grocery run I s’pose.”

“Will do.”

The real thing that pegs me as ‘new’ is the fact that I drive a PT Cruiser… Not exactly a ‘back woods’ car and I really stand out in town, which is a sea of dinged up 20 year old pickup trucks and Jeeps.

Fortunately, as soon as I get the WarWagon up and running I’ll be able to blend in even better… That and be able to get out of my driveway between October and March. 🙂

And with that, I should get some breakfast and get on the road for another day at work.

Marshal caught another one of these little gray field mice… I think that accounts for the two we saw when we moved in.

Interestingly, Marshal does not deliver them as presents. He prefers to drop them off at the back door as if knowing I’m going to toss them under the shrubs as both warning and fertilizer.

He’s looking very smug right now after his undoubtedly epic battle with the 2 ounce critter. 🙂

Well, it promises to be a busy weekend.

The last two items were hauled out of my apartment in Aurora yesterday; a 19″ TV and some plastic sheets for one of the metro rack carts. So, that’s over…

Today I’ll be meeting some friends of Kalira’s who want to come up and visit. Wolf and Lyon might be up the weekend as well, as well as some friend of Max’s. Aryntha, Rai, and LT were here Thursday evening to see “Farm 2.0” as well… I’m thinking I need to find a large-ish BBQ grill for the weekends when there could be 10+ people here. 🙂

This morning I’ll be heading over to Morrison for their annual “Community Flea Market”, which is really just a city-wide garage sale, but I’m looking for a new desk chair and a box fan and I might find one or both there for cheap.

So, there ya have it. Things are winding down from the hectic pace of last week so I might actually get to relax a bit this weekend…

Yesterday the WisperTel guys were out and installed a brand new 5.8 Ghz microwave transceiver under the south east eve of the house, which is pointed at the top of Conifer Mountain. This snazzy piece of hardware gives me 5Mb of bidirectional low-latency bandwidth to the intertubes.

So I can post from home now without using my iPhone.

Yesterday I didn’t get home till late… Had to see a lady about a horse…

I spotted a Belgian filly on craig’s list who was in a bad way and the current owner needed her moved to a better home asap, so I mentioned this to Kalira (the resident horse expert) and we both went and looked at the filly.

The filly was a rescue, of sorts, and the lady I talked to picked her up as a ‘project’ from another lady who had the filly just rotting in a field (her mane was so tangled they had to shave it off and let it grow back in), then a couple of months in realized that this project was too much for her (this is going to be a big horse). Judging by her teeth she’s around 2 years old or less, still growing into her Belgian bay colors, and already stands about 16 to 16.5 hands.

She’s been kept on sand, so her feet need some attention, she’s very green but very, very curious and willing to learn… When Kalira and I got there she would rotate away if we even touched her butt, but about 20 minutes later we had her picking up her back feet for us.

She’s sound – I had Kalira walk and trot her for me and she’s a bit toe’d in, but it appears to be because of her feet needing trimming, mostly because when I brought her foot up her hoof fell in line with her leg on both sides. I listened to her heart, breathing, gut, shoulder symmetry, vision, hearing, and checked out a recent poo and she’s very healthy – she just needs attention and work.

She’s also a bit cow hocked (in in front and out in back) so she’ll be a nice mover.

Anyways, Kalira liked her enough that she bought the filly; $950 – and the filly will be showing up here on Sunday.

So, the ranch will be more than just a moniker in a few days, which is nice.

Kalira, having now seen that I really do know a thing or three about horses is now telling me I need to get one too. And I’m telling her I don’t have enough time for one – to which she responds that she’ll care for it and I can just ride it… I’m still thinking about it.

I know the stories and pictures of and about ravenwood would lead one to think I’m about 20 miles west of nowhere, but that’s not really the case. One of the three “flagship” safeway stores is about a quarter mile from here, and around the safeway there’s a small sorta-mall with a few restaurants and other stores.

But, I am far enough out in “the wild” to have all of the perks of less civilization… For example I had two elk bucks play-sparring with each other in my front yard this morning…

And Marshal caught himself a mouse that was seen in the house as well.

Marshal is still the wondercat – he went from catnip mice to real mice without so much as a bent whisker… And he’s good at mousing as well; taking station in the kitchen early this morning and covering the exits. I didn’t see the action, but there was a growl, the scrabbling of claws on flagstone, and a loud squeek. Marshal then trotted back into the kitchen looking pleased with himself and a small field mouse in his teeth.

I tossed the mouse and made sure to reward the cat with praise and petting. 🙂

So there ya have it, another morning at ravenwood.

Well, here we are at Monday again.

The weekend was awesome in a ‘work your ass off and end every day too tired to sleep’ sort of way.

I’m completely moved, zeze is completely moved and has his half of the apartment to clean up, kalira is completely moved and is going to be helping zeze clean up, and max is probably half way done. 🙂

The house here at ravenwood is going together well. My bedroom is mostly finished and my ‘incredibly heavy and will not ne moved again’ sectional sofa is in place in the living room.

We also got the entertainment system set up – it is nice to be able to run the subs in my big sony speakers again.

So that’s about it for this post. I’m actually looking forward to work today, just because it doesn’t involve lifting heavy objects and many flights of stairs. 🙂

It rained quite a bit yesterday, which is good. The problem with rain is that it requires clouds, and clouds block the sun. This makes it pretty chilly up here pretty quick.

Most of yesterday afternoon was about 55 dergees, and at about 5pm I had to resort to bringing the main firebox online.

The main fireplace is quite large, but it has been updated with an equally large boiler-style fire box which is much more efficient.

Fireboxes are interesting critters. There’s several things you can adjust on them ranging from damper angle to air carburation, and the one here will hold abot 30 pounds of wood at a time. So, getting one of these running is a bit like starting a cranky diesel in that it doesn’t run right until it is at the right temperature.

So, for the first 5 minutes or so I had thick white smoke pouring out of the chimney and due to the front that brought the rain the smoke just poured down into the valley like a slow motion waterfall. But one it got to temperature and I got the carburation dialed in, you could smell the fire but nothing was visible.

Ultimately, I put two decent sized logs in the box and heated half the house to 70+ till well after 11pm.

Let’s hear it for caveman tech! 🙂

Some of those promised photos…

The fist night here at Ravenwood was very, very nice.

Yesterday was a lot of moving. I’m pretty much moved, zeze is 3/4 moved, kalira is half moved, and max has yet to make much of a dent in the mountain of stuff he has.

The warwagon’s carburetor developed a problem on the way up, just to keep things interesting for max who was driving it. It eventually made it though, so there is another project to be done before winter.

Last night’s bit of a rock climb up to “shaman’s rock” was a lot of fun. Unfortunately that whole area has gone from “wilderness” to “subburb”. There were about 30 people up there on the rocks last night, and 11 of them were kids belonging to one family. Ultimately we left early due to the people – I guess I need to find a new rock 🙁

See, from Shaman’s rock you can see all the fireworks at once – from Boulder to Castle Rock.

It was in the high 40’s last night, but even with the windows open, the foot thick walls of the house kept it in the mid 60’s inside. It looks like it won’t be too hard to heat the place on wood this winter.

Marshal has already settled in and is zipping about the place enjoying the space to run. I’m hopeful that the flagstone floors will help keep his claws trimmed. At the apartment I had to clip him every two weeks to keep him from sticking to the carpet.

So that’s it for this update, I’m off to wrangle some coffee and finish this episode of “sunrise over Legault Mountain”. 🙂

Sittin here on top of Conifer Mtn.,watchin’ the fireworks 🙂

I did some research today and the farm is actually called “Ravenwood” and was an Arabian horse ranch up until 1972.

I like the name, so I think it’ll stay.

I managed to move about 3/4 of everything I own this afternoon. I’m going to try to get an early start tomorrow and get the rest done.

Last night I signed a lease for a farm up in the mountains.

It is a very nice place, on 10 acres of southern exposure up in a valley near Conifer. It is also very peaceful and quiet, which is something I’m in dire need of after the last five years here in Aurora.

It is ‘horse property’ with a four stall barn and several fenced pastures, and with Zeze’s girlfriend around I might just get myself another horse. Kalira, the name I will use for her from her WoW character, is a practicing blacksmith and equine care professional – it’s what she does for a living. So even though I won’t have a lot of time for a horse and will require something weekend ‘turn key’, with her around the animals will get the care and attention they require while I get to do a lot of riding on the weekends.

The house itself is a large 5-bedroom place with flagstone floors, foot-thick brick walls, acres of wood, and this extremely cool round dining room… The house proper was a massive dairy barn back in the 1920’s and was converted into a home in the 60’s. The very cool dining room was originally the silo for the barn. It all makes for a very cool place to live.

I was up there last night and spent some time outside in the cool and quiet surroundings. While the ‘dark’ had Zeze and Max a bit ruffled and there was talk of more outside lights, Kalira and I talked some sense into them once they had adjusted to the darkness and were able to note that the stars give plenty of light.

Zeze, from Virginia and Max, from Texas, are going to be quite funny come October as neither are ready for what living ‘on the mountain’ entails.

The primary heat for the house in the winter is wood with backup electric baseboard heat just to keep the pipes from freezing. So I see a good deal of firewood splitting in my future – which is fine, it certainly won’t be the first time I’ve had to split two cords of wood in a weekend.

The only major down side to this is it is kinda expensive to live in the mountains, and it will be 36 miles, each way, to get to / from work every day… So I am paying for my better weekends with an additional 2 hours of driving every day – well, if traffic doesn’t suck it is only 45 minutes, but traffic rarely doesn’t suck.

So, yeah, hopefully this weekend I will have the few personal items I tend to keep moved 36 miles across town and up US-285 to my new home.

I’ll post some pictures of the ‘stead in the next few days when I’m up there before the sun is down.

Now that the free demo has released I guess I can talk about it.

I managed to score a pre-pre-release of the demo version of the “Creature Creator” for Spore a week or so ago and, if this small taste is anything like the full game, I don’t expect to be putting it down for a *long* time.

The free demo allows you to make creatures, but the body features are limited to just a small portion of what is in the full game.

I’ve had my pre-order in for the game since EA made it available for pre-order, but the free demo of the creator portion of the game is an excellent way to pass the time before release. As soon as EA has it up on the SPORE site, I recommend nabbing a copy of the free demo just for the ear-to-ear grins, belly laughs, and general feeling of well-being you’ll receive as you watch your little creation nod approval at your design decisions, dance around happily, and show off for you.

Once you’ve fiddled with the free demo version, there is a $10 version of the Creator application that has all of the hundreds of body features available to play with. This version of the application will be available Wednesday the 18th, so hours and hours of wholesome and fun godlike powers will be available to the masses this week.

So, there ya go. I don’t endorse too many things but, if you’re reading this go download the free demo when it is available and play with it. It’s good for you. 🙂

Yesterday myself, Zeze, Kalira, and Max which is the same crew from the previous entry, hit the Ren Faire here in Colorado.

It was an excellent day for the hike around the back woods of Larkspur.

So we left the crackerbox at about 8am, stopped by ‘Rosie’s’ for breakfast, and got to the faire grounds at 10am sharp… The south lot was already full and they were redirecting folks to the north lot so rumors of the Faire’s demise seem to be slightly exagerated.

That being said though the changes that have been wrought at the hands of the new management, which took over some span of years ago and since then I have not passed the front gate, are both wonderous and souless at the same time.

The grounds are now far more amusement-esque rather than ‘period’ with the inclusion of the moneytree ‘pirate’ ambiance across most of the grounds… Which is one thing I have to say for the new management, they know their audience and are very quick to capitalize on anything both ‘in the past’ and ‘in the vogue’ as it were. For example, there was a lot of what I would call ‘Cimmerian’ touches to the grounds and from overhearing a lot of the staff it was purely to capitalize on the recent release of ‘Age of Conan’.

Speaking of staff, the current crew seems to be missing most of the old-guard’s acting ability… I think about one out of five folks on staff even had a decent BFA and most were solidly in ‘street talk’ mode and it really blew what little ambiance there was. Additionally, it appears that anyone who can afford the space is allowed to sell wares as there were far more t-shirt vendors than I would expect in a ‘period’ production… There was even a ‘Mike’s Hard Lemonade’ vendor – yes, I remember reading about them from my studies of the middle ages…

But, all of this aside it *is* a business and businesses are there to make money, so I can understand where the change in focus has come from. The general populace isn’t intrigued enough by the period to really participate, but if you make it more of an amusement park, they stop viewing it as a ‘period production’ and look at it more of a ‘day trip to Elich’s’.

I think the biggest thing I noticed was how much either the rent at the Faire has gone up, or the dollar has diminished – or both – since the last time I was there. Pretty much everything purchasable was about 200% of what I would figure it was worth. And, remember, I used to work Faires and conventions, and I know which catalogs most of the booth-filler comes from, and therefore have a pretty good idea what was paid for those fancy dragons goblets and shiny silver unicorn pendants.

Post-Faire I took the crew up 105 and 85 back to Denver via Highland’s Ranch. It was decided upon leaving the Faire that everyone would like to see “Kungfu Panda”, so I figure the AMC there in H.R. would be an excellent place to see it.

Overall it was a very good movie; fun to watch with some really good ‘LOL’ moments. I rate it as ‘worth the money to see it’.

Today’s plans will take me to the North end of Denver to the Flea Market in Commerce City where I will most likely purchase a bicycle to commute to work with. I believe after that I will be at the theater yet again for the latest ‘Incredible Hulk’ movie.

Once that is done I’ll hole up here at home, log into WoW for a bit, and see who from the new guild is doing what and tag along for an hour or two.
 

I went on a bit of a road trip yesterday up into the hills and had a pretty good time with it.

Zeze approached me Saturday morning and asked if I’d be willing to act as a tour guide for him and two of his friends on a trip up ito the mountains. I of course said yes as any excuse I can get to leave Aurora is a good thing, and Zeze was paying for the gas…

Originally it was going to be a caravan of sorts as I gather Jalen and Flyn were going to come along as well, but I guess they didn’t make it so it was just the four of us in Zeze’s new Jeep.

We left here at about 10am and after swinging by a local McDonald’s so that the three of them could grab a bite to eat (I’m a terminally early riser and had eaten breakfast a few hours prior) we headed West.

The trip up the hill was fairly uneventful… The new Jeep is completely gutless though and I had to stand in the stirrups and liberally use the whip to get it up the hill at any semblance of speed.

We pulled in to Edwards at about noon and stopped at a local hangout called Paddy O’Day’s for lunch. Paddy’s was excellent as always and after everyone was well stuffed from the great burgers we headed out along US24 towards Leadville.

I’ve written here before about the US24 route between Edwards/Minturn and Leadville before. It’s a wonderful canyon called “Dark Territory” that winds up to the continental divide at Tennessee Pass and the headwaters of the Eagle river. Along the route there is pretty much an infinte amount of things to look at and be inspired by…

So we drove through Minturn, which is still Minturn – at least for the next year or two. There are plans afoot to widen the main street through the town (US24) for the new Battle Mountain ski resort… Just what we need, another money-soaked ski resort. I kinda feel sorry for Minturn as it’s the last of the small working mountain towns in the central area of the Colorado Rockies.

The first thing we stopped at on the route was the Gilman Mine and townsite, which still looks about the same as it has since it shut down. It’s a ghost-town, founded in 1886, and has this eerie post-apocalypse vibe to it… There is a developer from Florida, Bobby Ginn, who bought all of the land and mineral rights to Battle Mountain and his plan is to tear down Gilman and put in employee housing for the private ski resort they are building across the highway. So if you wanna see Gilman, you’d be advised to travel US24 in the next year or so while it’s still there.

The next thing on the tour was the bridge at Red Cliff, followed by the historic site for the 10th Mountain Division and the Continental Divide.

Next we wound down into Leaville, then followed US24 down into Buena Vista before getting off US24 and onto US285 back towards Denver.

US285 follows the old narrow-gauge transcontinental railway and also has some amazing scenery, including Mt. Evans (from the south side).  We got back to the house after a stop at Sonic for drinks at about 5pm.

All told the route I took them shows off most of Colorado’s 14’ers, three of my favorite towns, 1 awesome burger joint, 1 ghost town, 1 historic site, 2 passes over the Divide, and 4 hours of the best views in Colorado.

I highly recommend the loop for anyone wanting to see what all this “mountain” hubbub is all about.

Additionally I got to spend a few hours in a car with these two friends of Zeze’s… I’ve always said that if you want to really get to know someone, spend half a day in a car with them. Well, I can say that of all of Zeze’s friends, these two seem to be the best of the bunch; They’re well collected, educated, have their heads screwed on right, and have genuine personalities that have depth and breadth to them…

So, that’s about it. I was out of the house most of the day yesterday and while I spent all of it behind the wheel of a car, it was a very nice break from hiding in the house.

Wish me luck. I have my first interview with 38 Studios next week. It’ll be over the phone, which is always tough.

If they like me, I’ll be moving to Boston in a few months time.

Needless to say this post is locked to “friends only” until I know more, specifically because folks at work read this.