Jeff Phillips

Our Mexico Trip

I said in December that I would write about our vacation to Mexico, so I’d better do that – you know: keep my promise. It’s the right thing to do, you know.

We had intended to combine a beach vacation with Laura’s mother and a dive trip entailing several days of diving 4 for me, and 3 for Laura, only the Sunday I was supposed to start diving, I get a phone call at the room telling me the port is closed due to high water. Fortunately, I wasn’t really “feeling it” that morning and was in need of more vacation rest. Back to bed I went with no regret.

The next day, Laura and I made the taxi ride to the dive shop only to be turned down again by the port captain for high water. Even so, I was still not upset at not getting to dive – a miracle in itself. Tuesday, we called ahead and were told that all was good.

Once we arrived, we got on the boat – a very SMALL boat for our dives. Laura, at this point, is becoming very concerned due to the size of the boat both for the now-obvious method of water entry [the back roll, which she doesn’t like] and the relative size of the waves in comparison to the boat. Not to be deterred, we board and head out to the reef. After struggling to hold on to the boat for a while we squeeze into our gear and back-flop into the water. What we saw, I think, wasn’t worth the effort. The first dive was only moderately clear, maybe 30ft visibility. We did see two very large spotted eagle rays and two stingrays, but after a while it was time to come up. It was a passable dive.

Once on the boat, we began to feel queasy. For Laura, this was kind of expected with the water being so rough. What was not expected and far from normal was me, leaning over the side and tossing out the chorizo I had for breakfast. After that, we all felt better and decided on one more dive. We might have been better just heading back. Visibility was even worse and the current was now very strong. It was one of the most unsatisfactory dives I’ve had. We finally got back to shore and decided that we’d had enough diving for the trip. We had lunch at a great little restaurant in town and then headed back to the hotel where we were much more interested in lounging by the beach and pool and a couple of snorkeling outings.

We did have Thanksgiving dinner on Cozumel island and Pepe’s Grill. And yes, there was lobster on my plate.

Closet Construction & Data Migration

Now that the urgency of my project schedule has eased after the holidays have passed, and now that life is settling back into more normal rhythms, Laura and I have taken on and completed some projects. Among those are the complete replacement of my closet and some backend server migration – stuff that you don’t see, but see the results of [or not].

First off, Laura has been bugging me to “re-do” my closet for years. Our master bedroom has two closets, one large [hers] and one small [mine]. We did hers shortly after moving in, and a couple other projects involving the same closet construction parts and process. Now, it was my turn – especially since it seems my excessive quantity of shirts was bending the closet shelf/rod downwards. In my defense, the truth was that it wasn’t a capacity problem, but one of sloppy installation of the old system. I think it was bad when we moved in, but my obtaining a few more items of clothing has not helped.

Friday, on the way home from work, I stopped at the mall and picked up the equipment and shelves… in my two-seat convertible. It fit, but it was tight – kinda hanging out the back. That night, we ripped out the old shelves and I sanded and spackled the gaping holes that were left. I did more sanding and spackling the next morning and that evening, we painted the walls a similar color to the ceiling of the bedroom. Today, we installed the shelving system and hung up my clothes again. No more sagging: all is well with the world!

Oh, look: room for more shirts!

<geek-speak>

And the data migration part? I’ve just found out that there is a database plugin for WordPress that allows for it to utilize Microsoft SQL Server as the backend database. FINALLY. You’ll have seen many posts from me in the past about this [if you’ve been with me that long] and know my frustration that WordPress would never abstract the data layer and forced a proprietary data source on the users. Well, I’ve ditched it and this is my first post on the blog using SQL Server. So far, I think it’s a bit faster. But, I could just be biased…

🙂

The main thing is that I know how to use it, manage it, optimize it, and patch it. It is, after all, what I do.

</geek-speak>

Old Black Water, Keep On Rollin’

I don’t think it’s what the Doobie Brothers were thinking about, but I’m sitting at my desk with a glass of black water. Yes, BLACK water. One day a couple of months ago, Laura was shopping and came across a black bottle of water with a label that said it had a high pH level: 9.0 – which is 2 points above the normal 7 of regular water. This is supposed to be healthy due to the fact that we eat too much acidic food (like sugar, etc.) So she bought it to try out.

She got it home and I see this bottle sitting on the counter. “What’s that?” I say. “Oh. It’s a new high-pH water I saw. I want to try it out.” Great. I pick it up to look at it. The bottle is so dark, you can’t see anything through it… until I look closer. Seems it’s not the bottle that’s dark, but the water. It’s actually BLACK WATER. For real. See?

202-1290

It’s been sitting on the counter for two months after I noticed that the actual water was black. Tonight, it bothered me enough that it was just sitting there, so I popped it open and poured it over some ice. It’s not bad. It has a very minerally taste. Like there’s sand in the water. But, it’s healthy. Right?

If you’re curious, go to their site and read more.

Not Dead Yet

I know – I haven’t written anything in literally MONTHS, but I have been quite busy. Once I get some spare time, I’ll write about our trip to Mexico in November and other things. But, I just wanted to let all three of my readers that I, in fact, am not dead.

🙂

Fun With Macro

We [and by “we” I mean Laura] found a guy on Craig’s List who posted a ton of Canon photography equipment, most of which we couldn’t afford, but some of the items have been on our list for quite some time. A new 580EX II flash, complete with stand, mounting bracket and umbrella was a great plus, but the big ticket item that we’ve been wanting for a while is a new 100mm F2.8 L macro lens. It’s awesome! We can get some great up-close and personal pictures that are very hard to do with other lenses. So, I took it upon myself to play around a little. Now, I’ve been getting back into playing guitar, so it’s sitting out for me to take pictures of and a guitar makes for good “macro” shots. Here’s a picture taken just a few inches from the end [and yes, that’s a spot of dust on my camera sensor]:

Not stunning at first glance, but let’s zoom in a bit and you can see more detail [maybe even some you didn’t want to]:

Still not impressed? How about this one:

All of these are sections of the same picture. Look at the amazing detail!

This lens is actually for Laura, but she let me play with it. I suppose I have to give it back now. 🙂

Dream Vacation Property?

We don’t have one, but I’ve begun thinking about it. I know some of our friends either have a vacation home that they have for their sole use, or own a vacation rental property that they rent out.

In the first case, most seem to be old enough or sedentary enough to have spent 30 years in the same home – enough time to pay off the main residence to allow them to afford a second property and the mortgage that goes with it. That’s a great idea, and if I can accelerate the payoff of our main residence [which I’m now doing by paying above the payment amount] to be done in around 15 years, then we can focus our full “housing” budget on a new vacation home. That will take quite a bit of patience.

In the second case, I’ve seen friends buy an income-generating vacation rental property that they use to either pay off their existing house or pay off the vacation property with the net gain. Such a thing really doesn’t make sense unless there’s a net gain. I mean – why buy a property that you can’t stay in but a few week per year if it’s still going to cost you a big chunk to keep, right? Of course, doing it this way allows more than one vacation home location since there is a net gain. But then again, the downside would be that we couldn’t just show up at any time since there might be paying customers on site.

With these things in mind, and my initial dream location of a cabin/house/condo in the mountains of Colorado [subject to change upon spousal notification :)], I’ve decided to both accelerate paying off my existing loans [house & car] and begin saving for another house down-payment. This might take years and our goals may change, but saving at any time is a good idea.

So: in 15 years or so when I have many thousands of dollars in the bank and the current house paid off, there may be a ski chalet in our future… or a beach house… or even something else.

Yet Another Media Center Upgrade

Yes, I’m at it again. I’ve added something to my Windows Media Center. When I said it was “complete,” I suppose I was wrong.

Last month, we rented a Blu-Ray disk from Red Box and it wouldn’t play on our stand-alone Sony Blu-Ray player. We thought it was the disk and sent it back. Then, I got a copy of the latest Narnia movie on Blu-Ray… which also didn’t play. Hmm. That was frustrating, but the package included a DVD version which we watched. I thought a system update might correct whatever problem there was. We talked to technical support and they were most unhelpful

We then tried it gain earlier this week with yet another movie, which we didn’t have a DVD version for. It failed. Hmm. I thought I’d try to re-flash it. It wouldn’t work. I tried an old Blu-Ray that used to play and has played before on that player. It didn’t work. Very bad.

Now, I had justification to invest in a Blu-Ray player for the Media Center. I bought a cheap player, installed it and the included PowerDVD software and it worked. Mostly.

I wasn’t happy with the way that the stripped-down OEM version of PowerDVD worked, especially when it came to sound. The sound was supposed to be Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. Instead, it was simple 2-channel stereo and that was way uncool. So, I tried the latest and greatest version of PowerDVD. Funny thing, though: it did the exact same thing. I then downloaded an evaluation copy of Arcsoft Total Medea Theatre 5, which worked WONDERFULLY and was fully integrated as a plug-in into Windows Media Center instead of a pop-up stand-alone program. All the sound was now channeled digitally though my system.

I had thought to save some money by using the included software, but that doesn’t look possible anymore – especially since the full version of PowerDVD is the same price as Total Media Theatre with much fewer features.

All this took place a week after I had a hard drive failure on the machine which meant I had to replace the data storage drives with new ones. I now have 1.5TB of DVR storage. 🙂

So: barring a RAM upgrade which may happen in the future, maybe this time I really am done with the system.

Little Blue M Car

I’ve gone and done it again – bought a BMW M Roadster.

This one is a 2006 Z4-based one, and I have to say that it is even more fun to drive than the older ones I had earlier. The rear end is much more stable and it has all the convenience factors that I’ve become used to: auto-on headlights, rain-sensing wiper, and Bluetooth integration to name a few.

The ride is firm, but not hard and it has enough power to really move when it needs to.

We drive down to a dealer, Godspeed Motors [who by the way are very nice and helpful people], just south of Charlotte, NC to pick it up. We showed up at the dealer’s at 9:30AM, test drove, check it out, bought it, sold the old 330xi to them, and hit the road by 11:00AM. We ended up driving back through Greensboro and then Richmond.

My overall impression of the car is that while it doesn’t have the retro appeal of the Z3-based M Roadster, the quality is greater and the ride is much improved. Which means that I’m quite happy with my purchase. 🙂

Making Progress

Sometimes, you can catch up with all of the work you have sitting in front of you. That’s how we’ve been feeling with all of our pictures. Right now, we have over 9300 pictures sitting in our “to process” queue. What that means is that we’ve taken pictures over the last 4 years that we’ve done nothing with… not even reviewed and filed in some cases.

So, this afternoon, we made a decision to find a café and just do a few directories of pictures each. Laura replicated some of the folders from the server, and I have them ALL on my laptop [thanks to a 500GB second hard drive]. We started at lunch, but felt we had to leave the restaurant after a couple of hours. Now, we’re at a nice coffee shop in Reston which has good WiFi connectivity.

Laura is halfway through her directory, I’m halfway through my planned files and I got sidetracked and did more that weren’t on the list.

Here’s to finally moving out those pictures in the 2007 timeframe! Maybe…

Geeking Out

If you’re not interested in technology or other geeky stuff, you can probably skip this entry as I’m going to be describing some of the technical endeavors I’ve been undertaking over the last couple of weeks.

SP1
You may or may not have noticed that the site is a bit faster. This is mainly due to the fact that I have installed Service Pack 1 for Windows Server 2008 R2 on both the host and the various guest OSs that I have running. The new Dynamic Memory feature allows me to just set initial memory settings and allow the system [guest] load to either request more memory or free up unused bits so that other guests can use them. I’ve given the email server and this web server [and the firewall server] priority so that their requests for resources are serviced first.

The performance is much better – you may not notice much, but on my end when I use my virtual desktop [which is where I do all my personal computing like Quicken and personal email] is much faster since it has the RAM it needs and the other guests aren’t being hogs.

It also makes accessing all my other guest machines easier and faster. The ones not used much can idle and give back RAM. It’s supposed to be “greener” too, allowing you to save money by throttling back CPU and resource usage on the server to only what is needed.

New Virtual Box: FAIL
I tried to utilize one of my old laptops, a Toshiba Techra M5, as a new virtual host for a couple of guest machines [like a new virtual SAN host I got at TechReady]. I installed the raw, bare-bones Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 – which is NOT Windows Server, for those of you not in the know. The install went fine until I got to installing SP1 [see above] on the machine. The Blue Screen of Death made a command performance.

It seems that I remember why I stopped using the laptop: it’s prone to overheating and crashing, which is exactly what it did – several times. So, scratch having another host box for my virtual machines for now. I suppose I’ll have to wait until I get a new one and take one of the other old ones and repurpose it.

Smart Cards and Certificates
I’m also playing with certificates and smart cards. I’m about halfway there – I’ve gotten one to work via logging into a laptop, but not yet with OWA [which is the goal].

I’ll soon have to upgrade the CA to 2008 R2, but not just yet.

That’s all for now. 🙂