Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

(Based on a Facebook post from a few months ago.)

One of my mantras has been "Whatever it takes. No excuses." That is what I demanded of myself, and expected of others. Where did I lean this? I'm not quite sure, but I've given some thought as to where I might have learned it.

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Continuing my march down memory lane....

My high school -- Sweet Home -- was in Section VI, Division I of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA). Section VI covered western New York -- Niagara, Erie, Chautauqua, and Cattaraugus counties. Division I was for the larger schools. The schools (and teams) I remember us playing against were Amherst (Tigers), Kenmore East (Bulldogs), Kenmore West (Blue Devils), North Tonawanda (Lumberjacks), and Jamestown (Red Raiders). Games were held on Saturday afternoons, and occastionally on Friday nights.

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(Originally posted to Facebook on 10/20/16.)

[Backstory: Earlier this year, my friend Heather (aka maedbh7) had been looking for a "bivvy tent", and found one on Craigslist for $40. The seller was in Dayton, and had asked me to pick it up for her. And earlier this week, we finally took it on an overnight outing to Buck Creek State Park, east of Springfield, OH.]

While Heather tried out the Eureka Solitaire tent (and posted a review to her wall), I used my tried and trusty Eureka Timberline 2. I've had it since the early 1990s. It's somewhat styled after the 2-person tents we had in my Boy Scout troop. It sleeps 2 medium-sized people, or 1 large person. There are zippered vents at both the front and back of the tent to provide ventilation.

I use a 6' x 8' tarp below the tent as a ground cloth, and their "floor saver" (a sheet of thick plastic cut to fit this tent) inside the tent. There is an optional vestibule that attaches to the front of the tent to give me a little bit of storage space for gear and wet/muddy footwear. And there's a mesh "gear loft" that attaches to loops inside the tent to hold light items (flashlight, wallet, meds, cell phone, etc.).

Camping hack: I sprayed primer, fluorescent paint, and clear coat on the heads of the steel stakes so I can find them easier if they're laying in the grass. Brightly colored duct tape may work just as well.

My queen-size air mattress fills nearly the entire floor area. If it's inflated outside the tent, it's a little tricky to put inside. I often have to unroll the air mattress and then inflate it after it's inside. Ditto that for deflating.

Disadvantages: The tent isn't tall enough to stand up in, so changing clothes can become an adventure. If the fly touches the interior "roof" of the tent, dampness can occur inside the tent. And the zippers sometimes get caught and stuck on the sides of the zipper.

Despite these disadvantages, this is a great tent for a weekend outing.

So, on Facebook, Jeff Bonhoff asked some of his online friends about music, and what 12 albums would be the soundtrack to their lives. I don't know Jeff very well (and I'd like to change that), but two of the people who responded were Rand Bellavia and Phil Mills. I'm putting this on LJ instead of Facebook due to its length. (At one time, Facbook used to limit the size of posts. I don't know if they still do.)

The challenge was this: List 12 albums that are, in some way, the soundtrack of my life.

When I constructed this list, I intentionally limited this to one album per artist. I also started with 25 albums and eventually whittled the list down to 12.

1) Glenn Miller, "Greatest Hits"
My father was a fan of big band music from the 1930s and 1940s -- Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, et al. He'd often play recordings of this music at home while he was relaxing, working around the house, or working in his workshop.

2) Supertramp, "Crime of the Century"
One of the first albums I bought. The band got a lot of airplay on the local radio stations. I remember hearing "Bloody Well Right" in March of 1975, when my father was in the hospital for an ulcer.

3) Styx, "The Grand Illusion"
Another one of the first albums I bought. Ray LaVere, a high school classmate of mine, loaned me his copy on cassette tape. JY's ARP Odyssey solo in the bridge section of "Come Sail Away" got me interested in synthesizers.

4) Electric Light Orchestra, A New World Record"
Twin brothers Alan and Kevin Payne had painted the ELO logo on a wall in their basement, and several of us in the neighbood came over to listen to ELO. Who was with us? Dan Clune, Kirk Komasara, Mike Polino.

5) Synergy, "Games"
Studio musician Larry Fast recorded several solo albums under the name Synergy. This album, released in 1979, was one of the first electronic music, or electronica, albums I heard. A notable sound on the album was the lead violin line on "Delta Four", which was an early example of digital synthesis.

6) Paul Simon, "Graceland"
7) Big Audio Dynamite, "This is Big Audio Dynamite"
8) Prefab Sprout, "Two Wheels Good"
These three albums were the soundtrack of my time in college. I have fond memories of hanging out with my Delta Chi brothers at the chapter house, talking about anything that came to mind, and listening to these albums.

9) Gowan, "Strange Animal"
Some other friends of mine from college were fans of Gowan. I saw him live in the summer of '86 at the Crystal Beach Pavilion.

10) White Zombie, "La Sexorcisto: Devil Music vol. 1"
When I was dating Amy ("Zon") Mundhenk in '93, this is what we listened to as we hit the various haunted houses around Dayton.

11) Pat Metheny, "Secret Story"
I love listening to Metheny's music when I'm driving long distances. I could have picked any of his albums.

12) Jonn Serrie, "And The Stars Go With You"
This artist's music often accompanies planetarium shows. I like to listen to it as I try to fall asleep at night.

Years ago, when I was in college, I fell in with a group of people who had the common interest of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The group was called "Don't Panic!", and were working on their version for the school's low-power AM radio station, WRUB. (It broadcast its signal via power-line communication, using the electrical system in the dormitories.)

Who was in the group? John Feinberg, Larry Fein, Ron Odde, Don Henk, Tim O'Brien, and a few others whose names I can't remember. We all had copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Radio Scripts, and used that book as our script.

The first show of theirs that I was involved in was the final episode, "Fit The Twelfth". They had previously broadcast the preceding eleven parts. In this episode, we crowded into the studio. There was a section where a man was feeding his cat, whom the man calld "The Lord". And several of us were meowing like cats.

The decision was made to re-record an episode (with higher quality), and the fourth episode -- "Fit the Fourth"-- was selected. I played the part of "The BBC Radiophonic Workshop", in which my role was to create sound effects for the program. With the help of my trusty old Minimoog, I came up with sounds for the demolition beams, and the sounds of a spaceship door opening and closing. When it came time to record, we all crowded into the studio, and it went well.

We never recorded the other episodes, and I wonder what happened to the tapes of the show. I wouldn't mind having a copy for posterity. I know I still have the patch diagrams for the sounds.

Last night's Powerball jackpot was $500 million, and there were no winners. Saturday's jackpot is over $700 mllion -- a new record.

The rules for both multi-state lotteries have changed since I posted this article four years ago. ( So let's update this a little, shall we? )

The new job is working out OK, I guess. But it could be better. The project is to write a file-based source control system to manage remote servers. Puppet is package-based, and doesn't give us the necessary granularity to manage items on a file level.

This past week, I've been trying to learn how to write plugins for yum. Yum stands for "yellowdog updater, modified", and is the installation package manager for RedHat, Fedora, and CentOS. It's completely new to me. Plugins are writen in Python, which I've worked with before. But I have no familiarity with the modules I need to import.

My tech lead gives me partial information, and expects me to figure it out on my own. That may be how he learns things, but I need more hand-holding and spoon-feeding than that. The tried-and-true method of RTFM doesn't work for me; most of the documentation is written from the point of view of someone who understands how it works. Man pages are a reference, not a tutorial. And if I look at the code, which often doesn't contain any commentis, it doesn't make sense to me.

Deep down, I know he's not out to mislead me or send me on wild goose chases or snipe hunts, but it certainly feels that way at times. So why am I projecting or superimposing my past experiences onto him? Because it's what I know. ( And I'm reminded of several bad experiences I've had while being on teams. )

So, in the past year or so, I added a few pieces to my collection of musical instruments, collectively known as the "Sonic Arsenal".

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I had been thinking about making some of these kits for the Holiday Bazaar my UU Fellowship is having in early December as a fundraiser. But I would need some metal #10 coffee cans for this project, and permission from the man who originally posted this. (I used to work with him years ago, and have since lost contact with him.) But alas, the page on which I originally found this is no longer there.

I carry one of these kits in my car year-round. It has saved me several times, from giving the lighter to a fellow driver, to the duct tape for emergency repairs. So I will pass on the list of contents so that you can make one of these for yourself.

( What's in the can? )

A lot of companies are touting "the cloud" or "cloud computing" as the Next Big Thing in computing. Or even the Current Big Thing. But they don't take the time to explain what "the cloud" is.

I'm a skeptic and a cynic. I won't trust my precious data to something I don't know, understand, or have confidece in. And so I do research, in order to educate myself, and eventually, educate others

( So, what is 'cloud computing'? )