The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey September 20, 2015

Ch-ch-changes

Computational changes, at least... During the past week, I migrated all of the public sites (including this one) from a machine running Scientific Linux (SL) 6 (an RHEL respin out of CERN), and onto a different box running FreeBSD 10.2. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, SL6 was pretty slow to get updates from Red Hat and rebrand them, and release them to the world. I'd initially gone with SL because CentOS was suffering that problem. Then CentOS was picked up directly by Red Hat, and has become much more responsive. But I was ready for something…

Brian Bilbrey September 13, 2015

Quiet times

It's going to be busy soon, what with Capclave, and LISA15 ... but this weekend was quiet. We went to supper and played Trival Pursuit with Mike and Linda last night. The rest of the time? Chores, a spot of shopping, a bit of telly, a dash of early morning system administration for work. Boring, really. But necessary. Oh, and I'm working on migrating the underpinnings of this site to FreeBSD. But not tonight. * * * DoD reported no new casualties in the last week. Ciao!

Brian Bilbrey September 9, 2015

Mailing list etiquette, updated

I am pleased to report that the Contact Conference mailing list owner got back to me, pleasantly and quickly, apologetically acknowledging the faux pas. One can merely hope that others will pay heed. Mailing list membership should always be recipient-instigated, and double-opt-in. If you're going to Contact, btw, I'm jealous. Just sayin' ...

Brian Bilbrey September 8, 2015

Mailing list etiquette...

7 zillion years ago (Internet time) - aka 2002 - I attended the Contact Conference at NASA Ames. It was wonderful, made sad only by the fact that a part of it was a memorial for Poul Anderson. Niven, Pournelle, Vinge, and many others were in attendance as well. However, enjoying a conference over 13 years ago does not excuse the email I received today: My reply to the list owners went something like this: I've already unsubscribed myself, thanks, but you should consider sending an apology to the rest of the list, and provide clear, simple-to-understand instructions for unsubscribing…

Brian Bilbrey September 6, 2015

Magic Blue

Or some silly color name like that. Anyway, that's the exterior color of Marcia's new car. She decided that hauling around her quilting friends and her quilting stuff in a low-slung, two door convertible was getting less and less convenient. So after driving a few different vehicles, she ended up with a Volvo V60T5 - one of their little sport wagons. Nice lines, I think, and she's happy, which is a good thing. I've spend a number of hours this weekend working on a project for $OFFICE, and got the front yard brown stuff mowed a bit flatter, too. Mostly…