Books ⁽⁴⁶⁾

Brian Bilbrey October 10, 2016

10 Oct 2016

A day late, but a full weekend nearly behind me, so that's a good thing. Not much on the exercise front last week though, sad to report. I had a wonderful time at Capclave this year. Y'all may recall that I missed last year entirely due to food poisoning. This year I met new authors, discovered new works, and really enjoyed myself. The Guests of Honor were Sara Beth Durst and Tim Powers - talented writers both, expressive about their craft and the passion they have for their books. Lovely, lovely weekend. And as we were asked in at least…

Brian Bilbrey September 25, 2016

25 Sept 2016

By the calendar, it's Fall. By my reckoning, we're really close. I count "Fall" as the first morning below 50° F. Close, today, at 52°. A busy work week, productive but long after several "short" weeks under my belt. I also went to the office yesterday to do some work that required off-business hours AND onsite for "just in case the SAN firmware update fails." All went smoothly this time, thank FSM. The big events of the weekend were yard work ones. I used the hedge trimmers and the electric chainsaw to clear out the front garden beds and rid…

Brian Bilbrey June 12, 2016

12 June 2016

My heart goes out to all affected by the terrorist attack in Orlando. * * * Four days ago it was 47° F on my drive in, before 7 AM. This morning before 7 AM, it was 30 degrees warmer than that, and consequently a lot warmer today. Still, I got a few chores done. There wasn't a need to mow this weekend - we'd had no rain in the last week, and so the lawns pretty much stopped growing. I got some weeding done in the garden beds. And today I got the front automated watering setup working, and…

Brian Bilbrey April 10, 2016

10 April 2016

A good week, overall. I was on-call for the first half, which is tiring, even when nothing happens. Yep, I sleep a lot more lightly when responsibility requires it. But one week out of every few weeks ain't bad - and our monitoring and remediation are in a state of continuous improvement, so we get far fewer alerts and calls than in years past. All to the good. I also executed terminal retirement on a stack of former virtualization hosts. Spin down, uncable from last network connections and from the SAN, spin up again with a DBAN disk in the…

Brian Bilbrey March 13, 2016

13 March 2016

Friday the thirteenth falls on Daylight Stealing Time Sunday this month. Yay? * * * A good week and a productive weekend. Yesterday I got the spring fertilizer down on the lawn (in time for today's rain-in), and got the garden beds cleared of all the fall and over-winter cruft. I still have to turn over and amend the beds, but a start is a start, so I'll take it. I also did some aggressive pruning of the crepe myrtles in the front of the house, and weeded some of the beds there, too. Today? Well, I'm a bit sore…