We have a cool spider that's been hangin just outside our back door, building webs in the early evening near the light by the door. It tears them down by the time I get in the morning (around dawn). And usually has it back up by 7 or 7:30pm. I can't get a good picture of it, but I have some bad ones. Either the light is too bright (it's only a foot or so away from the light), ot the focus is off.
The last two are very large (unintentionally) so I'll just link to them:
http://danisaacs.com/images/new/incoming/030826/120_2083.jpg
http://danisaacs.com/images/new/incoming/030826/120_2084.jpg
From what I've been reading, it seems to be an orb weaving spider. From the pictures, you can see the legs have hair and are banded. There is a shape on it's abdomen that i can't really describe. Not a Recluse (since it's hanging where it is) and not an imature female Black Widow, as the shape is clearly not the hourglass they have. I think it's most noticable in the first picture.
I haven't seen it in any of the pictures online, but there are hundreds of orb weavers. I hope it's not a hazardous one, as I quite like watching it, and I dig the benefits of having somethign that eats insects near an entrance.
[update] Kristi found some good pictures online that are certainly the same type of spider we have. Here and Here are clearer shots of what the abdomen looks like.
Had my second Fantasy Draft a few minutes ago. This is the work league. Draft went very fast, 40 mintues and we were done. I had the #2 draft position.
#1 LeDanny Tomlinson
#2 Dante Culpepper
#3 Eric Moulds
#4 Keyshawn Johnson
#5 Jerry Porter
#6 Mike Vick
#7 Kevan Barlow
#8 Warrick Dunn
#9 New England DEF
#10 Ike Hilliard
#11 Doug Jolley
#12 Corey Bradford
#13 Jeff Wilkins
#14 Robert Ferguson
#15 Thomas Jones
I like it all. I waited on a second RB, but my draft position made it tough to get a good one. The first round was all RB except for McNabb. So pickings were slim. Stocked up on WR. Should be able to play matchups week to week or put a trade together for a #2 RB.
As I promised last week, I've taken some pictures of the Dell PowerEdge 2650 we bought @ work to be the new home of MS Exchange 2000. I'd take the time to explain what each picture was of, but honestly, if you need to be told, you wouldn't care in the first place. :)
I'm in 2 leagues this year. One with some buddies, and one at work. Had the Buddies league draft tonight. I'm not joyous about it, but should be OK. I had the 9th draft position.
#1. Marvin Harrison, WR Indianapolis Colts
#2. Charlie Garner, RB oakland Raiders
#3. Antowain Smith, RB New England Patriots
#4. Koren Robinson, WR Seattle Seahawks
#5. Brett Favre, QB Green Bay Packers
#6. Joey Galloway, WR Dallas Cowboys
#7. Doug Jolley, TE Oakland Raiders
#8. John Carney, K New Orleans
#9. Drew Bledsoe, QB Buffalo Bills
#10 New England, DEF
#11 Josh Reed, WR Buffalo Bills
#12 Kevin Faulk, RB New England Patriots
#13 Kelly Holcomb, QB Cleveland Browns
#14 New York Giants, DEF
#15 Jason Hanson, K Detroit Lions
Just missed out on Jerry Porter in the 4th round. But other than that, I'm pleased. Good QBs, good WRs. Not crazy about my RB, but there just weren't too many around.
As any of you that pay attention to my image archive know, I upload new pics to /image/new/incoming/yrmody. Where yrmody is the year,month,day the pictures were pulled off the camera. So today's would be 030820. And as long as I don't live until I'm 125 years old, that scheme should work just fine.
But I also have more meaningful directories. Dog pictures go to /images/pets/dogs/. So a time comes when the yrmody folder is a generation behind, and those pictures need moved to the myriad of /family and /friends and /events subdirs where they have a nicer contextual home.
So when that time comes, Kristi types up a list of which pics need to go where. And I move or copy them by hand. cp 117_1756* ../../../people/family/trevor Now when there are only 20 or so things to move, it's not a big deal. But I have over 200 pics in 080309. So it's far too much to do manually. And still have time to goof around.
Having spent a lot of time around a few code whores, I knew that there must be a way to script this. So I started thinking about it. Kristi already writes a list of files, I'd just need her to write that list in a given way.
Then my script would need to read the first line of that list and copy it to the destination I tell it. Then read in the second line, and copy it, and so on.
It sounds easy. And I'm sure it is. If you aren't a Code Moron. Like me.
So I google a bit. Don't find anything terribly useful. So I grab my Programming Perl 2nd Edition off the shelf. I wipe the dust off. And I turn to page 32.
And an hour later, I may be ready to start playing with some code. Being lazy has never been so much work.
Got a new toy @ work today. A new server to be the new home of MS Exchange. It's a Dell PowerEdge 2650. Havent' turned it on yet, but have a few tid bits to share.
First, the rails are not as adaptable as the old rails. They don't extend as far, and are about 1mm too short to fit in the racks that have available space. They only fit in the Dell or Blackbox racks. Which are all full. EOL'ing a machine Wednesday on one of the BlackBox racks, so I have to wait until then and put this in it's place. Sucks to wait, but I've no shortage of other shit to do.
Second, the internals are way different. No longer are there SCSI ribbons connecting the backplane to the on-board SCSI or PCI RAID card, as was the case for the 2450 and 2550. If you have any of those, you know those ribbons were a pain to deal with. Instead, there is a plug at the base of the backplane which plugs directly into the edge of the MoBo. This concerns me a bit, as I like to run the system disks off of the PCI RAID card. But I'm limited to the DC3/I on-board RAID controller. Not a killer, but still a single point of failure. Seems silly to not at least have an OPTION to use a different controller.
Third, things are layed out wonderfully. There isn't a tight space to be found. The fattest of fingers could pull anything out. A tremendous improvement over the 2450 layouts.
Fourth, I hate the cover. The 2450 and 2550 both had a divided lid that folded out towards the sides. This wasn't a problem area. But now it's a single plate that is thumbscrewed from the front, must be slid back an inch, and lifted off. Gives better access, yes. But with the improvements to the MoBo layout, it wasn't needed. I dont' expect it to be as easy to slide out of the rack and get access to the innards as the older 2x50s. Maybe I'll grow to love it.
The front panel looks cool. New drive bays are much better for airflow. Has an LED panel, but since I haven't plugged it in yet, I don't know what it does. Can't see it in the photos on Dell's site, since they have the cover on. The rear panel is also much better logistically. KVM are all right next to each other. NICs are in the middle, as are the serial ports. Very clearly marked, and accessable.
I'll bring the camera in tomorrow and get some shots of the MoBo. It's worth looking at. Well, Rick might dig it. Not sure anyone else reading would care. :)
I've been doing some coding lately. My shell scripting has fallen a bit behind where it needs be. So I'm making a concerted effort to get a groove back.
One of the things that I've hated about Windows (and *nix) is that none of them have BBEdit. I cut my teeth on BBEdit, and I've never seen a text editor that comes close to touching it.
And I still haven't. But I found a good free win32 text-editor that I've grown accustomed to. Omnipad. It has a lot of great features for real code whores, and is still simple enough that I can use it. If you're stuck coding on a Windows box, I suggest installing it and giving it a run. It's nice to have an editor that prints something close to what it shows on the screen.
I also have Visual Slick Edit. But it's too much for the wsh scripts I'm writing. Not meant for the casual whore.
And I could fire up the G3 and just use BBedit... Ugh. Why didn't I think of that before?
I know I've said this too many times already, but having spent most of the day watching my non-tivo TV only re-enforces my conviction that Tivo so greatly improves telivision that it's painful to watch without it. I fyou don't have one, get one. Really. You can't fathom the difference it makes.
As most of you who know me (and the few you only know me based on this blog) I have an unhealthy interest in politics. It started out young, growing up in a Union family, in a Union town. As the class clown, I had to be more aware of how authority worked than most. The dynamics of power, particularly its excercise, is a never-ending source of entertainment.
As anyone who follows politics, or has paid attention to History, knows, power corrupts. Offices held are usually held for selfish reasons. Intentions may at first be noble. And the noble purpose may from time-to-time manifest. But whenever the Office can be used for personal gain, it will be. Pending of course, the ability to get away with it. There is no shortage of examples that demonstrate this. I'd be insulting you to present any, so obvious is this fact.
15 years of paying attention has made me very, very suspicious of the motives of Offices of authority. I trust more than a few of my teachers would tell you I started out that way. Whatever the origins, I just don't trust blindly the integrity of others. It takes bit more effort than being a sucker, but it's worked for me.
So when I see in my HOA newsletter that the President of the HOA had a home-improvement proposal denied by the Architectual Review Committee, and appealed to the Board of Directors (of which she is the President)...well, my bullshit radar went off the scales. So I asked about it. We have a new website for the HOA, and they have an Online Forum. What better place, eh?
So I ask for the details surrounding this curious incident. I'm genuinely concerned that the person most responsible for dealing with nearly $200,000 of my community's money may not be operating on the up-and-up.
Another board member (recently a former one, as his term was up, and he's moving), responded. He explained as much as he could about what happened. He said the management company had incorrectly told her that she only needed the signatures of the neighbors living on either side of her, when in fact she needed the signatures of every adjacent property owner (including the one living behind her.) Now, since the improvement in question was one to the front of her home, it's not unreasonable to think the person living behind you shouldn't give a fuck about what you do tot he front of your house. But the rules say they need to be told, and have to sign the sheet you give to the ARC to review. Silly, perhaps, but a rule nonetheless.
So alledgedly thinking she didn't need person X's signature, she presented her materials to the ARC for review. They denied her request on the grounds that she needed Person X to sign, and since she was the HOA Pres, they wanted to make sure everything was done by the book. The board thought because she initially told the wrong thing, she should win her appeal. And she didn't vote, 'cause that would be an obvious conflict of interest.
Now, at this point, I imagine what I would do. Would I:
A. Go see my neighbor behind me and have them look over my plans and sign acknowledging they've been made aware of my intentions?
or
B. Appeal to the Board, which is made up of me, and people I've known for a few years to overrule the ARC's decision.
Hmm. If I thought the rules should be followed, I'd do A. Even if I didn't, I'd know that I held a position of authority, and could really expect to enforce the rules if I was going to ignore them when it was convenient. I suspect most people would understand the PR aspects, and just play by the rules.
So I mention this in response to the fmr. Board member. "Why did she appeal, instead of just doing as the ARC instructed?" I went on to present some hypothetical circumstances: Does Person X not live there (rental), and is impossible to reach? Does she have a fued or something with Person X (those things happen)? IMO, Person X's opinion isn't that important. I'd find most explanations acceptable.
But none was provide (yet, anyway). Instead, I was accused by another board member, and moderator of the forum, of gossiping. And told that gossip was not accepted in that forum. Now, I hardly think seeking clarification concerning the behavior of a steward of my money towards rules she is suppossed to be adjudicating constitutes gossip. I think it better represents accountability.
But instead of argue about semantics and desconstructing false assertions, as I usually do, I relented. My point had been made, so I made it once more, and said I'd discuss it no further there if they didn't feel it was appropriate. These being people I have to deal with in real life, such arguments bear little fruit. Better served to waste that energy on Brian, who needs a distraction.
But it occurs to me that it probably didn't occur to many to be suspicious of that single line in the HOA newsletter. And fewer still would even have taken the time to make a further inquiry. That I did makes me an asshole, I guess. But honestly, I wish more people were assholes in that regard. We probably wouldn't have a national debt.