Author: Carl Page 15 of 151

Visiting old friends in the garden

On October 10, 2021

Brookside Gardens will always be a special place. The gardens are always beautiful and every time I visit, there’s always something different in bloom.

This weekend’s visit was special because the indoor garden building was open. It has been closed last year and every time we went this year it was a little too late to go inside.

We were able to see the cacti, orchids, palms, and other beautiful indoor dwellers. It was like revisiting old friends. Such a peaceful place to sit and breathe deeply and take in everything around you.

I struggle not to take a thousand pictures every time we visit. I limited myself to just a few. Including the obligatory proof that I leave the house at times.

A tale of air travel featuring Denver

By Carl

On October 4, 2021

In Travel

In Denver, everything stayed in bags. Shoes on. Belt on. No full body scanner. Only a metal detector.

So while it was the sanest security screening I’ve ever had, it was a disaster getting to the security screening. The line was extremely long and disorganized. At one point TSA stopped every single traveler and setup a portion of the line where were we assigned to walk two people across.

There was a TSA dog with about 8 agents. We thought at first it was for distancing. But that seemed silly after we had been smashed together for 25 minutes.

Maybe the dog was sniffing for a specific thing. But why send only a portion of the travelers through the two-by-by gauntlet of dog and agents? And why two people at a time? Two random people.

It was the weird. No one there seemed to know what they were doing or why. But once we were through that portion of the wait, TSA hurried us up to the screening areas.

As if we were holding them up, when they stopped the line entirely.

It was the weirdest airport experience I’ve had and completes my the trip with three separate airports having three separate sets of security protocols.

At BWI we left everything in our bags, but shoes and belt came off. Full body scanner with a spot check.

In Salt Lake City, electronics had to come out of bags. Shoes off. Belt on. Full body scanner. No spot check.

In Denver, everything stayed in bags. Shoes on. Belt on. No full body scanner. Only a metal detector.

Zombie theory of the COVID World

By Carl

On October 1, 2021

In Introspection, Observations

In the course of making small talk tonight I mentioned my zombie approach to Covid.

I love a good zombie movie and I look at other people I don’t know as zombies. They’re walking through the world and they may be infected.

Zombies

They’re infected. They know they’re infected and they’re doing their best to infect others. Maskless. Unvaccinated. Going about their lives like nothing has changed.

The Unturned

They might be bitten and waiting to turn while trying to convince themselves they’re ok. Meanwhile surrounding themselves with other who may get hurt when they do.

Survivors

They’re perfectly ok and trying to navigate the infected works and trying not to get bitten. Or put themselves in situations to get bitten.

It’s exhausting. Trying to remain uninfected in a world filled with Zombies, the Unturned and Survivors.

Did you try turning it off and on again?

By Carl

On August 11, 2021

In Tech Tinkering

Today has been a good lesson in complexity. I self-host a number of things. I really enjoy the ability to have things running at home I can play with and not pay a monthly fee to sit idle as I lose time or interest in that particular item.

But tonight, I was reminded how irritating it can be. We had a series of severe thunderstorms and lost power for a moment. And I mean the blink of an eye. My NAS and desktop computer rebooted. The laptops (obviously were ok) but not even the monitors flickered nor did the router notice anything.

But it was enough to knock the NAS and Proxmox server out of whack. I tried to pull up something to listen to on Plex and it dutifully told me there was no media. As it lives on the NAS and the multimedia NFS share was currently unavailable.

So I rebooted the NAS and the proxmox host since I didn’t feel like getting into a troubleshooting session tonight. And that didn’t work.

So I went looking for how to simply reconnect the NFS share I was sure was available from the NAS. And… got lost in a hole of promox forums and people talking around each other’s questions.

I got as far as being able to see which shares the proxmox server knew about, but not how to actually get them reconnected. This is something I would still like to know. I’m sure there’s a pvesm incantation I can chant to make it all work. But I’ve not been able to find it.

Eventually after the third (fourth?) reboot, all was well and my multimedia, backup and other shares are back online and all is well in the world But it’s still an irritating diversion and reminder that I don’t know as much as I think I do. I know just enough to be dangerous and then run to the hive mind when there’s trouble.

That’s a major deduction, Olympic announcers

By Carl

On July 28, 2021

In Observations

I love the Olympics. Every four (or 5) years the world comes together to show off such immense and diverse talents across a mind-blowing array of sports. I love watching.

I saw a man take gold in a Triathlon he was never expected to win. I saw an Australian swimmer upset Katie Ledecky. I saw that same Ledecky out-swim a field of other world class athletes in 1500 meters like she was out for a morning warmup. I saw the world talk about Simone Biles take herself out of the team competition. (Good for you! Take care of yourself. You owe nothing to anyone but yourself.)

I love watching women’s gymnastics possibly the most of all. (But did you see the synchronized diving??? Those British lads were stunning!)

What I could not stand was the commentating for the gymnastics tonight. We saw Simone Biles take herself out of the competition. What we then saw was the rest of the team perform extremely well. Better than Biles had been up to that point. We saw young athletes with the weight of the world and American Media on their shoulders go out and deliver superb performances.

We saw athletes at the height of their sport.

But what we got from NBC was criticism and negativity. Nowhere was there a cheer of excitement or praise for a well-landed tumbling pass nor tricky maneuver. We got moans and gasps of disappointment as every deduction was dutifully called out. Every failure remarked upon.

And when they weren’t criticizing, they were silent. Terry Gannon, Nastia Liukin and Tim Daggett called the night and while I don’t recognize Tim or Terry’s voice. It was a male voice leading the complaints. They were no Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.

All three of them could take a page from Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines. They are calling swimming and doing a much better job. The excitement in their voices. Reminding us all of the amazing feats we were witness to.

I almost turned off the coverage after the gymnastics portion of the night. But the swimming restored my enjoyment of the night and the games.

Maybe it’s harder for the commentators to remember we are witnessing thrilling races head-to-head and stellar individual performances. But when we tune in to a sport for the first time in 2016, I want more than a frustrated sounding announcer to point out every little flaw and failure of these athletes.

Share the wonder. Marvel with us. This is a treat to watch. You have an opportunity to improve our understanding and enjoyment of an event. Or you can remind us how easy it is to fall into the trap of negativity and nitpicking every mistake and misstep. Choose enjoyment.