Author: Tim Jarrett

Back from the pilgrimage

My sister Esta has returned from her pilgrimage. Apparently there were some eventful things: bad connection, super late arrival, cows in the road, “Bagging the Rush,” etc. Good things, too: sounds like there was lots of spiritual growth happenin’. Her leadership experience on this trip makes most of my business experience look tame.

The CIO of Utah gets it

Surprisingly cool find: the weblog of the CIO of Utah, Phil Windley. Seems sharp and generally clueful, as evidenced by Blogs for System Status Communications:

My organization operates hundreds of servers in several data centers and a network that connects over 250 separate locations. One of the problems we have is status communication to various interested parties. Tonight I decided we should have a system status blog that uses categories with separate RSS feeds for various severity levels and systems. For the low price of $40/year we could have:

  • One easy spot to post status announcements, which would be ordered in exactly the right way.
  • A web-based record of status.
  • Multiple RSS feeds of the various systems and severity levels.
  • Easy integration into the personalization feature of our intranet; RSS feeds would show up as gadget boxes for people who want them.
  • The ability to easily subscribe to RSS feeds and digest them in various ways for people with special needs.

How could you not like that?

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Starting to look like a house

Boy, I need to get a new icon for Seattle news stories. Anyway, I was up until 11:30 last night finishing the painting in our great room. This morning the masking tape is coming up and the drop cloths are being folded away, while in the next room our flooring guys are masking the mess that was the old floor. The Broadband Fairy comes later today too. Far too much fun for one day.

Sorry I doubted you, Great-Uncle Landon

My cousin Aubrey’s genealogical research indicates that my great-uncle Landon, who died institutionalized, had patented “a method for transmitting mail by electricity.” When I saw the research a few years ago, I was Intrigued by the description but wasn’t able to find out anything about it. Last time I was back in North Carolina, I told my Dad I wondered if the patent had been issued or just applied for.

Today, with nothing much to do except “supervise” the refinishing and replacing of our floor, I looked up the patent in the PTO’s database, and found it: Number 847076, “Mail-Transportation System,” issued March 12, 1907. No on-line text, but there are six TIFF images of the patent drawings and claims. Pretty cool—he had an idea for an engine that would deliver mail to a series of regular stops, propelling itself by unspecified means along a suspended wire. Not as far fetched as shooting mail through a vast network of underground tubes using compressed air, which actually happened.

Bush: Who said that, again?

Washington Post: A Sound Bite So Good, the President Wishes He Had Said It. The Post catches Bush lifting from Al Gore, of all people, in his famous comment about not allowing the budget to go into deficit “except during war, recession, or national emergency”:

In this space last week, it was noted that President Bush often tells audiences that he promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that he would allow the federal budget to go into deficit in times of war, recession or national emergency, but he never imagined he would “have a trifecta.” Nobody inside or outside the White House, however, had been able to produce evidence that Bush actually said this during the campaign.

Now comes information that the three caveats were uttered before the 2000 campaign — by Bush’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore.

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Take that, debunkers

Salon: Debunking Deep Throat’s debunkers. Hilarious article by Ken Hughes, associated with the University of Virginia Miller Center for Public Affairs project on the Nixon tapes. Hughes takes on a series of arguments made by two recent books that attempt to claim that Deep Throat and Bob Woodward could not have exchanged messages by marked newspapers and balcony flags by actually going to Woodward’s building and trying it out himself. A sample:

“If Deep Throat wanted a meeting — which was rare — there was a different procedure. Each morning, Woodward would check page 20 of his New York Times, delivered to his apartment house before 7 a.m. If a meeting was requested, the page number would be circled and the hands of a clock indicating the time of the rendezvous would appear in a lower corner of the page. Woodward did not know how Deep Throat got to his paper.”

Woodward’s a bit dim, Hughes thought, not for the first time. Deep Throat did not have to get to his specific copy of the Times. He just had to get his hands on a copy of the Times before 7 a.m. and leave it outside Woodward’s door. In American society, such work is often given to children. They are called “paperboys.” Or “paper carriers.” Or “newsies” by those with a taste for archaism.

Hughes had been a paperboy once, long ago. He knew the things that paperboys know.

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Ouch

Brutal marathon painting session last night, after the floor guys left. But at least 99.9% of the walls in the great room are painted. We ran out of paint, upper body strength, and patience at about 10:30 last night, and still need to get the corners of the ceiling with a trim pad and touch up a few spots. All things considered, though, not bad for 4.5 hours and some 25-foot walls. (Cathedral ceiling = hard to paint room.) My arms may talk to me again in a few hours.

The fun surprises of homeownership

We’re having a few floors redone in the house we bought. One of the floors is going to be replaced so that we can level it with a section of existing flooring in the adjacent space. The flooring guy ripped up a few boards at the edge of the flooring to be removed, and discovered that the floor had been “leveled” using a unique subflooring material: newspapers.

The

On the plus side, this dates the addition of the glassed in porch on the back of the house to within a few weeks of the 1984 Grammys. On the minus side, we now understand why that part of the floor was never quite level. 🙂

Silent blogroll addition

Quick shout out to Craig, whom I added to my blogroll yesterday. He’s a former coworker from my first job out of college—a very gifted programmer and occasional Slashdot contributor. Still in the greater DC area, he’s now working at a Maryland startup. And he doesn’t blog as often as he should. 🙂
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I’m a real homeowner now

Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday. I was busy becoming a real homeowner. To wit: painting the two-story vaulted ceiling in our great room. Walls to be done later today, assuming the floor refinishing guys knock off early enough to let the dust settle down (they’ll be sanding this morning).

Apologies to all who tune into this blog for scripting, Mac, music, or other stuff. This is really going to be the Jarrett House North blog for a few more days—at least until our things get here. I start work a week from today and from that point on should be able to think about things other than home improvement.

We’re there

As you may have guessed from the last two items, I’m in Seattle now, joining Lisa who’s been here since our closing on Tuesday. The house is…well, a little empty until our furniture gets here, but we’re starting to get things whipped into shape.

Lisa is currently deadheading some of the approximately one kajillion flowers in the back yard. Feels weird but good being a homeowner—and feels very good having WiFi (of course the base station came with me and not on the moving van), even if it’s another week until broadband. Gotta run to Costco and stock up now.