Thoughts on jtalbot/blog

Auto Supremacists

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 22:30:00 -0600

Car marketing teams try to come up with model names that make people think the best things about their cars. They don’t want you to think they are just good; they want you to think they are the best. It’s always about the superlatives and being superior.

As I ride my bicycle around town, I’ve started noticing these feelings of superiority migrating from the cars to the drivers of the cars, or at least there are drivers out there that believe they are superior, simply based on the car they are driving.

'Tis the season for data recovery

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:30:00 -0600

I was updating some ID3 tags on a few songs today when I got an error saving the new tag. The mounted file system to my music share had become read-only. I checked the exports file on my server. It was read-write. I checked my fstab. Everything looked good. I checked the file system itself on the server. Trouble. One of my drives had failed moments earlier. Luckily, the array was configured for RAID-5, so no data was lost, but it’s still going to take a long time to rebuild it.

Food Critic

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:30:00 -0600

I moved from the Seattle area to Utah County about four years ago. One of the hardest parts of that move was the extreme lack of good food in Utah. I grew up in Utah and always figured we had good food here, but just in the expensive restaurants. I was wrong. There is no substitute for seafood only a few hours old, and it will never be possible to have that kind of freshness in Utah. One coping method I’ve found is to go on vacations, with the goal of eating great food being high on the list of reasons for choosing a location.

Red line

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:30:00 -0600

After a short swim today, I decided to take a ride up Provo Canyon. My previous rides up Big Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork Canyon were so much fun that I decided it would be a nice relaxing ride to help me get my mind off all the stress at work. It was not at all like the other two rides, nor was it relaxing.

For one thing, Provo Canyon is a freeway. I guess that didn’t really cross my mind until I typed it just now, but it’s true. Provo Canyon is a multi-lane divided highway. The ride up the canyon was a lot of fun. I had a great tail-wind pushing me up. In some spots I was able to hit the “red line” a few times (75 mph – indicated). I imagine I was only going about 65 mph, but that’s a topic for a different day. It was a great ride up the canyon.

Motorcycle Skills Test

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Several months ago I started the process of getting my motorcycle endorsement to my Utah driver license. The written test was a piece of cake, but everyone warned me about how hard the skills test would be. Luckily, they don’t let you take your skills test until several months after you take your written test. I think this is mostly due to the number of people waiting to take the skills test. Today was the day I was scheduled to take the skills test.

Alpine Loop

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:30:00 -0600

I took my scooter in for its first oil change a few weeks ago. The Scooter Lounge was having some sort of Scooter Rally where a large group of scooter enthusiasts all rode up American Fork Canyon together. They invited me to go, and bring Charmaine, but I wasn’t sure how well it would handle the canyon with both of us on it. I figured the scooter was made for two people, but probably two Taiwanese people. I had just ridden up and over Sun Crest and up Big Cottonwood Canyon the week before that. It slowed itself down to 35 on the road over Sun Crest… and that was by myself. So I declined.

Motorcycle wave

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Riding a motorcycle is like joining a fraternity of some sort. If you haven’t ever ridden one on the roads, you may not have noticed. When motorcycles pass each other in opposite directions, they usually give each other what I’m calling the motorcycle wave… each rider drops his left hand to wave to the other below the handlebars.

I realize that my scooter is far from being a motorcycle, but it doesn’t look like a typical scooter, either. I guess the larger wheels make it look somewhat like a motorcycle to motorcycle riders approaching from the front, because I get the motorcycle wave fairly often. It’s such a simple thing, but it adds a lot to the experience. I’m more and more convinced that I’m going to end up with a real motorcycle at some point.

Motorcycle Learner Permit

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:30:00 -0600

Silly me. I thought I could head down to the local DMV office during lunch and get my motorcycle endorsement. I completely underestimated the number of lines and the speed at which they would move. As my 1:00 meeting got closer and closer I realized I wouldn’t finish the tests by the time I had to leave. At 12:50, I was about to leave, having done nothing but wait in lines for 90 minutes. It was pretty disappointing. But then I checked my email and saw a message from my boss telling me not to worry about the 1:00 meeting. He had rescheduled it to 3:30 to allow me to stay there and take the test (so I wouldn’t have to re-wait those 90 minutes some other day).

Scooter

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 22:30:00 -0600

After a year of consideration and on-and-off research, I finally found a way to stop driving the Nissan Armada around. The point of not driving it is to save the miles/wear-and-tear for the real reasons we bought it… to drive large groups of people around and to haul large items around. It was never meant to be a commuter car. We bought it when we lived in the Seattle area and we never drove it to work. It sat parked in our garage most of the time. We brought it out when people came to visit us, when we took road trips (what a great car for road trips), and we hoped to buy a boat and/or other toys that we would haul around behind it… but then we moved to Utah. Gone are the days of carpooling to work in the morning.

Ubuntu Server

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:30:00 -0600

I finally upgraded my Linux firewall at home. I had a hard drive warn me that it was going to die soon (S.M.A.R.T. saved my bacon), so I decided the time had come to overhaul the system.

I recently switched from Windows XP to Kubuntu at work, so I thought I’d use Ubuntu at home as well. In the process of figuring out what packages I wanted on my server, I played with various ubuntu derivatives. I wanted to keep it light weight, so I decided to go without any GUI or with the Xfce included with Xubuntu over VNC. In the end I went with Ubuntu server with no GUI at all.

Comment Spam

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 22:30:00 -0600

It’s funny. I had pretty much abandoned this blog a long time ago, but here I am contemplating actually blogging (my last false-start probably shouldn’t count). Why? Because the WordPress php script notified me of some comment spam that was recently added to an old post. That was sort of amazing to me, since I have never advertised my site anywhere. There has never been a link to it from my homepage (there isn’t even a homepage right now). In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a link to my blog from anywhere in the world. But somehow the spiders and spammers found it and started adding comment spam. That’s pretty interesting to me. Why not until now?

Personal Information Loss

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 22:30:00 -0600

Your personal information is not yours at all. Companies collect it, buy it, sell it, archive it, mine it, crunch it, and even lose track of it. Many companies have recently disclosed that they have lost track of the information they collected on their employees and customers.

Citigroup has begun the process of notifying 3.9 million of its current and former customers that information about their accounts (names, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, account numbers, account balances, transaction histories, etc.) has been lost. Apparently, this data was contained on backup media that was being shipped to an alternate location. Citibank shipped the backup tapes on May 2nd, but didn’t realize they were missing until May 24th.

Clearly Not a Copyright Violation

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:30:00 -0600

I like movies. I buy the movies I enjoy on DVD, so that I can watch them with my friends. Sometimes I expose my friends to movies that they really enjoy, but probably would not have seen if it wasn’t for my recommendation (The Spanish Prisoner). Other times they introduce movies to me that I wouldn’t have seen if it wasn’t for their recommendation. We give our honest assessment of each movie when asked.

Shaved Aggression

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 22:30:00 -0600

When you shave your head, you become more aggressive.

In high school, I was on the swim team. In preparation for the state championships, we would follow the tradition of many swim teams across the world and shave our bodies. The theory behind it was to cut down on drag. More hair meant more drag. More drag meant more effort required to swim fast. So we shaved our arms, legs, chests, backs, and even our heads in the name of eliminating drag. Freshly shorn, we swam to victory. Looking back, I think we gained as much from the feeling of being shaved as we did from having less drag.

and so it begins

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:30:00 -0600

how do you start a blog? this is the question that’s been on my mind ever since i installed wordpress and created my about page. actually, i wrote a first entry at that time, but i was messing around deleting users and found out that deleting a user also deletes all the posts of that user (too bad they didn’t warn me of that when i clicked on delete). but it wasn’t anything worth worrying about losing.