Day: 16 May 2005

Travel Day

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I don’t have many of them any more, but today was a travel day (sort of). I used to consider a “travel day” a day where most of what I did was travel from one place to another. Now that I don’t travel as much (and am much happier for it) I don’t have as many as I used to. Dam, the last time I was on a plane was September. Most of my travel is train travel now a days.

I am at the hotel now. I got hear relatively early. Normally when I stay here (my companies other office) I am usually at work late. Today was different. I needed to be here for 2 days while work went on during normal business hours. That means I got to keep normal hours, well sort of.

I learned that getting to the hotel at 6PM means dinner at 7, 7:30. After checking mail, making calls, etc, I am bored and it is only 8:30. So I sit here on the bed with my ipod listening to toons, while I write on my powerbook. I will try to goto bed early, but I don’t know if that will happen.

I had the surf and turf at the hotel restaurant again tonight. I had it the last time I was up with Jayson. it was good, and only $3 more than the normal steak I get. I had a drink and felt nice and relaxed. I didn’t have more, since it was really early and I didn’t want to be tired and out of it the rest of the night. that was just in case I decide to be productive later.

Don’t Mess With The Guys Holding The Gun’s

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I was in Penn station today waiting for my train. Just an ordinary day. Until I hear commotion behind me. Some dude (homeless or just mental) is arguing with a cop or national guardsman at the police booth. The place where the cops hang out giving out help. There were EMT’s there so I assume someone called them about this guy. He didn’t seem to want to do what the cops wanted. The next thing I know there are several cops and military guys around this dude. He still didn’t want to do whatever the cops were asking of him. The next thing you know the guy was yelling at the cops, and what looked like he was acting erratic and crazy. The next thing you know the guy was being “detained”. That means he was put up against a wall (forcefully since he didn’t want to go) then the EMT’s were looking at him.

It was a bit of excitement for my morning. All I have to say is I don’t know how crazy, drugged or otherwise out of it to not listen to like a half a dozen guys with semi-automatic machine guns standing around me. That situation (to me) clearly states get on your knees, and put your hands behind your head while you say in as many languages you know I will do whatever you guys want.

I give the cops and troops credit. They got a bit rough with the guy, but I think it was well warranted.

The next thing I know the train I was going on got called, the line moved and I was away from the craziness. The rest of the day was much less exciting than the first hour or so.

Oh, if someone thinks they know what incident I am referring to, and in some future date they think that this guy will sue I have one thing to say. I am no use to you. I TOTALLY think the cops were in the right here, and didn’t use any unnecessary force. That and I have not so great vision and was a few feet away! I mention this story as a nice anecdote about what not to do when the police ask you to do something.

Storage

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Jayson is pushing an online disk storage system. He is thinking NAS. This will solve a problem we have with one nights tape backup taking so long is that it gets in the way with SQL server db backups for the next day. We just don’t have enough time in the day to run the amount of tape we need. if we backup to a disk array and then to tape weekly we can increase restore time, and backup times. from an engineering standpoint it is a great idea.

We toyed with it last year, but never got to budgeting for it. Now we think we really need it. I have to see if we can get the money for it. Jay is going to do some more research for me and then we will come up with options.