The Quail Lodge Motorcycle Gathering

May 6, 2012 in General, Places | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

This weekend Roberta and I got up at 4:30 in the morning to volunteer at the Quail Lodge Motorcycle Gathering in Carmel Valley. It’s an annual event where a lot of the “wealthy” bring their toys to show off. There were 1 of 54 made Harley Davidsons, 1910′s and 1920′s in abundance. It was a good morning. We had sunshine and cool weather warming up into the 70′s by noon.

This was a 1942 Harley Davidson kitted out for service in WWII. The picture is of the owners father riding a similar bike during the war.

Here’s a beautiful old Indian motorcycle. Indians were the theme this year.

There is a group called BUB Spead Trials that will let you see how fast you can take your motorcycle on the Bonneville Salt flats. 5 mile spin up, 1 mile trap, 5 mile spin down. Oh how fun that’s going to be! Anyhow, I saw a gentleman with a Bub shirt on so Roberta and I walked up and I said, “Hey! Are you associated with Bub? Or just went there at some point?”. His response with a funny look. “Uhm, I am Bub.” (-; That’s him in the light blue shirt and straw type hat. FYI. TheS-BF 7, if I overheard correctly, hit 367 MPH last year.

Here is a replica of the Motorcycle used in the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.”

This is a strange bike, it’s made by a company called MotoMorph. I guess there are only 3 of these currently in existance.

And for those of you that want nothing but MORE and MORE horsepower here is a 502 Cubic Inch Big Block monstrosity called the “Stud Hoss”

We had a pretty good time. I think next year I might want to actually do the event ride and participate, not that volunteering wasn’t fun. But, it would be fun to ride with some of these bikes.

Rendezvous with Destiny

April 25, 2012 in Friends, General | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Back before dirt when I was in the Army I decided to stop drinking beer and lazing about long enough to go through Air Assault school. 10 Days of yelling, running, learning, and jumping from helicopters. It was a wild experience.

Well, today I got some back! I met a Project Manager from one of our vendors that mentioned his time in JSOG (picture special ops) and I asked him if he was airborne and/or air assault trained and where. He  mentioned he had been to Ft. Campbell Kentucky (my old base) and that’s where he got his wings. Well, at that moment revenge was mine!

There is a tradition in the military that after you complete a fairly difficult (not too if I made it) school you not only got your wings you got a coin, a challenge coin.

Air Assault Pin

Air Assault Pin

One interesting item about Air Assault School was that (at least when I went through) they expected a greater than 50% failure/drop out rate. You wanted out, you left, done, gone, that’s if you haven’t f’d up and been kicked out. After you graduated and got pinned one of the traditions was to pick up a Challenge coin. I’ll have to take a picture of my coin and put it up, I can’t find my version any more. Well, more than 20 years after I earned my coin I pulled it out of my wallet and showed it to Dan, who I will admit, did Not have his on him. Now he owes me a beer! Hah!

BEEEEEER! And what’s better than beer? Free Beer!

And to make it even tastier it’s being bought by an ex Army Pathfinder! This is  a good day. (-: Time to pay up boy wonder!

Taking the girls see Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg

April 2, 2012 in General | Leave a comment

On Saturday Roberta was reading the paper and saw an article that Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg was going to be playing at the Sunset Center just over the hill in Carmel the very next day, Sunday afternoon. Now, I know most of my friends and family are probably saying “who?”. 

Nadja is a graduate of the Julliard School of Music, winner of X, Y, Z, head soloist at this symphony and that concert hall, etc. Here’s the link to her BIO. Just take my word for it, when it comes to violin playing, she’s one of the top classical violinists out there. She’s also been featured in a documentary call Speaking in Strings that discusses her troubled life, attempted suicide, and nearly career ending accident where she chopped off the tip of her little finger.

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg

Anyhow. She’s always been on my list of “I really want to see some day” along with Itzhak Perlman, Eileen Ivers, Hilary Hahn,  and the already seen Yoyo Ma ,whom Sis and I saw at the Benaroyal Hall in Seattle during his Silk Road tour and where we actually sat on the stage with the musicians.  

 Anyhow. Needless to say I really wanted to go see her play. Well, Roberta made some calls and we got 3 tickets. Molly, Nora, and I went and had a lot of fun. We sat 5 rows from the stage. The Sunset Center is a small venue and allowed us to be right up close. She is definitely worth going and seeing if you ever get the chance.

So, how do you like that dicotomy? One day we’re taking the girls out to shoot things and the next we’re taking them to outstanding classical music. (-:

 

 

Flying our Redneck Flag

March 19, 2012 in Friends, General | 1 comment

Well,

As anyone following me on facebook already knows. Roberta and I decided on a cold and rainly Saturday to take Molly and Nora up to the gunrange in Watsonville and teach them how to shoot.

For their first time shooting they did pretty good. We rented a .22 caliber revolver and a a .22 caliber semi-automatic. Roberta taught Nora the revolver and Molly and I used the semi-auto. After a box of 50 rounds each we swapped kiddo’s.

From 2012 Adventures
From 2012 Adventures

An interesting thing happened. Molly did pretty good, consitently hitting the target and getting comfortable with shooting. She had a lot of fun. Nora on the other hand was flat out scary good. In the picture above you can see she’s shooting at an evil clown. (-:  We started with typical round targets but got the clown targets so they could have some fun.

Anyhow, Nora’s first 4 rounds went into the top button, all in the circle, second 4 rounds in the nose, all 4 on target. It took her 2 shots to take out the right eye and 3 for her to take out the left eye. One more round each into the other two buttons, 3 in the right hand (one miss just below), 3 in the left hand, and one to break the axe handle, low center on the stick. All this on her first time shooting and at about 20 feet away (as you can see in the picture). Like I said, scary good.

 If anyone needs proof the evil clown and her other targets are now mounted proudly on her bedroom wall. I think we’ve created a monster. She wants to know when we can go back.

We also let them shoot the .40 Caliber Smith and Wesson that we bought Roberta for Valentines day when we lived up in Alaska. We put a single round in the magazine and let them shoot at a round target. They each did this a couple of times but preffered the .22′s. A lot less kick and a lot less noisy. But we wanted them to shoot it at least a couple of times so they would at least know they could.

Not a bad Valentines present if you're living in Alaska

Well, it’s been awhile

March 11, 2012 in Cancer, General | 2 comments

I’ve had a couple of comments in the “WTF are you?” category. And it has been quite a while since I’ve done much with this web site. Believe it or not this web site has been around almost 10 years now. It’s been abused, ignored, updated, moved, and it just keeps going.

I can’t post any pictures right now since the cable to our old Sony camera has run away to the hinterlands some where. Which is a tad frustrating. I know, I know, we need a new camera, but there is always something that comes along that takes precedence.  On the upside, we’re still running around doing things, we’re just not documenting it very well.

So, what’s going on with us? All three girls are now teenagers with all the teen drama surrounding that. Molly and Nora are following Megan’s footsteps and attempting to fail every class they have. They just don’t fit the 1950′s mentality of Pacific Grove Middle school. Megan, since she’s been in independent study has been doing great. She got lazy so she won’t graduate a year early, but she’s on track to be done ahead of time. And since she basically started independent study almost a year behind because of all the classes she failed at the regular school means she’s doing pretty good.

Roberta has survived 2 1/2 years so far and is still kicking. She has a lot of pain at times but seems to be handling things okay. She’s still working part time at SeaHarvest and getting out and about.

We’re looking to take the trailer out soon. Probably up to the Redwoods above Santa Cruz. It’s almost totally done and I’ve ordered a hitch for the Caliber. I still need to repack the wheel bearings, put new tires on it and tie down the propane tank. Most of the rest is small cosmetic items. At some point I’ll put a water tank back in it and make the water work, but for now it’s not needed. We get quite a few comments about it from people walking by and wanting to see the inside. I guess a 1958 Shasta Corvette trailer is kind of a rare item. When I get the camera fixed or a new one I’ll post some pictures of it.

As for work. Well,on the up side I’m on a contract that’s good until February of next year. I’m now officially a cable monkey, oh I mean Systems Installation Specialist. Even though I still do all of the work as an HPC Systems Engineer and nothing else really changed. It’s just the way the contracts work. Roberta and I keep talking about moving on. We’re just watching for that right job in the right location. It’s hard to be serious about moving on when we live in such a pretty area. Expensive as hell, but pretty. One good thing about working where I work is that I do get experience on a lot of different odds and ends. I’ve been teaching myself VMware installation, configuration, tuning, etc. I doubt I’ll ever put it on my resume, because then someone might want me to actually work on the stuff, but it’s been interesting none the less.

What else? Living large on the California coast. Tourist season is starting already. Which means all the fairs, MotoGP, car shows, Bach Festival, etc etc, is coming soon.

Resume’s and experiences

January 31, 2012 in Computers, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | 8 comments

We had a person start work where I am and I was forwarded this persons resume. 8 pages without cover letter. 8 pages? Really? I have always kept mine down to under 2 pages by deleting 80% of my experiences and training. If it’s not relevant or current why have it?

I’m one of the most fortunate underachievers in the history of mankind. I’m a college drop out with a bit of military experience. So why am I so fortunate? Here’s a brief list of the toys I’ve been allowed to build, maintain, and play with.

Arctic Region Supercomputing Center. ARSC

  • Icehawk -  117 fastest computer in the world and my first HPC toy.
  • Iceflyer – The first customer installed IBM p690 system in the country
  • Iceberg – 56th Fastest in the world when built and the biggest IBM p655 system ever built from scratch at a customer location. Also biggest Federation system ever built at the time we did it.

Naval Oceanographic Office. NAVO

  • Habu – another IBM SP system. Started at 7th fastest in the world but was down to mid 300′s when I began working on it.
  • Marcellus – IBM p690 system Started 11th fastest before I worked on it.
  • Kraken – IBM p655 system. 9th fastest in the world. Kept this baby up as Katrina went over our heads.

University of Edinburgh Advanced Computing Facility – EPCC

  • HECToR -  High End Computing Terascale Resource.  Second fastest computer in Europe when I started.  17th Fastest in the world.
  • HECToR – X2 Vector system. Only publicly accessible X2 in the world.

Temp assignment – Oak Ridge National Labs – ORNL

  • Jaguar – 7th fastest in the world at the time I worked on it. Updated to the fastest in the world.

FNMOC – Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center

  • Classified and unclassified clusters used for weather modelling and oceanographic modelling.

So, I’ve been pretty darn lucky. I always wanted to play with computers and i’ve been allowed to play with some really neat ones.  Told ya I was lucky.

Only in California

January 23, 2012 in Climate Change, General | Tags: , , , | 1 comment

Well, it seems the City of Monterey is going to change out roughly 2000 street lights for more energy efficient LED lights, replacing the sodium vapor lights currently used. They are doing this to ” allow Monterey to comply with a state law requiring the reduction of municipal greenhouse gas emissions“.

Article in the Monterey Herald.

So, a few items of note that I find interesting.

The total cost of this is going to be $934,000 for just over 1900 LED lights, or roughly $490 per light. The city is using a 10 year low interest loan to pay for this and will pay the loan back with the money they are “saving” in lower energy bills.  Hmmm…

$490 per light vs $50 (total guess) or so for a High Pressure Sodium Bulb.

FYI. From what I can figure out the Mean Time Between Failures of a LED light like this is quoted at roughly 50,000 hours.  Now that sounds like a lot, but remember there are 1900 LED lights with that average. So,

50,000 hours / 1900 lights / 8 hours on a day(rough average over the year) = 3.28 days between average failures.

This means the City of Monterey will be replacing one of these $490 LED lights every 3 1/4 days, or 2 per week.

$490 x 2 per week x 52 weeks per year = $50,960 per year in replacement costs. Let’s be nice and say the replacement cost is 1/2 that of initial installation (I’m being nice). So this makes it $25,000 or so in just bulb replacement cost over the course of an average year.  Or another way to look at it $250,000 in replacement costs on top of the $934,000 in initial installation costs plus interest over the course of the loan.

I’m hoping that I really screwed something up here. Otherwise this whole California attitude of “save us from Global Warming” by bankrupting us idea just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. At least the article isn’t claiming they are doing this to save money. It actually looks like a money loser even when you figure the savings of more energy efficient LED’s.

If anyone has better figures for LED replacement cost vs Sodium Vapor (I don’t know the cost of the bulbs for comparison), and/or the difference in MTBF for both I’d be interested to hear. On the surface this whole project looks like more “Green” bullshit to spend money that doesn’t do anything but let politicians pat themselves on the back say what a wonderful job they are doing saving the world.

 

 

Western Scrub Jay not a Blue Jay

January 10, 2012 in General | Tags: , , , , | 4 comments

The things you learn by chance.

I was going to make a comment about the interesting behaviour of a Blue Jay here at work, when I went to look up a picture on wikipedia I discovered the Blue Jay doesn’t have a natural home range in this area. Nope, no California in the green area, and there are a lot of what I thought of as Blue Jays around here.

Instead it’s a very similar bird called the Western Scrub Jay. Who knew?I sure didn’t. They look very similar to me.

The Western Scrub Jay

Blue Jay

Looking at them side by side you can tell, but, hey, they’re not side by side out in the quad area at work. (-:

Anyhow, the whole reason this began. I was walking between buildings and noticed on of the “Scrub Jays” with a peanut in it’s beak. It had found/made a hole in the grass large enough to hide the peanut in. So as I walked passed I was watching this Scrub Jay trying to work the peanut into the ground when it saw me, stopped what it was doing, (peanut buried at this point) and waited till I was about 30 feet away or so, grabbed the peanut out of the ground, moved about 5 feet over and reburied it.

I guess the silly bird was thinking that I knew where it’s stash was, so it moved it. Anyhow, I thought that was kind of cool. What’s interesting is to think about how many nuts are buried in the area. There are a lot of Scrub Jays around here. Something to think about.

First official helmet pocket dialing

December 29, 2011 in Friends, General | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Well, when we were up in Seattle visiting our friends my buddy Paul gave me a Scala Rider FM headset for my helmet.

It works pretty good for listening to the radio on my way to the office and to answer the phone if it rings on my 15 minute commute. I also have the option of using a cable to input my iPod for longer rides. I’ve only really used it to make phone calls when I first put it in the helmet, cause it’s kind of cool to ride along and chat with someone.

Anyhow, on the way to work this morning my the radio goes away and the helmet starts to beep at me. I haven’t actually had anyone call me while I was riding, at least not yet. So, I’m tooling down the road poking buttons on the helmet trying to figure out what the beeping is, saying things like “answer!” “cancel!” “Will you F’n Stop already!” etc, thinking maybe it’s a call coming in, or maybe the voice dialling is wigging out, or the battery is dying. Then I hear this voice in my head say “Good Morning, SeaHarvest”. Huh? Must have hit the right button and it answered a call coming in, “Hello Lynn, what’s up?” “What? Rich is that you?” And a confusing conversation ensues.

Turns out my F’n Crackberry unlocks the previously locked keyboard when the headset activates, and since it was in my pocket, I was hitting it on the gas tank while riding and the beeping noise in my helmet was actually me pushing buttons on the phone until it eventually pocket dialled SeaHarvest.

Technology. Some days it’s just a pain. :-)

Bose QC15′s vs the data center

December 27, 2011 in Computers | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

For Christmas Roberta and the girls got me a set of Bose Quiet Comfort 15 headphones with noise cancellation.

Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones

Due to very low tolerance of people who are all talk and no work, my office has been in the data center for the last year or so. I actually share an office with about 500-550 or so pizza box style servers. Needless to say, it’s a bit loud at times. WHAT DID YOU SAY?? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!

Here is a view taken from my desk that shows some of the systems near me.

From Monterey Living

Anyhow, Roberta is getting tired of my always saying “What?” whenever she asks a question.

I had a cheap pair of ~$20 noise cancelling headphones that only took out the low-frequency sounds (like the rumble of an airplane). Unfortunately the Dell servers have high-pitched fans that make a heck of a lot of higher frequency noise and the cheap headphones only toned it down a bit. Maybe 25% or so. I would have to set my iPod on about 3/4 volume to listen to my music and be able to hear it decently when I was working on systems.

Well, today was the first day I took the Bose QC15 headphones in to work with me.  When you first turn them on it almost feels like your ears pop, like with altitude. But the volume of sound from the servers drops by about 75% or so. I was standing between two rows of servers for about 5 hours total today (300-350 servers within 20 feet of me) and was comfortably listening to my music on the iPod at 1/3 volume. It wasn’t until I took the headphones off to try to speak with someone who walked in that I noticed how loud it was where I was standing. LIKE REALLY LOUD!  We actually had to go to a different section of the room to chat.

So far I’m pretty happy with the Bose headphones. I might actually have some hearing left in a year. My impression so far is that these are by far the best noise cancelling headphones I’ve tried for data center frequency noise. Definitely worth the steep $300 asking price, if they last a couple of years.

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