Home Server Reborn!

I actually reactivated this blog as a bit of a replacement to the old web/gopher server I used at home. I was using an old POS board that used old laptop hard drives that are very very fragile and everything that was transferred to them was ultimately lost to little stuff. I have upgraded that system to be totally solid state, but I haven't put it back into service for now.

Instead, I am now using an old consumer minitower with a software RAID in it, which should solve my worries about losing data again (at least for a while). For now, I am populating the server with some very, very old data that was backed up eons ago, some of which was on the previous server and some that never was, so things are a bit different.  Explore away!

So, I expect to continue the blog for a bit as a replacement, but with some interesting stuff on the home server that are probably unique due to their age.

The Great (Yet Premature) Down-sizing

It was almost a week ago when some spare hard drives, disturbed by my shuffling about in preparation for our upcoming move, dropped from a cabinet onto the open-faced motherboard that served as my web and gopher server for the past year.  The debris dislodged the sound card and jarred the hard drive enough to gouge the surface and totally ruin the drive.  I typically have a none-too-recent backup of the drive, but I have had to shuffle around the backup drives to put my daughter Shayna back into service, so the backup drive had been recently formatted and EVERYTHING is now lost!!

Fortunately, I had been slowly moving most of my core documents to cloud servers, so all of what I would consider to be the really important stuff has weathered this storm.  The server itself is back in service and there is a web and gopher server running, but they are both quite empty for now.  Both the old podcasts are totally gone, which is a bit sad, but it would probably be just as well that I render most of the information that went into the podcasts into far more concise text, probably for posting in the future on this blog.

Frankly, there were likely some very dangerous recordings and essays on the server that probably were very outdated and really needed to be removed.  It isn't good to have too much of your uncensored self out on the public web anyway.  It was okay when no one really looked at the site, but with job changes, moving, and graduate school in the offing, there was a good chance that something damning that I have said/wrote in the past could come back to haunt me!  I am quite prepared to attribute the falling hard drives event to a fortuitous act of God and be grateful for the happening...

If you go clicking on links to the old QuIX properties, I hope you are not too disappointed at the lack of objects to browse.  Life happens!

Navigiary Begins

After years of effort and trying to walk away from the thing, the first book of the Navigiary series: Escape, is finally out and available on the Kindle store.

There is also another blog that I have just for Navigiary. Surprisingly, I also allow commenting on that blog as well!

See what I have been working on all these years but know that Escape is but an introduction - the meat of the story is yet to come!

More than a New Year's Resolution

I am tired.  I find myself bored with my present life and the person I am right now.  I have a fine, fine job and I work alongside wonderful people, but I need to be doing more.  I need to become more and I am reasonably sure that this is also what God expects from me.  I hope you readers don't consider this a "cocky" statement as I consider it an indictment of my lack of activity in the area of rising to my potential.  I have no idea what that potential is, but I have not be making much of an effort toward discovering it.  I want to begin to rectify that, starting right now.

Every Sunday, we hold a family council and a bit of a "home evening" with whatever family members are available.  During the council, each family member has an opportunity to ask a question, present a concern, or make a comment.  Last Sunday, during my time to do "questions, concerns, or comments", something popped into my head and, after only a moment or two of thought, I commented that I wanted to share a personal goal.  With all the insight of a minute or two, I said:

"I want to celebrate my fiftieth birthday in London."

That may sound silly and totally unrealistic, especially given our family finances, but that is because you are likely not aware of the context of my statement.  Please allow me to tell a little about what almost unconsciously informed this goal.

Ever since my children were small, I have thought and spoke "internationally", which is to say that I dreamed of far-away places and things.  What would it be like to live in one foreign country or another? What places would be most possible for us to go?  What different cultures or languages would we have to understand to function well there?  Coupled with a total inability not to keep my thoughts to myself, I shared these questions and my research toward answering them with my family.  Over time, I began to see that some of my children were being affected.  My older daughter took it upon herself to teach herself Hebrew and to look forward to visiting and perhaps living in Israel which is not an inconsistent thing to do as both she and I share a Jewish heritage.  My younger daughter dreams of someday living in Italy and enjoying the beauty and art of that place.  Though my other children have so far expressed no desire to travel or live internationally, I would not be surprised if they quietly dream of such things or, at the very least, are familiar enough with locations outside of the USA to be far above the local average in a world geography exams.

When I was a younger man, I left a wonderful yet boring job and went to sea, getting a position as a seismic navigator hunting for oil.  It was an interesting two years, floating in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of west Africa.  Although I became familiar with various airports in exotic places, I took little opportunity to explore past being an airline passenger in the international terminal.  Although such travels whetted my appetite, it did nothing to address my hunger.

Unfortunately, outside of dreaming and flying a bit, I had not yet really taken my own advice.  I was encouraging my chlidren, but I was not being an example of someone who works toward the goal and accomplishes it.

I need to do a better job.

So, I don't know exactly how I will get myself working in London and in what capacity, but I have taken the first step to making it happen.  I have my passport updated and all my credentials in as much order as I can.  I am already interviewing with the company I worked for internationally over a decade ago and I hope they hire me and get my foot back into door of foreign travel.  It really helps to be there even occasionally when you want to live and work there.  It is also far easier to get transferred to London with a company than to get a job there as a non-resident non-citizen.  If I want help, especially from God, I will need to show everyone that I am willing to do as much as I can to make it happen myself.

I will likely keep you readers informed on how it goes.

The Asocial Unetwork

[Update: I do have a facebook account now, but that is only to advertise blog posts and such to the world.  I rarely look at what others post there.  Like me and be my friend knowing that I probably am not reading your stuff.]

I have just been regaled by the utterly thoughtless postings of several of my talkative extended family members on a "service" called "facebook".  My oldest daughter is an on-and-off member of this chronic exhibitionist collective, which is how I know anything about such things at all.  At the ripe age of 44, I am one of those "old farts" that avoids "texting", much less its more evolved cousins like twitter and a procession of social yammering spots.  I just never got interested.

The larger problem is that I decided long before this technology existed that it was far smarter and safer to keep your thoughts to yourself.  I can't say that I do a marvelous job of this, but I seemingly do far, far better than the typical youngish person.  In the distant past, people wanted their lives to be private and even went to far as to say that such a "right to privacy" existed or needed to be codified.  In our modern times, it seems no one even bothers to use the word "private", much less exercise privacy themselves.

I know all the tawdry gossip about the people around me because it is broadcasted to practically everyone through some social network.  The saddest thing of all is that these tidbits are not really gossip at all, these missives are actually posted by the person themselves.  Once upon a time, something unsavory such as an out-of-wedlock pregnancy was whispered around for weeks until the person finally admitted that the circumstances were true.  These days, the "mommy-to-be" uses something like twitter or facebook (does no one capitalize names anymore?) to inform everyone before the old-fashioned rumor mill even has a chance to warm up.  This must make "news agencies" infuriated as there seems to be very little "dirt" to dig about these days as starlets and CEOs just let their totally uncensored private parts "hang out" from moment to moment.  So much for "scooping" a story!

I only have a cell phone because my job requires it and I don't pay for a "texting" add-on, no matter how inexpensive it is.  I immediately saw that I would have what little concentration I can muster constantly interrupted by little non-sequitirs.  To think that I would invite further interruptions by signing up for a text message aggregator like twitter and the much more expansive social networks is just no where near my interests.  I have nothing to say at a moment's notice that would be proper and I doubt anyone else has useful things to say without some thought that an email would not improve.  I purposefully disabled commenting on my blog, which is the closest I will likely get to becoming electronically social - if you really want to say something to me, I prefer either an email or that you keep comments to yourself.  Rude, but true.

If you want to know what I do from minute to minute, I will say this:  I tend to breathe (and much more so now that I have discovered the Aveo TSD), I read various obscure texts, I ponder about life, talk incessantly at no one in particular, and write occasionally.  I blather on-and-on courtesy the podcast and I place the odd essay on my gopher server.  That is about all the "social networking" you are going to get from me!

Sabinoso Wilderness

A bit of the Canadian Escarpment nearby

As a hiker, I am excited about another public wilderness opening up very near where I live! If I cannot afford to move closer to hike-able places, it is just as good to have hike-able places move closer to me!

Of course, it is all very new and there is no access to the wilderness for now (might never be). I suppose you have to get airlifted in and out (or perhaps use an ultralight aircraft - there's an idea!)

Public Lands Information Center - Sabinoso Wilderness:

Press Release about the Sabinoso Wilderness

Don't Mourn For Us: An Epiphany

I was "teaching" at a high school in the spring on 2002 when I stumbled upon this webpage with an essay by Jim Sinclair that was just absolutely stunning. I think I was beginning to realize that I was autistic, just not at the same level as my son Matt, who was diagnosed just before his third birthday.

It seems I am on an autism jag today. Don't expect this to become an autism blog however. I got very tired of talking about it a while back, so I tend to hope I have moved on, but it is still there of course, that odd side of you that you can never escape.

I wish Lisa and I would have had this insight many years earlier, I think we would have done better as the parents of younger Matt. If your young child has autism, please read it and take it to heart.

The Essay: Don't Mourn For Us