ProteinSpill.com

Maggots in your Cast

No, not your fellow Cast Members. Well, maybe, if they have a wet, plaster cast. Go ahead, scroll about halfway into that article.

Casts that aren’t waterproof can get moldy, and Crotty said he’s “seen maggots crawling out of casts” that kids got wet.

I don’t really see this as a problem. In fact, as gross as it sounds, it might be a Good Thing. Seriously.

Maggots … eat dead tissue

I’m fortunate to have never broken a bone. My brother has, and I remember him complaining about the itch and digging out dead skin with a pencil. If he had maggots in there, maybe there wouldn’t have been any dead skin? I dunno about the itching though, with a bunch of fly larvae squirming around in there

If I ever do break or sprain something important, I think I’ll go for the removable cast. Keeping it clean solves the problem without having to resort to using maggots.

Using cellphones while driving

I’m reading this discussion about using cellphones while driving over on Slashdot and I think everyone there is missing the point. Those that fund and write the studies included.

The problem with idiots talking on their cellphones while driving isn’t whether the phone is held to your head or on hands-free.. it’s the IDIOT. Ban idiots from driving cars and the accident rate will go down significantly.

I suspect that people who have eaten bread are just as likely to be involved in a traffic crash as those who use their celly in the car. Maybe we should ban bread.

Apartment Hunting

Yesterday I took a look at this condominium in Celebration. It’s the top, middle unit.

I didn’t think the inside was too spectacular. Perhaps I was put off by the all-white walls, the lack of nice furniture (or presence of furniture at all) and the fact that the agent seemed a little rushed. Hopefully they will let me throw up some paint.

Tracy and I had gone out there the night before and walked around the place. The location is ideal: it faces west and across the street is a small wooded park (for Tekey!) and right around the corner is a community pool and soccer fields. There are walking trails to the east. The building has an elevator that opens up right to my front door. The outside felt homey, hopefully I can make the inside feel homey. That is, assuming they let me have it.

Server Move

Have you noticed that my entries here aren’t nearly as funny as they were when I was working in Monorails?

A few days ago, my only Windows machine, squit, had a network card pop. Unfortunately my most recent Quicken data is sitting on there. Rather than buy a laptop or upgrade my Mac Mini (lady) to do the Boot Camp thing I decided to promote slappy (file server) to my desk and install vmware.

While installing vmware, I was also trying to learn how to configure porterhouse (the Sun Fire server). I set it up in what was formerly Tracie’s room because it’s so loud.

As if that wasn’t enough going on, Ryan and I were doing last minute configuration on chuck (my new-to-me Dell Poweredge 1650) and moving shank (a virtual machine that hosts proteinspill.com and several other sites) over to it. Hopefully nobody noticed the 20 minutes or so of downtime while the vm was copied over.

Yesterday I emailed Karin to ask about the possibility of going part time here at work. I’m working so much even my fun time looks a lot like work. She suggested that maybe I cut Disney.. what?! That’s my sanity break there. If I were to leave Disney completely, I’d have nothing to say to you people but stuff about traffic on I-4 and plugging computers together. Bleh

Site changes

I made some changes to the site… hopefully it won’t cause too much spam to appear. If it does, I’ll lock it down again. Basically, you won’t be required to register as a user in order to post a comment to an article. You also aren’t required to register to post in a forum.

I closed a couple of the forums which weren’t being used so far and I opened a new one. Those of you who are participating in my evaluation are encouraged to post about your experiences with the Sun Fire server there.

Sun Fire T2000 update

Good news, I was able to make a proper serial cable last night and boot the machine. It is officially named porterhouse.*

I didn’t have much time to play with it late last night but at least I got it configured to go on the network. I’m going to have to review some Solaris admin stuff so I can install software and create the necessary IP tunnels so it can be beat upon. If you have an interest in helping me evaluate porterhouse, contact me and I may give you a virtual machine.

* those of you who don’t know: I name servers for cuts of meat and computers I use at home for Animaniacs characters. Most people use planets, Disney, or greek mythological creatures. That’s boring. At work we use sea creatures: moray, marlin, etc. What’s your naming convention?

10-7 Monorails, 10-8 Tomorrowland

Tonight was my last regular night in the Monorail department. It was a pretty smooth shift, as long as it was. I’m glad I got to spend it with many of my friends, including Maribeth and Tracy.

Currently the policy for picking up shifts is that I have to be statused in the department. That makes absolutely no sense. I think it was a rule created by Gloria. Now that she’s gone, I hope I can negotiate with Jeff or Mike or Doug to get it straightened out. I would hope that they would like a qualified driver to help them out now and then.

Next week I get to repeat the Once Upon a Time…is Now class. I’m really excited about that! Then I’ll have a few weekends of greeter shifts before I go to… Space Mountain. I’d really like to go to Tomorrowland Indy Speedway. Perhaps I can work that out soon.

Sun Fire T2000 free trial

The machine has arrived. I can’t believe they send me a machine like this for free. It’s nuts.

Only problem with it is I can’t really test it yet. It didn’t include the serial cable necessary to do the initial configuration, so I made one. I plugged in my trusty Wyse 30 terminal and connected the machine to power. I see the ALOM starting up and it eventually arrives at the sc> prompt. I type and nothing happens. I can’t configure it!

It has a network management port but that doesn’t have an IP address assigned. DHCP is turned off by default; you enable that via the serial management port. I can boot the machine via the power button.. and it does come up, but the system console defaults to the serial management port. So again, I can’t even log in to the thing.

One thing is for sure, it’s LOUD. Testing it here in my bedroom is kinda silly but it’s the only room in the house with A/C. On Monday, I’m going to try and contact Sun to get an official cable. If that doesn’t work, then I guess I’ll have to see about swapping this box for another. I’m sure the cable problem isn’t on my end because my adapters work between PCs and my Wyse30 just fine.

Paul Oakenfold at Tabu

That was the worst nightclub experience ever.

First, having never gone to downtown Orlando at night I didn’t know where to park. So I orbited Orange Avenue a couple of times until it was blocked off by the police. I found a spot in a garage nearby. Second, there were two loooong lines to enter the club. They weren’t clearly defined and nobody was outside offering any direction. I wound up waiting in the wrong line for about 45 minutes.

Finally at about 00:15 I get inside. It’s smoky and difficult to get through the sofas and t-shirt salesmen up front. I spent 15 minutes trying to get to one of the bars. The sound system SUCKED. It was loud, sure, but only the bass. It sounded better from the street–seriously. There was little light on the stage and I could barely tell who was up there. Paul was spinning at some point during my visit. I think I recognized the general shape of his current hairstyle. That and the promoter (?) was standing on the stage reaching up and pointing.

I gave up about 00:45 and came home.