/var/log/vadept.log

At 10:00pm on 3/18/09, I went down to the InReach building at 4635 Georgetown Place to move my one lone server out of their colocation area.  I got a call 2 days prior saying that they are shuffling everyone left in the building over to their rack at Pac-West telecom.  They are moving out of that building.  That building that I helped wire, that I helped setup, that I spent more hours there than anywhere.

I got to walk around the vast empty InReach building.  I knew where all of my desks were throughout the almost 10 years I worked there.  Looked at the tiny pieces of CAT-5 jumpers that I wired by hand well over 10 years ago.  My eyes started to tear up to realize that I’ll probably never ever see the inside of that building again.  I spent most of my teenage years confined within that small building working on servers, putting out fires, dealing with shit that now-days I could of never deal with.  Remembering the laughs, the long nights, the sitting at my desk wondering how in the fuck I was going to fix this server (but yet always did), the walks to McDonalds.  A ton of people who read this (or my LJ) worked there and grew up there with me.  That faculity saw the birth and the move of DeadJournal and housed zillions of bytes of data that I could never replace.

I unracked my one server, and followed Mike over to Pac-West.  Considering that over 10 years ago VAdept (this server) started out in the PacWest colo was sorta ironic.  I could still hear the sounds of the Ascend modem boxes heating up the room like huge rackmount hair-dryers.  Visualizing the USR 5+U modem chassis with the HyperDSP cards (that could never work right).  The smell of a real colocation faculity, and how a few times I slept on that cold raised floor hearing the air woosh under it while waiting for an array to rebuild.  Remembering the time Andy formatted a web-server array by accident, then said “See ya!” and left me there to restore from tape (you dick, I still remember that.. ).  It was a very weird and awkward feeling to be there again.  Everything looked exactly how I remembered it to be.

So since I was there, I decided to help Mike rack the gear that he brought over from customers who didn’t care enough to drive down to move their own damn computers.  It was such a weird feeling, that its hard to describe what it was like to be sitting in that colocation again after so many years.  In a way its fitting that my server ended back up to where it was born, with real generator power, real Halon and temperature monitoring, real 24/7 NOC, a “real” facility.

But using the same rackmount screws, the same power cord, and the same piece of cat-5 I’ve used for years and years; I’ve managed to pocket a few handfuls of dirt from the grave of the InReach colo.  Really, my server is its legacy.

What kind of back-woods ghetto airport doesn’t offer free wifi? OH, THE ONE THAT IM AT RIGHT NOW.

I still need to post a comprehensive report of the wedding.  But the summary is that my family is STILL talking about how awesome it was and my sister is very sad-faced that hers (in november) cannot nearly top mine.  Open bar helped a ton, and my friends and family were very good at drinking at least their $20/head-worth of booze.  I’m super stoked and happy that most of the sf peeps made it up there. Seriously.

The fucking condo we stayed at had free wifi, why doesn’t honolulu international airport have it?  Seriously, this is lame.  I’m not paying 7 bucks for 6 hours of internet.  The kiosks were charing $0.20/min (!!?!).  I can call like zimbabwe for cheaper than that!  Thank god I have my AT&T USB Internet Thingy (which I used a shitpot full and probably have already burned through my 5G/month traffic quota).  Tomorrow I go to get an iphone in portland.  I’ve wanted one forever and at 199 how can I say no.  I wonder how much of a PITA it will be to port my number from t-mobile.  Oh well.

On the 5.5 hour plane-ride home (which we get in to portland at 7am, wee) I need to make a ‘dark and twisted’ background for one of the people whom are playing in my shadowrun game.

Time for my wifey to use the internets now.

http://community.livejournal.com/guns/1180691.html

For those of you who don’t shoot guns, HR-1022 is a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. Only now it can include

stupid utf-8 with lynx bug is still there.. it makes my heart sad

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/popes-speech-angers-muslims/2006/09/16/1158334719699.html

“Middle Eastern leaders and analysts warned today of a potentially violent backlash in the region to Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks implicity linking Islam to violence.”

Lemme see. Pope implies Islam is violent. Islam does violent things because they are offended. wtf? Its like calling a kid a bully, then the kid says “Im not a bully!” as he punches you in the face.

I thought they were a religion of peace? So if they go around bombing everything because of this, does it mean that the pope was correct? Of course the Roman Catholics arent much better, but they arent denying or being insulted by it..

Maybe we’ll go put on armor next and restart the crusades!

Got the server up and working and everything resync’d. Now i can sleep at night.

Spent the evening hanging out at home working on the server.

Dax asked me to be the best man at his wedding.. Last night he said “you’re in the wedding, you’re the best man!”. I said “WTF! I didnt know this”. He felt bad because he sorta sprung it on me, so he formally asked me today. Of course I said yes.. Dax and Sena have been dating for like 12 years, back before Beka and I got together (beka used to go out with Sena’s brother), so im really happy now they are finally getting married

He came over today to drop off the ferrets. He’s leaving for washington until monday to visit his fiance’s parents who recently fled california and bought a house in washington.

His birthday is monday, so I gave him his birthday present now. A hand-carved pipe from a pipe-maker around the Santa Cruz area. He loved it. We sat out back smoking it and drinking rum.

His fiance’ (Sena) dad came down to pick up his “babies”. His rifles that i’ve been storing in my safe while they were moving. Had to be around 10 or so fine firearms that made me sad to leave. The safe was so full of gun goodness. Richard is much like tiffany’s dad; really cool and easy to talk to. Likes to shoot guns and other things, really awesome guy. I know two awesome Richards that live in neighboring states now.

So we all sat around out back bullshitting, drinking rum and smoking pipes. Talking about washington, life, work, etc. Dax wants his bachlor party to involve 48 hours of D&D and lots of booze.. I can arrange something like that.

Im finally done with my 30 hours of CE education thats due 8/31. Yay for me! Time to mail off my pharmacy license renewal!

Flight cancelled. Sadface. Looks like sleeping in PDX.

Friday: