I snapped the attached photo of this humorous emergency sign right before heading into our data center last week (name hidden to protect the guilty).  Then when we (tech dude Tim and I) got in, we found out that the man-trap "portal" that lets you in was broken.  We spent the next couple of hours running cables and cleaning up the mess in our cage in the colo facility, then decided it was about time to head out.  Which is when we found that the person we were supposed to call to get out of the data center had gone home for the day.  As had most of the people in the office.  We unsuccessfully tried to flag down the people streaming out the door to get some help, but finally got someone's attention, who let us out.  Turns out that there is *someone* on duty till 11pm, we just didn't have their phone number.

Which I found weird.  The previous colo I had experience with was at 365 Main in SF, which was very very much a 24x7 operation - our sysadmin used to spend the  night down there on a regular basis.  Access via the portal is 24x7 in theory, but if it's broken at 3am when someone needs to get in and there are no ($colo_facility) guys on hand... someone's going to get eaten alive. 

On Saturday, I took the kids for a walk down to the park, since Stef was off at band practice.  Our path took us by the sales office for our subdivision, and I stopped in to ask a question.

When we bought our home, the documentation stated that our home was wired with fiber-to-the-premises, which happily is true.  Unfortunately, when we moved in, I called up the company (Paxio) that was servicing the neighborhood across the street (also a Pulte development) and found out that they weren't going to be servicing our neighborhood.  Which was a bummer, since they were offering a symmetric 10mbit Internet connection for $50/month, including static IP's and other such geeky treats.  So here I was, stuck with a big fat data pipe, and no one to service it.

And this is why I dropped in on the sales office.  I asked them if anyone was servicing our fiber now, and they dug around and found out that indeed we do get service on it!  Apparently, our connection is exclusively served by AT&T U-verse.  This is bad for a couple of reasons:

 

1.  I've not particularly enjoyed AT&T's service in the past (their technology is somewhat lacking and their customer service condescending in some cases.  I know how to ping the upstream router, and trust me, it doesn't matter that I'm doing it from my Linux box, thanks).
2. U-verse offers digital TV and Internet access, but oddly enough, not phone service.  I'll have to spring for a Vonage line or add a standard AT&T analog phone line if I go this route.
3. Being a giant media services company and not a smaller information transfer company like Paxio, they're not really likely to give me lots of upstream, static IP's or permission to host websites or services on the back of my connection.

 

Long story short, my worst fears ended up realized.  U-verse is offered in my area (good), but TV packages comparable to our current Comcast setup cost more, and for the same price that we'd get 10mbit symmetric on Paxio, I'll get their extreme speed 6mbit down, 1mbit up connection.  Whoopee, I get more than that on Comcast already, what's the point of my awesome fiber if the upstream service is useless?

 

It's been a while since I've blogged anything; I've been buried with work and other aspects of life lately. Things aren't letting up much, but I'm stealing a few minutes on the train away from work to check in.

The kids are great, and growing like crazy, but they can be a handful at times. Every big grin with a "hi Daddy!" makes it very worth it. I'm proud of Stef every day for the work she does with them at home. No matter how busy, stressful, or long my day is (and it is often all 3), I know hers is right up there. She wasn't feeling well yesterday so I worked from home and gained a new appreciation for what she does every day.

I'm continuing to get more freelance work to do than I can handle, which is a great problem in the long run, as that's something I'd love to continue to have grow. In the short run, I'm trying everything I can to stretch my time to get done everything that has to be done without shorting anyone. I'm getting much better with time management and spending a lot less time just goofing off fiddling with things.

And I'm loving my Powerbook. I can't wait of course to get my hands on one of the new Macbook Pro's someday, but till then, this is an awesome work machine for me. One thing though, 3rd party apps need to do some work polishing their UI elements to match the rest of the glossy desktop. Having the dumb Cisco client in my dock is just destroying it's aesthetic appeal :D

 We had a nice dinner on Tuesday night at the McFarland's house to celebrate Keith's birthday.  The food was great (thanks Merari!), and of course we played some Wii after dinner.  I went undefeated in 5 Wii Boxing rounds against the computer, but came away with VERY sore shoulders.  Apparently, I'm out of practice punching people.  Go figure :)

I'm working to balance work and family, but for now I'm all dived in on every front and looking for some air. I do feel like I'm making good progress on some of my projects, which makes me feel much better than when everything is falling apart :D

So on Sunday, Stef and I took the kids to San Leandro to see Grandma Elsie, where's she's in a convalescent hospital recovering (rather well, I might add) from her hip surgery. We needed to get directions, so I grabbed my laptop to take with us. I never let the battery run out on my laptop, but this particular day I happened to do that, so I grabbed my DC inverter to run the laptop from the cigarette lighter in the van. Well, long story short, the inverter wouldn't light up and work, so I couldn't get power for my laptop. Worse, when we got home that night and I plugged it in and started using it, I started getting that little tingly feeling that indicates electrical current flowing through you. My laptop now pushes electrical current through me every time I touch the keyboard. Yuck! The repairs on the machine are going to be more than it's worth, and I need a laptop for my freelance work, so I decided to take my next paycheck for my contract work and use it to get a replacement. I was plotting to hold out for my MacBook Pro, but it looks like that'll have to wait a couple of months (in which time I'll give this new machine to Stef). So, here's the deal... OUT: Compaq v200z. IN: 15" Apple Powerbook G4 (Aluminum) running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4. The powerbooks are starting to come down in price to where it was practical to get one as a "cheap" replacement for my rather-piece-of-junky Compaq. I'm getting antsy -- going on a week without a usable laptop, which I've come to rely on more than I'd thought. Still, it's been a nice opportunity to take a small break from the breakneck work pace that usually consumes most of my commute.

And it gives me a chance to play with my other recent acquisition (I've been blessed with the opportunity to pick up a couple nice things lately): A Nintendo DS Lite that I snagged for cheap on eBay. I bought some cheap used games for it; New Super Mario Bros. arrived the same day as the DS, and I've been playing that in my free time on the train (as well as doing my devotions and reading some web dev books), and I've got Metroid Prime: Hunters showing up any day now, plus a little special surprise I'm getting for Stef. The DS is a fabuous little tool; the touch screen is rather neat (some cool minigames come with Mario) and I can see how the Wifi could be very useful when paired with Opera running on it for web browsing. The other thing that I really really would love to have is an organizer (calendar, todo list, etc) for it. There are homebrew solutions that require some hacking that I might try out, but it would be nice to have an officially supported tool -- even better would be if it integrated with Google Calendar and/or Gmail, but I guess that's just wishful thinking.

Anyway, I'm impatiently awaiting the arrival of my Powerbook. Aside from having a laptop again, it'll be the first really usable Mac that I'll be able to call mine (as opposed to a machine from work). Should be great!

Are any of you out there using Twitter?  I set it up today just for kicks to see what the hype is about  It's fairly easy to use and it's interesting to see what friends are up to.  I'm not sure that it's worth all the hype, but we'll see :)  my Twitter handle is okwichu if you want to see mine -- I'll probably close it down to friends at some point though.

I just got our new Comcast connection hooked up... we're paying for a 6 megabit connection... the Speakeasy speed test clocks us in at 23 megabit, with a 1.5 megabit upstream connection.  That's. ridiculously. fast. 

OTOH, I'm a bit disappointed by our cable hookup.  Most of it is still not in HD, so it looks rather cruddy on our TV...  I'm still figuring out where the HD broadcast alternative channels are hiding :) 

Hillary Clinton's presidential run website is now up (http://www.votehillary.org/CMS/). Interestingly enough, her people have chosen to use Drupal for her site, which is an excellent piece of software (and what we're running our site on here). I'm not sure whether to cheer that people are using this great content management system, or vomit that Hillary's using it (and running). Given that the template they developed is AWFUL, I think I'll go with the vomit option, excuse me

<-- running to bathroom, bye