Eight and a half hours later, I have single-handedly done the following:
- Moved four 23 kg rack-mount servers (sans rack);
- Moved four 23 kg uninterruptible power sources;
- Moved uncounted connectors, network cables, power cords, etc.;
- Updated all the DNS entries for the 33 domain names that point to said servers;
- Talked to three lovely people at my ISP's tech-support line to figure out why I couldn't connect to my new IP range (it was a PEBCAK issue on my end);
- Confirmed that my mail server can receive mail from everywhere; and
- Dropped my overall stress level by about 30%.
So now all I have to do is move a not-insignificant quantity of my mother's stuff, empty my current office, and empty my current apartment, then move the lot into my new place. Fortunately I have all day Monday to do that.
(Did I mention the three flights of stairs on the receiving end?)
The humble Lego brick turned 50 on the 28th. That explains today's Google logo.
For the first time in 11 days, the temperature in Chicago got above freezing this afternoon. It's odd how warm it feels out there right now.
Speaking of chilling, I saw No Country for Old Men last night. Great film. Very chilling.
Via my dad, via the San Francisco Chronicle's excellent Mark Moford: Whiskipedia.
And 28 other things to be happy about:
Women and minorities appear to be galvanized by Hillary Clinton's presidential run. Youth and college-educated voters appear to be galvanized by Barack Obama's. No one at all is truly, deeply galvanized by Mitt Romney or John McCain or crazy little Mike Huckabee, and everyone is generally repulsed by the fetid little tyrant that is Rudy Giuliani. All of this, remarkably, seems just about exactly as it should be.
The Oscar nominations are out. I can't wait for the press conference to announce the winners on February 24th.
Edgar Alan Poe is 199 today.
<rant>
I'm reviewing a lot of CVs right now, and I would like to vent for a moment. Just a few things, though:
- If you're applying for a Quality Assurance position, spelling and grammar count a lot.
- Unless you've gotten an invitation to apply, the people reviewing your résumé have others to read. Write concisely. Highlight the important parts. Limit yourself to two pages of paper with a link to a longer version. Don't waste the reader's time. Even if you're perfect for the job, you go into the phone screen with a mark against you if your CV has Dickensian verbosity.
- Don't put information on your CV that we can't use to hire you. If you put your age, marital status, immigration status, race, or anything else like that on your CV, a potential employer might bin the thing just to prevent any hint of bias in the hiring process.
- But do put down your bona fides. If you say "Engineering Degree" on your CV, you actually do need to include the actual degree (BA, BS, BBQ), the name of the institution and the date. Like it or not, a degree from the Ira Bialystock Engineering School and Storm Door Company is not the same as one from Northwestern, and since we're going to call your school to check that you graduated as a precondition of hiring you, don't waste our time by having us guess. We will simply guess that you went to IBESASDC and not NU, and pass.
</rant>
I almost slept through a story on Morning Edition just now, about sleep:
In our fast-paced, global society, many people consider it a big plus to need as little sleep as possible. But almost every sleep researcher will tell you that most people need at least seven hours of sleep for biological and psychological health. So there is a glaring disconnect between what the messages in our culture say about sleep and the messages we receive from scientists.
A very old friend of mine put her dog down this evening. I know how hard that was. Cali had a good life, and was loved. And she knew it.
Every dog owner has to face this eventually: dogs only live a few years. That doesn't make it easier.
In the Jewish tradition—in which I was raised, despite both my parents and me being devout atheists—we always acknowledge the sadness lurking behind joy. It's a Jewish curse to find the cloud behind every silver lining. We dip an egg in salt water at Passover to remind ourselves of this. Not to mention the not-so-far-from-truth Jewish joke about the widow at the funeral shouting "how could you do this to me?" So maybe it's inappropriately personalizing someone else's pain, but a friend going through this reminds me of how short Parker's life will be, and how important it is to cherish what he brings to me, which is absolutely no less than how much Cali's life brought to my friend.
So, Tink, I know what you're feeling. And I know Cali was a happy dog, and loved you unconditionally, and lived as long as she could. Nothing else really matters.