Computer Archaeology

Fifteen years ago I left a job, and this was one of the computers I left behind - a Sun Ultra Enterprise 450. I still get periodic calls to go in and do some things for them. It always surprises me a bit when I find one of these 17+ year old computers still doing what I left them doing. Today the external A1000 array failed -- totally dead, no power lights on either power supply -- and the E450 wouldn't boot, so I got the call to go in and try to resurrect it. Fortunately the active use of the files on that array has already been moved elsewhere, so all I had to do was remove the array from the configuration and restart it. However I think we are pushing our luck somewhat so we are going to replace the active roles on this computer with something... newer? Maybe just "less old".

Adapt Or Die

Today: Cable Unbundling Will Devastate Canadian TV Production: Report
My problem with the whole "bundling" thing is that it makes you pay for things you don't want in order to get things you want. In the past one could make the argument that providing a customized, per-household bundle of channels was too technologically expensive, and thus cable providers needed to have only a few tiers of service. But even since the 1980s when pay-TV and the first channels like The Movie Channel, addressable cable boxes have made this somewhat of a lie.

The fall-out from this problem is that I spend a huge amount of money on this stuff: $230 per month for TV, Internet (15/5/unlimited), and home-phone; plus another $50 for Jenn's smart phone. If my employer wasn't paying for my phone you could probably double what Jenn's costs and add the same again for me. Plus $10/month for Netflicks, $10/month for Spotify, plus whatever we spend on iTunes and old fashioned going-out-to-the-movies. Do the math -- it is a lot of money.

So anything which offers to trim $10 or $15 here or there sounds good to me and frankly I don't care that doing so means The Home And Garden Channel suddenly stops getting the 75 cents or whatever per month from my household.

You have to have a product that people are willing to pay for in order to watch. And if you don't, you are in trouble.

I am willing to spend money on what I want to watch. If you don't make something I am willing to pay for, I am not interested in subsidising you any more. If a subsidy is a socially desirable thing, do it the honest way -- through taxes. Don't try to back-door money flow.

Still Life By Alex

Alex sometimes leaves his toys in mid-play when sleep overcomes him. This is what we found when we checked on him before we went to bed. Makes me wonder what we're seeing here -- a fast food service? Live target day at the shooting range? Something else?

Update, 2015-01-18: Alex tells me that these people are playing Jeopardy.

Wyatt Visits "Crazy" Uncle David

Wyatt and JD were at Mom's on Sunday. Aparrently my brother's family calls me "crazy uncle David". So I figured the photo was appropriate.

Minion Ghosts

My mom makes novelty hats for the kids (and sometimes for me). These are her take on the Minions. The one on the right is for a four year old but it is too small for him, and somehow we ended up with it instead of the one-eyed "Stuart" hat for Alex. I'm sure we'll sort it all out eventually.  It occurs to me that the hats look kind of like Pac Man ghosts with this aspect on them.

Minecraft Project

We literally slept until noon on Friday, and wasted the rest of the day in front of the TV. I started digging a gap in a ridge in Minecraft P/E for no good reason other than I wanted to see  how hard it was. It is a lot of work, and it eats up axes -- fortunately there are lots of trees nearby and the hole generates its own cobblestone by the ton. So the project is more or less self-supporting. This is easily my biggest excavation so far in the game.

Project 365-2016

I tried this last year, but I got sick early on in January. The point of this is to try to produce one image per day.

I have been trying to figure out how best to do this -- the photos I take get automatically put into Google Photos, and there isn't a trivial way to link to Google Photos from Google Blogger. I end up having to download the photos and then upload them into Blogger. I could just use a Google Photo Collections for this, but the text editing is a bit... sparse. Also nobody looks at those things. I could also use Google Plus, but again that has a sharply reduced audience from that of the dozen or so people who read me here.

This is a pain, but I think I'll have to try to make it work.

...also, I'll be back-dating the posts so that they match the date that the photo is for/from.