Revolution

Cyndi and I were to be in Oaxaca today to celebrate Los Dias de los Meurtos. We were to arrive just as 4,000 Mexican National Riot Police swept into the city to put down the revolution that has left several dead. Since we our intended participation in the fiesta was short of actually being one of the meurtos ourselves, our prudence kept us home. We wish the revolution well.

My personal revolution continued as I started my new job. Coming from where I was to where I am has taken me a full 180 degrees around that revolutionary circle. I'm finding the commute tolerable except when fearsome natural events tie up traffic for hours. Events like the sunset.

I've gained the expected 15 pounds due to the temptations at Google. I've enjoyed meeting the people and learning about Google and it's great to work in a place where intelligence is high and sense is common and where true teamwork is more valued than group hugs.

As a final step betwixt where I was and I was to be, we were in Sante Fe for thier annual Zozobra fiesta. The cermonial burning of Zozobra and much of the fiesta took place on hilltop across the street from our very nice and quiet suite. It is believed that as Zozobra burns away, all of the past years hardships and disappointments that people have experienced burn away with him. While I can't speak for Cyndi, the time in Santa Fe was liminal for me as I moved from old to new and I was able to discard the old disappointments in favor of new hopes.

Vortices

We had a whirlwind tour down the coast to San Diego and back up inland, stopping briefly at the Palomar Observatory where we met what had to be Don Croft who informed us that Palomar is in fact a Vortex, lies on all the Vortex Meridians and is where Extraterrestials first brought life to Earth (as told by Native Legend). He then pushed his wheelchaired student around the Observatory and around and around a tree.

Meanwhile I was convincing Cyndi that Hurricane John was 2,000 miles away and wouldn't affect this trip and the Oaxacan revolution would be resolved before our trip for Los Dias de los Meurtos, when the cycle of life is celebrated.

And the tires turned round and round about a million times on this trip. Repeating this same trip for the third time.

From shore to shore

We returned from a nice week in Hawaii and while there was all sorts of things to report about from volcanoes to vanilla plantations, they really aren't all that interesting. However, it was election season in Hawaii and it was interesting to see all the lawn signs and read the editorials about the election. And The Homeless Problem is a top of mind for everyone.

As we drove around O'ahu and walked along the shores, we noted a number of people in permanent emcampments on the beach and when we drove along the Leeward Coast, we were totally amazed at the huge number of tents serving as homes. A little research confirmed these were the Homeless of the Problem and apparently are about 60% native Hawaiians. A number of Solutions have been proposed, including the Governor's tardy State of Emergency, providing Housing First solutions and converting military barracks into compounds ... err, make that "shelters". Even one forsighted Republican representative suggested the state invest in one way tickets to the mainland for these folks so they could live in affordable places like Louisville. Damn white of her.

Back in Pacifica the beach continues to be accumulating dead seals and dolphins. There seems to be some parallel but I'm not exactly sure how to draw it with care and feeling.

From Louisville to Hilo via Pacifica

After Cyndi sat for the bar, I packed her off to see her family in Louisville and let her bounce off the walls there. After re-arranging everything in her mother's house (we'll get calls for months asking "Cyndi, where did you put the extra table settings?") she has returned to Pacifica for a few days and then we head off to Hawaii to placate Pele. Avoiding Kona and Maui this time, we'll end up in Hilo for an orgy of fun at Hilo Hattie's and to view orchids and waterfalls and maybe even snorkel with the lava.

Last Friday I bid farewell ... or really just a temporary adios ... to my fellows at CNET and the two best iced coffee wranglers in SOMA. I'm now suffering from email DTs as I would get 500 to 1,000 work related emails per day (most of them automated messages that only need be noted and deleted) and to keep up with it all, whenever I was at home I would check my email every hour or so, delete 40 or 50 messages and return to the TV or the cats or Cyndi. Now I get bored, start towards the computer to delete email then pull up short. What do all those retired folks do with all their time?

Speaking of which, I just heard from my friends in Lancaster than the first of them just retired herself just last week. 30 years of library science was enough for her.

While waiting for the jet to take me off to Hilo tomorrow I'm filling my time watching "inside google" videos from video.google.com. Good content, low production values.

Why Blogger?

With so many competing blogging sites, why did I chose Blogger? Simple: it has the best features, best reliability, best support, best performance and is very easy to use.

That and the fact that I soon will be working at the company that runs Blogger. That fact did play into the decision a bit too.

In September I will be joining the Google team. I've certainly enjoyed my seven years at CNET and met many great people there and will certainly miss all of them. And equally, I'm very excited about meeting new people at Google and am looking forward to the new challenges and the energy and creativity those challenges will bring to me.

New Colo, Last Time

We successfully moved one of our major properties to a new colocation facility over the weekend. This is the 12th such move I've made over my storied carrier ... and if you count all those microsites, it's more like 40. I truly hope this is the last such time I get involved with such a move. They are a lot of work and while it is very satisfying to see so many people working together for a common and tangible purpose, in the end it's just a lot of work with dubious business value. After doing 6 or 8, they start to loose their charm.

This one wasn't as dramatic as renting jets and flying sites across the country and wasn't as easy as a local in place migration. In fact, this was just details: we setup all new equipment, configure it, load data, make sure all our operational processes are in place and move traffic from the old place to the new. Details. Lots and lots of details but no rocket science.

We did learn a lot about the sites tho. It's a bit like moving to a new house: you find all this old stuff you haven't used for years. Do you bring it with you or throw it away? And you do get a fresh start in a clean house. We did get a much better understanding of some things that have grown organically over the years. We need to take this understanding and turn it into actionable follow up items to clean up some cruft that came along. We have the potential to make some dramatic improvements and simplifications that will lead to services that are easier to support, grow and enhance. But the window for those improvements is narrow. Will we move thru it?

Well, one nice thing: years from now when I'm sitting round the table drinking coffee in the local cafe with all the other geezers, I can tell them all about these moves. Over and over again I can tell them. "I remember back in Ought-Six when we moved the 10th largest internet site to Tornado Alley ...."

Starting Over

A year ago I created this account and added one "test" entry. I didn't look at it again until today. Amazingly enough there were about 100 comments to my test entry. The comments were all selling cheap drugs or erection enhancments or access to porn sites. How did they know I am interested in all that stuff?

So I'm starting over but with a restrictive comment policy. I'll be curious to see what happens now.