Though the head of marketing claims that it’s no big deal, I can’t beg to differ more. Here’s a picture of the Storm On Demand Logo in Times Square.

Now, why’s this a big deal? It’s pretty rare for the guys in my department (System Engineering) to get much acknowledgement. For that matter, it’s even rare for most people to even get to work directly on something that is advertised in a local rag, let alone the biggest clip show on the planet.

For those that are completely unfamiliar, Storm On Demand is a “cloud hosting” solution that has been developed by my employer. In essence, I think of it as a rapid-deployment system for virtual servers. When I was asked to work on it some time ago, the “deployment” part of that was working. My job was to add the “rapid” part. To the best of my knowledge, they’re still using the process that I initially defined as “the best you can possibly do without dividing by zero.”

It might just be me, but even if I’m the only one that thinks so, that will have to do: This is fucking HUGE.

Most typically, discussions with our lord and savior, Casper Fox (combined with notions that are on my mind at the given time) produce some true gems. Here are a few from the last 24-hours:

It’s true that distance makes the heart grow fonder. It also negatively impacts the stomach, liver, small intestine, appendix, colon, and eyes. All in all, distance could be the leading cause of Crohns Disease.

If you are ever lucky enough to have bestowed upon you a racecar blanket for the purpose of a sleepover, you’re sleeping over. There is no question as to this, and resistance is not only futile, but really mean.

It’s five in the morning, and you’ve just woken up to a cat sleeping on your face and an excruciating charlie horse. There is a tiny face peering around the top of the stairwell, knowing full well that he or she is going to be in some deep shit if his or her parents learn that the respective bedroom is vacant at this hour. You hear “can I come down and snuggle?” If (after verifying that there is clothing on said tiny person) you say anything other than “come on down, buddy,” either your soul is filled with doodie, or you lack a fucking soul altogether.

Not necessarily the worshippers, but most certainly the Catholic Church as an entity is currently at its highest level of evil and ill since the Dark Ages. There are groups acting out against the relatively banal wrongs of the organizers of Scientology, and while I’m certainly no fan of that particular cult, it might be a good idea to take a look at other, more cataclysmically destructive organizations.

Typically, romantic comedies are only comedies in the same sense that the Divine Comedy is a comedy. On its face, and even on its ass, a romcom tends to be anything but humorous. At its best, a romcom is actually just a really long sitcom (see The Sweetest Thing). I still thoroughly enjoy romcoms, but they’re almost always a lot more tragic than funny, which is only funny if the observer is a sadist.

That’s all I’ve got. Here’s to another year I didn’t particularly want.

This is the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to write about a resent death such that the deceased’s creations are almost certainly better known that the creator.

Gumby creator Art Clokey has passed away.

I’m just as guilty as the next guy … until reading the news above, I’d had no idea who Art Clokey might be. After reading said article, I’m pretty sure that, save for the fuckery toward the beginning of his life, Art was the type of guy that I should probably strive to be.

That would actually work out pretty well, when it comes down. There’s not much to my ego, so there probably wouldn’t be a problem if something I dream up becomes ubiquitous, but leaves me as a somewhat obscure footnote to later generations. I can get behind that.

That’s not to say that Mr. Clokey is altogether forgotten, mind you. It’s certainly not my intention to put that notion out there.

This past weekend, the venerable Casper Fox paid me a visit to celebrate the new year. In our random adventures, we passed Gumby’s Pizza in East Lansing, and Art quickly became the topic of conversation. Primarily, we discussed a random memory of Gumby sitting over the makeshift grave of a Blockhead, apparently to ensure that the damned thing stayed in the ground. That’s pretty dark and at least a little twisted, and I can appreciate the talent that it takes to work that sort of scene into what is predominantly a program for children without being lynched.

Good travels, zany, twisted guy. Let’s hope that should the reins be taken over that it’s done so by somebody suitable.

One or two of you might recall my quandry about benefactor-based small service projects

I’ve decided, now that I’m forcing myself to actually take my days off, to go ahead with the project. Feel free to drop by Small Change and see what little info is there, then perhaps give a follow on good old twitter.

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Hasta ahora, un gran parte de la vida mia ha consistido completamente de años de soledad. Ahora mismo, soy todavía solo, pero hay una otra que esta sola conmigo de momento.

À la fin de ce mois, elle laisse pour des endroits inconnu. Très probablement, elle ne retournera pas. Je ne feins pas pour savoir la vie s’avérera pour l’un ou l’autre de nous, mais je sais que celui que les résultats ici, il aillent sucer.

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사랑해

Every month or two, I restart my search for a good distributed database system. I think I’ve found one that sounds good this time around, except that it’s an add-on to a specially-packaged version of PostgreSQL.

Don’t get me wrong … I really like pgsql. My problem is the “specially-packaged” part there.

At any rate, while looking around, an easy way to do up a generic HA (and prospectively HP) database management system came to me. Now the problem is working up the motivation to actually implement it. I’m writing up the basic concepts nowish.

So, since I actually had a reason to use this on a customer box today, here’s a fun little bit of bashscript madness that I’ve been playing around with:

source_http() {
  eval "$(wget -q -t 1 --timeout=5 -O - $1)" 
}

Looks dumb, no? It is, especially if the remote location that you source is not absolutely secure. It can be handy at times, however. For example, I’ve got a source-based package builder (kinda like a really, really simple portage) that I use to install some common stuff on customer servers. It sources the meat of its internal functions through HTTP, and it also uses this mechanism to absorb the build scripts into its environment so that I don’t have to have redundant copies of the build scripts on every server that gets an ffmpeg install.

For another example, assume that you’ve got a big nasty bunch of functions, aliases, environment variables and so on, and you’d like to be able to use them regardless of the computer that you’re using. You could do something like this in your .bashrc:

source_http() {
  eval "$(wget -q -t 1 --timeout=5 -O - $1)" 
}

if [ -f "/path/to/my/functions" ]
then
  . /path/to/my/functions
else
  source_http http://myserver.tld/path/to/my/functions
fi

What you end up with there is a check to see if the functions exist locally. If they don’t for some reason (like if you’re using drbdlinks), then it falls back to sourcing the functions via HTTP. If that fails, of course, you’re still left without your functions, but it’s worth a shot, I’d imagine.

Anyways, that’s all I’ve got right now. Enjoy.

Whenever the lotto payout starts to enter the millions, people tend dream about what could be done with a huge amount of money. I’m just as guilty as you are, though I’ve never bought a ticket, and it hasn’t happened in a really long time.

Almost invariably, the rundown goes kind of like this:

• Buy my mom a new house.
• Buy my dad a new car.
• Donate a bit to charity.
• Have one hell of a time with the rest.

Now, all of that tends to assume that you get a big, fat wad of cash all at once, which is rarely … if ever … the case. State-sponsored lotteries tend to pay out some percentage of the winnings over the course of a decade or two.

Well, forget about the large sum, and forget about the long-term payout. Let’s say that I have five-hundred U.S. dollars to hand over to you. The only stipulation is that you do not get to keep it. Rather, you are required to use it to make this world better, if only by an infinitesimally small margin.

So, what would you do? I know the CAPTCHA below is a pain in the arse, so feel free to mail me directly. My username at this domain.

I find myself to be not much on the eyes, and I don’t see a feasible reason for anybody of the opposing (not opposite … they’re trying to kill us, guys) sex to be interested. I’m not terribly trusting of all of the good lookin’ ones that strike up conversation, so on.

Which of the following would you say describes this situation best:

• I’ve been dealing mostly with shallow women.
• I myself am more shallow than I’d be comfortable admitting.
• I am a dangerous mix of perceptive and hypercritical and would do well to spend the better part of each day thinking about boobs.

There’s a valid reason for the question at hand. I’m interested in both of your opinions.