Geek

The latter half of my work week was consumed by a big “server migration” project. We are tasked with moving our applications to a server farm in a data center in the central part of the country. The server farm has “geographical redundancy”, which means there’s a backup copy elsewhere in the country. If one data center goes down, the other can pick up the slack.

This week we’ve moved applications from a server in Greenville, S.C. to the big data center. The application in question was written by programmers that have long left the company. There is no documentation. There isn’t even a general consensus as to who uses the various modules in the application or what other groups, which could be located anywhere in the world, have their applications talking to our inherited application. The server in question was sitting on the floor underneath a cubicle desk. Changes in the org chart placed a person with absolutely no stake in the success of the server or the applications in the cubicle in question.

On the bright side, the server hadn’t been sealed inside a wall while still powered on.

I led the project of building the new servers in the data center and moving the application that we inherited without documentation. The whole affair is over six years old and has had many cooks in the kitchen over the years, so the code is not consistently written.

The relocation project was deemed a success on Friday afternoon. As part of a very capable team of programmers at the company, we worked together to make this happen. After the move we had one trouble ticket from a team that used a forgotten module through some ancient automation. I came up with an interim solution until we could get things working reliably on the new servers.

It’s a small wonder that I slept 12 hours last night.

I haven’t had time to think about all the changes along the country’s political spectrum that happened this week. I haven’t had time to think about the flight I hope to take tomorrow afternoon (though the weather doesn’t look especially promising).

But I feel good today.

Before moving to Chicago nearly four years ago, we lived in Upstate New York near Utica. Located somewhat close to the geographic center of New York State, the township was the site of many high voltage distribution lines coming together at a very large switching yard a few of miles from the house. Marching northward from the switching yard, toward the Canadian border where power flowed from Hydro Quebec, was one of the highest voltage lines in the nation, a single 765kV circuit. On more than one occasion I took a couple of fluorescent light bulbs along for the ride and stood underneath the buzzing lines. The light bulbs lit up in my hand. Turns out I wrote about one of my field trips, back in 2012.

Back in 1980, Ralph Waite (from “The Waltons”) starred in a movie called “Ohms”. The drama addressed concerns a farmer has about the power lines being built across his farmland. I watched the movie with great interest; it was one of the first times my mom and dad let me stay up until 11:00 PM. My dad made the final decision, since he knew I was very interested in these things and was fascinated with the movie. He watched it with me. There’s a brief clip from the movie on YouTube.

During one of our rides over the summer, I noticed a high voltage power line passing pretty close to a residential sub-division in Channahon, Illinois. As we drove along US 6 I said to my husband, “those power lines are really close to those houses. I’m surprised they built the houses *that* close”.

He mentioned it must have been an optical illusion since we were over a half mile away from where I spotted the power lines, so we drove around the subdivision and surrounding area and concluded that no, they were really close.

While researching other power lines I spotted during today’s ride, I found this photo on the Internet. These were the power lines I was referring to back during our ride over the summer.

Here’s some perspective from a satellite view.

The housing development seems rather new so I wandered around on Google a bit to see if there was any discussion about the houses being so close to these power lines, but I haven’t been able to find anything. Now, I have no investment in any of this other than a dorky interest in the subject, but I’m still quite surprised at how close the residences are to this (seemingly) 765kV power line. Side note: I haven’t confirmed the voltage of these lines, they could be 365kV or 500kV, but the size of the towers seem to be the higher 765kV, but I don’t know this for sure.

I don’t know if there have ever been any conclusive studies on the health effects of prolonged exposure to these high powered transmission lines. I know I’m fascinated by them and have been around them on and off for years, but I have little interest in living close to them. Would I farm under them? Probably. Would I swim in a pool near them? Probably not.

The reason I went down this rabbit hole is because I realized that I’ve been in all 50 states and while I certainly haven’t seen every single power transmission circuit in the country, I don’t think that I’ve seen towers with such big “cat ears” like we have here in Illinois.

Today I took a photo of a glimpse of a sunset today, with a 345kV circuit crossing the Illinois prairie along the way.

I’m a dork. I freely admit this. I great joy in geeky, dorky things. We’ve talked about this before.

My Mac and iPhone and iPad are decidedly undorky. While they do what they’re suppose to do, they don’t really excite me in a techy, geeky sort of way. I see these hackers and crackers on television shows with awesome displays and nifty interfaces that beep and boop and I have none of that. I get in the realm of that sort of experience when I use Linux (don’t get me started on my Windows 10 experience at work).

Recently I discovered a cross-platform application called eDEX-UI. It’s a fun little tech experience with beeps and boops and characters flying around. It’s really just a super fancy terminal window (with multiple tabs) but I feel such dork joy when I’m using it. Does it lend credence to my productivity? Yes, it does, because it puts me in a focused type of system administration mindset. And that’s what I need in these days of boring interfaces to technology.

Geek out!

Sometimes I do things on computers just because I can. Like having a file server to backup the backup server we already have in place. Or wiring an old Pentium II to run the 1930s master clock collection we had wired throughout the old house back East.

Or sometimes I fire up an extra Raspberry Pi with touchscreen I have for a future project and use it to write a blog entry.

Since the pandemic I’ve spent many weekends simply being a dork. I set myself up at the dining room table and fiddle with the various bits of technology I have around the house, wondering what I can do next.

I tend to drift toward retro-style computing; command line prompts are mighty keen as far as I’m concerned and even though I mess around at the command line all day long in my day job, there’s still something nifty about being able to fire up a command-line based email program from 30 years ago to read the latest email.

Sometimes I just revel in being a dork.

I’m very impressed with this water feature at one of the new terminals at LGA LaGuardia Airport in New York.

LaGuardia Terminal B Water Feature | Behind the Scenes from Evoke Collaborative on Vimeo.

When it comes to typing, I’m probably one of the fastest typists I know. That sounds kind of prideful, but is it really prideful when you’re speaking the truth? I’ve been typing since 5th grade and when I was playing around with a borrowed typewriter at that age, my mother said, “If you’re going to type, use the right fingers”. She showed me how to type properly, for the most part, and from there my speed just picked up a lot. I aced a keyboarding class my senior year of high school, where I was entered into a statewide typing competition. I came in third. I was struggling with the space bar on my IBM Selectric II that day. Later, when I went to college to become a music teacher, I had a harder time playing piano than I thought I would have. I can plunk out music but I can’t make people weep with beautiful tunes coming from a piano; I figure I used up all my keyboard-related bandwidth on learning how to type.

Because I type for a living I’m very picky about my choice of keyboard. To this day my favorite Mac keyboard was in my 2005 PowerBook with its aluminum keyboard. I loved that keyboard and I had a hard time adjusting to the newer keyboards introduced in later models. I’ve never owned a MacBook Pro with the “butterfly” keys, though my husband’s MBP had that type of keyboard. It’s comfortable to type on but it’s not particularly reliable and I don’t really get a pleasing experience while using it. But it gets the job done, I suppose.

Mechanical keyboards are awesome and lately I’ve been gravitating towards the Cherry Brown switches in the Velocifire keyboards found Amazon. I don’t need a number pad; I find the narrower footprint works better for when I’m using a mouse. I have two of these keyboards; one for work and one I hook up to my iPad Pro when I’m writing long prose (much like I’m doing right now). This particular keyboard is notably affordable on Amazon. Other mechanical keyboards can go for well over $100.00. That’s a lot of keyboard.

One of the things (of many) that drives me crazy about using work’s Windows 10 laptop is there is such a delay between key press and display on the screen. I’ve followed several online guides to remedy this, I’ve swapped out keyboards to see if it was related to the keyboard (it’s not), and I’ve noticed the same issue when using the built-in laptop keyboard on the computer. It’s one of the reasons I tend to use my personal Mac for work, in fact, I use the same exact keyboard on both computers and notice no lag on the Mac. It must be a Windows thing.

Of course, mechanical keyboards can be loud, though the Cherry Brown switches are not nearly as loud as the old IBM Model M keyboards from the 80s that endure to this day. How I’d love to get my hands on one of them again.

Meanwhile, I’m quite content with these Velocifire keyboards.

I love vintage computing. It’s amazing what we could do with computers around the time I was born, over 50 years ago. The computerization of business was in its infancy, and using computers with capabilities similar to today’s microwave oven.

Here’s a video about IBM’s Punched Card systems.

Image from vrfitness.com.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m really not a fan of fitness, especially a focused "working out" regimen. I find the practice mind numbing and exceedingly boring. Riding a bicycle, going for a walk, or getting exercise through natural means like hoisting lumber around the family lumber yard or slinging hay bales on an early summer day is fine, but when one is expected to do push ups or stare at four walls while yanking expensive slinkies, that is just not my jam.

My career entails sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day. I walk from time to time and I try to get "standing time" to make my Apple Watch happy. I’ve been doing push ups on a regular basis, and I will continue to do so, but again, mind numbing.

My husband and I bought ourselves an early Christmas present in a pair of Oculus Quest 2 VR headsets. I mentioned his headset on a blog entry a few weeks ago, we bought another headset which arrived this week.

I’ve been playing a lot of Beat Saber and my arms are killing me. My body feels more worked out than it has in the months since my last substantial bike ride. It’s a good burn and I’m enjoying the challenges of Beat Saber.

If you’re not familiar with the game, the player is in a neon 3D VR landscape with blocks and walls and the like flying directly at you in time with a music track. The idea is to hit all the blocks with light saber like devices, which are color-coded to the colors of blocks coming at you. Don’t hit the bombs, and don’t get run over by the walls.

To me it’s like the 21st century of "Super Breakout" on the Atari 2600. "Super Breakout" was one of my favorite games back in the day, followed closely by "Astroblast" and "Centipede".

I’m not a fan of shooter games or aiming guns at people in a VR scenescape, but the cardio workout around Beat Saber is a lot of fun and more importantly, mind engaging instead of mind numbing.

With multiple Oculus Quest 2 units in the household, my husband and I are able to play the game together. If the neighbors are watching across the alley, they see two middle aged guys swinging their arms in synchronized movement.

It’s a great way to get some exercise!

My husband took me out to dinner. We haven’t had a “date night” out since the beginning of the pandemic and with the abnormally beautiful weather in Chicago, it was a gorgeous night to sit at a sidewalk table in front of a restaurant and have a nice dinner together.

The approach to social distancing at restaurants here in Chicago involves quite a bit of technology and a couple of assumptions. Some restaurants are checking temperatures at the door. At the moment, no restaurants are allowed to have indoor dining; only open air dining is allowed as of last weekend. To avoid spreading COVID-19, restaurants have opted to skip hard copy menus and instead have posted QR codes at tables. Patrons scan the QR code with their smartphone and are then presented with the menu. Wait staff are now carrying handheld electronic devices to manage the order tableside. Everyone is wearing a mask. Sanitation is happening everywhere.

The handheld devices I’ve seen are branded “Toast”. An Android device, the mini tablets allows servers to have their own device and not rely on a shared touchscreen at a central station. No paperwork is shared between the servers and the kitchen. We did get a printed receipt, which had another QR code, which we could then use to pay directly on our smartphone.

Our current state of technology has allowed us to manage the pandemic fairly well from an economic point of view. Can you imagine if this pandemic had come along in the late 1990s and we were trying to do this with Windows 98 and dial modems? The country would have come to a grinding halt.

Like the Y2K scare and the advancement of technology at that time, I think one good thing the pandemic has brought has been a shove in a positive direction in regards to technology. The work place will never be the same. School kids will never have a snow day again, they can just switch to remote learning.

And we’ll be able to read our menus right on our smart devices.