The Empirical Manifesto

(0) Zero alcohol
(2) Two cigars:

1 x February	1 x March

Thank you all for the kind words and emails - though I was bedridden for two days (and later quarantined at the doctor's office - Swine Flu? - Seriously?) I am already ramping up to capacity once again.

Here we go:

I'm still facing the pros and cons of everyday life, much as we all are, with the difference that I have tried, and tested ESXi. It is a fantastic multipurpose tool which has no place whatsoever in my home, unless as a third box, perhaps. It is NOT a replacement for a graphical workstation (VMware Workstation truly has earned its special niche), and I won't bore you with the details as to why (interested parties, if any, can inquire in the comments). Suffice it to say, its absolutely killing me, and I'll have to go back to running XP as a primary on one of my boxes. It is however, a gorgeous solution for our new proposed collocated server for a myriad of reasons, up to and including "attaching" to an internal, virtualized enterprise-standard EMC Celera NAS. Go drax0r.

Building my own ESX server was a great learning experience (I can now say I've built and managed one) and once drax0r saw what it was capable of, he started salivating as the nearly endless possibilities started playing out in his head. With the click of a button, I have at my disposal, a Solaris x86 box, an OpenSolaris box, and any flavor of linux I choose to run. ESX gives me the ability to clone entire operating systems for backup or archival purposes, or with "P-to-V" turn any existing x86 box into a virtual machine at the push of a button. I can't even comprehend what fanciful things we'll come up with having such flexibility at our fingertips. Windows runs even faster virutualized, as there are no drivers to set aside memory for (though I can't imagine a single scenario where we'd need to run one collo'd), but it was that 'virtual desktop' drax0r saw which really got him spun up by way of the minuscule resources required to run it as he peeked under the engine. Imagine - running Windows, without ever having to admit to running Windows! No wonder Parallels is so popular. "Minimize" and the embarrassment is gone.

As things stand now, I'm preparing to once again tear down my two boxes, swap parts in some semblance of order that only makes sense to me, and hopefully finalize my production workstations. I've been without iTunes, a printer, and audio (another lengthy story including HDMI-audio out; Ugh) for far too long.

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And a special thanks to Blue Portal Productions for the beautifully aromatic "Ambrosia" cigars which arrived in the post today!

( Cut due to the graphic nature of the image )

Concerning Tea
Wife and I left her parents house sans kids by 0900 and hit the post office to pick up a giant package my parents had sent the children. From there we had a cup of Amaretto Roobios at the local tea shop and purchased $30 of loose tea. We then stopped by Borders where I picked up a book for galinda822 and bought myself Concrete Blonde's Mojave. Visited a model home in a new sub-division my wife found when she was here in October - We'll be able to afford it according to my wife's 5-year plan, but it was at least as roomy as our house in Texas. Sounds good to me. On to Wal-Mart! We'd been so looking forward to visiting a real, Super Wal-Mart, but as it turned out, we ended up spending about $25 on some socks and deoderant and were in and out within half an hour. Sometimes, you can't go back home.



Meeting Go Granny Go
Met Go Granny Go and her husband for lunch at Spangles. It was a delightful meeting - Go Granny Go is so outgoing and engaging! We discussed timely topics, such as ProfessorTom and where to find good french fries in Wichita. As is usual for these types of meetings, there was way too much to cover in such a short period of time, but we did discover that they live approximately 200 feet from my in-laws. How funny is that? And of all the luck, they're heading to Texas Thursday. Safe driving Granny! She's always on the Go! ^{Read Granny's account of our meeting here...}



Concerning Wine
After lunch we visited "Under the Cork," the front-end sales to Smokey Hill Winery where I discovered my new favorite red, 'Simply Red.' If any of you recall, this is where I found the Eiswein last year, and who's master wine maker had been killed earlier that year as well, that tidbit is only important because they recently discovered a handful of bottles of port, with nothing more than '815' marked on the bottle. Apparently, they're fantastic. They had them tested to determine the ingredients, but are unable to reproduce it. They were selling for $72 each, and I must admit, I was tempted. After the tasting (oh no, the port was NOT included in that event) we ended up with three bottles of the red, a bottle of Christmas white (complete with mulling kit), another bottle of Spatelese, and a set of four etched wine glasses. Furthermore, we discovered they deliver to Missouri ;)

Concerning Cigars
Saw Nabil at Old Town Cigars; wife bought a box of Cojimar Sage when she found out they're no longer in production, and I purchased a single La Gloria Cubana 8x52 which I smoked at the River City Brewery across the street while downing two pints of a very peatty 8% Scottish Ale which they've dubbed 'Fat Bastard.' (Yes, it was fantastic.) When we were checking out at the cigar store, I asked Nabil if he remembered the cigar he gave me at the birth of my daughter. He did, and upon discovering I smoked it when she turned one, asked how it was. I was truthful - The Best Cigar I had Ever Smoked. It was a 1993 La Gloria Cubana: 10-years old when I smoked it. (While this is mostly a true statement, I did buy a gorgeous box of 12-year old Temple Halls once from J.R. Cigar while I was stationed in Korea. Those were really too good to talk about.)

Concerning Scotch
While we were out, I picked up a 10-year old bottle of Glenfarclas Scotch. As I'm not overly familiar with too many brands of Scotch yet, and I wasn't looking to drop a fortune on a bottle, I played ophthalmologist-patient with the very knowledgeable imported beer dude at my new favorite liquor store: "which do you like better, A or B? Now C or D?" We settled on a preference for Single Highland Malt. Which reminds me, I did get a most delectable sample-pack of what I consider my favorite to date, The Balvenie at a truck stop of all places on the drive down! It included one 10-year, one 12-year, and one 15-year. So far I'm halfway through the 10-year, and I love it. I only hope I'm not disappointed in the Glenfarclas, else I'll probably never buy anything else and just stick to The Balvenie. Its the only Scotch that makes me really, really, happy. I owe my renewed interest in Scotch to photogoot and for that will be forever grateful. To further drive this point home, I'm saving the 12 & 15-year for his January visit.



The Canon
Stopped at Best Buy to touch, for the first time, the Canon S3 IS after all the research this past month. $545 out the door which would have included the double-speed 2GB SD card, 4 NimH batteries & charger, and tax. My wife suggested I just go ahead and get it. I think she was drunk from all the wine tasting and that pint of Fat Bastard. But seriously, now that she's seen it, and I was able to answer all her questions about it (I didn't notice this at the time, but she told me later that as I was answering her questions about the differences in it versus the SLR, last minute shoppers had surrounded me and gotten quiet so they could listen too) I think I'll just save for that. And even though its more expensive at Best Buy, I try to purchase all my high-dollar electronics there for the 4-year replacement policy.

Concerning Egg Nog
10-hours of sleep later, I took my father-in-law and children out of the house for the day to allow my wife and her mother uninterrupted access to the kitchen in preparation of Crimbo. We went to McDonalds for breakfast and played on the indoor equipment for an hour, visited my father-in-law's brother & his children & grandchildren for an hour, stopped by the grandparents for an hour, played in the park for an hour, and spent
another hour dropping off gifts and grocery shopping on the way home. I grilled some perfect steaks for dinner and we dined like kings. My mother-in-law made a custard pie for her husband's birthday, then all six of us piled into the car to see the Xmas lights. When we returned I spiked my egg nog with the only thing alcoholic I had in the house - my scotch. Turned out to be the best egg nog I've ever had.

Christmas Day
My father-in-law built a fire out by the garage and we stood around it in fingerless gloves singing doo-wop like homeless people waiting for guests to arrive. The meal was expansive, and it was nice seeing everyone again. My mother sent two Power Rangers (the new series 'Overdrive' expected to hit U.S. television in February is about teen civil engineers of all things) for a total of three my son rec'd and two Transformers. My mother-in-law bought the largest one I've ever seen, Cybertron Primus who transforms into an entire planet. Most all of the larger toys, this one has three modes, one of them being 'battle mode.' I tell you, it looked just like the Reaver ship from the opening sequence of Serenity. Anyway, I was playing with it, flying it around attacking my son's Decepticon's, when much to my surprise, my wife pops out with, "Cool, it reminds me of Firefly." *grin* I love my geek-woman. Lori and I made out with $150 combined cash, and my daughter ended up with two Polly Pocket sets from my mom, hand crocheted blanket using four colors my daughter picked out, and a submersible, swimming mermaid from my mother-in-law. And that's just the big stuff...they've got enough new toys to last them at least a fiscal quarter, and there's more toys they haven't seen yet back home that galinda822 placed under the tree after we left. I think I'm going to save for that S3.

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^{This entry brought to you via the 26.4 kbps dial-up connection free with my home DSL account. Thanks to drax0r for finding me a number. I assure you, it was all I could not to not swallow my tongue getting these few pics up. I look forward to catching up with all of you online when I return.}

Went to a new smoke shop in Wichita. Box a third of a box of Acid cigars, the 6x60 size. DAMN. Wife allowed purchase because she wanted the box. Those of you not familiar with the Acid brand, it shows the silhouette of a Rastafarian adjacent a Ninja motorcycle with a cigar in his mouth against a physchodelic rainbow backdrop. Nice. I also purchased some humidifier solution for my humidor, and nice, dual-sided guillotine cutter. I'm going to smoke one on my way home.

Then it was onto the wine shop. A new Kansas-wine shop. You heard me, Kansas grapes. I sneered at the bottle of spatelese and was outright disgusted when I saw an icewein. My wife was busy tasting wines and I asked, "So how is it you sell an icewein?" She explained they followed the German recipe (I sneered at this as well, but was impressed they followed the tradition). At any rate, I followed this up with, "And how is it you can sell a spatelese?" She admitted that at the end of this year, they would no longer be allowed to use the name (no shit) but asked, "Would you like to try some?"
"Sure." Then, my entire demeanor changed. It was fantastic. I was beyond words. I asked, "How..." but it was clear I could not finish. The wine maker had spent time in Germany, and used the same 4 grapes the Germans use to blend theirs. I felt like I was back on the Rhine. I bought two bottles. She said, "Would you like to try the icewein?" I admitted that I would have never asked. You see, icewein is only made when the grapes are left on the vine in hopes of an early frost before they turn bad. In Germany, you could only get icewein about once every three or four years. As it turns out, this crop was a 2002 edition, the last time they were able to get a frost on the grapes. On the day of the frost, you have to pick the grapes that day, and press them immediately. It's a lot of work, and icewein is usually sold only in .375 litre bottles at three times the price. Its...well, thicker than most wines. She poured a tasting sample in the glass. I swirled it and brought it to my nose. The bouquet alone told me this was going to be good. I sipped it, swished it, swallowed it. IT BLEW MY MIND! Despite the cost. I bought a bottle, letting her know that she had exceeded any expectations I had of Kansas wine. I left with tears in my eyes thanking her profusely. "Thank you for your comments. It's customers like you that make our day." She said as I left. Perhaps it was the amount of money I spent that really made her day. Regardless, I have my icewein now.