Hotel Events

2006-01-24 09:28
ehowton: (Default)
February 11th markes my 6th month at the Extended Stay America. Let's take a look back:

Multiple internet outages.
Multiple power outages.
One power outage resulted in my groceries going bad.
4 different rooms.
One room flooded.
The toilet ran in one room.
The tub ran in another.
Broken A/C in one room.
My car was damaged.

It's been a hell of a year. Let's put that behind us now, and move forward.

Well. I just ordered a phone, and DSL. I'll have 3.0Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up with 8 static IP's. I'm going to need my Solaris server soon. Hee-hee! Might even replace my FreeBSD box with linux. Gentoo or Slack probably. I want to play with Ampache.



The way I see it, Japanese cars are ugly. I mean, butt-ugly. But, (at least before they started making them in the states) they were well put together and represented quality. So, despite many American's finding these cars ugly, they purchased them. American car makes saw the trend toward buying these ugly Japanese cars, and so started making American cars which looked like Japanese cars. Two items. No one will ever get a Chevrolet Aveo confused with a Toyota. And now America is filled with ugly Japanese-style cars. Nice.
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Mole-Boy

2006-01-17 11:18
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Went outside for a scooby-snack this cold morning, and noticed Tremors-esqe movement on the ground adjacent me. Soon, a mole popped up, sniffed the air, then burrowed just under the surface, and made his way in a straight line to the concrete sidewalk. He then turned, and continued against the edge of the sidewalk until he came to another concrete barrier. He was cornered. He made another turn, heaing into open area, running into a round outdoor lamp. He circumnavigated that, headed another direction entirely, then popped to the surface, knowing he was going the wrong direction! He stumbled across the cold concrete sidewalk, paying me no attention, and continued on his way across the parking lot in search of the end, to bury himself once more. What a fitting analogy for my own day here at work. Stumbling blindly into brick walls, stopping my progress at each turn. We had MLK off yesterday, but no other ministry did. Ergo, I missed all my appoitnments, received threats and foreboding announcments of my absence, and have twice the amount of work I would normally incur. Furthermore, two of my guys are out. Not a large number of people, but that does happen to represent 50% of my staff. Nice.

The hotel manager did not have another suite, nor did he have two rooms with a connecting door. So. We are now in two smaller rooms, side-by-side, across the hall. I had the manager move the bed in one of the rooms into the other room, as my two children are much too young to be in a room alone, and we set up shop in the other room. The manager told me that my suite would be dry within a day or two, and the carpet replaced, and we could move back shortly. I told him, "We're not moving again." He explained that although he's letting me have both these rooms for the price of one, he would be unable to continue this arrangment past a week, perhaps 10-days. I continued to look at him without answering until he suggested that he would contact his manager and see about an extension. Awfully wide of him, don't you think?

My wife bought our son a large-scale aircraft carrrier, replete with a squadron of aircraft. A couple of things bothered me about this particular toy. First of all, it was marked "68" which would be CVN-68, the USS Nimitz. Having been aboard the Nimitz, at least they put a resonable facsimile of the conning tower on this ship. Now, I understand that this is only a toy, and I also understand its made in China, however, the complement of aircraft onboard included a Swedish Viggin, a Soviet Fulcrum, a French Mirage 2000, an experimental US steath aricraft (F-19 nomenclature), a C-5 Galaxy (to date, nothing that large has ever landed, nor managed to to successfully flung from a carrier), a British Tornado, and a US FB-111. Oh, and a Chinook. At least I can tell him why some aircraft have variable-geomety wings, and why the Chinook has folding blades. I'll give the Chinese that for at least suppling the naval varient! Enough of that.

Still working on that spreadsheet. New requirements. ...and the hits just keep on playing!
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Hell Week

2006-01-15 21:25
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Friday night was BSG night, following probably the worst week I've had at work since I started. Now, let me first qualify that. I had director on my ass all week long, making my group look incompetent as each new request from her went to my management team, in the form of a reprimand to the quality of our previous work, as we worked to compile a spreadsheet of information she had asked for. What a pain. Sure, we'd identified inaccuracies in the database, but we were working to correct that. It wasn't going to happen overnight. On the flip side, now that I am no longer responsible for the National Security of this nation, and no one's life is in imminent danger, I refuse to overreact to a spreadsheet. I mean, I'm going to do my job, and do the best job I can do everyday, but freaking-out over a spreadsheet just isn't my idea of sanity.

Back to BSG night. [livejournal.com profile] somebritinmass had turned me on to "French 75" a drink composed of 1-part gin and 4-parts champagne. He warns me though, "It's got quite a kick, so be careful." We sit to watch BSG and I make three, one for myself, and one each for [livejournal.com profile] catttitude and ...who don't care for them. So I drink them all. And pass out on the couch. The next evening, I try a new drink. It's called WATER. And oh, what a sweet drink that is. From this point forward, I will never mix gin and champagne.

Watched Underworld and Mr. & Mrs. Smith this weekend. Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a delightful mix between True Lies, War of the Roses, and Prizzi's Honor, but Underworld disappointed me after reading about the rich gifts both vampires and lycanthopes have and how they battle each other and use their differing powers to both hurt each other and heal themselves in Laurell K. Hamilton's "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" series of books. Underworld had the two groups simply shooting guns at each other. How very disapointing.

Got to my hotel to find that my room had flooded. Fortunately, none of my computers or electronics were damaged, however, they had no suites available in which we could move into. So, we picked everything up off the soaked floor, packed somme clean clothes, and moved in with Carla. The manager is going to call me tomorrow with my options, however, the lady at the front desk assured me I would not be charged for this day. Wow. I have to move 1000 pounds of household goods and food and clothing to sustain 4 people, but I'll save $57.99. Just between you and me, I'd pay twice that to avoid moving.

Oh, and for those who found this entry a tad verbose, I implore you to check out ProfessorTom's single-word blog entry. He's out to change the blogging community with his bold new vision.
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The Wicked Witch of the West

2005-11-22 07:26
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FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2005: Worked late. After-hours move. Ate the best roast beef sammach on the market (Lion's Choice). Wife pulled in right behind me at the hotel that evening. Drank wine.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2005: Carla navigated the family to the St. Louis Mills mall (Da Mills!) which ended in beer. Fantastic! Read a large portion of Wicked while drinking wine.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 20, 1005: The wife single-handedly transformed our small, 300 sq/ft (and that's being generous) hotel room into effcient living quarters for 4 in about eight hours. Unbelievable. Drank wine.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 21, 2005: drp in town. Had a dream that his wife and I were at my desk at work, conspiring about something at work, and he walked in - I was terrified. She joined him during his visit and sat across from me. I was on edge all day. So I drank some wine.

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 22, 2005: Dreamed astro and I were walking around his 270 wooded acres making repairs to the house and outbuildings, driving an aging maroon Cadillac approximately 72 feet long. Later, he took off and Tony and I were hosting a busload of Army recruits on the property...until Lori's grandfather noticed that the ranks were wrong, and the lieutenant was not acting up to his responsibilities. It was an invasion force! Perhaps it was the wine?

Having a FANTASTIC week!

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Hello Darkness my old friend...

2005-10-08 16:14
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Silence.

The very thing my dear wife so desperately craves...is what keeps me prisoner.

I purchased my Bose MediaMate Multimedia computer speakers from the Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1996 for $250. They have a manufacture date of March 1995 on them, and they went out today. Plunging me into silence. I feel as though I am in solitary confinement. Ah, another thing my wife so desperately craves - solitude. Another prison for me.



It's true that the prices have plummeted on these speakers, now called the Companion 2 and only $99. They might as well be $1000. I no more have a hundred dollars to spend...and if I did, I'd be on my way to Wichita. Not sitting here in the dark, alone, in the silence.

I do have another set of speakers in Wichita, in storage. They suck. Still, what I wouldn't give for having the foresight to have brought them with me. It's been a month since I set foot in Kansas, and I'm ready to go back. Ready to leave St. Louis and hit the open road once again. To travel more than 11 miles at 45 miles per hour. Ready to...fly!

I suppose, as a last resort, I could burn mp3's from iTunes, then play them on my Dream Machine. I had just started Equinox, Part II, the first episode of Voyager Season Six when my audio died. I am at hotel nursing a cold which started around 0100 Friday morning. Was this brought on by the sharp change in weather we've had this week, or lack of proper sleep since my family left? I don't know.




Audio Device: RAW sample output
Playing: calling_sky_captain.ogg
Ogg Vorbis stream: 2 channel, 44100 Hz
Title: Calling Sky Captain
Artist: Shearmur, Edward
Genre: Soundtrack
Date: 2004
Album: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Track number: 04
Assuming raw pcm input filef 03:26.24 (170.9 kbps) Output Buffer 3.1%
LAME version 3.93 (http://www.mp3dev.org/)
Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz
Encoding to calling_sky_captain.mp3
Encoding as 44.1 kHz 192 kbps stereo MPEG-1 Layer III (7.3x) qval=2


There are quite a few things that Darwin can do better than Solaris, or shall I say PPC can do better than SPARC? I never could get LAME to do well, anything worthwhile on my Sun boxes. Those of you who run x86 exclusively won't have a clue as to what I am referring to. Suffice it to say, not EVERYTHING just 'works' outta the box on non-x86 architecture where OpenSource software is concerned.

I don't know if I can go a week plunged into silence. I tried unplugging everything and listening via the built-in mac speaker. That was the worst idea I've had in a long time.

My mac mini is slowly degrading. Because of the network set up I have constructed in this hotel, the Operating System cannot gain access to some online functions. The ports required to be opened are blocked and my research thus far has been unsuccessful in determining which ones are required. Software Update is disabled, as are various application optimizers which try to run, but lack the ability to access their online updated definitions. I'm hoping the box lasts another 5 months or so, and that I can restore her to full functionality once I'm free of this kludge.

Then it hits me. I purchased a holder for my cell phone which was ineffective and I was going to take it back to Best Buy. I could use that return to exchange it for some speakers. I'm really in no condition to travel, but what is the alternative?

No one at home when I try to call my wife. They have their own life now. Just have to hold on 6 more days...

Picked up some Logitech X-230 2.1's. They actually sound better than I thought they would. Maybe this weekend won't be so bad after all. Things are starting to look up.



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Not Again!

2005-09-29 08:25
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quark went down again between 0815 and 0825 this morning.

Lost power at the hotel again yesterday between 1500-1800.

Wife and kids safely arrived just prior to midnight Tuesday night.

Have been attending two, concurrent three-day offsite meetings, providing IT support. (This usually means dimming lights and advancing power point presentations for executives...)

One of the hotels provides wired internet access in the convention area, at $100 a connection. Alternately, you can connect to the wireless throughout the building for $10 a day. To counter this shameless practice, I installed a wireless router on the wired end for $100, and in turn broadcast my own wireless signal to 85 CIO's throughout the convention area. It was a great success.

Tony, if it was another power outage, would you mind plugging quark into the UPS? Thanks pal.

Eric
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Warning; Internet access is now offline.

2005-09-26 10:27
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No internet again this weekend.

That makes for a very long weekend indeed.

Drank G&T's all day Saturday, drank water all day Sunday. Doing nothing can be exhausting.

I was able to sleep quite a bit, which was more a necessity than a luxury. Of course that may have had to do with the amount of gin.

Met one of Lori's cousins's who live in St. Louis for lunch and a game at Buffalo Wild Wings Saturday. It was a nice time and went quite well seeing as we had never before met. They told me about the St. Charles Oktoberfest on Friday that Lori and I will probably attend.

Sat in my room all day Saturday after lunch and Sunday watching Star Trek Voyager episodes. Got a call about 1700, two servers were down at the Woodlands office. I drove over there, wound my way around the dark corridors, and opened the server room door. A rush of heat assaulted me. It felt upwards of 120 degrees in there. I reset the A/C and power-cycled the two boxes which were bouncing, then called Operations. I was connected to a conference. After 18 hours inundated with Starfleet colloquialisms, I just couldn't get it out of my system.

"What happened?" Someone asked.

"Environmental systems were offline." I responded.

"Did you bring the servers back up?" They asked.

"System reinitialization is now in progress." I told them.

What a GEEK!

There is SO MUCH going on here today and this week, that I'm sure my posts will be brief and infrequent. My wife is also coming down this week, not the best week to do so, but I'll take what I can get.
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The End of the World

2005-09-20 10:33
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I was sitting in my hotel around 2100 last night drinking my last G&T of the evening and chatting with "The Neck" when a huge storm blew up and knocked out power to the hotel....for the next six hours. Eventually, even the emergency lighting in the hallways went out, plunging the entire area into complete darkness. It came on by 0300 and I was able to get just over three hours sleep last night.

The Neck:


This morning I arrive at work only to discover that one of our remote sites was down and that "someone" should go over there for hand-holding and reassurance (and a possible reboot of a Novell router). That someone was me, and they were surprised to see me, but comforted that we were aware of their plight. Apparently SBC took a power hit as well, but their generators failed, leaving the entire city without an IT infrastructure. The whole city reeked of chaos.

In other news, quark is still down. quark and xirr are co-located at the ADC:

EricHowton:Hey, when do you think you can get over to take a look at quark?
drax0r:dunno, kinda busy, and it's like...far
EricHowton:That's ok dude, I understand. Whenever you get a chance. Thanks.
EricHowton:Ooops, I accidentally powered down xirr :(
drax0r:dammit! I'm on my way over there now.
EricHowton:Thanks!

Ok, that really didn't happen, but it made for an amusing anecdote. He's going to look at it this evening. He so totally rox0rs.

Watched an intense movie the other night, "JSA: Joint Security Area" It's a Korean movie (no, Tony, there's no ninja kung-fu) about the North and South along the DMZ. It won a bunch of awards in Korea, and I even heard Kim Jong-Illin' had a bunch of pirated copies imported for his staff to watch (training video's?) I don'd know if I was particularly interested because I was actually there, but from reviews I've read, it's one of the director's best films and enjoyed by those who have never been to the DMZ.

Well, my in-boxes (plural) just exploded and I can't seem to respond faster than they're filling up...
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Birfday

2005-09-18 16:38
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I'm 36 today. For my birthday, I built myself a FreeBSD box from my old gaming box. Installed Big Sister, but that turned out to be a huge pain in the ass, so I compiled Big Brother instead. The devil you know.... I stared at the Big Sister config page for an hour. I got Big Brother up and running in 4 minutes flat, including compile time. http://paris.darkvoyager.com/bb it's even got xirr on it, but Tony didn't want the client running. Stayed indoors all day listening to music and drinking Gin & Tonic. It's nearly 1700 and I'm thinking about sleeping. The wireless internet here has been stable all weekend. The manager ordered some newer WAP's for the closet which serves this hallway. I'm guessing that will also upgrade their 'g' from 54 to 108Mbps. It matters not to me, all my boxes are running off one of Tony's old 100/base hubs. And yes, there are collisions. I packed my switch away somewhere else I'd be using that.

I've heard of SecureBSD. This is my idea of SecureDARWIN:



So I got Big Sister to come up anyway. Sorta. Anyone who clicks the link above, depending on where I am in the project, will either get one page or the other. This ain't an exact science here people. I'm getting very sleepy...

Rod was at work all weekend working on his servers. Poor bastard.
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PBR Streetgang

2005-09-16 08:42
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I once read a very in-depth whitepaper on why USB could never be used for networking. Which is funny, today. And yet at the same time, so very, very dumb. My USB Networking Device...stopped responding today between 0730 and 0800. Wired networks are really the only way to go.



My primary Solaris server died today at 1040. My homepage is down, my gallery is down, my virtual Sun CD is offline, and my O'Reilly books are inaccessible. I was going to play with postfix this weekend. Sweet Tony has volunteered to swing by the ADC on his way out of town to fix, but that would delay him many hours and I'd rather he make it to East Texas safely and rested instead.

It's Friday and I have absolutely nothing to do. I'm guessing I'll make dinner at the hotel, watch a movie on the computer, maybe even install an operating system and build a mail server...sleep in a little Saturday morning.

Such is the life I lead whilst on travel.
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208.255.18.132

2005-09-14 22:21
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Well, it was worth the wait. And the frustration which followed. Extended Stay America issued me a publicly accessible static IP for six months. I was able to ssh into teh max0r from quark while I had the tech on the phone. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I'm using Windows XP as my firewall/NAT/port-forwarding router. I really can explain why, but that doesn't make it any less embarrassing.

Tony, I added teh_max0r to your DNS and restarted bind.

I'm looking at getting sendmail to work either on my Solaris server, or my mac, I haven't decided which yet. And as they have a new release of FreeBSD, I may rebuild that box or, perhaps gentoo and use that instead. At any rate, I'm running out of time now. It's nearly 0100, half my St. Louis raspberry weizen microbrews are gone, and I have an early appointment tomorrow...
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Part II

2005-09-14 07:43
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Internet Access was down when I got back to the hotel after work. Manager was gone and the front desk girl knew nothing. I called this number Tony found for me to move hotel's. Come to find out, they're right next door. "Come on over and use our internet. You can pick it up in the parking lot." It too is wireless. She suggested I call Homestead. They're hardwired to RJ-45 in the rooms! There's a magnet on my refrigerator with the logo for Homestead on it. "For more information log onto ExtendedStayHotels.com." It's a cruel joke indeed. No contact information other than the website. I called Guest Tech again and told them I needed internet access today. They're going to send someone out.

Today I immersed myself in a desktop problem at the other site. Fortunately, I was asked to work on a linux box. Unfortunately, linux is not unix, so it was an arduous task. In the end I determined that the kernel development packages weren't installed and I could not add the serial console to the kernel. In other news, I got my laptop. A Dell Latitude X1. It has a 16x9 screen and a nearly full size keyboard, yet is tiny tiny tiny. It has no PCMCIA slots, but does have an SD and CF slot, bluetooth and wireless built-in. 1.1 GHz Pentium IV Mobile with 768MB of RAM. Wholly adequate. I also got badged today.

Called Guest Tech back after two and a half hours of not hearing from them. They said they'd get someone right on it and that he escalated it to them. I replied, "That's already been done. Two and a half hours ago. I'm curious if they've been doing anything in between my calls, or if they only look at when I call them at two and a half hour intervals. Perhaps they could do something different this time?" Of course that just leads to him repeating the same circular phrase from his help desk book. Asses.

Watched a good three-quarters of Sneakers before the DVD player hit an unrecoverable error due to a large scratch on the DVD and would no longer play. Watched Dogma instead. Pretty powerful movie for a friggin' comedy. My all-time favorite Kevin Smith movie.

The Wireless Access Point is providing a proper IP and gateway now every 45 seconds or so, but still no outside connectivity. And even if it does come up to the point where I can post this, I have no faith that it will be up tomorrow after work and I begin again my vicious cycle.

Sleep

Internet was up this morning, but only after a reboot of the operating system. I seriously don't understand that. Will likely be BORED OFF MY ASS today. At least I have my laptop. They offered to 'build it out' for me as they have an extensive checklist. I sighed. I really am Tom Waters. I have a meeting with the CIO tomorrow and while the admin had me on the phone, she also wanted to invite me to their next monthly admin meeting! Word around the knitting circle was that a new Manager was in town and they'd sure like to meet me. SUPERSTAR! Never underestimate the power of a VP's admin...
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Internet Connection HELL!

2005-09-12 18:30
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Saturday:

Arrived in St. Louis. Found my hotel and moved in. It is, probably the worst hotel I've ever stayed at, in what I assume is the worst part of town. Still, they have a kitchenette, and broadband. Well, that's what I was told anyway. It's wireless access. I have no wireless devices. *sigh.* So, I buy a $100 USB network adapter. Yeah, that's what they run, $100. And I have to use windows to get it to work. Only thing is, it doesn't. Well, the device works fine and connects me to the network. Only I don't get assigned an IP address or default gateway. Who thought wireless was a good idea? There is a silver lining in this dark cloud, and that is, for $75 I can bring Daisy here to stay with me the entire 6 months. Now that makes me happy. Of course in certain parts of St. Louis, my Cingular phone joins the Verizon network and tries to prompt me for credit card information. Anyway, back to the internet. Extended Stay America has a 1-800 number they use for IT support. "Guest Tech." I called Canada and utilizing the Netgear Smart Wizard, connected to individual access points with a static IP, DNS and a gateway. All to no avail, as still, I could not even ping the gateway. We were troubleshooting for about half an hour before he realized he couldn't help me. That's usually the way things go with me. Why oh why couldn't they just wire RJ-45 in these rooms? I'm sure when he calls me back, he'll have a solution. After all, I'm using XP, right? Something he did tell me, however, is that I can request a public IP which bypasses their firewall. Now, IF we can get up on their cheesy WAP, that might just be the most exciting thing to happen to me so far during this new adventure...


Two things I forgot to bring with me to STL. Both are devastating and left a burning in the pit of my stomach when I realized it. My humidor, and my ties. $100 later and I'm the proud owner of three new ties. But WTF am I supposed to find a humidor full of cubans here? I'll have to retrieve it when I got to pick up Daisy.

Sunday:

Guest Tech is going to send someone out tomorrow. Two of the longest days of my life without access in a hotel all alone. I think I'll watch a movie. Oh, and the weekend-night girl is back at the front desk! Today I was 'babe.' Yesterday I was 'sweetie' and 'pumpkin.'

Imported all my opera from my now defunct Shoutcast server to iTunes for something to do and listen to. Full opera's of La Boheme, La Traviata, Tosca, and highlight of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Good stuff. Makes me want to go out and buy more. And of course the Doctor was singing La Boheme on the episode of Voyager I watched last night too...

Monday:

Shadowed my boss all day. He's probably tired of looking at me. Didn't really do anything today. Just watched and listened and sat a lot.
Came into the hotel and asked about the internet access. My very next question was going to be, "What time is checkout tomorrow?" However, much to my surprise, they fixed it. I need a stiff drink. banwidthplace.com clocks me at 83.8 kilobits per second. Watchout for Speedy! Maybe I'll just swallow my own tongue.


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