Wi-tricity

Thanks to Whitney for sharing this with me, it truly is fascinating, I am interested by the claims of safety, I hope he is accurate, but I wonder if we really understand the impact of magnetism on the body, okay I get that we are constantly exposed to low levels but what about additional levels?

Great lake water temperature

I was looking for data and found a goldmine, it seems that this entire site is devoted to monitoring the surface temperature of the great lakes:

Chillin' at the cabin

Well it was chilly, Saturday never got into the 70's we hung out for a while then I visited Home Depot and bought vinyl guttering which I spent the afternoon and Sunday morning installing. The girls did back to school shopping.

Guttering is not exactly exciting stuff I know, but it will improve the quality of life for the plants out front and also make the deck more usable - previously when it rained the lack of guttering around the deck made it feel like you were living inside a waterfall.

The grass has improved dramatically since the begining of the growing season, Buck has been helping us kill the weeds and it has really paid off. We have instructions for next spring.

I paddled across the lake and back this morning just for the heck of it, it was blustery and very few people were out. I practiced some (not so) static bracing out in the middle, I wore my paddling jacket, the first time in several month I have needed anything more than a shirt.

I spent the afternoon getting my gear ready for the trip east, looking forward to four great lakes in two days.....

Afternoon project

I spent Sunday afternoon assembling a series of plumbing parts, stainless bolts and webbing to construct a kayak stand so I can work on and wash the lake gunk off the boats before they are put away in the shed. It works extremely well and the Explorer is now de-sanded for the first time all year.
I also spent a few hours working on the new sports utility trailer, I have fitted the two bike racks and adjusted the kayak rests to where I think they will all fit. Now I need to take it back to the cabin and try the boats for size.
Ideally we would like to be able to take two bikes and two boats on our trip up the north shore next month.

During our morning paddle we discovered the second creek entering into the lake, the entrance was deliberately hidden by someone who has been systematically blocking the river using branches. We were able to slide across the tops of the logs at one end and then had a very serene paddle up into the wetlands. The DNR will need to come and clean up the mouth of the creek....
Oh and one learning for the weekend... don't leave uncooked chicken in the refrigerator at the cabin and expect to come back two weeks later and have a pleasant smelling kitchen.

We had a Cuban themed Saturday evening, I cooked a Cuban spicy pork stew, made from blended chills, garlic, roasted onions and tomatoes mixed with pork stock, the pork was then simmered in this mixture for 90 minutes - very tasty (but a little less chili required next time so we can enjoy it). We also experimented with mixing mojitos - by the end of the second glass they were tasting just right... or were they?

Emma's bedroom decorations

Not just polka dots but also her name on the wall in multi-colored wooden letters, an of course bright green curtains!

See what I mean?

What an amazing image (thanks to NPR), but also note the similarity to the Tahe Greenland? The bag on the aft deck is a seal skin bladder used as a float to exhaust the Narwhal when they dive. I have used a neoprene replica when I was learning to roll in the pool last winter, apparently its the what the Inuits use to teach their youngsters how to roll too..

Tahe Greenland

On Tuesday my father called me and informed me I needed to be cheered up (what with turning 40, changing roles and to top it all off having Emma return to Maryland at the end of summer).
The solution he prescribed was to buy me a kayak, but not just any kayak, only the best darn rolling kayak in the world (IMHO) - the Tahe Greenland, okay so I don't know that it is the best (yet), but.... it has every thing I have been wanting in a boat, radically low aft deck, classic Inuit lines, and its black - it looks either incredibly sleek, or evil - some people call it the Darth Kayak, I prefer to think of it as a weapon - designed to hunt to feed the family, not that there are many narwhals to hunt in Spring Lake but if there were this would be the boat to go get them in.
This morning on NPR there was an article about researchers working with Inuits in Greenland to "hunt" Narwhal in their hand made kayaks and to spear them with transmitters so their migration could be tracked - weird coincidence when I am looking forward to get a replica of the boats they are paddling...

Lessons is journalism

Last month after I was interviewed at Cisco Live an article was published which misrepresented my statements, after discussions with the journalist he edited the story and made it more representative of the actual story I had been relaying in the interview.
Today a colleague pointed out that yet another journalist had got some facts wrong, I had never spoken to this journalist at all, I can only assume from reading the article that he had been half listening to my presentation at Cisco Live or the online interview as a few of the quotes certainly sound like something I would say.... but unfortunately he got many facts chronically wrong, this time in print.....
Neither of these two journalists did any fact checking of their article - I question editorial policy in these two publications now and wonder what weight anyone should give to their content? I guess some people expect journals to at least attempt to be factually accurate and verify the story's, I used to be one of these people who put trust in the editors, now I am going to stop bothering to read them as they clearly are not worth the carbon foot print.
There is much debate nowadays about the role of print journalism, I read with amusement a comment recently which claimed that print journalism must survive as it is the only trusted source of news - NOT !
I am not bitter, just burnt - once too often.

Priceless

NAS Volume mobility

Yesterday I met with Mike Workman, the CEO of Pillar Data Systems, we discussed their new NAS solutions, in replying to an email from Mike this morning I thought it worth sharing a portion of the text as I think it helps answer a question that several companies have not fully understood yet when approaching our needs:

Our need for mobility is not an issue of utilization it is an issue of risk mitigation, arrays or filers fill up; run out of through put or run out of other resources, cache disk etc. nothing scales infinitely except the tales in marketing literature.

Our utilization improvements are coming from thin provisioning, and de-duplication, our capital efficiency comes from the net effect of increasing utilization as well and the improved distribution across tiers of disk speed and capacity.

Without mobility one is restricted to single instance solutions, relying upon the homogeneity of One – and yes this can be powerful, but does not recognize the challenge on a massive incumbent environment.

Emma rides three miles

Hard to believe it but Emma rode her bike around Cleary Lake tonight, just over three miles, last month she could not manage 3 feet! She is now the very proud owner of a horn that quacks like a duck!!

Twilight at Spring Lake