I woke up at 4am, no idea why, if anyone does know, please fill me in. Anyway, I decided to catch up on the world around me so I fired up my FriendFeed and started browsing.

FriendFeed is a wonderful aggregation service that simplifies keeping in touch with friends and family. FriendFeed lets you publish the data from your blog, social network sites, photos, and other places for others to see without them having to visit each site individually. It also has an interesting twist in that you can create Imaginary Friends where you put in the services you want to watch even if the person doesn’t have a FriendFeed account.

While catching up on my brother Michael’s feed I stumbled upon two separate pictures of my niece and nephew that had to be mashed. Enjoy.

The Disappointed Princess

Some days it all comes together like a Seinfeld episode; you don’t know why your seeing what you’re seeing, but you hope it leads somewhere. Today was one of those days on Twitter. It started innocently with a single tweet and ended up with me laughing uncontrollably. Maybe it’s because it was Friday or possibly because I like slapstick humor, or most probably I’m a little further off the beaten path than I think. Anyway …

@Natallini was putting off mowing the yard. Feeling all considerate, it is a Friday after all I, suggested a Tyvek suit or a cabana boy.

If she just wanted to stay clean, then the suit should work great.
With a handsome cabana boy to work the mower, she could sit on the porch and have her favorite beverage.

Then she was attacked in her own home, by vicious little creatures.

For those of you fortunate enough to have never encountered the painful little creatures, count yourself lucky. The rest of you understand the primitive need to squish them all. If you’d like to know more about fire ants check out the Wikipedia article on Fire Ants If you’d like to see them in action, there is a short video below.

Then we had a slight burst of misunderstanding between me @donthorp, @Natallini, and @eeUS

And then the Serendipitous tweet.

Trust me we’re getting there. My first thought, obviously, was Google. Surely someone out there has fire ant proof suits; but sadly, I couldn’t find one. I did find a patent entitled Insect resistant geotextile. For the very curious among you it’s actually interesting how they tested for insect resistance, so give it a quick scan. The connection to this story is provided in the following quote.

EXAMPLE I

[0034] An extruded nonwoven, such as Tyvek® was used to form a bag which was sealed to prevent the ants escape. The ants penetrated the extruded nonwoven within two (2) hours.

Although it only gives her a two hour window to escape, that should be sufficient if she also tapes the cuffs.

Now you’re wondering why Grizzlies. Occasionally we’re granted a Google gift during a search that provides fodder for posts such as this. I originally searched for ant proof suit. Lost in the search euphoria, I didn’t save the set of keywords brought me to this, but here is the video that brought the laughter.

There is just something about the testing of that grizzly proof suit that brought me to tears. My first thought was, “That’s a whole lot of Mondays”.

Some of you may have recognized the source immediately, but I had to research to discover that the footage comes from a movie, available on Amazon, entitled Project Grizzly by Troy Hurtubise. It documents “Hurtubise’s diligent work to improve his homemade “grizzly-proof” suit of armour, his efforts to test its resilience, and his forays into the Rockies to track down the grizzlies he dreams of meeting.”

I really don’t know if the grizzly suit is fire ant proof or not, but I’m convinced that the testing of the suit for use with fire ants would provide hours of painful video.

The shower has been draining slowly for a few days. On her way to work this morning, Laura called to remind me to pour Drano down the shower drain. Having a little extra energy this morning, I decided to go the extra mile and see if I could clean it by hand before using chemicals. That way, the Drano would be much more effective and have much less work to do.

Click for Larger Image

I’ve wondered for years how the drain cover stays in place, but I never bothered to actually look. On close inspection there seemed to be four tabs holding it in place, so a little pressure and it popped right out. If you look closely, you’ll see a little bump on the tab that helps keep it below the rim.

After successfully pulling the cover off, I peered into the drain and was greeted by a glob of stuff that honestly, was probably alive. Reaching in the drain, I SLOWLY pulled and pulled and pulled, until finally with a soft plop, an ENTIRE ponytail looking creature was resting peacefully on the shower floor. Thankfully, it didn’t spring to life and attack.

For the squeamish among you, I won’t embed the pictures, but for the rest of you crazy people, head over to my SmugMug Gallery Drain Life.

Off and on all summer, we’ve been trying to figure out how to get Alex to school. He is attending The American University in Washington, DC and will be majoring in International Studies.

We had several options:

1. Drive and tour the eastern part of the US
2. Drive one-way and fly home
3. Have the Family fly out carrying some of his bags and have a mini-vacation in DC
4. Put Alex on the plane and say have fun

The last option may seem a little harsh for sending your child off to college, but we’ve had a couple of years to prepare. Alex attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS) at the University of North Texas for his last two years of High School. The program is a residence program where kids can take college courses and earn their High School degree. This period allowed all of us to adjust to him being away from home, but not so far that we couldn’t meet up on a whim.

Soon after he graduated, we put him on a plane for summer school in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico at the Universidad de Guadalajara CEPE. He took a couple of courses and was able to tour the region where he took many interesting photos. All of Alex’s photos are available on his SmugMug account. He may have visited other places, but I do know he went to Puerto Vallarta, Guanajuato, and Zapopan a suburb of Guadalajara. One of the messages from him during the trip informed us that Guanajuato would be a great place for us to live if we ever do decide to retire in Mexico.

After he came back from Mexico, he hung out with us for a while before taking a driving tour of the Western US. I have yet to go through all of the photos of ‘Road Trip 08’, but it looks like they had a great time. The trip started in Jackson Hole, WY where his friend Laura picked him up from the airport and ended in Corpus Christi, TX at Laura’s house.

Alex came back in time to get off the bus from Corpus to help us load a U-Haul trailer full of stuff to transport to Tulsa where we exchanged it for other stuff, to bring back to Texas. I found out that he’d had maybe one hour of sleep since leaving Corpus after he learned of the Canadian bus incident; after the trip had started. He helped us prepare for the garage sale before packing his things for school. He had whittled things down before he left for Mexico, but he was able to make another pass through to provide more fodder for the sale.

I’ve been telling a good friend of mine for weeks, that we were probably going to just send Alex to school because he didn’t have enough stuff for us to need to drive. Here’s the proof.

His total belongings amounted to:

1. 3 boxes shipped via UPS ($88 ground, 2 day air was $425, um no thanks)
2. backpack (not shown)
3. 2 bags with him on the plane ($40 in excess baggage fees)

Sorry for the poor images (silly camera on phone), but I think it shows that it really was minimal.

So this morning at 5:30 AM, Alex and I headed to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport so that he could catch his 7:20 AM plane to DC. We walked in, I paid for the extra baggage, $40, gave him a hug and headed back to open the garage sale.

When I got home, I realized he had forgotten the tracking information for the boxes. So I typed them up and shipped him a quick email. Then to let me know when they arrived, I added them to TrackThis so that I would be notified on my Twitter account when the packages arrived.

A few hours later, at approximately 10:00 AM CDT, I sent this tweet.

At 10:10 AM CDT, I received this text from Alex

Just touched down

At 11:36 AM CDT, he announced his arrival at his room, which he’s sharing with two others.

…only two desks.

At 1:46 PM CDT, I knew everything was ok, because I was informed I owed him money.

School supplies were 50 … showers are good..better than our house

At 1:53 PM CDT, I received an email, that told me that he was settled in and rarin to go.

… edited …
Now I’m off to look into getting my iphone (:

Hopefully soon, I’ll get the text or phone call from said iPhone to prove that everything turned out as expected. Otherwise, he’ll need money at some point, then I’ll hear from him.

Goodbye

Today is a day of transition from the known to the unknown. Last week I decided that I needed to take a break for a much needed rest. Two thousand three hundred thirty-five days ago on March 18, 2002, I said hello as employee number 18; Today on August 8, 2008 I say farewell. A thank you and best wishes to each and every one of the talented people I had the opportunity to travel with on that part of my journey.

Inflection Points

Every so often in my life an inflection point appears and when it does, I’ve learned to embrace it as a doorway to a new adventure. They’re not always joyous adventures, but like any good adventure they provide tales for telling. These tales fit me well at this stage of my life. There are several transitions that I might detail in the future, but I want to touch on several of them in this story.

I can remember the first real transition and it’s not a pleasant one. My dad passed away from cancer when I was 13 and a short while later mom told me that we’d have to move into town. I can remember clearly that my response was extreme frustration. I had lost dad and now I was losing access to all of the activities I loved: hunting, fishing, horseback riding, and even my chores. In a fury, I packed up all of my favorite items to get them out of my sight because I knew the enjoyable part of my life was done. It didn’t take long for me to come to terms with the transition and once I did, I embraced it.

I had a couple of education related inflection points. During Spring Break of my Junior year of High School, I visited my grandparents who were wintering in South Texas. I’m fuzzy on the exact timing, I can’t remember if I decided before or after break, but I knew when I returned that there was nothing left for me in High School. When I got home, I took the GED and started summer school at ORU where my step-dad was a professor.

I started off pre-med, the decided on pure Chemistry. I was enjoying the studies, but apparently I had approached another inflection point. I was standing in a lab three years later, having completed all of my Chemistry degree courses and one of my professors made a simple comment, “you are really good with computers, have you taken any courses?” Apparently that was the click of another door opening.

I had started programming on the TRS-80 model I when I was 13 or 14 and spent a large portion of my free time working with computers, but I had never really considered it as a profession. Shortly after the comment, I realized that while I liked Chemistry, I loved working with computers and the variety they presented. Before the end of the semester I started the transfer process to TCU and as soon as the semester ended, moved to Fort Worth, TX. I hadn’t even been accepted yet, but I knew that’s where I would be.

Near the end of my penultimate semester at TCU, Laura and I got engaged. Some of you are thinking OK, So? What you may not know is that we had only had 3 dates before the engagement. This transition was a little drawn out, but I graduated in May of 1987, started my first full time job in June of 1987, and got married on July 4th, 1987. For those of you trying to do the math, we’ve been married 21 years now. It may seem odd, but I knew that it was the correct door to step through.

Near the end of the .COM bubble, one of my good friends Bill and I decided to form a company. We had been contracting together doing software for the Destination PC and decided that we should open an office, which is a pretty big commitment. After a while, we decided to self-fund an idea and brought in another one of my good friends, John. John and I continued contracting to pay the bills and help part time on the project while Bill worked full time on the project. The story is too long to tell in full, but the short version is, John and I threw ourselves into the collapsing job market so that Bill could stay with Select Payment Processing to guide it through several tough years to a successful acquisition. If all three of us had stayed, the company would not have been able to survive the collapse of the bubble. That acquisition is helping allow me to discover my next adventure.

The Unknown or There’s a World Outside of Yonkers

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/WbBnXryfjg4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This inflection point is a little different than the others in that I have nothing planned except rest. “Out There”, from Hello Dolly, has been on an endless playback loop in my head the last couple of weeks. I think it helps convey the hope that this change presents. Next week is a little busy, we’re going to have a HUGE garage sale, but I see that as part of the resting process.

My current short bio says “Overcommited, Developer, Entrepreneur, Part Time Trader”. My new short bio? “Adventurer in Waiting”. If you need to find me, look for a vista surveying a landscape of opportunity. Some where, out there, is the next doorway to adventure, I’m not sure where it is, but it’s there.

Let’s face it, I collect computers. Trust me, I don’t want to be in the computer collection business, but some how I have several sitting in the closet and many up and running as I write. Being an entrepreneur, start-up engineer, software developer, etc, I need machines to get things done. So, I tend to treat the house like a personal data center. Several enabling technologies have emerged that have helped me start down-sizing my home data center to be much more energy and space efficient. At this point noise and heat are still my biggest issues.

In the past, I would buy the best computer I could build and install everything under the sun on it to try and keep costs down. Problem is each machine would start collecting more and more cruft and the next thing you know, you’re wanting another box.

Not too long ago, VMWare unshackled their server product and allowed me to start collapsing physical hardware on to virtual hardware. They also made their product run on Linux, including Ubuntu my current distro of choice. The combination of VMWare Server with Ubuntu gave me the power to have a low/no cost solution for collapsing physical machines and easily re-using older hardware.

Another benefit is that I could start building single purpose “machines”. I could afford to run a Virtual Machine (VM) per application or have development specific VMs. A huge benefit was that you can migrate a VMs quickly to different hardware. I can, for example, take a web application from my “data center” drop it on my laptop and go mobile. When I get home, I simply move it back into the data center. When I buy a new host machine, I can easily move the VMs and recycle the old hardware without having to re-install all of the software. Not only have I started running server type applications in their own VM, I have also started creating single purpose VMs for desktop applications. Currently, I have a VM for my trading/investment software and I’m about to build a VM for my QuickBooks and other bookkeeping and business tasks.

I know I’m behind, but I finally took a look at the Dell Studio Hybrid. There is a review on PC Magazine. Seeing the form factor, I immediately wondered if it would run Ubuntu. Quick little search and I found the quote below at Dell’s IdeaStorm.

To me, a home VM server needs:

1. The capacity to have lots of RAM
2. Enough storage for all of the VMs you want to host
3. A fast, cool running multi-core CPU
4. Runs quietly. Noise is tiring and annoying
5. The ability to run Ubuntu and VMWare server
6. Draw as little energy as possible
7. One or more Gb ethernet adapters

What it doesn’t need:

1. Fast graphics, I access the machines remotely
2. Big form factor, I might want it in a closet.
3. Proprietary anything, we want to run linux
4. It should be relatively inexpensive

The Studio Hybrid allows:

• Intel Core 2 Duo up to 2.6GHz
• 4 GB RAM
• 320 GB SATA Hard Drive
• Integrated video with DVI and HDMI
• Built-in wireless N and Gigabit Ethernet

What I haven’t been able to determine is how quiet it is. You can see from the back panel that it does have a fan, so it can’t be completely silent. But in all other aspects, it looks like it could be a viable platform for a VM host in my greener home data center.

One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that I try and convert as many things to habits as possible so that I’m not continuously making small decisions. Conventions help make habits efficient. For example, in our house, coffee cups are stored upside down in the cupboard. Habits are also suppose to make pre-caffeine rituals safer, because, let’s face it, anything pre-caffeine for most of us is just outright dangerous.

We don’t brew pots of coffee in our house because Laura and I are the only coffee drinkers and we prefer slightly different coffee. For years now, we’ve used the Flavia beverage system which produces reasonable coffee by the cup. The designers of this system must have had to use their own product in a pre-caffeinated state because it does have a nifty feature, the overflow reservoir.

Good product design helps minimize the damage when habit and convention fail.

Making coffee in the morning is a habit with several simple steps:

1. Open door of Flavia to inform it to heat the water.
2. Select your coffee-pack from the carousel. My favorite, Intense Dark Roast.
3. Insert coffee-pack into machine, close door.
4. Select mug, invert, and place on brewing platform under dispenser.
5. Push brew button
6. Wait 15 seconds or so
7. Open door, remove used coffee-pack, and dispose in trash
8. Close door, take coffee in cup somewhere safe to drink

Product Safety Note: Performing any task without caffeine is not recommended.

Imagine you have house guests sleeping on the couch and you don’t want to wake them up by turning on the lights. Also consider that you might have ruined your night vision by checking email, twitter, or some other service before remembering coffee. Let’s see how this goes.

• Step 1, check
• Step 2, wait, can’t see, ah, use blue LEDs on top of coffee maker to read labels, check
• Step 3, check, easily done by touch
• Step 4, check, coffee cups are right above coffee maker, easily done by touch, with some help from blue LEDs
• Step 5, check, button is illuminated, and we know it’s location by heart
• Step 6, check, we know noise machine makes when coffee has finished brewing, it’s Pavlovian
• Step 7, check, easily performed by touch
• Step 8, check, WAIT, WTH, sound of coffee splashing on floor, instigate corrective action ASAP

So, at this point, I … oops, YOU, go into damage recovery mode grab paper towels and start cleaning up the floor and the counter, by touch of course. Your brain registers that you spilled coffee, but there is not enough to account for all of the liquid that’s suppose to be in the cup. Slowing down, you reach over to the coffee cup, and, by touch, conclude that you put the cup on the beverage platform upside down. Convention and habit FAIL. That’s also when you remember that there is a small reservoir on the beverage platform and thank the designers.

New habit, when making coffee in the dark, check cup orientation, by touch before Step 5.

I use Gmail as a mail aggregator for many of my accounts. I honestly do strive for Inbox Zero but I’m not very consistent. As part of the quest, I’ve become relatively proficient at typing in advanced search query strings, but it is a real time sink to hand enter those every day. Enter Gmail Labs.

On June 5, 2008 Google announced Gmail Labs in the official Gmail Blog. Being an early adopter, I turned labs on in Gmail almost immediately after reading the post but didn’t look at the features closely. This morning I woke up and realized I was failing miserably in maintaining my inbox and decided to make a dent. The frustration led me to search gmail help to see if there was any way to save/bookmark advanced searches. That’s when I stumbled on to Quick Links.

Gmail Labs, being experimental, are not enabled by default. You may have to Manually Enable Gmail Labs in Your Account. Once labs are enabled, you are allowed to control the features on an individual basis. As you can see if the photo above, I have Quick Links enabled.

For example, the Twitter Quick Link shows all of the email from Twitter in my Inbox using the search below. One nice touch is that clicking on the Quick Link re-populates the search field allowing you to specify additional search criteria.

from:twitter in:inbox

I know this feature won’t solve all of my Inbox Zero issues, but I’m hoping it will help me quickly wade through items that I don’t want processed by a rule and want to look at before archiving or deleting. Happy Cleaning!

I was minding my own business this morning, when I get the call. Using my normal trick, a very quiet, sharp ‘hello’ to detect predictive dialers from numbers I don’t recognize, I was expecting the normal lightning fast sales pitch. Instead …

REP: Good morning sir, is this Don Thorp?

ME: Yes. How may I help you. (Sometimes I do try to be polite)

REP: This is Charter Communications and we think we may have misconfigured your cable service. Please tune to channel 50 and let me know if you have clear reception.

Thinking to myself, “ok ‘maybe’ they’re being proactive”, I hunt for the remote (I’m in my office, if you could see my office, you would understand this is not undertaken lightly) and tune to channel 50.

ME: It’s static.

REP: Good, that tells me that you have our limited basic service. I can upgrade you today to our expanded basic cable for only $15.00 a month. Would …

ME: Ma’am, I don’t …

REP: You would get The Discover Channel, …

ME: Ma’am, I have DirectTV for that, I only want …

REP: Sir… (stopped listening)

ME: Have a nice day ma’am, thank you (click)

I have to hand it to them. By pretending that they’ve messed up my service, she was able to get me involved in the sales process. Sleezy, but effective in getting my attention.

During the middle of last week, a person I follow on Twitter, Jack Stevison, published his recipe for Ten-Hour Beef. I’m not much of a beef person anymore, so I decided to see if I could adapt it to pork.

The Recipe

1 Pork roast (5 lbs)
2 Purple onions
4 Serrano peppers
1 Bottle Guinness Extra Stout
2 Bottles Jack Daniel’s® Hickory Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce

Also needed: Salt, Pepper, Garlic, and Worcestershire Sauce

Trim excess fat off of the roast and slice into 3/8 strips. De-seed and slice the peppers into thin strips. Slice the onions and place half of them and half of the peppers on the bottom of the crock pot. Layer the pork slices on top of the onions and then cover with the remaining onions and peppers. Pour the Guinness and one bottle of the Jack Daniel’s sauce over the top. Cover and cook on high (6 hour setting on my crock pot) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

After the first two hours, stir gently to move things around and reduce the heat to low (8 hour setting). I stirred every hour for the next 7 hours. At this point pork should be tender and can be pulled apart with a fork, but does not disintegrate on touch.

This part came as a tip from my brother Michael.

Pre-heat the oven to 375. While it’s heating, lightly oil a cookie sheet, then transfer the solid materials with a slotted spoon from the crock pot to the cookie sheet. Using about half of the other bottle of barbecue sauce, cover the meat with a light (~1/16 inch to 1/8 inch) layer of sauce. I used a brush to make sure things were covered evenly. Once the oven is heated, place the cookie sheet in the oven and cook uncovered for an additional 15-25 minutes.

Take the sheet out of the oven and gently pull the pork apart with two forks. Mix lightly to spread the sauce and serve.

You may want to save some of the liquid from the crock pot to store with leftovers to keep it moist when re-heated.