Driver with MINI and RDU control tower

Back in January a handful of us THMMCers made it over to the new Flow MINI Raleigh when they first opened.  Things were still being constructed at that time.  I’ve also been over there a couple times for some service the past couple months as they’ve been in a “soft opening” phase.  But the big day finally got here - the official Grand Opening on May 15, 2010.

Co-pilot with MINI and Snoopy's sign

The day’s festivities started early with a scavenger hunt in the Raleigh area.  We gathered at Flow MINI Raleigh at 8:30 a.m. to receive our clue packages and we were sent off.  For this hunt, my co-pilot was my son William.  Our first goal was the Observation Park at RDU.  Luckily for us, we were traveling with a pack of MINIs on 540 over to the airport and the lead MINI knew where they were going.  After finding the answers to some trivia questions and getting a pic of the control tower, it was off to Crabtree Valley Mall.

Co-pilot with Shimmer Wall in Raleigh

At the mall we probably picked up some time as we were supposed to find some MINIs in the mall.  William had been there a few times with his Nanny, so he knew right where to go.  After that, we shot over to North Hills Mall where a British Car Show was gearing up.  Got a pic of William with a classic and counted classic British cars.  Also, we got to see a Tesla out there.  We then shot over to the original Snoopy’s on Old Wake Forest Road - a location I knew well since it is across the street from an auto shop that my father worked with.

Sax playing monkey at Cup A-Joe

After that, we headed downtown for pics and clues at several locations like the Executive Mansion, the Capitol Building, the Museum of History, Mordecai Park, and one of the convention centers.  From there we headed over to the Farmer’s Market.  I really hate going over there during these scavenger hunts as it is always very frustrating trying to find the vendor that has your next clue.  We then rode over to the NCSU campus for some info at the Bell Tower and then Cup A Joe.  I got to see the new streetscape project on Hillsborough Street.  That really makes things different compared to when I went to school there.

Co-pilot with painted horse at Horse Complex

We continued on out of town with stops at the Vet School, the Hunt Horse Complex, Carter-Finley Stadium, and finally the Museum of Art, before heading back to Flow MINI Raleigh.  We didn’t win the scavenger hunt, but I felt pretty good as we found all the clues, answered all the questions, and got all the pics we were supposed to get.  And at one point, William even noted that “this is fun.”  Flow provided us with some lunch and we checked out some of the MINIs (they have a nice convertible S in Chili Red).

Scavenger Hunt Winner with Flow folks

Near the end of our time there, we got to talking with the balloon lady.  She wasn’t having much luck as there were very few kids there.  After politely declining her entreaties to make a balloon, William finally relented and agreed to let her do a little face painting.  We figured she would just do a little something on his cheek.  But no.  She did a full on paint job over his entire face, making him look like a wolf (including eyes painted on his eyelids).  We got a good laugh out of that and I noted for William that he had made the balloon lady happy to finally have something to do and we noticed another young boy who got his face painted after seeing it could be done.  So that was a little bit of happiness he brought to two people at a small cost to himself.  So that was a nice little life lesson to close out the day.

Flow MINI Raleigh did a good job with the grand opening.  The scavenger hunt was fun, we got some free food, and got to spend some time seeing other THMMCers.  And I got to spend some time with my son doing something fun and a little bit offbeat.  Be sure to check out the photo gallery for all the pics we had to get as part of the scavenger hunt as well as some others.

Last week TWISTER from the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club sent me something interesting that his daughter had received.  It seems she was stopped at a vehicle checkpoint over the weekend.  No problems for her, but whatever agency(ies) was(were) conducting the checkpoint was handing out some flyers.  She managed to send a pic of part of the flyer to TWISTER as shown below:

License Plate Law Flyer

As you might be able to tell, it was noteworthy in that it shows a pic of a MINI.  And as TWISTER accurately surmised, it was none other than my MINI WUF.  You can find the original pic here on the blog.  You’ll note that they blacked out one of my badges - it was the one reading “HUMMER ESCAPE POD”.  Not sure why they wanted to black that out, but left all the FLOW MINI info.

I can’t see the entire flyer and haven’t been able to find the agency that produced it (though I do know it was not the NC Highway Patrol).  So there is a chance I am wrong on this, but it does not appear they gave proper attribution for the photo per the CCL I use.  And just basic etiquette would suggest you’d contact the person to at least let them know you are using their pic (and/or ask permission as may be appropriate).  I guess they may be picky about license plate frames - copyright law, not so much.

So without the attribution, my contribution is anonymous.  Yet my MINI has some little bit of fame (maybe 10 seconds worth - long enough for recipients to toss the flyer).  Maybe I can add this to my photography portfolio, no?  In the meantime, make sure your license plate frame is good to go in NC!!!

So I’m sitting here this evening eating some dinner and catching up on some stuff on the ‘net.  When I hear something upstairs, kind of a loud popping or crunching sound.  Didn’t think much of it the first time, but then whatever it was, it did it a few more times.  So I figure I should go upstairs and see what is going on.

As soon as I reach the top of the steps I notice it is extremely warm - almost hot.  Check the bonus room, nothing there looks out of place.  Start down the hallway and start to detect the odor of burning electronics.  Stop at the thermostat and note that the temp is 81 degrees even though the A/C is on and set for 72.  That’s not a good sign.

Get down to my office and the smell of burning electrical components is really strong.  Clearly something in the office.  Modem, routers, printer all look good and are powered up.  Then I spot it.

My server is not on.  I check it and it is very hot to the touch.  Clearly this is the source of the burning odor.  I get it unplugged.  But already, I know (and you the reader know) how this is going to turn out.  To be safe I check the rest of the upstairs.  Check the circuit breakers in the garage.  Check the outside unit.  Go up in the attic and check things, reset the breaker on the HVAC unit.  By now the odor is already starting to dissipate.  Alas, I still cannot seem to get the A/C to blow cold air (it finally did start back up about 15 minutes later).

So yes, the server is toast.  It’s network name was Donkey as in “the Donkey server”.  I plugged it back in just to verify and could not get it to power up at all.  It has served well.  Started out as a desktop PC back in the late 90’s.  Was briefly relegated to testbed status as I started dabbling with Linux and it had been replaced by a better gaming PC.  When I started up my business I went ahead at that point and converted it into a server.  Mainly served as a file server, but I ran some local web services on it and used it for testing stuff I was thinking of deploying in live environments.  That was back around 2004.

Haven’t looked it up, but at one point it ran for something like 283 days straight and only had to be taken down due to a planned power outage at our old house.  Not bad for equipment that was close to a decade old.

So Donkey, RIP.  You served admirably, well beyond your designed life.

The big question now will be whether I can save the data off the hard drives.  Hopefully they didn’t get toasted in the process.  I have some older snapshots of the data and I don’t think there is anything critical on the hard drives, but it would still be a loss if I can’t access them.  Can only blame myself for that (being lazy about backups).

MINIs gathered on Pilot Mountain

Yes, yes, yes, it has taken me almost a week.  And I have lots of other blog entries on my list of things to do (those would be GTD Next Actions).  But for now, I just want to see if I can crank out an update of the Covered Bridge Run that was held last Saturday by the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club.  This was a run that I led as a follow-up to the 2009 Covered Bridge Run.

In 2009 we stayed in the central part of NC visiting the Pisgah Covered Bridge after a route that took in a couple Scenic Byways including the Flint Hill Ramble (really nice twisty stretch there).  For 2010 I set my sights a little farther north - Virginia to be more specific.  There are actually a few covered bridges in the southwest area of Virginia (also home to one of our THMMC chapters).  Getting up to them though proved to be a routing challenge as it was quite a bit of ground to cover.  I also wanted to avoid Floyd County after the whole Turkey Trot Incident (no, I will not go into details).  And on the way back I wanted to avoid Hwy 66 since I knew we’d be doing that as part of the Bullfrog Run.

MINIs on Squirrel Spur Road

So, I decided to start us off at the top of Pilot Mountain.  Those who live in the area and have been up Hwy 52 have seen Pilot Mountain several times.  I had to do a bit of research and figured out there is a State park there and it had a nice, large parking lot close to the summit.  Perfect for a gathering of MINIs.  Our plans almost derailed when we learned on Friday that a marathon was being run on Pilot Mountain.  Fortunately it started out at the base and no runners had made it to the summit while we were there.  Although a couple llamas or alpacas or something were up there as we were leaving. (more…)

Was recently logging into one of the systems that I use on my job.  When you logon, it takes you to a splash screen with various bits of information.  This time, I was presented with the following information (identifying information removed to protect the guilty even if they are the Federal government):

System performance issues have been identified with xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Specifically, double clicking the mouse button during a page SAVE for the unaudited and audited financial submission process may lead to an error message identified as “Sql Map Client, error code [1427]“.

xxxxxxxxx has identified a temporary solution that will avoid this system error. When submitting your financial statement, DO NOT double-click on the SAVE button. Click only once and wait for the system to complete the initial SAVE operation.

The emphasis was in the original.  Unless I’m mistaken, it looks like the “temporary solution” that has been identified is basically - “Don’t do that!”  Gee, thanks.

On this Good Friday, I had a bit of an unusual situation to come up.  I got the day off from work.  However, due to snow days, the teacher workday scheduled for today became a make-up day, so the kids are in school.  And, my wife ended up subbing today.  So, I’m on my own for a bit today - at least until school let’s out.

Gimghoul Castle in Chapel Hill

Decided to use the morning for a little scouting work for a MINI drive idea I have in my head.  I suppose it is building upon the Howl at the Moon run I did last fall.  But this time, with haunted locations!  The first step was to identify some haunted locations that might be fun to get to (i.e. there are twisty roads leading there).  Not the easiest task.

I’ve identified four potential locations that are generally in the area.  There are lots more in the Triad/Triangle areas, but who wants to visit a college dorm?  Of course, the first candidate I visited today was close to that - Gimghoul Castle in Chapel Hill.  I vaguely remembering visiting the castle either during high school or college with some friends.  And yes, today’s mission meant riding through campus in the MINI WUF to get there.  No evidence of parties from last night’s NIT appearance.  No students at all really - guess class was out.  Anyway, there is a gravel circle that looks like it might be open to the public so we could circle right by the castle.  Not sure if it just happened to be open today or not.  If not, we should be able to get close enough on the surface street to be a worthwhile stop.

Devils Tramping Ground

From there, I headed southwest for some country roads.  This took me through downtown Pittsboro, where I got to see the recently burned down Chatham County Courthouse when I went through the traffic circle.  The next target was in the country - the Devil’s Tramping Ground.  I remember hearing the tale of the DTG growing up.  In my research, I had found a blog post that provided some GPS coordinates.  Upon arriving there, I was presented with a dirt road leading down into some woods.  Definitely not MINI country judging by the “lake” that had formed in a dip in the path.  But, it was also heavily marked with No Trespassing signs.  Just judging by sight, it didn’t look like the right place.  However, about 2/10ths of a mile back up the road was a small pull off with a path that led to a small circular-ish area littered with the remnants of partiers.  This looked much more like the photos I have found on-line describing the DTG.  Right in the middle were the remains of a fire.  Today, laying on top, were some “things” - sorry, no idea what they might be - that looked to be made out of some kind of hair (maybe some horse mane hair?).  Maybe 16 inches long, mostly white with some black, and they had some kind of handles at one end.  Whoever had been using them for whatever had thrown them on the remains of the logs, but they had not burned up.  This may be do-able.  Not great parking and who knows what kind of crowd we might stumble upon if I ever do this.

So those were the two locations I visited this morning.  fwiw, I may also look at throwing in the Pisgah Covered Bridge (found a tale about the  apparition of a hanged woman that appears in the bridge), Lydia’s Bridge (great story in the vanishing hitchhiker vein), and/or the Cabe’s Land Cemetary.  All  of those would probably be too long for one drive.  Hmm - a series of haunted MINI runs?

Rocky River Friends Meeting

With all that said, what is this bit about our Friends in the title of this post?  After visiting the DTG, I had plotted a route up through Siler City and then some back roads of Alamance County to get back home.  I didn’t even realize it, but it took me right by the Rocky River Friends Meeting.  That was notable as just last weekend they were having a revival at the meeting.  I didn’t get down to it, but it had been in our bulletin at church.  It was a nice large facility with lots of playground equipment (a good sign).  I guess looks can be deceiving, but it appeared to be a nice vibrant church.  And, it has been around since 1753 - so long, it has its own historical marker.

This means that in my journey I got to contrast the DTG with the Rocky River Friends Meeting.  The first is a patch of dirt off the side of a country road that has been overtaken by partygoers and is largely unimpressive.  But the Friends Meeting is alive and well - no trouble finding it and no threat for now of it fading from memory or existence.  So, imo, the Friends are winning!!!

MINI WUF proudly wears a new Bullfrog sticker!

As spring weather rolls around, one of the joys that I have come to expect is participating in the Tar Heel MINI Motoring Club’s Bullfrog Run.  I say I’ve come to expect it since it is something that I only know about due to my MINI ownership and participating with the THMMC.  This year’s run was the third annual running of this particular run for the club.  Members of the club have been running the route for several years; but in memory Rob Baker they started running the route as an annual event and dubbed it the Bullfrog Run.  I never met Rob as he had passed on before my membership started.  He was described as a great driver (who really knew what to do with his DS Justa), a great club member, and a great person.  His example also spawned the MINIs Motoring Against Cancer banner.  And for this particular run, we took up a collection that yielded a $120 donation to the American Cancer Society.

MINIs gathering for the run

I’m glad to say that I’ve been to all three of the Bullfrog Runs.  Besides the nature of the event, it is special to me now because the first Bullfrog Run was also my first ever event that I attended with the THMMC.  So even though my MINI adventure started in February, the running of the Bullfrog always feels like the “anniversary” of when I started with the THMMC. (more…)

Just thought I’d post up a quick entry about Document Freedom Day.  This is coming up on March 31st.  As indicated on the web site for the “event”:

Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards in general.

As any regular reader of this blog is aware (is there such a thing as a reader of this blog, much less a regular one?), I’m a big fan of OpenOffice.org for all of my “office” documents - text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.  Among the reasons I like OOo is the fact that it is free and that it uses the OpenDocument Format for saving files (and of course there is the “it is just plain better” reason).  Use of the ODF format helps others as they do not have to use specific software to open the files that I generate.  Theoretically, they do not even have to use an office productivity suite since the files are in an XML format (maybe not theoretical as I once had to go through the process of open the native XML file when I was helping someone troubleshoot some file corruption).

Those two factors in my opinion make a strong argument as to why governments and public administrations should switch to ODF.  There are plenty of applications available that can open an ODF file, many of them free (like OOo).  By using these documents, citizens are not forced to go out and buy any specific software application.  So, the government stays neutral with respect to vendors and the marketplace.  And, it does not seem to me that government should be forcing citizens to buy software just to be able to read/open a government document.

Unfortunately, even now, in my position I continue to get Excel spreadsheet files from HUD for the conduct of official business.  I’ve been tempted a few times to write back to them and inform them that “I do not have Excel - how am I supposed to use their document?”  I have a feeling they’d be at a loss as to how to answer.

Hope you’ll think about this some.  And maybe make a switch to some other document format.  You may even have a chance to try out OpenOffice.org.

Ran across this slideshow on the Baseline magazine web site. I seem to spend a lot of my effort promoting OpenOffice.org, Firefox, and Thunderbird. There are lots of other F/OSS applications I use as well. Don’t want to lose sight of the fact that I’m a big fan of Linux. Still hoping I may be able to convert my employer to Linux. Change is always tough though. Anyway, the facts from the slideshow include:

1. Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel while still a student at the University of Helsinki in 1991.
2. Last year, 75% of Linux code was developed by programmers working for corporations.
3. In December 2009, IBM announced a new mainframe system designed for Linux.
4. IBM chose Linux for what is expected to be the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Sequoia, due in 2011.
5. Linux powers 446 of the world’s top 500 supercomputers.
6. Some 95% of the servers used by Hollywood’s large animation studios are powered by Linux.
7. The first major film produced on Linux servers was 1997’s Titanic.
8. Director James Cameron again chose Linux servers for box-office smash Avatar.
9. Google runs its web servers on Linux.
10. Google has contributed about 1.1% of the code in the current Linux kernel.
11. Linux has a strong following in smartphones and other devices in the consumer electronics world.
12. Palm’s WebOS, Google’s Android and Nokia’s Maemo smartphone operating systems are built on top of the Linux kernel.
13. TiVo uses a customized version of Linux for its appliances.
14. In 2009, Linux had 33.8% revenue marketshare of servers, compared to Microsoft’s 7.3%.
15. As of January 2010, Linux still only has a 1.02% marketshare within desktops.
16. Torvalds created Linux based on the GNU General Public License (GPL).
17. Torvalds wouldn’t have written his own operating system if GNU had had a kernel at the time.
18. The GNU Project then lacked drivers, daemons and a kernel.
19. Under the GPL, any person or group distributing the Linux kernel must make the source code available to the recipient of the package.
20. Said Torvalds: “Making Linux GPL’d was definitely the best thing I ever did.”
21. Torvalds failed to register the name “Linux” when he first started his open source ventures.
22. In 1994, William Della Croce, Jr. filed for trademark in the U.S.and asked for royalties from Linux distributors.
23. Torvalds and his lawyers won the battle for the Linux name in 1997.
24. There are over 300 distributions of Linux actively deployed today.
25. Linux gained traction beyond the coder cult with 1993’s Slackware distribution, which was easier for non-programmers to use.
26. The Debian distribution was one of the first truly community-oriented Linux coding projects.
27. Debian’s code base remains the foundation for other distros such as Ubuntu, Knoppix and Xandros.
28. Debian v. 4.0’s source code containes 283 million lines of code.
29. $7.37 billion: projected cost to produce that amount of code in a commercial environment.
30. The first commercially-produced, live-CD distribution of Linux was Yggdrasil, released in 1992.
31. Red Hat was one of the first commercial Linux distributions to truly cater to the enterprise.
32. Ubuntu was the first Linux distro to be offered by a major OEM (Dell) to desktop users.
33. The Xandros distribution helped make the netbook craze possible when it was chosen by ASUS for the first iterations of the EeePC.
34. Linux-based Apache wasn’t named for Geronimo’s tribe, it was called “a patchy server” for its cobbled-together source code.
35. In 2002, The Register claimed Microsoft spent $421 million just to fight Linux.
36. In 2003, the SCO Group earned enmity by claiming that IBM transferred UNIX code into Linux and asking for redress.
37. The Indian state of Kerala made it mandatory for all of its high schools to run Linux on their computers.
38. The federal government of Brazil favors Linux operating systems over all others in its PCs.
39. In 2009, Brazil carried out the largest thin-client deployment of Linux to date, with 350,000 nodes.
40. IDC projects that Linux support sales will top $1 billion by 2012.

My son got a small guitar a while back and finally started to show some slight signs of interest in learning it.  I went ahead and bought a full-size Yamaha 6-string for the two of us to share.  The plan is to eventually spring for my own guitar so we can play together.

In an effort to be able to help him learn, I’ve been trying to figure it out myself.  Been at it about three weeks now, though I don’t practice nearly enough.  The Music & Arts store set me up with a good beginner’s book though and I’ve slowly been working my way through it.  I’m close to having the notes down for the first four strings.  In the process of doing that, I’ve managed to learn a few songs - Yankee Doodle, Happy Birthday, and Amazing Grace.  I’m not too good on them, but they are recognizable.  I’m starting to learn When the Saints Go Marching In.  One day I hope to be able to play a song for my wife.

The bigger challenge has been learning to strum the chords.  Once I get my fingers positioned, playing the chord is not a problem.  But switching between them is really hard for me.  Especially when switching from one note to the next.  I guess I’ll eventually get it with enough practice.  Dang small hands.

The other challenge is my complete inability to read music.  I suppose I’m making a little bit of progress.  Alas, my brain just does not function that way.

Anyway, it is a new challenge I’m working on in my life and figured I would start blogging a bit about it.