Geek Habitat

South Texas is not known for its moist summers, although with the weird weather patterns we’re seeing across the globe these days, I’ve lost track of what “normal” is.

About a week ago, the weather pundits began warning of severe flooding rains. Of course, it took five days longer than they predicted to occur, but sure enough yesterday morning we awoke to the “river” running in the greenbelt behind our house. No danger, and kind of a perk really — for a day or so, our backyard deck overlooks lush riverfront property, rather than an overgrown greenbelt!

Yesterday, I took our new 100mm macro lens out to photograph wildflowers on the greenbelt behind my parents’ neighborhood. We used the lens briefly at the San Antonio Zoo a couple weeks ago, but with the diversity of wildlife (including many wild bird species that are perfect photographic subjects), we spent most of the time shooting with our zoom lenses.

I have a lot to learn, but the trip was worthwhile. I had forgotten about the diversity of naturally occurring wildflowers I grew up with literally in my backyard — flowers I still have yet to see while hiking and camping at various Texas State Parks. There were even still some yuccas in full bloom, which seemed a little late for our area.

One of our primary web servers has been sputtering and fizzling all morning. It’s not a good day when your website uptime stats report looks like this. Ah, the Life & Times of a Web Geek …

I’m not knocking our web host, here. We’ve been with them since ‘97 and they are very rarely down at all, and usually no more than a matter of seconds when they are. In this rare instance, the server lumbers along for an hour or so and then takes a deep dive into oblivion until they restart it. An hour or more later, the process repeats. It doesn’t help that it’s taking email and FTP services out each time, as well. Now we know why Justin & I have two separate server hosting accounts — as bad as having several sites offline is, it’d be horrific to have them ALL offline.

Google’s Why you should work here page is fun reading, even if it does feel like a throwback to the dotcom (pre-bubble burst) era. However, I think I can live without an on-site dentist… yikes!

“Paging Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Moore, after your root canal, please report to Meeting Room Alpha for a briefing.”

I also want to know if you can get your free massage during your free lunch? I’m all about maximizing productivity, you know? Also, they don’t mention free Starbucks. I imagine footing the Starbucks bill would put any company out of business!

You can forget the Concorde, I want a passenger ticket when civilian trips to space are available. With the successful launch of the world’s first private spacecraft, I’m ready to hop a flight. (I’m in denial about how much such flights will likely cost. A gal’s gotta dream big, you know!) Check out the awesome in-flight video!

More news related to SpaceShipOne is available on Google News.

Yesterday evening, we welcomed the return of my dad from a four-month-long stint in the United Kingdom (U.K.) It’s wonderful to have Dad back home, and doubly nice to have him back in time to celebrate Father’s Day! (Perhaps that makes up a bit for his having to spend most of Valentine’s Day ‘04 on airliners to began this adventure?)

It’s an awesome and opportunity-filled world we live in, but there’s one thing that will never change — Home is always the best place to be! And home isn’t quite the same when someone who’s supposed to be there, isn’t, for whatever reason — travel, military service, illness, etc. So, again, WELCOME HOME, DAD — Happy Father’s Day!