My brother-in-law used to be the maintainer for the telescopes up there several years ago, and is up there right now with the firefighting crews (has been for a few days now). The mountain has been in danger several times but firefighters are there in full force (well, 150 is the number I hear). From his perspective I've been getting mixed information - a lot of the news has come in via what people up there see, and what they see isn't always what's really happening (we heard an entire Christian camp up there was completely burned down, but it's actually just fine!).
A lot of the media here is hyping up the 20+ communications towers at the top of the mountain being in danger, and just started talking about the observatory recently (running out of things to talk about after days and days of coverage, I guess). It is a critical communications point, but so far between the flame retardant, back burn (?) fires started now to prevent areas from burning in the immediate future, actual firefighters and planes/helicopters dropping water/retardant, it's looking really good. The winds have died down as well which is helping quite a bit. I'm currently in Palmdale which is a bit north, and the other day it was "snowing" ashes!
One guy close to the action on the news today downgraded the fire from "angry" to "cranky" - good to hear for all of us still riding this out.
When I used to work for a real company we'd name our servers after different (usually ethnic) foods - our first was named Kimchee (from our Korean designer). Then came Halo Halo (Philippino dessert), Pork Bun, and head cheese. And right before I left... Debbie Gibson for some reason from the new dev.
It was actually a good social exercise - every time we got a new server we had the next employee "in line" name it. Good times.
These days I use Bacon, Eggs, Lau Lau, and Loco Moco, for those of you partial to Hawaiian food! I love telling people to set their domain nameservers to bacon.site.com and eggs.site.com.
Indeed - my fiance works at a large financial institution and until a few months ago every single email had to be printed out in full, and turned in for review. They use Lotus Notes, btw. I nearly fell over when I heard about it... good grief.
In the mid 90s I was able to install Windows 3.11, bootable w/ DOS, on a 3.5" floppy. Ran slower than molasses in January, but by God, it was possible and worked!
There was even room on the disk for at least calc and notepad if I remember correctly.
As a new customer of Clearwire (I just signed up for their services in Seattle a month ago, one year contract but month-to-month was available) I have to say that I've been very happy with the performance, though the speed leaves a bit to be desired. My upload rate is about 250kbps on a good day, which falls within their promised 256kbps upload speed (so I shouldn't be surprised). The 1.5Mbps download rate comes down at 1.6 or 1.7 at times, so that's a lovely thing.
Why did I choose them? Cost really, I don't need a raging net connection and this was $10/less per month than any other solutions as I don't have a phone or cable line to bundle with for the big providers. Also they do offer the magic of accessing their network from anywhere in their range, which I haven't tried yet, but ideally I can access it in the mall, on the outskirts of town, or another city where they have service (a very wonderful thing). Unfortunately it involves carrying around their modem, which is the size of a modem, and not that practical for everyday use.
Thunderstorms are fine! Weather has been hell in Seattle for the last month, and aside from losing power due to a windstorm I've held my connection through rain, wind, snow, no noticeable decline in connection speed.
While I would like the available speeds to be higher I've been pretty happy, even if they're making a good profit on it I'm still saving money compared to a land-based solution.
I noticed that this was playing at the recent Seattle International Film Festival (href="http://www.seattlefilm.com/film/detail.aspx ?id=215) but wasn't able to catch it. Anybody check it out? Good/bad/nakedness?
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My brother-in-law used to be the maintainer for the telescopes up there several years ago, and is up there right now with the firefighting crews (has been for a few days now). The mountain has been in danger several times but firefighters are there in full force (well, 150 is the number I hear). From his perspective I've been getting mixed information - a lot of the news has come in via what people up there see, and what they see isn't always what's really happening (we heard an entire Christian camp up there was completely burned down, but it's actually just fine!).
A lot of the media here is hyping up the 20+ communications towers at the top of the mountain being in danger, and just started talking about the observatory recently (running out of things to talk about after days and days of coverage, I guess). It is a critical communications point, but so far between the flame retardant, back burn (?) fires started now to prevent areas from burning in the immediate future, actual firefighters and planes/helicopters dropping water/retardant, it's looking really good. The winds have died down as well which is helping quite a bit. I'm currently in Palmdale which is a bit north, and the other day it was "snowing" ashes!
One guy close to the action on the news today downgraded the fire from "angry" to "cranky" - good to hear for all of us still riding this out.
When I used to work for a real company we'd name our servers after different (usually ethnic) foods - our first was named Kimchee (from our Korean designer). Then came Halo Halo (Philippino dessert), Pork Bun, and head cheese. And right before I left... Debbie Gibson for some reason from the new dev.
It was actually a good social exercise - every time we got a new server we had the next employee "in line" name it. Good times. These days I use Bacon, Eggs, Lau Lau, and Loco Moco, for those of you partial to Hawaiian food! I love telling people to set their domain nameservers to bacon.site.com and eggs.site.com.
Indeed - my fiance works at a large financial institution and until a few months ago every single email had to be printed out in full, and turned in for review. They use Lotus Notes, btw. I nearly fell over when I heard about it... good grief.
In the mid 90s I was able to install Windows 3.11, bootable w/ DOS, on a 3.5" floppy. Ran slower than molasses in January, but by God, it was possible and worked!
There was even room on the disk for at least calc and notepad if I remember correctly.
I needed more hobbies as a kid.
- Captain Karikas of http://www.piratejokes.net/Why did I choose them? Cost really, I don't need a raging net connection and this was $10/less per month than any other solutions as I don't have a phone or cable line to bundle with for the big providers. Also they do offer the magic of accessing their network from anywhere in their range, which I haven't tried yet, but ideally I can access it in the mall, on the outskirts of town, or another city where they have service (a very wonderful thing). Unfortunately it involves carrying around their modem, which is the size of a modem, and not that practical for everyday use.
Thunderstorms are fine! Weather has been hell in Seattle for the last month, and aside from losing power due to a windstorm I've held my connection through rain, wind, snow, no noticeable decline in connection speed.
While I would like the available speeds to be higher I've been pretty happy, even if they're making a good profit on it I'm still saving money compared to a land-based solution.
--Captain Karikas of http://www.piratejokes.net/
I noticed that this was playing at the recent Seattle International Film Festival (href="http://www.seattlefilm.com/film/detail.aspx ?id=215) but wasn't able to catch it. Anybody check it out? Good/bad/nakedness?