Jappy Jaladays begets a number of other punny greetings:

• Merry Mojitos!
• Merry Margaritas!
• Tijuana celebrate? Hope you do.
• Party tortilla tired!
• Don’t let the season tequila.
• Salsa nice having you in our lives.
• Let’s go singing Christmas Cuervos!

Michael Pratt asked me recently:

Do you still use your treadmill desk? Do you continue to find it beneficial? I love the idea of these things, but worry a little that I might tire of it in practice, or that it might be difficult to work at it for long periods.

It may seem a perfect opportunity to revisit my old walking desk blog post, but that just raises the guilt level I feel every time I see the thing unused. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I don’t use it much anymore, though I do believe I lost some weight and generally felt healthier when I was using it regularly.

It can be difficult to walk and type. The treadmill runs as slowly as .5 miles per hour, and that helped me to get started. Eventually, I found two miles per hour a comfortable rate and would work at that for hours at a time. But I lost the knack of it after a long period of travel and had trouble getting started again. One of the problems was that as the treadmill aged, it could no longer properly work at the slow speeds, or without a high elevation angle. The higher speed meant that I couldn’t simply ease into it as I had at first, and the higher elevation angle left me in a less comfortable typing position.

That could all be justification, but it’s what seems to have happened. Still, while I was doing it regularly, it was easy and convenient. I may have just convinced myself to try it out again.

dcdead’s photo of the Central Station of Strasbourg, France reminds me of something I’d long wanted to do in (or around) my old house: put it in a dome. Apparently, this dome doesn’t fully cover the building, just enlarges it without obscuring the facade. Still, 6000 square meters of glass looks pretty good, eh?

Back to my old house, however. Here’s the plan: forget the lack of insulation and the drafty windows (and the dying roof, before I replaced it), solve all of that by putting a greenhouse up around it. Even single layer glass would eliminate the wind and rain and make the whole house significantly easier to heat. Aside from having the possibility of a year-round lawn, it’d save a lot of fuel.

My hosting provider lost a server, and their most recent backup of my database was from Wednesday. That was newer than what I had, so that’s what I’ve got. Any comments submitted between then and mid afternoon today have been lost. I was luckier with my posts: I write most of them in ecto and had them backed up on my lappy.

At least the Sox won.

crash, recovery, suck

With plenty of moving help from Zack, Matt, Cliff, Justin, Jon, Will, and Karen, Bisson Tower went from empty to full quickly enough that we all had plenty of time to sit around and enjoy the lunch Sandee cooked up, then retire to the roof with cocktails.

The cats were traumatized by it all, but I’m happy to be done with construction and finally be able to enjoy the new place, with all its quirks.

bisson tower, condo, home, manchester nh, moved, moving, new home

Interesting, a LAMP solution that promises “the next generation of genealogy sitebuilding.” it does pretty charts and pages, and as any web app should, makes it easy to edit or add information.

But it also makes me wonder if there’s an XFN attribute to indicate parent/child relationships. Could our work on network identity and social software solve this?

family history, genealogy, parent/child, xfn

Uploaded from before the days when Flickr would keep the original size photos, this is one of my favorite, most spring-y shots. And with weather like we’re having here now — 57° in northern New Hampshire! — it’s very appropriate.

Daffodil, flowers, photoblog, spring, warm weather, Daffodils, Daffy, Daffy

With over a foot on the ground already, and more falling now the through the night, we’re crossing our fingers for another snow day tomorrow.

weather, warren, snow day, snow, curtailed, forecast

I described it to Jessamyn in an IM last night:

lights flickering here,
sirened vehicles passing frequently,
smell of smoke hangs in air outside

The Globe reported it this way:

WARREN, N.H. — A sawmill went up in flames during the night in Warren (New Hampshire).

Fire officials say they may never know what started the flames at the K.E. Whitcher mill around ten o’clock last night. The three-alarm fire quickly engulfed the building.

No one was hurt as firefighters from 13 communities battled the flames, but the mill is a total loss and the fire chief says there is so much burned rubble, they may never figure out how the fire started.

He said it’s not considered suspicious. [link added]

burn, burned, fire, mill, sawmill, warren, Whitcher

New Hampshire’s Highland Games are back where they belong in Lincoln NH. Fittingly for the Highlands theme, the weather Saturday was cold and misty, with fogs rolling over the hills. I half expected Lorna Doone herself to appear.

The games, of course, are “Scottish Heavy Athletics” involving the throwing (though sometimes carrying) of just about anything that can be found. Rocks… hammers… sheep… trees, they all count. Well, the “sheep toss” is actually the “sheaf toss” and is intended to measure an athlete’s ability to toss hay to the top of the pile. But can I be blamed for preferring to imagine it as the sheep toss and encouraging the audience to bleat “bahhh” with every throw. Surely you can’t blame me for explaining to the kids in the audience that the games come from the ancient practice of tossing sheep over the king’s bed so that he may count his way to restful sleep?

The big event of the games, however, is the kaber toss. A kaber can measure from 16 to 20 feet long and weigh 80 to 130 pounds. A birch tree fits the bill quite well, though this year’s kaber appeared to have been manufactured.

Sheep dog trials, dancing, piping, fiddling, and a visit to the sword tent all round out the day.

caber toss, festival, highland games, kaber toss, new hampshire highland games, scottish games, sheaf toss, sheep toss, throwing

Let the vexillographers cringe, flag desecration never tasted so good.

Sure, it’s barbecue season, but that’s no reason not to enjoy breakfast. And what better way to break fast on the Fourth of July than to dress waffles as sugary, fruity flags? Do that with your hamburgers. Do that with your potato salad. Do that with your hot dogs. (Okay, I can imagine a few ways to do that with all of those, so let’s see the pictures.)

Related from MaisonBisson Kitchen: Celebrate Independence Day With A Drink.

banana, bananas, blueberries, blueberry, flag, fourth of july, fruit, independence day, july 4, july 4th, patriotic, patriotism, raspberries, raspberry, red white and blue, stars

Wendy sent out this invite last week:

Last month the Monningers quite suddenly became restauranteurs. Six weeks later, Wendy, Joe and Pie are excited to announce the Grand Opening of “the Twig”– an ever-so-cute restaurant in their hometown of Warren, NH.

On Saturday, June 24th from 11-2 come to the Twig for free pizza and cake. Win gift certificates and enjoy the newly-opened “Brook-Side at the Twig,” a beautiful outdoor beer garden along the bank of Black Brook.

Thank you to all our family, friends, neighbors, vendors and eaters who have supported the Twig. We appreciate your support and look forward to seeing you soon.

It’s all in Warren, at the only full-service restaurant/bar in town:

Open Mic Night at the Twig
Every Thursday night 8-11pm.
Hosted by Sky King ( formerly of the Sopha Kings, presently with Woodchuck Hollow).
Come to play or listen.
Pizza and bev. specials.

Scrabble Night
Every Tuesday night from 7-9pm, starting on June 27th.
BYOSB (bring your own scrabble board).

Sunday Brunch
Every Sunday from 8am-12pm.
All you can eat brunch for $8.00/pp. Kids $5.00.
Great spread including fresh baked breakfast pastries and dessert.

Breakfast Tue-Sat 7-11am
Lunch Tue-Sun
Dinner Tue-Sun. Open until 10ish (except Sunday until 8pm)
Best pizza in town
Great dinner specials
Sunday brunch
Full liquor license
WiFi/ TV/ AC
Tuesday Scrabble
Thursday Open Mic
Brook-Side at the Twig

bar, dining, food, grand opening, new hampshire, restaurant, the twig, warren, warren nh, wendy monninger

Snow and rain mixed throughout the day Tuesday, but we awoke to glistening white fields and trees. Above is the view due west in Wentworth this morning, before the warm spring sun melted it all away.

glisten, glistening, landscape, morning, pine, pines, snow, snowfall, spring, tree, tree farm, trees, winter, woods

I should be thankful to have friends who get worried about me when I don’t blog for a couple days (or at least make up stories), but let me take this moment to make it clear that I haven’t gone into boat sales. This has happened before, and it just means I’ve got a larger than usual pile of deadlines (and interesting projects like WPopac) on my plate.

busy, friends, blog schedule, cliff pearson, deadlines, deadline, funny, full plate

The folks at WMUR’s Chronicle are featuring my friends Joe and Wendy and their dog sledding tonight. The photos above are of Justin in a race a few years ago (video of the finish also online). Warren hasn’t been so proud since we put the rocket up.

dog sledding, warren, winter, snow, wmur, television, wmur tv, new hampshire, warren nh, media, media attention

I used to have a stand-up desk at work. Then that got replaced by a pair of standup workstations above a more normal desk. Then I moved offices and switched roles from sysadmin to programmer and got the most normal desk ever.

Then, in January 2005, I heard an NPR story about Dr. Jim Levine’s study that put a high value on constant movement throughout the day, and I got concerned about sitting for so long. Levine was so taken by the results that he assembled a walking desk (my term) using a treadmill and hospital tray (the kind that slides over a hospital bed).

Now, almost a year later, I’ve got my own.

Joe Stirt of BookOfJoe got excited about Levine’s treadmill desk and eventually built his own. Mine was especially easy to setup because the arms are perfectly level and large enough to hold that big cherry board I use for the desk surface.

treadmill, treadmill desk, walking desk, walking, computer desk, exercise, Dr. Jim Levine, Dr. James Levine, Dr. Joe Stirt, movement, health, desk

It’s an unseasonably warm and rainy January here in Warren, where warm actually means daytime highs of about 30 degrees and ’seasonable weather’ would be closer to zero. The point is that it’s the worst possible winter weather: the rain ruins the regular winter activities, and it’s still too cold to take up summer activities. Perhaps that’s why I take such comfort in this video of Ashton, even if it is the video that killed my Clie.

Context: August/September 2005, Atlanta.

Facts: My Clie shoots video. Kids were meant for video. Pools were meant for kids.

Plan: Put Clie in Zip-Lock bag, shoot video underwater.

Problem: Zip-Lock bags aren’t as waterproof as one might expect.

Result: great video of Ashton in the pool, a soggy Clie. Eventually: replaced with a Treo 650 (the Clie, not the kid).

The great thing about lo-fi video like this is that it gives kids of today the opportunity in 30 or 50 years to look back at images that are as strangely colored, grainy, and jumpy as the home movies our parents had. Videos of our youth are just filled with VHS smear.

Music by Bonobo, also at Amazon.

kid, kids, cute, pool, clie, palm, video, ashton, soggy, waterproof, lo-fi

Winter in Warren can be rather picturesque.

winter, snow, tree, field, snowy, apple trees, trees, winter’s day

Snow, thick and heavy because of the thaw these past few days, covers Warren. Our rocket stands tall for all seasons.

happy holidays, warren, new hampshire, warren nh, winter, snow, rocket, postcard, holiday card, holiday cheer, holiday, holidays, 2005

A friend of mine jokes that every conversation in Warren revolves around heat. But, it wouldn’t be funny if it wasn’t at least a little bit true. As it turns out, most of the rest of the country is talking about heat too.

Pellet stoves have been all the rage this fall. I feel lucky to have gotten one before the rush, but I’m also a little dismayed about the selection. Why (as usual) do Europeans get good looking pellet stoves like this, but no American manufacturer can do anything that looks like it was designed in the past two centuries.

But I shouldn’t complain. At least I got the pellet fuel I need, others may not be so lucky. New York state’s Consumer Protection Board issued a press release asking retailers to ration supplies to three tons per household., but an AP report quotes a retailer saying “there is not a shortage of pellets, there is a shortage of pellets getting to us in a timely fashion.”

And all of that makes for good conversation in Warren.

wood pellets, pellets, pellet fuel, heat, heating, warren, pellet stove, wood stove, energy costs, heating costs, heat, home, home heating, winter, cold weather, fire

Cliff invited me to WordPress.com earlier this week and I’ve just gotten a chance to get things up and running over there. I’m planning (though plans are never certain) to move my link blogging (think “blinks”) over there and (perhaps) re-publish them here in some aggregated form. We’ll see how that works out over time.

tags: blinks, blogging, link blogging, new blog, wordpress, wordpress.com

The rains this weekend swelled the rivers to flood stage in south-western New Hampshire. As much as half of Keene is said to be under water. Further north, the small and historic downtown of Alstead has been washed away.

This picture comes from the Portsmouth Herald, and reports in the Washington Post from Keene and Alstead add detail. The current death count is five, according to NHPR news, and NH Governor John Lynch has declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. Many hundreds of people have been evacuated and are waiting for the waters to recede.

Inspectors say the flood control damns are at full capacity but are holding — for the moment. Predicted rains for tonight and through the week are worrying people, though…

tags: alstead, alstead nh, damage, destruction, devestation, flood, flood damage, flood destruction, flood devestation, flood stage, floods, keene, keene nh, loss, national guard, rivers, state of emergency, swollen rivers

I switched to Lunarpages last week after the fiasco with my old hosting provider. Now, because of bandwidth and CPU usage, I’m moving to a new server at Lunarpages. I wasn’t surprised about what they said when I got a message from the sysadmins about excessive CPU usage on my shared hosting account, but I was surprised with their proactive and customer friendly approach.

Anyway, I’ll be figuring out my new server and control panel (it’s Plesk, and I’d been using CPanel for a while). Please alert me to any problems you might find with a comment to this post.

tags: web hosting service, excessive bandwidth usage, excessive cpu usage, hosting provider, hosting providers, lunarpages, new server, plesk, switching, web hosting, web hosting provider

Sometime around 10 PM Friday the MySQL server at my hosting provider took a walk. The hosting sysop blamed it on my site and disabled the database that serves it by making the directory the MySQL files are in unreadable. MySQL didn’t seem to handle that condition well, and since MaisonBisson was still piling up queries looking for the content in the DB, things continued to go downhill.

My involvement started around 11 PM Friday night (yes, I’m that dorky). Not knowing what was going on, I started a support ticket with the host. The sysop replied fairly quickly with some MySQL logs that showed nothing, but then didn’t answer any further questions on the ticket until about 11 AM Saturday. The host’s answer was inspecific, but I replied quickly and again I got no replies.

Then, around 2 PM Saturday, the host sent me a message from their abuse department telling me they’d disabled my account (it had actually been disabled for about 15 hours or more by then) because the site was causing problems with the DB server. Apparently, because the scripts on the site were looking for the missing database content and MySQL doesn’t handle things well when the DB files are made inaccessible on the filesystem and because I was still getting traffic (though the traffic wasn’t getting content), things weren’t going well.

Again, however, my replies to support got no answer, and it was about 10 AM Sunday before I got another response from the hosting provider. But it still took until 1 PM before I could get the sysop to restore my access to the site content (under the condition that no public access be allowed on the site until they approved it).

Around 4 PM, after about 42 hours of downtime, MaisonBisson went live with a new provider.

Things I’ll admit:

• I haven’t paid serious attention to optimizing my code for heavy traffic (but I don’t really know what “heavy traffic” is)
• My site was getting a lot of page loads Friday (though it wasn’t record number), and weekend nights can be especially busy (look at the list of popular incoming searches in the sidebar during the weekend and you’ll understand)
• I don’t know how many queries per second I was calling at the time of the DB crash (or how many were running overall), or any other detail statistic of the CPU load I was generating

Lessons:

• HostGator sucks.
• Keep backups up to date (I actually had a good DB backup from early Friday, but I didn’t have filesystem backup)
• Perhaps I oughtta look at some ways to optimize all this.
• HostGator sucks.

Tips For Hosting Providers:

• Don’t treat customers like they want to crash your servers.
• Remember that customers can’t see the system performance stats you can. Involve them early — as problems are developing, but before things crash — so they can start working on solutions before anybody loses uptime.

As late as sometime mid-morning Saturday, HostGator could have kept me as a customer — and I was still considering upgrading my hosting account! — but customer service that was both slow and indifferent soured me.

abuse department, bad customer support, customer support, heavy traffic, hostgator sucks, hosting provider, mysql crash, queries per second, support ticket, web host, web hosting

Will and I climbed Moosilauke in early August, but it was only now that I got around to stitching the panorama.

The view is considerably wider than 360 degrees, composited from 33 photos. The “full-size” version on Flickr contains 8 gigapixels of data. The real full-size version is a over 34 gigapixels.

tags: 4000 footer, moosilauke, mount moosilauke, mountain, mt moosilauke, new hampshire, warren, warren new hampshire