Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I'd like to tell you a little tale
So, I'm going to do my best to redact names here, because I'm not trying to defame anyone or anything.
Many years ago, I got interested in a particular hobby. Let's call it Ram Hadio. It was fun, and I was having a good time with it. I got involved with a particular group, which shall remain nameless. Sorry, not even spoonerized.
Anyway, I was hanging out with this group for a while, and ended up being a board member for a while, and then wasn't, but kept attending board meetings. All good. At some point, some pivotal equipment, which I shall call The Box, lost its home. It'd previously been living the Boxy equivalent of la dolce vita, in someone's basement.
Then, the owner of that place stopped owning that place any more, for reasons which don't matter for this story. So the The Box was cast loose, without a home. There was something of a panic, as The Box has some particular requirements for a home, it can't go just anywhere.
So, in a fit of civic-heartedness, I volunteered, "You can put it in my basement." My basement is set up about right for Boxy happiness, although it's really not ideal. That was about two years ago, give or take 6 months.
So, my house became the new home of The Box. It was kind of big, and took up more room than I liked, but I could live with it. After all, it was just a temporary home, while this organization scoped out new places to put The Box; places which would be more permanent and happy. So, The Box and I continued living peacefully, even though it wasn't in its happiest possible situation.
Every once in a while, the group would come to the conclusion that The Box, being a big and complicated thing, needed some work. Sometimes I'd work on it actively, sometimes I'd just let people in who knew what needed to be done. No real problem.
Every month (or as often as I could), I'd go to board meetings, and we'd discuss things, including the current state of The Box, and the search for a new Boxy home. There was always some small progress on the home-search, but never very much. Sometimes, we'd come up with sure winners, which would be dashed a month later, at the next meeting. In every case, it was evident that The Box would be moving as soon as it could.
So about 14 months ago, give or take a few months, I came into a board meeting, and said, "Hey! Due to some anticipated changes in my life, I need to get The Box out by January 1, 2007." Now, this was 14 months (more or less) in the future, so everyone said, "Great! Thanks for the advanced warning!" Smiles all around. We would speed up the search for a new Box-home, and it'd probably happen around Summer 2006. Cool.
Now, I'd known for a long time that this organization is not great at actually doing anything in chunks of time smaller than a month (between board meetings), which is why I gave them such a huge warning. I figured 14 doing-stuff chunks would be enough. They'll likely find a new Box-home, and I can proceed with my life free of Boxy intrusion. But I also had a little niggle at the back of my head. It said, "Heh. Heh. I bet you're gonna be shoving that Box out the door on January 1st, to sit in the snow, possibly conveying an impression of sadness." The Box, that is, not me, conveying the sadness. In any case.
Needless to say, I've set you up well. You know by now that The Box is still with me. Note the date at the top of this entry. Summer 2006 came and went, although with some very promising Box-homes on the horizon. But somehow, we never followed up, or they weren't as promising when we actually examined them in detail. Whatever the case, The Box is still a guest in my basement.
So, now, we've been through a mean, nasty winter storm, which knocked out power to most of the Seattle area for a week -- some parts are still without power. That's a terrible thing, and I'm sorry so many people are suffering. I had sent an email about a week before the storm to the President of this organization, and said, "Hey, I can't help but notice that January 1st, 2007 is rapidly approaching, and I won't be able to attend this last board meeting [to coordinate getting The Box out of my house]."
Two days ago, I got a reply from the President, more or less saying, "Hey, Ian, that was sure a nasty storm. Any chance we could push back that date a little bit? Just a wee bit, until the January meeting." Gee, it sure was a nasty storm, I'm right there with ya, Prez. But no. I told you fourteen months ago that 1/1/07 was the date. I'm sorry you lost your power, but, really, we shouldn't be in this position at all. It's going out the door as soon as I wake up on January 1st.
Oh, and did I mention? It's Christmas-time, which means that my time is all kinds of booked up from now until then. See, that's why I figured we'd be done with this in the Summer. 'Cause that whole Holiday Season? Bad time to be getting things done which don't relate directly to roasting chestnuts or hanging out with family. I mean, I'm sorry, and don't think you didn't get a little pang of guilt from me there, but if 14 months isn't enough warning, I don't know what is.
So now, I find myself in the enviable position of having to tell a public-service-minded organization they're out of luck. In a way, I set myself up for this by ever letting that adorable little Box into my basement in the first place. But in another way, I extended the Box's life by two years (or so) and gave my organization an excellent chance to find the perfect, shiny, Boxy home. I didn't even charge them rent, like the last Boxy home did (it wasn't much, but when your organization runs on under $1000 a year, everything counts).
Now, of course, I have grown weary of the organization, and their inability to do almost anything of consequence. I bade farewell to Ram Hadio a while ago, at least as an active hobby, and The Box is my last real attachment to it. When it's gone (whether it's collecting snow outside my door, or happily ensconced in the Boxy workshop, where it will (theoretically) be taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up by dedicated organizational volunteers), I doubt I'll think about it too much. All of which is a pity, since The Box and its organization once seemed to hold such promise.
Won't it be interesting to see what I post on this subject, come January 1st, 2007?
Posted at 15:21 permanent link category: /misc
And now, a word from our technician
If you've been having trouble viewing obairlann.net from your Linux machine, I've been rudely informed that my site is BROKEN and NON-COMPLIANT. However, in the midst of his rudeness, the bug reader who responded to my bug report did give a good workaround.
This problem affects Linux kernels 2.6.17 and forward, and will presumably affect all future kernels until I fix my BROKEN router.
But I'm over the rudeness.
Anyway, what you do is add a new option to your default route spec. A basic example goes like this:
route add default gw 192.168.1.1 window 65535
You'll obviously want to change your default gateway IP from 192.168.1.1 to whatever it's supposed to be (note that's your gateway's IP, not your machine's IP -- run "route -n" first and see what 0.0.0.0 points at if you're not sure). The tricky bit is that "window 65535" bit, which apparently limits something or other so that my FEEBLE and BRAINDEAD router can gum the packets sufficiently to swallow them.
It worked for my laptop at work, running kernel 2.6.19.1. If you're not familiar with making low-level changes to this kind of thing, you might want to avoid doing it, but rest assured that it does seem to work.
Posted at 13:39 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater