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My Brother

Thu, 1 Aug 2024, 09:34 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

My brother likes music continuously playing in every room. I often turn it off when we leave. My brother runs his dogs for miles sometimes twice a day. I walk ours around the block in the morning before it gets hot. My brother organizes swims across the lake. I paddle. My brother sets up tents in giddy anticipation of the arrival of his adult children. I am oblivious while mine panics when he realizes he won’t have a place to sleep. My brother lugs buckets of soapy water into the woods to scrub every surface of the outhouse. I sit in there gazing at the spider-discarded pile of dead flies and make a mental note to bring a whisk broom next time, which I never do. My brother celebrates our grandfather’s antique wooden tent stakes that held up the Army tent when we were very young. I pound in shiny aluminum stakes with a shiny sledge. My brother makes joyful music by pounding on a cardboard box as he sings the Wabash Cannonball. I used to sing in the shower. My brother never stops. I struggle to start.

The joys of my brother are many. His days are filled with multitudes, the likes of which I never quite understand. But he is the yang to my yin. I cannot imagine a world without him in it.

Argiope aurantia

Wed, 31 Jul 2024, 09:01 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. 1967 

They ran out the back door into the field behind the farmhouse. It was summer. The air was warm. The sky was blue. And cousins were everywhere.

The kids ran across the lawn and into the nearby farm field. They ran into the corn rows. And somewhere in there, he encountered a spider web strung between the tall stalks of corn with a huge Corn Spider dangling in between. 

He came to a screeching halt with the spider in mid-air inches in front of his face. He was glad he noticed it before running thru. He turned around. And to this day, he has no other recollections of running up and down those corn rows, likely because … he didn’t?

2. 2024

We’ve been out of town a while. The yard has had a chance to wild to itself, and the unusually cool and wet weather has meant that the yard is not the usual brown, crispiness to which we’re accustomed at this point in the summer. (Although starting tomorrow, we’ve got triple digit highs, no rain in the forecast, and certainly crispiness will soon be upon us.)

But for now, there is greenery. There is water in (some of) the birdbaths. There are wild flowers blooming generously. There is grass growing gladly. And there is this suspended in midair on the walkway between the Texas Persimmon and some tall sunflowers.

the spider that made itself at home during our absence

A Yellow Garden Spider, almost as big as the palm of your hand with its legs stretched out. First one I’ve seen in this yard. Shades of the 1967 corn field.

I’m glad I noticed it before walking thru.

On Travelling Home

Tue, 30 Jul 2024, 04:59 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Five Days / Four Nights

Returning solo to Texas from Michigan was a five day affair. I had the teardrop behind me. I knew that I didn’t want to drive over 60 and so planned to avoid Interstates entirely. (Don’t look at me like that! The Fair and Industrious Trudy is completely onboard with this style of traveling. So it’s not like I went off the deep end when I was driving on my own. I have her endorsement on this, so what else do I need?) Finally, I was eager to squeeze out as many cool-ish days as I could before returning to the heat, and had plenty of time. So it was a five day (four night) affair. 

  • From Michigan to a campground in the Hoosier National Forest in Indiana.
  • From there across Illinois to somewhere in the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri.
  • From there to a campsite on Lake Dardanelle in Arkansas.
  • From there to a campsite on the eastern shore of the lake in Lake O’ The Pines in Texas.
  • … and then the final leg drive home.

That’s five full days of driving with four nights at reserved campsites along the way.

2. Hard Work

But here’s the thing of it.

Driving solo as pilot and navigator is hard work. Even going slowly, it’s difficult.

There’s making sure you know where you’re going, of course. But your route is full of tricky turns not shown in your paper atlas. And there are changes in road numbering, or non-standard signage making it seem so. And of course you need a customized, super detailed map of the last few miles to the campsite (which you prepared many days ago, right?). Because in most cases, you have no cell service, so your phone can’t guide you. And the left and right turns down oddly-named or oddly-numbered local roads certainly won’t show up in that atlas. 

And it doesn’t help that you’ve chosen to drive side roads to the side roads. Slow is beautiful, yes. But slow is also… slow, which means that you’re driving most of the day. Of course, that’s the whole point of the exercise, right? Slow down. Smell the roses. With all great driving efforts there comes rose fragrance. Or something like that.

Still, it’s hard work.

3. Eat + Sleep

And then here’s another thing of it.

Upon arriving at the campsite after a full day of driving, all you can think of is eating and sleeping. No exploring. No hiking. No swimming at the beach. Just eat and sleep. (Maybe a shower in between, depending on the campground.)

After the hours of navigating-driving, I would pull into the campground relieved to have arrived without any wrong turns, relieved to have arrived before sunset (not relishing the prospect of backing up a trailer by myself in the dark). And I would proceed to

  • secure the trailer,
  • cook and eat a meal,
  • sit for a few moments to enjoy the breeze or the view or the swarming mosquitos, and then
  • go to bed as soon as I could. (“Mommy, why is that man over there going to bed already?”)

I found myself looking at my watch, asking myself, “Is it ok for me to lie down now?” 

4. A Report

So… here is my report.

Traveling like this is a lot of work. You drive all day. When you arrive at your next campground, all you think about is eating and then sleeping.  And then you do it another day. And another. And another and another. Hours blend into hours. Days into days. Campgrounds into campgrounds. Looking back, I’m doing well if I can name each night’s campground, let alone picture them.

Wait. Here I am, rambling on about how hard it was, and how hungry and tired I was, how I can’t picture the places I camped at. And you’re wondering, “Dude. Maybe fly next time?”

No. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. My report is this:

a view of the Vistabule trailer at the campsite in the late evening light sunset across the lake from Buckhorn Creek campground, Lake O' The Pines, Texas

Everything I said above notwithstanding, after a trip like this, your soul is deeply refreshed. At least mine is.

Now… unpack the trailer…

Leftovers

Tue, 30 Jul 2024, 11:55 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. New York Leftovers

I crossed the St. Lawrence River from Canada to New York windows wide open. The temperature dropped, bringing joy to driving the Thousand Islands Bridge solo despite the lack of anyone to describe the beauty of the amazing world passing below — a world of clear water, of sunlight bouncing off the waves, of dream homes on islands just large enough for a dream home, of boats cruising the lazy river winding between the many islands, of a world far away from mine. As I drove across, the cool air a sort of consolation prize, I smiled to myself, breathed deeply, and upon reaching the southern shore continued on to Rochester.

That evening, Chachi Bette took treated me to a hip dinner at a hip restaurant she knew in a hip location on a hip street and a old, storied part of Rochester. We walked past big houses and elegant mansions as evening settled and the number of diners on the sidewalks diminished. The next day she took me for a walk thru the nearby cemetery, up hilly drives under towering trees beside gravestones some of which were so weathered that you could read nothing even if you stooped to look. And she took me on another walk later thru the nearby park, up hilly sidewalks and up a long cascade of steps, by one of the city’s reservoirs that usually hold water pumped from the Finger Lakes but were empty for maintenance.

On the evening of that second day, I kept to myself the soreness in my hips brought on by our hilly walks as I did a load of laundry (which I swear was not why I stopped by) and as Bette sat at the Oak table in her dining room cutting onions and peppers and olives and rutabagas and what-all for a tuna-pasta salad that we feasted on later. Ok, I thought: rutabagas fine, but the olives I left for her. She made so much salad, there was plenty for my next day’s drive back to Michigan, where I arrived with a few hours of daylight left.

And oh, was I grateful for Bette’s leftover pasta salad, which I devoured in an instant.

2. Michigan Leftovers

Back in Michigan, I walked alone around the cottage in the cool summertime breeze blowing off the lake. There were things to do inside and out, front and back, upstairs and down, putting away some things, cleaning some things, and packing others, all mixed with sitting on the hill, looking out on the afternoon sunlight glistening on water, listening to Bluejays and Kingfishers and the Great Blue Heron and yes the lonely Loon, and noticing the Hummingbird that had noticed the new Tiger Lily blossom.

Janet came over to announce dinner would be at six. Earlier, she and I had collaborated on the assembly some newly-arrived (and I must say unpleasant-to-assemble) chairs so she and Kent may entertain larger crowds on their deck in a breeze overlooking the water from the top of the hill where their cottage sits. When we had finished the final chair with no leftover hardware (because with me a hardware check is always in order), after I had checked that all the screws were tight (because I pictured with horror one of them sitting back only to have the chair give way), only then did I deploy the chairs to the deck. And I kept my soreness to myself as I stood with a silent old-man’s groan from where we had been sitting.

As announced, dinner was at 6:00. We had pulled pork and chicken and baked beans and cole slaw. And mac and cheese. There was plenty for the three of us and then some. So as Kent announced it was time for him to do the dishes, Janet packed some of the leftovers for me to take with me on my trek back to Texas. And at the end of that next day, after many hours driving south on what was supposed to be a short driving day, I arrived at my camp site with just enough time before dark to eat.

And oh, was I grateful for Janet’s leftover pork and beans and mac and cheese, which I devoured in an instant.

Silent Sunday

Sun, 28 Jul 2024, 06:59 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

panoramic view of the Ozarks from a scenic overlook on the side of Highway 7

#silentsunday #ozarks

Not Shabby at All

Wed, 24 Jul 2024, 07:06 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

The squirrels are chowing down on the White Pine cones. There’s one over there eating one as you might eat a cob of corn. Eating one and then hopping over to the base of a different tree to inspect the fallen cones for a follow-on course. And he just found one right there half the distance from me as where he was just a moment ago. The crowd here is gone. It is just the squirrels and I. They were patient with us. Now soon the place will be theirs again.

A orange-golden sun just descended behind the pines across the lake, it’s rays of dying light stabbing shards of glow into the forest over here on the eastern shore, lighting up tree trunks that had begun to fade in evening gloom, now shining with a momentary sheen. 

I text my cousin to ask about sheets and about dog biscuits. We talk about putting chairs in the attic. And life jackets. And so on.

“Have a good trip,” he says, as if to say that I should enjoy the last fleeting moments of my last summer evening here. Our grandfather would have said the same thing.

I reply with a picture.

a view of the western shore of Halfmile Lake as the orange-golden sun sets

“Not shabby at all,” he replies.

“Nope. Not too shabby,” I reply back.

And with that perhaps we can just declare the evening chores done and this chair to be for sitting.

Hillary

Tue, 23 Jul 2024, 06:17 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Breakfast at the Hotel

The guest room in my dad’s condo in Ottawa was always, shall we say, a bit cramped.

The desk and the bookshelves that lined two walls and the old-school four-drawer file cabinets took up about a third of the space. The fold-out sofa bed took up another third. That left the remaining third wrapped around the periphery of the bed as a super narrow walkway in which we left our suitcases and inevitably tripped over each other trying to find our stuff for tomorrow. I don’t know how many visits it took before we started staying at a hotel down the street. In comparison, it felt like the Hilton — oh, wait. It was a Hampton Inn, which is a Hilton. 

Hillary was in charge of the breakfasts in the lobby of the hotel. She kept the eggs and breakfast meats coming. And the coffee. And the yogurt and cereal and fruit and bagels and waffles and toast. She had helpers, but you could tell that they often were new on the job, and so Hillary generally did much of the work herself.

Around 9:00am, there were inevitably more people hovering around than there were seats at which to eat. And in the press of people serving up their food, kids dropped their eggs, people ignored the waffle-maker beeping and had to be reminded to flip it over, and the coffee sometimes ran low. Throughout all this, Hillary’s smile and laughter never ceased.

On one trip, there was some kind of convention so they moved the breakfast to a large conference room upstairs which meant Hillary had to push carts onto elevators and load and unload the food all while the hungry overflow crowd wondered where their food was and why the coffee had run out. Yet her smile and laughter never ceased.

Year after year, visit after visit, this was true. And when we returned, she always recognized us and greeted us like a sibling might, or a cousin. She was a joy to talk to. Her morning smile was a wonderful way to start the day, especially on cold days in the winter when the sun hadn’t yet come up very far.

2. Goodbye to Hillary

The man behind the counter explained everything about the room when I arrived to check in. He explained the room key. He explained the wifi. He explained how to park in the underground garage. And he explained when breakfast was served. 

I leaned over the counter. 

“Is Hillary still in charge of breakfasts?” 

His eyed widened. “Oh, you’ve been here before.”

“A few times, yes.”

“Yes, she still works breakfasts,” he said.

It turned out that the next day was her day off. But on the day after that, sure enough, there she was. Bringing sustenance (and coffee) out from the back kitchen into the dining area. 

When I saw her, I got up from my table and walked over to where Hillary was helping a boy flip the waffle machine. When he walked off, I tapped her on the shoulder. 

“Hillary,” I said. “I am David. My wife Trudy and I …”

“Why yes!” she said as her smile grew. “How wonderful to see you again. Is Trudy here, then?” She looked over my shoulder, expecting Trudy to be somewhere over there.

I told her that Trudy had flown home, and that I was in town one last time to deal with some paperwork related to my dad’s estate. I introduced her to my brother, who had walked up behind us and was wondering I suppose how it was that I was chatting so familiarly with a stranger.

“Your father was a nice man.”

“I don’t think I’ll be back again,” I said and held out my arms. We hugged each other firmly.

“Well maybe you and Trudy might come back for a vacation.”

Maybe we might. Although I can attest that it is a very, very long drive.

Mom and Dad

Tue, 23 Jul 2024, 10:53 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

My mom loved wild tiger lilies. She collected seeds from along the road and propagated them on the hill. While I was in Canada, they started blooming.

a tiger lily with its orange blossom and unfocused blue of the lake in the background

Hi Mom!

My dad loved donuts. He lived just around the corner from a Tim Horton’s. On the way back from Canada… Well don’t judge me, please.

a copy of coffee and a donut from Tim Horton's

Hi Dad!

No One Would Ever Publically Admit

Sat, 20 Jul 2024, 09:48 AM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

Let’s just say that I’m glad I wasn’t flying yesterday, or crossing a land border, for that matter. Or managing production CloudStrike software.

All that hoo-hah makes me think about four things…

1. Config files

Software systems often come in two parts: (a) the code that does the heavy lifting, and (b) config files with settings about particulars. It’s my understanding that the recent CloudStrike update issue was that a new config file was pushed out, and that it caused a pre-existing bug to manifest itself for the first time.

In a previous life, I fought a losing battle to include config files as part of the software certification process. After all, the prevailing view went, data files are “just data” not code. Why should the data be subject to software certification process? That just slows us down needlessly, and we have work to do.

My suspicion is that something like this was involved in the CloudStrike failure. They had recently detected some new circumstances that they wanted their software to flag. The update to their config files evidently defined the criteria for identifying those circumstances. My conjecture (based only on what I’ve read online) is that this was a manifestation of the argument that I lost. Is that what happened?

No one would ever publicly admit something like this. So I will never know.

2. Testing

It appears that the failed CloudStrike update was instantly deadly. If my understanding is approximately correct, once applied, the new config files triggered a bug that led a Windows reboot from which the computer could not recover — a blue-screen-of-death. If this was as instantly fatal as it seems to have been, and if this blue-screen-of-death reboot failure occurred on every machine once the update was applied, how was this not caught in testing? 

Either (a) the testing was skipped, or (b) the testing environment did not realistically mimic the production environment. I strongly doubt the testing was skipped entirely. I suspect the latter. 

No one would ever publicly admit something like this. So I will never know.

3. Incremental Rollout 

When you have massive infrastructure running the same codebase on a single hardware base, you don’t update it all at the same time. This is kindergarten stuff. You roll the updates out slowly and see if things are ok. That way, if something goes wrong, it doesn’t crater your entire enterprise. 

I’ve never been the guy responsible for this kind of update process. I fully understand that my perspective on shoulda and coulda necessarily doesn’t include the full story. But I can’t imagine staring into the abyss every time I mash the “update” button without some kind of reassurance that if I screw up, I will be able to stop the process before things spiral out of control.

In the case of CloudStrike, things definitely spiraled out of control. So did they really apply an across-the-board update to all of the production Windows machines of all of their customers in all geographies at the same time.

No one would ever publicly admit something like this. So I will never know.

4. Rollback Plans

Any mature software organization writes explicit plans that describe all the steps and all the contingencies involved in making changes to their production software, and these include “rollback plans” on how to un-update the changes if things go wrong. This sounds easier than it is, but it’s a thing. Thinking thru worst case scenarios really is part of the IT job. It’s not a luxury, because … well, because of what happened yesterday.

My suspicion is that there was no rollback plan for these config file updates. Or if there was a rollback plan, no one thought it thru sufficiently well to realize that it would involve an admin physically logging into each affected box. Did they write a rollback plan? If so, was it triggered? If so, why did it not work? 

No one would ever publicly admit something like this. So I will never know.

5. I Will Never Know

I will never know the answers to these root cause problems. The best I’ll get is hand-waving, imprecise language, and maybe some credible-sounding proximate causes. 

But that’s ok. I am just a math teacher teaching functions and equations. And I don’t need to know. I will sleep well, anyway.

Swimming Across the Lake

Mon, 15 Jul 2024, 06:03 PM (-06:00) Creative Commons License

1. Rules Based Order

Old hands — those whose memories of this place go back before their memories of this place, those who recall the cacophony of frogs before the chorus fell silent, those who remember when the southern end of the lake was still wild, before lakeside swimming pools and fertilized lawns replaced the forest that kissed the water’s edge, those who remember what it’s like to ski behind a 25 horse Johnson before inboard MasterCrafts and propeller-less SeaDoos. 

Old hands like those have a punch-list of lamentations. They mourn the passing of the world of their younger years — the song of the frogs, and the wildness of not only the southeastern shore of this lake but the utter wild of all the lakes, the meticulous skill required to stand up like from a chair as a whining 25 horse motor pulls you out into deep water. Their lamentations include such things as

  • That pontoon boat is going too fast.
  • They’re swimming out too deep.
  • They’re driving that boat too shallow.
  • Look at the size of the waves they’re making.
  • They shouldn’t be out on the lake after the start of evening fishing time.
  • They should have lights if they’re out this late.

and of course

  • Oh, those jet skis.

The old hands mourn the passing of the rules based order of yesteryear.

2. No Evening Swim

Yesterday I got in inkling to swim across the lake before sunset. The day before, I had swum across with Ben while Sam paddled the safety kayak. And based on that, I can definitively say that had I participated the super swim competition a week prior, I would have at least placed fourth. As my cousin said, “No medal, but a respectable showing.” (There were of course only three competitors in that competition, but still…)

The swim with Ben and Sam felt great, so I wanted to go again last night. This time I would use Janet’s pink floatie for safety, since Ben and Sam were gone and I would be alone in the water.

But… Oh that jet ski. 

There was this guy on a jet ski zipping around the lake faster than any I’ve ever seen. I’m telling you he was zipping around. Zipping! And he was pulling a girl on a tube whom he was whipping left and right and spinning in tight circles at random places in the lake. I’m telling you he was whipping and spinning around. Whipping and spinning! To top it off, he was going clockwise around the lake. Clockwise!

“David?” Janet called out from next door.

“Yes?” 

“Not a good time to swim across.”

“Nope. Not goin’.”

This was no old-fogie lamentation. No yearning for the rules based order. This was simple common sense. There would be no evening swim.

3. Morning Swim

This morning, the sun was coming up in the east with patches of blue sky peeking thru remnants of clouds from last night’s thunderstorms. The beach on the western shore was bathed in sunshine. A warm breeze blew out of the southwest.

Janet’s pink floatie was still on a chair on the deck, in spite of last night’s wind.

There was no one on the lake. No pontoon boats. No speed boats. No fishing boats. No loon. Even the swans were still nestled into their overnight places in the reeds in the swamp.

Crucially, there were no jet skis.

I went inside to change. Grabbed a towel, swim goggles, and Janet’s pink floatie and pink swimming cap (pink for visibility, y’all. vis-i-bil-i-ty). I walked down to the water’s edge.

The water was warm, a nice complement to the breeze. The swim across and back was wonderful. And… I placed first among all the competitors. Just sayin’: finished first.

Sadly, no trophies were given.

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