jeremyrandall / blog /

Spondork and I went for a walk on Mt Tam yesterday, in the rain.

I don’t think that walking on a mountain in the rain is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think it’s the smartest.

We stopped at Walgreens on Lombard before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. I bought a poncho, since Spondork pointed out that carrying my gigantic blue and yellow umbrella into the woods would be dumb and “un mountain man -like.”

Right, that would be the dumb part.

We also bought a couple more of the “three dollar Walgreens hats” that we tend to buy every time we head out on a poorly planned outdoor adventure. They’re cheap, bright and goofy, and I think they are starting to litter both of our homes. I know there are at least two of them sitting on my bookshelf already.

On the drive up Mt Tam there is this ridge that actually has houses on it. It’s some weird zoning aberration that goes on for maybe a mile; as far as I know the entire rest of the mountain is National Forest and is protected from development. As we drove on the ridge and looked at the valley below, all we could see was a gray wall of clouds and rain. We passed a VW bus on the side of the road that looked like it was just one or two more gusts from being thrown off the ground into the canyon that presumably still lay below.

We got to the parking lot three miles below the East Peak and pulled in; it was so foggy all we could see was a wall of white in front of us. I joked that we were either pulling into the parking lot or we were about to drive off the side of the mountain into the abyss. Sometimes I make jokes when I am scared.

There were other folks out hiking (that was reassuring). An older couple advised us where to go, incorrectly, as it turned out. So we found ourselves on an unmarked trail alongside a rushing creek. Spondork walked animatedly ahead of me, talking loudly and gesticulating wildly.

The walking was great; I’ve been back on my game lately, so I was mowing up that hill with ease. But the roaring creek three feet below the crumbling earth that we walked on was making me nervous. Spondork started to totter as he crossed a log and I grabbed him and shoved him back onto the trail. Fucking shit. It occurred to me that it’s totally possible to get lost on Mt Tam. And, for some reason, I remembered the Blair Witch Project.

Forty five minutes and seven jumps over the creek later, we came up on a real trail, a fire road perhaps. Suddenly I could see the sheer beauty around me. The tall trees, the mist hanging in the air, the rocks and moss and leaves all around, everything drenched and sated by the water dropping out of the wind.

We walked down the big trail until we got to the part where it flooded over. We took turns peeing in the woods. And then we turned around and came back. We talked and joked and made fun of each other and everyone we know. And instead of taking the unmarked trail that we came on (we couldn’t find it again, thank goodness) we found a well marked trail with a name that we recognized and knew would lead us back. This trail was narrow and came down the grade on switchbacks. Spondork and I walked and yelled at the top of our lungs and made bad jokes and bad imitations of people we know. This is how we bond, I guess.

I’m not sure how to describe the beauty of the woods in the rain, but I think anyone who has seen the woods can imagine looking across a field as the rain comes down in torrents, hearing the water floating and dropping from all sides, hearing your own footsteps crossing through puddles, yelling and laughing like little kids and going from feeling lost to feeling found.

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We dedicated our trek to Walking Bob, our friend and a hell of a guy, who is now hiking around somewhere beyond where we can currently go. We miss you, Bob.

Plus some New Year’s resolutions…

Technology

When I bought my primary Mac a while back, I decided that I was going to treat it as a sort of “home production server,” meaning I wouldn’t use it to try beta software, I wouldn’t repartition the disk, I wouldn’t do things to mess it up and, thus, I wouldn’t need to reinstall the OS after some unnecessary technological debacle (I have other computers that I use for testing, experimenting and messing things up). But over time this computer started to degrade as some applications came and went and various parts saw incremental upgrades, and one not-so-incremental upgrade; for the sake of convenience I did an in-place upgrade to 10.5 instead of doing a clean install. Sure, all my stuff was intact, but performance and overall reliability went down, of course.

Last night I decided to bite the bullet and do a clean install. I run backups every night, so I made sure the backup data was valid, then started formatting. Everything went great and the machine was running perfectly after installing the OS and various universal binaries of the applications I use. Then I realized that I didn’t have any of the iLife apps that came preinstalled originally (iPhoto being the only one that is particularly important to me). I did some searching around and found that I could install the older iLife apps from the OS disc that originally came with the machine. I fired up that installation and everything was fine until it crashed unexpectedly. And brought the whole system down with it. The internal hard drive was totally corrupted! I booted from the CD and ran Disk Utility. It took three tries and then it claimed the massive amounts of corruption had been fixed. I went to start up the machine and, well, it’s not coming up at all. Here we go again.

The positive things: my backups are solid (as expected, using a shell script created before Time Machine was an option), it was pretty painless to import my database backups back into MySQL and it was a snap to configure apache2 for the webapps I use locally. I get to run through this whole routine again, which is good practice. And once I get this rig done up again, I expect performance and reliability to be back on track.

Update: I did another full rebuild, reinstalled all my apps and copied all of my data back, only to have the machine freeze up and refuse to boot again. Time to try TechTool and then go to a diagnostics appointment; the machine is still under AppleCare.

On another note, my boss bought me one of the new thin aluminum Apple Keyboards to use at work (I thought he was just being nice; turns out I was typing really loud on the old clackety keyboard); I liked it so much I bought one for myself to use at home. Excellent keyboard.

Travel

I did a small amount of travel over the holidays, both by train and by plane. I like train trips since I don’t have to deal with the airport, I can move around freely while en route and, most importantly, I can bring a laptop and write. Life has been so busy lately that having a day riding the rails meant I had a day to write and reflect. I wrote over 5,000 words on the train, examining my year and my accomplishments, looking at patterns I have been repeating and working out the things I’d like to keep doing and the things I need to change or stop doing. There are some hard decisions there, but that’s what taking an objective look at myself is all about. I was also able to see some amazing scenery and see how the train winds its way down a particularly tall mountain pass.

The plane ride was pleasant; I chatted the entire time with an interesting couple sitting next to me. We had a remarkably broad conversation for three people who had just met.

The silly moment was before the flight, at the security check, when they pulled my bags for a secondary search. I hadn’t even thought that my tube of toothpaste would be a problem, but it was more than the three ounce limit. I think that limit is ridiculous (as is removing our shoes), but I also know that it’s just not worth arguing about. I just quietly said, “okay, you can keep the toothpaste.” The security woman looked at me with compassion and asked if I’d like her to squeeze some of the toothpaste into a plastic ziplock bag so I could have a little with me to brush my teeth later. I thought that was nice of her, though it occurred to me later that since she believed it was actually toothpaste, and was willing to give some back, then why not let me keep all of it? I figure we were both doing our parts to act sane, within the confines of the insanity imposed around us.

Transit

I got a chance last week to ride the double decker bus that Muni is testing out. It’s nice and clean, and the view from upstairs is interesting. The ceiling on the top level is pretty low, so heads will be bumped. The bus itself felt responsive and didn’t seem to strain under the load. I did notice that it has double axles at the back; I’m assuming that is to carry what must be much more weight than a regular bus carries. I’m curious how these buses compare, weight-wise and fuel efficiency-wise, to the long articulated buses that are used on many of the routes.

I think that an electric trolley-bus version of the double decker would be needed here in SF; we should be lessening the amount of diesel burned here, not increasing it.

Weather

Someone recently said, snarkily, that I “just write about the weather” here. I disagree. The weather is a handy way to mark changes, and the changes in the weather often remind me of the passage of time and prompt me to write a little something here. But the weather is in the background, helping me set a tone for the limited writing I do in this space. I’d like to think that someone who thinks I just write about the weather is someone who is not really paying much attention to what I’m saying. That being said, it’s 45 degrees Fahrenheit right now. To me that is really cold! I am so grateful for the double-paned windows, the radiator and the new boiler down in the basement, firing with half the gas consumption of the old one.

Work

I have some interesting projects underway at work. The big ongoing project has been rebuilding the core network, moving everything to new equipment, renumbering the network with new subnets and moving machines around. All without the folks using those systems noticing. It’s sort of like the way Caltrans is rebuilding the bay bridge and approaches; they build around the old and then move the traffic back and forth, all without shutting down the roads. Caltrans has closed the bridge a couple times, but I’ve avoided any prolonged outages. We’ve migrated from one firewall to another and moved the core switching to a new “layer 3 switch” (layer 3 switching is still so cool). There was about 30 seconds of downtime when we switched traffic over to the new firewall. I’ve been joking that we scheduled it for when the CEO was in his car for the ten-minute drive between the office and his house. It did take some time to migrate some IPSec tunnels to the new firewall, but those tunnels are for specific traffic, not general access.

Design

I’m rooting through my list of art and design projects, looking to pick out a couple small projects I can fit in here and there, scoping some medium projects to make them more manageable and doing some preliminary planning for a larger remodel-type project that may get underway later in the year.

Social

I already have plans into the first couple weeks of the new year. Community, seeing friends, helping folks when I can, enjoying people and being enjoyed; that’s what it’s all about.

I’ve been posting short status updates fairly regularly on Facebook; if you know me in person, please add me to your friends list there.

I’ll be attending the usual events and look forward to seeing folks and catching up.

New Year’s resolutions

I actually have New Year’s resolutions to exercise more, eat more vegetables, lower my fat intake, rest more and pay more attention to healthy choices, physically and emotionally. Delightfully outrageous, indeed.

Work sent me to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a week. I found some cool parts of town, ate healthy food and walked quite a bit throughout the week, around the river and a couple of the many lakes. I’m not sure what I expected but I liked it more than I thought I would. “Nice” is the word that comes to mind. People were pleasant but not aggresively so.

I was invited to dinner by a co-worker who wanted to meet at the big “Mall of America” place. I drove around the perimeter about four times, marveling at the gigantic tackiness of it all. I finally mustered up my courage and walked in; I made it about 20 feet before deciding that a giant mall is, in fact, one of my worst nightmares, so I turned around and got the hell out of there. Shudder.

Progressive front yard:

A park along the river; one of the places I walked:

Rail line heading into the downtown area:

Details of one of the bridges that crosses the river:

I snapped this shot when I was out on the rented Harley in Hawaii:

I’m not really a Harley guy, but it was fun riding around. Maybe if I ever go back I’ll find the other bike rental place and get something a little less… well, Harley-ish.

This morning I took the subway in to Manhattan and caught the Staten Island Ferry. It was free, gave me my boat fix, and offered a great view of the city. The sky had cleared up and the sun was out.

I promptly turned around and came back. I found out that the shoes I was wearing have very little traction on snowy streets. So I made my way carefully, walking up Broadway. It was very cold, so I ducked in to a place to grab a bite, then did some “window shopping” at the J&R Electronics store. I got into a discussion with a woman shopping there about the problems with the Bush administration.

Then I walked toward City Hall, turned right, and walked halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun was reflecting on the water as a DEP boat, several ferries and a couple tugs passed underneath. The air was still cold and crisp, and the view was outstanding. I had made my way many miles by train, boat and foot.

Thu, Jan. 15th, 2004, 07:17 pm