BoomFlag

I haven’t blogged for a while, so I’m poking through old pictures that were still on the camera. Here’s one from just before Christmas, when I had my slave labor… err, I mean kids… stuff and stamp our 250 Christmas cards.

The envelopes had adhesive strips (because no one wants to lick 250 envelopes!) and when they were peeled off, they gathered enough static they stuck tenaciously to things. Things like hair.

Zack was handling the stamps, and each book of twenty had some strips along the edges. He made good use of them.

Here I am, reclining on my bed hacking away on the laptop. With a rat on my butt.

For some reason Laralee thought it was “cute” so she grabbed the camera.

The other day Zack and I were digging through a box of my old stuff… and by “old stuff” I mean literally a box of junk from the past 30 years of my life. I don’t even know how some of those things ended up being saved for all this time.

One of the amazing finds was my old Wal-Mart badge. Here I am sporting it:

Remember, at Wal-Mart, Our People Make the Difference. I was going for the “I don’t really want to make a difference” look but looking at this picture, I think it’s more of a “I think I have rheumatic fever” look or something.

Kyra, who’s much more photogenic, is showing off my original Hughes employee badge.

That was taken on my first day of work, back in June 1995. What’s funny is apparently I wore a suit that day.

And never again. I was the guy who didn’t wear shoes around the office, and even when I flew to L.A. or D.C. for presentations to colonels and generals, the most dressed-up I got was khakis and deck shoes. And no socks, naturally, because they’re tacky with deck shoes.

The next time I wore that suit was November 2010 when I pulled it out for church. And it still fit.

Zack left me a note on my orange juice this morning.

That last reference is because I’m desperate for two “epic” developers, and hoping to find someone soon. Too much work, too few good people.

What a good kid.

Zack was ready for the big game.

We didn’t have inflatable helmets for the Giants or the Patriots, but my old Redskins one was good enough for him.

Snow day!

Today is the unofficial day to protest SOPA, the awful piece of legislation the U.S. Congress has been considering as a way to stop copyright infringement on the internet. Not surprisingly, the technique they’re considering is poorly thought out, benefits the big media conglomerates (RIAA and MPAA) far more than anyone else, lacks oversight and transparency, and worst of all strikes at the very foundation of the internet.

Many major web sites have decided to make their sites “dark” in protest, hoping to raise awareness of this issue and get people thinking about what Congress is doing.

Google has an interesting home page:

Craigslist has a landing page with a message, then a click to get to the site.

But Wikipedia has the most courage, in my mind, because for the entire day this is what you’ll see:

For one of the most-trafficked sites in the world, this is a major statement. Let’s hope it works.

I run some servers for a client, and some new people are taking over the project so they’ve asked me to put together a diagram showing the relationships between the servers and the functions they provide.

This environment has evolved over the past eight years– when I first started working on it there was only a single web server. As the layers have been added and the complexity has grown, some pretty crazy stuff has been put in place. But even I wasn’t prepared for the complexity of the overall ecosystem until I started sketching it:

Yeah.

Now I have to figure out how to organize this into a nice diagram that will make sense to management. Whee.

Zack wrote his Christmas thank-you notes today. I know Grandpa reads my blog from time to time, so this is going to spoil the surprise, but I couldn’t help but share one of his notes:

Ahh, the brutal honesty of a ten-year-old. As Laralee says, “At least he wrote them!” I suppose sometimes it’s the thought that counts.

(By the way, Grandma and Grandpa, the Lego Earth Dragon really is his favorite Christmas gift. So I guess that’s something.)

I just opened a letter from our health insurance provider with the same happy news they send at the end of every December: our premiums are going up. They’ve gone up between ten and twenty percent every year for the last decade. Since I’m considered “self-employed” we pay all of our premiums out of pocket, so I’m much more sensitive to the cost than I was when I worked for bigger companies.

Every December I grumble a bit about another 15% (or so) rise in our insurance costs, but every December we decide to soldier on and continue paying. We have a high-deductible plan ($7,000) which means the only thing the company will ever pay for is something truly serious like heart surgery or a kidney transplant or whatever. Last summer when Kyra had her mysterious illness for several weeks, we racked up $5,000 in hospital and specialist fees, and paid every cent out of pocket. That was a good time, let me tell you.

This year’s letter says we’re going to see an astounding 45% increase in our premiums. I can’t even imagine what would trigger an increase like that. The letter claims that all of the people covered by similar plans are subject to the same jump in price, so I suspect a lot of others are unhappy like me.

Now I’m seriously considering whether to have health insurance at all. We’re a healthy family: none of us really get anything more serious than a cold once a year or so. We have no major health problems, and Kyra’s incident was the only time in the last fifteen years we’ve gone to a doctor for anything more than a mild case of strep. If we’re paying close to $10,000 a year and then paying $5,000 when someone gets really sick, what’s the point? I should throw out the insurance and spend that money on a sweet family vacation or something.

Grrr. The health care industry sucks. And the insurance industry.