24 August
A Disk Kissing Itself Goodbye
At 2:45 this morning, my home office / techie practice server suffered a catastrophic failure of its primary slave disk. Among other things, that disk was responsible for storing the Active Directory log file for the server’s Windows 2003 domain controller. The device itself was a Maxtor 20 gig model going on 12 years of age. It was still in service after the server’s motherboard overhaul because of the Windows 2000 Active Directory Services recommendation: “For best performance, place the database and the log file on separate hard disks.”
18 June
My week, in logos
Many exciting things happened here recently. Last Thursday I volunteered to help staff the airport while the Nascar drivers flew in for their race. Friday I did my first solo flight at JCC. Saturday I got a perfect score on the aviation test. I spent Sunday reading the Aeronautical Information Manual. Monday I performed a rejected takeoff that I was particularly proud of. Tuesday I basically had a class from 4pm to 11pm. But right before that I was congratulated on being admitted to EMU for the fall term, so it was all smiles. :)
18 June
8-bit Album Cover
Before there was Weezer, there was Weeze, and before that, Elisha Cuthbert had an NES console. At least, that’s how I’d start the music video for “The 8-bit Album.”
But don’t get your hopes up. This isn’t a Weezer album. Well, it is, sort of. It’s more like a this-is-what-Weezer-would-have-sounded-like-on-a-25-year-old-arcade-game album. It’s experimental. It’s childish. It’s adding a happy hardcore remix to two genres that are already too far juxtaposed.
Weezer – Buddy Holly (nordloef Cover)
This was my 2nd-favorite track. You’d never know from listening to it that it was released in 2009. I was planning to upload the Bit Shifter cover last month instead, but I just didn’t like the choice of (original) lyrics in that one. 8-Bit is Creative Commons licensed.
26 April
Before flying over Ann Arbor, Nov. 2008.
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Today marks a new beginning in aviation for me. The morning weather is perfect, the wind is lively, and I am absorbing knowledge of airplanes like a sponge.
Auspiciously, I received a letter from the Federal Aviation Administration as I was leaving to go to the airport. Its contents were totally unremarkable, yet provided some light reading when I arrived a few minutes early.
My decision to embark on this career path comes after years of informal study and preparation for the formal and extremely professional journey ahead.
15 March
Remember yesterday's front page?
Welcome to the new and very different miqrogroove.com! Every five years or so, this website undergoes a major retooling to keep everything in line with my plans and expectations. Ten years ago, the transition was from GeoCities to a University of Michigan server, where the website experienced a period of rapid growth and change. That was the golden age of sharing files and sending e-mails through websites. Within five years after that, miqrogroove.com had moved to professional hosting and consisted of many thousands of pages in multiple natural languages. That period included the birth of social networking on the web, and common availability of megabit residential Internet service.
Today I am weighing three undeniable trends in the life cycle of miqrogroove.com. Most importantly is the fact that past phases of growth added some scrapbook-like features that were never updated. In a system of static files, it is very bad to do that because the addition of new content always increases the burden of management. Five years ago, the way to get around that problem on a budget was to design a custom web application from scratch, or even use a hideous pre-packaged web portal system. On the bright side, there are now mature, free, content management platforms spanning the skill range from sophomore webmaster all the way up to rocket-scientist information modeler. Setting up a weblog-style page is already second nature to the masses, so the weblog itself has become appropriately automated for adding and archiving pages of real content.
