And now, it’s time for a “Fuck You Friday” special!

 

To the Translink bus driver who changed lanes into my lane when I was halfway up the side of his bus, forcing me to STOMP on my brakes and nearly get rear-ended by the morning traffic behind me and then STILL almost clipped my front end with the ass-end of his accordion bus rather than wait the 1.5 seconds until I was past him; a hearty “FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE” and I hope you have a shitty weekend!

Reminds me of an old proverb(ha) I heard on a Maclean and McLean record when I was a young impressionable child:

May bloody piles torment you,

May corns grow on your feet.

May crabs as big as turtles,

Crawl up your ass and eat.

And when you’re old and feeble and become a nervous wreck,

I hope your head falls through your ass and breaks your fucking neck.

 

To everyone else, have a great weekend. ;)

Last week enough parts arrived that I could start putting together the first of my two new servers. In the end, I decided to buy SuperMicro barebones servers instead of HP or Dell (or IBM) servers because of the size of the hard drives we wanted. My co-worker and I came to the figure of 4TB for where we expected company-wide data storage to be in five years time, based upon the current size and the growth we’ve had and are expecting.

In order to build a RAID5 array of 4TB, we had to have five 1TB drives. Of course, 1TB drive doesn't actually HAVE 1TB of drive space on it, it’s only about 927Gb or so because of the whole 1000 vs 1024 multiplier. Sure it was fine in the days of 100Mb drives, but now it’s just ridiculous. Five 1TB hard drives yields a 3.6TB array. We are “missing” or “losing” 400Gb or almost half of one of those terabyte drives when extrapolated across the array.

The hard drives that Dell and HP (and I’m assuming IBM/Lenovo) use have custom firmware on them so that the onboard diagnostics can talk to the drive and receive information from them. This means that the same Seagate Barracuda or Western Digital Caviar 1024Gb drive that costs about $166 at NCIX or Tiger Direct costs $924 from Dell Direct or CDW. You also need the hot-swap caddy for that particular server, and they don’t sell those separately (unless you find some on Craigslist or eBay). That would have meant that I spent more on those hard drives than I ended up spending on the entire SuperMicro server.

This is the second time I’ve dealt with SuperMicro. When PC Powerhouse closed it’s doors, we (my old company) bought up their server rack, patch panels & switches and there were two SuperMicro 2U servers in there. We called it the Sharktank and used it to set up a completely separate network with a copy of our Active Directory on it to use for testing purposes. We also bought a third SuperMicro 2U server and stuffed it full of 500Gb hard drives to use as a disk-based backup solution. I was impressed with the build quality then and when I needed a cheaper alternative to brand-name servers here at my new job, I went to SuperMicro again.

Fortunately CDW carries SuperMicro servers. NCIX does as well I found out which means I have two suppliers I can have compete against each other for better pricing. The first one arrived mid-week last week and I put it together in one afternoon. These particular servers are Intel Xeon quad-core processors, 4Gg RAM and two 250Gb hard drives in a RAID1 (mirrored) configuration with Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard Edition running on it. The RAID controller is an Adaptec 3805. In addition, they also have the five terabyte drives configured in a RAID5 array. These servers have redundant 750 watt power supplies and are plugged into an APC 2U Rackmounted UPS pushing 2200VA.

So begins the headache. The maximum disk size that windows XP, 2003 and Vista (non 64-bit versions) can see is 2Tb. My array is 3.6Tb. Try as I might, I could not break through that 2Tb maximum. The drive just didn’t show up in the Disk Management snap-in. I tried everything I could think of, it just wouldn’t show up.

I deleted the array that I had created in the controller BIOS settings and re-created it in Windows using the Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM). No good. As soon as I added the 4th drive to the array, the available disk size went from 1.8Tb to 2.0Tb and ignored the remaining 1.6Tb. I searched and searched and searched all weekend and asked every SysAdmin I knew and had access to via IM, email, phone and shouting over a live band at a pub Saturday night. No one had any insight.

I found out about GPT during this time though, and how it works and what it does. There are a lot of limitations to using GUID Partition Tables instead of MBR mostly due to BIOS limitations. EFI bios can boot from GPT disks, so that means all Macs can, but only Windows XP x64, Vista x64, Server 2003 SP2 X64 and Server 2008 x64 can BOOT from a GPT. This had no bearing on my setup as I wasn’t booting from this disk, it was simply a big data drive. There’s supposed to be a way to right-click an unrecognized disk in the Disk Management snap-in and Convert to GPT (or Convert to MBR) but since my Disk1 was not showing up there, I couldn’t do it. FRUSTRATION SETS IN.

I came in over the weekend to relocate the server from my workbench into the rack and re-created the RAID5 array and initiated a Build/Verify rather than a Quick Init. After two hours of solid disk LED lights, the progress meter changed to 1%. Oi. I left and went home for the weekend, thinking that it should be done by Monday morning, and once the drive array is Optimal, then maybe it will magically appear.

No suck luck. I arrived this morning to an Optimal array but still nothing in the Disk Management snap-in. I opened the Device Manager and checked through there to make sure that the Adaptec 3805 had the correct and up-to-date driver. It did. When I clicked “check online for a new version” it returned a message that I already had the best driver for the job. Fortunately I’m not that trusting of Windows Update.

I went to the Adaptec website and navigated through to the 3805 downloads. there was a newer firmware available, but there was a new, windows-certified driver for Server 2008 x64 that was dated Oct 2, 2008. I downloaded that driver and copied it over to the server. The documentation suggested that I could either do it via rebooting the server and booting from a floppy, or I could do it via the Adaptec Storage Manager console itself. I updated the driver and Windows Server 2008 said “your new driver is installed but will not be working correctly until you restart your computer.” Since this is a new server and there’s no data on it yet (hell there’s nowhere to PUT the data) I clicked OK and when it asked me to reboot, I clicked yes.

I was disconnected from the Remote Desktop, and since I don’t have a console KVM in my rack just yet, I kept my fingers crossed and waited a few minutes for the server to come back up.

I re-connected via Remote Desktop (as an aside, as of November 19, 2008 RealVNC’s free version does not work with Windows Vista or Server 2008, just their pay versions do) I fired up the new Server Manager and expanded the + sign next to storage and clicked on Disk Management…

HOLY JUMPING JESUS ON A POGO STICK I HAVE A NEW DRIVE SHOWING!

Disk 1 unknown 3723.99Gb NOT INITIALIZED. The Initialize Disk Wizard popped up on it’s own and asked me how I wanted to initialize this disk: MBR or GPT? Even the note at the bottom is good: The GPT partition style is not recognized by all previous versions of Windows. It is recommended for disks larger than 2TB, or disks used on Itanium-based computers. Honestly, Itanium? Who even USES those? In this case, I’m going to go with GPT because I’m never going to boot off this drive, and Windows Server 2008 sees the GPT partition just fine. The XP Client computers and other Windows server 2003s that will be working with the data on these drives will all be accessed over the network via SMB anyway so it’s all good.

FINALLY the drive is ready to be formatted as NTFS (which should take another bunch of hours, even as a quick format) and I can start preparing my checklist for migrating the old file server on to this one.

Just over two years ago I came across a link that said that Rip Curl was making a rechargeable, heated wetsuit. DAMN! I posted that I did not know if it was for scuba use or it was merely “splash-proof” for kayaking and surfing.

It took two years, but this morning I saw a post on The Uber-Review that they’ve finally brought it to market.

It’s only rated to 10m so it’s not designed for SCUBA diving at all. Surfing yes, kayaking yes, SCUBA, no. They were thoughtful enough to do a bunch of testing to make sure that the electric field generated by the lithium-ion batteries and the carbon fiber heating elements wouldn’t attract sharks. Thanks guys! Hopefully they didn’t get the batteries from Sony’s laptop battery division. :)

Rip Curl’s website has a cool interactive flash site set up with videos and a neat “thermal body scanner” that shows you where the elements are and how much heat they produce when you have it switched on low or high.

Now if I could find a battery-heated wooly-bear to wear under my drysuit, I’d be back in business diving up here in the Pacific Northwest… maybe next spring :)

PS: they're just over $1000 MSRP and doesn't really say what the thickness is, although I kinda think it's a 4/3mm.

A few weeks ago I posted a rant about some dirty filthy stinking hippy who sheared off the drivers side mirror on my car, less than a month after I bought it.

Of course, it probably wasn’t a hippy, they don’t normally drive cars… the odd VW Microbus but those are few and far between.

I spent a week calling around to wreckers to see if anyone had a replacement. No, no, no, no and haha no, really! The mirror is a power/electric mirror so I had to replace it with another. There’s a little speaker in the corner on the inside, so I couldn’t even replace it with a manual one to save a few bucks.

I called a couple Honda dealers and they all quoted me $340 plus $65 for installation. Funny how the price of one is juuuuust a few dollars higher than the standard deductible for comprehensive insurance. When I got that info, I posted another rant about collusion between auto manufacturers and insurance agents.

In the end, I ordered a 3rd party replacement from PartsTrain.com for $34.99 USD. It cost me about $30 in gas to drive out to Sumas, Washington and pick it up from Package Express, the mail-drop that I use for US shipping. I installed the mirror yesterday and it fits and works perfectly. The only difference is it’s black/unpainted. My passenger side mirror is green, the same color as the car so I’ll have to get it painted one of these days. Even if it costs me $100 to get it painted, it’s STILL half the price of buying one from the Honda dealer.

As soon as I pulled away from the curb this morning without having to twist alllll the way around in my seat to see if there was anything coming, I realized just how much I missed having that mirror for the last two weeks.

Tonight I received my first SPAM message on Facebook. I had 1 new unread message and was putzing around when I went to read it and saw that  I now had TWO messages...

I clicked into my Inbox and my heart sank...

The Inbox view only showed the first line or two, but that was certainly enough. This is the first time I've seen one that referenced the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, but the details are not the important part.

The important part is that these fucking scammers are starting to infiltrate Facebook. I suppose it was only a matter of time. They've made using Hotmail or Yahoo mail practically unusable. Hotmail at least has the 'exclusive' setting so that only people in your contacts/address book can  actually send messages through to your inbox, but I've had to abandon my Yahoo email account that I've had since 1997 because it gets about 50-60 emails a day, most of it various forms of the Nigerian 419 Scam. The sad part is that even now, in 2008 people are STILL FALLING FOR THIS CRAP. There are various names for it, I know it as a 419 scam because that's what The Register called it when I used to read that. They had a whole section on 419 scam-baiters each week it seemed. There's another one about a lottery going around to and even my mother nearly fell for, forwarding it to me to ask me if I thought it was legit. As if.

This is a pretty serious thing for Facebook, and I hope they figure out some way to nip it in the bud. The whole point of a social networking site is, well, to NETWORK. Meet new people. If everyone starts jacking up their privacy settings to the point that you can't contact anyone unless you're already friends, how are you going to get to be friends?

As soon as I saw it, I looked for and found the "report message" link right there underneath this scumbag's name. It came up with a warning that if I proceeded, the person would be put on my block list and any relationships I had with that person would be broken. The two choices were Spam or Harassment. I kind of flipped out a little bit and vented at the poor administrator who has to open that message. The next popup (remember when THOSE were the scourge of the internet?) said that the message would be forwarded to Facebook administration and that I would not be informed if any action was taken.

Unfortunately, this sets up Facebook staff for a never ending game of Whack-a-mole, where these scumbags who have nothing better to do than sit in internet cafes in Nigeria and create fake user ids and email addresses and send their spam out.

Hurricane Paloma is about to rock Grand Cayman with a direct hit. The weather is deteriorating already and the eye is supposed to pass very close by or directly over Grand Cayman tonight at about midnight. What’s the rub? ZAC WAS JUST THERE ON VACATION AND LEFT A DAY OR TWO AGO.

I double-checked and sure enough, the outlets on the wall near my rack are regular 120v outlets (higher amperage sure, but 120v connectors) I removed a little more of the packaging and sure enough, the UPS is set up for 230v operation. Shit.

“Cannot retrieve the URL specified in the XML Link property. For more assistance, contact your site administrator.” I AM THE BLASTED ADMINISTRATOR! TELL ME WHAT THE FUCKING ERROR IS!!!

Something weird happened to me last night. I think it had something to do with the time change back to Standard Time.

Today’s frustration is brought to you by… SharePoint! WSS 3.0: when it absolutely DOESN’T have to be done overnight!

The other day I received a request to set up a blog in SharePoint to replace an old-school email newsletter that was distributed throughout one of the divisions at work. Sure it’s the beginning of SharePoint Sprawl, but this is a good reason to USE SharePoint and to get people used to spending more time in it.

WSS3.0 comes with a Blog site out of the box. It’s very, very basic though. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by using DasBlog for the last five years or so, but the WSS 3.0 blog only allows ONE category per post and it just looks so plain. There’s a free third-party add-in called Community Kit Enhanced Blog Edition available at CodePlex which allows multiple blogs, theme/skin-ability and more than one category per post but I didn’t feel the need to start experimenting with a new solution on the production site. It’ll do for now.

The good news is that Windows Live Writer works with the SharePoint Blog right out of the box (as it were, it’s a download).

More good news is that like every other thing in SharePoint, it generates an RSS Feed.

The BAD news is that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS3.0) does NOT come with an RSS Viewer out of the box. What the shit? It comes as part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, but not WSS3.0.

Back over to CodePlex, there’s a free third-party add-in called Feed Reader. I downloaded it and installed it to my test SharePoint site… and it doesn’t work 100%. There’s a broken image link for the icon, a broken image link for each bullet-point image and a broken “refresh feeds” link down at the bottom. Other than that, it works pretty well, but I’m not about to go and start messing around with the production server with something that’s only 90% working. It’s PURELY a visual problem, but it’s enough to generate calls to the helpdesk and minimizing those is of course, job #1.

Falling back to the things that come with SharePoint, there IS an XML web part. I thought I’d give that a try, because what is an RSS feed anyway? It’s an XML file! I even found an XSL example that would display it the way I wanted to that was as simple as copying and pasting. Just when you thought everything was going to work out, there it is. The Rub. The RSS feed generated by SharePoint is a a file called listview.aspx?List={Gigantic Guid} and not a .xml file. Because of that, SharePoint cannot resolve the listview.aspx GUID to an XML file and it fails, even though IE7 resolves it and displays it as a newsfeed properly. Le Sigh.

It HAS to work, other people are using it, and even some comments on the page with the XSL file said “it works great, thanks!" so I don’t know what my problem is, other than the obvious: I’m not 10% smarter than the program is.

A couple weeks ago I saw a headline somewhere.... not sure if it was online or in print here in Vancouver that said Edmonton headed the list of where the most murders take place beating out even the Greater Toronto Area... Really? Edmonton? I didn't see it...

About the same time I received an invite to a group on Facebook to "Find Johnny Altinger" who was one of my online buds back in the late 80s and early to mid 90s. Apparently he had gone missing and one of his family members was canvassing everyone on his friends list on Facebook to see if he had contacted them. I joined the group and shortly afterward was contacted by a reporter with Global's Edmonton office asking me how I knew him and when was the last time I heard from him.

Next thing I heard was that the Edmonton RCMP or Police homicide division was looking into the matter and he still hadn't been found.

This morning I received another email from a reporter with the Edmonton Journal saying that the police had made an announcement in the case and could I call him and answer some questions about how I knew him and what he was like, etc. I checked Canada.com and got to the Edmonton Journal's homepage and there on the right, top link was a headline about a 29-year-old man had been arrested for first degree murder. With a sinking feeling, I clicked the link and sure enough the arrest was in connection with the missing man case.

I emailed the reporter back and told him the same thing I told the first reporter... we met when we were teenagers (online-ish, before the internet had graphics) because we both had the same kind of computer system and traded games with each other. I hadn't seen him since the mid-90s before I moved away, and then reconnected with him on Facebook earlier this year.

When I got back from lunch today I refreshed the link to see if there was any new information and there was a little more info. There was also a flurry of activity on the group page on Facebook as well. Shortly after that, Little Bucket IM'd me and since she lives in Edmonton I asked her if she had heard about it, and she sent me a different link to a longer story that was much more shocking. I don't really know what to say, it sounds like the plot from a bad movie.

Yes, collusion, not collision although in this case it's pretty close.

Last weekend I posted a rant about some hippie bastard who sideswiped my new (to me) car and sheared off the driver's side mirror. I suppose because I've been driving for close to twenty years, and five of those as a truck driver it's second nature and I don't even think about it, I never realized just how much I use and rely on my mirrors. I have a huge blind spot now, as I can't really even turn around that far in the driver's seat to see what my mirror normally does. Add in gray skies, rain and condensation on the windows and it's a recipe for disaster. Fortunately that hasn't happened yet, but has driven me (ha ha) to extremes to get it replaced.

I started off at UAP/Napa Auto Parts online site. No dice. I tried Googling but any parts online place, while having a plethora of engine and body parts, don't carry mirrors. A few days ago at work I was "cleaning up" the user profile of a former-employee before archiving his or her documents and in his or her temporary internet files was a cookie text file for Partstrain.com. I checked them out and to my surprise they had the mirror I needed, and it was only $36. $36 USD, and it was black, so I'd have to get it painted to match but it was better than nothing. I ran into a problem shortly in that they didn't ship to Canada. I clicked the "chat with sales help" and she confirmed that they don't ship to Canada, but referred me to autopartsonlinecanada.com who was an affiliate of theirs who did.

Autopartsonlinecanada.com does indeed ship to Canada but don't have any mirrors. I called their customer service 800 number and the sales rep confirmed that they did not have the part I was looking for and in fact only carried mirrors for Volkswagens, but they didn't advertise that. Shit.

I filled out a parts request form at Carter Honda's site and also one at Ralph's Used Auto Parts, a network of auto wreckers/used parts places around the Vancouver area. I didn't hear anything back for nearly two days from either, so I called Ralph's on Scott Road. Nothing. I called their affiliate on Mitchell Island, nothing. He kinda laughed a little so I asked him if this was a hard part to find and he said "Very." Great.

Dictionary.com defines collusion as "a secret agreement, esp. for fraudulent or treacherous purposes; conspiracy" Now I wouldn't go so far as to accuse fraud, but check this out: I got an email back from the parts man at Carter Honda. A new mirror from Honda was $314 and they quoted me labor of $65 (one hour basically) to install it. $314? Sounds fishy... I checked my insurance policy and sure enough, the baseline deductible for comprehensive insurance is $300.

I had avoided ordering from PartsTrain and having it shipped to my mailbox in Sumas as it costs me about $30 in gas to get out there and back as well as about three to four hours round-trip depending on if there's a lineup at the border. In the end, $36 + $30 in gas and then getting it painted still comes out to less than half the price of the factory replacement part so I ordered it Friday afternoon from PartsTrain and I'll have to make arrangements to get out to Sumas next week sometime and then install it myself.

Meanwhile I have to keep driving around with no mirror for another week.

Have you ever clicked “cancel” during an installation wizard, or managed to hose something on your computer or one of your servers by manually messing around with settings because you think you’re smarter than you really are? If you’re like me, you have. :)

Yesterday when I was messing around with SharePoint Services 3.0 on our development server, I managed to not only hose IT, but I also hosed our Windows Software Update Services server.

WSUS is like having your own Windows Update server. Rather than have all your computers check and download updates from Microsoft’s servers (chewing up all your bandwidth and/or ISP’s quota) you download them to one central location and then having all your computers download from that server on your network. As the Administrator, you can approve updates and they will automatically be available to your clients, but new updates that you haven’t approved won’t be available. In the event that you come across a Windows Update that breaks an application on your computer, you can prevent your computers from downloading and installing it.

It runs as a web site, it uses a SQL database for it’s backend and then it uses some local storage for the actual updates (in whatever languages you specify you will support)

If one of those parts gets hosed (like when you’re mucking about in IIS admin and break the WSUS website, or you manually delete the database instance that it’s using), then there’s not much you can do but uninstall and reinstall the application.

What happens if WSUS has disappeared from the Control Panel’s “Add/Remove Programs” list? If you think you’re a smart cookie, you’ll re-run the installation program which (depending on the program) will give you repair or uninstall options. In the case of WSUS, there’s no “repair” option and re-running the setup program launches the uninstall routine. If some piece of WSUS is missing however, then it fails with a generic error. Stumped.

I found a similar post on Experts Exchange and the accepted solution was a Microsoft Office utility called Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. The utility’s home page on Microsoft Support explains that it wipes out the registry information for uninstalling. If you have a corrupted installation or un-installation it MAY allow you to re-install the application successfully. With nothing else to lose, I downloaded it, installed it and fired it up.

It showed a list of all the programs that were installed on the server, based on the registry information. I found Windows Software Update Services v3.0 SP1 in the list, clicked on it and then clicked "Remove”. It ran successfully and then I closed the application before I did any other unintended damage and then ran the WSUS setup program again. This time instead of starting the uninstallation routine, it came up with the fresh install screen. Choosing the same locations that were set up before installed the software “over” the old locations. The installation created the web server over again using the same ports and the downloaded updates are in the same place.

Because all the clients were either pre-configured or receive their Windows Update configuration info via Group Policy, everything “picked up where it left off”

The Windows Installer Cleanup Utility is a last-ditch effort when you’ve exhausted every other process to remove a corrupted installation. It’s a nuclear attack on the registry and Microsoft’s warnings and as-is and disclaimers highlight that. If you find yourself in this kind of a situation, it makes a handy addition to your Bat Utility Belt. If you try it and you do more harm than good, well, too bad. :)

I referred to it earlier, but haven’t elaborated on it (at least on here) but I did land a job earlier this month after spending a month re-adjusting to Vancouver. I waited to look for an apartment until after I started working so I could find somewhere that wasn’t a huge PITA to commute. I had a 15km radius in mind so as to reduce my auto insurance footprint as ICBC has a “15 km or less” category.

As I did before, whenever I refer to work, I’m only going to refer to it in a general sense without any specifics or names (to protect the innocent… and compared to me, everyone is an innocent!)  People who know me well or know me through other social networking sites will be able to figure it out pretty easily but people who end up here randomly or from a search engine, I’ll still be somewhat anonymous. There’s no HR policy on blogging in the Employee Handbook, and I don’t want to force them to make one.

At my previous job, we deployed a small-scale SharePoint Portal 2007 site. Those of you who are familiar with SharePoint are probably laughing right now but seriously, it was a small deployment with one site and only a few pages. At least it was when I left!

When I took an Exchange 2007 course in December of 2007, the instructor referred to SharePoint as a cancer. It starts off small… one site, a little collaboration but as people start using it and hearing and reading about some of the things it can do, then the feature requests start coming in and the sprawl begins. Before you know it, you have an entire datacenter just to support SharePoint.

That portal we set up was mostly about a KPI dashboard for the Board of Directors. We had a specialist from Toronto fly down for a few weeks and help us set it up and do some custom coding to draw specific data from our SQL databases (Mo Paul represent!)

At my new job there was already a SharePoint portal in place. In fact it there were a couple. There was a SharePoint Services 2.0 portal up and running using an Access database as it’s backend and some serious line of business applications custom-written to run on it. There was a SharePoint 3.0 portal running that we are slowly migrating to that was SQL Express based but each of those line-of-business applications had to be re-written to run from SQL instead of Access and because they were so intertwined, we couldn’t migrate them one at a time, but rather all at once so it became a pretty gigantic project.

There were also some other sites and a document management system in place that was running either WSS 2.0 or a custom application that those authors wanted integrated into SharePoint as well.

All of this required me to get up to speed on SharePoint pretty quickly. In the past, my experience with SharePoint was “it’s a cancer upon my network, growing uncontrollably and sucking up all my resources.” I referred to it to my brother as “the ominous black cloud on the horizon of IT and developers” and went so far as to quote Colonel Kurtz “Horrors” soliloquy to a friend via IM who then remarked that “being this far north is affecting my mind”

I’ll probably start posting more stuff about SharePoint as I learn it and cross-post it to the IT Team Blog I set up in SharePoint (See? the sprawl is starting already!) to help document my descent into madness.

I've got a bunch of posts in the pipeline and maybe one day I'll get around to finishing them and posting them.

Last night some fucktard sideswiped my car and sheared off the driver's side mirror. This morning Laurie and I went to get a coffee at Giancarlo's on Commercial Drive and I saw something sitting on the sidewalk that didn't look like the normal kind of litter the fucking hippies and homeless around here leave around. It looked like the 'guts' of a mirror... Laurie saw me looking at it and went to investigate, and said "yup, it's a mirror". I looked at my car and thought "well at least it's not mine."

As she was further down the sidewalk, she could see the other side of my car and said "yeah actually it is" so I went to look and sure enough, some fucktard clipped it. The housing was sitting on the street next to my car and somehow the mirror ended up where it was, IN FRONT of the car. Since there was nothing to do about it, I picked up the pieces and put them in the trunk and we went for breakfast.

When I came back, armed with only a Leatherman, I removed the remaining pieces of the mirror and brought it all inside to see if there was a way i could use some moxy and epoxy (or Gorilla Glue) and put it back together. Nope... There are some plastic pieces missing to fit the jigsaw puzzle back together and some of the plastic looks "stretched" rather than a clean break that might have been able to fit back together.

Upon further inspection, there's a scuff or three on the front window pillar but they're really superficial and will probably just buff out. It looks like it was a mirror-to-mirror collision, but the person was going fast enough that it sheared off the screws inside the housing. there doesnt seem to be any scuffing or scratching on the housing itself, which is weird.

I checked my insurance papers, as I found out this is something that falls under "comprehensive" but the deductible is $500, so that pretty much torpedoes that idea. I have no idea what a replacement mirror will cost. I emailed a Honda dealership loally that had a "parts request form" online and I googled around for some OEM replacement parts. They were all in the 60-100 dollar range, but they were all black. The trim level on my car has color-matched bumpers and mirrors so I may get hosed.

The good news (if there is any) is that since I bought this car, I've seen LOTS of other Civics with the same color and head/tail light design as mine so there should be a fair bit of parts at the wreckers.

What pisses me off the most about the whole thing, aside from the hit and run, and aside from being out-of-pocket when I really haven't even received a paycheck yet (I landed a job, btw, but that's another post) and aside from the fact that I USE my mirrors and rely on them for you know, safety is that now there's a fucking HOLE in the drivers side door/window that's going to let COLD AIR in and probably blow right onto my hands while I'm driving!

If *I* had that much trouble "fixing" the streaming from WMP11 to Xbox360, how the hell are mere mortals expected to be able to figure this out? Ork had a similar problem and he ended up installing TVersity to make it work, and I initially installed Orb to get around it before fixing it the first time, too.

I've held off on writing anything about the whole ordeal until the settlement was done, just in case. I'm still not going to write too much about it until the money is deposited in my bank account, but some of the details are familiar enough to warrant a little write-up here.

Ten days ago, I wrote about some of the things that I had got done, and some of the things yet to do. In ten days, I've managed to scratch one of those things off the list: I picked up a car.

The expatriate community in Cayman is rather unique and I don't think it's matched anywhere else in the world. The cross-section of industries who employ them and the union of where those generally distinct groups intersect can lead to some pretty outrageous situations, but at the end of the day everyone looked out for everyone else. There was always an extra seat available to pull up to the table or the bar and help the FNGs learn the ins, the outs, the what-have-yous of island life. That's part of what made Cayman special and probably why I stuck around so long. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I would do everything over exactly the same... except maybe that bit in Texas!

So, to recap: $5000 car comes out to 5600, and then 2500 annual insurance premium is an up-front cost of potentially 8100. Add on fuel (at $1.30/liter) and maintenance (and of course tax on both of those) and it's easily going to be a $10,000 "investment" in transportation. The only problem with that of course is calling it an investment. An investment is something that provides a return.

then wondered if US Airways and Carnival Cruise Lines were partnered. If not, they should be. This flying trailer park is the perfect vehicle to transfer those Whiskey Tango cruisers from whatever fucking hole they crawled out of to get to their floating trailer parks to spread their drive-fast-turn-left "culture" throughout the Caribbean, six islands at a time, for seven days.

So this is it.

I'm booked on one of the "extra sections" that Cayman Airways is flying to Miami tonight at 7:40pm. I'll get to Miami close to 10:00 and then tomorrow morning I can start looking for a way to get to Vancouver that won't cost me an arm,leg, my xbox and my firstborn male child.

Worst case I park my luggage in the storage area and go sack out in a pew in the chapel up on the 4th floor by the post office. It's always dark, quiet and air conditioned in there.

 

It isn't exactly how I pictured leaving Cayman, especially after 10 years, but I really have no good reason to stick around. If I did, I'd have to sit here in the dark, sweating my sac off with no air conditioning and maybe even no water, if the power and water are off. It's also costing me more to do all this last-minute stuff, but whatever... better than sweating it.

Unless I feel the need to post from the departure lounge at the airport, this will be my last post from Grand Cayman as a resident and local living urban legend. :)

I woke up this morning at 6am. I don't know why... I never woke up this early when I was, you know, WORKING. I checked the NHC overnights before doing anything else and WHAT THE?!

Gustav went SOUTHWEST overnight and was 'rounding the SE corner of Jamaica and then... headed right for us. Christ on a pogo stick, there goes my flight for Saturday! I checked the CPA at Stormcarib (really the only reason to go there, all the self-professed experts who post in their not-so-humble-opinions get on my nerves faster than... well faster than a fucking hurricane can change it's course while you're sleeping!) and it's now forecast to pass within 9.0 miles of Grand Cayman on Saturday August 30th at 2:12amEDT (0112 local)

That's too close. Plus with the southern pass, we're going to get the brunt of the NW and NE quadrants as well as be susceptible to storm surge, which is really the killer in hurricanes. Fortunately it's only supposed to be a cat1 and become a cat2 once it passes us and heads into the Gulf of Mexico (and aiming for New Orleans). It strengthened pretty quick overnight, so it could be a cat 2 or even higher by the time it arrives early Saturday.

People are getting into busy mode, traffic is terrible especially the chokepoint between the airport and the rest of GT. Boards are up all over and the supermarkets are packed. I think as people woke up this morning and saw the change in track it spurred them out of "we should be ok" to "we need to make damned sure we're ready" so all the ants are hard at work, while the grasshoppers are laying on the beach.

Update: I spoke too soon. Watches will go up on all three islands at 6pm local time today.

It sure seems the 5PM EDT update didn't do us any favors. Closest point of approach is now 73.8 miles on Friday at 5pm. Grand Cayman is well within the tropical storm force wind "cone of death" and brushing the hurricane force wind field based on the updated tracking map at the Naval Research Monterey map. That means we'll have sustained winds up to 74mph with higher gusts. Not bad, but not good, either. Gustav is forecast to be transitioning from a cat2  to a cat3 around that same time, so looks like a shitty Friday night in Little Cayman and Cayman Brac.

Saturday the airport should be back to normal, including my flight that's taking me from Grand Cayman to Houston... with Gustav heading from here into the Gulf of Mexico, I can see the flight being delayed, and then delaying me into Vancouver (again) because it has to go arouuund Gustav churning away in the gulf. I hope they don't just cancel it outright though, that would really suck (for me)

I sent home my second trunk this morning via FedEx. 68lbs at International Air Priority rate to zone D. ouch. Tomorrow I'll send the Drobo (minus the drives) and perhaps a suitcase, too. If I have to start jockeying around and changing flight plans on the fly, I don't want to get dinged for excess baggage at every stop.

W.T.F.

I have four more sleeps to go, my flight is booked for Saturday, August 30th at 4:45 PM. Hurricane Gustav is now expected to pass nearby sometime between Friday 2am and Saturday 2an. One model has it going south of us, the other five are varied but with two passing between here and Little Cayman and two between Cayman Brac and Cuba.

The page that shows all the models shows the intensity forecast and takes it up above 105mph at 96 hours and the discussion page/forecast at the NHC's site says:

MOST INDICATIONS ARE THAT GUSTAV WILL BE
AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE IN THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA
IN A FEW DAYS. 

Wonderful. Extremely dangerous is about as high as you can get. I think I read somewhere one time that category 3 was "dangerous', category 4 was "extremely dangerous" and cat5 is "catastrophic" so if I'm right and it's expected to be a dangerous hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean sea on Friday, that means we're going to get a lot of weather.

Of course, tempering that doom and gloom is the fact that hurricanes are completely random. When Ivan brushed past in 2004 (the eye never crossed land in the Cayman Islands, but rather passed less than 20 mines southwest) it was officially a category 4 with official winds of 154mph. Those officials weren't here though and 154 was their best guess. There were gusts over 200mph. Storm surge completely inundated the island and most trees were completely stripped of branches and coconuts, along with a lot of roofs. Compared to Hurricane Dean last year which also wavered between a category 4 and 5 as it approached us directly, then turned more west and went south of us spared us a lot of damage. Once the craziness of the airport was dealt with I went home to wait it out and nothing happened. Nothing major, anyway.

Judging by the map at the NRL Monterey Marine Meteorology Division's map, as of the most current update, Grand Cayman is going to be spared the hurricane-force winds and almost all of the tropical storm force winds. That doesn't mean we won't have "large battering waves" or storm surge encroachment and massive amounts of rain, but it also means the sustained winds will be less than 35mph with higher gusts.

Nothing to do at this point but to go about normal life and continue packing. Fortunately my clothes are going in Space Bags which are heavy ziplocs with airlocks and my trunk is mostly waterproof but will definitely float. Once the alert gets issued, watches and warnings go up there will be more to do (shutters, provisions, etc) but for now, hurry up and wait.

This was the title of a post I saw on gadling.com about a week ago or so. They have a series of articles called Galley Gossip, written by a flight attendant and this was what her post was called when it came through my RSS reader. When I went to gadling this afternoon to copy the URL to use here, I saw it's name had been changed to "There's more to Miami than La Carreta" so I guess someone took offense to the title of the original post.

The theme of the post is that for her, going to Miami means getting off the plane, going through immigration and customs (if it's an int'l light) and then going to La Caretta and getting back on a plane and going somewhere else. It really struck a chord with me because my take on Miami is similar: airport, cargo, airport commercial park, a few of the hotels in the vicinity of the airport and the Circuit City on Galloway. My Miami is not South Beach, Key Biscayne, or anywhere sunny, bikini-clad and prone to be featured as a backdrop on Burn Notice.

I thought about this for the last year, once I could see the light at the end of my work-permit tunnel in Cayman. It isn't like Seattle, where I could drive down for the day from Vancouver should I choose. Miami is pretty much the farthest you can get in the continental United States from Seattle. I made a point of scheduling extra time when I was in town in order to explore a little more. I started driving south rather than north and seeing what was around in Kendall and downtown and South Beach. In September when I was up for a whole week, I arranged to drive down to Key West for the weekend on Friday afternoon once I was finished work. I flew up and drove across to Naples for the weekend back in April when my parents were down there with friends having a mini-vacation.

Yesterday, when I went up to meet my cousin Raffaella and her friends who were in Miami on vacation from Italy, I saw more of Miami in one day than I had in the last four years. They had already walked around Collins and Ocean avenues and seen what they wanted to of South Beach the day and evening before, so we piled into the car and took off for Little Havana. Their Lonely Planet guide to Miami and the Keys said that Calle Ocho was the place to be on the last friday of the month when all the shops stayed open until midnight and I think the street was closed to traffic with people just hanging around partying into the night. Unfortunately it was a Wednesday afternoon at 12:30 so it was just another latin-flavored neighbourhood with fancy wrought-iron bars on the windows.

We decided to stop for lunch at Cafe Versailles. I had heard the name before, but thought it was just a coffee shop in the Miami airport near concourse F. Boy was I ever wrong. It was listed in their guidebook so we took that at face value and punched it's address into the GPS SatNav. When we arrived I was shocked to see that Cafe Versailles and it's counterpart Versailles Bakery took up almost the whole block of 35th SW and Calle Ocho. There were multiple (small parking lots) and a lot of people going in, coming out and hanging around the walk-up coffee & lunch counter that faced Calle Ocho. We found parking around the back and then went in. Is this the front door? No. Is THIS the front door? No. I guess over the last 37 years they've expanded into their neighbours space a few times. We finally found the front door and went inside. A maitre' d escorted us through the labyrinth of dining rooms to a table set for six. He asked me (in Spanish) if we wanted menus in Spanish or English. When I said "Sorry, I didn't catch that? slower please?" he said "Ah. English" and changed our menus.

It's hard to describe the dining room we were in. Mirrors everywhere, gilt fixtures, chandeliers and funky segmented ceilings were just the beginning. The mirrored walls were etched and had fluorescent tube lighting behind them so the etched parts shone through white surrounded by mirror. It was really bizarre. It reminded me of somewhere "fancy" my grandparents would have taken me when I was a kid in 1978, 1978... except it was 2008. They had a veritable army of runners, bussers, waiters and waitresses, bartenders and I can only assume the second division in the kitchen. I'd really like to know just how big their kitchen really is.

Then there was the menu: huge. Four pages huge. The first page was cold appetizers, soups, salads and a kids menu. The second page was chicken dishes. The third page was pork dishes and a few beef dishes. The fourth page was seafood with the back inside cover dedicated to sandwiches (Cuban, natch but also some very American things like a club sandwich or cheeseburger with fries. Then on the back outside cover was side dishes and beverages. Homemade sangria, beers, wines, and of course, the mojito. I had the Cuban Sandwich, and the girls ordered a variation on chicken & rice. After lunch we ordered two Tres Leches cakes for everyone to try and Cuban coffee. For six of us, with tip it only came out to $75 which is pretty darn cheap. It would have been as expensive had we gone to Chili's or some other lame-ass chain restaurant (Hey Farva, what's the name of that place you like to go with the shit all over the walls?) and not nearly as unique or interesting.

A rain band, or a squall came through just as we were finishing lunch, so I ran out to the car and brought it around so they didn't have to run through the rain. We were trying to figure out where to go next, what with the weather and all. Key West was out of the question, it's a nearly four hour drive each way. I suggested we could either go to Key Largo, or we could go to Ft Lauderdale. I looked at the sky and it was dark and ominous to the south, and relatively bright to the north, so we opted for Fort Lauderdale. We caught up with the rain that passed us by at lunch on the way up, but when we hit Las Olas it cleared up and was even sunny out when we got to the beach.

The girls were really impressed with the beach at Fort Lauderdale. I think it was more of what they were expecting Miami Beach to be like. A wide sidewalk & seawall and then sand stretching down to the waterline. All the hotels, restaurants, condos and bars were on the other side of the street, giving an unobstructed view of the beach and the ocean. We wandered south along the beach for a half hour or so, taking pictures until we all got hot and thirsty. We crossed the street and went upstairs to Lulu's Bait Shop that was overlooking the beach. I think it was the first time any of them had been in a dive bar and weren't quite sure what to make of it. We wrapped up and got back to the car by about 4:30 when our meter (which had 90 mins on it when we pulled in! score!) ran out.

As we were walking back to the car, one of my co-workers Jean called me. She was heading south from Boca Raton to get on the same flight as me, so she pulled off and met us at Carlos and Pepe's for a margarita and the best damn house-made salsa and chips. My friend Shannon met up with us too, since I'm leaving next week I won't be calling her randomly when I'm in town saying "wanna have lunch at Carlos & Pepe's?" anymore :)

We got back on the highway at about 6:45, yikes. The flight was at 8:55, cut-off time to check in is 7:55 and I had to drive from Fort Lauderdale to South Beach, and then from South Beach to the car rental return, and then catch the shuttle bus back to the airport! Yikes! We made good time on I95 south at that time of night and then got into a bit of traffic in South Beach which raised my heart rate a little but in the end, I dropped the girls off with plenty of time for them to clean up and make their 9:30 dinner reservation at the Blue Door and I got back to the airport and checked in with literally minutes to spare!

I went through security and by the time I got to the gate, they were boarding. I was the SECOND last person to get on the plane (cough-Jean!) and was asleep in my seat before the plane took off. I woke up in the air, saw that the seatbelt sign was off, grabbed my headphones, unstrapped my seatbelt and lay down across all three seats and was out like a light until the flight attendant came and gently shook me awake to put my seatbelt and take off my headphones for landing. I sent the girls a text message to let them know I made it to the plane and was back home in Cayman before getting home and crashing HARD until my alarm went off this morning at 7:30 to start my second-to-last day of work.

This is my last week of work (un-officially) before my permit and right to live in the Cayman Islands expires next Wednesday and I head north to Canada to start the next chapter. I had a few days-in-lieu left over that would either get paid out or used up so I decided to burn one up (along with one of my 'free' employee tickets that will expire next week too) and go up to Miami to meet up with my 2nd cousin and her friends who were on vacation from Italy.
I got up at 5am Wednesday morning, after being up til 2am the night before unable to sleep with my brain going 100mph with all the plans and preparations and pondering the future. I got to the airport at 5:45 am for a 7:05 am flight. I already knew the flight was close to full, so I couldn't take advantage of "early check-in" the night before and go straight to the security checkpoint and take my chances at the check-in line. There's a flight that goes to Jamaica at 6:55, right before the flight to Miami at 7:05 so at 6:15 there were still people showing up and queuing to check-in for the Jamaica flight. I was still in line at 6:55am when they announced the final boarding for my flight. I got checked-in to standby and then they closed the flight and started calling people's names according to their priority. The good part about high turnover of staff is that my seniority is middle-high now, so I was called first and got a boarding pass... and then had to go wait in line at the security checkpoint. I got through there and then the Immigration exit checkpoint, walked across the departure lounge to the doors and outside... and was stopped for secondary screening. The security agent went through my bag to the smallest detail and then wanded me and had me take my shoes off again and checked them out before passing me through to the plane. I sat down in my seat, put on my seatbelt and fell back asleep.
I awoke just over an hour later when the flight attendant woke me up and said we were in Miami: I was the last one on the plane :) I cleared immigration and customs, picked up my rental car paperwork and then stopped by Starbucks on my way to the baggage office to take a look at one of the computers there as a favor even though I was technically on a vacation day. A quick stop at the bank and then I was off to South Beach to meet up with the girls.

Out and about (oot and aboot.. I gotta practice my Canadian accent, I'll be back in the great white north in two weeks!) today you would be shocked to think that there was a Tropical Storm Watch in effect. I was sitting at Paperman's Coffee House at the Strand with Lee talking about it. One thought that occurred to me was if this storm is less than 36 hours away, and it was as bright and sunny and cloud-free, blue-skied as it was today... how much (or rather) how little time did people have to prepare back in the old days before radios, telephones, radar and satelite imagery?

Tonight at the 1900Z update, the Gov't of the Cayman Islands upgraded the threat to a Tropical Storm Warning for Little Cayman and Cayman Brac, and kept Grand Cayman at a hurricane watch. That may or may not change overnight as the hurricane moves sort-of towards us.

In the forecast, it called for four to eight inches of rain over Hispaniola, Eastern and Central Cuba, Jamaica and the northern Cayman Islands with isolated areas of up to 15 inches. That's a lot of rain! Fortunately for the Cayman Islands, their topography is akin to a billiards table, but in Hispaniola, Jamaica and Cuba they have mountains, so that could lead to flash floods and mudslides (and not the cool creamy yummy kind that you can make with a Margaritaville Frozen Drink Maker... which I bought from SkyMall and is waiting to be picked up in Sumas WA when I get home! :) :) ). As of the last NHC update, they measured TS force winds extending out up to 105 miles from the center. That last update's forecast co-ordinates also calculate the closest point of approach to Grand Cayman of 179 miles, so while it will be breezy, we probably won't get 35mph+ Tropical Storm force winds.

On CaymanPrepared.ky (which they finally got around to updating today... is it just me or is it just bad form and laziness when you post on the site that the next update will be at 7am, but then don't actually change anything until after noon?) they're saying:

Additionally the Cayman area can strong north to northeast winds of 15 to 20 knots tonight, 20 to 25 knots tomorrow, leading to very rough seas with wave heights of 6 to 8 feet, especially near the Sister Islands.

Aside from the missing word there between can and strong (which I assume should be 'expect') it says we're going to get N-NE winds 20-25 knots tomorrow. What does that mean? It means that on my second-to-last weekend in the Cayman Islands, I'm not going to get to go diving. Again. Last week got washed out due to a hangover (not mine, my buddy's) and this week due to Fay.

I guess this just means I'll have to call in sick one morning and go for a dive once the weather clears :D

Today marks the two-week point before my final departure from the Cayman Islands. Mother Nature wanted to give me some sort of going-away present, so I'd just like to take a moment and tell her thanks for this:

THE GOVERNMENT OF THE
CAYMAN ISLANDS HAS ISSUED A TROPICAL STORM WATCH FOR THE CAYMAN
ISLANDS.  A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM
CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN
36 HOURS.

 

Tropical Storm Fay is out there, just south of Haiti now. Last night before I went to sleep, the three-day cone of death extended just far enough west to include Cayman Brac and Little Cayman. This morning both the Sister Islands and Grand Cayman are under a Tropial Storm Watch. Unless Fay keeps sidling west before making a turn north, all this means for us is some crappy weather and maybe a few squalls late Sunday or early Monday.

I checked last night on www.caymanprepared.ky which is a website hosted by the gov't and their one-stop clearing house for emergency communications. It's certainly easier than trying to remember all the little URL nuances of their awful gov.ky portal. Last night their "threat level" was orangey-yellow and residents were asked to remain vigilant. The next update would be 7am this morning. Well, it's 10am this morning now, and the NHC is reporting that the gov't has declared a TS watch, but still no update on their official website.

I've posted URLs for weather resources in the past, and probably more than once. To narrow down the focus of the posts, you can click the Hurricane category in the categories list for an archive of old posts including all the links.

So that's the bottom line... for saving the company $300 and burning a loyal customer, the store manager reaped two years (and counting) atop the Google search results for "Divers Supply Grand Cayman" with the terms "Fucked in the ass by Divers Supply Grand Cayman" in the link text itself.