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This morning my home PC scolded me for moving several directories. Except... I hadn't done that at all. I checked it out and sure enough, my 1TB drive (d:) isn't showing up. Reboots got nothing to change. I powered the machine down, ran errands, came home... and now my machine is stuck on the Windows start up splash screen. I'll give it another 30 minutes before I power cycle the thing.

It's been a very long week.

Last night I didn't have nostalgic dreams -- mostly because I didn't sleep well at all. What sleep I did happen to get was mostly punctuated by unsettling or nightmare-esque visions. Thankfully there were very few of those, because I spent most of my evening just tossing and turning. In point of fact, I think I turned over more times than a hot dog on a 7-11 roller grill.

And before you ask: yes, I posted this entry with the sole purpose of sharing that terrible joke.

Dear CONvergence 2012,

If the hotel that serves as your function space sells out its room block in 36 hours from the time it opens, then it may be time to look at a new venue.

I love the Bloomington Radisson Sheraton Double Tree, I really do. It has served this convention very well for many a fun and incredibly inebriated, traffic-cone-wearing years. I have special love for the pool and cabana area, because the way it is laid out makes the room parties a unique experience with a level of guest interaction that would be nigh impossible to duplicate in any other environment. That rich engagement is a wonderful thing and I have many fond memories of CVGs past because of it.

But if you can sell out the entire hotel within thirty-six hours of opening the room block, there is something wrong. To put a fine point on it, the thing that is wrong is your venue is woefully undersized for the needs of your (consistently expanding) audience.

Your website's hotel page¹ says it all:

2 years ago, the room block at the Sheraton for the 2010 convention took 1 month to fill.
1 year ago, the room block at the Sheraton for the 2011 convention took 1 week to fill.
This year, the room block at the Double Tree (same building as the last two years) took roughly 36 hours to fill.

As our primary obligation is to the Double Tree, and we had worked with last year's fill rate of a week, and have not as yet secured all agreements with the Sofitel to be able to take room requests for that venue. Hopefully needless to say, we are working on securing that agreement, as well as an agreement with other hotels as rapidly as possible. We ask everyone's patience.

I am a reasonable man. I accept that things that have limited supply and high demand will sell out quickly. But look at those metrics! They are telling an important story and the CVG board seems to be willfully ignoring that story. Since 2009, with every year that passes, you are selling out the main hotel's room block in approximately ¼ (1/4th) of the time of the year previous.

We are talking about a hotel room here, not tickets to meet Bono in person, nor free ounces of gold (or, for those DS9 Trekkies out there, bars of gold-pressed latinum). You are not Ticket Master. These are hotel rooms we're talking about. These are part of the lifeblood of your convention. I refuse to sit, salivating, over the "register!" button. Spending time, on notice from an email, hoping to reserve a hotel room? Waiting with hundreds of other attendees for time to tick down and the lock to open so the mad frenzy may begin to reserve a place we pay to sleep? That is not how I want to spend my time. It is disrespectful to expect us to expend our time this way as convention attendees.

The second paragraph on the hotel page, about the obligation to Double Tree and having not yet secured agreements with Sofitel? This simply highlights the problem. The demand has far outstripped the capability of the existing facility to support this convention's needs. If a thirty-six hour sell-out is a surprise and you do not have alternate options readily available (without the hotel page giving a chiding warning to people who choose to be proactive instead of becoming victims of an artificial shortage that, "any reservations made at the Sofitel before we have reached an agreement may not receive a convention rate") then you are Doing It Wrong. Either understand you have an overwhelming demand that is growing every year and plan accordingly (hint: that means having your plans with Sofitel and other venues in place before the main hotel sells out) or move. Anything else is penalizing your attendees.

I love this convention, but I'm starting to wonder if the people who are in charge are so in love with memories of a facility that they cannot see how they are doing their key demographic (hint: the Convention Attendees) a crucial disservice. And while I am but one man, I am surely not alone in feeling that the already frustrating & convoluted experience of dealing with the CVG Hospitality Staff paired with the inability to get a room booked IN OCTOBER is enough to put me off attending the con at all.

Yours,

-Feren

Due to a comedy of errors (I'm not laughing right now), it turns out that my macro lens hit the floor tile in my hallway. Frantic testing produced abnormal behavior, which tugrik confirmed to be damage to the USM ringmotor.

The good news, as such, is that a repair shouldn't run me more than 1/5 of the price of the lens.

The bad news is that, well, let's face it -- a $520 piece of glass hit the ground and suffered damage as a result.

This is not how I wanted to start my vacation two days before my birthday.

Got into the office around 7:45pm last night (Friday). Got home at 7:30am this morning (Saturday). This is a sign that things did not go as well as I might have hoped.

To begin the night, I did the second Opt-E-MAN circuit cut. This one went much more smoothly than the one on Thursday night. Was done in under an hour (less than half of the total time window I had set aside for the event). This was good.

( Then it became not so good. )

At least the faces of some drivers will.

The last two Juniper M10i routers were delivered to the new datacenter today. Sadly, only one of them is usable. The other had damage to the box that made me curious, and the two shock sensors had both been tripped. Opening the box revealed that the handles on the two included power supplies had been smashed and bent inward, and the filler plates had been popped out of the front. Which implies to me a back-to-front shock. But man, what the hell did they do to this thing, play forklift soccer with it?

Tripped shock sensor This is not what you want to see on the outside of the box carrying your $20k chassis.

Bent power supply handles Bent handles on the two power supplies.

Popped faceplates Four or five of the front filler plates on the M10i were popped out from the shock.

So it should go without saying that UPS Ground (the carrier that has their label on the box) is going to be taking a big ol' healthy bite of a $20k shit sandwich and reimbursing Juniper for the damaged unit they now have to replace. Meanwhile I will have to wait for another M10i to be shipped to me as an RMA... argh.

I love the emails that I get at work, sometimes. I love the opportunity to be a smartass in response even more. For example, I just received this...

---

From: [DBA]
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 3:23 PM
To: [Project Manager 1]; Feren; [Feren's Boss]
Subject: Pipe sizing for transfers to new delta production

We were under the impression that the pipe going to production will be getting larger soon.

The last time we needed to transfer a large file to production from delta or delta2 we got kicked out repeatedly.

After a very productive day we are on track to start out database builds tonight and tomorrow.

For one of these databases this will require a 50gb file transfer. With the problems occurring last time we want to confirm when the pipe gets bigger so that we can reduce the chances of restart.


So when will the pipe get bigger??

Thanks,
[DBA]

---

I carefully considered this for a minute, then sent a response:

---

From: Feren
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 3:23 PM
To: [DBA]; [Project Manager 1]; Feren; [Feren's Boss]; [Project Manager 2]
Subject: Re: Pipe sizing for transfers to new delta production

When it works out more regularly and drinks protein shakes.

---

Dear Lazyweb,

It's that time of the season again, just two short years after the last time! Yep, the cell phone contract has expired, and lady_curmudgeon and I are looking at new phones and carriers. It's going to be a mix of plan cost and finding phones we like. Curmudgeon wants a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a camera. I don't care about a camera, myself. QWERTY is a requirement, virtual or real I don't care.

So I'm not even going to poll this time around, and instead just invite you to comment with your thoughts. Here's where we stand:

• I love my iPod Touch, so I'm naturally biased towards the new iPhone 3G S, but I hate AT&T. Their plan is sorta meh as well, and Curmudgeon didn't see anything she liked phone-wise since she's not sure an iPhone is the device for her.
  
• I'm alright with T-mobile, I could put a jailbroken iPhone on there, but she sees no phones that she's down with (doesn't think she likes the SideKick). On the plus side, we could do a month-to-month no commitment plan.
  
• I have Sprint right now on month-to-month, and get a 15% discount. No iPhone there (duh) but the new Palm Pre is out and the reviews seem fairly positive so far. I haven't had a chance to play with one but I'd consider it as an alternative to the iPhone. Curmudgeon likes the LG Lotus that they carry. Their prices are better than AT&T. We have yet to see if the Pre catches on and apps come out of the woodwork like they have for the iPhone.
  
• Verizon's not shown me or Curmudgeon anything that we're interested in thus far.
  

So, recommend away. I know warphammer is twitching hard at the thought that I might join the iPhone ranks, so I'm curious

Halfway through the drive (205 miles) and I'm pulled over by an Indiana trooper for going 11 mph over the speed limit.

Oy, let's see how much this costs me.

Edit: cited me for 78 in a 70 mph zone becausew that's what my cruise control was set at. Total damage: $136. Are you fricking kidding me? You're citing me for 8 mph over, really?

Yeah, I'll contest this.

Dear IE,

You may now officially blow me. I have your homepage set to about:blank, yet whenever I hit CTRL-N to open a new window you piss me off. How? By immediately taking that new window and loading the URL of the old window in it. Thanks for that.

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