Erik and I went out shooting again, I know Sunday and shooting imagine the shock! First round today we were joined with a father daughter pair. It was her second time out, and she shot mostly ok, but she was getting beaten up by the gun pretty badly. Also she kept reloading and closing the action immediately after shooting. Which meant there she was all loaded and ready to shoot for a long while between turns. AAAAAH Even when moving stations. While there's nothing extremely dangerous about this it's rude, and unsafe. I was really distracted by it too. I thought about saying something but I didn't. I hit 15 and 20.

Then I went out to find more shotgun shells because I was out. Prices sure are going up on them. I couldn't find any I wanted at sportsman's warehouse. Eventually I found the ones I wanted for a price I was happy with at Fleet Farm. I bought 3 cases. Which ought to hold me until mid winter.

I called my Dad too. He had some really good ideas for when I redo my garage this fall. I'm ripping out my big useless workbench. I'm going to replace it with salvaged kitchen cabinet uppers, set on the ground. Then I'll put a 2x12 on top for a surface. It'll make all that pegboard more usable and take up less space. Also one of us came up with the idea of getting cheap toolbox bases, the rolling kind, and mounting the portable tools on top of them, one for the sliding miter, one for the drill press that sort of thing. Then they can be moved easily and all the bits and pieces for the tool can be kept right there with them.

Soon I'll start drawing up my garage, then I need to find an electrician.

I realized I rarely blog about work anymore. This isn't some great plot. It's just that I like my job. Rarely is there anything bad to whine about, nor anything fantastic to gloat about.

Today however has been frustrating. We've had backup issues the last couple of nights. Jobs start but don't finish. That sort of thing. Well they finish, bptm hands the job back, but bpsched never says "Ooh that's done, NEXT!" This has lead to ugly ugly backup reports in the morning.

So I called tech support late last night, and got a call back at 7:30 this morning. The things the Symantec/Veritas tech was telling me seemed almost like tier 1 voodoo fixes. But I tried them. And they appear to be working. Only tonight will tell I guess. So it'll be another long sleepless night with nobody on IM to chat with, while I watch my backups churn.

Added to this, is the EXTRA SPECIAL NIFTY full backup of our test ERP box, which isn't really a text box so much as it's auxiliary production. It has to be wiped and rebuilt for reasons that the Unix/ERP side of the house folks know. I know it has to do with "the software is too old for the new hardware" sorts of things. Well since they're wiping it they of course want copies of the data. Even the data that should be fine. I've heard things about tonight's activities like "We don't care if all the other backups fail. This has to run as fast as possible." "I don't care if we cancel everything else, this has to be fast." "Doing this fast is the most important part. Because nobody else can start until you're done." I just keep nodding sagely and discussing that with one network cable there is only so fast I can move 400GB of data. I initially estimated a best case of 10 hours. I'm hoping to beat that, but we'll see.

I don't really know what they want me to do, Sure I have 4 drives that can all spin at 36MB/sec in theory, and in reality sometimes get as high as 32MB/sec. But I don't have the inbound bandwidth to really spin them all that fast. After all the best I can do inbound is the 125MB/sec of Ethernet. By the time you strip out TCP and IP headers and other junk, we're down quite a bit from there in useful data. Add to this conundrum that we're coming of one server, and 9 spindles and we just have to admit that there is a finite max speed, and life is going to have to go on.

I guess we'll see. I'll bet I don't sleep much tonight.

Well, many of you know I'm working on a new relaxacon, bacon. Yeah we named it bacon, all the good names with con in them were already taken, and it's great food! So there. Anyhow, bacon is now by popular demand taking online registrations. So if you've talked to me and said "Oh yeah I was goign to remember a check next time I saw you and I forgot again." this is your big chance.

[edit note: link fixed, thanks guys!]

It seems Sunday must be blog day. In the last week I've removed another concrete footing, and been to Iowa twice.

Erik and I went shooting again today, and this time we learned shooting with people better than you produces better scores. Also we observed some guy with a really weird mount that involved pointing the gun backwards over his head first. I can't wait til the first time he tries that at some competition and the range safety guy takes his head off. I shot well both rounds. I think I need a 3M sponsorship, cause you know it's all about the Scotch Tape. Only 3 less than Erik both rounds!

47: 20
48: 17

Well it was another busy Sunday here at Camp Beagle. The day started with the usual beagle feeding and rumpusing. Then some AI email. Then trap shooting with Erik. Another beautiful Sunday morning at the gun club. Which is good because once again we ended up sharing a field with the slowest squad of four in the history of the universe. But, to add to their slowness they added a fifth shooter. At least their manners are getting better. A few weeks back they weren't even taking turns so we were all stuck waiting, several squads of shooters, for them to poke their way through two rounds.

To make up for it our first round Erik and I shot with the fastest shooters in the west. Well probably not, but they were fast, almost too fast. But it was ok, and I hit 14. Some I missed for no reason I understand. Others at least I know why I missed them. The wind was really up too.

Then another round of the pokeist squad on earth, meanwhile Erik found us a couple of guys to give us a squad of 4. They were both shooting for league scores. I shot leadoff, which is sort of unusual for me. I guess it worked for me though I hit 20 that round. The dedicated amongst you will notice this is tying my highest score ever. The one shot with Charlie's gun. If you haven't read the story of me falling in love with a shotgun you can click here. That was just about a year ago, two weeks shy of a year, if my math is correct.

Then I drove home where Eric (not the Erik of above) was waiting. He and I tore out what was rest of the deck. Well really I wheezed and he tore out the deck. While I shuffled around the yard moving bits of debris into the garage. It's a good thing he was there. I am not strong enough to run a sawsall for very long. Now we're just down to the concrete pilings. He and I dug one out. I have this to say. They're going to stink! I guess I know what I'm doing after work every day this week.