Beowabbit

I thought my day was full and interesting before the six datacenters in my building (along with a big chunk of the rest of Cambridge, and most of the rest of MIT) lost power. That happened around four thirty. Power came back around six thirty, and we all dived into bringing servers and services back up. I got home around eleven thirty.

One of the highlights of the time while we were waiting for power to come back was watching my boss and another of my colleagues pry open an elevator door so that the people who’d been trapped in it for about an hour could get out.

plumtreeblossom’s building on campus lost power too, but since she didn’t have to babysit a whole bunch of servers as they eventually came up, I think that meant she ended up going home earlier than expected, rather than later than expected. (The T was running during most of the power outage, I gather.)

It was an adventure. I like my adventures in moderation.

There’s an opening for a Linux sysadmin (with a bunch of user support mixed in, including Mac and Windows) in my group.

Stolen from email I just wrote for a mailing list:

My group has an opening for a system administrator (with a lot of end-user support and documentation mixed in). This is at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, based in the Stata Center (most recently in the news because a Dalek landed on it).

We are primarily a Linux shop (currently Debian; probably Ubuntu in the foreseeable future) with a lot of the sort of quirks you’d expect from an MIT lab (AFS, lots of homegrown stuff, people with root on their workstations, etc.). We also have lots of Mac and Windows machines, and the person in this position will end up doing a fair amount of supporting Mac and Windows users, as well as Debian desktop support and system administration.

Our departing sysadmin (leaving for grad school) hopes to have some overlap with the new hire. He has an excellent and patient way with users, good documentation skills (internal and user-facing), a desire to do things the Right Way that will save us work down the road, and the gumption to take on substantial projects, and we'd love to have similar qualities in his successor.

(I forgot to mention in that mail that I’d love it if we found somebody with experience administering email on Linux/Unix systems, since I’m the postmaster and if we don’t I won’t really have a natural backup/collaborator for that. We use Exim, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Mailman, and some homegrown stuff and have a slightly quirky email topology. That’s all optional, though.)

If you’re interested, you should definitely fill out the online form at that link, but you should also contact me (email if you have it; otherwise comment here or direct message here or on Twitter) so that I help make sure your résumé doesn’t get lost or delayed.

Yesterday afternoon I got to see the birthday girls at Diesel, with treasonx and inkedandkinked, and it was great to see them. (Aside: The Diesel has changed a lot since I was last there! I should go some Tuesday.)

Then they went off to a fancy dinner while I met plumtreeblossom for a yummy but much less upscale dinner at Mike’s before the show. Had a great time being all shmoopy with my wuzzle, and then we went across the street to see the New Year’s Eve command performance of The Slutcracker. As with the two other performances of it we’ve seen this year, we got there early enough to get front-row seats and had a fabulous time. This audience was (as one might expect on New Year’s Eve) a bit more raucous than previous ones, and the cast had a lot of fabulous energy. We love our cherished family Christmas tradition!

Then we went to a great New Year’s Eve party nearby, among the highlights of which were a wonderful Buffalo chicken dip, chatting with audioboy about exciting radio theater plans, and especially getting to see surrealestate, DD, and little J. We had a great time.

When we left shortly after midnight and were walking towards the car, we saw this odd light in the sky. It was moving through the sky more or less like a satellite or a very high, very fast airplane, but it was way too bright, and an odd colour — kind of yellowish. (And it was way too long after sunset for satellites to be lit that brightly, and they were moving a bit too fast.) As it disappeared into the distance and we were wondering what it was, we realized that another one was crossing above us, equally fast. And when I looked back in the direction it had come, there were a couple more, coming together. And as each one or two passed overhead there was another one off in the distance following. They all stayed quite bright, but they would dim and brighten a bit, as if they were passing through thin clouds. (Turned out not to be that; see below.)

This all took about five minutes, for much of which we were standing still on the sidewalk just looking at them in bafflement. All sorts of possible explanations popped into our heads, from military jets with searchlights to War of the Worlds.

Finally, we saw one that seemed lower, and seemed to be moving a little bit differently, bobbing a bit. And we saw what appeared to be a short cone of light pointing down from it, showing up in the haze, and pointing this way and that. At that point, I was sure it was something with a searchlight. But it moved more and more erratically, and eventually it became clear that it was not something large and bright and far away but something small and very very close. It was a white approximate sphere a bit less than a yard in diameter, lit by a flickering flame inside, and it was falling, and bouncing around in the breeze. It came lower and landed on the porch roof of a house directly across from us (with the flame still burning). As we were debating what to do (call the fire department, or ring the bell of the house and tell them something burning had landed on their roof), a breeze carried it off the roof and it landed safely in their driveway, still burning but definitely starting to sputter out, and we got to go examine it up close.

Some googling found out that they were these flying lanterns (although the ones we saw used wire to support the fuel). I am really glad that one landed so near us; otherwise, we’d still be wondering! On the other hand, having burning things randomly landing in the most densely populated municipality in New England full of old wooden houses strikes me as a very bad idea. They were beautiful, though!

Then we came home and had a lovely New Year’s Day hangout in the kitchen with vanguardcdk (who had just gotten back from the Slutcracker cast party — he’s their house manager) before going to bed.

It’s less than fourteen hours old yet, but 2012 is really awesome so far. And I’m so happy to be starting it with my wonderful partner plumtreeblossom and surrounded by friends.

1. If you have a Dreamwidth account as well as an LJ account, and I’m on your Friends list on LiveJournal, could you add me there as well? That way I can comment there when I see cross-posts. (I’m beowabbit there as well as here.)
2. The coffee-flavored jellybeans were not the high point of my evening, but they were definitely up there. I knew the flavor was very familiar, but I wasn’t actually able to identify it unaided. Now I think I’m going to be obsessing about coffee-flavored jellybeans for days.

Note: I don’t actually think to check Dreamwidth except when I see cross-posts, alas, so I probably won’t see stuff that’s only posted there.

(This was in response to somebody asking for Android app recommendations, but it was too long for an LJ comment, and I figured other people would be interested too. This includes Free, free, and for-pay proprietary apps; the links will tell you which is which.)

( Some of the Android apps on my phone, with notes. )

Much to tell; not enough time or awakeness to tell it all.

My last week at my old job was every bit as frantically busy as expected, but I think I covered the major bases, and I got a wonderful send-off. My boss gave me a really kind and touching goodbye. And the department threw me a little reception and bought me a wonderful going-away gift which I’m going to get a huge amount of use from (a streaming-video box that lets me watch Netflix and some other video-on-demand services on a TV).

I had a wonderful big dinner with friends on Friday to sort of mark the transition, and another one after my first day at work with bubblebabble, whom I am now working with, and bitty and plumtreeblossom. I’ve spent lots of lovely time with plumtreeblossom lately, including an unscheduled but delightful date on Sunday because she needed to come over to borrow a cup of Internet.

The new job is exciting and very busy and a little surreal in places, but in good ways. There’s a lot of ramping up to do, but I feel like I’m becoming part of the group quickly, and it seems clear already that the job is a good fit for me and I’m going to enjoy the work and the people.

This is definitely not doing the past few days justice, but I’m a bit fried right now, so it will have to do for now.

Oh! And I had a great phone call with bcat1 and spacechicken and silverlibre and ka9sqb over the weekend. And I think it was last week sometime that I got to hear the babies on the phone for the first time!

Anyway, rich full life with love and friendship and joy and change and stability and BABIES!!! and interesting work and, from time to time, even a little bit of sleep!

Oh, PS: This morning (heading in to MIT from plumtreeblossom’s, I ran into eisa in the T station! And then heliopsis and bedfull_o_books and A. and N. and J. from theatreatfirst whose LJ names I thought I knew but can’t find. It was the most social commute I’ve ever had, and if I believed in omens I would take it as a good one. Actually, I don’t believe in omens but I’m going to take it as a good one anyway.