The Manic Mechanic

Long day at work that was actually pleasant and productive. I hope the next three days are like that. After coming home and having a bite, I started getting things fixed up and ready for the trip. Our 10x10 easy-up canopy we take camping suffered a broken strut when it was used for a function where Jeff works. Tonight I brazed up the broken metal piece, cleaned and painted it and reassembled the frame. Good as new. I packed the truck with some sundry items and gave it a mechanical once-over. It's good to go, though I'd really like to wash the thing before the trip. It's a mess inside and out. I have a pair of folding reclining chairs that need repair after a rather large individual from LJ that shall remain nameless bent part of the mechanism. That will happen tomorrow. Most everything else is ready to go.

Put a 500GB drive in an external enclosure and am currently backing up this laptop. The new server has settled down and is behaving nicely (click on wood), though I still have to find out why the DNS service wont load properly at startup, yet runs without issues after starting manually. The server itself has it's own automatic backup schedule, so it takes care of itself. I realized that in the past several months I have accumulated nearly 11TB worth of hard drives. Newegg loves me. I await the inevitable day that I can look back and call that ridiculous amount of storage 'quaint'.

N.B. All those drives are not part of one computer, instead some are library drives for the HTPC, a couple small ones and one big one for the new server, a couple external drives, and about half that will make up the uber file/media server. The same data in a bunch of locations. And I promised myself no more god boxes. Sheesh.

I am reading where the NHRA, the sanctioning body behind professional drag racing (with cars, not with heels and dresses) is considering shortening the track from it's historical 1/4 mile (1320 feet) to 1000 feet in wake of the death of one of it's more famous drivers, Scott Kalitta. I'm sorry, but that is total BS. Yes, the cars are hitting record speeds again and again, and it's getting tough to haul them down from 340+ mph in the remaining track length, even more so when the cars or their systems are damaged. Racing of all kinds has always evolved the safety aspects as speeds increased. Much of this safety tech works it's way into our everyday cars. Time has come to advance the safety technologies once again to keep pace. Making the track shorter reduces trap speeds and leaves more room for stopping. But changing the track length invalidates comparisons of past record achievement with what will happen in the future. And some things should remain sacred anyway.

On the way to work this post-snowy morning I happened across a white Ford van driving erratically on I-95. Speeding up, slowing down, weaving, riding the lines, changing lanes haphazardly, passing blocks of cars then slowing down forcing the previously passed cars to go around the van, etc.. In other words, not driving in a safe and courteous manner, and, quite frankly, behaving quite dangerously and putting others at risk. This van passed below that huge over-the-highway electronic sign that lately, when not displaying info about upcoming traffic hazards, Amber alerts and whatnot is frozen with that ever-diligent "REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY - 1-800-XXX-XXXX" found everywhere in out neo-confascist state. I was so tempted to take them up on the offer, especially given the logos and lettering on the side of that van:

"Department Of Homeland Security"