Haven’t gotten around to writing a full-on dive report about the sea lions on Sunday, but I love this photo that Bonnie nabbed of me on my 300th dive:

Carol asks why I stopped hosting the website myself – seems like a good topic for a blog entry. :)

I originally ran the server from home for two main reasons: I wanted full control over installations and server issues, and I needed more space than hosting companies at the time could affordably provide. The main downside when I first started up the server was that the download speeds could be very slow, since we had a pretty slow Earthlink connection. We shelled out for some extra speed with a different DSL provider (Speakeasy), and basically wound up paying an extra $40 a month for the privilege of hosting our own server.

I enjoyed it though – no need to wait for user support if I needed something fixed, I got to practice lots of sysadmin stuff, and I was able to configure everything exactly how I wanted to.

Recently, though, it’s been getting a little slow. Even with the “fast” uplink that we pay for, once you get a few users looking at photos or downloading movies the connection gets eaten up pretty quickly. So I started looking around at hosting companies again.

And, lo and behold, they’ve come a long way in 3 years. I can now get 200 GB of room for only $10 a month, and – the best part – I have shell access to my account, so I can log in and futz around with stuff on the command line. I can install my own software, manage my own databases, and even make most (possibly all) of the configuration changes I’d ever need to things like the web server, mail server, etc. It’s all done through web-based control panels which wrap my changes in all kinds of levels of security, but it works. So far I have yet to find anything I can’t do with my Dreamhost account that I could with my own server.

And what’s been even more surprising is their great response to user tickets. So far I’ve had exactly two problems: one required an actual configuration fix at their end, the other was just something I didn’t know how to do. In both cases I heard back within an hour with a fix.

So – faster, cheaper, still plenty flexible, tons of disk space… I have yet to encounter a downside. But I’ll let you know if one ever rears its head. If all goes well in the next month or two, we’ll be able to shut off our noisy server in the office and stop paying the extra cash to Speakeasy every month. That seems worth the day or two of hassle involved moving over all my databases and files.

So far, so good in my migration to DreamHost.   An actual post will be coming later about sea lions now that I’ve got my blog in its new home!

Saturday night, we met up with Bonnie and Mike at Vets Park to look for mating squid. They usually run just before or after a full moon, but we got reports as early as last Wednesday that they were out in force, a week early. Since I missed out on the squid run last month (Jeff made it, but I sissied out on the surf), I was determined to get in the water this time. With a video camera.

Bonnie beat us there, and called to let me know that she was looking at the “tiniest little waves,” which really made my day. Turns out her idea of “tiniest little waves” is maybe a smidge different than mine, but they were certainly do-able. The lulls were knee-high, with the occasional set of waist-high waves. Every now and then, a chest-high wave would come through, but they looked pretty low power.

So we piled down the stairs and headed in, Jeff toting his monster camera rig, and me clinging to my smaller video housing. I’d only made one surf entry with it before, and that was when the conditions were similar to a lake. I got a little nervous as we approached the water, but that’s not particularly unusual for me.

Since my hands were occupied with the camera, I went for a fins-on entry so I wouldn’t have to juggle them. If I had timed it slightly better, like Bonnie and Mike did, this would have worked out perfectly: when you get knocked down, you just start swimming. Pathetically, I got knocked down by a couple of 2-footers when I wasn’t even to knee-deep water yet. The bottom was full of ups and downs, so there was no getting past the surf zone by swimming – especially not trying to keep the camera out of the sand. I flailed in the surf for a few minutes, waffling over how hard to try to crawl forward, before finally deciding to back out and try again.

And I’m really glad I did. My second attempt went much more smoothly – I didn’t fall over til I was in water deep enough to start swimming, and hit a nice long lull besides. We kicked out to join Bonnie and Mike, and then descended in separate buddy groups to look for squid.

When we hit 70 feet, we started bumping into rug-sized patches of squid eggs. A few dead squid rolled around on the sand, and every now and then a handful of live ones would cluster around the eggs. Females carried new egg pouches to deposit, and fended off over-amorous males, who jumped anyone they could. A lot of them would approach the camera and check out the lights, pulsing red colors as they backed away from me.

One in particular really took a liking to Jeff, getting up close to his mask and investigating his camera.

The vis was only so-so to begin with, and that deep the bottom is super-silty and easy to stir into a brown haze even if you’re being careful (plus, the squid themselves kick up some sand in their digging around). So Jeff didn’t get as many good pictures as last month, but I did manage to capture a bit of squid action on camera! Click on the picture to see a :48 second quicktime movie:

Squid Run 1/27/07:

We also spotted a pipefish, bat ray, thornback ray, and hundreds of shy, half-buried sand crabs. The only bummer was how little time we were able to spend in the squid zone; when you’re at 70-90 fsw, you suck down air (and soak up nitrogen) awfully quickly, and after 20 minutes it was very much time to leave. It was hard to keep moving upslope when there was constantly something we wanted to stop and photograph, but as my air edged under 800psi it got easier to keep moving! We surfaced after a safety stop with just a little under 500psi left, and I made a textbook exit standing up. It’s always nice to end the dive NOT covered in sand from crawling out on your knees.

Yesterday afternoon, an employee at the Pasadena power plant did something to shut power down to 1/3 of the city for about 10 seconds.

It came right back up, but not before doing some collateral damage. In the process of restarting, Caltech’s chilled water plant blew a pipe.

As in, no more chilled water coming out of the plant.

Guess what keeps our computer rooms cool?

Last night the temperature in the server room shot up past 80, and all “non-essential” machines were shut down. This includes all the development and testing servers, a handful of operational (but apparently “non-essential”) web servers, and parts of our mail system. As of this morning, only 2 of the IPAC operational servers are still up, and I have no idea how long that will last. If it keeps getting hotter in there, they’ll shut them down to keep them from getting damaged.

So, here I am at work, playing on my new MacBook Pro, waiting for news. I’m hoping to at least be able to redirect all our currently-down services to an error message page somewhere, but everyone who can edit DNS is currently running around and not easily grab-able. No other IRSA folks have bothered to show up (my boss would be here, but he’s in Seattle for a big astronomy conference). Most of the lights in the building are off, and the doors to the computer room and to outside are wide open, with fans blowing outside air in.

And the sun just came out, so now it will get warmer. Keep your fingers crossed for our poor servers!

We’ve had a visitor the last few nights. Not quite as cute as a kitten, but I’ll take what I can get:

Things that have made me laugh out loud in the last few hours:

• Driving past Normal Avenue in the middle of Hollywood. Not.
• Seeing a store labeled “Ferreteria,” and imagining walls lines with caged ferrets. (Alas, ferreteria means something like hardware or ironworks, and not weasel-rama.)
• Aunt B over at Tiny Cat Pants started a whole “Blog Your Period” day which totally had me rolling. If you’re not squeamish, read on.
• This picture at Cute Overload.

I’m pretty sure there was more, but I think you get the idea – I am easily amused.

SCENE: 10:30pm, in the dining room.  Daddy is working on his laptop, with Mom’s help to translate his handwriting from notes taken earlier.  I am attempting to step outside onto the screened porch.

Me: Damnit…is this thing locked?

Mom: We never lock that doorknob.

Me: Well, it’s not opening.  [Jiggling handle]  Hmm – no matter how I turn the knob or push the lock-button, the actual part that sticks into the door doesn’t move.

Daddy: You’re just not doing it right.  Twist it.

Me: I AM twisting it.  I’ll just go around.  [Picks up flashlight, goes out the back door and around to the outside screen door… which is locked.  Returns to dining room.]  Good grief.  Are we going to have to take the doorknob off?

Daddy: NO!!  Idiots… you just have to TWIST IT!!  [Struggling to get out of chair]

Me:  I think I know how to use a doorknob.  It’s definitely broken.

Daddy: AAA!  Not BROKEN!  Shee!  [Gets up and into walker, heads towards the pile of cable plugging in the laptop to the wall.]

Mom: No, not that way.  NOT THAT WAY, BOB!  Anna, the scary thing is that sometimes when you let him do things, they work fine!

Me: Nope, this thing’s totally busted.  [Trying to unscrew doorknob from door]

Daddy, getting closer: Jesus Christ!  Stop fiddling with it!  Get away!  [Daddy starts fiddling with doorknob.  He twists: door opens.]

Me: For fuck’s sake!

[END SCENE]

That’s the tricky thing.. it’s hard to tell when Daddy’s being crazy, and when he’s just being Daddy.  For instance, 30 minutes prior to the above, we had this little bit of excitement:

SCENE: I am upstairs checking e-mail.  Mom is downstairs napping.  Daddy started watching a movie in the living room at 9pm, but from the sounds coming from there I suspect he has fallen asleep, until:

Daddy:  Hey!  HEY!  Get down here!  GET DOWN HERE!  Let them in, goddammit!

Me, rushing downstairs: What?  Is something wrong?

Daddy: They’re knocking!  Let them in the front.  They’re knocking around the back!

Me: Maybe it was the TV – I don’t think anyone’s there.

Daddy: NO, GODDAMIT.  Huh.  Huh.  So there’s no one there?  Did Peter call?  What time is it?

Me: No, he never called.  It’s 10pm – do you want to go to bed?

Daddy: Bed!  Jesus Christ, no!  I’ve been sleeping for 12 hours!

Me: No, Daddy, it’s 10 at night.  I think you’ve only been asleep an hour or so.

Daddy: 10 at night?  It’s still last night?  Shee!  Are you sure?

Me: Pretty sure.  I just went upstairs to check email, and you were watching a movie.

Daddy: Hm.  Did Peter call?

Me: No, he didn’t call. 

Daddy: My god, what am I doing sleeping at this time of day?

Me: Well, it’s kind of bedtime really.  It’s 10pm.

Daddy: 10pm?  It’s still Wednesday night?

Me: I’ll be right back.  [Fetches Mom]

[END SCENE]

So… that’s life in the Clower household for now.  Just a little funny, a little sad, and a lot unpredictable.

Sick with a cold, working on 5 hours of sleep after an evening of cross-country travel, and up at what felt like the crack of dawn, we met up with Cookie and Barrie in the lobby of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis for a visit to the new Georgia aquarium.

I was armed with a pursefull of tissues and cough drops, so despite my constant sniffling I was able to enjoy the day (though those around me had to suffer frequent noisy nose blows).

We reached the aquarium around 10am, while it was still filling up and not too crowded.  Even the entryway was gorgeous and new-looking; you pass between two tanks full of enormous schools of jacks that crowd against the glass to check you out in return.

First, we hit Tropical Diver, full of the tradtional aquarium-fare: tropical pacific fish.  One especially impressive tank was full of fish from Hawaii and the south pacific, and I was amazed by the number and variety of critters they’d managed to cram in.  Unlike the Long Beach aquarium, the Georgia Aquarium uses a lot of live coral (about 40%), which added another dimension to the display.

Up next was the enormous Outer Reef exhibit, including the famed whale sharks.  Visitors enter through a hallway with small glass cut-outs into the bottom of the tank, where we caught glimpses of rays, enormous groupers, and a bit of whale shark tummy in the distance.  The cutouts get larger as you move down the hall, until we reached the entry to the acrylic tunnel beneath the tank.  There’s a little moving walkway that slowly takes you through the tunnel, with more than enough time to look up at all the critters cruising by overhead.  Besides the four whale sharks, we spotted zebra sharks swaying their enormous tails, a wobbegong shark lurking right next to the acrylic, schools of cow rays, and clusters of little fish zipping along right in front of whale shark mouths. 

There was a definite atmosphere of awe in the tunnel, and I was a little sorry to move on – until we realized that the next exhibit was a larger window onto the whale shark tank, with a much better view of them.

We stood in the gallery watching the whale sharks take turns cruising by.  Enormous groupers and napolean wrasses also hovered near the glass, checking out the visitors.  My growing need for water and rest finally drove us back out to the main atrium for a break.

Up next: the Cold Water exhibit.  I was expecting lots of Caliofornia tanks with kelp, and was a little disappointed that the kelp forest only merited one small tank with pretty boring critters (and only one or two garibaldi, even though the aquarium’s mascot is based on that fish).  Oh well – we’re not in California, after all!

The next tank made up for any disappointment – beluga whales!  They reminded me of enormous albino sea lions, actually: very agile, playful, and capable of more expressiveness than fish (or whale sharks).  There were three hanging out near the glass, turning somersaults, or zipping towards the glass with a last-minute swerve to avoid collision.  The smallest of them hung back towards the other side of the tank, scratching himself against rocks. 

We tore ourselves away from the belugas to polish off the rest of the Cold Water exhibit: penguins, sea otters, and sea lions.  The penguin display was pretty cute, but the otters and sea lions were nowhere near as good as the west coast versions.  Two otters swam back and forth in a small-ish area, and 3 enormous bull sea lions were the sole occupants of their exhibit.  Not a juvenile or female in sight.  It was pretty amusing to watch the guys fight over the best spot on a rock, nipping and barking at each other while the watching families insisted to their children that the sea lions were “kissing.”

The last two exhibits didn’t take much time, as none of us were particularly blown away by freshwater or Georgia critters.  Plus, we all have this kind of “pretty, pretty, next” attitude towards museums (or aquariums), and none of us are into spending long periods of time battling the crowds to see stuff.

It was noon now: time for our behind-the scenes tour.  The lovely Liz and Scott took our group of 17 around to check out the veterinary area, commissary, and topsides of the tropical diver and outer reef tanks. It was great to see the whale sharks from the top, and wow – that is one enormous tank.  Seriously.  All that live coral requires a lot of sunlight, so both these exhibits have huge skylights in the ceiling as well as dozens of high-powered UV lights that make it more than a little warm in there. 

We finished off our visit with a cruise through the gift shop, but nothing really caught our fancy.  By this time, the place was getting pretty swamped with families and strollers, so we hit the road, all piling in Barrie’s car to head home to Columbia for Christmas.
 

Daddy’s been at home since Friday, when Mom decided to get him back out of the psych ward.  He wasn’t making dramatic improvements, but there didn’t seem to be anything to do that couldn’t be done just as well from home.  So, we got a normal Christmas after all.

He’s definitely “on,” but also quite grumpy about people not understanding that he just gets “set on” things, and there’s nothing remotely crazy about it.  I’m not quite buying it. As Mom warned, there are piles of papers all over the house where he’s spontaneously begun “organizing,” which is quickly becoming a running joke in the family.

Joel and Jeff are putting up with it all really well – we’re having a lot of fun both egging him on and arguing with him, no doubt driving Mom extra batty.  Oh well.

There have been some depressing moments, so I don’t want to quite give the impression that it’s all sunshine and roses.  But at least we’re all together, and having a good time.

Aquarium and Christmas posts coming soon, illustrated with lots of pretty pictures by Jeff…