What Does a Fisher Cat Sound Like, from Cape Cod Wildlife Calling
More than just what a fisher cat sounds like, it has video of what a fisher cat looks like, AND audio files of red foxes and raccoons for disambiguation.
Author: H Walker Jones, Esq
A professional programmer with a sordid past involving sysadmin, tech support, and cooking.
Halon
You know that big button near the door in the data center, the one labeled “Halon?” That’s French for “exit,” so you push that to unlock the door and get out.
From a slashdot post
Hint: don’t hit the ‘halon’ button unless you like getting a big bill for disaster recovery and cleanup — Editor
The Troublesome Broadcast Message
Back in the good-ole days of Windows NT (circa 1998) I was a member of IT support at a large multi-national corporation. The campus I worked for was about five thousand people large.
Background: Windows 98/98/NT 4.0 had a neat little utility to send pop-up messages to specific machines. It was a front end to the net send built-in command, and messages would appear almost instantaneously on the recipient’s machine in nice little window. (Similar functionality still exists in more recent versions of Windows, but the messenger service no longer starts by default.)
So, one slow day a bunch of us were shooting the shit and getting a little rowdy. I think there were some flying objects and maybe a nerf gun involved. One of the upper-level techs, who shall remain unnamed, fired off a message to someone else: “John, look out behind you”.
Only, he didn’t get the machine name right. He broadcast it to the entire campus. 5000+ machines.
A lesser-known feature of the net send command, and therefore of the messenger utility, was the ability to message an entire workgroup or domain. To do so, you only need to specify the workgroup or domain name in the recipient box. And that’s what he did – he intended John’s machine name but the domain was the default in the box — and he forgot to change it.
Hoo boy, that was some trouble, and being a political organization it nearly took the form of someone’s-getting-fired-type trouble. It took the ‘lizard king’ email storm to finally let it die down completely. I’ll save that story for another day, when I dig the entire email chain out of archives and obfuscate some details.
Lovesac Sactional: The Review
The Hunt for New Furniture
We wanted — nay, we needed — a new couch. The old one is sporting a dip so deep that only the dog can curl up comfortably. (Oddly enough, come to think of it, it is slightly dog shaped. Why that little…)
We cruised the local furniture stores for months but we had a hard time agreeing on a particular style. Megh kept stopping in the local Lovesac store, though, “just to sit down for a few minutes”. I eventually got the hint that she was interested in their ‘Sactionals‘.
After much hemming and hawing, I was forced to admit that a) the furniture in the showroom is comfortable, and b) the concept — free-floating furniture that you can rearrange into chairs, couches, lounges, beds, etc. — is intriguing.
Making the Decision
We don’t currently know anyone that has anything from Lovesac. We even asked all our Facebook friends, but nothing more solid came through than some “I really want one of their fuzzy beanbags!” At $600 for a beanbag, no wonder that it remains in the want-to-have category.
That brings us to the price. Sactionals are an expensive way to get furniture. I figure that compared to a similar-quality couch that doesn’t fly apart, we’re looking at a 30% premium. Not as bad as the beanbags, but that’s still a steep price to pay for the possibility of sitting on a fabric Optimus Prime.
Lovesac’s business model seems to involve putting their showrooms into malls and other places where you might want to take a load off and sit for spell. Paying high mall rents may explain the price — that, and the novelty.
Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post if this remained an expensive pipe-dream. We did indeed take the plunge and buy something.
What You’re Getting
As mentioned before, Sactional furniture comes as pieces, one of two types: bases and sides. One base and three sides makes a complete chair (or one base and one side for an armless chair); two bases and two to four sides makes a couch; and so on. Every piece also gets a removable, washable cover so you can purchase the color and fabric style you want. You can spend a little more (or a little less) on the covers to upgrade your furniture.
We purchased two bases and three sides, to make a couch with an open end (it seems more inviting that way).
We also purchased the standard cover, which is also one of the cheapest options. We liked the material more than some of the fancier velour- or velvety-type covers.
The Delivery
Your furniture is delivered via FedEx. Everything comes in flat boxes, Ikea-style, with no piece being too large for an able-bodied adult to man-handle into the house.
We didn’t get a tracking number until the same day everything arrived, which was a little annoying. I rushed home when Meghan gave me a heads up, so it wouldn’t sit on the front step all day. At least it wasn’t raining that day.
I got everything moved inside, and drove back to work.
I’m out of work and home before Meghan, so I teased her by sending photos of the of the boxes, one at a time. She can’t stand the fact that I can wait for things.
Total time from ordering to delivery: about a week. If we had ordered fancier (custom) covers we would have had to wait longer.
The Unpacking
After dinner we got down to business. After moving the old couch to an empty corner of the house, we unpacked the first box: a base.
The cushion for the base is stuffed inside the base itself, and held in with a pair of wooden planks (well, sticks really). You have to slowly rotate each stake until it comes out. Doing so releases the cushion, which then uncovers the hardware and some instructions telling you how to remove the stakes and cushion without damaging them.
Fortunately for us the process was somewhat intuitive and we didn’t damage anything in our ignorance. We unpacked the other boxes in similar fashion. The covers come in their own box.
The Assembly
The first step was to attach feet and stick on no-scratch pads (which are included). There’s enough pads to adequately cover the “shoes,” which help connect the pieces, as well.
The instructions emphasize that getting the slipcovers on straight is very important, and it is. Getting them on at all was the hardest part of the entire process. The covers fit tightly, and there’s no “give” if you get them on crooked. We had to start over on a couple of pieces because they were obviously wrong, but when you get it right it’s just as obvious.
The pieces don’t clamp together nearly as easily as they seem to in the store. It’s probably because the floor models are taken apart and reassembled frequently, so everything stretches a little. I wouldn’t say they were difficult, but they do require a strong hand.
I was pretty satisfied with the whole assemble-your-furniture experience, but then again I like Ikea, too. I read some other reviews about assembling Sactionals, and we seem to have had one of the better experiences.
Total time, from unpacking to sitting my ass down: about 75 minutes.
The Result
I’m only writing this the next day, not enough time to provide an informed opinion about longevity, but the couch feels about as comfortable as the store’s floor model — maybe a little firmer and tighter, but all new furniture does that.
It looks as good in real life as I hoped. The kids have given it their seal of approval as well.
In the picture is our Sactional couch with one of our old pillows and a Wii-mote. On the left side of the picture the wooden beam is part of our old futon, with a similarly-colored cover, facing the other way.
I’ll probably revisit this in a few months with our thoughts on it long term – worth the purchase, worth additional purchases, etc.
Muzak in Market Basket
Van Halen’s “Yankee Rose” playing in the supermarket.
I’m getting old.
High School Musical (In Middle School)
Shortly before the new year, Alpha surprised us by trying out for a part in drama club – High School Musical. She made it into the supporting cast.
For months she has stuck to a busy schedule of rehearsals in between school, karate, and regular activities, mostly without complaint. (though not entirely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) She tried really hard, though.
Tonight was opening night, and the whole show was fantastic – Alpha was great, but the rest of the show was great too. No disasters, not even a missed line, and the leads had really strong voices. It felt more like a high school production than middle school. Most importantly, the kids really looked like they were having fun (especially the kid who played ‘Ryan’).
Next year the high school is going to see some great singing talent come in. And Alpha? She’s talking about trying out for the next show.
Cars
“The sixties were good to you, weren’t they?”
— George Carlin
Now I really get it when Sarge says “The sixties weren’t good to you, were they?” to Fillmore (voiced by Mr. Carlin) in Pixar’s ‘Cars’.
Altitude, the Trampoline Park
The morning after a sleepover, I took Beta, Alpha, and Alpha’s sleeping-over friend Rho to Altitude, an indoor trampoline park. (Fun fact: once upon a time they were called “jumpolines” until your mom got on one.)
They have a field of unadulterated trampolines for jumping, plus dodgeball (on trampolines), basketball layups (on trampolines), long jumps with trampolines (landing in a foam pit), climbing walls (over foam pits), and pugil sticks on a balance beam (again, falling into foam pits).
It’s pricey, as you’re charged by the half-hour and it’s $9 per person per half-hour (discounts apply for longer blocks of time). You also must bring special Altitude-branded non-skid socks or buy them for $2/pair.
It’s a really good time despite the price. I recommend not more than an hour at a time – the kids really started to flag after about 45 minutes. They slept well that night, too.
Alpha Earns Her Gold Belt in Karate
Alpha has officially taken her karate to the logical next step, and put herself on track for a black belt. This puts her into ‘Doshi Kai’, which basically means she’s not trying karate out anymore – she’s a serious student.
Here’s a segment from the promotion ceremony:
Missing from the video is me giving her the gold belt, and a short kata demonstration. Her kata are now crisp and confident.
Hoth
The northeast region of the US has been in a (relative) deep freeze for weeks. Last night we bottomed out at -12° F.
Pictured is our oldest child trudging across the desolate, Hoth-like expanse that is (was?) Silver Lake. Most of the snow has blown off, leaving a crusty powder that almost, but doesn’t quite, support you.
Not pictured: the tauntaun that I split open to keep the children warm overnight.