I dream of rain

Nobody was hurt, fortunately. Grease fire on the stove. The ceiling used to be white, and that little strand down one side of the photo is a bit of plastic that melted off a light fixure.

Sorry about the lack of updates; I've been rather under the weather. Things are picking back up on all fronts now.

The difference between 300mm and 18mm focal lengths...

Lightning struck a basketball hoop about three yards from where yours truly was standing. It was just an itty-bitty bolt, but I took it as a sign to get off the roof. Which I ignored.

Lots of cool swirleys in the cloud as it passed overhead..

Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 19:00:27 -0400
From: Solomon Peachy 
To: jeffrey.scabarozi AT brevardcounty DOT us
Subject: A mixed encouter with two lifeguards

Mr. Scabarozi,

I had an interesting encounter with two lifeguards earlier today
(5/15 ~16:30) at Paradise Beach Park, and I felt the need to share and
ask you a couple of policy-type questions.

I moonlight as a photographer, and one of the things I like to do on
nice days is go to the beach and take photos of wildlife, surfers, and
whatever else catches my eye.  Today the surf conditions weren't
particularly good, so there was only one surfer in the water.  But the
breeze felt good, so I decided to stay and see what caught my eye, and
take some photos while I was at it.  Oh, and I was doing this from the
main boardwalk.

After I'd been there perhaps half an hour, thinking that I should head
home and make dinner, a voice pipes up to the effect of "I hope you're
not taking pictures of what I think you are."  I turn to see one of the
lifeguards.  More than a little confused, I respond that I really don't
know, and after a little back and forth he all but accuses me of taking
pictures of some kid that was supposedly running around naked somewhere.

At this point, another lifeguard comes up behind me and politely asks me
to stop taking photographs due to "patron complaints."  Meanwhile, the
first lifeguard is telling me to "beat it", and the second responds
"I've got it" a couple of times to try and calm him down.  The second
again politely asks me to not take pictures, emphasising that he's not
accusing me of doing anything improper and that he's not asking me to
leave.

Faced with this reasonable, polite request, I respond "sure, okay", put
the lens cap on, and that's pretty much that.  I hang around on the
boardwalk a little while longer before leaving, not really wanting to
hang around this particular stretch of beach as long as the first
lifeguard was on duty.

So, I'm writing this both in appreciation and dissappointment;
dissappointment at the churlish, confrontational approach of the first
lifguard, and appreciative of the eminently reasonable, polite and
concilatory approach of the second.

I have no idea if there really was a kid running around naked, but if
there was, I hope that harassing me was only done after the kid was
rounded up and wrapped in a towel. I understand there are particular um,
sensitivities where children are involved, but I can't help but feel if
the first lifeguard's consternation was misdirected.

I've taken many a photograph at Brevard's beaches over the years.  The
time before this I was chatting with a Melbourne PD officer while doing
so, and I gave my business card to one of the lifeguards when they asked
if I'd have the pictures online somewhere.  I've never tried to hide my
(or my camera's) presence; indeed I go out of my way to both be highly
visible and stay out of the way.

So, all of this said, I'm not out to get the first lifeguard in trouble,
and this is not a formal complaint by any means.  I'm relaying this
experience to provide context to the questions I wanted to ask you, in
your official capacity as the head of the lifeguard program.

1) What laws, ordinances, and/or regulations cover photography on
   Brevard County beaches?  (It is my understanding that, the beaches
   being a (very) public place, there is no reasonable expectation of
   privacy, and photography is a considered a constitutionally protected
   activity)

2) What is the legal jurisdicion of the lifeguards?  The park,
   boardwalk and/or the beach in the designated "lifeguard zone"?

3) What are their non-lifesaving duties/powers?  (Can someone indeed be
   told to "Beat it" for doing nothing improper?)

I ask these questions because I genuinely believe I was doing nothing
improper or illegal, and I'd like to know the lay of the land to prevent
this sort of thing from happening in the future.

Thank you for your time,

 - Solomon

Any sysadmin has a naming convention for the systems under their purview. With the need to refer to a specific system, the names may be purely functional, but being the eccentric sort, sysadmins try to give them more memorable names wherever possible, if for no other reason that 'chomp' and 'chewy' sound better than 'corpdb1' and 'corpdb2'.

My own naming convention has evolved remarkably little over the years. I firmly believe that names need to be earned, by function or by quirk, but a loose framework for said names helps a great deal.

The first system I ever named was pizzahut. As I went (and still go) by the handle pizza, it was a natural name for a server that intended to be my private playground and storage space. Many hardware reincarnations later, pizzahut still lives, dutifully serving away as the digital heart of my house.

shaft was the second, coming along three months later as a shell, www, and dns server for other people's use. It too still lives, many hardware reincarnations later, and is more important than ever. It served you this page!

lunchbox was my workstation at one of my student jobs. Food to go, eh? It too has gone through many iterations, the name following me through various computers at various employers.

issues was the name of my workstation at home; it was well named. I eventually sold it to my sister and bought a laptop instead.

crapper was set up in the bathroom for use on the toilet. It didn't last long, mainly because the hardware was so underpowered and by the time it finished booting (off of a floppy!), you were probably done anyway. And the whole thing was a one-up type joke.

spank came along as a backup DNS/mail server for shaft, and still lives, doing next to nothing but doing it quite well. Except when hurricane comes through and drowns its internet connection.

teavee was an experiment with a TV tuner, originally living in the kitchen. The first iteration of this died due to truly flaky hardare, but the name was re-used after I moved to Florida and gave it newer hardware. That didn't last long either... within a week, one of the hard disks blew, and the machine was rechristened...

burnt, in honor of the scorch marks left on the case from the aforementioned hard drive. It also finally brought the naming convention back to the food/pizza-related motif that continues to this day. Burnt's now on its third iteration of old flaky hardware, and acts as my home entertainment center.

baked and half-baked were two names for the same box, a Sun Ultra 2 workstation that I got for practically nothing just before I moved to Florida. Orignally called half-baked because one of the CPU modules was dead, it was promoted to fully baked once the repairs was made. That machine never did much besides put out a lot of noise and heat, though it did briefly act as a router, owing to its NINE ethernet ports. Yowza.

handtossed is my wireless access point. All of those bits being flung into the air.. makes me kind of hungry.

digorno is my SLIMP3 music player. Named in honor of the "It's not delivery, it's Digorno!" advertisements, this device "delivers" music, only it doesn't. Eh, it's an inside joke. And still pizza-related!

heatwave is my old laptop. Actually, several of them. The first one I bought had a bit of an overheating problem, so the name seemed appropriate. The next two reused the name but didn't have heat problems, but the last one... earned the name back, and then some. I still have it, and have to keep a fan sucking air out of the vents in order to keep it from dying. I'll probably be promoting this machine to be my "new" entertainment center, as it's a lot more powerful than burnt, and even with an external fan, much quieter.

And finally, marinara is my current laptop. It was a tossup between 'sun-dried', 'hawaiian' and 'marinara', because its black with an orange-red trim that looks like marinara sauce left out a bit too long, sun-dried tomatoes, and a stereotypical hawaiian sunset. I'd have reused the name heatwave, except I still have the old laptop.

So there you have it, names. And all of this said, I haven't figured out what to call the new box yet. 'stuffed' is my current favorite.

This was shot with a 24mm lens, lying on my back, nearly directly underneath these maniacs. On the other hand, they're not stupid enough to get in the way of the fireball, unlike a certain photographer I know...

First, a week ago this blog was upgraded; now it's powered by the latest-and-greatest Nanoblogger 3.4. No real visible changes, but that was kind of the point.

But that's just a sideshow of the big changes going on behind the scenes. shaft, the server that powers this blog, and pizzahut, the server that drives my home's internal network and my photo site, are being merged into one server. This is long overdue, as the hardware is a full three generations old now.

Shaft's curent hardware has been in 24/7 use for just under seven years, albeit with two blown power supplies, two dead fans, and a motherboard swap to enable a full gig of RAM to be utilized. It's a P3-1GHz, 1GiB RAM, and a pair of 40GB drives in a RAID1 configuration. And it JustWorks(tm).

Pizzahut, on the other hand, isn't quite as old but it's a bit of a frankenstein; its importance has steadily grown since my photos have taken on a life of their own, and its upgrades have reflected that. It is a dual P3-1266MHz, 3.5GiB ECC RAM, and 4x250GB and 4x200GB drives in two RAID5 arrays plugged into a 3Ware 7506-8 card. Plus an ancient 18GB SCSI drive that I purchased used in 2000 that serves as the root/OS drive. And I pound the hell out of it on a daily basis.

Last night, Phase I of my server upgrades was completed successfully. the old RAID arrays and their controller were replacd with a 4x1TB RAID5 arrangement, plugged into a new 3Ware 9550SXU-8LP card. The usuable disk space shot up from 1249GB (20GB free) to 2751GB. When this fills up (by the time I'm done restoring stuff shifted to offline storage I should have about 1TB free), I can just drop in another 4 drives to create another ginormous array.

Phase Ia comes next. The ancient SCSI OS disk in pizzahut should be replaced with something newer (and faster!); I have 1x160, 2x200, and 6x250 drives lying around now. This may not happen, depending on the timetable for Phase II.

Phase II involves the new motherboard/processor/etc for what will become the new unified server. I haven't decided on the final configuration, but it'll be a server-class motherboard with PCI-X (for the RAID card), 8GiB or more RAM, dual GigE, and a modern quad-core CPU. Each of the cores will pack more oomph than all three of the old CPUs combined, and there are four cores to play with. What I buy, and when, depends entirely on finances. If I get more donations (hint hint) I'll be able to buy a bigger box, sooner.

Current leanings: Asus M2N-LR + AMD Phenom II X4 940 (Shanghai), or Supermicro MBD-X7SBE + Intel Q9400 (Yorkfield). The latter will run about $60 more. Of course, more money can be spent for additional CPU oomph, funds permitting.. Speaking of funds, this phase, as spec'd, will run about $700 with the new case, power supply, and other misc bits. Maybe a bit more for a UPS that can handle the load.

Phase III will be to migrate shaftnet's services onto the new box. What form this takes place is yet to be determined; I'd like to keep my internal network services seperate from the external ones.

Frankly, as ancient as shaft's current hardware is, it's wholly adequate for what it does. This upgrade is being driven by the needs of my photography, primarily on the disk space front but having more (and faster) CPU cores for image processing will make a hell of a difference. Piggybacking shaft's services onto this box will effectively be free.

At this point, the biggest question I face is what to name the new box -- shaft, pizzahut, or something new?

...I just wanna bang on my drums all day..

May is upon us, and promises to be a relatively calm month. April was hectic; I was on the road for three long weekends, finalized my divorce, and was generally running around like a headless chicken.

As the dust settles over the battlefield, I once again find myself asking that ever-present question: What do I do with myself now?

Every time I've tried to answer this, I get a series of qualifiers, but no actual direction. If I'm lucky, I can see the next step or two ahead before the cloying fog completely obscures my path.

It's been incredibly frustrating, but it's also forced me to live in the short term, making the most of everything that comes my way. And that... has been incredibly rewarding. Not just photographically, either.

"When faced with a choice of paths, chose the more beautiful."

There's something fundamentally... pleasing about this photograph.

Taken out the window of the car while waiting at a traffic light outside of Jacksonville.

You know it's theoretically possible, and it always seems to happen to a friend of a friend, never to you or anyone you know directly.

But it happened to me. And I'm still shocked, two days later.

...I ran out of shampoo and conditioner at the SAME TIME.

I caught the tail end of this sunset when I went outside to feed the kitties. After I recovered from the "holy shit" reaction, I went back for the camera, wishing I'd left the ladder outside...

I find myself with a lot on my mind today. Oh, that in of itself is normal, but for some reason this seems much more, well, visceral than usual.

It may have something to do with the massive backlog in my RSS feed reader; as I write this it's 11,400 entries, from something like 250 individual feeds. I fell behind on my trip to Arizona, and I've never managed to have less than about 3,000 entries in the unread pile since then. It would be worse, except my reader only keeps the last 100 entries from any given feed.

More than 3/4ths of the feeds are phography-related; a handful of photographer/technical blogs.. but mostly a deluge of photographs. It's given me many ideas, but more importantly shows me what works, what doesn't... and has really helped me hone what I want to accomplish.

The remaining quarter covers a wide swath, but the largest chunk of them are of a somewhat sexual nature, and of a rather deviant nature at that. I say "somewhat" because I'm not following them for the sexual content, but rather as an insight into the dark inner workings of the human psyche -- and sex is inexporably tied up in all of that.

Last night I found myself stuck on the couch with my leg wrapped up in a heating pad, with nothing to do except work on the backlog. And so I flipped through amazing photographs, read highly-charged stories of seduction and desire, and let the thoughts of dominants and submissives alike wash through my subconscious mind.

The more explicit something is, the less interest it holds for me. I like subtleties and suggestive visuals; letting the mind and imagination fill in the blanks rather than the "meat market" approach that puts it all on display. Similarly, I don't care for the "shop class" approach to writing (pound, drill, clamp, etc..) instead wanting to know what's going on in the characters' minds.

It's these mind games that I love; reading about the paradoxes of feeling, the conflict between reason and desire, the cascading snowball of emotions that destroy resistance and awaken the deep primal urges that we keep bottled up most of the time....and the sheer joy that comes from embracing them.

Immersing myself in this imagery, be it textual or visual, forces upon me a balancing act of sorts; feelings and parts of myself that must be embraced without being overwhelmed by them; the burning need to understand and how they work so that I can then see these hidden strings in others... and manipulate them to effect the effect I desire.

It's these desires and their affects that weigh on my psyche this morning. I have always needed other people, either as subjects or as an audience, and often both at the same time. Knowing what makes people tick helps me draw them out, past their projected shells, revealing themselves -- waiting for that perfect moment and capturing that emotion playing across their face in a photograph.

And later, the look on their face changing from (mock) exacerbation to a voiceless wow when they see the results -- themselves through my eyes. Their beautiful truth.

This is what I love; seeking out beauty, sharing it, and if I'm very lucky, creating some of my own. To do this, I have to open myself up as wide as possible, let the world in... and myself out.. to play.

It's no wonder life's been so interesting lately -- Like attracts like; passion begets more passion, and as some know, when I let myself out to play, it can be very fun indeed.