High-Speed Rustbucket

It’s a thoroughly nasty rain/mist/drizzle combo outside, a weather pattern more suited to Kentucky teenage depression in October than April in the desert. The music shuffle today has given an equally somber song to set the mood.

We’ve made it about 10 miles north and it’s turned to snow. I’m altogether not looking forward to what this has turned into when we get to Santa Fe County. In like a lion, out like a lamb? Not quite. The fog pattern is an unusual one, I’ve got what I estimate to be 15 miles of visibility except for Albuquerque which looks to be positively covered in fog, a cloud ending abruptly at the foothills of Sandia Peak and about a thousand feet tall. It looks for all the world like someone poured a giant bucket of dry ice on the city.

I’m mostly at peace going into today, I busted my ass yesterday and today is Read-Only Friday. I’m not looking to be a hero today, being a hero is not making anyone work this weekend. I can work in the lab, I can do documentation, I can follow up on quotes, I can do my weekly review, I can plan new security initiatives, there’s a lot of stuff to be done that doesn’t involve poking production systems.

I’m surprisingly awake today. I think it’s a combination of “yay friday”, realizing I had slept in and had to rush, and more upbeat music. I think I’ll start doing this a little more often, the embedding of songs as I’m listening to them. Last.fm only updates when I get home and run iTunes, which isn’t terribly often, and I like the look of them.

I’m considering a redesign of the blog, nothing major, but widening the main column a bit, and making it work better on mobile. The latter is trivial thanks to Jetpack, the former will need a little elbow grease. I bet I’ll figure it out though.

I’ve started using a USB mobile hotspot, and sometimes it’s more distraction than anything. The signal just isn’t great out here, particularly when you’re rolling through uninhabited high desert. And when I decide that I want to do something online on the train, if it’s not posting these blogs, it’s something complex. Case in point, I decided I needed ffmpeg to rip the youtube video above because I forgot to put the song on my phone, and rather than wait half an hour to get to the office I’d rather have it now…and then wait half an hour to get good enough signal to finish a 26MB download.

We’re rolling through Santa Fe proper now. Snow fucking everywhere. Fuuuuuuck this. Glad I brought my ski jacket. And it’s still snowing! This is crap. Diana would say it’s cute and picturesque. I say it’s horseshit.

See you on the other side of Friday.