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Updating everything

When it became clear that we weren't going to get snapper migrated onto mithlond, I went to build course sites on snapper and found that we couldn't do it with php 4 anymore. So I built php 5.2.14 and installed it. It broke some things, but surprisingly little. I've now updated eaccelerator too -- no problems. I ran into some problems getting drush working, but figured them out (the wrong libraries were getting loaded). The course sites are up, in php 6, with ldap authentication, and working in a multi-site install. Check.

I had hoped to update all of the labs to 10.6 this summer. I got the BCRC updated to 10.6, but had enough problems with it that I decided to leave the teaching labs at 10.5. Little by little, I'm getting updates built for the intro labs and, today, spent most of the day today in the ISB getting updates built and applying them. Check.

When I built my 10.6 install, I updated radmind and built a bunch of new transcripts. It turns out that the updated radmind makes transcripts that aren't backward compatible. So I've been carefully making sure I get the transcript for the new radmind installed on all the machines before any of the new transcripts that break the old radmind are installed. Check.

And then there's the whole update-macosx-and-break-X11 that's been the pattern for the past year. Now I need to check if updating X11 broke any of the other X11 apps we use. Sigh...

And, on top of everything, are all the frantic people trying to figure out how to use all the updated stuff. Sigh... I just don't have time to do all the stuff I'm trying to do. It's going to be a rough semester.

Little by little some things are coming together. We've got almost everything authenticating against ldap now. There's one small step we have to make for (nearly) everything to be able to authenticate against ldap. I've had several people thank me for the efforts I've made to bring sanity to how authentication was working in the department. And we're finally using a multi-site drupal install for course sites. It's not quite perfect, but close enough to get through the semester and to perfect next time around. And the department site is taking over the roles of a bunch of disparate sites in the past. Things are getting better. But there's so much new we have to do each semester and so much that's still just cobbled together and undocumented.

But I haven't run into any show stoppers yet. Just two more working days before the semester begins. My last big challenge is to get my writing course set up -- while keeping everything else going. It'll happen.

Semester approaches

The semester is coming at us fast. Early in the summer, the plan was to replace the BCRC server. In the end, for various reasons, we didn't quite make that happen. For the past few days, I've been sorting out how to build resources for the fall on the old server. Making good progress.

Yesterday, I finally wrote a new script that builds an instance of drupal for a course site using symlinks from a template and runs the database dump, .htaccess, and settings.php through sed to rewrite the course specific parts. It works perfectly except for setting the name and slogan of the site. Upon reflection, I think I'm going to install drush and then call drush after the site is built to set those.

As if I needed another project to work on, I decided to involve myself when the department wanted to have digital signage. I've been skeptical about buying one of the closed-source solutions, since I've heard nightmarish stories about trying to support them on other parts of the campus. They wanted to show a video on one in the ISB and several faculty spent hours trying to make it work before they got me, with ffmpeg to begin systematically exploring the fileformat/codec space until we found one that would work. Stupid. We bought an inexpensive LG display and a MacMini and are planning to use this recipe. Basically, you create a unique URL at your drupal site that presents content with a special theme optimized for your display.

The recipe is really cool. I showed it to Tom to see if he would be interested in working on the special theme. He was super excited because the Dean's office has been interested in solving the digital signage problems they already have.

I've run into some roadblocks. Apple just rev'ed macmini line and so the hardware architecture is completely new. I tried using our existing macosx install and it wouldn't work. I explored putting ubuntu on the macmini and found that the macmini hasn't been out long enough for ubuntu to work on it either: I couldn't even get the installer to boot. I expect it will be fixed in a few weeks, but that was frustrating. So I went back to macosx and built a unique radmind image to support display machines. All the machine has to do is run either plainview or firefox in kiosk mode.

I also ran into a bit of skepticism from the chairman who wondered why we couldn't just use Powerpoint. Sigh... He's concerned about getting faculty to contribute and review content. I pointed out that the person who's probably going to enter most of the content is already putting up the announcements on the website and this will just become an extension of that. If they had to pull all the information out of powerpoint slides to make announcements, it would be more than twice as much work.

I've got my Esperanto course basically ready to go. It's always a challenge to guess how much time outside of class students will be willing to invest. I've aimed at 2 hours. I've outlined 4 tasks to do each week that I estimate will each take around a half hour: 2 lessons at lernu and two chapters from Bonvenon en nia mondo. I think if they actually do everything, by the end they should be pretty fluent in Esperanto -- I guess we'll see.

The writing class I've taught often enough that I'm not worried about it. I still haven't come up with a good theme for the writing class, though. I usually try to come up with some kind of unifying theme that ties all the activities together: invasive species or something. I've been thinking about doing this one about models. When we have to do our final research project in late November, it will be warmer to study a model, rather than try to collect data in the field. I also need to think up a good object for them to investigate during the first day...

MSP Summit

Today we had our annual MSP summit. Some people call it a retreat, but I'm tired of hearing about unions retreating, so I call it a summit. It was good.

Nancy Folbre gave some opening remarks to frame the discussion drawn from her new book Saving State U. Public Higher Education is getting strangled, like all other state services, because neoliberal policies and globalism have conspired to shift the financial burden onto the middle class (by reducing taxes on capital gains and forcing the University to self-fund financial aid). With the middle-class increasingly squeezed by stagnant wages and increasing costs, there's little support for the increased revenues that would be needed to fix the state's declining support for public education. It's discouraging to recognize that, writ broadly, our problems can only be solved by fixing the whole world.

Our subsequent discussions focused on more trying to identify what we could organize to try to fix. There is a lot we can do. I mentioned the several ideas that I've had for union action. In particular, the idea of a "good work" action. Since we serve a vulnerable population, there's little interest in performing any kind of action that would compromise the students we serve. It's a tough challenge.

Hopelessly behind

DanielYesterday, Daniel got to go flying as the culmination of his week of aviation camp. He was the first one to take off. Sitting in the pilot's seat, with the instructor in the co-pilot's seat, he was at the controls when the plane took off, flew up to Turner's Falls, and landed. One of the other students flew back. Now he's got a pilots log book with the first half hour of flying time logged. It was fun to take the morning to see him go flying, even thought I'm feeling hopelessly behind.

I never get as much done over the summer as I had hoped. With only three weeks left before the beginning of the semester, I've had to make some hard choices about what I can realistically expect to get finished before classes begin. At the moment, I've got about 4 major projects part-way done. Now, I need to finish the ones that can be finished and get the others patched up enough to get through the fall.

I've been making good progress in putting together the syllabus for my Esperanto course. I'm looking forward to teaching that -- it looks like an interesting bunch of students. The hard part is trying to guess how much time it will take them out-of-class to do what I'm asking. It's hard to strike the appropriate balance.

I miss St. Croix. I miss being able to walk over and watch the ocean. I miss the easy camaraderie. I miss the quiet of the refuge. Still, drinking coffee out of my Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge mug, I can close my eyes and almost imagine I'm under the great blue sky with clouds streaming across... With palm trees overhead and the black-crowned night heron standing like a statue... With the tinkle of the shells and beach glass as little waves lap at the beach. Ah, St. Croix.

Grueling day of travel

We spent yesterday packing up and traveling home. Buzz and I got up early and while Buzz took Krissy to the airport, I started folding up traps and fixed some food for the boys and tried to get them moving. When he got back, we packed up everything that needed to be stored at the refuge. At the refuge, we couldn't get the vehicles into the gate, so we did a bucket brigade to pass stuff in through the hole in the fence and then dragged a hose and vacuum cleaner out through the fence to give the vehicles a quick sprucing up before turning them in. By the time we were done, I was drenched with sweat.

I put on my bathing suit and took one last long swim in the ocean. The sun was shining and the water was particularly clear. I dunked myself under the water to wash off the sweat and wiggled my toes in the cooler water near the bottom. I floated and watched the clouds stream across the sky. The beach was deserted at Cottages with just a few people farther down at the public beach swimming. I dunked myself again. Ahhhh...

We got everything packed and in the vehicles by noon. We dropped everyone off at the airport and then Buzz and I took the vehicles back, walked back to the airport, and started navigating the airport security and border control. The ticketing agent seemed particularly scrutinizing, asking Daniel how old he was and looking carefully at the picture in his passport. We learned eventually that Daniel had been randomly selected for special security screening. Everyone seemed to think it was questionable to subject a 12 year old to special security screening, but went through the motions. Poor Charlie learned he couldn't take his palm hat back to the states because of the potential for transmitting some palm mite. So the lucky palm trees in Massachusetts were successfully defended by border patrol and have nothing to fear from us.

The flights back were uneventful. We landed in Hartford at midnight and got home an hour later. On Monday, I go back to work.

Eventful last days

We've been incredibly busy the last few days. On Tuesday, we hit the botanical garden and the rum distillery. (Z is all set!) On Wednesday, we got a tour of the Hovensa refinery (thanks to a happenstance meeting in the Lost Dog). And today we went hiking, snorkeled in cane bay, drove up to the LEAP project, and stopped by the beer swilling pigs. Tonight we're planning to stop at the Lost Dog one last time.

The Hovensa tour was very interesting. We met a guy at the Lost Dog who is in the mid or upper administration of the refinery who wrangled us a tour. We arrived at 9:30, watched a short informational video, signed length forms which (among other things) stipulated that our only purpose in visiting the refinery was to sell food. We started with a visit to the docks, where the huge tankers come in. Then we got a driving tour of the refinery and got to see all of the different units. It was fascinating. The emphasis of our presentation was the lengths the refinery goes to in terms of safety -- especially environmental safety.

Abandoned rum factoryIn the afternoon, Buzz and I set out some traps on Mahogany road and Creque Dam road. While we were out, we stopped by an abandoned rum distillery where we'd heard there were bats. Boy, were there bats! There were huge numbers of bats. They didn't like being photographed much and began flying around us. The walls and floors were splattered with guano. It was cool.

Today, we got up early and headed out for Annaly Bay. We were supposed to park by Carambola and hike along a trail to a place with tide pools. We parked and started hiking, but pretty quickly Daniel and I realized that we weren't going to make it. It was already hot, incredibly humid, and there was no breeze. We climbed up a 15% to 20% grade for half an hour and were far behind the others and drenched with sweat. It looked like were were likely have to two or three climbs like that each way on the hike (which was around 2 miles long), so we decided to turn back. We walked back to the car, wrote a note to the others in the dust on the back of their jeep, and drove to a bar and grill in Cane Bay and I got a beer. (Daniel got a virgin strawberry daiquiri). We enjoyed the shade and breeze and aimed to get back around noon. We actually got back around 11:20. At 11:30, they returned. They hadn't ever found the trail. They climbed to the top of "scenic ridge" and were totally exhausted and soaked with sweat. I prevailed on everyone to come back to the bar and grill and we hung out there for an hour and everyone went snorkeling in Cane Bay.

Afterwards, we drove back up the mountain and found scenic ridge again. We drove back down the other day and ended up on Creque Dam road. We drove down to the main road and Buzz was ready to head up Mahogany Road to see the Beer Swilling Pig. We stopped at Project LEAP so Buzz could pay his respects to Fletcher Pense (by urinating on his grave). We ended our day at the Domino Club where you can purchase cans of beer to feed to a Beer Swilling Pig -- they have two: Grunt and Hurricane Rodger. We fed our cans of beer to Hurricane Rodger, who showered everyone with beer when he opened the cans. It was great fun.

Yet tonight, we plan to visit the Lost Dog one last time. Tomorrow, we pack up and head back home.

Dead mongooses, East End, Christiansted, and the trip back

Team Mongoose 2010As I write this, I'm sharing our dining room with a little zenaida dove under a tropical rain shower. He comes and visits every day jonesing for crumbs. He even looks inside the doors of the cottages.

We ran the traps early yesterday and then met up with Mike when we released the animals. We had gotten conflicting accounts about mongoose being trapped (and killed) on the refuge. Buzz had asked for them to scan any animals they killed for PIT tags -- or to freeze the carcasses of any animals they killed -- but had gotten no reports. But when we arrived, we had heard that animals were being removed, so we asked Mike what was happening. It turned out that there were a lot of animals in the freezer that no-one had told us about. We pulled out bag after bag of dead mongooses -- most not particularly well labeled, but at least some with dates and places. We left them to thaw in the tropical heat while we went out to the East End.

We drove along the south shore and out to Point Udall. They've fixed the road, which is nice -- it had gotten really bad. The last time we'd been out there, a fire had gone through, but this year, with all the rain, it was very lush. We got a nice group photo.

We drove back to Christiansted for dinner, since the brewpub was closed when we went there before. Buzz and I had a drink while the kids went shopping and then got a table upstairs before the Crab Races started. They have some new thing where people pay $5 to get a hermit crab and then they have races with them. Pretty barbaric.

Sunset over the boardwalk was gorgeous. We took our time walking back and got some nice pictures against the magnificent sky.

Once we got back, we sprang into action. At 9:30 at night, we pulled a table around the refuge to where there was an outside light and began pulling dead mongooses out of bags. Krissy labeled bags while Buzz and the others checked for PIT tags and dissected out the stomachs of the animals to take back for a dietary analysis. I held a light and recorded data. We got the stomachs of around 50 individuals and found 5 PIT tags. Buzz and I were both impressed at how the students jumped into the task and got it done.

Just a couple of days left...

Diving on the pier

The view from Polly's at the PierFredricksted has a pier that can accommodate the big cruise ships. There was a cruise ship here last Sunday, but this week one didn't come -- maybe they don't come on a weekly schedule. There's great snorkeling and the supports of the pier are covered with tubeworms and sponges. It turned out that someone needed to stay back and hold the car keys (because they have these electronic things on them now), so I volunteered to do that. I found a cute place called Polly's at the Pier where I could see the pier and had a cold drink in a nice breeze.

We put out a trail camera with a pile of chicken feet and have gotten some good videos of mongooses. Two mongooses visited the camera yesterday morning between 8 and 9. They were mongooses we had marked and we noticed some interesting things. We noticed that the first one was very suspicious of the chicken feet. She would grab one and jerk back, as if she was expecting something to try to trap her -- where would she get an idea like that? We also noticed that they don't really like to eat the chicken feet. They're attracted by the odor, but they don't seem to be able to find much in the way of anything edible on them. We also noticed that the hermit crabs are invisible to them. They completely ignore hermit crabs -- that suggests that they don't eat hermit crabs, unless maybe they're starving. I replaced the card in the trail camera and we'll see if we get anything new today.

Having fun

I've been too busy to write much. We ate at Angry Nates when the Fort Christian Brewpub was closed at lunch time. I like their slogans: "How about a nice glass of shut the f*** up" and "A job worth doing is a job worth doing drunk". We had another adventure at the Lost Dog. Stella spent half the evening on Charlie's shoulders.

Buzz and I picked up some lobsters and okra at the farmer's market yesterday and, over the course of the afternoon, prepared a big luau. Chris and Chad fixed the lobsters, Alyssa and Krissy fixed a big pan of macaroni and cheese, and I stir fried the okra with some onion and garlic. It was fabulous. Daniel had been worried that we would put the lobster in with the mac & cheese, but his fears were assuaged and everyone was happy with the results.

While the kids were fixing dinner, Buzz and I took the animals out and released them. I asked Charlie if he wanted to go "release the mongoose" and he thought about it and then declined. I said to Buzz, "Little does he know that 'release the mongoose' is a code for going to visit a brothel." He didn't quite catch what I meant, so I had to explain it to him, but then assured him that we weren't going to visit a brothel. I do think that "going to release the mongoose" would a great euphemism for going to a brothel, though.

Lazy morning

This morning, Buzz and the students are off to Buck Island. I spoke with the boys and they said they weren't that interested in doing the Buck Island tour again this year, so we're having a quiet morning back at Cottages. It's the first lazy morning I've had this trip. Daniel had one lazy morning when I was meeting with the refuge manager. Charlie's been able to have a lazy morning nearly every morning, although randomly cut short when Jonathan would want him for something -- but usually not until 9:30 or so. It's nice to take things slow for a change.

I'm setting up a couple of trail cameras which we'll put out sometime this afternoon to observe mongooses at the traps. When the boys get up, I'll see about organizing some laundry and then we'll drive over the Christiansted to meet the team when they get back from Buck Island. Normally, the trip would have been in the afternoon and have dinner at the brewpub, but BigBeards is only running morning trips in the slow season. It's a lot of work to get everything organized in time to get over there by 8:30. It's another reason I'm glad we didn't go.

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