Threads

My life has many threads. I had to come home today because the contractor repairing our house after trees fell on it (back in May) needed to get in to do some drywall work. Finally, the main work is done: the roof over the shed dormer is replaced and the work to bring the structure of the roof up to code is completed, and all the siding is back on the house. While we had the roof open, we got a lot more insulation installed too. Now, there are only a half-dozen small things to finish up.

While I was home, I found that there had been a power outtage in the building long enough to take down most of the department servers. And when they came back up, there was a problem with network connectivity in the intro labs. Or maybe it was authentication. I could talk to the machines via ssh, but couldn't authenticate. We've finally gotten ldap working -- after years of trying to make it happen and months of work. But now it wasn't. But it was working some places: the web authentication was working. And it was working in the other building. With those pieces of data, I realized that there must be a problem with the iptables on the NAT gateway so that ldap connections from clients in our building were being blocked. Sure enough, I found that the script that sets up the ruleset was not the most recent one. I flushed the rules and ran the correct script and stuff started working.

Other threads: Tom Hoogendyk and I have set up a system for managing digital signs in the building with a recipe based on drupal. The system has generated excitement at the college level where the experience using proprietary systems has been poor.

I've been trying to put the pieces in place to take a sabbatical working on an interesting project with the people at Sandy Point. Trying to get the University and the funding and the project all lined up has taken a lot of time recently.

I also had to fill out my AFR and go back over the past year and reflect on what I've accomplished -- and how little I've been able to focus on Science Education. I'm hopeful that we can find a way to rebalance my position so that I get to spend more time building educational resources and less time just managing infrastructure. You need the infrastructure to build the resources, but it's not what gets me up in the morning.

The haibun I wrote has been accepted at Belletra Almanako. It's about a father-and-son outing to Mount Sugarloaf. I'm working on the next haibun, about a Columbus-day road-trip a couple of years ago. And i have another story I'm thinking about submitted to Literatura Foiro. I've also been having fun writing some fiction. I had an idea for a story and have been exploring whether to try to make it into a novel. I started writing it before NaNoWriMo and, although I have an idea for another novel I'd like to write -- and I'd really like to participate in NaNoWriMo, I decided I couldn't spend the time.

Too many threads.