These are my links for August 30th:

• AFP548 – Kerberos Part 2 – Kerberos on OS X –

Irondale High School was built in 1967, and sometime between when it was built and when I started attending, another section of classrooms was added on to the building. This section had blazing red carpet, and so naturally, we all called it the “Red Carpet” area. The Red Carpet area was home to the Language Arts classrooms, the Social Studies area, and the Media Center. The other hallmark of this section of the building was the so-called “moveable” walls. The walls were all large panels of something like fiberglass, and were designed to be moveable, so they could be reconfigured fairly easily into different classroom configurations. The result was that the rooms were always noisy, because you could always hear the classrooms next to the one you were in, and things like electrical outlets and light switches were always weird. Since these were just temporary walls, all of the electrical stuff was in the ceiling, including the light switches. All of the teachers had long poles they would use to press the light switches in the ceilings. It was bizarre.

I walked up to the Red Carpet area to see how it looked today, and I was glad to see that they finally remodelled it into something a lot more functional. First and foremost — the red carpet is gone. In place of it, they have installed institutional beige vinyl tile. It isn’t beautiful, but it is easy to maintain, and it is much less ugly than the red carpet was. Secondly, the moveable walls are all gone. They put up sheet rock walls, and along the hallways, the sheetrock is covered with nice ceramic tile, which makes the walls much more durable. I didn’t go in any of the classrooms, but I’m guessing that the ceiling light switches are now gone and that normal light switches are in their place.

As a former classroom teacher, I looked at the changes to the red carpet as good choices to make those classrooms more conducive to teaching and learning. As I walked around the new area though, I have to admit that part of me is sad to see those changes. The red carpet area of my youth, as ugly as it was, did have a lot of character. Because of that, it was a much more memorable place. Some of my favorite teachers and some of my happiest memories of my high school years happened in that part of Irondale. Now that part of the school has effectively been replaced. Oh well. I guess you can’t stop the wheels of progress.

–Pete

Yesterday I attended the 40th Anniversary Celebration for Irondale High School, in New Brighton. I was a graduate of Irondale way back in 1990. For the celebration, they had an all class reunion, and invited anyone who was an alumni of Irondale to come and visit the school and reconnect with old friends.

Wow! What a trip down memory lane. I drove into the parking lot and immediately flashed back to all of the times I drove into that lot as a high school student. Early morning Jazz Band rehearsals, late afternoon Odyssey of the Mind practice, Band Concerts, play practice. It goes on and on…. Strangely, as I sat in that parking lot, it felt like home….at least until I turned and looked at the building itself. The building looks totally different on the outside than it did when I attended. Not that it was bad….just different. Irondale was remodeled a few years ago and the main student entrance was completely redone, and that whole section of the building got a nice face lift.

I exited my minivan and ran through the rain soaked parking lot to the front doors and walked in to this foreign looking building and was greeted again with familiarity. It seems that through the remodeling, much of the interior of the building had been cleaned and freshened, so while it wasn’t exactly the same, it still carried the familiarity of home. As I walked about the building and talked with some of my old teachers and classmates, it began to feel more and more like walking back in time more than 17 years to my glory days of high school. (Yes — i was one of the strange kids who loved school. That, I’m sure, is why I spent part of my career as a teacher.)

I’ve decided I’m going to do a series of posts reminiscing about my time at Irondale, and also about what has changed since I attended there, and what has stayed the same.

More to come….

–Pete

You all probably remember that my wife and I have two llamas. They are both males and their names are Placoon and Catazo. Every year, in this climate at least, llamas need to be sheared. The first year we had them, we just had them cut around their body, but left their legs and neck long. This year they were so shaggy, we decided to have them body clipped. The person who clipped them lives near our house, so after they were clipped, my wife brought them by the house so the neighbors can meet them. Oh yeah — I’m sure you figured this out, but they normally live at our friend’s farm. My wife took this nice portrait of Catazo and I while we were standing in the front yard. Isn’t he cute?

–Pete

These are my links for August 17th:

• TidBITS: Stewing Over Safe Sleep –
• TidBITS: Safe Sleep Revisited –

So just as I was settling down for a quiet evening of blogging, surfing, and just general goofing around, the power went out in my neighborhood. I don’t know whst the cause is, but now I’m stuck trying to do all of that stuff on my iPhone instead. Don’t get me wrong – I love my iPhone, but I was really looking forward to a nice big Cinema display…

–Pete

These are my links for August 9th:

• Company Policy for Paid Time Off (PTO) Vacation, Holiday & Bereavement Leave –
• Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership Center Helpful Links –
• Paid time off abuse adds up – Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal: –

Yesterday I spent a few hours up at Beacon Shores resort in Cross Lake. My family has been staying there off and on for 27 years. It is hard to believe that it can be that long. I love that part of Minnesota very much — almost as much as the North Shore. I did take a bunch of sunset photos while I was there. I’m hoping one turned out good enough to post hete from my photo of the week.

One last thing. This blog entry was written on my iPhone.

–Pete

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was out at the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI this past weekend. We had a great time, but this particular AirVenture will be remembered as one of the darker ones. The reason, is that last Friday, during the afternoon airshow, there was a terrible accident involving two P-51 Mustangs. Unfortunately, that accident resulted in the death of one of the pilots, a man named Gerry Beck. I didn’t know Mr. Beck personally, but I knew who he was and I do think I actually met him once. In addition to Gerry’s death, the airplane he was flying, a complete reproduction of the P-51A Mustang was destroyed.

So why is Gerry’s death significant to me? The answer lies in his role in the aviation community. Gerry owned Tri-State Aviation, a shop in North Dakota that was involved in restoring World War II era aircraft. His work was legendary and he was also known as an extremely nice individual to be around. He had a passion for keeping these old airplanes flying, and a passion for flying in general. Gerry’s absence will be keenly felt in the warbird community here in in the Upper Midwest in so many ways.

My prayers go out to Gerry’s family and to the family of Casey Odegaard, the other Mustang pilot involved in the crash. Casey will live to fly another day, but I know that he and Gerry were friends and this accident must be devastating for him as well.

For more information on the accident, follow this link.
For a chance to see what this Mustang looked like before the accident, follow this link.

–Pete

It is hard for me to put together my thoughts on this tonight, but it is such a major event, I think I have to at least try. You’ve probably seen the news reports on this already, but tonight as I was standing in the lobby of the hotel I’m at, I learned that the Interstate Highway 35W bridge that crosses the Mississippi River near the HHH Metrodome collapsed without warning, injuring 50+ people and killing 6+ people as well.

I saw the “Breaking News” on the TV from a distance when I came into the hotel and walked towards it to see where the earthquake was. The image looked just like the images of the collapsed freeway in California during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. I was extremely surprised to see the caption say that the images were from Minneapolis. I was even more surprised to see which bridge it was. That bridge is *HUGE*. It has been there for longer than I’ve been alive. How could THAT have suddenly collapsed??

The good news for me is that my family is all fine. None of us live particularly near that bridge anymore, and none of my family need to cross it all that regularly either. Thank God. It wasn’t too many years ago that we lived much closer to it and had a need to cross it pretty regularly.

The implications for the future are huge — not even counting how this has changed the lives of the families who lost loved ones or have to deal with the aftermath of a critically injured family member. That road is a MAJOR artery in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area — it is eight lanes wide! Losing that road will royally screw up traffic all across the area for at least a year and probably more. I can imagine it will take at least a year, and probably two or more, to remove the debris and replace the bridge with something else.

One of my co-workers put it pretty eloquently when I was chatting with him earlier about this. He said, “In a way, you should be thankful to be in a traffic jam tomorrow.” He’s right. I could be one of the poor souls who was crossing the bridge when it dropped. Given the choice, I think I’ll pick the traffic jam.

I’m sure there will be more on this later.

–Pete

This past weekend I attended the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI. AirVenture is a week-long airshow/convention. I try and attend every year or two. The Oshkosh airport is the busiest airport in the world during the show. As always, it is a great opportunity to take photos. I snapped this photo in the warbird area. I don’t know who this P-51 belongs to, but it is a gorgeous example.

–Pete

These are my links for July 31st:

• AppMarks – A little website that gives you a way to bookmark iPhone friendly web applications.
• Introduction to Unix commands – Knowledge Base –
• Unix commands reference card –
• OS X commands – A nice website that goes through various Mac OS X Command Line commands.

These are my links for July 27th:

• Report to NASA claims astronauts flew while drunk| Reuters –

These are my links for July 24th:

• Spymac.com :: News :: Safari use drops in June – An interesting article about Safari

These are my links for July 23rd:

• Saving a packet trace in Mac OS X – This article goes over how to use the commandline tool tcpdump to do a packet trace from your computer.
• Mac OS X: Firmware Updates for Intel-based Macs – A very useful article that details out what versions of the Boot ROM firmware and SMC firmware are the most current for Intel based Macs

Last weeks post was from my flower photo shoot around town. This one is from the same photo shoot. This is a patch of wild daisies that were blooming near a pond that I walk by almost every day when we’re walking the dogs.

–Pete

These are my links for July 18th:

• Mac OS X Server 10.3 or later: Avoid spaces and long names in network home directory name, path –

These are my links for July 17th:

• Setting different timeout values for the Active Directory Plug-in – This article goes through how to set shorter timeout values for the Active Directory Plugin

These are my links for July 16th:

• System relies on ice to chill buildings – Yahoo! News – An interesting article about using blocks of ice to cool a building in the summer
• Mac OS X: How to add a URL (@) icon to the Dock –
• Mac OS X Server 10.4: Network requirements to host a Software Update server –

I took an hour today and walked around the little town I live in, taking photos of flowers around town. I managed to snap a bunch of great photos, and here is one of my favorites from the group. This was actually taken in my own front yard.

–Pete