Committed

My boss and I are in Des Moines, IA on a reasonably big job. It's big in that if this project goes well, we'll be booked with work for the next couple of years -- on top of our already hectic schedule.

During some downtime earlier this evening we were trying to get a handle on the real-world performance of the new Cisco 1250-series access point. I'm not often swayed by the latest widget or the claims bandied about by the spinsters. But I'll say this: it truly is an amazing piece of technology. It far exceeds anything else I've worked with -- and not just in throughput. It actually takes advantage of a particular kind of interference that we have always dreaded, multipathing, and enables the access point to perform better as a result of it. It's hard to believe without seeing it firsthand.

To try to get a handle on realistic throughput, we decided to move a large file between the testing laptop and a laptop set up as an FTP server. That file happened to be a .avi of the move: The Commitments. After we were done with the test, I thought I'd watch just a little bit of the movie.

I had forgotten what a fantastic movie it is. It's surely one of the best music movies of all time, with a strong commentary on the state of things in industrial, working-class Dublin. The movie came out in 1991, but I doubt that much has changed there.

If you haven't, see it.

What a difference a day makes

I started a project on the 33rd floor of The BP Building in downtown Cleveland on Wednesday. It's really quite a spectacular view from up there.

Here is a view looking to the west towards The Warehouse District and out to what's referred to as The Gold Coast of Lake Erie. In the bottom right corner of the photo is The Old Stone Church. It's a nice place. I've shot two weddings there. The minister, however, must think he's running a concentration camp. You can't do anything she deems inappropriate -- like sneeze. You'll be banned for life. Yes, really.

Anyway, in this picture is the west side of Cleveland it looks to be marginally less of a toilet than the rest of Cleveland. It looks that way, anyway.

Yeah, it's Cleveland, so don't get too excited. But for us surface-level, worker-drone types, it's a rare treat to see the world from this perspective.

I was fairly snap-happy, so I took lots of pictures -- many of which I knew would be lame. Here is a lame picture of Public Square:


Nothing special -- again, just a chance to see it from a different vantage point. Pay special attention to the top right corner of the photo, the area where there is a car initiating a right turn.

Today, that same maneuver wouldn't have been possible:


A closer look?

Yes.

It seems that a water main dating back to the 1880's (!!) broke.

The nerve. And marvel at the 20 or so people in yellow vests staring at the hole in the ground.

Your tax dollars at work, they are.

As my mother pointed out, in a *real* city -- a city with real traffic, this sort of thing would have been paralyzing. When I drove down there, I encountered not a single problem.