I will try to catch up a little for those who are not inclined to use farcebook…

Some catchup below the fold:

I had a lovely Thanksgiving and then went through a brief period of feeling out of touch with the world because my two jobs are resetting my natural clock and daily rhythm to a schedule that few of my friends share. I have learned that some people don’t mind a late night text and phone call, and for that I am grateful as I can talk to people on my drive home from the 2nd job. With both of us working two jobs, Erci and I are seeing less of each other so we’ve made an effort to have a date night now and then. We got to see the recent Muppet movie, and were delighted by the show, the dance numbers, and the appearance of both Jim Parsons and Neil Patrick Harris.

I once again (and pretty much every quarter) am very grateful to Mike Bombich for Carbon Copy Cloner which makes full backups of your Macs easy and you can boot from them. Highly recommended.

I took advantage of some employee discounts and replaced our original Time Capsule with a new one and our D-Link with an Airport Extreme for much faster wireless throughout the house. I am also replacing the Linux with Xen virtual Open Filer machine iSCSI disk share to an old Mac Mini as home media server with Linux NFS shared directly to newer Mac Mini as Media controller and AppleTV units as Media viewers. This is the sort of thing I find fun!

A lot of my personal project time got stolen when I discovered my 120 gallon marine reef aquarium spring a leak! Jeff Lofgren was my hero and helped me move the fish, shrimp, corals, and other living things to a variety of smaller tanks and coolers the day the leak was discovered, and most everything survived (though I did have one of the smaller tanks crash). I am trying to get the leak repaired so I can put the big tank back together again, but have not had time to really progress on it much.

Discovered that Domaine Raspail-Ay 2008 Gigondas is a spectacular wine while having a lovely dinner out with a special friend, highly recommended. I also found out that Fireworx pizza in Leesburg is delicious for those who can do gluten, thanks to co-workers for dragging me there.

ThinkGeek has some pretty spectacular iPad cases with integrated Bluetooth keyboards.

Cassandra and Jeff recommended and lent us “Across the Universe” and we finally watched it Christmas Day and it is both spectacular and moving. I went out and bought my own copies of both the movie and the soundtrack the very next day and have been listening to it ever since… beautiful dance numbers, some very compelling re-arrangements of Beatles music.

I am trying to get several appliances and home repairs done, and we keep running into no one wanting to pick up work, so I guess the economy must be recovering. I am learning that I despise the incompetence that is Sears Appliance Repair, and the fact that they seem to have bought out all the competition. Our Dacor oven has an F1 code alert, which indicates problem with the control panel. Our Viking under-counter fridge has been out for ages with a failed thermostat. We have a small roof leak over our kitchen. All will get fixed eventually, but it’s like pulling teeth to get people to come take our money and fix things.

I successfully replaced a 5th generation iPod classic hard drive and then sold it to a niece for the cost of the replacement parts, very happy that was so easy. Steve and Ashley helped me bring the 120 gallon tank outside and hose it out, and then my hero Jeff Lofgren and Alexandrea Lynch helped bring it back in on New Year’s Eve… Odd mystery, it did not leak when outside, nervous about filling it without having done a repair…

Jill and Eddie hosted the Molecular Mixology blow-out bash to bring in the New Year at their place and Kate, Erci, and I joined many friends there and had a fantastic time being irresponsible… I discovered that coughing after sipping Pyrat rum over a bonfire can be a mini-fireworks show!

Now I am recovering from a fairly nasty ear/throat virus and then infection… Life is always full of surprises.

Virginia Board of Elections

If you are unsure of your district, or where to vote – you can enter your County or City and Address on this website and find out about your districts and voting location:

What’s on My Ballot

All polling places will be open from 6am to 7pm on Tuesday, November 8th.

Many state senate offices are being challenged. All state legislature delegates are up for re-election. Many county and city offices are also having elections.

These state and local elections have very far reaching impacts as the redistricting was decided by the winners of the last set of state and local elections, and the winners can shift the balance in the U.S. Congress by several seats per state each redistricting. It is one of the failures of our democracy, but one we have to live with until we amend the constitution.

Go vote and make your voice heard, even if your vote is for “None of the above.”

Also a good time to clean gutters and make sure drain tile is connected to down spouts and is clear of debris.

I am in a new House of Delegates district because of the 2010 U.S. Census and redistricting, the new district is the 87th and because it is new there is no incumbent advantage. The Democratic party is deciding a candidate based on convention, but there is really only one person running for the Democrats for district 87 right now, and that is Mike Kondratick. The Republicans have a primary, August 23rd, to pick between Jo Ann Chase (Tea Party whackjob) and David Ramadan (club-for-growth anti-tax guy); who will then run against Mike Kondratick.

I am also in a new State Senate district, the new 13th district and once again there is no incumbent advantage. The Democratic party is deciding based on convention again and the only person running appears to be Shawn Mitchell. The Republicans are using the August 23rd primary to choose between Dick Black (yeah, the plastic fetus guy), John T. Stirrup (current anti-immigration ass-hat in Prince William County), and Bob FitzSimmonds (Kook-in-elli’s henchman and anti-immigration idiot); who will then run against Shawn Mitchell.

It looks like my U.S. Congressional district is still the 10th, so I will continue to fight to replace Frank Wolf who is not good for veterans, education, nor people being yet another corporate shill doing the bidding of big-business lobbyists every chance he gets.

Prince William County has a Republican Primary Election on August 23rd, the deadline for new voter registration is August 1st.

Within Prince William County it looks like Babur B Lateef of the Democratic Party and John S Gray an independent candidate will be challenging incumbent Republican Corey A. Stewart for the office of chairman of the county board of supervisors.

There are also races for each county supervisor seat, I am still in the Gainesville district where there are five Republicans running in the August 23rd primary to face off against Democratic candidate Ann Wheeler. The Republicans seeking to replace John Stirrup (who has, as predicted, run off to seek State Senate office) are:
Martha W. Hendley, Steven M. Botello, Suzanne N. Miller (campaigning on job creation and education, unusual for a Republican), Peter K. Candland, and Michael J. High. You know as much about them as I do so far…
A few of them don’t have websites that I can find (yet) so I linked to their VPAP contributions page.

It looks like I am now in House of Delegates District 87 (used to be 13):

http://redistricting.dls.virginia.gov/2010/DistrictMaps.aspx

I can’t quite tell if I will be in State Senate district 13 or 28 (used to be 29) because the PDF map resolution and detail is not good enough to locate my house on the map:

http://redistricting.dls.virginia.gov/2010/DistrictMaps.aspx

I am disgusted that the publicly funded redistricting maps require proprietary (although free) and security nightmare Microsoft Silverlight to view them.

Update: Some quick analysis over at DailyKos:
Virginia Redistricting Analysis

About the new 87th, Johnny Longtorso writes:
“The new district went 59-41 for McDonnell and 54-45 for Obama. Democrats have grassroots organizer Mike Kondratick running, while Republicans will choose between Virginia Republican Party official Jo Ann Chase and consultant David Ramadan in the August 23 primary.”

About the new 13th, Johnny Longtorso writes:
“Marshall’s district was, I believe, the most overpopulated district in the House before redistricting; it had enough population for two districts. So a lot of precincts had to be removed: the northern portion of the district, including Loudoun County and the northwestern end of Prince William, was moved off to create the new 87th district, while the south end of the district around Manassas is chopped off and added to the 50th and 51st districts. This leaves us with a spindly tentacle that reaches from the Haymarket area to Bull Run, picks up Manassas Park, and adds the bit of Prince William that’s wedged between Fairfax and Manassas. This leaves a district that’s slightly improved for Democrats, having gone 61-39 McDonnell and 55-44 Obama, but which retains Marshall’s base in western Prince William County.

The 13th always seems to be fools’ gold for the Democrats; Marshall has had a tight grip on this district, and always manages to win, even while being outspent. Nevertheless, they’re trying again; Air Force veteran and defense contractor Carl Genthner is giving it a go this time. We’ll see how Marshall does in his newly-slimmed down district.”

Update 2: Better Maps at VPAP.org, thanks VPAP!
http://www.vpap.org/updates/redistricting_maps

That may work for a lot of people, but we’d be in the shadow of Bull Run Mountain

Another option might be:
novawireless.net

Not quite as fast as Comcast; and prices are no better, but they must have better service and support and manners.

The driver for this change is that Comcast wants to increase the cost of our internet service because we are canceling Cable TV service because they unilaterally dropped The Weather Channel, MSNBC, FX, TBS, TNT, History Channel, A&E, Bravo, TLC, Discovery, Travel Channel, Food, and Comedy Central from our Limited Cable package.

This is a repeat message for those who missed a similar one last month; I already have several people on the list.

Qualifications/Education Requirement:

* Requires a bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent
* Minimum of 7-10 years of experience in the Information Security field
* CISSP, CISM, CISA, and/or others a plus
* Experience managing a 24x7x365 operations environment
* Ability to communicate clearly and effectively with both technical teams and non-technical management

Sr Project Manager – Technical Projects

Qualifications/Education Requirement:

Bachelor’s degree. Minimum 8 years in project management/coordination. Experience with CMMI or ISO9000 is a plus. Software systems development and hardware implementation. Ability and desire to quickly gain domain and business knowledge. Extensive hands-on experience with Project management tools (e.g. MS Project Standard or Server). Excellent organization, verbal and communication skills.

Systems Data Analyst

Qualifications/Education Requirement:

* High level of comfort working with monitoring and metrics infrastructure
* Experience managing and analyzing KPI’s for a technical organization
* Self-starter who is able to build consensus around goals beneficial to the organization
* Proven ability working within technical architecture and related end-to-end data flow
* General level of understanding of internet protocols
* In depth experience utilizing Excel or other tools to effectively present graphs, dashboards and reports
* Familiarity with processing data via scripting languages (such as Perl, Excel/VBScript or other tools)
* Experience extracting data from databases via GUI-based tools (e.g. Access, OBIE, etc.)

VP Network Engr & Ops

Qualifications/Education Requirement:

· Successfully led Engineering operations for a publically traded, global company exceeding $1 billion in annual revenue

Possess a deep understanding of operational management practices and technologies, including: data networks, data center operations, servers & storage, service desk operations, and the technologies that support/enhance the online customer experience

· Extensive experience in managing large scale Data Centers to Tier 4 standards; mastery of production technology platform management and operations, experience in providing a robust and scalable network environment in conjunction with a track record of a creative and entrepreneurial approach to the delivery of technology innovation

· Experience with developing and deploying telecommunications and internet focused solutions

· Experience managing in a SAS 70/PCI/SOX compliant environment

· Minimum of ten years of professional experience in roles with significant IT management responsibility

· Bachelor’s degree is required, an advanced degree is preferred

· Must have led an Engineering/IT group that had to deal with multiple offices both domestically and internationally as well as serving remote employees

· Exceptional written and verbal communication skills and the ability to communicate complex technology concepts to non-technical audiences

· Proven experience in outsourcing enterprise application and services, as well as developing and monitoring related Service-level agreements

· A strong interest, talent and intellect for engaging and partnering with employees to support the range of technical needs presented are critical

· Must demonstrate proven ability to: a) creatively resolve problems in close consultation with stakeholders and, b) build consensus among differing perspectives to reach decisions that leverage the company’s use of technology in service of its mission

· In-depth knowledge of emerging technology trends in the area of IT architecture, software development and large data warehousing tools is essential Previous experience with mergers and acquisitions.

Systems Operations Specialist II
Qualifications/Education Requirement:

* Excellent customer service aptitude
* Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
* Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills
* Proficient with UNIX or Linux, MS Office Suite, and Netcool.
* Working knowledge of RADIUS, ACE, SecurID, and SQL.
* Familiarity with MS Windows, MS SharePoint, MAC OS, Oracle, Siebel, eHealth, CACTI, SNMP, syslog, traffic shaping, DNS, WAN, or LAN would be pluses.
* Able to work shifts; including nights, weekends, and holidays.

Storage Engr
Overview/Job Summary:

Responsible for the daily operations, configurations, administration, and security of the Neustar storage and backup systems(in US and international sites), including maintaining reliability, performance, and availability of the environment. Perform basic troubleshooting and service recovery assignments. This is a 24 x 7 operational support with an on-call rotation. The candidate must be able and willing to support 24 x 7 and perform off-hour on-site change management tasks (especially from Saturday midnight through late Sunday morning) and travel on short notice.