The thought struck me the other day that it might be nice to stick most of my computers into rackmount cases, so as to free up some leg room under my desks. Newegg has some at pretty reasonable prices. But then I started looking for racks to put them in.

¡Ay caramba! Those things are expensive! The cheapest one I found after looking through five sites was about $1700 for a bare-bones 14U frame. No walls, no door, no top - just the rack frame itself. Since that seemed like a lot of money for a glorified Erector Set, I wondered if I could build one, so I googled for the specs. And nestled in the Wikipedia entry on rack units, I found the line: Professional audio and video gear often comes with rack mount options and use the same measurement specifications.

What a price difference. A basic 20U rack - no door or back, but solid sides, top and bottom - goes for about $200 from a music supply site. "Pizza box" servers are a bit deeper than audio gear, but as long as the rack is backless, that shouldn't be an issue.

The moral of the story: corporations with large data centers tend to have much more money than musicians do, so their equipment is priced accordingly.

When I've ordered something online, I have a tendency tend to obsessively track it on the delivery carrier's Web site. Which gets annoying when something sits at its first stop for three days, so as not to arrive early, heaven forbid.

I love how UPS never admits to being late with a package - if they should happen to fail to deliver it by the specified delivery date, the status changes from "In Transit - On Time" to "In Transit - Rescheduled".

"Oh, your package isn't late, sir. It's just been rescheduled."

Well, I suppose it could be worse. I could see "TRAIN DERAILMENT" in the status field...

Most nights, I play iSketch (sort of like online Pictionary) with a great group of people. Unlike most iSketch "rooms", which will just draw the given word "as is", we usually try to add a twist to our draws, to make things more challenging (and, if possible, funny).

Last night we were playing with a wordlist consisting of two- or three-word phrases. I was particularly proud of this draw:

Sadly, only two people guessed the phrase.

Robert,

L74 has been in the Remote Sites folder for weeks. It's right between L73 and M01. Please make sure you're sorting that window alphabetically.

Regarding the daily server report, if you open up today's and look at the very top, under the section titled "The following servers had no unusual errors or warnings", you will find L74. I know it's unusual for a server to be up in that section, but we do actually have a few of those.

-- Jeff

...really? A highly complex computer chip from the future is damaged by an explosion, and just scraping at it with an X-Acto knife is enough to repair the damage?

In Part I of our Conversation, [Landlord] promised to be over Friday afternoon. It is now Sunday afternoon. I have been calling both his home and cell numbers since yesterday, trying to reach him to find out why he hasn't made good on his promise. Finally, he answered his cell phone:

Hello?

Hello, [Landlord]?

Hello?

Hello.

Hello? Anyone there?

Nice try. I know you can hear me.

What? Hello, who is this?

This is Jeff. Your tenant on x^th Street.

Well, I don't have no tenants on (x+2)^th Street. Goodbye.

*click*

Fifteen more minutes of calling him back and going to voicemail - which he hasn't set up, so it won't let me leave a message. Finally:

Hello?

Hello, [Landlord]. This is Jeff. Your tenant on x^th Street.

This ain't [Landlord].

Well, this is [Landlord]'s phone number.

No, this ain't [Landlord]. I found this phone on the floor.

*click*

I guess he found [Landlord]'s voice on the floor, too.

If I needed any more evidence that the basement windows aren't particularly well sealed, the five-inch-long great grey slug crawling down the wall under the window casement was a fairly good clue.

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." -- John McCain, in an article for Contingencies (Sep/Oct 2008).

If the erstwhile media-friendly candidate were actually taking questions from reporters these days, it would be nice to hear if he still feels that deregulating another profession is still a grand idea, given its recent results in the banking industry.

Come to think of it, it would be interesting to learn why, until last week, he was still so gung-ho on financial deregulation, given his personal history with its results.

From Forbes.com:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Now, remember, the people behind the bailout plan are conservatives. You know, the ones who belong to the "party of fiscal sanity".

I've been watching more political TV the last few nights, and since I'm mainly watching in real time, I haven't been able to skip commercials like I normally do. One which stands out is for the Mercedes-Benz M Class automobile. If it senses an impending impact, assures the advertisement, it automatically rolls up the windows to help deflect energy around the passengers.

When I lived in Connecticut, a friend of mine was a paramedic (and, later, and EMT). He was required by law to stop at any accident scenes and offer assistance. I saw more than a couple, but the one which has stuck in my mind was the one where the driver of one of the vehicles had his window half-rolled down, and had been resting his arm on top of the window. Let's just say I think of that accident whenever I see a French rack of ribs.

Now, obviously, the M Class will need to roll up the windows fairly quickly and suddenly when it senses a crash about to occur. What does Mercedes-Benz expect will happen if someone has an arm hanging out the window?