Why Libertarians Can't Barbecue

Today marked the inaugural use of our new barbecue.

For the first few years of our marriage Taleena and I would go every spring to our local sporting goods store and pick up a cheap little propane powered grill; the sort of thing you'd toss in the back of the car and take to the beach for a picnic. We'd use it all summer long and by the time late September came around the grill would have worn itself out so in to the trash it would go.

Eventually my brother-in-law picked up a free BBQ from the side of the road. It was a gas grill that he stripped the guts from and turned in to a traditional charcoal unit. He left it at our house when we moved in and that has been our outdoor cooker in the two years since. That is until today.

About five weeks ago we ordered a new barbecue from Amazon.com and it was delivered last week. I finally went to the home supply store today and picked up a propane tank and got it filled thus allowing us to finally get a nice quick grilled dinner on the table. Or so I thought.

After putting all the parts together I tested it and went on my way to assemble the rest of dinner. Our menu for the first meal was a family recipe for marinated flank steak served on a bed of rice. So I dropped a couple of cups of rice in the cooker and grabbed the bowl marinating meat from the fridge.

Now this is where my libertarian sensibilities became disturbed. I hit the igniter on the grill and 'whoosh', a hot blue flame quickly ringed the burner. A few flicks of the tongs and about a dozen strips of juicy meat were sizzling on the grill. I closed the lid and stepped inside to slice up some watermelon. When I came back out to flip the strips I discovered that the barbecue was barely warm. I checked the flame and saw that is was small and low, putting off hardly any heat.

I checked all the connections, and attempted to restart the grill but with no success. The lid has a label on it with a phone number to call for help so I dialed up only to learn that their support hours don't match up with typical grilling times out here on the west coast. Grrrr. It was time to hit the internet.

On the FAQ of the CharBroil website I discovered the problem. It seems that in 1995 the government required an over-pressure valve be installed on all new gas grills. This device restricts the flow from the tank if the pressure is too great. This in turn causes the valve to freeze up and all of that caused my new grill to simply warm my dinner rather than give it a nice sear.

I'm sure that there is some safety value to having this valve in place but the Libertarian in me was getting irked that it was preventing me from simply enjoying a bit of grilled beef. I was unable to find any sort of adjustment or set screw and in the end had to keep pouring warm water over the valve to keep it from freezing up. Not an ideal situation but it did the job long enough to get dinner cooked.

Time to do some more research and figure out how other people are getting around this government imposed restriction to a plate full of sizzling meat.

Full Circle

In late 2004 I started the blog Life On A Pacific Island. It has gone through fits and starts since that time and changed formats many times.

I kept it here (at blogspot) for a while and then moved it over to a web server I built at home and kept in my small office. In that form I changed it around several times as I experimented with different web tools and content management systems. That was a fun experiment but ultimately it proved to be overkill and I shut the web server down. In fact that box is still sitting under my desk waiting for whatever the next project might be. (I'm thinking it might be a home PBX phone system.)

The next home for the blog was at a community website run by a fellow islander and IT professional. That was MyWhidbey.com and you can still read all of my past posts from that period by clicking here. It was a good home and Sebastian does a great job with the site. He was very helpful in developing several blogger friendly features.

With the move to my newest computer recently I decided to search for a blogging tool that would make it easier for me to write, edit, post and manage entries. I've found one I like and meets my needs but to make it work I needed to come back around to using the blogspot service. And that is why you see a bunch of old posts below.

Your bookmark of http://www.LifeOnAPacificIsland.com will still work (you do have it bookmarked, right?) but you may need to update your RSS feed if you're reading the website that way. I'll add a new link for that soon in the sidebar.

Also don't forget to check out my other blog Speak Like A Geek. And thanks for your readership.

Website Version 2.1

Once again it has come time to set this blog adrift on the sea of the blogoshpere. I have re-established www.LifeOnAPacificIsland.com and will be updating that instead.

Thanks for visiting here and come see me at the new site.

The Verbalist discovers recording his own voice

Just to prove that not all of my blog is geeky (sort of).....

Last night I brought home two purple Hot Wheels that a co-worker had given to me for the kids. He and received them as a promotional goodies from the Purple Pill People and had no real use for them. The kids loved them.

When they learned where the cars had come from the Verbalist (to borrow a phrase) decided it would be a good idea to send a thank you to my co-worker. His sister chimed in with a big "Ya!" Not wanting to squash a good instinct (especially since I am bad about thank-you notes) I started to reach for the colored construction paper and crayons; the basic tools of the under 10 crowd and especially the Muralist. But that is when it struck me to use a different set of tools better suited to the boy.

I have been playing with Audacity, a free sound recording and editing tool and decided to grab my laptop rather than the Crayolas for this project. I told the kids what I intended, namely to have them record a message saying thanks for the cars and that we would email it to my friend. The Verbalist is getting very computer savvy and understood quickly; his sister took a few more moments to chew on this but understood once we got going.

I hit the record button and told Harry to start talking and away he went, like a fish to water. Helen took a little prompting but followed her brother's lead if not so verbosely.

In the end I was able to edit it down to a neat little package and we emailed it off. This morning as I came in to the office Jim was at his desk while I walked by and said he got a kick out of the message.

Mission accomplished.

As a footnote to this story after recording the thank you message Harris announced that he wanted record a message to my parents who live about 200 miles away. We did, and they too enjoyed the audio greeting but I am afraid I may have opened Pandora's box. Just don't be shocked if you see an announcement for his newest podcast sometime in the near future.

Production vs Development

I was asked on Monday morning by a co-worker "So what have we learned about making changes to a production server?" He was making a joke but he had a point. I should have known better than to start messing around with a server that is up and running.

I took the comment to heart and last night built up a second computer to use as a development server. This will allow me to ask questions like "What happens when I do this?" without destroying several weeks worth of work.

As I mentioned in my previous post I have set PHP-Nuke aside in favor of a different CMS (web serving application). What that means to you is that the new website will have a cleaner and more professional look. It also means that I should have the photo gallery up with less hair pulling than I was experiencing while working on it under the old site.

Stay tuned web surfers; it may be low tide now but the surf will be coming up soon.

The Horror!

I'm still not sure how it happened but the whole file system on my personal webserver has died.

Lost. Gone. No More. Dead as in "This is an ex-parrot!"

As a result, the website that was is no more. I 'm in the process of putting it back together but it may take me a week or so. Please be patient.

The ironic twist to this story is that it was lost while I was trying to set up a second hard drive on that computer so as to have a place to mirror the entire site for JUST SUCH AN EMERGENCY. Damn, I hate irony; sarcasm I can take, but this just hurts.

Oh well.

On the bright side, I will be able to fix some of the issues I was having and might even look at using a different tool since I now know some of the problems with PHP Nuke.

Keep watching this space for updates.

The site is dead. Long live the site!

Going on the theroy that "there’s no time like the present" I have decided to close Life On A Pacific Island the blog and open Life On A Pacific Island the website.

So click on the link here or manually enter the the url http://www.LifeOnAPacificIsland.com in to your favorite browser. Be sure to update your bookmarks as well.

Thanks for visiting the blog and I look forward to seeing you at the new website.

One Step Closer To The Edge

Geek Warning: By now you all should know what that means; it's gonna get geeky in here. As usual, if that isn't your thing please feel free to surf on over to Sun Comprehending Glass or Island Passage. You won't hurt my feelings. For the rest of you, strap on your beanie hat and break out your slide rule. It's nerd time!

When last I left you I had just installed linux and was about to install Apache and PHP. I then learned that the good people at Fedora were about to release Core 4 on the 6th of June. Heck, I could wait a few more days and get the torrents for that. A few days came and went when I learned that the release was going to be pushed back another couple of weeks. I was feeling busy with other parts of my life (like the usual end-of-the-month drill at work) and decided not to worry about it too much.

Then, just a few days before the new release date a co-worker said that he had downloaded the CD images for Core 4 over the weekend. It seems (and I confirmed this from Slashdot) that one of the mirrors hosting the images was left unsecured over the weekend and lots of people ended up with 'pirate' copies before the official release. (Can one have a truly pirate copy of software that is under the GPL? Just a little something to wrap your head around while trying to fall asleep some night.)

Anyway, it took me another few days before I was finally able to sit down at my Frankenstein box and run the install but when I did I took care to include Apache, PHP and MySQL as part of the original package. This time everything went off without a hitch. And just to add some Cool Whip to the pie, since Core 4 is all new I didn't have to run an up2date or yum after I was done to upgrade anything. Shiney!

Now came the hard part: installing the content management system. For those who don't know a CMS is way to build a webpage dynamically. It uses PHP and MySQL to basically run a database report and present the results as a webpage. Each part of the page (such as a poll, blogroll, photo gallery or news item) is a node and those nodes are stored as records in the database. Take a look at Slashdot and This Week In Tech. The both use CMS tools to deliver their content. Look at them with an eye toward breaking each logical part of the page down into separate nodes (or modules if you prefer). Now store those nodes in a database and use something like MySQL to call the nodes you want to display. Take the report of nodes that MySQL gave you and use PHP to fit them in to a Cascading Style Sheet. Viola!

Go ahead, take a look at the examples the then come back. I can wait.

Now that you have a basic idea of what I am talking about you can see that the big advantage of a system like this in that it makes it easy for me as the admin to move, add or change the content very quickly. It also allows me to set up user accounts and with them permission to different things depending on who the user is. As an example I could choose to set up a public photo gallery of my scenic pictures and post a gallery of family photos that would only be visible to my family and close friends. Confused? Not to worry it took me a while to get it.

Another advantage is that I don't need to know much in the way of HTML. With all respect to my friends who work with HTML and even helped support their families with that knowledge (Stephen, I'm talking to you) I have no burning desire to get that deep in to tags and css. Having said that I do still have some css skills that I need to learn so as to customize the look of the site but for know I think I will go with one of the templates that are available out on the web for free.

This post is getting on the long side so I think I will pause the story here and tell you that the next geek post I will delve in to the strange world of trying to get the CMS installed.

Welcome Sun Lovers!

I saw that my wife linked back to here on her blog today so that people could get a peek at what The Verbalist, The Muralist and The Infant look like. To that end I thought I'd take a moment to let you know who is who in the photos below.

Scroll down to the boy holding the butterfly. That is the Verbalist and the picture was shot by Taleena. I am sure if you ask her she can tell you how that shot came to be.

The Muralist, or Princess Helen as she likes to be called at home (or Super Helen when the mood strikes her) is the one in the hat and glasses. You can see another picture of her by clicking here.

Lastly, if it was not obvious, the Infant is the sleeping baby in the picture between the Verbalist and the Muralist.

Perhaps we will take some time soon to actually post a picture or two of Taleena and I. Until then you will just have to make do with her words, my photos and rambling of a geek.

Coming soon: Fedora Core 4 install and PHPNuke vs. Drupal

Glamour Girl