Last weekend Reagan and I went with Beth and Brian to the Witte Museum to see OUR BODY: The Universe Within. The exhibit contains 20 actual complete human specimens. Mmmmm…tasty:

According to their website all of the bodies originated from China:

All of the anatomical specimens contained in Our Body: The Universe Within originate from China and have been provided for the exhibit consistent with the laws of China. The anatomical specimens are not owned by the exhibitors, but are provided by a Chinese foundation to promote educational and medical research of the human body. While we do not have the specific identity of each anatomical specimen, they have been donated through medical schools and other research facilities in China to promote education, science and medical research of the human body.

The exhibit will be in San Antonio until May 26th.

Life - No Comments »

I took in 10 books today to sell. The combined retail value of these books is well over $200, probably closer to $300. One of them still carries the $76.00 sticker price. When I heard the loud speaker call out my name I was full of excitement. My offer was ready. I thought, “How much will I get? I could really use $50 in my pocket!”

“Two dollars, sir”, from the man behind the counter. I think he probably began to explain why but the message was lost in my growing desire to climb over the counter.

“Total?”, I asked. He quickly confirmed and I made the walk of shame out of the store with the same number of books that I had entered with.

Life - 2 Comments »

With the Super Bowl two weeks from today here are some fun facts about the big game. Source: NFL 2007 Postseason Media Guide unless otherwise noted.

- A visitor to South Florida typically spends $146-$245 daily on hotels, meals, local transport and entertainment. For Super Bowl XLI visitors spent $668.60 daily, not including game tickets.

- The historic Lambeau Field in Green Bay was built in 1957. This football shrine is the oldest stadium still in use by an NFL club. The next oldest? San Francisco’s Monster Park was a built a year later.

- The San Francisco 49ers are the only organization to win more than two Super Bowls without losing one. They are 5-0. Four belong to Joe Montana, one for Steve Young.

- The next three Super Bowl host cities are Arizona (this year), Tampa, and Miami. Dallas will host Super Bowl XLV in their newly built stadium in 2011.

- No offensive players other than quarterbacks, receivers, and running backs have ever been a Super Bowl MVP.

- Super Bowl weekend is the slowest weekend for weddings (Source: USA Today)

- San Francisco police reported arrests for minor crimes dropped from an average of 360 daily to 96 on the day of Super Bowl XVI between the 49ers and
Cincinnati Bengals.

- According to the Associated Press, 80 percent of Super Bowl ticket holders are in executive, management, professional, or sales positions; 35 percent attend the game on corporate expense accounts; 27 percent own their own companies; 25 percent are corporate officers; and 22 percent are on boards of directors.

- For Super Bowl XXXIV, 17 of the 60 ads during the broadcast were bought by Internet companies, compared with 1 for Super Bowl XXXI in 1997. (Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

- For Super Bowl XXXVI Fox used 27 TV cameras. For a typical broadcast they used 12.

- The first four Super Bowls did not use the roman numeral notation.

- You could buy a ticket to Super Bowl I for $6. The cheapest face value ticket this year is $700.

- While the final episode of M*A*S*H is the most viewed television show of all time (Feb. 28, 1983), 8 of the top 15 most viewed shows are Super Bowls.

Sports - 1 Comment »

Last Wednesday my team from the office went to the lake for a day of fun. As I was being pulled 30 mph behind a wakeboarding boat I realized that I hadn’t laughed this hard in a long while. Holding on as if my life depended on it we whipped side to side. My goal was to hold on, the drivers goal was to send us flying off the raft. Good times. As you can see from the video we took a pretty nasty spill.

I now make daily visits to the chiropractor. 4 down, 44 to go over the next few months.

Was it worth it? You bet. I needed a good laugh.

Life - 4 Comments »

I heard something downstairs tonight and figured that Reagan couldn’t sleep because she was thinking of the upcoming school year. I look to my left and I see that Reagan is still fast asleep. “Oh well, it was probably nothing”, I convince myself. Minutes later I hear the distinct sound of a computer keyboard. I have to go check it out.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Burning the midnight oil was my four month old daughter all hopped up on Dr. Pepper. Mastering Regular Expressions? I can’t even get through that entire book…

Geek, photo - 2 Comments »

There’s a great column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about how it must feel to be Michael Vick these days:

How must it be, being Michael Vick?

From prince of this bustling city to pariah of an entire country; from idol of millions to cheap joke on the “Tonight Show;” from having too many friends to having no friends at all — how must that feel? How must it feel to arise each morning believing the walls have moved ever closer in the dark of night?

You can, and should, read the full version here.

Sports - 1 Comment »

John blogged about his first DIY Macro Studio attempt and it was enough to motivate me to bring mine back out of the closet. Here’s my first attempt from a few months ago:

Now that I have two flashes I could hit the light box from both sides. Here’s today’s version:

Can’t forget the setup shot:

John, you had two pieces and I didn’t get any?

photo - 2 Comments »

I’m a big fan of the Colbert Report and my favorite recurring segment is called “Better Know a District”. Colbert interviews a member of Congress and asks questions about the district that they represent. The combative interviews are always full of laughs. Here’s one of my favorites:

If the video does not show above here’s a direct link.

Uncategorized - No Comments »

I was reading a little bit about Apache optimization tonight and an article suggested offloading all image requests to a lighttpd server via mod_proxy. On the surface it made a lot of sense because a sysadmin can throw mod_proxy and lighttpd up without needing to notify web developers or change site content. However, from my tests it looks like Apache + mod_proxy + lighttpd is slower than just Apache and much slower than a standalone lighttpd server for static content. For my tests I used the http_load application.

Case 1 – lighttpd v1.4.15 serving a 9.05k image file

# http_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 url
183259 fetches, 10 max parallel, 1.69881e+09 bytes, in 10 seconds
9270 mean bytes/connection
18325.9 fetches/sec, 1.69881e+08 bytes/sec
msecs/connect: 0.0889203 mean, 3.338 max, 0.023 min
msecs/first-response: 0.340411 mean, 9.85 max, 0.11 min
HTTP response codes:
code 200 -- 183259

That’s 183,259 requests handled in 10 seconds.

Case 2 – Apache v2.2.3 serving a 9.05k image file

# http_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 url
88581 fetches, 10 max parallel, 8.21146e+08 bytes, in 10.0002 seconds
9270 mean bytes/connection
8857.92 fetches/sec, 8.21129e+07 bytes/sec
msecs/connect: 0.115481 mean, 5.775 max, 0.021 min
msecs/first-response: 0.799573 mean, 69.448 max, 0.102 min
HTTP response codes:
code 200 -- 88581

88,581 requests in 10 seconds. Clearly lighttpd is faster. What happens if we combine them as the article suggests?

Case 3 – Apache v2.2.3 + mod_proxy + lighttpd v1.4.15

# http_load -parallel 10 -seconds 10 url
39435 fetches, 10 max parallel, 3.65562e+08 bytes, in 10.0001 seconds
9270 mean bytes/connection
3943.47 fetches/sec, 3.65559e+07 bytes/sec
msecs/connect: 0.180241 mean, 7.756 max, 0.022 min
msecs/first-response: 2.05521 mean, 150.937 max, 0.301 min
HTTP response codes:
code 200 -- 39435

38,435 requests served in 10 seconds. This is worse than a standalone Apache web server.

My conclusion: Use http://images.domain.com/ for your static content and let lighttpd serve it as fast as possible.

Geek - 4 Comments »

My team spent the afternoon in the park playing sand volleyball, flag football and kickball. John Strunk used his new digital camera to create some videos that are now on YouTube.

Me nailing BK during kickball:

Me throwing a touchdown pass to Elaine:

Uncategorized - 5 Comments »