So I’m on I-95 northbound. I notice the right lane is moving really slowly so I signal and change into the next lane. It’s then I get ahead a bit and find out WHY it was moving so slowly. State Trooper in an SUV. I  blew past him doing 80. He didn’t even move out to chase.

Now the perplexing part is, I was driving a fire engine red Honda Civic. I do note this is a 2017 Civic with only 1300 miles on it. And typical of Honda, all sorts of bells and whistles including a feature called Stop Hold. Let me tell you I like that feature. You tap the button and when the car comes to a complete stop you can take your foot off the brake pedal and the car will stay stopped and the brake lights still on. It’s pretty awesome. Then to go just touch the gas pedal. But the one feature the car didn’t have is tilt/telescope steering wheel – that’s one of my favorite features of a car. I note the Mazda 3 and VW Golf’s I’ve driven had that. The Honda – not so much.

But when I drive I tend to keep right unless of course I get behind a line of traffic moving at what I term idiotic speed. And I do use my signals and make disparaging remarks about people who don’t use their signals for lane changes. But idiotic speed is that which is at or below the speed limit. As I’ve said before I shall say again, I find speed limits to be ridiculous and merely a suggestion. I’m usually bombing down the highway at speeds of 70 to 100 MPH. But here’s the really funny part, I’ve blown by a shit ton of cops. And none of them has ever moved to chase me. It’s weird. I see people pulled over all the time and have to wonder what offense they committed.

Maybe one day my number will be up. Who knows.

1. Driving on I-95 and doing a cool 75MPH. Look I see speed limits as merely a suggestion. And with the speed limit idiocy in Rhode Island you can probably understand why. From southern RI the speed limit goes from 65, to 55, to 50, to 45. I can remember when it was 70MPH for the entirety. Plus they’re changing up the exits so a lane of traffic is for the exit, the other is a through lane. So everyone thinks they should slow down.

   But anyhow back to the story – I’m flying down I-95 south and all of a sudden I see the car in front of me jack on the brakes to the point where his tires are leaving a nice skid mark and smoking. Which in turn I had to lock mine up. Because the speed dropped down to 30 for no valid reason whatsoever. Instead it was some flashing lights on the NORTHBOUND side. Look in that section of I-95 the nearest turn around for law enforcement is 7 miles away. Just keep going, the flashing lights on the police cruiser means he’s busy. He won’t even notice you flying down the other side.

2. Then there’s the grocery store – where people will just stand in the way in a main traffic aisle. I get a little assertive on that one with a loud “EXCUSE ME”. That usually wakes them from their stupor.
3. Escalator hogs. I’ve mentioned this before. The right side is for standing, the left side is for moving. It’s really that simple.
4. Conflicting information. Look someone is right, and someone is like a stopped clock which is actually correct twice a day. Let’s not all jump in at once.

It’s called Marvel’s Iron Fist. It’s got a lot of elements I like – the whole “fuck you up” thing is present, then there’s the Buddhist thing, and the things like The Hand. It’s truly great.

So I’ve been following the ITER project on YouTube. They’re very close to completing construction of the buildings for the reactor. Then they have to build it.

They chose a Tokamak design – Tokamak is a Russian acronym for  toroidal chamber-magnetic. Seriously.

Right now people keep saying when will fusion happen. I hate to tell them but there are a bunch of Tokamak’s and stellarators and even ignition facilities all over the world. And they’ve been fusing stuff together for some time.

The issue is none of the machines so far as reached break even, vis a vis power required to run it is less than the power it puts out.

So they run for periods up to about 10 seconds or so.

The ITER project is a bit overbuilt. But then it had to be.

So this week has been interesting. Figured out how to get fiber channel interface up under Oracle Linux 6.8. But alas the fcoe-utils were version .9 something and would only allow one interface at a time to be active. Not good for failover.

So I downloaded the ISO file for Oracle Linux 7.3 – that has version 1.x for fcoe-utils. And so I have both fiber channel interfaces just chattering away at a full 20 gigabits per second. Awesome!

So today concluded my first week at the new job. One of the things that draws me to the new place of employment is that most of the people I’m working with have been there for 20+ years so there’s definite potential for longevity there.

Secondly my boss – I really like the guy. And I think the feeling is mutual. For example this week I came explained how to have data integrity, built Oracle Linux 7 on a server and then re-built it using HP’s Intelligent Provisioning. Except it’s not that intelligent. I’ll explain.

Every time I’d try to build with Oracle Linux 7 (Which is really RedHat 7.3) it would barf on install and exit out to the Dracut shell.

Tried it a few times and then reasoned, every other HP Blade server they have, it’s running Oracle Linux 6.5 or 6.6 – so I downloaded the 6.6 installer ISO and wonder of wonders it worked. Got a bit literal pat on the back for that one from my boss. It’s funny how just that makes me want to show off my skills even further.