Birthday Skydiving

July 15, 2010

bryankearney geek stuff, just me , , 4 Comments

When Jenny was a youngling, she read a National Geographic Magazine that talked about indor skydiving. This month was Jenny’s birthday, and when I was talking to some friends they mentioned an Indoor Skydiving Place near us in Raeford, NC. They said it was fun, so I figured it would be a great birthday idea. The name of the place is Paraclete XP I called them up, and come to find out they could handle all ages. So, I called up my parents and they were willing to go. This past Tuesday Jenny, myself, the kids, and the grandparents all headed down to Raeford for Jenny’s Birthday.

This place is fabulous.

We headed down after work, and got there 45 minutes early. We were met by some friendly folks, and told to head up. There we saw the wind tunnel with 3 folks doing all types of fancy tricks. They were floating upside down, doing flips, and shooting themselves up 30 feet in the air. The tunnel was all glass, so we got to watch and see how cool it would be.

We then met Selwyn, our instructor. He was a Jamaican Dude with a Welsh Name. He was very friendly, and did a great job with both the kids and a the adults. He took us down to watch a goofy video, and then gave us some basic instructions about how to hold out bodies, and how to know when he wanted us to straighten our legs and bend them. He did a great job with the kids making sure they understood. Then we went to get dressed in our flight clothes. Let me say, we looked cool:

We then went in to fly. It was more physical than I thought it would be, but much easier to get control. Kudos to our instructor Selwyn who always seemed to know what we needed to do and did a great job communicating alot of information without talking. We were in 90-120 miles of wind, so you could not hear very much. But he did a great job.

All and all, we did good. Jenny did great on her first flight:

And both kids did great on their flights:

And for the proof that all ages can do it, here is my father in flight:

By the time it was over, we had all done 2 flights of 2 minutes each. This was more than enough time. We were able to get up to about 12 feet on our own and to do basic moves. At the end, the instructor asked us if we wanted to fly to the roof. He promised there was nothing we needed to do, and nothing we could do cause any issue. Needless to say, looking into a tunnel and seeing your wife shoot to the roof at 120 miles per hour is pretty wierd.

For folks in the Raleigh area, this is a great time. I highly recommend it!

First Solo Boat Repair

July 12, 2010

bryankearney just me, toys , , , Leave a comment

Last year we purchased a boat. It was our first, so we wanted something cheap which if it sank we could leave it where it lay. We found a Bomber off of Craigslist that fit the bill. Bomber is a real type of boat, one that was made back in the 80s. I think they do bass boats now. If you google it, you will find 3… all of them torn up hulks. This one had a little rot damage, but not too bad.

This year, the engine had been giving us issues. We have a Mercruiser 3.7/LX which I am told is an engine that was made for about 2 years. It was the only 2 years that Mercruiser actually made the engine instead of contracting it out. So.. we have a unique boat, with a very unique engine. I don’t much about engines, but I know having a unique one is not great.

We tracked down the issue we were having to the to the shift interrupt switch. This is what it looks like:

The issue is that little switch which acts like a clutch on a car. It seemed to fail whenever we ran the boat and then stopped it. Since the engine is water cooled, the hottest the engine will get is after you stop running it. We guessed the heat was causing it to fail. We assumed it would be a cheap part, but soon learned that the entire plate had to be replaced. So much for cheap.

Here is the new part which I ordered from ebasic power, a good NC company:

It arrived in one day, which was great. The fix is that little grey piece right in the middle. The rest is what I needed to mount it to the engine block. I set out early Saturday morning to put it back on. It actually slid into place nicely. I disconnected the cables put them off to the side, unbolted the old piece, put the new piece back in, and added back the cables. I tested it with the muffs, and it seemed to work. My wiring was a bit messy, but all and all it looked good:

I read you needed to test this in the water, but saturday around noon it looked good. On Sunday, we headed out to the lake. And.. the boat worked like the champ. Here we are drying off towels and shirts after a good afternoon of skiing:

So, my first solo repair job on the boat.. and it seems to be a success!

My message to the movie industry

July 2, 2010

bryankearney just me 3 Comments

I went to see Toy Story last week, in 3-D. It was very good. I went with my family (wife and 2 kids) so it was a bit on pricey side even at a matinee. However, the story was good.. the voices were good..the animation was great.. so it was worth spending the dollars.

One thing I noticed was that every one of the previews was for another 3-D movie. Some looked great, some looked like garbage. This has gotten me thinking.. if every movie is in 3-D, then that is the standard. I should not have to pay an upcharge to see it in 3-D.. it is the standard. In fact, I should actually get a discount to see the 2-D movie since I am settling for an inferior product.

Please do not take this as an excuse to raise the prices on all the movies. I love going to movies. I am willing to pay for the experience of sitting in the theatre with my friends and seeing it. However, you need to realize what Netflix and Red Box have done. Your 2-D movie is worth $1 to me. $1 for my whole family to see it. I am willing to pay more to see it in the theatre. The theatre experience is great, so I should have to pay for it. I get to see the movie sooner in the theatre, so again I can accept an up charge. However, my base price is $1 for a family of 4. So… if you triple the price for the theatre experience, and then triple that price for seeing it sooner you see about where I value the product.

Do not use private if you write frameworks

June 24, 2010

bryankearney candlepin, geek stuff, work 8 Comments

If you write a framework, please do not use private. You may think that you know how I am going to use it. I promise, if it works as it should I will not try and override the basic functionality. However, if I am looking at the code to know it is private then I have a use case you did not expect.

My current example is rails active resource. This is a great framework if you are planning to use it to talk to another rails app. If your url does not end in .json then you have to override / reimplement many high level methods because of one or two private methods.

I know they teach you this in school. I know it makes you feel smart. Stop it. Private methods makes your frameworks less usable and less extensible.

My Office

June 24, 2010

bryankearney funny, geek stuff, hockey 1 Comment

This is my office. A great use of mobile technology, on location support, and ambient cooling.

My Office

Need help testing new libvirt java bindings

May 19, 2010

bryankearney geek stuff, work Leave a comment

I have moved the java bindings for libvirt up to 0.8.1. It is mostly cut and paste code, but the test driver does not support some of the new features so I would appreciate if someone could bang on them a bit. Specifically, I would like to see someone try out:

Snapshots
Streams (Callbacks in particular)
Secrets

I have put an SRPM out at [1] and a compiled jar at [2]. You can always clone the repo at [3] and build it from there.

Thanks!

[1] http://bkearney.fedorapeople.org/libvirt-java-0.4.5-ALPHA.fc12.src.rpm
[2] http://bkearney.fedorapeople.org/libvirt-0.4.5.ALPHA.jar
[3] http://www.libvirt.org/git/?p=libvirt-java.git;a=summary

Rest: Going from Simple to Good

March 25, 2010

bryankearney candlepin, geek stuff, work , , , , Leave a comment

We have been playing alot more with Rest at work, and we are seeing that there is alot of docs on how easy it is to spin up a REST interface. However, there is not much on how to make them good. Fortunately, I work with alot of smart people we can have good discussions with. Bill Burke has put up the results of one of the discussions on a good way of modeling state transitions on rest. Check out his post

Rest, I dont think I get it

March 1, 2010

bryankearney geek stuff, work 8 Comments

I sent this as an internal email.. but figured I would post the question as well. File this into the “I dont get it” category. Not as bad as Google Wave, but close.

So.. I hear that Rest is a panacea, but mostly because it is “Rest not SOAP”. I actually understand many of the benefits that REST is gives you:

1) I can use a simple http client to access resources, therefore it is easier to adopt.
2) I inherit alot of the WS-* enhancements from the underlieing http transport, so the frameworks are lighter weight.
3) The ability to use the service both by a client and a browser.. mashups become easy.

What I keep getting hung up on is the absence of a formal description of the interface. I see WADL, but whenever I dig into this it seems to get brushed aside as a nuisance. If i want to write typed clients, then I need to have some formal contract of what can be passed in and what is returned. This contract seems to be what alot of the cruft around SOAP is for. Is there something I am missing with this? The answer the books/articles seem to give is “who needs a formal spec, it is all URI’s”. This tends to be a load of hooey, since some clients (rails in particular) do not handle nicely objects of the same type with heterogeneous data sets.

So.. it seems like Rest (which is not SOAP) makes it easy for the easy clients by skimping on the tools for the more complex clients. I can easily do jersey -> jersey, and I presume Resteasy -> Resteasy. But w/o that neutral definition.. cross implementation clients (robust ones) are actually harder.

Am I missing something?

Good Hockey Nicknames

March 1, 2010

bryankearney funny, hockey Leave a comment

It is the end of the hockey season, and the parents have been coming up with some good nicknames for hockey players. It is a fun thing to do when giving out participation awards. I was unable to find a great list on the internet, so here is what we have put together:

Best Between the Pipes
Best Passer
Best Sportsmanship
Best Stick Handling
Biggest Goon
Breakaway King
Brick Wall
Captain Goof Ball
Chief Mucker
Goon Juice
Grinder
Hardest Worker
Hat Trick
Jr. Coach
Killer
King of the Wraparound
Little Big Man
Little Giant
Lumber Jack
Minister of Defense
Most Consistent
Most Improved
Mr/Miss Hat Track
Mr/Miss Not in My Net
Mr/Miss. End to End
Mr/Miss. Hustle
Mr/Miss. Moves
Mr/Miss. Reliable
Mr/Miss. Versatility
Not Past Me you Dont
Not So Secret Weapon
Red Light
Smooth Operator
Speed Freak
Speedy Gonzalez
Team Leader
Team Spirit
The Blond Bomber
The Blur
The Cardiac Kid
The Closer
The Defender
The Destroyer
The Enforcer
The Joker
The Pitchfork
The Playmaker
The Puck Stops Here
The Punisher
The Silent Weapon
The Sniper
Tough Guy
Tricky
Was that a good check coach?
Wood Chopper
Yoeman

I am always looking for more!

Latest RHQ: 3.0.0 Build 3

February 23, 2010

bryankearney rhq, work Leave a comment

Another good release from the RHQ team. You can check out the new release here. Lots of new alerting work, and some good performance enhancements. Check it out.

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