Scott.Buffington.me

Many of my personal experiences, particularly sad moments I have refrained from blogging about. But knowing that my brother not only loved the Internet, but also that he had checked out my websites over the years I really felt this one was important. I said good-bye to my oldest brother William Francis Buffington Jr. today, or Bill as we all knew him. 

I will never forget you Bill. I will always remember you and Janet coming over on Halloween night when I was a kid, the whole family gathering on Christmas at your home on Christmas night, Summer weekends at the cottage in East Berlin when I was a teenager and all our hardcore badminton matches. You, Steve Fritz and I going fishing and us rarely catching anything, except a laugh from one us doing something goofy (Usually Steve and his duct taped rods).

I remember you introducing me to computers and letting me play on them at your home starting when I was very young. Playing with computers hooked to your TV with a cassette tape drive in the late 1970s or early 1980s all the way to playing games on your Apple or IBM computer in the early 1980s. I decided to work in the Information Technology field because I wanted to be like my big brother.

You were more outspoken than me and although we perhaps did not always see eye to eye, I loved you dearly and I had hoped we had many more years together. I always thought you were one of the most intelligent people I had ever been associated with and envied you. Like dad, you left us far too young. Perhaps this is the crutch of being the youngest sibling, I felt I lost dad and mom too soon and now you are gone too, much too soon.

You and Janet were like second parents to me when I was kid and I often revisit all those happy memories. I love you and I will miss you big brother. Not a day will pass where I will not wish I could relive some of our moments together and I hope you knew how much you meant to me.  

My favorite quote - "UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -- Dennis Ritchie.

I have reached a blogging milestone that I think it is fair to say not many reach. I have been blogging for 10 years. I wrote a nice post back in January recapping the past 10 years. Rather than rehash that entire post I would encourage anyone interested to go read that post, where I wax poetically about the past decade. Instead I would like to focus on just the blogging aspect of this milestone.

There have been many statistics about how most blogs are never updated after the first post or so, it is actually very unusual for the majority of blogs to make it past 1 year. I would gather that the number of blogs created daily has fallen drastically with the popularity of Twitter and Facebook filling the niche for many. I have many of the posts I wrote over the past 10 years in the archives, but not all. This domain, scott.buffington.me, has only been my blogging home for the past few years. Prior to that I blogged many years from nitevilla.net as well as some other random domains. While nitevilla.net still exists, as a place to test code, the posts that originally resided there either reside here or they are gone. Over the years I have decided to remove some posts, for example, I once participated in something called a Blogathon where I posted a blog post once every half hour for 24 hours. I removed all those posts and many others that I felt offered little in the way of content.I could argue that I have been blogging longer than 10 years, I have been posting topics to the web on personal websites dating back to the mid 1990s, but prior to owning my own domains those posts were on sites like Geocities and those web pages are long gone.

Probably the most unique thing about my blog is not only have I managed to keep posting over the past 10 years, though not as much in recent years, but also that I still use a homegrown blogging solution. Those with the technical know how usually give up on the homegrown solution and migrate to Wordpress or one of the many other blogging platforms. I am proud that I have continued to support my own solution and have at this point made the decision that I will continue using my own solution until the web changes in some way where it would not be possible.

Now the hard numbers, this is my 653rd entry appearing on this domain. That is an average of 0.17 entries per day or one blog post every 5.5 days. As of this post, there are 1,171 comments appearing on this blog. My homegrown blogging solutions has blocked 69,765 spam comments, since I began keeping count. I would be remiss if I did not mention that I had a forum on nitevilla.net that I maintained for six or seven years before it became stagnant. During the early years of nitevilla.net, the forums were decently active with probably 20 or 30 visitors posting regularly. My blog actually lost quite a few regular readers when I shutdown the forum. I wanted to start focusing items I would often post to the forum instead to my blog. In hindsight i am not sure that decision had the effect I had hoped it would. Then again, it might be the other social changes that have occurred on the web that have limited blog interactions.

Looking back over the past decade it occurred to me that this past decade was probably the most relevant decade of my life, both from a personal perspective and certainly from a blog perspective. While I could be jaded because this is the most recent decade of my life in memory and I am certain major events happened in my life prior to 2000 that shaped the person I am, the last decade seemed to have the most adult life changes. Looking back through the blog it would be obvious to most that I do not make New Year’s resolutions and I do not really post about the year that was. I did post and delete a resolution last year involving my career that did not come to fruition, but things are better with my career than they were a year ago. There are and have been many events in the last decade that makes this year a post worthy event.

Having been born in the year 1970, it might be obvious to you what two milestones I experienced in the past decade. I of course turned thirty in 2000 and forty in 2010. So how is age 40? Not bad so far, I am a little less fit but I do not feel any of that is due to age, more so a lack of time as a result of the other major events of the past decade. I really feel I educated myself more over the past decade than in any other decade of my life. A lot of this education was a result of my career, an IT career requires a continuing education if you want to excel at your profession. But I am also an adult learning geek. I am also fairly certain that I have read more novels, some being rereads, in the past decade than the prior decades of my life. To go along with reading more I wrote three novels myself over the last decade by way of NaNoWriMo having participated five times and completing three of the five challenges. Only one of those novels found it’s way to print format and that printed copy is a closely guarded secret. Also over the past decade I have been slowly pursuing a bachelor’s degree. Admittedly I could have probably attained that degree if not for my penchant for becoming engrossed in other interests and again distractions from the other major events of the past decade.

Those other major events of the past decade? Each of them are documented here on my blog, those being Jacob, Riley, Emma and Zoey. Each of these distractions have provided me a lot of enjoyment and a lot of tiring days and nights. Of course each of these distractions were a result of another major event of the past decade, meeting and eventually marrying my wife Julie.

The past decade was not entirely full of sunshine and fields of flowers, just like everyone there were down moments. But that is all I am going to say about that, I am aware the events happened, they were not fun to go through but I am not dwelling on any of them and each provided a life learning experience so hopefully I will not have to experience them again. If I do, I will get past them just like I did the last time, by taking a deep breath, taking account and moving on.

Twenty-eleven is sort of a big deal for my blog because mid-May marks the 10th anniversary of my blog. The blog was on another domain in 2001, not all, but most of all that I have blogged has found it’s way here and is readily accessible in the archives. I have blogged less over the last couple years, somewhat due to Twitter (which I am taking a New Year’s break from), but also because I have really tried to only write about things that are worthy of a lengthy write.

I really feel having a blog over the past decade was valuable in multiple ways. Blogging was a factor in why I feel I learned and grew so much over the past decade. Whether my writing was good, bad or great I wrote and based on the stats, I wrote about once a week. I met or conversed with interesting people from what I can truly say are from the far reaching corners of the world and some that were not that far. Some of them you can find in the links along the right side of the blog, but not all. These people were kind, thought provoking, witty and contributed to my interests and growth. A lot of these people I would have never gotten to know or build friendships with if not for blogging. On a side note I also started podcasting with Alex, who happens to be one of those people I met through blogging. Alex and I continue our fantasy football podcast from our league website on a weekly basis throughout the NFL season. Our fantasy football league will begin it’s 10th season in 2011.

So there you have it, a few of my many reasons why the past decade and the start of the current decade were so blog worthy. I hope the next decade is as fruitful to me as the past decade in new and exciting ways.

Check.

A crisis? Not really, but some disappointment definitely was prevented. Every year since my son's first Christmas in 2001 I have purchased my son a Hess Truck, only this year for what I think is the fourth time it is not a truck but a race car. Pretty much since October every illness my kids have gotten I have also picked up in some way shape or form, easily this is a record for cold and flu for me. For roughly a week and a half since October 20th or so I have been healthy, it is really quite frustrating. To make a long story short, I kept putting off stopping in at a Hess station to buy this years Hess Toy Truck, err vehicle.

Finally today I decided was the day, I had intended to go and do this last week, but sinus pressure and a serious headache kept me from venturing out. I had this belief that these things rarely if ever sold out and I was wrong. I visited my normal stop and a sign on the door read that the Hess Toy Race Car was sold out. I asked inside if they knew of other stations that still had this years Hess toy. They said they had just sold out and that they believed all the stations were sold out. I knew of a small Hess station that I figured would not get the amount of traffic this station does. On my way I passed another Hess station that still had the signs up. I went inside and was informed they had sold out last week. My last chance was the small out of the way station I knew of, otherwise that meant I would pay double the price on Ebay and the gift would not arrive until the New Year. Checking the final station I was told they were sold out, but that a Hess station in Marysville still had some. I was out on lunch and if I was going to make the trip to Marysville it would be after work. The lady behind the counter then asked me how many I needed. I said one would be fine, but I usually purchased two as we kept one in the box. She sent the other guy in the back and he came back with two. I do not know what the story was with that, but I was thankful I found the one item that my son looks forward to each year.

In the future this will not be an item that I put off purchasing. If by chance Hess would stumble upon any of the numerous mentions I have given them over the years. I love the creativity of the various vehicles. But you guys have not done a tanker truck since 1990, I think a tanker truck once every 20 years is okay without you being repetitive. You have repeated some of your other themes during the past 20 years, for example I see numerous fire trucks. I think we are ready for a tanker truck of some type again.

Like last Summer I spent a week unplugged from email and phone calls while spending a week in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I confess I did use my iPhone a few times to check the weather, relatives fiddled with the phone more than I did, but I did not read email, twitter or answer any calls the entire week. I am still catching up on about 200 personal emails and and my Google Reader subscriptions. I know I will have a lot of work emails to catch up on Monday morning, but like last year, being unplugged from communications and many of my Internet habits is somehow liberating.

I spent part of my last evening away from daily life and the Internet sitting atop the highest sand dune at Jockey's Ridge State Park watching the Sun set while the boys ran up and down the dunes. It was a relaxing end to the week before we had to pack for the long drive home. Note to self, take the kites to Jockey's Ridge next year.

Fun show at Hershey Park Stadium on Friday night and I can now say I finally saw Bruce Springsteen Live, something I have always wanted to do. I just have never had an opportunity before and was extremely disappointed I could not make the show last August. Friday was a beautiful night with temperatures in the low 70s and a packed stadium of 30,000 brought out a lot of energy from Bruce and the band. This was the first stadium show of the tour and the second show featuring Jay Weinberg, Max Weinberg's 18 year old son. Jay was AWESOME! He thundered the house all night long on the drums. I thought the show might have been the longest of the tour so far and I confirmed that at 2:58 it was indeed the longest show so far featuring a tight 27 songs. The show began at 8:19 p.m.

"Hello Hershey, are you ready to be delivered?" Bruce asked as the band took the stage.
1. Badlands
2. Spirit In The Night
3. Outlaw Pete
4. Radio Nowhere
5. Out In The Street
6. Twist and Shout (sign request, tour premiere)
The sign read: "If U play Twist and Shout" I'll burn my Hannah Montana CDs"
7. Working On A Dream
"Good to be here tonight in the wonderful home of candy" Bruce said to the crowd.
8. Seeds
9. Johnny 99
10. The Ghost Of Tom Joad
11. Raise Your Hand
Bruce collected signs, there were so many.
12. Give the Girl a Kiss (sign request, tour premiere)
I met a guy from the Baltimore area and he said many people thought Bruce would play this at the Hershey show in August of 2008 but he did not. Bruce picked up a sign that was a big Hershey kiss and on the white wrap it read: "Give the Girl a ...." This was soundchecked earlier in the afternoon. "This is very obscure," Bruce said. "Being we are in Hershey, Pa. we'll play it." Then he was asking the band "How does it start? What's the first guitar part? Oh, just sing it... Who knows this one?"
13. Trapped (sign request)
"I've seen a lot of signs for this one," Bruce said.
14. Waitin' On A Sunny Day
15. The Promised Land
16. Backstreets
17. Kingdom of Days
Bruce mentioned how Patti was home recovering from falling off a horse and that she was also home because it was, "Prom night. My daughter is 17. Security!"
18. Lonesome Day
19. The Rising
20. Born To Run
House lights go up, 30,000 people in Hershey Stadium go crazy. Even the kids, many 10 years old and younger were singing every word to every song. You could feel that Bruce and the Band were feeling it.

Encores:

Before the encores Bruce said "I love all the signs but it's getting a little ridiculous." He then mentioned "18-year-old Jay Weinberg taking over for his Dad. he's the first guy to sit in that seat for 35 years except for his pop. If you want to sit in that seat - that's saying something."
21. Hard Times
22. Thunder Road
23. Tenth Avenue Freeze-out
24. Land Of Hope And Dreams
25. American Land
26. Rosalita
The band was ready to leave when Bruce shouted out "We'll do one more!" He called Jay and the others back out as they were leaving the stage.
27. Bobby Jean

Show over at 11:17 p.m. I first discovered Bruce Springsteen when I was 13 years old during the "Born in the USA" craze, immediately dug the story telling style of his songs. I quickly realized he had a whole lot of other awesome music way before that. Though I have always had a soft spot for "No Surrender" and "Glory Days" both off "Born in the USA", neither one was played at this show. But so many other great songs were played that I cannot say I was at all disappointed. Let me tell you, this was three hours of music, with no long guitar or drum solos while the rest of the band disappeared, there was no intermission. It was three hours of the Boss rocking the house and the entire E Street Band doing their thing.

Zoey Michael
Originally uploaded by Scott B.

Zoey Michael Buffington was born February 13th, 2009 at 8:47AM. She weighed 7 pounds, 4.5 ounces and was 19 inches long. Both mother and daughter are doing well and resting comfortably at home. Big brother and both big sisters are very proud.

Not really. They had a laser version of the famous Christmas Story BB gun at Bass Pro Shops. They were selling the real thing too. But we will just settle for trying out the laser version for now and stick to nerf and super soakers at home. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.

Green
Originally uploaded by Scott B.

As I mentioned before, I was going to attempt to create a Lego version of the classic green versus tan army men for my son this Christmas. After some late Friday nights in which I sat constructing green and tan tanks and jeeps in Lego format, as well as some time perusing Lego parts websites to build my individual soldiers, I have both sides completed. Roughly I have almost 20 soldiers per side, more than enough to rekindle this classic rivalry.

I got creative while choosing heads and tried to choose Lego heads that looked tough and rugged, few of those chosen would meet military regulations as far as haircuts. But I was not aiming for that anyway, I was aiming more for the old GI Joe look. If you look closely you will see beards, gold teeth, various smirks and even a terminator looking fellow on the tan side.

As far as the uniforms I tried to mix and match, much like what I have seen while watching World War II movies, I did not want the uniforms for either side to be identical. I wanted the colors to match but the uniforms to be vary slightly. What I have is one set of Lego soldiers who are clearly green and a second set of Lego soldiers who are wearing browns and tans.

Tan
Originally uploaded by Scott B.

Mixed in with the Lego soldiers are some Best Lock soldiers that came with the tanks and jeeps, all these parts and pieces are Lego compatible. Some of the complaints with the alternative Lego sets are that they did not lock together as well as Lego. Personally the bricks went together about as well as any Lego sets I have built, but I was not overly concerned as I intended to glue each piece so that the tanks and jeeps were permanently together. The Best Lock tanks are great and fit into what I was trying to create perfectly. I took a few liberties and put some of my own touches on the tanks to better enable multiple soldiers to man the tanks.

I think I came up with a toy idea that my son is going to be absolutely thrilled with this Christmas, and certainly a toy that none of his friends will have. If this is as successful as I hope, perhaps both sides will get some reinforcements in the future. Go GREEN!

It has been a tough past ten days or so. We had to say good bye to our Beagle, Hunter yesterday. I have never been good about taking photos of the pets. Occasionally they show up, but for the most part I have not done a lot of pet photographing. This is an old photo, Hunter was much whiter in the face now than in this photo. Still, up until about ten days ago he was as full of life as a puppy. With children and so forth Hunter took a back seat through the years but he was liked by the kids who always laughed at his floppy ears and he would gladly lick their hands and face.

We thought Hunter was out of the woods after having a few teeth taken care of last week. But Thursday and Friday of last week he continued to regress and worsen. Sunday he was beaten and I had to make the decision to say so long to our 11 year old Beagle.

Hunter was the last of my pets from my single days, I got him as a puppy in February of 1998. He provided a lot of Beagle challenges, laughs and lastly sadness. Hunter was part of several daily routines for me for the past 11 years. Hunter, you will be missed.

Check.

Every boy, at least in the US, even those in the current generation most likely had Army Men in their toy arsenal. You know those molded plastic, usually green and tan soldiers that burst on the scenes again in the 1990's as a result of the popular video games and of course Toy Story. I had a huge collection including the Navarone playset when I was a kid. My collection was boosted by older brothers and I literally remember coating the basement floor with battles for Navarone, culminating with the fall of the top floor and the destruction of the big guns. I saw the movie (with Naverone spelled different) as a kid prior to getting the play set for Christmas in the late 1970's.

If any of you dads have tried to collect a variety of Army Men now for your kids, you quickly learn that there is not much variety and there are some that literally have no use except to destroy using some Sid from Toy Story method. I picked up a couple bags a couple years ago to use as awards for Jake when a job was well done. The molds were horrible, no detail and they would rarely stand on their own. This pretty much eliminated the purchase of this toy in the future. Even though the quality of these Army Men is horrible, Jake still plays with them, the kid actually has an amazing imagination and really plays with all his toys. It is enjoyable to listen to his stories unfold and I know one day I am going to really miss his imaginative play.

If you do not know, Jake is from my first marriage. Because he has two full time households there has occasionally been some duplication of toys. I try to come up with ideas that are as imaginative as his play and I have mostly been successful. Each Christmas around October I start thinking of ideas. This Christmas I have decided to construct the classic Green versus Tan Army Men in Lego form. For those not up on their Lego, Lego has never made modern military sets. Knights and Star Wars is about as close as you can get. In the Lego world some creative fans of Lego have been constructing even molding their own Lego modern military equipment and upon seeing some of the creations earlier this year I have held onto the idea.

I am not going to go crazy, but I have managed to find some websites where I can acquire the various torsos, legs, heads and yes even helmets that I can use to construct the two sides. Fortunately there are some compatible Lego like sets that have tanks and other military vehicles. By mixing and matching and using some creativity I should be able to put together my own Dirty Dozen for both Green and Tan. In the end, I am not going for actual scale here. If you remember our Army Men, the tanks and aircraft looked like they were built for troops half the size of our Army Men. My Lego versions should be much more impressive than even the originals and they will see Jake through his imaginative youth.

Late night weekends will likely see me constructing the Lego vehicles and troops for a Christmas Even invasion. Once I get some models finished I will post some photos.

I promised some big news once I got the blog settled in at the new domain. So without further ado, Julie and I are expecting our fourth child in February. We will now be outnumbered by two! We decided a while back to have one more, giving us a very full house.

Once we find out if it is a boy or a girl the decision on whether we repaint the famed pink bedroom will be made. I had not anticipated repainting a room so soon, but Emma and Riley will be bunking up in the larger light green bedroom. Early trials with Emma and Riley sharing a room have been met with mixed results. Although I think we just about have all the kinks worked out. Sometime around the middle of February an exhausted stork will be delivering our next special package.

IMG_0010.JPG
Originally uploaded by Scott B.

What a long strange trip it has been. Seems like yesterday I posted this. This past Monday Jake started Kindergarten. That is him climbing on the bus with the Spongebob backpack.

I really have been side tracked since just before Christmas, a combination of Internet connectivity issues and probably a little boredom. Trying to break the silence, I thought I might post some of the items I received for Christmas.

Of course a few years back someone obviously reading the website noticed I am a fan of zombie movies and gifted me Max Brooks book The Zombie Survival Guide. Julie gifted me Max Brooks newest book, probably soon to be a movie, World War Z.

I have always been a fan of the movie, A Christmas Story, based on Jean Shepherd's novel. Thanks to Julie, I now have the novel.

Having an interest in the mysteries of math, I thought the following book sounded interesting. I will now be able to find out if it really is interesting.

I received three homebrew recipe books that I will definitely use for research on my own recipes as well as try a few of those in the books. All three books have awesome information and some very interesting recipes. One of the books I received from Julie's parents and the other two Julie gave me for my birthday, which was earlier in December. Here is one of the books I received.

In recent years it seems that it has become a tradition that the final gift I purchase is the Hess Trucks. It seems I have written this exact post before. For those that live elsewhere and are not privy to the Hess Toy Truck, the company has produced a toy truck for Christmas every year since 1964, except for 1973, 1979 and 1981. I have been getting my son two trucks every year since he was born. If you watched the Macy's Parade this year you might have seen the Hess Toy Truck float in the parade. I get two trucks every year, one to give him as a collectors item that never leaves the box and another that I put under the tree. This will be his 6th Hess Toy Truck and he still plays with all of them.

This year I made the Hess employee happy when I entered and asked for two trucks. She informed me that my purchase was the 99th and 100th for her store in the last three days. Apparently Hess was running an incentive program for this weekend for any store that sold 100 trucks. My purchase earned the employees of that store a holiday bonus.

This years model has 32 lights on the tractor trailer, the most ever that have actually been lit. There have been models with more lights but not that many actually lit. The toy trucks are really well made, every one that I have purchased still works and not a piece has fallen off. Looking back through the years on Hess Toy Truck dot com I was surprised to see that a tanker truck has not been made since 1990. I remember growing up and seeing the commercials, a lot of the models in those days were tanker trucks. It almost seems we are long overdue for a return to a tanker truck, at least for one season.

1) Big two car garage. (There is always something to do in the garage)
2) Home office slash datacenter. (Somewhere to put my computers aka servers)
3) Dry relatively comfortable basement. (I have about two tons of free weights, meaning a basement is a must)

With spring training opening in the MWBL (Mechanicsburg Wiffle Ball League), many experts thought the Monroe Street Marauders would go head-to-head with the Yankees in an attempt to sign Alex Rodriguez. The Marauders surprised everyone though by signing Jake Buffington, a young Pennsylvania prospect who's wicked one handed swing and strong arm looks to power the Marauders to the League championship.

The Marauders also passed on A-Rod because they have a shortstop that perhaps has more range at the position than any player in Wiffle Ball League history. Hunter Dogg, has amazing stop and go abilities, that some believe he fine tuned by chasing Rabbits of all things.

Local man and Wiffle ball analyst and expert "Dude" Steck has been observing the Marauders as they have opened Spring Training. "J-Buff pulls the ball like no one I have ever seen", said Steck. "He about took the head off of player playing the hot corner today. The guy never saw the ball coming. He's just wild enough pitching the ball to intimidate the batter.", continued Steck. With a Wiffle Ball aficionado like "Dude" Steck thinking that highly of J-Buff, who is the youngest player in league history at 2 years old, how can the kid fail.

Steck also had this to say about Hunter Dogg. "The Dogg is Barry Sanders in a Wiffle Ball uniform, err.. Well in a fur uniform. Amazing range, nothing gets by him", said Steck. Six year old Hunter Dogg is a long time veteran and brings experience to the Marauders. It is apparent the Marauders have plenty of weapons and they are looking forward to moving practice from the basement gym to the backyard.

Here is the photo I promised a few months back. This was my 1991 Honda Civic DX, 223,281 miles at trade-in.

I snapped this photo just before leaving for work on the day I traded the car in on a 2003 Jetta 1.8T. The Honda was a tremendously great car, saw me through rain, snow and heat and never let me down.