So far, I couldn’t really get myself to spend $1,000 to $1,500 on an office chair like the Herman Miller Aeron or Mirra 2, though I’m getting closer to understanding why people do that.
One big surprise was that the “risk-free return period” is only 30 days, even though their returns policy states that it is 365 days. In fact, it still states this, even though I asked them about it on August 23.
Under what conditions can I return a product?
You can return a product for any reason—discomfort, personal preference, or unexpected fit issues—as long as it’s within 365 days and not intentionally damaged. We want you to feel confident in your purchase.
Next, the chair is pretty nice. The build quality seems good, and it was easy to assemble. The mesh feels a little rough, but it has good airflow, and the headrest can be in the right place as well.
The tilt feature, and the tilt-lock, feel pretty nice, especially with the headrest. However, I’m about 6′ 2″ (186 cm), and this chair is just barely tall enough for me. If I move it all the way up, I can get my legs to a 90 degree angle. And if I move the headrest into the highest-possible position, it can support my head if I lean back.
But the biggest complaint that I have read is definitely true. The lumbar support is really sharp on top. It is a block of plastic, barely covered with padding, and it is not angled up at all. That means that the top edge digs into the back, especially when it is adjusted up. I have tried to soften the edge a little with a bit of memory foam, but after a few hours, my back feels sore.
I do feel that this alone, the lumbar support, may be a deal breaker and lead to the return of the chair.
The armrests are “4D” and move in/out (a little), up/down (a lot up, but just barely enough down), forward/backward (quite a bit forward, not enough backward), and rotate inward/outward (decently).
However, I can’t get the armrests adjusted the way I need them. I can’t get them in close enough. I guess I’m almost too tall for this chair, but not wide enough. The closest I can get them is if I move them all the way in, all the way back, and rotated outward. But even that leaves a gap between the armrest and the chair, and really only my elbows touch the armrest. If I try to get more of my forearms supported by swiveling the armrests inward, then almost no part of my arm touches the armrests.
Next, the chair has a pretty sharp edge around the side of the mesh, and that, together with the imperfectly adjustable armrests causes the back of my upper arm to painfully scrape against the chair sometimes.
Finally, and this is perhaps the smallest point, the coasters suck. I’m on hardwood, the chair has wheels, but it seems like I’m scooting around on felt.
The more I think about this chair, the more I think it’s not right. Too bad.
A while ago, I bought a Kindle Scribe, with the goal to take notes on books and PDF files.
Reading on the Kindle Scribe is pretty nice, though. One of the things I like best is to hold the Kindle Scribe in landscape format (wide, rather than tall), and then have two columns on it. To me, this feels the most like reading a real book.
Regarding taking notes and annotating books and PDF files, the latter hasn’t worked out all that well so far. One problem is that I can really only get PDFs in and out of the Kindle Scribe, in a way that can be marked up, is through Amazon’s servers. That limits the things I’m willing to put on the Kindle (for example, no work stuff).
However, recently I tried taking notes in Kindle books again, and this has improved a lot. Books now have an “infinite margin” on the side that you can use to take notes. I’m pretty happy with this feature.
I’ll have to find out how I can export these notes now. That isn’t clear to me at all yet.
I’m finally (again) working on replacing my home office chair. This one has really lasted quite a while, since my dorm room days on January 19, 2001.
I had tried to replace it once in the late aughts, but that chair was of much lower quality and isn’t with me anymore. It didn’t make one of the moves, either the move to Seattle or the first move within Seattle.
Does a 24 year-old piece of furniture need some kind of official burial or something?
Also still not sure I feel like I can drop a grand and a half on a Herman Miller chair yet…
Herman Miller has an amazing 12-year warranty. But it’s not transferable. Used Herman Miller chairs sell for between $350 to $500 usually, but of course, they’re not covered by the warranty. A new fully loaded Herman Miller Mirra 2 chair is about $1,500 before discounts; while a Herman Miller Aeron is about $1,900.
On the other hand, that might be the last chair I need.
Herman Miller has made the choices quite hard, perhaps on purpose. The Aeron has two different kinds of lumbar support, one that is height-adjustable and one that is depth-adjustable. The Mirra 2 has a single lumbar support that is both height- and depth-adjustable, but it only comes in a single size, while the Aeron comes in three different sizes.
Sometimes, I’d also like a headrest. Mainly when I think about the long-term vision, but according to my wife, I need it mainly when I think “these people are idiots.” Neither the Aeron nor the Mirra 2 have headrests, but it’s easier to find after-market headrests for the Aeron.
Finally, I would really like to turn the chair into a geeky version of a “captain’s chair” and attach split keyboards to the armrests, especially because of my earlier search for a good keyboard replacement. And I’m not quite sure how well I can attach arms to the Mirra 2, which is really the only Herman Miller chair to which I have frequent access.
But perhaps I shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just get a new chair of some kind.
Right after coming back from Finland, my next oncall shift started at work. And on the second day of it, my keyboard started producing just garbage when I typed.
I have had some form of Microsoft Natural Keyboard for over 20 years. If I remember correctly, I first experienced hand pain in 2002 and bought a Natural Keyboard Pro, which helped for a long time. At some point, it must have broken, and I replaced it with a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.
That’s the keyboard I’ve probably had for the last 15 years. It used to cost about about $50 new, but isn’t being manufactured anymore. I started buying used keyboards in reserve, but they didn’t last very long. I bought a couple of keyboards in 2024, and one already broke, after not even a year.
I counted myself lucky, because I had one in reserve… But that one had a broken left shift key. Ugh!
I used an Apple Magic Keyboard to carry on my oncall work while also going on a keyboard spending spree. I bought two more used Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 keyboards on eBay (in case I can’t dislodge my muscle memory), and then tried out a few more new keyboards on Amazon.
In the image below, top to bottom:
Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 — my favorite, but the used keyboards that I can now get from eBay tend to break after just a few months. Not a viable plan for the future.
X9 Wired Ergonomic Keyboard
Kensington Pro Fit Ergonomic Wired Keyboard
I also ordered a Perixx Periboard535BR, but returned it unopened.
The Kensington keyboard arrived first, but after trying it out, I quickly noticed one thing that has annoyed me with other keyboards before as well. The Fn key sits between Ctrl and the Windows key. This is a pretty important area, since it is used for a lot of keyboard shortcuts that I need to efficiently type and control my IDE for development. The problem is that this Fn key doesn’t really do anything other than access the media keys. It is not a “real” key that can be programmed or re-assigned. From the point of view of the operating system, it doesn’t exist as a separate key. It’s just there so the keyboard can pretend it has more keys. That’s fine… I just wish it were in a different place. Overall, I couldn’t really use the Kensington keyboard well.
Next arrived the X9 keyboard, and honestly, that one is pretty close to the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. The big difference is probably that the spacebar is broken in two parts, instead of being continuous. At the beginning, sometimes my thumb would try to hit the spacebar and instead didn’t hit any key. But I think I got used to it by now. The keys don’t quite feel as nice as on the Microsoft keyboard, and they don’t lift as much, but overall, I’m pretty happy with this keyboard, so much that I decided to use it as my daily driver at home, and to not even try out the Perixx keyboard, which has the same problem with the Fn key as the Kensington one.
Hopefully, for now the keyboard emergency has been defused. I’m wondering if I should by a few more of the X9… just in case.
The last, and longest, part of our summer trip was a long stay in Finland, where my mom grew up. As stated earlier, this was my first vacation in two years, after working through all weekends from April to August in 2024 and just making trips to see Jenny’s family for Kate’s birthday and an early Thanksgiving, and going to my 20-year reunion at Rice.
After just a day or so in Iceland, I noticed how much I needed this break. I had had an inkling, but it wasn’t quite clear how stressed and overworked I was, and how I was just going from one problem at work to the next. In Iceland, I began to feel like a human again. And now, in Finland, even the stress of touring and sightseeing dropped off. It was wonderful, and now I also remembered why I so much liked coming to Finland and not really doing anything, even as an adult. We picked blueberries, went on lots of rowing trips, explored all the islands nearby, and saw the swan family on most days. We discovered lots of live clams right on our beach, and Kate engaged in a “clam safety operation” in which she dove and picked up clams that were too close to the beach, where they might get stepped on and broken, and transported them farther out into the lake.
We were blessed with the best summer weather I can remember in Finland — it rained a little bit one morning. We ate pretty much every meal outside and went swimming every day. In the beginning, the water was still a little cold and required a bit of willpower, but by the end of our stay, we could just stride into the water in the morning without hesitation. The unexpected MVP of our stay was a watermelon floaty that we borrowed from my cousin Pasi.
Jenny and I went on morning runs along the forest roads, and towards mid-July, we’d just strip off at the end of the run and cool off with a swim. I continued my trend of using the increased free time during trips to go running (I’ve done that on every visit to San Antonio, and also my last trip to Rice in Houston), and even ran another half marathon (I had run the Lake Sammamish Half Marathon earlier this year). A couple of times, I also swam to the island and back.
Our stay in Finland was different from the last few times, because my aunt Airi wasn’t staying at her mökki right next to ours anymore this year. That meant we — gasp — had to cook ourselves, but it really wasn’t that difficult. We just had to plan a little bit more, because our fridge is so small (what you would call a “dorm room fridge” in the US). We cycled through eating salads for a couple of days, then had pasta with sauce and some vegetables, followed by soup and sausages the next days.
But it was much quieter without Airi and Lasse there. Fortunately, my uncle Tapio was there most days, and everyone came in for Airi’s birthday at the lake. It was great to see my extended family again after six years, and it’s just wonderful how everyone embraces Jenny and Kate as part of their family. They just fit in, like two puzzle pieces.
We were amazed again how well the Finns (at least our Finns) know how to party. Pasi, Päivi, Sanni, Siiri, Jonne, Jenni, Kaapo, and Tiitus (who wasn’t there this year, unfortunately), were the biggest dancers at our wedding and got everyone to join them, and this year’s birthday party for Airi was equally epic. It started at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and went on for 12 hours. At some point, Jenny and Kate asked if they could go for a swim before the party ends, and everyone reassured them that there was no worry they’d miss the end of the celebration. Long after we had gone to bed, the Finns went for a midnight swim and most likely had some more bubbly.
Everything went perfectly, until the 2nd to last evening at the mökki. Kate was just changing into her nightgown when we heard a scream, and then Kate emerged, saying — with surprising eloquence: “Mama, I just realized I have been stung by a wasp.” A wasp had stung her near the belly button. We had heard something moving in the walls of the mökki for days, but couldn’t really tell what it was. Finally, on one of the last days, I spotted wasps flying in and out near one of the windows. They had eaten their way through the insulating foam and made a nest in the wall. But we had never seen one inside the cottage. On one of the trips to the city, we had bought wasp spray, and earlier that day, I had sprayed the window from the outside — I just didn’t want them to continue eating into the wood. In their dying panic, some wasps must have found a way through gaps in the wood into the sleeping area of the mökki. Most of them had died, but a few of them were still alive. And one of them on the bed was alive enough to sting Kate.
Objectively, it wasn’t a bad sting, but of course it hurt, and Kate didn’t feel safe in the mökki anymore. She slept the next two nights in a hammock outside. In fact, she stated that she never wanted to come back to the mökki ever again, a claim that she has since reduced (she’ll come to the lake, but she’s not going to sleep in the cottage). What a bummer, at the end of an otherwise perfect trip of sunshine, swimming, nature, and a whole lot of doing nothing.
Perhaps because of the wasp incident, but perhaps also just because we had been gone from home for over three weeks by now, Kate was ready to move on. We said goodbye to the mökki and drove to Helsinki, where we spent a very hot day at the zoo and the old market. It was too hot for most animals, and the bear was the smartest one by deciding to take a swim.
We met up with my cousin Pasi and his family one more time, and then it was time to say goodbye to Mummu at the airport in Helsinki. The flights back went pretty smoothly, except for some long lines at immigration and boarding at the layover in Iceland. Dr. Tapa (Jenny’s dad) picked us up at the airport in Seattle, and it was good to be home again.
The next day, we departed Vik and headed towards Reykjavik, via a couple of amazing waterfalls and the rift valley.
The first waterfall was probably the most scenic one we visited during our trip. Kvernufoss is just a short 1-mile roundtrip hike from the parking lot, but just like in most American national parks, that’s enough to keep the big crowds away. Hiking into the canyon felt like something from Lord of the Rings, and one of the cool features was that you could hike behind the waterfall. There were also plenty of birds nesting all around us.
The bigger, much more well-known and -visited waterfall is Skogafoss, less than five minutes away from Kvernufoss. You won’t get any solitude here, but the size of the waterfall still makes a visit worthwhile, especially since you’re already here anyway. If you have the right footwear, you can get very close to the massive waterfall. Again, this is enough of a crowd repellent to get a bit of a distance from the masses.
After this, we kept on driving for a decent stretch, all the way to Thingvellir National Park. This is the rift valley where the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates are getting pulled apart. It is one of the few places on earth where you can observe this above water. Most of these rifts are deep in the ocean.
Our visit to Thingvellir far exceeded our expectations. I had only thought of the geological aspects, which were interesting. But without knowing the Icelandic language or history, I didn’t know anything about the historical significance of the place. It was the site of assembly of the Icelandic chieftains from the year 930 on, and then the place where Iceland’s declaration of independence for signed in 1944, this becoming the founding site of the modern Republic of Iceland.
Our tour guide was amazing. In the beginning, he explained that he works at Thingvellir National Park in the summer, but during rest of the year, he is a professor of history at the University of Reykjavik. We felt very fortunate to have a tour guide with such deep knowledge of Iceland’s history and the national park. Only at the very end, when we were on the Lögberg, the site where the declaration of Icelandic independence was signed in 1944, did he say that there have been seven presidents of Iceland since thefounding of the republic… and he was one of them. Our tour guide was the 6th president of Iceland, Guðni Jóhannesson. And later, he sold us the tickets to enter the museum at the site, which was very well designed and interesting to adults and children, history buffs and the more geologically minded. What an amazing afternoon.
At the end of the day, we drove back to Reykjavik and checked into the last hotel of our Iceland stay. On the next day, we had planned to the Hvammsvik Hot Springs, which had been advertised as a less touristy option than the Blue Lagoon. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that the minimum age of entry was 10 years, so Kate couldn’t go. I felt horrible for having overlooked this. My mom and I spent a couple of hours there and also took a quick dip in the ocean, but we couldn’t really enjoy it. Also, as we got closer to noon, more and more people showed up, which actually made it feel more crowded than the Blue Lagoon.
Fortunately, Jenny is so resourceful and Kate bounces back quickly from setbacks. They found a place to pull off the road, play by a stream and build an amazing fairy house with a sauna and a hot tub. The most beautiful part of this morning was wholly unplanned.
We still wanted to give Kate an opportunity to swim, so after lunch, we went to a public pool in Reykjavik, the Laugardalslaug public pool. Honestly, this is what we should have done from the beginning. We have no pictures from the visit, since cameras and phones were prohibited, but this was actually the most Icelandic bathing experience. It was a wonderful public pool complex, with the biggest kids pool I’ve ever seen, and six or seven hot tubs of different temperatures, as well as a cold plunge tub, a sauna, and a steam room.
The experience around it made us wonder “why aren’t all pools run like this?” You took your shoes off before entering the changing rooms, and the place where the lockers were located was the “dry zone”. You changed into your swim suit and took your towel with you, then you walked into the “wet zone,” got naked, showered with soap and shampoo, and then got back into your bathing suit. You left your towel in a rack, and then went to the pool. On the way back, you showered again, and then dried off completely while still in the “wet zone.” As a result, you could change back into your clothes in the “dry zone” without trying to figure out how to keep your socks from getting wet.
I think this was where we saw the most Icelanders, and we could tell that this was perhaps something similar to saunas in Finland, where locals gather after work to relax and have a chat in the hot tub. I think if we were to go to Iceland again, we would visit the Blue Lagoon again, but also make several visits to Icelandic public pools.
We had one last amazing seafood dinner in Reykjavik, which included sampling Hákarl, fermented shark. We were all adventurous enough to try it, including Kate, which made me proud of her, but it wasn’t Jenny’s or Kate’s thing. Mummu and I didn’t mind, but it isn’t something that I would eat a lot of either. It kind of reminded me of a mixture of licorice and a cube of pork fat.
At 4 in the morning, we left our hotel and drove to the airport to fly to Finland. Yes, that last picture is “night time” during the Icelandic summer.
After our scramble of Kristianartindar, Jenny and I returned to our hotel to find that Kate and Mummu have had a great time. They had a relaxed breakfast, later of course, than we did, and then went to see the waterfall that was right behind the hotel. The remainder of the day was spent in the hot tubs, the sauna, and the bar for lunch. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant. Like I had already mentioned, it was good, but perhaps a little expensive, even for Iceland.
The next day, we checked out and began our trek back west towards Vik, but first we stopped at Fjaðrárgljúfur, a winding canyon fed by several small waterfalls. What got us the most here is how casually Iceland offers up these amazing places. For Iceland standards, this canyon wasn’t even that great, but wow… Worth the 10 minute detour and the ability to stretch our legs.
After that, we drove on to Vik, where we checked into our Hotel Vik I Myrdal and discovered that the hotel did not, in fact, have a pool. That was a bit of a disappointment. Somehow, when booking our trip, both Jenny and I had interpreted the blue area in one of the pictures as a pool, not as a disabled parking area. A mistake that happens to everyone. Or not, perhaps.
Instead, we spent a few hours at the black beach that had also served as our venue for the Icelandic horse adventure earlier. It was interesting to see how the tide was coming in, and how big the waves were. We cautioned Kate a bit to not get wet, because we weren’t quite sure that we could rescue her from the crashing waves, but also because we didn’t want her clothes to be wet and cold in the ice cave that we were planning to visit later that day.
Later, we headed to the Katla ice cave excursion meeting spot near the Vik Kronan store. We were a bit worried, because the instructions talked about walking on the glacier; bringing your own backpack with food and extra clothing; and wearing warm base layers, a waterproof outer layer, and crampon-compatible sturdy hiking boots. Mummu didn’t have her hiking boots, just her trainers, and we knew fitting crampons securely would be near impossible. We essentially dressed for a glacier climb in wet conditions. I wore my base layers, hiking pants, rain pants, hard-shell jacket, and mountaineering boots, and I even brought my helmet along. Why not, I wanted to avoid having to wear a heavy rental bucket for a long period of time.
When the guide saw me, he asked if I was dressed for Mount Everest. Turns out there is almost no walking on the glacier involved, maybe a few hundred meters, and the crampons are microspikes. The ride on the “superjeep” was still pretty interesting, because once we were off the road, the guide deflated the tires to get more traction on the sandy road, and to provide a smoother ride. The vehicle forded a few rivers, something we definitely couldn’t have done with our all-wheel drive rental SUV. It was surprisingly dusty as we were heading towards the glacier with the ice cave.
The walk from the superjeep to the cave was pretty easy going for Jenny and me, but for many, even that was a bit nerve-wracking. Balancing over boards to cross the small river and walking on the dirt of the terminal moraine was uneventful, but once we got to the ice of the glacier, many visitors became uneasy. One of the reasons, of course, was that there was a river of melt water nearby, and during the safety briefing, when no one was asking the guide anything, I had asked what was something we should avoid doing under any circumstances. The guide said “absolutely do not fall into the river.” The river here looked cold, but not too deep, so I wasn’t worried. Jenny and I knew how to walk in balance, Kate was pretty good at it too, and Mummu is also a capable hiker.
My relaxed attitude changed once we got to the cave. The water was raging, fast and noisy, deep in a canyon of ice it had cut. There were no railings, just ropes attached to carabiners on ice screws (one carabiner was unlocked, so I locked it). Totally sufficient, but I really wanted to put Kate in her climbing harness and attach that to the hand lines using a friction hitch.
What was cool (besides the ice) was that we could see the layers of the glacier, like the annual rings of a tree. That makes sense, but I had never before been able to really experience that.
The ice cave was smaller than the pictures, especially the promotional pictures, make it seem like. They’re all shot using fish-eye lenses (including the one above of us). Maybe there are different ice caves than the Katla ice cave, caves that are larger, that go deeper inside, but I’m glad we came here. Some kind of ice cave should be on everyone’s Iceland bucket list.
For dinner, we headed to the Ströndin Pub in Vik, where we enjoyed soups and salads, pasta, beer, and watched part of the Iceland – Switzerland soccer game of the 2025 Women’s Euro Cup. The food was good, but again, shockingly expensive for pub fare. Just drink enough to not be able to math anymore.
This July, my family went on a trip to Iceland and Finland. It was my first real vacation (not just a reunion at my former university, or visiting family for a birthday or holiday) in over two years, and it was so necessary.
In Iceland, we did some more or less intense touring — less intense than what guide books suggest, but more intense than what we usually do, with four hotels in seven days, and quite some time in the car. After arriving on an overnight flight, we relaxed most of the day at the Blue Lagoon. I had heard it was a little touristy, but I didn’t think it was overcrowded. Worth the visit.
One cool thing was that there was a volcanic eruption a few months prior, but we had been told that only the parking lot of the Blue Lagoon had been affected. I thought “okay, so maybe a few inches of lava?” But when we drove to the Blue Lagoon, we were on a temporary gravel road and suddenly saw the original, permanent road six to ten feet below us. That’s a lot of lava!
Speaking of Lava, we ate at the Lava restaurant at the Blue Lagoon, and while it was expensive, it was a great dining experience. Jenny enjoyed her catch-of-the-day (unfortunately, we don’t remember what it was), Kate had very tasty fish and chips that was not a kids meal at all, and I had the best lamb I have ever had.
Later that day, we picked up my mom, who was arriving from Finland, and then drove to the Frost & Fire Boutique Hotel in Hveragerði. When we got there, we weren’t quite sure we were in the right place. There was a lot of steam coming out of several vents, there seemed to be just several huts, and it wasn’t clear where the reception was, or if there was one at all.
We were in the right place, and I wish we had been able to stay there longer than just one night. We stayed in small cabins. They were a little tight, but cozy and private. There were a couple of hot tubs, a swimming pool, and an amazing geothermally-powered restaurant, Restaurant Varma. My mom and I had what was probably the best food of the whole trip there. The breakfast here was also amazing, with not quite as many options as in some of the more corporate hotels later in the trip, but with a homelier quality somehow.
The next day, we explored the area behind the hotel and the local Geothermal Park. We enjoyed watching the very regular geyser there and learned quite a bit about the history and ecology of geothermal power. For example, shepherds used geothermal vents to steam-bake their bread while they grazed their flocks. And that there is a specific spider near the streams that only eats a specific fly that lives there, which only eats the specific algae found in the volcanic stream and nowhere else.
After that, we drove on to a major tourist destination, the gigantic Gullfoss waterfall. It still wasn’t too crowded, but you definitely weren’t alone. Still a worthwhile sight. Even Kate said “whoa” when she caught her first sight of it.
Here, we did notice how expensive Iceland is, though. We spent the equivalent of USD 90 on four sandwiches. We drove on, more to the southeast, towards Vik, where we had booked a riding tour on Icelandic horses. We hit more and more one-lane bridges and areas where there were no fences separating the grazing sheep from the highway. The agent at the car rental place had warned us to not run over sheep, and we had thought it must be a joke (especially since he said if we had the choice, we should run over the rams and not the ewe), but now it was a real possibility.
Icelandic horses are smaller than most other horses, and have a genetic mutation that allows them to run in a gait others cannot, the tolt. This was useful, since the roads were usually pretty bad and limited, which meant horses weren’t used to pull carts, but as pack horses to carry goods and people. Icelanders are also very protective of their horses — foreign horses aren’t allowed on the island, and if an Icelandic horse leaves, it can never return. Since there are no predators on the island that could take down a horse, Icelandic horses actually lie down to rest, something you never see with other horses.
Icelandic horses are also very cute, and we thought there can’t possibly be anything cuter. But we were wrong. Icelandic foals are even more adorable.
After the horse adventure on the black beach, we went to a grocery store to get supplies for Jenny’s and my planned guided climb of Hvannadalshnúkur, the highest peak in Iceland. Then we drove on to the Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon, where we planned to leave Kate and my mom while Jenny and I climbed. Just after we checked in, we found out that our climb had been canceled, because of rain, too warm weather, and unstable snow bridges.
If we had found out just a tad bit earlier, before checking in, we perhaps would have stayed in Vik and saved some money — the Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon was outrageously expensive, but also pleasant. Kate enjoyed the hot tub, the sauna, and the sheep around it. Vik would have had more options to do things, though, but now it was too late. We changed our plans (“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”) and decided that Jenny and I would still hike in Skaftafell area and would try to scramble Kristinartindar on July 5. This way, we would hopefully still get a peak in, and Kate got her much desired time alone with her grandmother.
But we had another day before that, and we went to Diamond Beach. This was the first time we could try to get an understanding of the vastness of the Vatnajökull glaciated area. We noted the retreat of the glacier here as well — at the end of the 19th century, we would have been standing on the glacier, now it was miles away; saw eider birds brood without moving and learned about the use of their down; and climbed on little icebergs that looked like diamonds in the sunlight, acting as the namesakes of Diamond Beach.
On the way back, we partially hiked into the Mulagljufur canyon. To speed up the progress, we carried Kate on our shoulders for good stretches, something I really enjoy. I miss having Kate in the carrier backpack and going on long hikes with her, with elevation gain, while talking about everything we see, but the pack became too small for her a long time ago, and I don’t know how much longer I can even carry her safely on my shoulders. She needs to hike on her own two feet, something she is absolutely capable of for miles and lots of elevation… when she wants to.
In the evening, we had dinner at the Fosshotel. It was good, but too expensive for what it was. Maybe I only feel like that because of the amazing food I had the first night at the Restaurant Varma. The breakfast, on the other hand, was great here.
The next morning, Jenny and I hit that breakfast buffet as soon as it opened — a benefit of the cancellation. Otherwise, we would have done an alpine start and missed breakfast — then drove to the Skaftafell base camp area from where our climb also would have started. We helped some very confused Japanese tourists (“I don’t know where your tour group meets, but here is a map”), then hiked towards the first waterfalls.
We decided to visit Magnúsarfoss and Svartifoss early in the day, before too many people show up, even though our true objective was the Kristinartindar summit. The trail up to these waterfalls, and a little bit beyond that, was of really high quality, either with wooden boardwalks and stairs, or with some kind of metal grid tiles that provided a lot of traction. Svartifoss was beautiful, with curved basalt columns that we’ve never seen anywhere else.
After that, we backtracked a little bit and headed towards the Skaftafell Glacier observation point, where we met a large group, and then we were alone for most of the day. We had decided to hike counter-clockwise, against what most guides had suggested, because we wanted to be able to see up-glacier for most of the hike. The added benefit was that we ended up going up the sketchiest, steepest section near 2900 feet elevation, to the southeast of Kristinartindar, rather than going down.
We could see how long of a trip it would have been up the Skaftafell Glacier, but most of the upper mountain towards Hvannadalshnúkur remained obscured in the clouds for most of the day.
The final off-trail scramble to the summit of Kristinartindar looked more difficult than it ended up being. There was a fair amount of scree and loose rocks, and we successfully worked to not kick any of it down, but the actual route to the summit remained elusive until almost to the end. All we saw were drop-offs left and right. We dropped our packs at about 3500 feet elevation because we knew we had to be close and because it looked like it might get interesting, turned a corner, and saw that it was a walk-up from here.
We hit the summit, which was near some kind of obelisk-like structure, and then went on the knife edge a little farther, to a point where we could really see the drop-off on both sides. I had my Snickers, which I had planned to eat on Mount Rainier earlier this year, and then we turned around, picked up our packs, and scrambled down the scree slope to a super-massive cairn at 3100 feet elevation, where we rejoined the trail and had lunch.
Then it was mainly down, down, down for long periods of time, but there was nothing difficult anymore. We looked backwards several times, to make sure we didn’t miss anything, but the western side of the Kristinartindar loop does seem to offer fewer views. That, plus the fact that we had to go up instead of down on a steep section means I really recommend doing this loop counter-clockwise, like we did.
At the very end, we did see what we think must have been the Hvannadalshnúkur summit, peeking through the clouds. We know it wasn’t just the clouds that lead to the cancellation of the climb, mainly the unsafe snow bridges, but we still felt somewhat spited by the mountain gods.
We got back to the Skaftafell base camp, but before packing up, we asked the guides when the best time to climb Hvannadalshnúkur would be. We were told late May (though there might be bad weather) to mid June (although this year, May was so hot, it was starting to get tricky even in June). The best way would be to live in Iceland for a year and just time the weather that way.
A good trip. In the end, the destination counts much less than the time you spend out in nature with wonderful company.
Early this June, Jenny and I, along with our friends Sam, Chris, Sharon, and Nigel, attempted to climb Mount Rainier again. We had trained for the last few months, felt pretty strong, we had permits, and the weather looked good. Chris had summited twice before, just like Jenny and I. We didn’t make it this time.
A few things are different, compared to our 2017 climbs. The biggest change, of course, is that we are parents. That meant training is very different. We couldn’t go on as many hikes as we used to, and we never actually made it out into snow-covered mountains. Jenny and I did a few Mount Si hikes with weight, but we couldn’t hike them together. Sam also trained on Mount Si, and a couple of times he and I hiked together, once we even did a Double Mount Si. Still, we were strong and fast. In fact, I was faster than eight years ago: 1 hour and 28 minutes up.
Most of our training was not really mountain-related, though. Jenny carried a 50 lbs backpack, filled with our old college textbooks, up and down a local hill ten times several days a week. I took the stairs at work, averaging over 100 floors three days a week, later also with a 30 lbs backpack. And whenever I could, I also rucked with the 50 lbs backpack. It’s still different than actually training on snow.
Our friend Dana watched Kate along with her and Sam’s kids, and that all went great. Kate had a blast. We dropped her off Friday night, and then drove to Paradise at 4 AM on Saturday morning. We needed to pick up our backcountry permit, and the ranger station opened at 7 AM. We had decided not to pick up the permit the day before, which would have meant either a 7 hour round-trip drive for Jenny, or camping somewhere nearby. We really should have camped.
We got to the Paradise parking lot just before 6:30 AM, just as planned, and got ready. There was a long line for permits, however, and only one (very busy, very friendly) ranger working. We didn’t get our permit until 8:30 AM, which meant we started hiking a full two hours later than we did in 2017.
The ranger also informed us that it was very warm. We knew that from the weather forecast, of course, and had planned to leave at 11 PM from Camp Muir. The freezing altitude was over 15,000 ft, which meant the whole mountain was melting.
We started hiking up to Camp Muir, with a couple of stops. The ground was still snow-covered all the way down to Paradise, and the sun was beating down on us. Once we got a little higher, we fortunately caught some cold breezes rolling down the snow slopes. The only steep part was below Panorama Point, leading up to the pit toilet there (which was snow-free but closed), but it had a good boot pack and ascending it was easier than in 2017 when we climbed with Vicky.
Jenny and I on the Muir snowfield. Picture by Chris.Taking a quick break. Picture by Sam.
In general, I thought the ascent to Camp Muir went well, and I felt strong. Once we were on the Muir snowfield, at around 8500 feet, we allowed the group to spread out a little, as long as we stayed in line of sight. Chris and I got to camp first at 2:15 PM, after about 5.5 hours. We were a bit faster even than during our first climb in 2017, so really not too bad.
Chris and I, getting close to Camp Muir.Note that the distance is way off; it’s only 3.9 miles. I don’t quite know how the Garmin Exix Gen 2 can be this bad.
We claimed three tent platforms and set up the two tents we were carrying, then waited for the others to arrive. Unfortunately, we couldn’t start melting snow yet, because we didn’t have the stoves.
By 5 PM, we had melted enough snow to fill up and purify most of our bottles and pouches again, cooked our dinner and then went to listen to the rangers’ safety briefing. The rangers said that we were in record heat days, and that the teams that had the most success had left camp at 10 PM — yet another hour earlier. And there was a crevasse, the “High Crack” above Ingraham Flats and before the Disappointment Cleaver, that was so large that two people had to be on the snow bridge while crossing it.
At around 6 PM, we talked. We now had lost about 4.5 hours (2 hours before we started hiking, about half an hour en route, and 2 hours due to the earlier alpine start), and we still had to filter more water and prepare our ropes. That would leave us about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, to try to sleep. Not very much. I felt physically strong, but mentally not fresh at all.
The crevasse really scared me. We had three-person rope teams, and had practiced for a crevasse fall of one person. If two fell, one person probably wouldn’t have been able to stop the other two. Sam, Jenny and I had planned to be on one rope, and the idea of a total loss terrified me. The thought of Kate becoming an orphan opened cold, frightful depths in my gut.
At first we discussed still roping up and getting going at 10 PM, so we could take a look at this crevasse. But when I realized that we’d not only have to cross the crevasse at 2 AM, when it’s still relatively cool, but also at around 9 AM, when it would be much warmer, and that we could get trapped on the other side, my resolve dwindled.
There are things we could have done, like the third climber giving the first two a belay, but I didn’t feel sharp enough to actually do that. And we still weren’t done preparing and hadn’t even had a chance to try to sleep. And I was worried about summit fever at the crevasse, the temptation to say “let’s just go” even in the face of high risks.
In the end, I said I didn’t want to go and make the attempt beyond Camp Muir. I felt too mentally tired to do my part in securing the rope teams, and admittedly, I was petrified by the thought of leaving our daughter without us. My suggestion was to stay at camp, scramble Muir Peak, and then rope up and do a glacier exploration at 7 AM, without any chance of making the summit, just to see the Ingraham glacier and get a feel for walking as a rope team.
Some of us were definitely disappointed, some maybe also a bit relieved, but we had agreed that we would go as a team, that our risk tolerance as team of parents would be low, and that one person turning around would mean the whole team would turn around.
We scrambled Muir Peak in the evening, then got a good night’s sleep in our tents, while we listened to other teams getting ready. In the morning, we scrambled Muir Peak again and watched a beautiful sunrise.
The group during our evening scramble of Muir Peak.Sunrise on Muir Peak.Sunrise hitting the upper mountain. This exact moment always feels like the mountain is singing to me.
Sharon and Nigel decided to pack up and head down, while Sam, Chris, Jenny and I roped up for our exploration. We used Chris’ 40 meter rope, with Chris in the lead, followed by me, Sam, and Jenny. We started walking on snow that felt pretty good. Far softer than the styrofoam-like snow that is perfect for crampons, but not too slushy yet.
The rock section known as Cathedral Gap, which separates the Cowlitz glacier from the Ingraham glacier, had seemed nearby from camp, but it was half a mile nonetheless. The lack of recognizable features on the glacier and the cliff face played tricks on our eyes. Once we reached the rocky section, we took in coils of rope to avoid dragging the rope on the ground, which could cause rock fall, and looked back: Our tents were tiny, allowing us to properly judge the distance. The Cowlitz glacier was already littered with rocks, big and small, which had tumbled down from the Cadaver Gap, something we were reminded of frequently during the evening and, surprisingly, even at night, when it was the coolest.
The rock section was short, only a few turns, which was good, because we had left our crampons on (we also would have left them on at night, had we attempted to summit). Stepping with crampons on rocks feels like dragging nails across a chalkboard. Fortunately, most of us had steel crampons that could be sharpened. While we were on the Cathedral Gap, a group of three climbers descended, having successfully summited. We congratulated them; I admit I had very mixed feelings.
Then we crossed over onto the Ingraham, allowing us to see the expanse of a much bigger glacier than the Cowlitz, with its big crevasses like the High Crack and the even bigger one under the Disappointment Cleaver. Shockingly, there was running melt water at 10,500 ft elevation, and a near constant rock fall coming off the north face of the rock band between the Cathedral Gap and the Cadaver Gap, at about 8 in the morning. It was warm, and the glaciers were melting.
We turned around at 11,000 ft on the Ingraham, from a place where we could see the High Crack crevasse, the Disappointment Cleaver, and portions of the route on the upper mountain above the cleaver.
We made it back to camp, packed up our tents, harnesses, crampons, stoves, and all the other gear, and then headed down. Chris left a bit earlier and was heading down by himself, while Sam, Jenny and I decided to do some snow skills training on the way down. Sam proved to be a fast plunge stepper, and Jenny and I sometimes struggled to keep up. We also did a decent amount of glissading, while we practiced proper form: Ice axe in your dominant hand, with the pick facing outwards, away from the body; braking was done with the non-dominant hand grabbing low, close to the spike. We also trained rolling over into self-arrest position while glissading, and performing self-arrest in general. Finally, we built a few snow anchors and showed how strong a deadman anchor and even a vertical picket is.
Ignoring the disappointing fact that we had planned to summit and didn’t, it was a very enjoyable trip. I felt physically strong and realized again how weirdly much I enjoy carrying a 47 lbs pack up 4600 ft. We had good conversations, met generous fellow climbers who gave us water and granola they didn’t need anymore (6000 calories in one bag, holy smokes!), watched a gorgeous sunset, and came back healthy and safe (with just minor sunburn on the tip of my nose and some very chapped lips).
But I also met a new part of me. I hadn’t expected that I would be the one who says the risk is too high, but in the end, it was I. We had two more permits for the following weeks, but I didn’t want to go, because it would have meant missing the end of year celebration at Kate’s school and her kindergarten graduation. I had always scoffed about things like kindergarten graduations, thinking they aren’t real, they aren’t important, but I realized they actually are important to me. I want to be alive and present in Kate’s life. This is only kindergarten, but it was a year of lots of change and growth for her, and I want to celebrate with her. This is the only time Kate finishes kindergarten, but the mountain is still going to be there.
It was difficult to get over feeling like I had disappointed the others, that I had ruined the trip for them. The weekend that we decided not to go, perhaps 30 climbers crossed the snow bridge twice. Since then, it has certainly been over a hundred. I have seen pictures of the crevasse and the snow bridge, and it is more substantial than I had pictured it in my mind. But it was not straight-forward either, with an awkward, angled crossing. I think we probably could have made it, but I felt mentally too fatigued to take the risk. I have come to accept my decision. It was still a beautiful weekend in the mountains.
Looking forward, there are a few things I would do differently:
Most importantly, we should have picked up the permit the day before and camped there the night before the climb. That would have allowed us to start hiking as early as we had liked. I know why we didn’t do that, because it would have meant another night away from Kate, but this climb just isn’t a one-night trip for me. It wasn’t for me in 2017 either.
We should have practiced some more glacier skills, like boot-axe belays or belaying off a picket, and spent more time as a rope team walking with proper rope management and slack. I think that would have given me more confidence.
Perhaps Jenny and I just can’t be on the same 3-person rope team. Maybe the risk is just too high for me.
We sent Chris and me ahead with tents, in order to claim tent platforms, but then we couldn’t melt snow. I should have given others some pickets and crevasse rescue gear and taken the stove.
I think we’ll give Rainier another shot next year. I’m going to have to figure out how I can be a climber and a parent. I thought I had, but I very clearly learned what persona is more important to me. I’m a father first and foremost.
I had Home Assistant installed in a VM from a while ago, when I was trying to have some more advanced conditions for alerts, but then I stopped using it. Now I spun it up again and connected the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition.
I went with Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition, because I wanted something that was pre-built. I don’t want to mess around with a Raspberry Pi or something like that.
Here are my observations:
While running on my little VM, the voice assistant is slow. Turning on a light takes 12 seconds, while it’s instantaneous with Alexa.
The voice recognition gets triggered when a recording says the wakeword.
The voice assistant right now is pretty dumb. All it can do is turning things on and off, basically.
I realize I can improve all of this. I might have to get a dedicated computer with a better GPU for this.
Yesterday, we went to see the 2025 production of “The Magic Flute” at the Seattle Opera. This was a relatively new production that was originally created in 2012 by Barrie Kosky and Suzanne Andrade for Komische Oper in Berlin.
Featuring seamless interaction between onstage performers and animated visuals, this production is a “wonderful show” that is “great for opera lovers, newbies and the whole family” (Los Angeles Times). Inspired by silent movies, Barrie Kosky’s colorful and energetic production comes to Seattle after receiving standing ovations at opera houses around the world.
I can see that this was a technically challenging feat to pull off. The projections had to be spot on, the performers had to be exactly in the right place.
Unfortunately, this staging didn’t work for me at all. In fact, it was the worst opera performance I have seen in over 15 seasons of watching opera at the Houston Grand Opera and the Seattle Opera.
Probably the worst part for me were the “silent movie intertitles,” when the opera switched from Mozart’s beautiful orchestral music to cheap and off-tune sounding harpsichord music. We understood that they were trying to imitate the written explanations between scenes in silent films, but these were jarring interruptions in the music. And even in the silent film days, grand theater performances and opening nights would have full orchestras. It was the cheap, sad theaters away from Hollywood that had the single harpsichord or out-of-tune pocket piano to provide the music.
This production interrupted Mozart’s beautiful score with cheap theater music… not because linking it to silent film somehow required it, but to make a stereotypical joke. Wrong priorities for people who I assume love music.
The combination between silent film and opera also feels very questionable. Sure, both silent film and opera are melodramatic, over-the-top. But the ways performers emote in both are just so incompatible. In “Sunset Blvd.,” Norma Desmond says “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.” In silent film, performers emoted with their faces. In opera, you emote with the music and with the singer’s voices. Having opera singers be silent in those misguided silent film intertitles felt like such a strange waste of talent. Interrupting the music and the moment to make the “silent movie joke,” again and again, just killed the feelings the music is supposed to inspire in opera listeners. It was a record scratch, just as a gag.
My next problem was just how two-dimensional and therefore limited the principal performers had to be because of the staging. They had a few doors that could open, and the performers were essentially pinned to the wall, like dead butterflies. They hardly moved, they hardly interacted with each other. Frequently, the principals were projected over. With the Queen of the Night, I couldn’t even tell if there actually was a live singer inside. Sadly, having the live singers didn’t add anything. The Seattle Opera could have recorded the whole thing once and projected everything, like a movie in a movie theater.
Having great acting and elaborate staging isn’t absolutely necessary, because in the end, it is more about the music than about the acting — as we have seen just recently with the fantastic “in concert” staging of “Les Troyens” at the Seattle Opera — but as described above, the musical side was atrocious, ripped apart into dozens of small chunks by the silent movie intertitle joke.
I am fine with minimal stagings. But this wasn’t it. It was minimal on the side of the performers, but at the same time maximally and unnecessarily busy on the projection side. Everything was always moving, filled with distracting jokes, repetitive and busy. It is simply criminal when the visual side is so stimulating that it overwhelms the Queen of the Night’s “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” aria, which is so iconic that one should do everything possible to let it stand by itself.
That the focus was on the wrong part was never clearer than in the “Die Strahlen der Sonne vertreiben die Nacht, es siegte die Stärke” finale, when — almost for the first time — a larger group of performers gathered, yet they were black and white, projected over with fake “old movie dust” and film imperfections, while on bright red background an animation of musical notes zoomed around.
Then there were disconnects between the imagery and the story. Why was Sarastro represented so robotic and cold? Doesn’t he represent the sun? Sure, the Queen of the Night was a big spider, but she seemed more organic and less creepy to me than mechanical-analytical Sarastro. What was the meaning of the creepy eyes and the silent, top-hatted men that were surrounding Pamina… when they were supposed to re-assure her of Tamino’s love?
Maybe there was a little bit too much creative license given to the animator. At least too much for me to understand. And that would have been okay, had I been able to close my eyes and just enjoy the music. But I couldn’t, because of the silent movie intertitle joke.
Many audience members seemed to love this production. There was a lot of laughter. But to me, the focus was wrong. This was a production for the ADHD generation of TikTok consumers — one that might as well be consumed as a movie, in a movie theater, and not with live performers.
I am concerned if this is the direction the Seattle Opera will take. A staging like this one devalues the amazing skills of the singers and distracts from the beauty of the music.
I completed my collection of Depeche Mode albums the other day by adding “Sounds of the Universe” (2009) and “Delta Machine” (2013) — which I had both somehow skipped — as well as “Memento Mori” (2023). None of them are as good as “Spirit” (2017), but I am enjoying “Caroline’s Monkey”.
If I have to choose a single favorite book for the year, it’s probably “The End of Reality.” If I have to pick a single book that has influenced my life the most, though, it’s “How Not to Die.”
I’ve been exclusively working from home now for over a year. The last day I was at the office was Friday, February 28, 2020. At that point, I decided the risk of getting on public transportation and being around hundreds of co-workers was too high.
Early during the next week, we stocked up and beat the rush on supplies and toilet paper, which allowed us to not shop for several weeks. In retrospect, we were probably a little too concerned (for example, we let mail sit for a couple of days before opening it, even though fomite transmission has later shown to not be a problem), but we just didn’t know. And it was relaxing to not need to go anyway.
I had a pretty good setup at home already, with a standing desk and two vertical 20″ screens (which I’ve had since early in grad school). I got the standing desk because standing was the only way I my infant daughter would let me work. The standing desk definitely saved my back. Early on, I also used a $300 subsidy from my employer Oracle to buy a 27″ 4K monitor. The screen real estate without having things split between the 20″ monitors definitely helps. I just wish I had got a 32″ 4K monitor. On the 27″, the pixels are too small.
Our schedule has definitely changed. My commute from home to work was actually pretty good, but I nonetheless save about 2 hours combined. This has allowed us to actually work out every morning. Again, if we hadn’t started that in March 2020, this past year probably would have been much less healthy for us. I’ve read that about 60% of Americans have had undesired weight changes (mostly gains) during the last year. Our weight has stayed the same, but we’ve definitely gained muscle mass. I don’t think I’ve ever been this fit on a whole-body level. My legs are less fit than during climbing season, particularly the 2017 Rainier season, but overall, my body is doing great.
I probably still spend more time working than I did before. Especially in the beginning, in March and April 2020, it was difficult for me to set boundaries. I worked early, I worked late, I worked a lot. That was draining, and I had to find the self-discipline to not look at the work computer even though it is right there. In general, self-discipline has become much more important.
Initially, I thought I’d quarantine and work from home for maybe a month or two. Now we’re reaching the end of month 13, and it will still take a few more month for sure, even though an end is in sight.
Microsoft recently announced that they are letting employees back on campus, even though they are still encouraging employees to work from home. Oracle hasn’t made that announcement yet, and I don’t think anyone will be required to come back at least until they are vaccinated, but Microsoft’s announcement made me search my feelings about returning to the office.
I’ve realized I’m not close to ready.
I anticipate it will be a few more months, maybe three, of working from home exclusively. And even after that, I plan to work from home most days of the week. There simply are lots of benefits, and my team and I have demonstrated that we can be productive even though we work remotely.
That made me think of how I fit into the world of mathematics. I know I had calculated my ErdÅ‘s number at one point, but I couldn’t find it anymore. I myself haven’t authored any mathematics papers, of course, but there are computer scientists who bridge that gap.
Over the holidays, I migrated from 1&1 to DreamHost, and I got almost everything to work. The only thing that didn’t work anymore were the email notifications from my Buffalo LinkStation NAS. Normally, they report once a day that everything is okay, or immediately if there is an error.
I had re-created the email account that I use for that in DreamHost, updated the SMTP server and credentials in the LinkStation admin interface, but it wasn’t sending any emails. It was saying “Test email sent.” when I tested the new settings, but nothing ever arrived. No combination of login mode and SSL/TLS/disable worked.
I had to figure out if there were logs anywhere. I know the NAS has SSH access, but I hadn’t done that in a really long time. It seems like somehow, it got disabled again. No problem, yesterday evening I ran an easy-to-use Java application called ACP Commander GUI to re-enable SSH access and set a new root password. Then I could SSH into the NAS.
The logs were fortunately easy to find in /var/log. The file messages contained the following line every time I sent a test message:
550 5.7.1 Sender domain not allowed
What in the world does that mean? It turns out DreamHost has a policy against spoofing the sender. But I don’t think I was doing that. All I was doing was sending it from nas.machine@domain.com (which had the email account set up with DreamHost) to personal.email@gmail.com. I wanted the sender to be nas.machine@domain.com, which shouldn’t be blocked, and I wasn’t setting a different sender email anywhere!
After searching a bit for the ssmtp.conf file, I found it at /etc/melco/ssmtp.conf, and it contained the following line:
FromLineOverride=YES
Whenever I set it to NO, it got overwritten again and set to YES. I don’t know from where or why, but I assume this somehow sets the sender email to the destination email. So when I was trying to send to personal.email@gmail.com, the NAS was inadvertently also setting the sender to personal.email@gmail.com, which was prohibited by the DreamHost policy.
This means I can’t send to personal.email@gmail.com from the NAS. Instead, I have to send to an email account on my DreamHost domain (e.g. nas.forward@domain.com) and forward it from there.
Oh, I love troubleshooting my tech in my free time.
I’m totally going down the rabbit hole this morning…
I need to test an rpm package.
The host in the cloud can’t access the QA yum repository.
So I download the package to my work laptop, copy it to the cloud host, and try to install it locally.
Of course, it has dependencies
I try to download the dependencies too and copy them over to the cloud.
It looks like there is a cyclic dependency.
Screw rpm -i, let’s try to get yum to work so it can get the dependencies for me.
I should set up a local mirror of the QA yum repository.
I try to use wget to mirror the QA yum repo.
wget fails because some library doesn’t work.
I try to uninstall wget, but it fails because of permissions.
I fix the permissions and uninstall wgett.
I tell it to re-install wget, but now it needs to update Homebrew.
Now it’s running make.
40 minutes later, and it’s still building.
Then I try to blog about it, but this WordPress blog can’t connect to its database. Apparently, 1&1 has silently changed the database hostname. Thanks!
