Kelly Mayhew, R.I.P.

Yesterday a friend and college, Kelly Mayhew, passed away. He'd been in hospice for the last few days, so it wasn't a surprise. He fought and lost the battle with cancer for over long two years.

I met Kelly in 1999. For two years he worked as our in-house graphic designer and reported directly to me. He was talented and fast, an unusual quality for a designer. He had a wide ranging career, including work for Disney. He was also the designer for the logo for Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Two years ago, just before he learned of his cancer, I had to fire him in a round of job cuts and typical for Kelly, he expressed sympathy for me in having to make the call.

Kelly was one of the good guys. I spoke with him just last week. He could no longer walk, but still wanted to work. It is some comfort to me that I'd been able to supply him with a steady supply of free lance jobs. Lately, the jobs didn't have deadlines.

I've got few enough friends that I can't afford to lose any of them. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as we all prepare for life without Kelly.

Getting Old (but not that old)

I was born in 1960, which made me too young for the summer of love. Didn't matter. I was raised in a strict religious community, so no free love'n for me, even if I'd been old enough!

No regrets there, just fodder for perspective. I also did all of my dating between 1978 and 1981. Just enough to give me some rather painful disco memories (god, how clueless I was), just get the hang of asking out girls, then married!

That also put me safely monogamous for the last 22 years, protected from nasties like HIV and Herpes. I shudder to think about me trying to date again. Yikes. Happily married, thank you, and I'll just stay that way if I have anything to say about it.

But that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy looking at a pleasing female form. I enjoy it a great deal. I just don't know what to make of this: The Second Annual Blogger Boobie-Thon for Breast Cancer.

It's an excellent cause. I'm well aware of the problems. My sister-in-law is a survivor of breast cancer. I'm the father of two daughters. I'm concerned about their health as well.

It's just that I wonder about tying the two together. I'm not sure it's an outright bad idea. Frankly, there are some excellent "racks" displayed there. I guess I'm more surprised that so many are willing to lift their shirts and send in photos. Sure, many are anonymous, for the most part. Maybe I'm just sensing a bit of the generation gap. Always been a bit of a square.

Are young women really that much more sexually open and available than they were 20 years ago? I'm not concerned about myself - that's not a problem I have to face. But how do you prepare a kid for life like that?

You know, that whole burka thing is growing on me.

Don't 'cha Just Love The Onion?

Now there's a job I'd love to have. Reporter for The Onion.

The Onion | IBM Emancipates 8,000 Wage Slaves

Won't someone free me?

Join The Tribe

Here's something interesting, at least it has the potential: Tribe.net.

I'm not overly concerned about privacy - my public persona and private are pretty much one - at least for now.

If you join up, link me as a friend!

Something A Bit More Pleasant To Think About

Diane says I can't quit my job and operate a theater and convention center out of our basement, so I decided to turn my mind to other pleasant thoughts. Here's something delightful from the New York Times.

88 Keys, Many Languages Be sure to see the slideshows and listen to the audio.

I myself am a "hack" piano player. I can read music, but I have no theory. Good ear, poor training. So I play for my own enjoyment, and not enough at that. A couple of years ago I got the bug and upgraded from the really quite good Baldwin "Hamilton" studio piano, to a wonderful Baldwin baby grand. Mine is the model M1 Artist Series in traditional ebony.

Sure, if I had the $$$ I'd have looked at the Steinway, but frankly, it's too much piano for me. The Baldwin is an excellent instrument, far superior to the cheap Korean and Japanese pianos. It has a rich, powerful sound and terrific feel.

If there's time, I'll spend some time at that keyboard tonight.

How Much Straw Can This Camel Haul?

I've been afraid to have my blood pressure checked lately. A few weeks
ago, the day I had another kidney stone attack and I learned my
grandmother had passed away it was something like 158/120. In fact, in
the last couple of months the job stress has been steadily mounting.
We closed a remote office and laid off a lot of good people and close
friends, then a few weeks later we changed our management structure and
laid off another friend - I was part of the decision making process on
both, so my stress has been high all along.

Then this past Friday was a doozie. I had a pretty good day planned,
end of the week, looking forward to the weekend. As I came through the
door just before eight I was greeted with "the web site's down".

OK, no big deal, that happens from time to time. I checked my email
and saw the site reports and a message from the ISP - the main server's
drive had crashed and they were replacing. Still no problem. I had
two separate servers, one with the FTP and SQL (the real data of the
system) and a second with the web site and processing structures -
that's the one that had crashed. I was also confident they could fix
that as well, since not two months in the past I had specifically
requested daily backups.

Or so I thought. They informed me mid morning that that drive was not
backed up. Hadn't been since July, when they changed their backup
procedures. And their backup rotation had wiped out any backups.

So I began reloading both primary sites from my machine, but that was
only HTML. I started looking for other backups and calling for outside
help. My contract programmer was on the road, but would be back in an
hour. He then called me and told me his girl friend had been in an
auto accident and he couldn't help. I called for the original site
developer, a former employee, Jamie, and left messages everywhere. And
the clock continued ticking - our online store generates on average
between $1,000 and $2,000 per day and it wasn't looking good to get
back online soon, maybe days.

Jamie left a message that he could help around 4 p.m. and that left me
fairly confident, but I soon learned he didn't have any personal
backups. I met him at the office, called in the boss and we started
tearing the place apart, looking for backup CDs. No luck. Jamie went
home to search some more and the boss kept looking. Before I went
home for medication I made a series of calls to get the drive packaged
and sent to a drive recovery specialist, a move that could cost up to
five grand.

Around ten Jamie called and let me know that basic operations were
restored, then the boss called that he had found a backup - only two
years old. With that we were back by Saturday morning. I was able to
call off the drive recovery, but we still are missing some
functionality we've added - I don't know the prognosis of getting it
back.

So, we pull another one out of the fire. Not so much fun, though.