Alerts vs. Time of Day

A long time ago I worked at a company called DTN. We had several systems that worked 24/7 processing news, weather, and market feeds. One of my early jobs was to create a system to alert us when something went wrong.

All our data-gathering systems could send text messages to a pager via an API I created. And the central paging system itself would poll data-gathering systems to confirm they were up. Anyone could write plug-in modules for the paging system and expand it. You could telnet into the paging system to administrate it. Today, people use programs like Nagios, but back then we didn't have all those cool open-source tools.

In the spirit of eating your own dog food, I first tried this paging system I created myself. Everytime something went wrong with the system, I got a text page on what the error was. Then I could log into the system and control the alerts. That system was cool.

Soon after, I got paged 100 times in just a few minutes. So the paging program got updated to have the additional ability to limit pages to 1 per 15 minutes. It was 'cool' again.

Later, the system woke me up multiple nights in a row for errors that were minor, and corrected themselves. After another round of development, the paging system learned that between 10 pm and 7 am, something had to be really, really, wrong before it would page.

(One day, all our data feeds stopped. It turns the satellite that they used failed. So did our pages go off? No. The satellite those data feeds used was also used by our paging system.)

This was an evolution in knowing how to send alerts 'smart' depending on type of alert, time of day, and quantity. I wish many other devices would go through it. My cell phone will beep merrily at 3 am letting me know it has a low battery. Come on, do you really think I care at that time of night? Worse yet is the smoke alarm that tells me it has a low battery in the middle of the night. Many of our smoke detectors require a ladder to access. Just what I want to be doing.

So the moral of the story: If you are working on a system that makes causes an audible alert to be made, allow for different 'priorites' to be made depending on the hour of the day. It will improve the quality of life of your customers.

Creating your own operating system

I located a good tutorial on creating your own operating system. I first tried it under Linux with no success. It does work under Windows with DJGPP.

Under Linux I'm having issues with compiling 32-bit under a 64-bit OS, and the symbols between C and assembly don't match up. I should be able have a C function called main and then call it with _main from assembly. But the extra underscore isn't getting added on.

I figure creating my own OS should be easier under Linux, not harder.

New Sewing Machine

I built my last balloon nine years ago using a borrowed Adler sewing machine. I've wanted a sewing machine myself, but have found it difficult to find one on the used market at a decent price. I've seen a few on the coast, but they are hard to ship.

Today my search was over. I picked up a Singer 112W116. It is an industrial-grade sewing machine that can sew two rows of lock-stitch at the same time, 3,000 stitches per minute. I'm not sure how old the machine is, but I'd guess us is older than I am.


I need to see if I can get it to working soon. When I built the balloon I was pretty good at setting the timing on a sewing machine and having it run smooth. But I've forgotten those skills and will have to learn again.

A balloon skims the top of a pond:

A couple balloons near where I landed:
I'm on approach for landing. I just brushed the tops of the trees to help slow down:

Deathly Hallows Release Party

Getting Ready:
Party at Barnes and Noble, on University:

2007 National Balloon Classic (2)

2007 National Balloon Classic Photos