Brian Jamison

I recently had the pleasure of installing Monit on one of my personal servers. At OpenSourcery we use more complex tools like Nagios + Munin, but I needed a simpler utility for monitoring services, and Monit also allowed me to easily restart a service that may have died. Thumbs up all around.

And while I was able to install and configure Monit in just a few minutes, I didn’t have an easy way to test different loads on the system. Enter stress, which was equally painless to configure and set up, giving me a number of ways to controllably test load on the server in question.

Once again the power of open source proves itself. Total time invested, less than one hour. I didn’t have to pay for a thing, and everything just worked.

I think they meant “biodiesel”

I’ve been having intermittent issues with my comcast setup, mostly doing netflix instant viewing. I called in today and quickly became frustrated with the run around. After I politely asked to be connected to billing to cancel my account (and sitting on hold for 10m) my issue was magically escalated.

Here’s director Josh Tickell at the regal fox tower last night.

If you’re in Portland the weekend of 11/14, the answer is yes.

I saw a film called FUEL last week and it moved me, it inspired me, it gave me hope for the future. Now I’m reaching out and asking you to go see FUEL the weekend of 11/14.

Why will this make a difference? The world premiere of FUEL is in Portland, and /only/ Portland on November 14th. If we can pack the house on the opening weekend, theater owners will pick up this film and millions will see it. Just by watching a movie you can make this happen.

For once, it is up to us. /You/ can make a difference, and see a great film at the same time. There may never be another chance to have such a gigantic impact for the price of one movie ticket.

So I’m asking you to join me sometime over the weekend of 11/14 to see the film, to tell your friends, neighbors and everyone you know about it. Let’s pack the house!

I hope to see you there.

More about FUEL here:
http://thefuelfilm.com/
Opens 11/14 at the Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10

Full disclosure: my company created the website for the movie, but I am posting this because I really loved the film and I believe you will too.

Randall invited us to see the annual migration of the swifts on Friday. The sky was filled with thousands of diving, spiraling, swirling swifts — literally a churning tornado of black wings.

We’re going back — only this time with a big poce of cardboard so Xander, Sofia and I can sled down the steep grass banks before the swifts arrive.

Here’s a quick photo from budapest!

Apparently he just decided to open a chain of pastry shops in Romania.

Saw these amusing treats at a pastry shop in Szeged last night.