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How Often Do You Get to Touch a 10,000 Year Old Mammoth?
Earlier this week a farmer just outside of town was excavating in his field and uncovered the skeleton of a Wooly Mammoth. It made big news here and the story was picked up by a number of big news franchises. Anyway, the farmer is the father-in-law of my wife’s friend and she invited us out to see it.
How could I say no? I’ve seen skeletons of mammoths in museums and drawings of them since i was a kid. But this was an opportunity to actually touch something that roamed the very land where my house now sits, an animal that lived and died here 10,000 years ago. It was amazing to say the least. What struck me was the shear size of everything. I know mammoths were large, but the skull was probably as big as my dinning room table. The tusks surprised me in that they were so smooth. I don’t know why I thought they would be rough but I was surprised that they were smooth, almost polished.
Well, here are links to some of the news stories for more info and below that are some pictures.
Farmer finds woolly mammoth bones in Michigan field (Detroit News)
Woolly mammoth bones found in Michigan soy field (Chicago Tribune)
Farmer digs up woolly mammoth bones in Michigan soy field (Washington Post)
Michigan farmers discover woolly mammoth skeleton (BBC News)
Woolly Mammoth Skull
Mammoth Front of Skull
Mammoth Shoulder Balljoint
Mammoth Tusk Tip
2014 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 680 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 11 trips to carry that many people.
MDT Lab Builder v 1.1
I’m working on version 1.1 of my MDT Lab Builder. I want to fix a couple of things, make the scripts a little more robust and start adding additional content.
For example:
- I’m going to remove the creation of the MDT share on the host computer. I shouldn’t go creating shares on other’s computers
- The evaluation version of Server 2012 R2 expires immediately, so the servers will only remain up and running for a short time before they shut down
- To allow for updating with additional content, I’m adding logic to both the MDT prep and Hyper-V buildout scripts so they can properly handle existing content when going form one version to another (going from v 1.0 to v 1.1+)
- I’m tackling the upgrade process for Windows 10
My main goal for this new version will be the Windows 10 upgrade process. This new version will create a Windows 7/8 workstation and include a simple task sequence used to upgrade them in-place. This was talked about at TechEd Europe and an SCCM demonstration sequence is explained here.
At least that’s my goal.
“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have thought often about starting a blog and I always managed to talk myself out of it. What would I write about? Why would I write? Why would anyone be interested in what I have to say?
Well over time I’ve realized that If I’m going to write I should not worry about who might be interested. If no one ever finds this blog it should not matter. I will write what I enjoy and find the writing itself rewarding.
And should anyone stumble across my little corner of the Internet and ask, “Why?” Johan Arwidmark ( DeploymentResearch ) said it best, “Giving something back simply makes me feel good.”
If I’m lucky, maybe something I write here helps someone down the line.
Thanks
Mike
The Systems Monkey 