Archive for April, 2001
April 12, 2001 at 04:00
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- After a month and a half, I decided that enough was enough, and finally fixed the sea of decrepitude that was my activity log. Every day I would think to myself “I should really write down what I did today, because I like having that record.” and would promptly fall asleep or start talking to someone and so on.
- Since our build master just left, and there’s really nobody else who can do it, I’ve reluctantly taken that role for the next couple of months. It’s good, because there are so, so, so many things that I want to fix, but it’s also quite possibly the most infuriating and frustrating job I could possibly be doing, since it involves dealing with every team, many of which contain incompetent people.
- On the bright side, Alain works for me now, and he seems pretty good. He doesn’t seem to have any real opinions about how this stuff should all work, so I can spend the next few months making sure that he fully believes that my way is the one right and true path, and that all others will be cast down. I guess if I succeed at my goal of automating as much as possible and removing the stupidity, he can just take over for me when I’ve decided that I’ve had enough.
- Today was Tyla’s last exam of the term, and so we celebrated her completion and new employment offer with a dinner at Thai Grille. Alas, Deb already left for Ottawa for the long weekend, but Zach, Alice, Mike, Janice (!), and George could be counted on for some gastronomic excess.
- cassis is nearly beta-able, I just need to fix a half dozen smaller things and release it. It’s probably no more than 5 or 6 hours of work, I just need to make time for it. In other news, there’s been a lot of Achtung talk lately, and it looks like the GNOME 2.0 platform is finally stable enough for us to push Achtung over the finish line. Or at least the pre-alpha line.
- I’m tired, and I haven’t decided whether I’m going to work tomorrow yet. It’s a holiday, so it’ll be a good chance to actually get something done.
April 13, 2001 at 04:00
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- I dreamt that one of the NHL playoff games showing tonight was “The Toronto Maple Leafs vs. GNOME.org” All I could remember about it was that Owen was on the team, though. I wonder if Owen plays hockey.
- Speaking of hockey, the Toronto v. Ottawa game was some of the finest hockey that I’ve seen all season–and it was just game one! There’s a quadruple-header tomorrow, with a chance for Toronto to go up 2-nil.
- Mike, Alice, Zach, and I met up at Zach’s for card games and Chinese food before they departed to spend the weekend in Toronto. Mike and I departed for great hockey.
- I want to have Cujo’s children.
April 14, 2001 at 04:00
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- It’s been hovering around 10 degrees all week, but I still see lawn glaciers in some parts of town when I’m walking around. Some near my house are still 2m tall, indicating that they’ll probably be around for a while… I shoveled the rest of the snow off of my front balcony, since I think the dripping was bothering my ground-floor neighbour, but it still had probably another week or so of melting left.
- Parc Jeanne Mance was finally starting to dry up, so George and I got an hour or so of frisbee in before the hockey this afternoon. The 10 degree afternoon was basically perfect, if occasionally gusty.
- More fine hockey, if not as spectacular as last night’s offering. Toronto naturally shut out Ottawa again, and Edmonton stole one from Dallas, which makes that series interesting indeed. I can root for just about anyone against Dallas. I’d wave a Satan flag if he were playing against Dallas.
- Simon has a relatively-nonserious liver disease, for which I started medicating him today. The blood tests, which I had silently scoffed at at the time, seem like a good choice now.
- The US Bureau of Prisons Execution Protocol. Pretty interesting reading.
April 15, 2001 at 04:00
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- Brunch at Beauty’s with Adam and George. Fairly large lineup, but it was really nice outside, so it wasn’t so bad.
- Some child left his hand in the door frame to get it lightly smashed. 20 minutes later, when I held the door for his mother, she leaned around the corner and left her hand in the door frame for a minute or so, while I held the door and we all chuckled. We all know where that child got that particular trait.
- More frisbee, more nearly-perfect weather.
- George and I wanted to roast a rabbit since it’s Easter and all, but the PA was sold out of whole rabbits (and are closed today, since this is Quebec). Alas.
April 16, 2001 at 04:00
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- A relatively mundane day at work; spent most of my day debugging and trying various new Bonsai and Tinderbox things. I hope to get far enough ahead of my work to be able to lock myself in my office for a week and rewrite Bonsai. Maybe the one good thing that will come of this god-forsaken temporary role. They don’t pay me nearly enough.
- Steak, scallops, bacon, shrimp, veggies at Mike and Tyla’s. Hillary drove Mike back from Ottawa today, which was a pleasant surprise visit. We kicked back to watch Toronto shame Ottawa again, though it was much, much closer than it should have been. Alas, Ottawa broke the shutout streak at something close to 11 periods without scoring.
- If I have time to update my activity log, Harold certainly does.
- The future is x-rated.
April 17, 2001 at 04:00
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- I dreamt that the CVS server was crashing all over itself, but then woke up and didn’t care.
- blah blah blah blah blah.
- Decided on a whim to go to SFO this weekend; leave early Friday, back on the red eye Tuesday night. It’s time, I haven’t been out west in a year or so, and I miss my good friend Chris.
- During the getaway she will drive the Vespa.
April 18, 2001 at 04:00
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- Bleh, I slept in way too late. I have an assbarnload of stuff to do at work today.
- Left work on time today, as I’ve been sneakily doing most of the week, and went to watch some of my taped Newsradio episodes at Zach’s. I miss Phil Hartman more and more every year.
- Mike and I saw Econoline Crush tonight at Metropolis. A good show, if somewhat brief, since they shared the billing with two other uninteresting bands.
- Leafs sweep Senators–all too beautiful, and all too predictable given the history of the Senators in the playoffs. 0 for 16 on the power play, and LaLime was tied for fourth in total Ottawa playoff goals scored. The Ottawa press are going to have a field day.
- I’m with Zach: TLC, if you’re listening, the American Junkyard Wars teams really have to stop. I can’t listen to that grating announcer or watch the assholic teams for more than 10 minutes. Boo.
- Congratulations Canada on legalizing insulin!
April 19, 2001 at 04:00
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- Today I hate Solaris with every fibre of my being.
- I hate the shit flinging monkeys that had to buy a Sun because it’s expensive, and we all know that expensive things always work better and are cooler. As a sysadmin with a Sun, your cock is eight thousand feet long.
- I hate the morons that get in my way, and the morons who want me to do a job, but don’t trust me to do it.
- I hate our IMAP server and the nutjobs that run it, since it’s down for at least the 10th time this year. I bet the baboons that run our internal services make at least twice as much as I do.
- As far as I’m concerned, there’s no amount of money smaller than a steamer chest full of 20s that would convince me to debug CVS on Solaris. Yet here I am, doing just that. This must change. Very, very soon.
- Only the knowledge that I’m going to be away until Wednesday keeps me from throwing a filing cabinet through my bay window and resigning.
- We played Scrabble in the foyer for a little while, then I left to play frisbee with George before the sun went down. So much fun, but I pulled a muscle in my neck when running over some wildly uneven ground. I think we’ll walk the extra block to a flat field next time. Ow. Fuck.
- Made beef with broccoli with George, then showed him how to medicate the cat in my absence.
- Congratulations Canada for getting a daily newspaper!
April 20, 2001 at 04:00
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- My neck still hurts. And Edmonton lost to Dallas. Not a whole hell of a lot really went well yesterday. Today, well, today will be stellar.
- Flew to SFO with remarkably little trouble; for once, my experience with NWA was something other than the purest of soul-sucking blackness. The flight was an hour late, of course, but that’s because SFO was designed by a baboon so that only one runway can operate in anything other than blue skies.
- Congratulations Canada for getting electric lights in parliament!
April 24, 2001 at 04:00
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- Still in California, and boy is it ever beautiful.
- I’ve gotten too much sun to claim that I’ve been working at home. Oh well, fuck ‘em.
- Chris has a great little covertible, so we spent a while driving around to the various points of breathtaking beauty and spectacular landscapes. I see that I was really doing it all wrong last time. The key to survival out here is to avoid the city at all costs, and telecommute from your house in the hills. I think.
- We watched a few movies.
- Time for me to go eat mexican, drink margaritas, get on the plane, and sleep until Detroit.
April 25, 2001 at 04:00
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- The mexican place we planned on visiting had vanished in the night so we descended on Spettro for delicious food. Oh–and bring your own wine, no corkage fee. I don’t see many places like that any more.
- Mail server’s down again! Thank god nothing accidentally changed while I was gone. The mouth-breathing bags of boogers that we hired to “administer” (if you’ll permit the exaggeration) our network strike again!
- It’s cold here.
- I’m tired.
- I just found Paul’s coffee cup on a far corner of my desk. Paul has been on vacation for two weeks. Eww.
- Oh. Deb just fessed up. It was her cup. Still eww.
- CIBC has made another offer related to the robbery. I haven’t decided if I’ll take the pig fuckers’ make-nice money or not.
April 26, 2001 at 04:00
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- I slept for 14 hours. I don’t do that nearly often enough.
- Tonight is game one of Toronto vs. New Jersey! How bitter can I be when there’s hockey of such promised greatness as will be shown tonight?
- Today will be a good day at work, I claim, through sheer force of will.
- Deb thinks that it’s all warm and sunny (which it is!), but all I can think about is how cold it is, and how I was in bare feet and shorts in the 09h00 18-degree beauty two days ago. How quickly one forgets the winter, it seems…
- The clock in the méero was off by an hour; I got this thrilling rush, like I was living in the central time zone, only to have my hopes dashed on the rocks of despair the next time I glanced at my blackberry. Life is so cruel.
- Good hockey, of course. Mike beat me at tennis for the first time in months
April 27, 2001 at 04:00
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- My favourite part about calling CIBC Customer Care [sic] is that no matter which extension you dial, it still sends you to the same pool of wank-o “service” representatives who then have to redirect you to the person that you actually wanted to speak with.
- The Ximian boys flew to Ottawa, so Mike and I took the bus over to help them get to Montreal. We ended up renting a car for the way back since it’s cheaper by far when you’ve got 5 people.
- While in Ottawa, Mike and I managed to grab dinner and a beer at the Arrow and the Loon. God, I miss that place.
- Good red wine and Virtua Tennis. We are such losers sometimes.
April 28, 2001 at 04:00
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- Nat, Jacob, Joe, Mike, Tyla, and I met at Atwater to buy a lot of food for dinner. A lot a lot.
- There were 10 or 11 of us for dinner, and at one point we were going through the wine at an incredible pace. I think our final total was only 7 bottles, but a couple people contented themselves with scotch and bourbon.
- Excellent food; lamb shoulder, steaks, chicken, squid, various vegetables, all grilled up nicely. Couldn’t have been better.
- After dinner, Nat, Steph, Zach, Ryan, Martin, Adam, and I went to Jai. It was great fun.
- I spilled most of a cup of water almost directly into my laptop’s keyboard. After letting it drain all night upside down (with the power on, what the hell) it seems to have almost fully recovered.
April 29, 2001 at 04:00
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- Bought bagels, lox, onions, capers, and eggs for breakfast and hauled it over to Mike’s. We supplemented it with cream cheese, sausages (real ones, not shitty breakfast links), squid, strawberries, and whipping cream. Sigh.
- Played some tennis, watched the tape of yesterday’s hockey game (augh, so close!), played some more tennis, and generally lounged.
- Went to Takara for dinner, then to Paramount to see Driven. Worst movie since Coyote Ugly, quite possibly worse. The “dialog”. The “plot”. The “monologues”. The “character development”. I can’t believe we let Jacob talk us into seeing that.
- I really like the new 10 dollar bills. I wasn’t so big on them at first, but they’ve grown on me.
April 30, 2001 at 04:00
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- While I was getting ready for work this morning, somebody rang my door buzzer. Uninterested in a chat with my landlord (who’s been in Mexico for 4 months and would probably be pretty chatty) I considered ignoring it, but peeked out to see a Purolator truck. Chris had Future Shop ship over a copy of Age of Empires (he’s such a sweetie). Neither of us are going to get anything approximating work done this week. Maybe I can sneak in a few hours before he wakes up in California.
- I did my taxes this afternoon. A piledriver and six feet of wrought-iron fencing and no lubricant.
- Went home, cooked dinner, played Age of Empires with Chris for a while. Good, clean fun.
