Life

Today was a good day, TCB-wise: I finished reading Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. There are a few really terrible entries in this collection of short stories, but mostly it’s a good read. Upgraded this blog to the latest Wordpress, and switched to the veryplaintxt theme. I’m enjoying the minimalist theme, but Wordpress appears to have eaten a lot of my tags. Submitted Elixir for inclusion in Fedora. Elixir puts an Active Record layer on top of SQLAlchemy, meaning you can do SQLObject-like things with better database support. »

My newest healthy obsession is coffee. Though I have always been a coffee fan, I had never taken any steps beyond putting dark roast in my Mr. Coffee two- cup. Now, our household has a whole new coffee routine. We now have a Mr. Coffee bean grinder, airtight ceramic containers for bean storage, and a Bodum French Press. Note the colour coordination, which delights the eyes as one prepares to delight the palette. »

I’ve been trying to understand the popularity of facebook over the past week. In particular, why is it seemingly more popular than friendster or orkut (unless you’re Brazilian)? Devan phrased it well (using his elite new irc nick): 12:39 <@jbowes> facebook is way too much like orkut 12:40 <@jbowes> or all them other ones 12:40 <@jbowes> why is it that people seem to like it more? 12:40 < kryptos> it tries to replace everything 12:40 < kryptos> we have email 12:40 < kryptos> we have blogs 12:40 < kryptos> we have flickr 12:41 < kryptos> i wouldnt even be on facebook if i didnt have to check email for plans tonight, and constantly see facebook emails 12:41 < kryptos> maybe i need to filter them to trash Facebook wants become the canonical source for your data. »

Following zeus, I took the nerd test: Excellent. »

It’s not enough to handle all error cases; you have to respond to them properly as well. While waiting in the Ottawa International Airport, I placed a call to my sister from a pay phone. The number is local, so I entered the seven digits. The phone’s response was to play a recording for me: “To dial this local number, you must enter the area code.” I tried again, entering 1+<area code>+<local number>, what I had assumed to be the only way to dial a number with an area code. »

On Wednesday evening, whilst I was playing Nexus Ops with a few mates, the toilet began to gurgle (it turns out it had been gurgling all day). After a usage and a flush, the toilet overflowed with such speed that more than half of our apartment was flooded before the water could be stopped. It turns out there had been some blockage in the sewer lines to the apartment building. Cherie and I then spent the next two days soaking up water, moving furniture and cats around, and generally having a bad time. »

Late last week, the stalwart soupnazi née jerry crashed hard, taking a lot of data with it. Both Devan and I have since recovered most of our lost data, but the peculiar thing is that some hosts are still resolving dangerouslyinc.com to the old IP (including the Dal CS machines, which run the planet). DNS is such a dark magic to me. I do not know how it works, nor do I wish to know. »

If your wife/SO has not yet watched NBC’s Heroes do not let her! My wife, Devan’s wife, and Jeremy’s finance all have some sort of a thing for that Hiro character. If your relationship has not yet been affected by this pandemic, protect yourself, and stay away from this awesome show. »

It must be obvious from previous posts that I love git. Tonight I sent a patch to the mailing list. It’s small and simple; it lets you save options for cvsimport in your config file, rather than supplying them each time you run it. Hopefully it will be of use to others. »

The Fedora Users and Developers Conference is on Friday. Weather permitting, I’ll be flying up to Boston to attend tomorrow night. In no particular order, here are the parts of FUDCon I am looking forward to: Cold Boston weather means I can wear my parka. Riding the subway. Meeting Mr. Katz and Mr. Vidal in person. The yum hackfest. Getting a free t-shirt. I plan to take lots of photos, but I usually forget my camera whenever I go anywhere, so we’ll see. »