Monthly Archives: October 2004

No more vacation…

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It’s the evening of the last day of our week of vacation. How sad. So did we accomplish all we set out to do? Here’s the original list:

  • Finish putting the TV room back together. Done! Hooked the subwoofer up today, that was the final thing.
  • Clean and tidy everything. Well sort of, then we messed it all up again.
  • Play with the new PVR arriving on Saturday (yay!). PVR rocks! High Definition TV rocks!
  • Take delivery and install truckfuls of stuff from Ikea. Done!
  • Do something about the damn leaves. Done! Then the trees dumped another load on the ground.
  • Dig stuff up. Done!
  • Plant new stuff. Done!
  • Clean the gutters. Umm, not done.
  • Put away the garden furniture. Done!
  • Blog. Done!
  • The office. Mostly done. You can see the floor now.
  • Relax. (optional). Managed to get a little bit in.

So all in all a successful week, despite both of us getting sick. We could still do with a second week though.

Oh yeah, have a Horrific Halloween. Boo.

The Cooler

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Watched The Cooler the other night, mainly because it’s one of the few movies being shown on the Movie Network in high definition and right now I’m addicted to anything high definition.

I seem to remember the movie getting poor reviews and even poorer box office takings, but I quite enjoyed it. The premise is ridiculous, but you just have to suspend disbelief on that.

There is some very unpleasant violence about halfway through which had me cringing in my seat and I’m not usually affected much by movie violence; there’s also plenty of bad language, but hey, it’s set in a Las Vegas casino.

William H Macy was great as always; he seems to like playing “losers”, and he does it so well. I spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out where I’d seen his partner before and finally figured out it was Maria Bello, who did a stint on ER. She also gives an excellent performance in this movie. Alec Baldwin manages to play a nasty villain who you end up feeling some sympathy for, not an easy trick.

Overall it’s a good little movie, mixing what I’d describe as fantasy elements with the gritty reality of Las Vegas casino life.

Well done Kim!

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The Centraide annual trivia quiz organised by Kim the Book Lady was a storming success. The room we had in Thomson House turned out to be too small for the crowds of people who showed up (I like to think advertising on my blog drew the crowds, but then I’ve always lived in a fantasy world.) but luckily there was an overflow area. The questions were tough but creative and a lot of fun. Tony and his friend Michelle joined us to make up a full team. We failed to come anywhere near the top, and those damned Maroons beat us yet again, but we still enjoyed ourselves and much money was raised for Centraide.

The hair

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Me and Rob The ongoing experiment this past few months has been my hair. It started from being too lazy to go to the hairdresser, then turned into “hey, let’s see what happens if I let it grow.” I decided to leave it over the winter, giving my head protection from the cold. Winter hasn’t started yet and it’s already getting annoying, so I’m not sure if I’m going to make it. It gets in my eyes, I’m constantly brushing it away from my face. I have to blow dry it in the morning so it doesn’t freeze on the way to the train station. Anyway, for those of you who haven’t seen me for a while, I’m the hippy on the left in that picture.

Sick. *cough*

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I’m sick. It started around Tuesday when the virus started gently scratching the back of my throat with a delicate fingernail. It stayed that way for a few days until yesterday when it launched itself into a full-blown mucus-fuelled sinus nightmare. Yuck. Oh well, at least I have a new toy to play with.

Creationists at it again

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Bill Buckingham, a devout Christian who rejected a biology text because it was “laced with darwinism” has succeeded in getting creationism onto the school biology curriculum in Dover, Pennsylvania. This sickens me.

Bill wants to “give the balanced view of intelligent design and Darwin’s theory”. Intelligent design is just a fancy name for creationism, a faith based concept with absolutely no scientific grounding. Darwinism, or natural selection is a scientifically proven theory that has survived and grown for 145 years.

If Bill really wants to provide his students with a balanced view, then he also needs to consider the myriad of other creation myths that exist in the world. Of course this material is more suitable for a comparative religion course, but Bill seems to think it’s biology.

To get a clearer picture of Mr Buckingham, here’s what he had to say about the idea of removing ‘under god’ from the pledge:

“America was founded as a Christian country. While we welcome people from other countries, that doesn’t give them the right to change things. If they don’t want to say it our way, they can go back to the country they came from.”

How enlightened.

Vacation! Sort of.

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Only one and a half days left then I’m off for a whole week of vacation. Well sort of. We’re not going anywhere, the plan is to potter around the house doing “stuff”. The list of “stuff” is getting quite large. It includes:

  • Finish putting the TV room back together.
  • Clean and tidy everything.
  • Play with the new PVR arriving on Saturday (yay!).
  • Take delivery and install truckfuls of stuff from Ikea.
  • Do something about the damn leaves.
  • Dig stuff up.
  • Plant new stuff.
  • Clean the gutters.
  • Put away the garden furniture.
  • Blog.
  • Relax. (optional)

No doubt Jen will comment on this post, adding all the things I forgot.

Ikea

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I promise no Fight Club references in this post. Damn, I suppose that was one.

Apparently we’re going furniture shopping at Ikea tonight. We do that a lot. A large percentage of the contents of our house comes from Ikea. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, Ikea has good stuff, and it’s cheap. It would be nice if their were other options though, like Fly, which comes close.

So yes, we are disciples of the great Scandinavian furniture god, but I have to say their latest advertising slogan is just stupid. Ikea. Fits. Fits what? Those programme announcers must feel very silly saying “This program is brought to you by Ikea. Ikea. Fits.” It just doesn’t scan well. Bring back the thrown out lamp advert.

What I do

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During that terrifying thing known as smalltalk usually one of the first questions that gets asked is “So, what do you do?”.

My first complaint is that the question usually really means ‘What is your job?’ and by making the job part implicit, the question is giving way too much importance to the work we do. I do lots of things, and one of them happens to be something I earn money for doing.

So I assume they are talking about what I get paid to do, and I say something like “I’m a computer programmer”. This brings me to the second problem. Unless I’m in a room full of geeks, and talking to a fellow geek, this usually results in a glazed “oh no, it’s one of those” expression, a polite “Oh, that’s interesting” and a complete end to that thread of conversation. I realise that to a non-computer person what I do is probably akin to black magic, but I’m sure if my answer was “Oh, I’m a warlock” it would at least generate a bit more conversation. Why is it so hard to find things to say about computer programming?

I work as a computer programmer. It’s quite interesting. Really. I develop and maintain modules for a centralized accounting and finance database. I use Oracle and Unix tools to do my job. I’ve been writing computer programs since I was about 10, and earning money for it since I was 19. Sometimes I do it for fun too. I do not own a pocket protector or a slide rule, and my glasses are perfectly intact.

Busy weekend

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A busy weekend at home. Al the painter guy finished the painting on Saturday so we started putting the house back in order.

Yesterday, we went shopping for a wall hanging for the hallway and came back with said wall hanging, plus three pillows, dishes for seven place-settings, socks, boxer shorts and a springform cake tin. Oh and a huge pile of groceries. Saving is for wimps.

I spent the rest of yesterday afternoon furkling about in the basement running wires under the TV room floor for the surround sound system. It’s now all hooked up except for the subwoofer wire, which turned out to be about 6 feet too short. Damnit. The good news is I managed to run a wire from the amp down to the computer in the basement that has all our music on it, so we have our music collection back.

Finally I had a big pack of mince (that’s hamburger for you silly North Americans) that needed to be cooked so I spent the evening making spaghetti sauce (bacon, onions, mushrooms, mince, tomatoes, tomato sauce, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, red wine) and cottage pie filling (onions, carrots, mushrooms, mince, cinnamon, parsley, mixed herbs, flour, beef stock, tomato puree). And I christened my new cake tin by making a bog standard sponge (equal parts flour, sugar, butter plus baking powder, 2 eggs and some vanilla essence, beat it all together, add a bit of water if necessary, stick it in the tin, stick it in the oven at 325F for about 30 minutes).

Autumn

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It’s autumn in Montreal, a beautiful time of year which has its good points and not so good points.

The leaves on the trees turn to dazzling shades of yellow, orange and red. In the forests it gives a kind of tapestry effect with the bright fall colours intermingled with the evergreens. Of course those leaves eventually fall, making crispy carpets on the ground which have to be raked up or otherwise dealt with by us home-owners else we get ostracized from our community.

Autumn is also the time of year when we get crisp clear skies which are stunningly blue, a perfect backdrop for those leaves I just talked about. Of course along with those clear skies comes lower temperatures and that hint of winter just around the corner.

I never really appreciated autumn until I came to Montreal but now it’s probably my favourite season. Apart from the raking.

It’s electric

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I’m at home today following a couple of electricians around as they fix various electrical oddities in our home. So far we’ve found a sensor driven light with a broken sensor, a switch that doesn’t switch anything, a light socket with no power, a plug socket with no power, a heat vent with no conduit (handy for feeding speaker wires through!) and lots of electrical silliness in the basement. The joys of home ownership.

Watts Electric in Beaconsfield are doing a great job for us though.

Geeky Memories

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This made me laugh, and brought back some fond memories.

I got my first computer as a Christmas gift when I was very young, a Sinclair ZX81 with a whopping 1k of memory and a deliciously untactile membrane keyboard. Within six months I was pushing the limits of what 1k could hold, plus I wanted to play 3D Monster Maze, so I upgraded with a wobbly 16k RAM pack and got scared witless by that dinosaur advancing toward me.

Soon even 16k wasn’t enough, and black and white block graphics were getting boring, so the Sinclair 48k ZX Spectrum was on my Christmas list. 48k of memory, a keyboard that responded when you pushed a key, colour not-so-blocky graphics AND sound. OK so it was annoying beepy sound but still it was sound and that was just too cool.

I spent the next couple of years hunched over that tiny keyboard writing code or trying desperately to get the latest game to load off casette tape (usually pirated casette tapes thanks to my biology teacher who had a tape to tape deck in his office that he let us use.). Manic Miner, Jet Pac, Chaos, Sabre Wulf, Ant Attack, 3D Deathchase; some of the best games ever written were written for that unassuming little computer.

Clive Sinclair turned me into a geek. I still want a C5.

Thanksgiving Gastronomy

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We had a slightly unconventional Thanksgiving / anniversary celebration meal here yesterday. Elisabeth, Richard and Loula joined us for:

Curried carrot and peppery Broccoli soups: onion, carrots, chicken stock, curry powder, cooked and whizzed in the food processor; onion, broccoli, chicken stock, salt and lots of pepper, cooked and whizzed in the food processor. Both poured into bowls from opposite sides for an attractive green and orange presentation (very Irish sectarian as Elisabeth pointed out).

Roast stuffed pork loin: Half a pork loin (rib end) rubbed generously with a bashed up mixture of fennel seeds, rosemary and salt and stuffed with a mixture of sliced red onion, ripped sage, sliced garlic, pine-nuts and sourdough bread. Roasted for an hour or so.

Sweet potato cakes: Grated sweet potato, grated onion, egg, flour, salt and pepper, formed into cakes and sauteed.

Asparagus bundles: sandwich an anchovy fillet and a rosemary stalk between six asparagus spears, top with a halved baby tomato and tie together with a slice of pancetta. Drizzle with olive oil and roast in the oven for 5-10 minutes.

Lemony pudding: cream a 1/4 cup of butter with 1/3 cup of sugar and the grated rind of one lemon. Beat in 2 egg yolks and 7 tablespoons of self-raising flour. Mix in a cup of milk and the juice from the lemon. Beat the egg whites until stiff then fold in to the mixture. Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes or until spongy and golden on top (don’t let it burn like I did…)

More painting

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Yes that’s right, more painting… but not by us this time, yay! Al the painter guy is here painting our downstairs bathroom, tv room and kitchen all white (did I mention Jen loves white?). The house is turned upside down, but at least I don’t have to touch a paint can or roller. He also painted the smallest of our three bedrooms a light shade of blue (yes, not white!).

Happy thanksgiving you groovy Canadians!

Yay CBC!

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I have to congratulate CBC who have made the very smart decision to start supporting streaming OGG Vorbis format for listening to CBC Radio from the website. Not only that, but they also have instructions on the listening page for listening from unix/linux systems!

Congratulations CBC for supporting open source, patent-free software solutions.

What’s on my desk?

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My laptop, the phone, some writing pads, two spoons and a knife, a single serving pack of sugar, some paper towel, some dark chocolate, a silver Gateway 19″ monitor, black keyboard, black mouse, Dell mouse pad (not being used), a Ron Jon Surf Shop mug with tea in it, my business cards, other peoples’ business cards, a slinky, some reports, a picture that says “My desk isn’t a mess… it’s uniquely organized”, a picture of me and Jen in Nelson BC, and some Post-It Notes.

Winey Weekend

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This past weekend we had some visitors from Toronto, Rob and Noelle. They arrived late on Friday night, and the first thing we did was open wine. This was a sign of things to come. A very pleasant weekend followed, involving much more wine, some good food, sparkling conversation and a bunch of silly categories games. Oh, and a trip to Eggspectations!

Recipe from the weekend, Chicken on a beer can: Heat up the bbq (you need one with a good high lid). Take a chicken and smother it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Take a tall can of beer and drink half of it. Stick a couple of garlic cloves into the can. Impale the chicken on the can so it’s sitting up like something out of Eraserhead. Stand the can on the bbq, close the lid, and leave it for an hour and a bit.

Quizzing!

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Tonight is pubquiz night at McKibbin’s on Bishop above St Catherine’s starting at 8(ish).

Tomorrow night is pubquiz night at Hurley’s on Crescent below St Catherines starting at 8(sharp! (ish)).

For Jen

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Strange and beautiful
Are the stars tonight
That dance around your head
In your eyes I see that perfect world
I hope that doesn’t sound too weird

And I want all the world to know
That your love’s all I need
All that I need
And if we’re lost
Then we are lost togther
Yea if we’re lost
Then we are lost together

I stand before this faceless crowd
And I wonder why I bother
So much controlled by so few
Stumbling from one disaster to another

I’ve heard it all so many times before
It’s all a dream to me now
A dream to me now
And if we’re lost
Then we are lost together
Yea if we’re lost
Then we are lost together

In the silence of this whispered night
I listen only to your breath
And that second of a shooting star
Somehow it all makes sense

And I want all the world to know
That your love’s all I need
All that I need
And if we’re lost
Then we are lost together
Yea if we’re lost
Then we are lost together