March 30: Just Me and My Horsie

After approximately 400 years of non-stop raining, we have a somewhat dry day today. Miraculously, some snow actually survived, but it's mainly stuff hiding up against fences or underneath bushes. Spring has definitely sprung, and life is much better as a result of it. I'm trying to get outside more, in an effort to not be such a lazy computer geek. Last night, Janet and I “manually tranported” (ie, walked) to Tim Horton's on Main Street. According to Google Maps (have I raved about how awesome this is enough yet?), it's about 3 km each way, so it's actually a half-decent amount of outsideitude. Go us. Everyone seems to be on a mild health kick lately (although it's nothing extreme). I wonder what caused it, since it was spontaneously, and how long it will last.

Sigh. Thanks to a catastrophe of some kind, the wireless network at Dal is broken. Oddly enough, it's possible to connect to the network, but it won't give anyone an IP. The prevelant rumour is that, during an connection upgrade of some sort, one of the routers got fried. Evidence would seem to corroborate this theory. Anyway, that means that I have to have my laptop plugged in, which is tres uncool. It's a retro day, and I'm a very spoiled geek.

Speaking of being a spoiled geek, both my mom and I got fed up with the crappy quality of my laptop's TV out, which was due to poor cabling, so we went out and improved the situation. We bought an S-video switchbox, so I can use S-video instead of an S-video/RCA convertor, and a really long gold-plated S-video cable. Things are much improved, and things are easier to work. Now, the video isn't horribly washed out, but it does still have a bit of noise. I have to rip everything apart and untangle all the wires. Audio/video cables + power cables = hummmmmmm.

Songs currently stuck in my head include: “Paul Revere*
(This is a cover of a Beastie Boys song which I have never heard.)
” by Andrew Vincent.

March 27: Carve Your Name into My Arm

Something very exciting happened to me this weekend. Coming home from work Friday morning, I pulled into the driveway and stepped out of the car in my usual zombie-like mood, chanting my mantra: sleep-sleep-sleep. However, I heard something unfamiliar, a sound I hate, and yet have missed: the Nelson bird. (I was sure I've mentioned this on here before, but a quick search of the archives yielded no result, so I will explain it again.) The Nelson bird is a strange, tiny bird that lives in the forests of Cole Harbour. There is absolutely nothing interesting about it, save for its unusual call: a melodious tweet-tweet that bears a strong resemblance to the “Ha ha!” laugh of Nelson Muntz on the Simpson's. It is instantly memorable and incredibly annoying, since the Nelson bird will spend hours at a time stuck on “repeat”. It was the bane of my youth, until I learned to sleep through anything.

Since it's now Sunday, Happy Eastah everyone. Since it's a holiday you might guess that I'm at work. You'd be right: I'm on my first break of the evening. This is my last night of an unusually long weekend (thanks to picking up an extra shift on Thursday). Tomorrow is Easter dinner at Joey's, followed by oodles and oodles of studying for the two midterms I have on Monday. I once again express my annoyance at having midterms with less than two weeks of classes left, and extra annoyance at having two on one day, and a whole heap of extra annoyance that the classes are taught by the same professor, who could have easily spread things out a bit more. Other than these unnecessary tests, however, school has wound down to a managable level. All that's left is the final panic of finals and I will be home free on my last summer ever. Eep.

Continue reading “Carve Your Name into My Arm”...

March 24: Brick phones are...

I was just talking to Mom, and she said that earlier in the week, there was a psychic on Oprah who prophesized a huge snowstorm would hit the “isle of Nova Scotia”. I guess I'm relieved I live on the peninsula of Nova Scotia. Poor sods who live on the isle, wherever that is, will get snow. Psychics suck.

Fun news from around my universe: I've completed my first pay cycle on my fancy budget successfully, and have begun the second. Also, I have to work tonight, and since tomorrow is Good Friday, I get paid a ludacris amount of overtime money, which is awesome. Oh, and I bought Pee-Wee's Playhouse #1 from Amazon last night. I'm such a loser. Now, for the fun part:

Last night, Taylor and I got into a discussion — alright, argument — about the relative merits of fliphones versus the flippally impaired “brick” versions. Taylor calls them “open faced” phones. Really, if you think about it, this is a religious issue, akin to the unending PC vs. Mac war*
(It's funny, I wrote this line before I read Taylor's side of the argument, and he said the exact same thing. We're such dorks!)
. Or, at least, it would be, if I wasn't able to absolutely prove that fliphones are better. Why? Here's a list of the most obvious reasons:
  1. When your phone rings in a public place, you can slyly withdraw it from your pocket, flick it open with one wrist, and say “Talk to me, babe.”
  2. If you check the caller ID and see that you don't want to talk to whoever is calling, you can chuck the phone back in your bag or pocket or coat, without worrying about accidentally picking up the call.
  3. No need for key lock.
  4. Decent fliphones, with a screen on the outside, function as clocks, and can replace the lowly watch. Thast's good, since I've never liked watches.
  5. The basic physics of the device allows for bigger screens and keypads.
  6. When you're bored, you can pretend your phone is a puppet and make it talk. Mine kinda looks like a mouser from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the old one).
  7. Finally, when you're REALLY pissed off at whoever you're talking to, you can just scream “FINE!” and snap the phone shut. That way the conversation ends with a nice “crack” noise, instead of a whiny “bleep”.
Taylor raises some points of his own, but I think most of them can be dismissed. You should go read his part before reading the following paragraphs. And, here we go:

Having to open it may be a “waste”, but if you can't spare half a second to flick your wrist to open a phone, you've got bigger issues. Plus, decent phones show the caller's picture on the outside of the phone, too, so having it closed is perfectly fine. As for antennaes, well, we both agree that they're somewhat ugly, but they're not particularly bothersome. The antennae on my phone, for example, is used to wrap the “seat belt” of the protective case around, to keep it snug.

Now, the argument of “hinges are just one more thing to break” is a good one, and has some basis in fact. On old fliphones — say, anything before 1998 or so — the hinges really did break easily. They finally fixed it, however, and the hinges now very solid. You're more likely to see the screen break before the hinge nowadays, because they're made out of metal. I liken this complaint to people who don't want cars with electric windows, because they're scared that they'll break. Sure, electric windows used to suck, but they've got it down a science now.

Anyway, the whole debate is somewhat stupid: fliphone vs brickphone isn't really a debate based on merits, it's debate based on personal preference, because it's all about style. I love fliphones, because I don't like feeling like my phone is from 1996. Whatever you choose is up to you.

March 20: Captain Carl's Lost at Sea

Okay, don't judge me too harshly, but I'm watching Pee Wee's Playhouse — yes, that one — and I'm actually having a pretty good time. The robot guy is awesome, and I totally forgot about him. Actually, watching it is like an unending series of childhood flashbacks (and very funny, can't-believe-it-was-in-a-kids-show sexual inuendos). I don't remember the cowboy with the neon lasso, but that's alright. Some surprises are alright. I definitely want to buy this on DVD. Connect the dots, la la la la, indeed.

Anyway, I continue to be sick, and I'm getting somewhat stressed out about school. It's that nice, crunchy time at the end of semester. I've got my assignment almost done for network security (one question left, and I actually might not do it), and the graphics are all done for my user interface design demo on Monday. I'm nervous about that, however, even though I think we'll do alright. The two tests I have at the end of the week definitely make me unhappy, though: they're both in classes taught by the same guy, and he knows that there's a lot of overlap between the two groups of students, so I can't imagine why he wouldn't have the decency of putting the tests on different days. The so-called advanced web programming will be a snap, but the UI design will actually require studying. My god, I'm sick of thinking of/talking about/being in school.

In real life world, there was a gathering of folks for dinner at Janet's — wait, now that I think of it, David and I were the only ones that didn't live there, so it's not a gathering. Hmm. Anyway, it was fun. I hadn't actually eaten real food for quite some time (it's utterly amazing how long I can survive off of food that comes out of the microwave). This paragraph is really disjointed — I hereby abandon it.

Heading back into the surreal world of Pee Wee's Playhouse, I also forgot about the happy dancing flowers and the utterly random cartoons. What a weird show! Wow, I totally remember this cartoon (the one that can only be named as “Kitchen Karnage”, where evil mice kill a bunch of vegetables)! I'm so tired! Exclaimation points rock! Wait! Remember Penny, the claymation girl? Wacky. It's really too bad that Pee Wee turned out to be a pervert. Or, at the very least, turned out to be a pervert that people couldn't forgive (George Michael seemed to do okay with that). What can you do?

March 18: You're a Strange Animal (That's What I Know)

I am sick, again. Things...well, they suck. I hate being sick. I am, proverbially, sick of being sick. I ditched school today because I knew that if I went, the odds of me going to work would be almost zero. I figured that it'd be easier to make up for school than work (since it's impossible to make up for work). Definitely not fun. It started to hit me around this time yesterday, culminating during Operation: Move-The-Big-Desk-in-the-Basement-Down-to-Janet's-House-in-Tony's-Truck-So-That -Mary-Ann-Will-Stop-Complaining, in which Janet, Tony, and I took the big desk in the basement down to Janet's house, so that Mary Ann would stop complaining. So far, so good.

I'm listening to Strange Animal by Gowan, and if you don't know what that is, the odds are you've just forgotten it. It's a very catchy eighties pop song that has an absolutely bizarre video. I'm still confused by mullets: did anyone think they were a good idea? Why? How can any self-respecting person get a mullet in this day and age? It's absolutely insane. Last time I was getting my hair cut, I had to wait for the hairdresser to finish the kid in front of me. She was giving him a mullet. What amazed me was not only that the kid would want a mullet, but that his mother would let him, or that the hairdresser's professional code of conduct allowed her to do so. I asked her if she felt guilty for giving him such a stupid hair cut. She said “Yeah, but that's really what he wanted.” Wacky.

Now, Strange Animal is over, so I'm continuing to listen to John Stewart's America: The Book: The Audiobook (I've been listening to it for the last hour, but that Gowan song popped into my head and I had to get rid of it). It's a very funny look at modern politics, and includes an excellent comparison of the origins of American democracy vs. the origins of Canadian democracy. It's remarkable what can be made humorous, given the right context.

Anyway, I'm going to go now. I've got to do the traditional Friday run tonight, so I should try to wake up. Ugh. Update: The Friday run ended up being not-so-traditional, because after stopping in Tantallon for gas and groceries (only a few, of course), the car wouldn't start. After fifteen minutes of Keddy and I desperately pushing the car around the parking lot — feeling like idiots all the while — we gave up. Leaving Keddy (who, like me, was so winded as to be shameful) to guard the car and try and look pathetic enough for someone to offer him a boost, Mom and I hiked off to the nearest gas station. Whilst there, a cadre of Sobey's employees — nay, the Sobey's Squadron — came to our rescue with jumper cables. The whole ordeal took about 30 minutes. And I'm still trying to catch my breath.

March 16: I Wish You Were Sleeping

I have the song “My Personal Moon” by Madison Park stuck in my head. I can't make out the words, and I can't find the lyrics on the Interweb (read: Google) anywhere. It's driving me absolutely insane.

I have several threads of reality that I want to record here. Thread #1: First of all, my mom made it back from Mexico in perfect condition, other than having a bad case of the flu (which I think she probably brought to Mexico with her in the first place). Everyone around me (Mom, Dad, Janet, Katie, Pugsley, Tony) seems to be sick, or have been sick within the last week. I was really sick about two weeks ago: I'm such a trendsetter. Anyway, this year's flu really sucked. I am so happy that winter is over in just a few more days (Sunday!!!11). I've had a weird urge to just be outside lately. You know, fresh air, sunny skies, maybe some wireless Internet connectivity — the basics. Is that so much to ask? Blah. Recently, I have just been feeling awesome and definitely not wanting to be cooped up inside anymore.

Thread #2: I woke up today with every intention of working on — nay, actually doing, from start to finish — my chunk of the essay for my network security group project. After having a wake-the-hell-up shower this morning*
(*cough* afternoon.)
, I was cooking myself breakfast when I remembered that I'd picked up an extra shift at work. By the time I'd eaten, gotten dressed, and checka'd my email, it was time to hop on a bus and head to work. I don't really mind the 3 - 11 shifts, but I find them very busy (keep in mind that I'm used to working in the dead of night). It was alright, except for an unfortunate telephone incident: some woman refused to accept the fact that no one there could give her medical advice over the phone, and then I accidentally knocked the phone off of my desk, effectively hanging her up. Boy, did she sound mad when she called back. All was well, of course, but it still sucked. Anyway, in case you care (and remember how this paragraph started), the essay I have to do is on denial of service attacks, and how we can work on preventing them. I've got to summarize the whitepaper we were given on this topic, and explain the motivation of the proposal it laid out. It's not exactly rocket science, and it only has to be three or four pages long, but I just haven't been able to get around to it.

Continue reading “I Wish You Were Sleeping”...

March 12: Hopefully, The Last Snowstorm

ARG! Snow! What did I tell you about dumping more snow on us, nature? That's RIGHT, I said I'd totally help destroy the ozone layer more. And here we are, with more snow, and I am definitely not pleased. It's March, for crying out loud — let up! I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else — I mean, we've had snow later than this before. I just thought that, maybe, we'd have a nice spring this year. One that actually springs.

Anyway, it's Saturday, March 11th, 2005, and it's 7:15 pm, which means that my mother, the world-weary traveller, will theoretically be arriving home from her Mexican jaunt in another nine hours or so. I'll be busily trying to stay awake at work, so I won't get to go out to the airport with Mary Ann. I have a bit of a feeling that her plane might be delayed, I mean, look at the snow*
(Ah, what would I do without the CS web cam?)
. I definitely don't envy Mary Ann the honour of doing the airport run tonight. The combination of snowing, possible late arrival, the fact that it'll be 4 am, and having to bring the dog make for what will most likely be a very, very crappy night. Morning. Whatever.

I, on the other hand, get to enjoy the warmth of the IWK, basking in the glow of the computer I spend my time at, and the unhappy stares of parents who absolutely cannot fathom why their child did not get pushed ahead of everyone else. If I'm lucky, I'll get to field some phone calls from unhappy parents, who absolutely cannot fathom why the nurses won't tell them any over the phone. It's a living.

I suppose I should take the time to record some of the recent events in my life, none of which are interesting. School, mainly, is taking up the bulk of my time, although I grow more and more tired of it every day, as is the tradition this time of year. I've got so many stupid group assignments that I'm going insane, and I have an essay to write tomorrow (it's not a high priority thing — yet — so I'm not too worried). In other news, I'm desperately trying to conserve money. I really need to come up with a budget, and if anyone has any experience with that, I would be grateful for input. My life, and especially my finances, are a chaotic, disorganized mess. I'm definitely too old to be so disorganized. Time to grow up!

Anyway, I'm off to watch my latest guilty pleasure, Joan of Arcadia. I'm not sure why, but I really, really like the show (even if the premise of light being conscious, and god, absolutely ridiculous). It doesn't hurt that Joan is really hot (incidentally, she looks like Josie Miller, the, uhm, “model”), or that her spacey friend looks just like Josh Allen. The only problem I have with the show is that whenever I hear her dad talk, I picture Fat Tony from the Simpson's, and her mom is totally Clara from Back to the Future III. Other than that, I like it. I'm a dork.

March 09: Somebody Get My Mom

Hey, hey, hey, they found a dead body in Halifax harbour. How messed up is that? I don't have a news link, but they mentioned in on the Daily News web site. “Recreational divers” found a skull and a jawbone on Saturday. My question, of course, is who the hell is stupid enough to go into Halifax harbour? It's more like gravy than water, at least until the harbour clean-up project actually accomplishes something. They've been talking about that for as long as I can remember, and I just don't understand what the problem is. Government is so ludicrously slow sometimes.

Moving along, life is acting fairly normally. We had a crazy bout of rain yesterday, which washed away most of the latent snowbanks. The wind howled, reaching a speed of something like 140 km/h in Halifax. Normally, I find it difficult to imagine such speeds, but I can personally testify to it. I couldn't sleep over the noise and house-shaking that the winds were providing last night, and the dog (who is very lonely, since I'm not great company for a dog — he'll definitely be glad when everyone is back from Mexico) spent the night huddled on my bed. There's nothing worse than trying to sleep when there's a scared poodle trying to get under your blankets.

So, needless to say, I'm tired today, and trying to learn about VPNs to boot. Network security is...less than exciting when you're sleepy. Fortunately, I brought the car over to school today, so I don't have to spend hours and hours on the bus. The annoyance of having to move it every two hours is more than mitigated by that fact. I can't wait to get home.

Anyway, in other interesting news, Alex, everyone's favourite hippy, was in the Daily News today. I couldn't find the story on their web site, but it doesn't matter, since they don't let you link to entries anyway. However, if you come across a copy of the paper, look her up. Such a hippy. And on that note, I bid you adieu — I've got to encapsulate my head in the details of packet encapsulation.

March 07: The Long Now

I find it remarkable that two people who have two of the worst last names in the entire universe — Diffie and Hellman — managed to find each other, invent something, and become famous (in the computer science world). The odds are microscopic, and yet here I am, learning about the Diffie-Hellman exchange. Actually, I'm not learning about it yet. Someone is talking about why he should be elected DSU president, something I couldn't possibily care less about. I really hope this doesn't waste the entire class. (To his credit, he's a convincing speaker and seems to have some decent ideas.)

I spent the weekend doing nothing of interesting, and basically dealing with interesting things that were happening to other people: Mom has jetted off to Mexico for a week (AS EVIDENCED BY HER ALL CAPITALIZED COMMENT WITH }RANDOM >CHARACTERS MIXED INTO IT IN THE PRE{VIOUS ENTRY), and Planet Janet/Katie/Pugsley has two new residents: Tony and Adam, who is sort of Janet and Katie's cousin*
(For some reason, he was also known as 'Square Head the Syphillis Queen' at one point. I just thought I'd mention it.)
(I'm not quite sure how the “sort of” bit works). Of course, this is fun and exciting because Tony is an anti-social person who rarely left his room: now, he'll be forced to interact with the world. Also, it's good that everyone won't have to move out due to catastropic financial collapse. You know how it is.

Anyway, from the geek category, I've solved my comment spam problem (for the time being). A feature I've wanted for a very long time — comment expiry — has now been implemented as a Nucleus plugin. If you use Nucleus as your blogging tool, Expiring Comments is for you. One week after an item has been posted, the ability to leave comments will be disabled. Since it is old entries that comment spammers tend to target — places where the administrator of a blog are unlikely to notice — this solves a large part of the problem, by closing the information loop. Combined with blacklisting, this pretty much solves the problem (for now). Give it a shot and let me know what you think. Incidentally, I'm not claiming to have invented this revolutionary idea — WordPress and MovableType have both had plugins to do this for quite some time. (However, I did think of this independently.)

Now, I've got to go concentrate on Diffie-Hellman. However, I would like to offer congratulations to Keddy, for writing one of the least coherent blog entries of all time. Three cheers.

March 05: Welcome to Communist England

Well, it's official: my mom is on her way to Mexico. There's no reason to be jealous; you, too, can someday go to Mexico, to bake on the beach and get a sunburn that makes your co-workers burst out laughing whenever they see you. Yes, anything is possible.

Now, despite what you might think, I am not in (or on my way to) Mexico. I'm still at home, having a traditional Mark weekend (read: working, being sleepy, watching TV, cruising the Interweb). Janet and Pugsley aren't back from Prince Edward Island yet, so I'm bored. My mind keeps wandering to the various assignments that I should be working on, and yet am avoiding like the plague. Blah.

I found this really cool tool called SAJAX that automates the creation of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript + XML) weblications. It makes it possible to directly call a PHP function from Javascript, and basically create some unspeakably neat projects. I've got a very, very cool idea for a project that could make use of this. If I can find the time and motivation to get it done, SAJAX would definitely enhance the project. The only problem is that I really hate Javascript, and (directly as a result of this fact) can't really program in it. I can get simple things done, but it's not my forte. By a long shot.

Anyway, the Addams Family is on. I still remember seeing it in theatres, with my cousin Darryl. We tried to go by ourselves, but the idiots at Famous Players wouldn't let us in because it was rated PG-13 (I was 8 at the time, and Darryl was 14). Darryl's mom ended up driving in at the last minute to provide the required adult supervision. I'm still not really sure what it was that made the movie be rated PG-13 — anyone else have any ideas? At any rate, I'm going to go watch it now. So, call me if you're bored.

March 03: Portions for Foxes

Now that it's March, I can official start complaining about winter, right? I can't wait for spring-like weather, and (technically speaking) there's only eighteen days of winter left. Unfortunately, I live in Nova Scotia, where spring starts sometime in May. The rainy season, however, is nearly upon us — huzzah.

I just got home from work, which was blissfully brief. They've created a new position with shifts that are only four hours long; basically, the entire point is to provide coverage for other people to go on their lunch breaks. I worked from 10:30 to 2:30, suffering through the joys of workplace renovation. After months of discussion, they're finally re-organizing the main desk area, chopping the center counter space down to about half of its previous size and generally just opening the place up a lot more. It's definitely coming along, but I'm getting sick of “Wet Paint” signs stuck on everything and the smell of industrial strength glues. It'll be nice when everything goes back to normal.

Anyway, the current plan of action is to get something to eat and then find something to do tonight. Janet and Pugsley are going to Prince Edward Island for the weekend, and they're leaving at 11 tonight, so I'll probably spend the evening hanging out down there while packing and preparation ensues. I should, of course, be doing something school related, but since when have I ever done the logical thing? I like to live dangerously.

So, on that note, I'm off. My inbox, after all, is empty.