Another Brick in the Wall - Google Blogger

It had been driving me a little buggy for sometime now that the
bandwidthd app I use wasn't treating my soulseek traffic as P2P but
instead lumped it all into TCP.

Today it finally resulted in a hair so far up my ass that rather than
bug the actual developer about it, I dug through the source code til I
found where he was defining P2P traffic and added the soulseek port.

Then recompiled and installed my modified binary.

After a wee smidge of testing, it appears I have a bit more work to do
yet.... damn. I suspect it's just a bit of tweaking in the actual
configuration file in specifying the various directories it needs to
use. I can launch it just fine, but it's apparently not updating the
local webpage with the data.

Doh.

Related, and a bit of a call for input... anyone out there on the
intertubes using OSX have a favourite editor for coding in? Ideally I'd
like something that has syntax highlighting for html, sh, perl and c.
You know, the biggies :)

Discovered I'd copied my music over to the macbook The Wrong Way (tm)
and am now in the process of adding it the Apple Way (tm). It is gonna
take a long time for it to bring in 16298 tracks... it's currently on
track 853. Eep.

What with the shenanigans and goings on with glassapples car, I'm also
poking the old employer who she had purchased it from to see if
something can be worked out. She <i>could</i> donate it to the Kidney
Foundation, but I don't know how much good that really does her. She's
already spent $2000 trying to fix everything up and make it hers, and a
tax break doesn't do a student a lot of good right now. Rather hoping
he can just buy it back from her and take the tax advantage himself.

He may not be legally obligated to do so in any way, but it'd be The
Right Thing To Do (tm), what with having essentially told her it was
driven under 50km/hr and babied since it was purchased lo those many
years ago.

It looks like there is a short term work possibility for a coder. A cry
for help to finish off a Joomla project went out to the Calgary PHP list
and I haven't seen anyone reply to it thus far.

Anyone out there in my many acquaintances and friends interested in
taking on a weeks worth of work?

<a
href="http://php.meetup.com/159/boards/view/viewthread?thread=2592825">help!</a>

<blockquote><i>

We have contracted a company to develop our new website using Joomla.
Work started last May and now almost a year later it looks like this
project might never be completed. Would you be able to direct me to
somebody who would be capable of finishing such a project? I?d say we?re
about 80% done but there are some missing critical elements that prevent
us from going live. It will probabbly take a couple of days to a week's
worth of work to cross the finish line.

</i></blockquote>

Contact details are in the link.

I am so tired of this nasal congestion. I finished off the prescription
like an obedient monkey a few days ago, and it hasn't cleared up. This
morning is particularly bad.

Yesterday at work, I didn't make nearly as much progress as I was hoping
on my phpip hack job. Doh. I do think I know what I need to change/fix
though, so I'm hoping I'm right. I also committed a heinous act of
office torture on some of my teammates. I brought in my french press
and coffee grinder, and treated them to a pot of the Panamanian coffee.
Bwahahahaha. They are forever ruined!

After work I killed a bit of time, dropped in an said hello to OID, and
then headed off to Deliiria's birthday party.

Welcome to the TriCentury club lass *grin*

It was a relatively low key affair, with some very tasty munchables
prepared by her mom. Hun, your mom kicks multiple kinds of ass. Many
thanks to her for having prepared the tasty spread! I didn't know many
people there, but it was a friendly bunch. Any group that finds itself
watching Firefly and laughing in the right places is A-Ok in my books :)

This morning is off to a rough start, but I generally find that mornings
and nights are the hardest with $malady. The congestion and coughing is
strenuous and leaves me short of breath. Fortunately it seems treatable
over a short period with coffee, and I have that particularly treatment
covered off in spades. Hrm. You know, I have no idea where that phrase
comes from, and it's an odd one.

The roomie is playing country. I'm just telling myself that people
grieve in their own ways. I will grieve for my ears :)

--
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Well this has been a vaguely complicated day. Due to futzing about til
12:30am this morning/last night, I didn't get a lot of sleep. Because
it was so late when I got to bed, I didn't dare take a percocet... which
means today my shoulder and back were hurting like hell.

Spent the day fixing code and trying to troubleshoot a rather
problematic sql query that just has me stumped.

If anyone out there happens to recall how to enable general type query
logging in mysql (in the my.cnf file) it'd be much appreciated if you
shared ;) It's MySQL 4.1 on RHEL4. Even broke down and fired up
tcpdump, and got nada. Right at the end of the day it suddenly occurred
to me that the reason I was getting bupkis in tcpdump is because I'm a
security freak and it communicates via sockets, not the network ;)

Then the end of the day rolls around, and I'm almost home... friend
phones me up with a flat and in need of a partial rescue. The car
actually broke down close enough to home that he got himself and his
munchkins to his place thank goodness. Ended up hanging around there
with him for about 2 hours while he waited for AMA to show up. His kids
have discovered the happiness of naked. Heh.

Picked up my sweetie from work, headed home... crisis. <a
href="http://glassapples.livejournal.com/482047.html?mode=reply">glassapples</a> has not had a good night of things, and we headed off to help her say goodbye to Frodo. We'll miss you bunnay.

I am hoping tomorrow is filled only with good things.

<a href="http://www.digg.com">
<img src="http://digg.com/img/badges/91x17-digg-button.gif" width="91"
height="17" alt="Digg!" />
</a>

--
~^~
// "\\ /\\
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@ // ///=\\SCII Ribbon Campaign
X /=---=\\gainst HTML E- Mail
X /// \\
// \\ ----------------------------
\ // \\
\// \\
\\

The Noodly Appendages were kind today, and I got the magical email
around 10am informing me my laptop was in and I could pick it up. One
rushed meeting later, and I was out into the frozen urban wasteland to
face the subzero windchill.

All for a good cause, even if my fingers were so cold when I got back to
the office it slowed me down in opening up the box.

First up, on booting up the Macbook, it was a HELL of a lot more
straightforward to configure for my own use than a fresh out of the box
Windows install. Not many updates to install either.

Next up in the land of knifty was the remote and how Mac OSX handles
media. Oh my god. If someone out there who wasted the money and
frustration on Windows Media Centre saw this, they would freaking weep
at how smooth and sexy it is.

It dealt with my laptop wheel mouse with nary a blink or whimper.

It dealt with my USB docking station with a quick prompt to determine
what my keyboard was.

World of Warcraft is a thing of beauty :)

I am currently rsync'ing about 80+GB of music across our network, have
apache up and running along with php (it's there by default!) and am
downloading Bootcamp so I can make this slick baby triple boot.

Not honestly sure how much I'll find myself spending in linux/Windows at
this point though. Most of the dev/testing stuff I want to do appears
to be possible in OSX Panther.

Also, the Macbook is so light it's not funny. I mean *really* light.

I am ridiculously happy with this purchase.

--
Be in pursuit of equality, but not at the expense of excellence.

Been feeling like hell for a few days now, what with the shoulder and
stuff. Add into that a sore throat that is making it very uncomfortable
to swallow and you have a grumpy assed mofo on your hands.

Despite that, today should be a good day. I'll be watching my cell
phone obsessively today waiting for the phone call from the Mac dealer
and the arrival of my laptop.

Also praying for the arrival of the MotoQ phones that Kim and I have on
order. It's going to be nice not being in the stone age anymore on the
tech side of things.

Listening to some new to me music right now by OhGr. The name of the
group was reason enough to grab a few tracks :) If you're looking for
something new to listen to, this would be a good pick.

Also, the Panama coffee has arrived! What with my spectacularly unhappy
throat and everything, particularly this morning, I'm putting off making
a pot until this evening when I get home from work. One more thing to
look forward to *grin*

Today is promising to be a busy day. I've scheduled one of my projects
to go live this morning, so hopefully that goes smoothly. It should,
I've tested it pretty thoroughly :) It'll be nice to get all that data
out of the Excel spreadsheet it currently lives in and into a handier
web app like phpip. After that comes the NFS mount of doom, and making
those bloody snmp scripts my bitch.

The learning curve after that it going to be a bit steeper as I try and
then get that SNMP data into the phpip db, and correlated against phpip
data. Whee!

Damn. I need someone to invent a sourceforge/freshmeat dictionary of
some kind. I hate being told I have a spelling mistake when I don't :)

--
Be in pursuit of equality, but not at the expense of excellence.

So I hit the <a href="http://www.memoryexpress.com/">Computer Store of
Doom (tm)</a> and picked up an Enermax 535W FMA II power supply for
Kim's computer. A couple of power ups later and I'm about ready to
snap.

And then I get one of those odd urges to wander around the side of the
desk, flip the KVM over to her pc... and sure enough, it booted. No
beeps, but it booted.

At this point I don't give a shit where the beeps went, I win. To hell
with beeps.

Fuck'em right in the ear with their not beeping ways.

MotherFUCKER.

Wednesday

Cloudy with sunny periods. 60 percent chance of flurries in the morning.
Wind north 40 km/h gusting to 60. Temperature falling to minus 19 in the
evening. Wind chill minus 30

Wednesday Night

Cloudy periods. Wind north 40 km/h gusting to 60 becoming light
overnight. Low minus 27. Wind chill minus 35.

Dammit, I thought I'd had words with The Man about this and ensured
winter was cancelled and El Nino was on it's way in!

-35. JEEBUS.

I shall buy a snow plow, and name it Buster Rimes.

Pretty good day today, even despite the incredibly late start to it.
Nothing like having your brainmeats addled by percocet to ensure you
can't wake up.

Took the Kimster shopping and she's now set up with some nice new
clothes. I even managed to snag myself a new pair of decent jeans a
pair of dockers for under $50.

Tonight has been spent drinking some tasty coffee, and taking drastic
measures to fill the 300G drive I have at my disposal. Only one third
of the way there. 97G of music and another 5G of software that is now
backed up. The idea of losing stuff to scratched cd's bugs me, so I
like to have a copy just in case.

I figure as long as I have at least the OS, antivirus and Office type
stuff backed up I should be good. Also now have the World of Warcraft
patches downloaded, so when the laptop arrives on Wednesday I can
immediately get XP Pro and Linux installed, and get WoW installed
without a crazy wait.

Also added a few more things to the software folder to avoid downloads,
like Adobe Reader 8, .Net, DirectX and the like. It's always nice to
install these from a 100Mb network instead of waiting for the
intertubes.

Many thanks to Labyrinthman for assisting me in obtaining the very
latest <a href="http://www.deathboy.co.uk/">Deathboy</a> tuneage.
Bought both the mp3 collection, and should have the cd itself
eventually.

After having abused his bandwidth horribly to download everything he
had, I figured I could at least repay the gift of kickass music by
contributing back to the cause. I believe in supporting the artist, but
not big record companies. So if you liked the Deathboy stuff you've
heard thus far that I had shared up, get thee hence to his website and
spend yer measly $5 to get the mupthreez *grin*

Today has been one hell of a day. It got off to a bit of a rough start,
as I completely and utterly wiped out getting to my car and landed
square on my shoulder. More on that in a bit.

Got my butt down to the bank, and paid myself. I freakin' love that!
Who got paid? PAID IN FULL BABY!

Then began the slightly more painful process of saying goodbye to large
chunks of change. The first step in eliminating my income was down at
AMA where I forked over all my fines and car registration.

$850 poorer, my car is now legit and I have an AMA membership. Ow. To
celebrate, I washed my car.

Next up was punching an even bigger hole in the old finances, but for an
extremely worthy cause. BLINKIES!

My supah sexay Macbook 2.0GHz with 160G SATA drive and 2G of RAM is paid
off, and will be in on Wednesday it appears. BOOYEAH! Mmmm...
blinkies.

>From there it was off to my former place of employment to pay off my new
domain which is still unannounced really. I don't plan on making that
domain public until I've managed to register it as my company name as
well. I suppose that's a bit of a vanity thing, as there really is no
need for anything more than my numbered company. It's just a heck of a
lot easier to give someone a name rather than try and remember 7 digits
followed by Alberta Inc. Yeesh.

Next up on the list of expenses was to finish off the payment to the law
firm that handled immigration for Kim and I. That went a little pear
shaped, as I managed to completely forget my cheque book at home.
Whoops. We just about cleared it up since they have a debit machine,
but it was unfortunately on the blink. Not handy. So that'll be a
return trip on Monday likely.

>From there it was a mad dash through rush hour traffic to pick up some
fresh veggies and stuff for my sweetie so she wouldn't drop of the
starved at work. I'm all about keeping my sweetie a happy monkey :)

Grabbed a quick bite with Allison up at Brewster's way out in the
industrial area before she headed off to archery with her new bow and
spiffy new arrows.

Then a little more errand running where I picked myself up something to
use on the laptop when it arrives.

World of Warcraft :) Should be interesting... I've never played a game
like that before, and have never been much of a gamer.

Then it was back downtown to rescue my sugarmoogle from $employer.

This is now the bit where I revisit the wipe out from this morning.
Throughout today my shoulder had been stiffening up something fierce.
It got to the point where I could barely lift my arm at all and was
getting shooting pain down my arm into my thumb and numbness in my
fingers. Not cool.

So off to the Loughheed hospital to get it looked at. Being a minor
injury, I actually managed to completely sidestep the horror of the
Emergency waiting room itself, and was sent over to minor treatment.
After some rather painful prodding and lifting of my right arm and some
range of motion tests, the nice doctor man gave me two percocet and then
ordered some x-rays. While nothing showed up on those, he's fairly
confident I have a hairline fracture in my shoulder. So a handful more
percocet to take for the next couple of days and it's off to home. At
2am.

Today has been a *very* long day. I am now dragging my sorry ass to bed
after taking two more percocets, and I'm going to enjoy a truly solid
sleep.

--
Be in pursuit of equality, but not at the expense of excellence.

<a
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070103/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_parents">source</a>

<blockquote>
"It is contrary to (the child's) best interests that he is deprived of
the legal recognition of the parentage of one of his mothers," Justice
Marc Rosenberg wrote in the ruling, which did not name the three parents
or the child.

...

The two women, who have been together since 1990, told the court they
did not want to adopt the child because it meant the father would lose
his status as a parent.
</blockquote>

And then of course, there are the naysayers...

<blockquote>
The Alliance for Marriage and Family, a coalition of several groups that
promote a traditional family structure, had filed as an intervenor in
the case.

"We think there are many good reasons for continuing to uphold the
definition of family as two parents," said Joanne McGarry, executive
director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, one of the groups
represented by the alliance.

"Once you remove it from the realm of nature and the realm of
traditional moral and religious teachings, who's going to decide how
many parents a child can have? What's so magical about three, maybe
there could be more."
</blockquote>

Remove it from the realm of nature? Say what now? What's unnatural
about a child having multiple caregivers? Perhaps Joanne McGarry should
take a very brief jaunt back in the history of Scotland, Ireland,
England and many other European countries and re-discover the rather
nifty notion of 'fostering'. The kind of fostering where a child would
be sent off to stay with other family to make them a more well rounded
person and expose them to new things. To broaden the mind. I suspect
Ms. McGarry's mind could be easily expanded using a Q-tip. Anything
would be an improvement.

As for the reference to 'traditional moral and religious teachings'...
give me a break. Traditional where? Is it her suggestion that we
ignore every other type of family unit arrangement in the world in
favour of the rather recent adoption (heh) of the so called traditional
family? Ms. McGarry comes off as a rather small minded racist eager to
ignore any reality that is not based in her religion and Euro-centric
view of people. Clearly those heathen Africans or Indians don't have
anything of value to add to the discussion.

As for who is going to decide how many parents a child can have, I'd say
that's up to the parents. And no, there is nothing magical about three.
I think a child could uniquely benefit from having even more dedicated
caregivers rather than being abandoned to the care of strangers in a day
care and being turned into a latchkey kid because the 'traditional' two
income family can barely make ends meet.

So shaddup and siddown Ms. McGarry. You and yours have a shrinking
place in the decisions of where our society is going.

A big hearty thank you to Justice Marc Rosenberg.

<blockquote>
The problem is that over 220,000 unique IP addresses queried us in a
15 second pcap file I just looked at. So there are an enormous number
of people who have not fixed their mail systems to stop using ORDB.
</blockquote>

Folks, if you run a mail server or know someone who does... have them
double and triple check the RBL's they are using.

A best practice would be to review logs frequently enough that the admin
would catch dnsbl's that have been retired in a Not Good Way (tm)

My idea of frequent and someone elses may differ, so please, at *least*
once a month. Check for dnsbl failures.

Gamers are officially out of their freakin' minds.

400+ MB downloads from slow servers just to get the game client?
Jeebus. How about some of the companies start building in torrent like
clients into their software to speed this up? Downloads at 40KBps
indicate to me that they don't have enough bandwidth and either need to
get some, or find a better way to distribute their clients.

It appears there is no rescuing that computer, at least not immediately.
Come Thursday afternoon I'm gonna go grab a <a
href="http://www.memoryexpress.com/index.php?PageTag=&page=file&memx_menu=EmbedProductDetail.php&DisplayProductID=5819&SID=">Antec TruePower 2.0 480W</a> power supply for it. If that doesn't do the trick, I'm a bit stuck.

All that aside, I think we've decided to break down and get her a laptop
in February as a replacement. If I manage to fix her box, it'll likely
become my primary system and I'll relegate my current box to server
status. That'll give me roughly 700G of storage. That should keep me
in drive space for a month or two :)

I'm also rather excited to see the price of the Macbook I want coming
down in price. I can now get the duo core 2GHz with 2G of RAM and a
120G SATA drive for a lower price than when I looked a few weeks ago
with an 80G drive.

I swear to god, I am going to toss that moth@f*(kinG!! computer out the
razzafratzin fuckin door.

SO tired of troubleshooting one inexplicable fucking failure after
another.

FUCK.

Wow.

Not a single person has done the <a
href="http://www.okcupid.com/matchme?u=zastrazzi-cgy">Match Me</a> test
for my profile.

That makes me sad.

--
Be in pursuit of equality, but not at the expense of excellence.

So here we are on January 1st of 2007. This morning turned into a real
struggle. I woke up feeling pretty crappy and short of breath. Not
good. Despite that, I managed to get my butt out the door to get my
very tolerant and forgiving wife (thank you sweetie, I love you!) off to
work. We had a bit of a painful hunt before leaving where she must have
had to call 6 different Tim Horton's to find one that would be open and
not half way to Lethbridge or something though. Yeep. We did however
track one down and got her loaded up with The Fix (tm) and got her to
work.

6 minutes late. Doh!

Still not feeling 100% by any stretch, but a plate of scrambled eggs and
a cup of this very nice Indonesia Flores coffee from <a
href="http://www.philsebastian.com/">www.philsebastian.com seems to
be moving me closer to some vague semblance of humanity. I'm just glad
I wasn't out drinking last night. Clearly my body couldn't have handled
the poisoning that would have ensued.

Today is going to be spent in computery type pursuits, including ripping
a lot of cd's. It's high time I started getting these onto my hard
drive, because I clearly suck at keeping them in a non-scratched form.
Not sure what else specifically I'm going to be up to, although I feel a
nap features strongly in my not to distant future.

Possibly even right after this post!

Well, maybe not immediately after. I do want to get all the way through
this tasty coffee, and perhaps indulge in another cup :) Coffee is
conducive to napping doncha know.