kraigu spaghetti sauce

Moving

Sat, 02 May 2009 00:49:07 GMT

Boo: the dude who was supposed to be out today was just starting this morning at 1130. When we went by again around 4, he was about half done. This set us back since our apartment is mostly full of boxes and we're still not done packing yet, never mind cleaning.

Yay: current landlord wasn't renting this unit this month anyway, so he's fine letting us stay on a couple more days, since we weren't planning on doing most of the move til tomorrow anyway. At a pro-rated rent, of course. So we're paying to get the chance to clean this place properly. I'm less than enthused about that for reasons some of you all know already, but hey, at least we're not totally stuck.

Yay: dude at new place was at least half done, which means (assuming they kept working) he should be mostly done by now. We did tell him if he needs tomorrow to move more stuff out, that's fine - otherwise we'd be stuck with it anyway, but it never hurts to be gracious.

Yay: I have several friends helping tomorrow, one of whom is even relatively able-bodied. So we should be able to get the hard stuff all done anyway, even if it means stacking furniture in the basement.

Boo: moving stress (plus worry of how my cat is going to take it) is combining with stress of starting a class Monday then going to a 6 day conference Tuesday, so I won't even get to enjoy living in my new place until nearly halfway through the month. (And then I'll be returning to a lot of boxes...)

Boo: since dude had Rogers, they didn't process my move request.

Yay: I called them today and it'll be moved tomorrow - except
Boo: our phone can't be done until the 12th. (Could have been Tuesday, but see above re conference.)

Boo: I did something to my shoulder today and my back isn't a lot better. And we have furniture to move tomorrow. And it might rain.

Boo: carpets in the new place are less than stellar, and I really doubt dude will have or take the time to clean them properly (although I did see a vacuum cleaner there, at least).

But... at least we're moving. Some time. And while it's been pricey so far and will continue to be, at least I have a friend's truck to do the move with, so no stress finding a rental truck in Waterloo in May. (That apparently caused dude some stress, U-Haul screwed him which is why he's screwing us, but... yeah. University town, May... go figure, it'll be hard to get a truck, and U-Haul sucks.)

Tired now, going to sleep soon I think. It was a long "vacation" day of packing boxes and stressing.

Just used in conversation with my boss...

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:06:46 GMT

"I will give them the privilege of my doubt."

Why yes, I am feeling particularly entitled and dictator-ish today. How are you?

An army story.

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:09:32 GMT

When I was in the Reserves, I was on a 10 day field exercise in the summer at CFB Gagetown. We were occupying pre-dug trenches filled with cement on a live fire training area. Our mortar pit was wide and shallow. We moved in the late afternoon, and spent the evening setting up.

The trenches were near a pond. It had been raining fairly hard the week before, but most of the water had drained out of the trenches. The bodies of the frogs who had jumped in and subsequently drowned had not, however. While I busied myself with readying 60mm mortar bombs, my fire team partner picked up all the little froggie corpses and flung them out of our pit, one by one. One lasting memory of that summer was seeing their flying bodies silhouetted against the setting sun.

Resolutions

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:03:36 GMT

It's that time of year, when everybody's making resolutions.

I'm not though, and I'll tell you why.

I understand how they work (and don't work) for some people. I understand that for some, it's a good time of year to reflect and decide what they'd like to change about themselves, their lives, whatever.

To me though, it's just another day. I always reflect and think about what I'd like to change. When I decide to do it, that's when I do it.

The whole arbitrariness of "NOW let's think about last year" actually kind of pisses me off. I understand it's a good hook for things like news stories and such, but aside from that, I'm not sure I really see the value in reserving a particular time of the year for introspection.

I like to live New Years every day.

Commenting and jerbz.

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:58:00 GMT

Every now and again I need to remind myself forcibly that weblog comments follow Sturgeon's Law. While reading comments can be ok (you can even learn a lot from that other 10%), trying to engage those responsible for the 90% of the crap posts and comments only leads to frustration. As Neal Stephenson said, arguing with them is a sucker's game. It's made all the more frustrating because while 90% of those responsible for the 90% that's crap are consistent and you can just filter them out without thinking about it, the remaining 10% of the crap shifts - even smart people come out with indefensible clunkers now and again, and they'll tend to defend those just as tenaciously as they do their other, better comments and posts.

Yes, even I do this on occasion, just as I'm sure I sometimes make mistakes while driving that must infuriate other drivers the same way they usually do me.

Sometimes it's best just to get up and walk away, remember life before the tubes and find something else to do. Read a book, pet the cat, write a journal entry with a real pen, take a nap, play a game... anything. Or, as a compromise, write a stream of consciousness Livejournal post.

In other news, I start my new job soon. I've technically already done a few small things for it, but it's fr srs in less than a week. It's one thing to know intellectually a lot of the things that need to be done, quite another to have as one's major responsibility having to help pick the things that are possible given resource and time restraints, and then have to implement them. It's not just the fun stuff any more.

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:33:57 GMT

When I was 7, we moved to Edmonton. My dad was a hockey fan then, and in that heyday of Gretzky and Messier and Fuhr, so did I become one.

We used to call watching the game on ITV or CBC "watching the game" and listening to it on 630 CHED was "watching the game in black and white."

If you came home and the game was on, you asked the score. If it was tied, you'd still ask who was winning - that would be the team who had lost the lead when the score became tied.

Modern technology is scary

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:56:09 GMT

I am currently nomming the contents of a can of beef ravioli I purchased for "emergency rations" (ie, Mike forgot lunch and is too hungry to not eat but still too lazy or broke to wander out and get something). This can was part of a bunch I bought one job, four offices, five pay grades, and ~55% of my current salary ago. It had a best before date that is still 7 months in the future.

I do not know if this is wonderful, or terrible. It is definitely scary.

Blast from the past, thankfully not an IED

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:17:23 GMT

I'm always worried about seeing somebody I knew from my time in the Canadian Forces in the news for the wrong reasons - lately, because they've been killed in Afghanistan. So far only once, and I watch that news like a hawk, but I feel sick to my stomach every time I see that headline and feel vaguely guilty for not being over there myself.

It was therefore a bit of a surprise to see my platoon commander from my QL3 Infantry course interviewed in the Stars and Stripes.

And yeah, news flash: the Canadian military has higher standards of operation than does the American. Why you would allow Private Bloggins, who has all of a year and a half of training in marching around and how not to kill the wrong people with his bangstick, to interrogate prisoners is completely and utterly beyond me.

I'm not quite sure what relevance the relative values of the dollars has to pay though. It's not like our troops come home and get to pick whether they buy gasoline and bread at US or Canadian prices.

Major Noel (then Lt. Noel) taught me, among other things, how dangerous even 1 ounce of plastic explosive can be when it's in a casing designed and built by Canadian engineers. Hopefully he won't find out the hard way how dangerous roadside bombs and RPGs can be as well.

office supplies

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:18:50 GMT

I was setting up some PCs for n00b grad students (who'd damn well better show up, now that I've sunk time into them), and one of the offices was newly set up.

On top of each desk, I found no less than one bottle of cleaning fluid, apparently made for and supplied especially by the furniture company.

I am at a loss.

But not so much that I didn't scoop some bottles (that came with used cloths), as my furniture is not-new and actually could use some cleaning, whereas these desks are so new they still have that new-desk smell.

It is true

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:34:31 GMT

melted_snowball and da_lj are not really the same person.

Hard to believe, but true.

In other news, computators hate me today.

Quote of the day

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:17:02 GMT

"Well, there's always the meat."

Made my day. It's even funny out of context.

Holy Conversations

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:37:06 GMT

While walking into work this morning, I saw a sign on a building:

"Welcome to Holy Conversations"

What is a Holy Conversation, and what does it sound like? I rather imagine the end of Dogma. I'm not sure a holy conversation is one I'd like to have, even if I was religious.

Academic collaborators

Fri, 02 May 2008 03:38:24 GMT

I don't know how anybody gets a damn thing done in collaboration. Maybe when you're both equal partners it's different, but trying to help Linda finish off a 5 page paper was hell. We did a couple of hours last week, and then tonight about 2.5 hours, but it felt like 12. At the end of it we had roughly 6 pages of reasonably well-written paragraphs that had a decent flow. She's going over a printout figuring out ways to work around the couple of XXX CHANGEME and XXX PARAPHRASE BETTER statements I inserted, and I'm about to get a (well-deserved, I think) beer.

But there have been at least a couple of times I wanted to snap, and I'm sure the same goes for her. At least she didn't cry this time, and I didn't stomp off for an hour-long break. I can't even imagine trying to do something more complex, especially if both people have something actually invested in it. All I wanted from this was to give her drug-addled mind a break. (She's on strong painkillers for her back problems.)

Linda's paper is about the speech John Kerry gave to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, by the way, and it was a very good one, although one of her secondary sources was all but fellatious in its tone. Published in 2004, how convenient.

... I forgot to transfer the beer from the freezer to the fridge, and now it's half-frozen. Crap. No sweet sweet alcoholic bliss for me.

Treadmill for bucks

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:02:19 GMT

Today at the grocery store, Linda and I saw a treadmill. For toddlers.

Really.

Anybody who feels the need to get their kid some exercise without having to oh noes send them outside is welcome to trade domiciles with us. We live on the third floor of an apartment building, no elevator. Just have them run up and down the stairs a few times. If you're worried about their safety, you can eliminate the need for your own treadmill by accompanying them.

we have a third story animal

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:27:56 GMT

Linda reports that there are bits of cheese and chicken bones on our porch. Fine, some animal is depositing them there. We know we have squirrels on our porch on occasion - which pleases our cats greatly. But squirrels don't eat chicken, do they? I shouldn't think bones are ideal nesting material either.

What other animals live in a city and are capable of scaling brick up to a third story porch? I've seen raccoons, but I would think they're too heavy to climb that far. Bunny rabbits can't hop that high and certainly don't eat chicken. I've never seen birds on our porch, or at least nothing bigger than a sparrow - so it isn't crows or magpies. I really doubt skunks can climb that far.

So what is it?

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:46:28 GMT

This past year, I billed out about 853 hours of work. At a rate of $50 an hour (which I think is what our "rates" work out to, even though it's all funny money in the end) that's $42,650. No, that's not what I actually get paid, it's just supposed to defray some of the cost of my salary and, er, living expenses I guess you could say - office, phone, yadda yadda.

It's kind of depressing to think that it takes me a year to cost the Canadian taxpayer what I cost in one night of a live fire exercise.

PS: plz 2 be payin ur taxes, I needz the moolah. kthx.

Early to bed and early to rise

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:48:52 GMT

Well, I've got half of that, anyway. The last couple of mornings I've set my alarm for 7 (which gave my cat great distress this morning, as he is unused to this shriek and is nervous by nature anyway). I kind of like getting in for 815-830, I can get a fair bit done before everybody else comes in and make things noisy.

I just need to work on the earlier to bed thing a bit. And leaving work before 5:30.

Maybe it'll help SB get her butt in gear in the mornings too. (Perhaps living bacon will suddenly grow wings too, but you never know.)

And no, the new year has nothing to do with it. I hate new year's resolutions, the date is coincidental.

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 15:17:24 GMT

So guess who just rebooted a Solaris 8 machine after reinstalling then replacing its shadow file, forgetting that it had been decreed our machines shall not have root passwords set?

Idiot.

My life the last couple of months

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:13:47 GMT

The last couple of months have been school, family issues, and work.

Linda's back issues are chronic and congenital, which means I get to do a lot of the picking up and cleaning up at home. Anybody who knows me well knows that means it mostly doesn't get done. It also means she's been loopy on painkillers until fairly recently - who knew that an anti-depressant was a great nerve blocker? (I do now, and so do you.) Hopefully that will help.

School, well, my classes are done and they were great fun, but now I have a 4500 word paper due Monday. I've got maybe 750 words done on it so far, another 1500-2000 easily on tap, but then it's crunch time. If I hold true to form, I'll start Sunday evening with 2500 words, inch my way up to 4000, then suddenly find myself close to 5000 and wondering what on earth I can cut out. At least the topic's interesting, and judging by some conversations I've stirred up, I'm far from the only one who finds it so. Legal and ethical implications of recent neurological discoveries, specifically from fMRI scans, if anybody's interested. With a side order of justice and free will theory. I love learning stuff, I considered minors in either psych or philosophy at UNB so this sort of combined course is like crack, and I love editing papers, but that initial writing... pulling teeth.

Work? Let's just say right now I'm trying to figure out a way to cut down an estimated 130 hours straight of firmware patches on 56 machines to something a bit more manageable. (464 patches, give or take a few hundred, each taking 20 minutes, about half of which brick your system if you do them incorrectly so I want to do them one at a time.) When I'm not working on that, I'm trying to figure out why our Blade Centre won't talk to its NAS. If I don't want to do that, there's always documentation to write or systems to upgrade. Next week I've got OS reinstalls or upgrades scheduled for two major multi-user systems and three days in which to do them. I'd hoped to upgrade three clusters as well, but the firmware patches are going to get in the way.

When I'm not avoiding doing one of the above three things, I'm either decompressing with a novel, trying to watch a hockey game, agonizing over finances, or sleeping.

So, that's my life since October or whenever it was I last posted. It could be much worse, but I'm not going to say it couldn't be better either. All I can do is play the hand I'm dealt though.

t00bz

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:27:53 GMT

This is what the t00bz were invented for.

Seriously.

My life is now complete.

reason why my boss is > *

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 19:52:18 GMT

In the last 48 hours or so, I've written and passed in a 10 page paper, participated in a 90 minute seminar and a psych survey (I'm a lab rat), done a shuffle of a couple of machines (and in so doing got to inconvenience, idle, or otherwise fuck up about $750,000 worth of salary and $150,000 worth of hardware). This morning I've was head down trying to sort out the fallout from that last particular item, including dealing with a faculty member who was displeased with some of the results. (Not my fault he didn't read his email, and he did apologize, but I was still pretty pissed off at the time.) I've also had a steady stream of visits from others who also did not read or understand the warnings that were sent out and are put out that their files have `disappeared', and of course there's the usual machine-swap madness.

I forgot to eat this morning, so my boss went and got me some cake, an apple, and my favourite from the C&D, beef vindaloo.

Yay! If only my headache (literal, not metaphorical) would go away, life wouldn't be terrible.

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:05:25 GMT

Nope, I'm still not dead, still too busy living life to really write about it. Succinctly, Linda's back has been as bad as it's ever been, which means I get to play hands and feet for usually half an hour in the morning and about the same again in the evening (if not longer). Between that and work being somewhat insane and class, it's been a chore. I do have a new co-worker finally, hopefully that will help.

Speaking of class, it wouldn't be a "last day before the paper is due" night without some angsting and staying up ridiculously late working on said paper. I'm not actually sure how well I'm going to do - I'm sure I won't bomb it, but I'm not sure I'll pass with flying colours either. Oh well, it's "only" 30%. In the "should have had an outline to show the prof last week" department, he'd asked for ~10 pages (including bibliography), 3000 words. That's cutting it close, especially with the doublespacing. I'm at 8.25 pages or so and still have about 700 words to go, going to be a tight squeeze. I guess I can reduce the font size, he wants a word count included so I guess that's more important than just pagecount.

I took a couple of days off two weeks ago to try to get a head start on the paper, and it wasn't a total waste - I did make it to three university libraries and a public library in those two days plus the Saturday, but between a minor case of work burnout and the other stuff, I mostly just slept. Maybe I'll try three days for the final paper, and earlier - it's worth 60%. (Which means I'll have to do it in the next couple of weeks... nice way to spend my 6th anniversary.)

A la prochaine, if you really miss my witty wit and writing, you can always check out my other home. Back to the grind, at least my cat gave up trying to help me and has gone to sleep.

Getting crochety

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:36:31 GMT

I must be getting exposed to CS types too much, layout matters to me now. Combined with pre-existing ill humour at seeing words like "impact" used in place of "effect" and other signs of poor editing, it made reading this paper, entitled "Visually Assessing Possible Courses of Action for a Computer Network Incursion", rather painful. In fact, I stopped about 10 pages in. I was cringing as soon as I saw the table of contents - it wasn't the content of the contents that triggered me, but the poor layout. (Written in Word, is my guess, although I'm no expert.)

It looks like an interesting paper, but on a Sunday, I don't know if I can force myself past the visual gunk and desire to pull out a red pen into reading it.

No offense intended to the author, who worked very hard on it I'm sure, but... damn. No abstract should say "This report presents a tool that allows the security analyst to visually evaluate various containment options to minimize operational impacts."

Nope, not dead

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:48:46 GMT

I'm still not dead, just pretty busy.

Sending Linda back to school in the fall, another $8000 in debt (or we will be once the line of credit is spent).

Going back to school again myself, taking PHIL/PSYCH 446, which used to be titled Cognitive Modelling but now is something else.

I'm also taking a pass through my personal inbox this morning, which means some of you might be getting replies to comments as old as last October. See my thoughts on necroposting, if you're wondering why.

I recently (late last week) started using a system for keeping my work inbox at < 10 messages, and no, it's not by simply filtering everything into other mailboxes as some do. I do filter mailing list emails, but that's it. I would describe this system more fully, but the margins are too small
NO CARRIER

Hobbies(ish)

Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:11:07 GMT

No progress on the Scheme front, but I started teaching myself LaTeX in order to produce some nicely-formatted documentation for our still-fairly-new clusters. That's like crack too. Three or four hours to write up maybe 15 pages worth of text, then a couple of hours to roughly TeX-ify it... then another 5 or 6 hours to clean up the last 10% of the formatting. I got it all down except the best way to handle URLs - do you wrap them in the middle if they come at the end of a line, or force a newline? Either way looks like crap.

It's easy to lose several hours mucking around with that. I didn't let myself use TeXShop at first, just so I'd have a better handle on how things worked, but when I started using it last night, man. Finestkind.

Now I should sleep.