Gecko Bloggle

I couldn’t do the Down the Rabbit Hole post today.  ‘Cause I got nothing.  Seriously.  There’s just too much.  Too bad, ’cause it’s a neat idea.

It’s good though.  I’m good.  We’re good.  Tate’s got the barfs that Ripley had last week, so think a little thing for a two year old who doesn’t quite get what’s happening with the hiccups get outta control like that.  Let’s hope it’s over in 24hrs or less, like it was for Ripley.

I’m going to Florida next week.  Weird.

We (mostly Arwen) were proven right on the housing situation.  Finally.  After all that.  One meeting in one day, and suddenly it’s “Oh, whoops sorry ’bout that.”   (Except I don’t *know* that ’cause I’m afraid to read it).

Mitt Romney is making a fool of himself on TV.

Also, I have a headache.

Oh, and I want this guy to release an album because he made this snippit of music for an Smirnoff ad, and I dig it.  Go to Our Work, Advertising, and Music (the one with the little red glasses, in the middle).

‘Nite.

Eep Omnibus Pablum.
(Translation: I got nothin’.)

Yeah, no, I got nothing. This past weekend was good, partly ’cause I deliberately didn’t get into anything from work ’cause I knew this was going to be “hell week,” due to some stuff that’s coming up fast for a Friday deadline. Today, I felt like I was battling all day to stay on target, which was made worse when I suddenly ground my gears to switch tracks entirely for something that’s due tomorrow, instead of something that was due last Friday.

Heh. Ooopsh.

On the upside, I spoke to someone on the phone today who talks even faster than I do. It was awesome. I didn’t necessarily feel confident that he could do what he said he was going to do, but omigod did he ever BELIEVE he could do it. It was one of those rare moments when I found myself thinking “You might be full of it, but I hope you manage to pull it off.”

I wonder how often people think the same about me at work?

So what have I been doing lately? Just for fun, ’cause I’m crazy like that, I installed VMWare, and created a virtual Ubuntu Server. I just wanted to see what it could do out of the box, and found that there was a step with a “do you want fries with that?” checkbox screen, and two of the items were web server and mail server. The very same two things that don’t really work very well on my current server rig right now. So I fired ’em up just to see how scary they were, and they just. Plain. WORKED.

I didn’t install an FTP server (oops), so I couldn’t just start hauling stuff from my currently IIS server into the virtual Apache, but I was pleasantly surprised once again by Ubuntu.

The server version isn’t as exciting as some of the vertigo-inducing effects you can find with the Compiz stuff under Ubuntu workstation, but hey, who needs all those windows doing the hokeypokey like that?

(/me waves hands back and forth, going “Oooh! Ooh!”)

I’m becoming a zealot, aren’t I? Shoot.

If I keep this up, I’m going to end up being the guy running around in shorts, suspenders, and a backpack, telling people “He got Linnixth running on his watch! On his watch he runs it!” I don’t think I’ll ever be as uber as Mister Aardvark, but I’m happy to claim to have been there when he was still a guy working in a bagel place and thinking maybe he should learn about this Linux stuff after he finishes his first album.

Arwen and I went to Deb’s birthday on Saturday night, just like when we didn’t have kids. Rip and I went out yesterday to the park, and there’s some fun pictures up on Flickr (of both events).

On the way home, we hit the bargain bin at London Drugs and bought Super Monkey Ball Adventure, which is a little over Ripley’s head, but sorta slap-happy fun anyway. Two hours of fun for $9.00, not too bad.

OH! I might be going on a business trip soon. Probably. Most likely. We’ll see. Second time in my career I’ve been paid to go somewhere. Last time was when Service Pack 2 for Windows XP came out, and I spent more time going through customs than I did in the air.

This time, I’m gonna have to travel on a Sunday, and come back on the following Saturday (I think, we’ll see). S’gonna be fun (I think, we’ll see). Arwen keeps saying I said I was going to Daytona, but I *know* I didn’t (I think, we’ll see).

For the record (hah!) I bought CDs last weekend, and forgot to tell the world. Despite what groups like the RIAA might have us believe, FREE streaming of music pointed me to music I’d never heard of before, but I like, and then that led me to BUY some for SOMEONE ELSE, ’cause I thought they would like it too…

She just turned 19 (happy birthday last week!), and I’m happy to say she’s my cousin, from that freaky-music-over-talented wing of the family. Somewhere on Youtube I’ve got my uncle John playing a badly tuned piano. I seem to have got the funny gene, but not the musician gene.

Okay, enough nothing from me. ‘nite yall.

Oh, and this song makes me want to do a new style of dancing Mr. Mills and I spoke about in one of our podcasts, and I’m a call it “grumping.” A little moody, and little blue, but funky. Think DeeeLite, but bummed. But diggin’ it. Y’know?
(probably only shows up at http://www.geckotemple.com/blog).

Let’s see.  What’s going on over here?

Caught part of the recent Golden Globes awards “press conference,” which was just kinda painful.  Mary Hart from Entertainment Tonight fame just couldn’t seem to figure out how to turn it off for a moment, which gave her segments this weird “The Office” tension.  You kept expecting her to do/say something desperately inappropriate, and then try to get a high-five from someone while saying “Am I right?  Huh?  People?  You were all thinking it, right?”

Caught CBC’s “jPod” tonight.  Very close to the book, plot-wise, but not very close to anything to do with the geek culture the book had.  What’s missing is the odd people who work at the company in question.  Through personal experience via professional placement, I happen to know the author knows the ex-president of the real “Neotronic Arts,” and the question that Arwen had was a valid one:

“Do you think Coupland thought the company was like that,  or did the president think it was like that?“

Yikes.  I probably don’t want to know.

What they don’t seem to have any of is the alarming humongousness of “Neotronic” Arts.  It doesn’t look like a University with low fuzzy walls instead of classrooms, fortified with games-that-don’t-yet-exist posters, and nerf-hurling railguns.  Not at all.  It looked like they took over the set of Good Rockin’ Tonight and Switchback combined* (see that flicker of tin? just me flashing my “old guy” badge), and put some big freakin’ LCD panels on ’em.  The acoustics in that place would be repugnant.  Nobody has headphones on, so you know it’s fake.  Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t see speakers, either, so they’ll never have a round of “My music has more bass than yours,” which is a near-daily tussle in our department.

They’re also missing the wonderful genius weirdo types.  The ones that wander the common areas, muttering to themselves, listening to $800 worth or portable audio equipment while wearing $8.00 worth of clothes.  You can’ write these people, or put them on TV.  No one would believe you.  People don’t like to think that the chainsmoking sketchy dude at the bus stop might have had something to do with a game like Playground.

There’s no Dodgeball League (I kid you not) in Neotronic Arts.  Of course, the book was done before Phase II of our Burnaby campus was completed, so I guess I can’t fault Doug on that one.

That, and playing “let’s hide the ringing cel phone someone left on their desk,” which is, I’m pretty sure, why cube walls are hollow.

Beyond here be the brayings of a techie…  Non-geeks might wanna take a pass on the rest of this post.

Click here to read more.. »

A long time ago, in a Valley far far away, I used to ride my bike a lot.

Like, a LOT.

And now, with the help of Google Maps, I’m going to bore the heck out of you while figuring out how far I was actually riding, if you’ll bear with me.

Starting when I was about 16, I was riding my bike 16km to school, the first six of which was down a windy mountain road until I hit the bottom of the valley, and then flat. Not a big deal, but getting home? In two years, I *might* have done that ride 1/3rd of the time. Maybe. I remember not having an odometer, so I was counting the rotations of my pedals while riding some long straight bits (Prest Rd. was psychologically difficult, even though it was straight and flat).

When I had my first post-highschool job, and first apartment, with my first post-highschool girlfriend, I was riding to/from work, and while only 7km, there was a horrifying hill called Mariner, which was a winding climb that was bad enough that I’d listen to car engines struggle on the way up, and listen to truck brakes grind and smoke on the way down. Psychologically, this hill was painful. The first week or two or riding up every day, I was having to stop, get off, and walk, or brakestand to catch my breath and stretch my legs . I worked with a guy named Boraz Carrera (pronounced like “Boris”), I think, who, in that “West Coast Italian Ehhhh…. no problem” way he had, explained that hill climbing shouldn’t ever be about pain in your legs, because “your legs can only hurt so much, and then they can’t hurt MORE, they just keep hurting the same.”

He might have been full of horse pucky on me not actually damaging my leg muscles, but damned if his advice didn’t work. I still look at a hill and go “Oh, ew, no.” but can climb it anyway, remembering Boraz’ “yoda-the-sherpa” advice.

When I was living in East Van, I was carless, and was riding 19Km to and from work, and can still fast-forward in my mind’s eye through the entire trip, and instantly hear Public Enemy’s opening to “Fear of a Black Planet” playing on those beautiful summer mornings. Still one of the best albums to cycle to, in my opinion.

Then there was a great dearth of bike riding, except for a short time when I was doing little zips (9km) around Stanley Park’s SeaWall, which was (oddly enough, pretty much flat).  Like, maaaaaybe did that a half dozen times before my bike was stolen from the lockup in our basement.

Oh, but then I bought another NEW bike, (new to me) for $100, and then that got stolen from work.

Last Spring, I bought a brand new swankity bike.  A Trek 7100 or something.  Light.  Sturdy.  21speeds of over-raised seat craziness.  A few trips (and one care package from my mom) later, and I’m decked out for anything except black ice, it seems.  If the weather’s +4 or better (allegedly 38, for our friends to the South, if you use Bob & Doug MacKenzie’s “double it and add 38” rule), I’m riding to work now every other day.

My little computer tells me it’s *just* shy of 11km when I use the routes I’ve picked for lowest psychological impact.  Also, I want to arrive at work looking like I’ve been cycling, not looking like I’m REcycled (gettit? huh? haha? no? okay), so my ride TO work is slight hillier in the beginning than on the way home.

Google Maps is lying, but this is sort-of my route to work.  Takes me between 35 & 45 minutes now, which isn’t too bad for an old dude like me.

Further news as events warrant, must go play Guitar Hero II and finish recovering DJBrokeman’s data from his drive that cacked on him recently.

Oh, and have a little hope for me in my board meeting tomorrow, okay, there’s still work to be done, but MAYBE it’s getting better.  We’ll see.  We’ll see.

So, uh hi.

Long time, no see, eh?

What have I been doing?  Let’s see.

Family:

• We’re good, all things considered.  Xmas was stressy and rough, but only due to external circumstances (see Housing, below).  Considering what we were up against, I think Arwen and I did extremely well.  Nobody got hurt, and the kids once again have toys that keep them busy without making us insane.
• My mom’s on the mend.  We went up to visit, and she’s doing much better.  Thanks to everyone who asked when they felt it was appropriate, and didn’t when they didn’t.
• My wife developed a thing for socks before either of us knew what hit her.  One day, she showed me something, we both sat there for a minute, and then I said “Yeah, actually, that’s hot.”  Who knew?  $17 for a pair of socks can be a good deal, if they’re the RIGHT socks.

Work:

• I’ve been busy with work, which has been going really well, now that I’m finally getting the hang of not being an all-day techie, but instead getting used to the idea of putting together training and documentation FOR techies (and end-users).  There’s a high-impact, but (we hope) low workload project in the very near future, thanks in large part to all the hard work already being done by the guy that works next to me all day.  He knew this stuff was coming, so he did all the technical tough stuff, so now it’s just a question of all the stuff we didn’t expect, and rolling out what’s coming without freaking out our userbase.  The next week or two should be fun*, and a nice way to come back from our winter break.

Housing:

• I’ve also been kept very busy with being a new board member at home, and trying to figure out how to bridge what I’ve been hearing and seeing vs. what can (and can’t) be changed/corrected.  We got something rather, shall we say, alarming *right* before Christmas, which really put a dent in our holiday time, but in the end, I think it was bombastic enough that it meant I went to bat and started swinging.  Is everything goodness and light now?  No.  Is it the end of the world?  Also no.  There’s hope now, at least, which is something I couldn’t say 8 days ago.  Or even two.

Facebook:

• Yes, I’ve been booking many hours on there.  Not really *doing* anything, just having a lovely OCD time and hammering that refresh button to see what’s happening NOW with everyone I know.  I feel like those rats you hear about, who’ll push the “get food” bar constantly, even if there’s no food coming, simply because food comes sometimes when you push it.  Karlababble has asked for a Intervention from Facebook, but I think that’s just ’cause she wants to get into fisticuffs with the older guy who shows up on there once in a while.  On Intervention, that is, not Facebook.  Wait.  Dude.  What?

Music:

• I’ve been listening to a fair amount of new stuff, thanks to a large number of excellent new/free music blogs, and streaming sites.
• Damien Rice hit my radar late one night a few weeks back, and I was instantly transformed into a slackjawed slushpile of overwrought emotional goo.  I was sitting there feeling grief & loss for something that I had NOTHING to do with.  I wasn’t just sad because the songs hit me, I was sad because those song existed.  I’m not sure when the last time that happened was, but hooboy.  If it was a seasonal thing, it’s good I wasn’t in the Hallmark store at the time, ’cause I would’ve started bawling right there.
• Johnny Vancouver and I did a podcast two MONTHS ago, and I haven’t had time to re-encode some of the songs that got squished by the process to post the whole show.  Soon, baby.  He and Warren have also been doing a Video Podcast that I’ll have to link to in the near future, so you can see that it’s not HIS fault we’re not doing shows, it’s all me.

Geekin‘:

• So, Vista came out around this time last year, and I’ve been using it at work in all its 64-bit glory (and bleeding edge stupidity).  At home, I’ve been afraid to try to fix the Win2k3 server I’ve got running this site, (it’s currently completely unresponsive on the console, and Exchange 2003 isn’t talking to the outside world, but the webserver works, so I’m not touching anything), so we’re moving to 3rd party hosting in the very near future.
• I’ve also been fooling around with more flavours of Linux than you can shake a memory stick at.  Ubuntu (and Kubuntu/Xubuntu) have all passed my “diddit goe?” test with flying colours under all sorts of weird hardware, and I’ve been happily using it as my “main machine” at home for doing everything I need to do in an evening.  The October (7.10) version just plain works, including wifi.
• I’ve once again found new respect for Knoppix LiveCD, with it’s utterly awesome ability to ignore that a drive or partition are all screwed up, and just copy stuff anyway.  My friend at Vancouver Film School can attest to the power of Knoppix when it comes to restoring data from drives that have been declared “dead.”
• Trinity Rescue Kit also made my day more than once this year.  It’s nice to be able to pull a “dead” machine from under a user’s desk, and have their data shared back to them via Windows (Samba) networking shares in under 5 minutes.
• I tried messing with my iPod’s head, and installing RockBox, but eventually found it too annoying to USE, even though I like the idea.  I’ll stick with the portable and multi-platform Floola to get my music onto my ‘pod without having to use iTunes (or stay married to a single workstation for music, for that matter).
• I also found out that old iPods can have their harddrives replaced using the odd little drives found in Toshiba R100 laptops.  Also, a new (and bigger) battery for an iPod can be purchased online for less than $35 (incl. shipping of the battery).
• Digital Picture Frames purchased at ToysRUs for under $80 don’t necessarily suck.  Way less work and heartbreak than trying to build them myself out of Frankensteined Laptops.

New Year’s Eve:

• This year was small, and time well-wasted playing Guitar Hero (I finally got over my stupid “but I’ll suck at it” stagefright to try it.  I don’t know what I thought was going to happen, but I’m told I’m doing pretty well for someone who picked up a plastic axe less than a week ago.  Totally Rick and Elissa’s fault if I even end up in front of the Movie-Theatre-sized screen at work, rocking out to Flock Of Seagulls’ “I Ran” in the next six months.
• I have a slight headache NOW that is, I think, the hangover from going to bed last night at 3am, and getting up at Noon.  Possibly held at bay by taking the kids to the park in single-digit weather.

I’m not making any promises or resolutions this year, but I do *hope* to post a decent-length thing at least once a week.  No more two-month hiatus (hiati?) for me.

What else am I looking at lately?  Check here from time to time to see what I thought I’d want to look at later.

* Not really, I’ll probably be muttering a swearing to myself by middle of next week.

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