Gecko Bloggle

My previous one was a little *too* hip, but also only showed one post on the screen at a time.

Plus, I’m not in Dubai (I don’t think).

More serene theme coming soon.

Okay web site, you win. I’m moving you outta the house.

The time has come to move this site to a place that does hosting. My days of trying to figure out why my server is so hooped I can’t even log into it any more (seriously, the thing doesn’t respond to Ctrl-Alt-Del any more, or when it DOES, it takes 15 minutes to prompt me for a username & password, and then spends another 20 minutes trying to get to a desktop).

Email’s been non-functional for MONTHS, and I can’t remote into the box any more, so trouble-shooting is somewhat, uh, hampered. What’s weird is that you’re reading this from that very same utterly hooped box, so obviously SOME of the services and things work. Oh well.

Moving on.

We’re trucking all of our blogs and stuff over to the good (fast, cheap, and friendly) folks at FusedNetwork, and since we’ve got a few databases on the go, and have things like Podcasts running here, we need the space and bandwidth offered with their “Package 2,” which worked out to less than we were paying Telus for the privilege of screwing up our own DNS. (Don’t get me started on Telus’ “We’re protecting you, so we’re going to break all inbound DNS and SMTP without telling anyone, so give us an extra $40/mo if you were running a server” thing that happened a year ago). Three months of having our website hosted will pay us back for the entire year of being with Telus on their “Business” package.

What with me no longer being gainfully employed (more on that after the move, perhaps), I have some time to work on things like moving web sites around, and thought about trying to bang my head against the wall and get the server running properly again, and starting thinking of the stress of trying to do that on a box that has two VERY active blogs on it (and one that’s more sporadic – mine), and trying to do all the patches and stuff that might be needed at 11pm so I don’t interrupt traffic for those two sites and just thought… forget it. I’ll pay someone else to make sure the site is up. $12/mo sounds like a decent amount to not have to think about it any more.

So we’ll talk when we arrive on the other side. Mmmmkay?

PS: Anyone wanting to leave more comments about Jan’s passing away can feel free to do so, I’ll just copy them over to the new site once we arrive there properly.

PPS: We’re at the new locale now, so if you’re reading this, we’re DONE! Yay.

So I’m in Maitland Florida, which somewhere between Orlando and Daytona, based on what the freeway signs say.

View Larger Map

Oh, but let me tell you about the trip out here yesterday. You know when you need to travel early in the morning, and you have those nightmares when you wake up late, and there’s not really enough time to get to the airport before the plane leaves?

I didn’t have one of those dreams.

I. Lived. It.

I intended to be awake at 4:30AM to leave for the airport at 5:30, arrive at 6:00, and get on a 7:30 flight, leaving enough time to get through the security checks and stuff, but not having to sit around for hours waiting.

Packed a whole bunch of times, and checked too many times to make sure I had enough socks, and printed three copies of all the papers I needed, and all sorts of things. I was ready to wake up, brush my teeth, get dressed, maybe have some coffee and a little food, and then walk a block to the nearby hotel and scam a taxi to the airport, a 30 minute trip. No problem.

Stayed up a little too late, like 11pm, but I figured I could sleep on the plane, so that wasn’t TOO bad. Fell asleep pretty easily, thinking I’ve triple-checked that the alarm clock said 4:30, and was on a station that wouldn’t “wander” during the night. No problem. Deep sleep.

Blink. Still dark. Blink. Clock. Blink.
5:55
5:55
Fiiiive FIFFFFFTEEEEE FIIIIIIVE!
HOLYSHIT!NightMare!WakeUp?Please?No?Maybe?GetDressedAnyway!
GotDressedGrabbedTwoBagsCalledCabOutTheDoorToWaitOnStreet.
I SET THE ALARM FOR 4:30PM, NOT AM, I’M AN IDIOT.
6:02
InCabToAirPort!Sure,Fine,GoTheOtherWayCauseAccidentOn16thDon’tCare.
Here’s$30KayThanksByeGrabBagsRunIntoAirport.
6:18
StupidAutoCheckInThingNO…IDon’tWantToUpGradeFor$93…Srsly,NO.
FillOutCustomsThing “Am I bringing any fruit? Live animals? Is my cat in the bag, maybe?”
CheckCheckCheckCheckCheckitySignedyCheck
6:25
GetPaperThingiesGoToCustoms
“Purpose of your trip, Sir.”
“Oh, uh, work. I’mean. Business, but work’s sending me. For training. Haha.”
{Don’t freak out don’t freak out don’t freak out do I look high? I bet I do! don’t freak out}
“What *kind* of training, Sir.”
“Uh, this ITIL process thing, for work.”
“Is it your COMPANY that’s SENDING you THERE for training, and then you’re coming BACK?”
“Oh! No, yeah! Work’s training me, but there, which is also work.”
{I’m not high honest I *just* woke up unless I’m still dreaming in which case I’m not the droids you’re looki-}
“Have a nice trip.”
“Thanks!”
{Woot! I’m a freakin’ DreamJedi!}
ThroughSecurityCheckScanThingieTakeOutLAPTOPGoThroughSecurityScan
ThingieFindGateAndTravelingCompanionFromWork.
6:38

So yeah, I’m here, and it feels like August (complete with summer smell and the whole thing, even though it’s the first week of Feb. The ground almost always looks like it just rained, but it hasn’t.

More about the work stuff later. It’s almost 9pm Pacific, so I gotta go to bed, ’cause I might not have to be at work until 8:30, but that means being at work 5:30 in “Wet Coast” time.

Powered by ScribeFire, and freaking out, and airlines.

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).

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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Just in case this field is blank, it’s a player for the new (FREE!) Saul Williams album.

Radiohead might be on to something… I’m a check out the album, and THEN pay for it. What a concept.

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we’ve created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they’d find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren’t aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer…

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

Go here to check it out.

So we’ve been living in a hotel for a week, while our hardwood floors are ripped up & replaced.

There’s only been one phone call to delay (thus far), so it looks like we’ll be back in on Saturday afternoon.

New podcast coming as soon as I’m back in the house to put the file back online (maybe Sunday?) and fun stuff like that there.

November is going to be better than Febtober was, since there’s just been WAY too much stress for all involved on almost all fronts.

I’m good.  Arwen’s good.  Kids are good.  My mom’s home & healing.  Work’s good.  Two weeks off was good.

Facebook’s new Blackberry application is pure eeeeeevil.

Be good to yourselves, and failing that, do a workshare swap with someone else.

Here ya go.

1 – Meet Me – Nora Smith-Hisler

2 – Talkybit 1

3 – Oh My God – Mark Ronson F. Lily Allen

4 – California – Marlena Shaw

5 – Track 24 Off Duncan’s Cousins Hip Hop Compilation – Guy of the Hip Hop Genre

6 – Talkybit 2

7 – Ultimate – Gogol Bordello

8 – Purple – King Kooba Meets DJ P-Trix

9 – Can’t Stop Talking – Betty Hutton

10 – Talkybit 3

11 – Nature Of The Experiment – Tokyo Police Club

12 – Goldrush – Yello

13 – Track 4 Off Duncans Cousins Hip Hop Compilation – A Series of Samples from Other Songs That Have Been Strung Together to Make One Song in It’s Own Right

14 – Talkybit 4

15 – Kinetic Stereo Kids – Barefoot In The Rain

16 – How You Sell Soul to A Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul – Public Enemy

17 – Fantastic Plastic Machine – Theme Of Luxury

18 – PiAno – Richard T. Hatch Says Round Evry Corner

19 – Talkybit 5

20 – Dead from the Waist Down – Catatonia

21 – Strma A Uzka – Susuma Yokota

22 – Once in a Lifetime – Wolfsheim