::Blog

Ever feel like you're being blown off? I felt like that today on the Fresco IRC. [tired]Is it just me? I mean - what is it? Or is it the fact that I haven't contibuted enough code to be useful yet? I'll start working more on CORBA. I think the ideas behind it are neat, but I suspect that lots of companies will rather code their systems in one language. Or use .NET. U wonder if I actually want to live in a dystopian world? I think maybe...yes. I don't know. It's weird - if I close my eyes I see myself going home to a tiny apartment. The hallway is dark - not totally dark, but dimly lighted. The lighting is an orange shade - it appears to originate from some point at the end of the hallway. I can't see my face - I never see my face. I'm looking at my back. I'm wearing some sort of trenchcoat, a sort of grey woolen thing I think. I pass two people talking. I don't even bother looking at them - eye contact is minimized. I'm in chase mode - I swing round to my back, I open the door. It's not even a normal door. The screen goes black. I want to go back. I've been here at least once before that I am sure of and I have memories of an earlier time. The elevator. I still remember the elevator. We're going up. It's utilitarian. There's metal at the bottom. But I can't remember the floor. It's a glass capsule and I can see out. But I can't remember what I see. It's something black - night, the outside of the housing complex? Or perhaps a memory from my childhood - the empty column down the cnter of the building - seven stories up. I used ot wonder how it would be to fall. To fall down. What was at the bottom? Was it the refuse of years past - or was it clean? Why was it even there? I'm in the elevator, I look around. Someone turns to talk to me. There are three inside. A shield goes up and the voices of the other two die away. I'm surprised - I've never seen anything like it before. I want to go back...

Hmm...looking at Owen Taylor's XR example and I realize that unless Fresco becomes usable and usable quickly it's going to be blindsided by X. There doesn't seem to be any urgency on part of the Fresco developers about this tho :( I will try and work harder. X is improving (albeit slowly) and its architecture is hung off by extensions and not the best considering what we know, but unless Fresco exploits that with something that's workable and _looks good_ before the long hyped XFree86 5.0 the chance might be lost forever. And don't believe what the X people say - there _are_ problems with X. And its not flaming or being stupid to say that. I hate you Allen.

Well, it's uh the 21'st and I realized that I didn't write in my blog. That's not good. I was trying out my commitment to consistently update this page. So what have I done? Well - I spent the last week _cursing_ X at work. And cursing just about every graphics related thing in sight. Man - so many problems. I just wish I was able to work 200 hours per day. Maybe then I could solve all my problems. But that's not important. The important thing is that I fell in love...with RH 8.0. [Guess you weren't expecting that!] In my quest at work I got the chance to install RH 8.0 on a dual 2GHZ Xeon with 2 GB of RDRAM, my choice of Radeon 9700 Pro or 3D Labs Wildcat 5120, 2 36 GB SCSI hot swappable drivers and a 19" monitor. Sadly enough - RH 7.3 was not very...nice on that machine. Not to mention that it looked horrible. At any rate - RH 8.0 blazes and (I almost cried when this happened) it allows me to use the hyperthreading capabilities of the Xeon. I felt - overjoyed - when I started up perfly (SGI Performer demo application) and it said "Found 4 CPUs!". BOOYEAH! RH 7.3 eat your heart out. Problems though have to be dealt with. I love the AA and I am really looking forward to RH 8.2. Why 8.2 instead of 8.1? Because hopefully by then we'll have a completely AA enabled Mozilla and the last vestiges of GTK apps will be replaced by nicely AA'd GTK2 apps. The gcc 3.2 compiler is much stricter so I guess I'll have to do work on that front.

[sigh]All right. As I sit here - I just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading about Eugina Loli-Queri's new hobby OS - Sequel. Who is Eugina? She's a 'contributing editor' (my ass - she writes almost every article) on OS News. And now I'm going to spend at least 10 minutes of my life ranting about her/it. Eugina... I think the only way to (politely) state my opinion is to say "I dislike her - intensely". Seriously. I am usually a very reasonable guy But I have the feeling that if I'm in the room with her I would be forced to give her a laxative in the hopes that she would lose interest in the verbal diahrhea that she succumbs to in order to relieve her physical pain. In other words I cannot stand her. At all. Why? Hmm...perhaps I can list a few reasons.

• Steadfast belief that only she is right. Not open to dissenting opinions.
• Inability to accept that she is wrong. (Note: this is different from above - she's never apologized, even when she's balatantly wrong)
• Strident. Her preferred method of 'debating' is repeating her stroy 300 times and questioning the other individual's intelligence whould they disagree.
• Inability to compromise. If I were the owner of a company I would fire Eugina. She thinks that interating that its her way or the highway is the ideal way. Wrong. In most companies that attitude will probably cause deadlocks and 3 times the amount of friction had you deal with the situation in a more _diplomatic_ way.
• Hatred of open source. Hmm...yes I can admit that OSS is not for everyone. That's not a problem - there are all different kinds in the world. But Eugina's hatred for OSS is extreme. Her rantings on the incompetence of OSS in general, its lack of viability etc etc would make a sailor cringe. [And she wonders why OSS designers don't stoop to kiss her ass when she screeches her latest prcolamation]
• Power complex. Everyone must bost to Eugina.

And more... There are a few rules you should know about OS News. First - there is a cult of Eugina. These drug addled invertebrates believe that all that Eugina says is right. Usually after she slams OSS. Again. Second, don't ever question Eugina. Such a thing is TREASON. I mean Eugina must _always_ be right. Even though what she's saying is _blatanly_ wrong. We know she must be right. Third, if ever Eugina is losing an argument, she'll blame some of her earlier statements on her lack of command of the English language. [cough]BS[cough]. She's probably got a better command of English than 3/4 of the posters on OS News. Finally, for someone who expends so much vitrol on slamming OSS projects, she's done remarkably little in helping them. Perhaps she should consider these few pieces of advice. First - yes, projects have problems. However, it is possible to highlight those problems without slamming developers or insulting them, or saying insulting comments about them in forums. If you do, then do not expect them to kow-tow to you when you want those problems fixed. Secondly, its nice to have principles and stand up for them, but you will really get a lot more traction if you're willing to work _with_ people. Give it a try. It works. Yelling at them won't. Jeez...I just spent twenty minutes writing this and I'm still not done. Now I'm pissed. I'm writing about Eugina while I haven't done my latest Fresco task. Dammit!

And...mystery # 1 is solved when it comes to Zope. It turns out that port 8080 is for the Red Hat (I guess RPM based) Zope setup, while in Debian its set to 9673. Just found that out today morning... It would explain my frustuations trying to connect to the Zope server. Now, let me experiment with this and find out if I can create a consistent framework to which to migrate all my websites. Integrate svn, my blog, the issue tracker etc under a single consistent framework... Whoa, there's a dream. It'll take a long time to do I think. Also to be noted is that the user created with the Debian account does not seem to work (for whatever reason) anyways I did:

• cd /usr/lib/zope
• python zpasswd.py /var/lib/zope/access
• Fill in the stuff needed
• /etc/rc5.d/S20zope stop
• /etc/rc5.d/S20zope start

This got zope started up and I was able to access the management interface. I am so emotionally drained today. Talked to Stefans for a bit and got my next task for Fresco. Will work on that tomorrow. Finally got myself a chairmat (so I can use my office chair!). Experimented a bit with Zope... I think I can see the _huge_ advantage of working with a CMF system. It would certainly simply some of my tasks and give me things like comments etc. Concerned though - what are the differences/advantages of using say the Plone Collector as opposed to Roundup. I think Plone collector will be simple and easier to use and probably more well rounded and integrated into a CMF framework, but since Roundup was designed specifically for Issue Tracking it would be much more powerful if you wanted to use it for that purpose only. So many choices. [sigh]Everywhere I turn it seems MS is getting stronger. Is there no chance for us? My depression increases. We have to get Fresco out - or maybe PicoGUI will be the Linux world's great hope. After all, I think its a given that the first project to break new ground is often the one that doesn't succeed. It's only the ones that come after that become truly great. Why? Because they learn from the first one's mistakes. Must sleep now.

So what do I read today but this article in the Toronto Star. I knew that problems like this were going to happen when the US started its racial profiling, but this is hitting _very_ close to home. My name is Allen A. George. I happen to be a Candian citizen. I also happen to an Indian, and was born in Kerala - a state of India. [Sidenote: When will the Indian government come to their senses and let me have dual citizenship? I _want_ to be a citizen of India and their senseless policies are preventing that]. If I come to the US from another country will I be subjected to this stupidity as well? I mean - what would have been the harm in _checking_ with the Candian Consulate to verify if whe was a Canadian citizen or not? Also, what base intellect and ignorance made them conclude that all Indians are named Singh? My name is George - from birth - does having a name like that automatically put me under suspicion because I don't have an Indian enough name? This is totally ridiculous. I think this letter put it well. I too am an Indian Christian and I don't think that some INS official's ignorance should mean this sort of disreputable, despicable behavior.

The sad thing is that no one is going to tell the US that this behavior is utterly moronic. It seems to be the prevailing attitude nowadays and I am thankful that I live in Canada. Ignorance like this is what leads to problems down the road...

I was not feeling well at all today. Feeling so bad that I considered going to Franklin and asking to stay home. In the end, decided not to and worked on. At any rate, I felt better by the end of the day and so was able to go to the 2003 Canadian International Autoshow. Wow - what an eye opener. First - this is one of the events that I'd go to once, simply so that I can experience what its all about. I wouldn't necessarily go to one again - simply because I'm not a car buff and although I can appreciate cars, I can't really _appreciate_ them. You know what I mean. There are many people who like computers, but unless you understand what's going on underneath the hood you can't really _appreciate_ them. You can't look at the technology and marvel at the fact that a number of engineers and scientists came together and created a new concept, a new way of looking at the same problem and coming up witth a totally new solution. There is a big difference between casual appreciation and true "I have seen the light" appreciation. At any rate, it was quite the show. For those who don't know, the autoshow is held at the North and South Metro Toronto Convention Centre as well as the Skydome. I got the opportunity to see cars that I've only seen (and lusted after) in piictures. First, some thoughts. I would never consider buying a BMW/Lexus. The people on the floor locked up every single car (even those that cost 30K or so) and you'd have to be in the company of a salesperson to try one. I understand that your cars are expensive - but when Mercedes Benz, Cadillac, Lincoln and Infiniti are letting people sit in and experience their cars you come off as snobbish. Secondly, I fully understood the source of all the car salesman jokes/angry comments. While the majority of the GM reps that I talked to were friendly corteous and made me _like_ being in the GM area, there was one salesman who soured my experience. When I was trying out a car he started asking me a lot of questions, making uncalled for comments, asking specifically what I wanted to buy (come on - I simply wanted to know when a modelcame out) and in the end pressing his business cards on me. Note to this individual. You suggested that I direct other people to buy from you. My answer to this is NEVER. You are the embodiment of the high pressure sales tactics that I despise. I would not subject any of my friends or family to a buying experience with you because I am sure you would try to railroad them. Well - what can I say. First, I got to see Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Ferraris. Wow. I mean - wow. There's a reason why those machines are expensive. They exude raw power and I'll never own one ;) I got to see a lot of Toyota cars. I've got to say one thing - the Camry just keeps getting better. The interior quality is like that of an upscale car. No wonder Toyota is posting 30%+ gains in market sales in Canada while the Big Three stumble. Toyota quality and reliability is unmatched by any other car in their respective class (just check out the stats if you don't believe me). Got to see the new Honda Element. I remember when the Aztec came out - people criticized its plastic undercladding. Well, if you thought that was too much - the Honda is _way_ over the top. Am I the only one who thinks matching grey plastic with sheet metal on the exterior is a stupid idea? At any rate, it will still sell because its a Honda. And you know what I know lots of people who would buy this _just_ because its a Honda and therefore must be good. Note - I personally hate the exterior design of this thing. I think the interior is much better laid out. I got to sit in the M-B cars. Well, I'll say this much - holy smokes do they have excellent interior designers at Mercedes Benz. Even in their C series class, everything inside reeks of quality. The fit and finish is excellent an the cars simply cocoon you. If I had the money when I was much older I would consider a Mercedes Benz. Seriously. And you know what? I liek the exterior styling. The Beemer's styling is agressive (something I like in those cars) but the Mercedes Benz styling is sleek and elegant. I've got to say that I like that too ;) Hmm..what else? Ah yes - the new Ford Mustang. I like it. I think the styling is quite good and it looks like a muscle car. Perhaps its that particular shape to the nose? I don't know, but it evokes memories of older cars with horsepower to spare... But I jest - I would not buy a Mustang because although I love the sensation of speed and raw power I would like to be environmentally friendly (and use transit if possible). And that's where I come to the Smart. I'd never seen a Smart before today and it was paradoxically, smaller than I expected and yet bigger than I expected. First, that car is dinky on the exterior. I saw a _lot_ of Hummers at the Autoshow (I think GM is promoting them in a big way - I've always been fascinated with them simply because of their raw capabilities and army genes - although having tried a few SUV's I can't tell why The wheels are really small! Yet the interior room was much larger than I expected. There was quite a bit of headroom and legspace as well! Surprising. I would not mind buying and travelling in one of these if I lived and worked in the city. Much more fuel efficient and much better use of parking spaces ;) Maybe they should make only cars fitting these dimensions be allowed into Toronto... Good old M-B engineers! What else - ah yes. GM. I was _very_ interested in GM because a lot of the cars I like happen to come from GM's stables. Which is quite different from my friends. A lot of the cars they like come straight from Hond'as stables. I'm bucking (get it!) the trend I guess. So I'll mention a few highlights. I got to see the Corvettes. Must admit - I'm a fan of the Corvette's looks... I also got to see the Autnomy. Now wow, that's a car. Hydrogen fuel cell in a skateboard chassis, four independent motors for each wheel and the ability to simply drop a new exterior on the skateboard chassis. plus driver by wire and lots of composites. This car was designed from scratch and it's refreshing. To be quite honest I would be excited if the future of the automobile was something like this! Got to see the Cadillac Cien. Oh my...I like (no...love!) the new angular stylings of the Cadillacs and the Cien is the perfect embodiment of this. It simply looks like a razor (and with a Northstar V12 in the back - probably cuts through the air like one too). Do you believe that a car can look better in real life than in a picture? Then that's how I felt when I saw the Pontiac Solstice.. Oh my. That car is so curvy (which contrasts to my angular leanings) but it looks so good. So...clean. And the interior looked very well designed to - smooth curves and light colors. I want one. Finally I got to look at the Cadillac CTS and XLR. The XLR looks shweet....really shweet. I've _always_ been partial to the CTS and up close the exterior styling did not disappoint. What I was disappointed in was the interior styling. I think that if the CTS wants to go up against M-B or BMW or Audi or Lexus thay have to examine those cars and see what they did with the interior. The M-B's interior feels open and to reiterate - not congested. Knobs are discrete and well positioned/designed. In contrast, the interior styling of the CTS was not what I expected. First, I would like the sterring whel to feel more thicker and solid. Also, I would like the interior designer who suggested the styling for the AC vents be summarily relgated to a junior post. It looks horrible those vents - must be designed better. Third, improve the layout of the center only and the buttons on the sterring wheel. For some reason the buttons tactile response is not up to par - they feel cheapish. The center console could have been redone in a much more efficient way... Anyways, I like the CTS but if they fixed these I would seriously consider it.. All in all a fun day. Back, feet and shoulders were sore...

To war or not to war, that is the question. The answer is more complicated than the hawks and doves would have you see it. I see problems to both sides, and this leaves me confused as to which position I should support. Maybe I should support neither (no - ignoring the problem does _not_ make it go away). Boo!

I've been doing a bit of reading and I've decided to be a bit more contemplative in this little blog entry. First - I'd have to ask myself. Why do I write and maintain a blog? Truthfully its because of a number of reasons. I've always found it interesting to have an insight into another person. A blog usually reveals a lot abou them - their likes/dislikes, what motivates them et al. I've enjoyed reading other people's blogs and I hope that maybe people will enjoy reading mine as well. I also consider it a way of relieving stress. Often I find myself in a situation where I experience turbulent thoughts. My mind literally froths - arguments, emotions and reasoning vying for supremacy. I find that the simple act of putting my thoughts into words has the effect of calming me down and organizing my thoughts. Incidentally, this is also why I tend to be locquacious at times. Please don't consider that as me being foolish or simply talkative - its often a way for me to organize myself. I've often been stressed lately and I've put a great deal of thought into _what_ I'm feeling and to what those emotions can be ascribed. Maybe it's something I've always known, but never really admitted - but a major cause of my 'problems' has been the way I perceive and interact wrt time. Everyone wants more time. I'd say that I _really_ want more time. As my understanding grows and I interact with more people I've come to realize that there are so many things I want to do. I'd like to maintain this web page, work on KGI, work on Fresco, learn Python, learn OpenGL, improve my understanding of program/algorithm design, work on a brand new, integrated website... There's a lot to do. In addition, I have other non-computer related activities that demand a certain portion of my time. It's left me with a feeling of always being behind. Reading Slashdot or KernelTrap leaves me with a sense of guilt. Am I not using my time well? I just spent 20 minutes reading news when I could have been working on Fresco (or something else). At times, this leaves me - for lack of a better phrase - emotionally drained. This is a genuine problem I need to solve. I cannot work on everything and I have to balance my relaxation with my alternate activities. To be quite honest - I can't even remember a day in the last couple of months that I've simply sat down and thought. How depressing. One attitude for mine that should be improved is "the grass is always greener on ther other side". Sometimes when I'm working on an item, I immediately think - "Could I be doing something else in the same time, and more effectively?". This of course is normal - but what is not, is the amount of energy I put into answering such a query. It also results in a much more unfulfilled feeling after an activity. After all, I haven't enjoyed it or put all my efforts into it because I've been thinking "perhaps my time is better spent elsewhere". I've of course taken a few steps to increase the amount of time I spend. For one thing, I've eliminated movie watching. Most of what I've seen is mediocre fare and to boot - rarely engages one's intellect. Unfortunately, despite this, it takes a minimum of 1.5 hours to watch a movie, time I sincerely believe would be better spent doing something else. Another step I have to take is to _slow_ myself down. I've often joked as to how I tend to speed read now. It's actually quite depressing. It's a habit I've acquired after years of reading web pages, blogs, texts at high speed for the information I needed. The basic technique is skimming through a book (or any printed material) reading just enough that you have a general idea of what it's all about. I've got to say - for someone who never read anything about speed reading I've done quite well for myself. The unfortunate side effect is that I speed read everything. I was shocked when I finished my last book (fiction) in 1.a matter of a few hours. This was over 400-500 pages. I considered what I'd achieved at the end. Yes I had an understanding of the plotline. But did I appreciate the subtlties of the plot? Did I revel in the atmosphere that the author created? Did I even attempt to think, to consider the impact of the authors words? Did I put down the book an allow my imagination to wander in flights of fancy based on a single phrase, an idea that presented itself to me as I had done when I was a child? In a word - no. I was too involved in finishing the story as quickly as possible so that I could move on to another activity. I am forced to consider Fady's statement. In a recent telephone call he stated that he thought that modern technology had failed us. We were building things that worked faster but it hadn't improved our quailty of life. What was it all for? he asked. I'm afraid that although I agreed with him I did not know the answer to this question. Make no mistake, I would love to be able to sleep less and not suffer physically, emotionally or mentally (something that is not possible now). I would love to be able to work faster, and understand new ideas immediately with blinding clarity. Unfortunately I am no longer the child who was able to do that, but am now an adult with a very clear and at times humiliating understanding of his own limits.

Long day. Did some work on Fresco. Uploaded the partially copmpleted vim coding styles. Talked on #kgi and now might be looking at writing a driver for kgi. Omigosh. I don't know what to say. Figured out the issues with my pay - count the days Allen count the days. I have to resolve things with myself. It's all in my head to be quite truthful. All in my head. goodnight.

Moved funally to Debian's GNOME 2.2. Deleted all vestiges of GARNOME. WIll try it again later. I find myself getting angrier, more abrasive lately. Angrier with the world, more apt to take offence - just on edge. I don't know what's causing it? Perhaps some recognition of my capabilities (or lack thereof, or lack of effort?) I don't know. Neiljp commited my patch to Fresco CVS. Thanks neiljp! Started reading bout how to create vim scripts. I'm working on the task to implement a vim script file for the coding guidelines in the fresco coding style. Vim's scripts are interesting. I'm not sure how everything fits in. It seems however - quite modularized. I am greatly looking forward to Reiser4. When it comes out I will be taking the opportunity to buy a new copy of Libranet (perhaps one that includes Reiser4 as the default option), exorcise the unused Windows partition and redo my computer from scratch. I anticipate that this will be quite a painful undertaking, but I believe it will be worth it. Reading about extremely smart people can be very depressing. Especially if you find yourself comparing your acheievements to theirs. The question inevitably rises: "What am I good for?" I think brilliance and mental capacity is one of the greatest gifts God can give... [sigh]Just spent 30 seconds trying to get to this line in Vim. Sleep @ 12:00.

Got up quite late today - a weird headache on one side of my head - not sure what it was or how it was caused. Had stayed up very late the night befor talking to neiljp about CORBA and fresco. Did a little work today. At aroud 5:50 left for the MEGA dinner. Interesting evening. Got to talk to Jerry Meade - a representative of the PEO. Asked him about what is being done about certifications that include "Engineer" in their name without them being an actual engineering graduate/degree. He stated that the PEO is trying to do more about it - they've hired three extra people to police the abuse of the term engineer. Also, they're taking Microsoft to court over its clearly fraudulent use of the term Engineer. I should state (in all fairness) that Red Hat, following Microsoft's lead has a certification called the RHCE which also uses the term Engineer illegally in Canada. I dislike _intensely_ the fact that people see fit to use the term engineer in whatever way, shape or form they see fit. Seeing as I am studying engineering some guy out of arts/business should not be getting the right to have Sales *Engineer* (!?!!) on their business card. I mean - what the hell is a Sales Engineer anyways? Heard of the following - Sanitary Engineer, Marketing Engineer? It's out of control and the PEO doesn't seem to be doing anything about it. If it was - then why am I seeing so many abuses of the term? At any rate - the dinner was decent and afterwards people took the opportunity to loosen up quite a bit and dance around. It was quite hectic. Gotta say one thing - these functions always seem a bit 'off the cuff'.

Some JACKASS company called Castle Technology Inc. feels free to rip off the Linux kernel. I'm sending those ******* idiots a piece of my mind. I hope that they infantile _simian_ bastards burn in hell for this. Not only that I would consider it a great honor if someone took it upon themselves to spam that webserver into oblivion. Friggin idiots. Man...had an argument today with my Dad about the metric system. I mean...how cheap is that. We were arguing about a measurement system?!!? Bah. At least I got out of work early today. Talked to Fady. Got a letter from Kurt. I'll have to suggest that we hit the auto show on the 19th or something. That would be neat :)

Another day another tiredness ;)

Still pissed off about Waterloo. Man...I hate XIG. Those guys possibly have the worst attitude of any commercial vendor I've ever seen. They constantly lambast Xfree86... And their X server isn't that great either...

I am extremely disappointed in the University of Waterloo. I question whether I made the right choice in joining this university based on my current interests. Lets get a few things clear. Ahem. UofW can _accurately be called "University of Redmond, Waterloo Campus". The Engineering Dept. is *firmly* in Microsoft's pocket. If Microsft takes control of any more of the department they might as well own the damn place. Microsoft labs, Microsoft languages, Microsoft servers... And soon enough I am betting that the few remaining *nix servers, computers in Engineering will disappear. Let me get something clear. I am _disgusted_ with the University of Waterloo's Engineering Department and entertain the very feverent hope that I will be able to get of this place before the entire stupid mess goes down the toilet. I mean - they're springing for XP licenses when they can (and should IMO) be using OO.o/StarOffice for peanuts? Also - where is my 15% raise in tuition going? Is Waterloo a financial black hole or something? Oh yeah - when Waterloo had the great idea to take it up the ass from MS in that C# debacle it turns out that it lost approx. 200 SunBlades from Sun and probably a lot more in the long run. I mean - look at it! Students from Ryerson, York and Toronto has masive *nix labs and do a majority of their work there. At least they get _exposed_ to different concepts. That's all I'm asking for you stupid *WASTE* of a department. Well everyone...please look at the following _very_ carefully.

IF YOU WANT EXPOSURE TO A LOT OF UNIX WORK, DO _NOT_ JOIN WATERLOO ENGINEERING. YOU MIGHT AS WELL THINK OF IT AS AN MS ONLY SHOP. CONSIDER WATERLOO CS INSTEAD. OR IF THAT DOESN'T FLOAT YOUR BOAT - ANOTHER UNIVERSITY.

Whoa...I had the weirdest dream today. Dark depressing, involving death pursuit, relentless pursuit, vampires, elevators, castles, rain, destructive creatures... It was - unusual and yet - epic. When I briefly woke up I had the feeling that I had existed in the dream world for...I don't know... I didn't want to stay in the real world. Too useless...

At approximately 10:40 this morning I went to slashdot. I found out that the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on landing approximately 200,000 ft (@ 12, 500mph) above Texas. All are presumed dead - although rescue crews have been rushed to the area. I am extremely sad about this event and my heart goes out to the families of the astronauts who were on the shuttle. They did what most others could/would not - they spent the time, the energy and took the risks to undertake such an extraordinary task. Their accomplishments are what makes me proud ot be human - inspite of all the foolishness that happens in the world today. May God be with them and their families. I'd like to end with a poem that's always touched me...

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

-- Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee

I will *NEVER* buy a DELL computer. Why the hell does RH turn so many services on??? And what's the deal with them ignoring ReiserFS??? When the heck are they going to put a nice pic on startup? I mean - that has to be the ugliest boot screen I've *ever* seen. Why does up2date break stuff?? I mean - if Debian managed it - why can't Red Hat?!

Read some interesting things today about gstreamer. Being dropped by Rhythmbox. MAS just came out and word is that it won't be used by either KDE or GNOME. Well...it goes to show all is alive and well in Linux land - absolutely no concensus as to standards ;) Although, in this case I'd have to wait and hear about the performance of MAS first before I come to any decision. Plus it seems very X specific, which kinda kills it for things like PicoGUI or Fresco. Bah. Freaking hell. Also the MIT license, which I _personally_ think is one of the weakest licenses possible. At least the LGPL ensures that if someone makes changes to your code base, they can't simply walk away with it and sell a competing product without giving out the source. Man. Bah. Got SSL working...but...now you can connect to razorblade.dyndns.org only via SSL. Which is suboptimal. I don't need the entire site secure...only one tiny section ;) Xine seems to be the big winner in these multimedia wars so far... Ok. Hmm...it doesn't seem like its possible to do what I want without creating another vhost. Yay...my subversion links and SVNParentPath work flawlessly now. Now to get authentication ;) OK. WHOA. Breakthrough! Subversion (client side) will *only* check out via https!!! Heck yeah! Well..actually I had this working _quite_ some time ago. It's just that I wanted it finer grained. But I think that will have to wait another day. now I have to track down the problem re passwords. Well. Fixed that. My stupid mistake. I should really concentrate on _what_ _I'm_ doing _right_ at that moment. I would do things faster. At any rate, it was a problem on my end. Now to try and get *even* finer grained control. Ok. I'm very confused now. Should I create a GTK2 SILC client as an exercise or should I work only on Fresco. Should I switch from Fresco to picoGUI? Should I concentrate on both, all? Should I buy a laptop? How can I maximize the time I have? [Perhaps not reading /.] ;) Bah...so many questions. Ok - here's my take on the Fresco/picoGUI situation. I like C++ better than C. However, I want to work on a project that is for actual production use - not just a research project. In that case picoGUI looks like 'it'. Fresco has kinda languished. But...if I help out, maybe Fresco won't languish. At any rate - I can always move to picoGUI later - after all the concepts are the same (sorta) between them. Some of scanline's ideas make a lot of sense. For example - application writers want to deal with widgets - not scengraphs directly...so his separation of layout, widget servers make a lot of sense. Also, CORBA is turning into more of an unjustifiable decision. [sigh]. The truth is that I think *nix people are more likely to go with picoGUI than Fresco. So confused. At any rate - back to moderating the GNOME forums again. I like GNOME. Although I hate the code that's underneath ;) I do like how usable it is...

What's scary is that"m trying to use emacs keybindings to type into gedit. Whoa. Mind warp there. Sigh. Must. Get. Out. Of. Rut. Actually this rut has been in place for over 2 years now. I don't know what to do. Maybe I just don't want to do what I'm currently doing? I don't know. I think one of the big problems I have is adjusting to a large volume of code quickly and making changes that could break the entire system. I don't want to do that. Or get snivelled at. I guess one must take these in stride. I'll send the patch off today. Damn it. I *really* wish metacity had the "Always on top" option. I miss it. A lot. I want to see what's scrolling in the X-Chat window. Some interesting discussions about Fresco. Micah Dowty - the guy who created picoGUI is going to be starting an entirely new GUI based on the stuff he learned. This GUI is meant to be extremely scalable, have the advantages of X etc. Now, this is interesting. I face a quandry. This project is *very* close to what Fresco is/wants to be. But some stuff beckons. First, Micah seems to be a prolific coder - more interested in getting something that works in 90% of the situations out the door instead of considering all possible cases. From what I've read of Fresco, its developers do the reverse. Now this has its advantages too.... Now interestingly enough, having read some of the arguments for the new design and some of the arguments of fresco I...agree with both. [sigh]. Or do I just not stick to a project? But if I don't leave is it an example of over commitment. Or what's the MSCI term for it... I don't know. But its interesting. It *really* seems like njs is thinking about moving on. And whoa...lurking suddenly got interesting... Will keep me posted :) NOOOO!!!! He left. Bah...I don't get to hear the interesting technical discussions :( Bah...and I'm using ^X^S to save my gedit stuff. Whoa EMACS! Yeah. It be weird. So yeah. In the end I don't know what to do. Bah...Freenode is being banged on today... Stupid MS SQL worm. Sigh. Groove looks really good. Unfortunately MS owns it. There is no open source alternative. Maybe I should consider writing one ;) Haha....maybe in PYTHON! Oh yeah. I don't *ever* want to have to deal with ugly ugly code. And yes, using templates in C++ makes your code look...I don't know. Demoralized? Ignore me. At least Autopackage is doing something. Bah. But its based on a fragile collection of SHELL scripts?? I mean...come on. Bah...what to do. I know! I'll work on ensuring that SSL and subversion play well together on my computer. And maybe finally fix the freenet problem. Hmm...it appears that Freenet could have a bw limiting bug. Not good. Ah hmm...approximating 6K a sec for 30 days....Freenet will use...15 GB of transmission. Uh. No. I can't pay for that. Even if I cut it down to *2K* a sec, I will still transfer 5 GB. Hmm...one solution is to move to an ISP with a higher limit (will be done) and next move to 4-5K a sec. [stunned] In my quest to find about Apache2 and SSL I found another link to my webpage via google!

Depressing day in some respects today. Listening to one of the core Fresco hackers today and found out about his "eagerly awaiting to port his programs to Windows." [sigh] I guess he can't leave Linux fast enough... You know, this does depress me. Microsoft has such a commanding presence that its often hard to see how a minority of the computer using population can stand behind and support an alternate. It's not like MS is standing still either. They're coming out with new products, improvements technologies etc. Not only that, by introuding the .NET platform and their new .NET tools, their developer lock has grown much stronger. Again, its hard to see any light through all of this. Very hard. You know, I partly joined Fresco because in the long run I saw it as an alternative to X. I saw it as a way to finally create a forward looking, well-designed platform - for *nix. The news that one of the main developers is extremely interested in Windows does lead me to question his commitment to the future of Fresco. Don't get me wrong. This guy is undoubtedly a very good developer and he's been working on the code for years. But what is his goal? Is his goal to have Fresco simply as a platform for new ideas? Or is he really working towards providing a windowing system that is not as hobbled as X? I want to know... It's interesting since in comparison, picoGUI is quite young but it seems to have grown much faster than Fresco. Why is that? At any rate - these are simply questions. I've got to get back to working on Roundup. Found out that the cause of all my cgi woes was the fact that I had forgotten to symlink cgi.load in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled. Foolish...very foolish. At any rate. Very late. Gotta sleep.

Struggled again with setting a duplicate of the Fresco Roundup. Nicholas was no help. Man...is it hard to get an extra duplicate of a website. Hmm...at any rate, I was looking around and I realized I had forgotten about the RIAA's poisoning the P2P networks with tons of junk files. For that: "I'LL NEVER BUY A PIECE OF MUSIC FROM YOU JACKASSES". Now that I've got that out, I immediately started to think about how to harden the P2P networks again this kind of attack. One method I can think of is something like trust metrics. Given a search your results get placed at the top depending on how well your search matches, how fast you are AND how trusted you are. To be trusted you have to be sharing a large number of files, have a number of successful uploads etc etc. Until you are trusted you will be kept on the fringes of the P2P networks. As your trust rating grows, you'll start to move inwards, and forge stronger and more ties with other nodes... Just a thought. Maybe I should investigate this seriously someday. Distributed things are extremely interesting for me. Bah...attack Roundup tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get to ask Stefan some stuff.

Fixed up the exception for Fresco. I will create a patch and submit - I don't know if it'll be accepted. Created a new layout for the bug page. People seem to like it. Talked to Stefan and got introduced to the Fresco web sources. Oh. My. Gosh. I mean - whoa. I think Fresco is the little center of the world where every new piece of technology lumped together. When Fresco really got going they started using C++ (which is still not heaviliy used by the *nix community), CORBA and a *completely* different design. I mean - some of the stuff is *extremely* ambitious. Well - the web page reflects that. Heavy use of XML, XSLT. The Issue Tracker is built using Roundup. There are murmerings of using Subversion instead of CVS (please say yes - Subversion is *much* better to use than CVS....). I'm surprised they aren't using Scons for their build system. (Actually, I think they made the right choice wrt. that). It reduces the barrier to entry. At any rate, I was told to change the bug search page to reflect the current schema. Unfortunately, a look at the bug search page revealed a mass of TAL (Zope Templating...). Lots and lots of Python. It seems to be the language of choice among the open source community. Gotta pick up a Python book soon... At any rate, set up a roundup server and promptly got stuck. Have no idea exactly how the heck I'm going to debug the bug template. Oh man. I have to ask Stefan about this.

Blender - meet Allen. Allen, meet Blender. Allen is blown away by blender. Allen hopes that Blender will survive - it is an amazing piece of software. Game engine, ability to create 3D banners, movies, totally portable little games etc etc. I mean - wow. It's *really* impressive to say the least. I don't know what to say.... I wish I had some draing talent to actually use it :) I wish them the best of luck in the future...and I intend to contribute to them (money) so that they can continue their work.

Have you ever got to play with virtual reality goggles? I got to today. It was extremely neat... I mean, the feeling of being in another place was interesting. Unfortunately, the resolution has to be upped and some other work has to be done. Not only that the goggle manufacturers have to mconstruct the goggles better. Then we'd have some cool stuff going on ;) Ah well, gotta hope that someday I'll be able to work on that and get some improvements in. Working on getting a bug fix in for Fresco. Hmm..surprise surprise. My code actually built. Oh my. Ok...now for the testing. I figured out the mistake I was making the first time. In fact, it happened because I confused exception() with Exception(). Go figure. Yeah. I know. Ah well. We'll see if everything works out. At least I can play with the bug list page... Asked quite a few questions today and found out that it'll take *quite* some time to create non-Xfree86 accelerated OpenGL drivers. There's a difference between accelerated drivers and accelerated OpenGL drivers. This might sound perfectly plausible and understandable to a lot of people. I guess I'm not that smart.

Ah today. Mandrake filed for bankruptcy, MS entered another market, the MPAA is pushing for totally locking down computer use and MS is going on a massive offensive to stop governments from switching to Linux by revealing some of its source and allowing govts to 'base' their security schemes on it. Could anything get worse? Oh I forget - *never* ask that question, because something will always get worse. I slept for 5 hours, I feel horrible. I drove for over 6-7 hours today. Well - today was the day of the raffle, so I went to Waterloo. Stayed around for an hour, dropped off the stuff I had and drove back home. Snowing in Waterloo, gusty (seems like Waterloo always find something to bring me down). Great... At any rate, hoping I'll get to sleep in time today. Found out that my build at work was *terminally* broken. Now I have to remake the entire thing. And no sign of the master in sight. Joy. Joy. Joy.

My my, I'm starting to get very used to emacs. So much so that I'm unconsiously using its keybindings in other programs and getting frustuated when something pops up. Took a look at PicoGUI. It's another X alternative, but it started relatively recently. It's progressed much *much* further than Fresco and it looks eminently usable. Did I mention that it looks *very* pretty and has nice cool themes ;) I have to ask micah how he manages to move so quickly, while Fresco is moving a lot slower. What is it - is it just focus, time or what? I know that he's in university though, so maybe he codes during his breaks. I dunno. I think if I gave up some stuff things would go easier. For example, I've stopped listening to music. This is a good thing (tm). I find that I can't concentrate while listening to music. I've tried to stop watching movies. Finally, the culmination of this is the intention to stop reading Slashdot et al. and work on Fresco and other stuff in that free time. I'll let you know how that goes. Some things though - news sites have to be the biggest time wasters in history. That and reading mail. Talked to njs on #fresco and cleared up some doubts regarding Fresco and what the files were.

Okay - It's something like 4:00 now. I just upgraded my Debian version of GNOME and everything (for the first time in terms of Debian GNOME) looks *as clean* as its meant to be. I also have fontconfig! YEAH. Then...the amazing thing happened. I searched for Mozilla fontconfig Debian in google. On the second page I happened to notice a very familiar phrase "Linux, Debian, Libranet, GNOME, I believe...." I could not believe my eyes. A quick check. Oh yes.. YES IT IS! It's my webpage :) :) :) :) Finally online. I'm so happy I started compiling GARNOME and I'm going to sleep!

Thankfully the fontconfig patches have been accepted to QT! Now Xfree86 4.3 will come with FontConfig by default and GTK/QT will use it, Mozilla will use it.. Now if TK, WX* and the core X toolkits would use it we could *finally* have AA across Linux. Well - I'm forgetting about the Beast. OpenOffice. Hint hint guys - USE FONTCONFIG. Went around DRDC today on a tour. Got introduced to a sound chamber, a crash test dummy site and a diving tank. Man that diving tank is *cramped*. Reminds me of a comment a guy made - he said (and I paraphrase) that 'Working here is like working at the science center - you get to see all the cool things that people with passes can't see. How true :) Well - confirmed my suspicions re: KDE/aRTS etc. Bullheadedness. Did a lot of linux news catching up. Read a lot about GNOME etc. Installing the new GARNOME, new Mdk beta came out today. Read a lot on u-OS. I don't agree with the comments about C++, but the package manager does look interesting. The man has some loft goals though. He intends to support 10000 packages by the end of 2003. He currently supports 300. All the power too him man. All the power to him. Will start looking at the Fresco code tomorrow. Man - that's gonna be rough. Will take a look and see how the newest KDE looks. From the looks - its just as option ridden as ever. Joy. [cough - cough]. Yeah right. Apparently Emacs *could* be written at some point and time with GTK+ support for AA. HELL YEAH. That's what I'm talking about. :) In other news I'm getting much more proficient in the use of basic emacs commands. Its amazing what 8 hours a day in front of the console will do to you. Oh yeah - I saw the simulator today. Damn was it cool :)

Well...what can I say. Took a look at the code today. Let me tell you something. I understand the beauty (yes I said beauty) of OO. The project I'm working on is rather large and has been created by a number of developers working over aperiod of years. The fact that its written in standards compliant C++ makes it *much* *much* easier to understand. Not *only* that - here's something else to remember if you're ever working on a project. Document Everything. And I mean absolutely everything. Why? Because every single architectural decision you make, every config file you create etc. needs to be documented if someone different is working on it. Trust me on this. Compare Fresco which has almost no inline code comments and a very generic architectural documentation with the project I'm working on (in which the documentation is orders of magnitude better). Within a few days I already feel much more comfortable with how the project is laid out and how components relate to each other. Not only that, since it is written in C++ I can easliy extend base classes and add the functionality I need. Now - this brings me to another point. I love the GNOME desktop, but I have come to the sad realization that I will probably not contribute to it in its current form, simply because I do not have the heart (or the will) to program in pure C. I like objects and I like how they simplify the lives of developers. This is one of the biggest reasons I think KDE is succeeding. KDE is written in C++ (albeit a bastardized version relying on some..interesting..preprocessors). I've outlined a number of additional reasons in my earlier rant. Do I also mention that they have *complete* documentation and a simple system of making components? Yes? Yes? Much as I dislike C#, I have a strange feeling that C# is going to be xtremely important for GNOME's survival.

Not a big fan of Xi Graphics at all. They have an extremely condescending tone. And I mean extremely condescending. If you ever want a reason why code should be GPL/LGPL as opposed to using the X11 license - look no further than them. Crazy. Got another mass of documents to read. Oh my gosh. This stuff is *out there*!

Well...I'm not going to mention much about my job at all over the following 4 months unless something *entirely* out of place and extremely exciting happens. That being said - got my assignment today. I will see how that goes. Got a good computer to work with. Actually - make that an *extremely* good computer. I've never worked with so much horsepower in my life. I feel like...I FEEL GOOD MAN! OH YEAH. Not *only* that I...GET TO WORK WITH LINUX!!!! Shweeet! :) Oh crazy. Well...got a stack of reading to do. This is gonna be interesting.

Well...it seems like things always happen on my birthday ;) Once it was the Canada FIRST Robotics Competition kickoff, then school starting - and now my job. Had a low key birthday celebration. Nothing much to say there. My first day on the job today. Lots of walking around. Got introduced to my co-workers. Everyone seems friendly. It seems like a nice atmosphere to work in. I can't believe it - I'm a government employee. It feels kinda interesting that I'm (quite literally) paying my own salary ;) Hah! Well...I'll see what I have to do. Got a nice call from Geoff today! Wished me happy birthday. Seems he's leaving on the 12th. Wished him the best of luck. Brought up mention of the trip. Seems that he is *indeed* still interested. Mentioned that Allister had already contacted him at least 4 times about the trip. So its a go with Allister. Now we just have to do a ton of work to get everything together...

Well...tomorrow's the big day huh. My work starts. Today was by contrast one of the most...irritating days possible. I wake up tired. And IO mean *really* tired. My arms and legs are sore as heck and it hurts to move. Not only that I feel really sick. I make it over all of that and go to church. Afterwards I sit downstairs and almost fall asleep. I'm that tired. Maybe I should have gone to the youth group meeting. Wait - there's more! Go to the YMCA to work out and reach there at 4:50. Drop off the video that's overdue and park my car underground. The place was kinda full and the workout wasn't that satisfying today. Partly because I was feeling really crappy. Can't finish it because too many people were using one machine. Bah. Give up and am embarassed when I can't complete my last set on the Fly. Joy. Joy. Walk out to the library parking lot - and what do I find? Wait - the parking lot is SEALED. not only that, there's no access to the library. Oh man. So, call my Dad - notify him that there might be an 'issue'. Walk around. Kock on doors - can't find any security. Greaat. I'm cold, shivering and 30 mins from home. Walk over to the City Hall and while walking to the North Entrance (apparently the only one open Sunday at 6:50) notice and open exit to the underground parking lot. Walk inside (hoping I won't get run over). Get lost (because it has two/three (?!) levels and its extremely confusing! Bah...finally start following arrows and then signs and get to the car. Drive out as if a bat from hell is behind me. Darn it. I just feel bad today. Bleep.

Mmm...lots of good food today. Read a bit. Didn't do that much. Calm before the storm. My work starts on the 6th - we''ll see how that goes. Not much at all to say really. I'm just...sitting back and relaxing in my last two free days. Church tomorrow. Ignoring time again afterward. Yay.

[rant] Sigh... You know - it's 1:40. All I had to do was turn off the computer and go to sleep. But no. I couldn't do that. I feel a rant coming on. You know what's a weird thing about the open source world? The divisions. The little wars (and the big ones) that start up over and blow out of control. The worst thing is that we feed it, make it worse. The one I'm going to make is about GNOME. I love the way GNOME looks and feels. I love some of the *high* class, truly professional GNOME programs there are - for example Gnumeric, Rhythmbox, Gnomemeeting... By contrast...KDE. Oh my - KDE. I hate the icons, the cluttered interface, the pure arrogance of the project... What do I mean by that? The KDE project would *never* use anything that another project developed if they could spend time and resources reinventing the wheel themselves. Examples: Mozilla vs. Konq., aRTS vs. ESD (well ESD is crap and I hope both projects get it into their mind to use MAS and much more. Whatever. I guess that does piss me off quite a bit to be quite honest. But, despite my dislike for KDE I am nothing but realistic. They *are* the defacto Linux desktop. And they are for a number of reasons.

• Professional toolkit designers. This makes a difference
• Huge community support [Users, developers, companies]
• Language choice: C++. Not C. Using C for large application development is...questionable. That's putting it charitably to say the least.
• Complete documentation

Need I go on? GNOME has made huge strides and I will continue to use it. But I have to say one thing... The longer GNOME languishes without proper developer documentation, the fewer people are going to develop for it. Without the developers a platform is lost. MS knows this, Trolltech knows this, Sun knows this - in fact it seems everybody but GNOME knows this. Oh - and whose bright idea was it to create a pseudo OO toolkit in C?? Why not just use C++? [sigh] Whatever. The mistakes of the past come back to haunt us.

What's next? Oh yeah. X. X... Hmm. What can I say? I mean - a windowing system that manages to drag twenty years worth of baggage with it from version to version. Oh yeah. A windowing system that manages to perform slower than even Fresco in its admittedly budding state. But you know what? There was a window. A window in which something different could have come it and X would have lost. But no longer I think. X is being improved. Slowly but yes. I hope and beg that in the next major version (5.0) they will destroy the historical baggage that X has carried. I beg. But, the truth is that too many things depend on X now. Too many. And the more people start using desktop linux, the smaller the chances of anything changing. The Xfree86 team is too concerned about maintianing backwards compatibility to do anything radical. I understand where they're coming from - after all, they work for companies whose Unices *use* all these programs that require backward compatibility. Bah. What a garbage situation. Fresco has a really tiny window in which to make a difference. I don't know if it is possible. I would like it to be. But, pragmatically I think I know the truth. The time comes in which you have to ask yourself a few questions. Any pursuit born out of a flash in the pan desire never comes to fruitition. You can never handle the crap days. The days when it feels like nothing is going your way. The days when it feels like you're going nowhere.. Joining Fresco to beat X is the wrong reason. Thankfully I didn't. So why am I considering joining Fresco? To learn about Windowing Systems. To see if I can make a difference before its too late. [/rant]

Omigoh...sleep at 4:00. This is not going well. Went to the library and a whole buncha places. Found out that the hospital that my sister works at is infected with the Norfolk virus. I feel secure already. No wonder hospitals are disease vectors. Talked a bit to Allister. Geoff's leaving in a week I believe. Ah well. C'est la vie. I hope he enjoys his time in France! I hope I enjoy my job... Lots of snow. Lots...

Yes, I've been lax over the past few days. What did I do today? Hmm..woke up..went to church. Good service. Bad afterwards though. Stood around for 1 hour (cause Dad had to help with some church activites). Being ignored by *everyone* my age was worse than the standing around part. I can handle standing around. Depressed because of that. Yay. Went and took a look at where I work (Downsview). Wow...the entire complex is HUGE...but a lot of the buildings are old. Finally found out where the DRDC buildings are situated. Hmm...hope my time there will be good. Got back. Took a look at the Fresco stuff. Finally took a leap of faith and jumped into #fresco on irc.freenode.net. Extremely pleasant conversation with Tobias Hunger (one of the primary developers). I am now trying to write a simple "Hello World" application to try and see how Fresco works. I nw understand more about how Fresco deals with objects (graphics) and exactly what pieces are stored client-side as to server-side. Gotta say one thing though. Its extremely confusing when you first get involved in what a client/server is . Its kinda weird. Looks like I'll have to be doing a lot of reading. This seems like an *extremely* long term thing. I mean *really* long term. Lots of reading, especially wrt C++, CORBA and basic graphics programming. Got kinda ticked off with the old berlin stuff and spent a *ton* of time building my own version of Fresco. Things to watch out for: you cannot have two omniorbs on your system. For some reason it refused to pick up my omniORB3 libs but it would pick up the includes. Weird huh. I ended up building omniORB as well. Also - here's a link for omniORB4 .debs. Got a nice email from Kurt ;) Talked to Shoba. Ah - one of my favorite cousins. Talking to her always manages to undepress me. For some reason I can talk to her normally and quite well. Good conversations too. Don't know if she likes the conversations though ;) Maybe. She's going to do her PhD as well! Oh man. I feel *really* young. Talked to Rengi, Theja... Interesting day. Sleep early. Got a ton of stuff to do tomorrow.

I'm so tired. Everything is so painful. I look and MS is creating a full scripting language with with to support their servers. They're looking to kill Linux right now. Stop it in its tracks. You know, every time I turn MS is doing something to destroy Linux. And you know what - no one in the non-Linux world cares. They can use their pirated MS software and they couldn't give a rat's ass. At all. Times are looking bleak now. 30 billion in the bank. How can a bunch of coders stand up to that? Hmm? We have a fractured DE, a windoing system that everyone agrees requires a MASSIVE rehaul (except the guys doing the coding - they prefer to pretend that everything is ok). There's cruft from the last 30 years in the file system layout, packaging, design, everything. And everyone, including me is passing the buck. Oh good. So very good. Credible alternatives for windowing systems do not exist. The FHS standard is a joke. No distro follows it seriously. The best guidelines I've seen are Debian's, but no one wan't to follow them at all. Times are looking bleak. There seems to be no respite in site. What to do? What to do... How can progress be made if people don't want it? How?

Watched the Astronaut's Wife today. B rate type sci-fi. But, I didn't like the ending. Why? Because the aliens win and I hate the aliens winning. I am a big humanity type person. For all my cynicism when it comes to general human behavior, I would do anything in my power to prevent humans from being destroyed. Anything. I believe it is our destiny to take to the stars and become a great civilization. And if I have the power to protect that destiny. I will. Who knows? Maybe someday I will be given the chance. [Yeah right...dream on Allen].

Awoke crazily late. I hate sleeping at 4:00. Woke up with a headache as well. Joy. Not only that I realized that I had to get to my orientation at the Y! Bah...stumbled out of bed and after everything got into the van. Started driving and realized that my Dad (as usual) had done the 'gas thing'. You see, when I see the gas gauge low - I fill it when I get *back* from a place. My rationale? Simple - I won't be as bothered and a few minutes doesn't hurt. Besides, when I have to sprint to get someplace I don't have to worry about fuel. But my Dad doesn't believe in that. Joy. Fill up the gas... by the time I get there I'm seven minutes late. Now - not to say that my Dad leaving the gas low was the problem. If anything it wasn't - I was the problem. You see, if I had been prepared, I would have left leeway time for this. Since I was not - result = late. Get there and don't know what to do. Wander around inside the gym looking for an unknown Milka. Finally get her paged. She's obviously not too happy with the sit. and we reschedule the thing for Monday. I hope I'm not late. Built Fresco today. That was an exercise in pain. Why? Because the Debian packages of omni ORB are freaking old. Looks like the lost the maintainer. So I build it myself. Except it takes forever because its in C++. Oh man. Then I have to get libGGI. Thankfully packages are uptodate - but it looks like I won't get mesa support. (I found this out later). Umm.. Hmm.. So I start building Fresco and run into the immediate problem that it can't find the bloody includes for the omniORB. Well...it isn't in a standard path see. So of course, I try to specify the INCLUDE flag, the CPPFLAGS, etc in Bash but it doesn't work. Joy. Oh joy. Finally look through the mailing lists and find that I have to use --with-omniorb or somethign like that. Greeeat. Finally get Fresco build (1 movie later) and try run it. Wait - forgot to say - it was in the make step that I say the message that GGI didn't have GL support. Of course, I find out that I can't access /dev/fb0. So, I do something VERY stupid. su and try again. I get a nice black screen with an immovable mouse cursor. Umm..hmm. Try to run the fresco demo and locks the computer up tight. Everything. No input posisble. Unfortunately, no other computer on the network has an SSH client and I'm too lazy to get one so I restart. (BAH!). Ticked off. Delete Fresco and resolve to try it on the new machine. Job # 1. Watched Amadeus at around 3:00. Good movie. Turned me kinda morbid. Actually very morbid. Headache coming faster now, like the heels of a drum rum rum. Turning drum.

Went to the library today. Picked up a huge ton of movies. Thankfully I'm getting sick of watching movies. I have an intense desire to run everytime I see one now. I believe my headaches could be the result of watching endless movies in a row. Aight - what did I do. Oh yeah - I went to the YMCA and got myself a membership. My gosh, that place is massive. I mean *really* massive. Its craziness. Its got a really nice gym, but it seems like it'll be packed all the time. Well - if I use it well its worth the cost. went for the portrait shoot today. Jeez...that had to be the most annoying thing ever. First Dad and Mom fussed over Angela like there was no tomorrow. Go do this, do that..blah blah. Bah. Whenever they try that on me - it doesn't work. After a certain point I just stop listening. I say whatever I've got goes. It's really much less frustuating that way. Also the photographer kept saying..."closer, closer". I mean, how much closer does he bloody well want me to go? I have my personal space here huh?! Bah..sleep at 4:00.

Celebrated Dad's birthday today. Got the computer from Dave. Its a Celeron 400. with 128MB RAM, 2 CDROM drives. 1 HDD, 1 NIC and and old ATI Rage II+DVD. Not bad. It's all I need to run a small experimental machine. Want to try out the newest kernels on it and fresco as well. Perhaps a distributed filesystem? Maybe I should invest in a new HDD. Watched Monsoon Wedding. Don't know what to think of it. Scratch that - I know what to think of it. This isn't like my family (extended or othewrwise) at all ;) Probably because we're at the other end of India. Different religion, different culture entirely. Gotta say something though - I think the brides look waaaay too gaudy. I mean, sure its a joyous occasion and all, but there is a limit on the amount of gold you can put on a person. That's also probably because I don't like gold a lot. Aha - some things I can sympathize with and understand. Others are just plain weird. Is it just me or did one of the characters lust after his OWN COUSION? I mean - that's just wrong. Baaadly wrong. Crazy. Too saccharine sweet in places. Whatever. Went to sleep at 4:00!! Jeez. That's uh - kinda late. The Windows machines decided to take offense at the fact that their Workgroup was WORKGROUP. Stopped doing anything network related until I changed the workgroup name. I love random things like that. They make [sarcasm]so much sense[/sarcasm]. There are times in your life where you just wish you could go back in the past and take back what's been done. I used to do that. But its better to understand what went wrong and change the behaviors that led to it. In other words - don't regret it - change it and never make the same mistake again ;)

Merry Christmas. Went to church today. Unfortunately, my parents decided to be late...again. I...dislike...going to church late. [sigh] Whatever. I don't feel right man. What the hell. Depression catching up to me. We got there late. It was packed, so had to stand in the back. Found a seat and then realized that I'd managed to break a family in half. My ears were burning. Listened to the Christmas choir. I know I don't want to do any performance arts. Never. They should also [perhaps - a suggestion] teach the children's choir not to scream. Sing. Not scream. So, the question is - what made me depressed? You want the answer. You'll get the answer...in my own special way. I dunno what to say man. I am the consumate outsider. No where have I ever gone and fit in. It must be something about me. Something I've done, or said. Dunno what. It bothers me. It bothers me a lot. Everyone's in a group - except me. Man don't I feel like an outsider. I'm troubled. I know I shouldn't care - but I can't help it. It shouldn't matter if they accept me or not. But it does matter - and it does hurt. Yeah..screw it right. Easier said than done. Its a part of me now. Only one person even bothers to talk to me - and I'll remember that. I appreciate the trouble they took. They had the opportunity to go elsewhere but they didn't. On a completey unrelated note. You know the only way to stop wanting something so badly is to stop thinking about it. Cause the more you think about it, the higher it is on your mind. The higher it is in your priority list. The key to not want something is to forget about it. Completely. Except its hard. Replace it with something else. So impossible to do so... If only. I know what I have to do. Dear Lord, give me the strength. Shoeveled the driveway today. Scraped the thing c..l..e..a..n. Took a long ass time. The thing is huge - and a lot of frigging snow. Punishing myself. I am a bastard. Useless.

Well...its Christmas Eve. Got up extremely late today. What did I do today? For starters, rolled around on Linux websites. Read a lot of information. Realized that the newest version of the Reiser4 patch was out, 2.5.53 just came out etc, etc. Read more about GGI and the developers' plans for the future. Then...back to tackling the weird problem with the Apache server and georgeal.homelinux.org. As usual, checked it out on lynx via WARG [ssh] and saw "Gee...the pages are being rendered properly...why isn't index showing up??". Of course include is compiled in... Hmm...back to checking apache2.conf and what...oh me oh my, what do I see but an interesting little directive called DocumentIndex. Hmm...this looks promising. Considering that it has index.html, index.php and so on...BUT...not index.shtml. Immediately added it and the site works properly. I feel like slapping myself. I think I should be reading the config files waaaay more carefully. Took a look at the svn stuff. Moved the repositories around and made preparations for my university page to access repositories for multiple terms. I think I will have to make a separate repository page. Went shopping with my sister for a birthday present for my Dad. Ended up buying him quite a bit of stuff. Walked around for quite a bit. Saw a lot of cop cars... The Bramalea City Center has become the Hudson's Bay Company Center really. A Zeller's, a Bay and Home Outfitters. Realize how long its been since I last saw the place. So much has changed. Saw Justin Frim and the albino girl (Sarah?). Neither recognized me...but they wouldn't woudl they. I do melt into the background. My biggest asset sometimes. Went to Blockbusters to pick out movies. Took waaaay longer than we expected. There is a *lot* of crap out there from Hollywood...its surprising. Picked Supernova, Green Mile and Devil's Advocate. Got back and watched Supernova. Holy crap that was a BAD movie. I mean *really* bad. Not as bad as Freddy Got Fingered, but bad enough. We have gratitous nudity (withing the first 3 minutes), a ninth (?!) dimensional bomb, a maniacal, strong, young weirdo, three love duets, a computer with human emotions and much much more. Did I mention that the maniacal, strong, young (he keeps growing younger) weirdo has magical regenerative capabilities and can never be killed? Forgot that.. Disguted. Watched The Green Mile. Much better movie. It's got to be horrible to kill (have to kill?) an innocent man. I don't think I can deal with it. Ate quite a bit. MMmmmm. Mom's cooking rocks. I mean really rocks. Cake, mutton curry, biriyani rice and so much more. Goodness all around. Realized/was told that I'd turned the dial on my bar fridge up too high. As a result had frozen milk. Called Fady...he wasn't in. Will try again tomorrow.

Walked over to FS to take a look at CD/Mp3 player. Decided it wasn't worth the money. Lots of food today. *Lots*. Read a ton of Linux stuff. The newest RH beta came out today. Gotta try it out when I have the chance. Understood more about KGI, GGI and Fresco. Wow... Linux *could* have been different. I wish the KGI and GGI teams the best of luck. They need it. Linux badly needs a new way with which to interact with graphics. Sad to say but X really doesn't cut it. Not unless there's a major reorganization. Took a look at NPTL. Looks interesting for highly threaded apps. Bought a computer from Dave for 130. Meant to be a development/experimental machine. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully well. I mean *really hopefully*. Things that I'm very interested in seeing on Linux (some = pie in the sky, some = soon).

• Serious contender to Xfree [Fresco] (PITS)
• Replacement for mess of framebuffer, VESA and DRM kernel stuff [KGI, GGI] (PITS)
• Decent manufacturer supplied printer drivers (PITS)
• Sensible, scalable, distributed packaging system that works on all distros (PITS)
• Reworking of filesystem heirarchy (PITS)
• Newer, better version of Gnutella (SOON)
• New OOo toolkit (PITS)
• Thorough GTK documentation + tutorials (Come on Sun...)
• NPTL support is standard (SOON)
• Reiser4 (SOON)
• Kernel v2.6 (SOON)
• Gnome2.2 (SOON)
• Media Application Server (SOON)
• GTK2 Mozilla (SOON)
• Faster Mozilla (PITS)

Wow...that's a lot of stuff. All Linux related. Interesting though, for all its faults I like Linux. I'm interested and willing to stay with it for however long it takes to get these troubles sorted out. I just hpe they get sorted out soon ;) Cause no one's gonna wait forever. No one... Biggest thing on this list? Xfree replacement. Fat chance tho.

Went to the University of Western Ontario today with my sister. Seems she likes it a lot. I've gotta say - the campus is pretty huge. Kinda what I'd like the Waterloo campus to be like. Taller (and I mean much taller) buildings, open spaces etc. Waterloo feels *really* constrained by comparison. You know, sometimes I feel like just knocking Waterloo engineering buildings down and rebuilding them taller, more distinctive...better... Then again I also think about Fresco becoming the default *nix Windowing system and I laugh to myself - because both have exactly the same chance of happening. Approximately zer0. I also checked out the SLMP30. It appears to be unavailable at every 2001 Audio Video location that I checked out. But you know what I really want for Christams? Not an mp3 player, not any electronic device, no computer... Quite interesting actually. When my parents asked "What would you really like for Christmas?" I replied - "Can you promise me an 80% average - cause that's what I really want.". Of course - that's unpromisable, so I'm not getting that for Christmas. Besides - that's not their job - its mine. Then I was asked by someone else today, "So what do you want?". To which I replied - "I'd like to have a great girlfriend. Someone with whom I'll have a future." Needless to say, that isn't happening anytime soon ;) So, I'm consoling myself with a CD/Mp3 player that costs $150 after tax. Reminds me of the guy in MSci who stated that we were starting to use physical items to assauge our emotiona issues. Yeah - I believe him. Bah...even less GTK coding today. I feel really stupid because I'm having some issues coming to terms with the GTK API. It feels dissimilar to what I'm used to... Not only that, I've read some notes by GNOME programmers online saying that the API is extremely clean and easy to use. It also feels like we're looking at two different things. I feel like a real jackass. I don't understand. I got into Java programming right away. I understood how things worked. But this...I feel like I can't understand it. I'll hit it again tomorrow. Have I ever said how much I *hate* looking at dev docs on the net? I need to see hardcopy. Bah. We'll see how things fall out. Yeah - we'll see. I hope everything works out. I think I want a good pair of boots and a good long coat.

Ah...the trials of having programmed mostly in C++/Java. After the cleanliness and frankly the commonsense of how a lot of that API is laid out - the GTK API is just...odd. Perhaps the key word is confusing. I'm not sure how everything fits together with each other. Since this is a C toolkit and inheritance doesn't take place (its aggregation AFAIR) somethings are just...um...weird. Talked very briefly to Jeroen about Anjuta2. I tried a bit of programming today. The weirdness with GTK didn't help me. I retreated to my cave and sat down. Haha. Sat. He sat on the mat staring at the cat waiting for the rat to gorge itself and become fat and crawl up the bat without getting stung by the gnat. Bad gnat. Interesting...the more I watch Fight Club, the more I understand it. Or, perhaps I'm reading too much into it. What do you think mmkay? Whatever - interesting disassociation of the person into two separate individuals. I found it particularly striking that Tyler Durden was everything that...Jack...wanted to be - but wasn't. Yeah. I understand that. It is hard sometimes. Why woud Tyler create a loser personality for himself? No one wants to create a loser personality - no one. Because it is useless. I find myself typing and I don't think anyone is listening. Blah Blah go my words but no one listens. Just like real life. But in all fairness I do not invite listening. My very attitude puts listeners off. I tend not to be open or communicative. Weird, because I am an *extremely* good listener. Do you know what "Du reischst so gut" means? It means "You smell so good". I was thinking about buying a CD/mp3 player for Christmas. Unfortunately, it costs 128 dollars and that will be quite a bit after tax. So I don't think I'll get myself any presents for Christams. Odd huh - I'm getting myself presents? Not really. Actually normal. Going to London tomorrow to see Western. Yeah. Go Western. Thankfully I have one book left. Gonna have to burn through that. Sometimes I wish. I wish things were different. I wish especially one thing was different. But I know it won't happen although I think about it almost every day. I don't know why I keep thinking (obsessing?) over it when it'll take place around 5 years from now... Maybe its just me. The way I am. The way I always was and the way I will be. I know I can change though. But maybe nothing matters for this. I know it won't matter. Nothing matters. Je suis fini.

Well, I hit a roadblock early this morning (3:00) in my quest to code for Anjuta2. Glimmer absolutely refused to compile. Bombed out with various automake/autoconf errors. As I was dead tired I decided to leave it and attack again later. Almost exactly 12 hrs later I took a look again. By judicious use of aclocal -I /home/testuser/garnome/share/aclocal/ -I /home/testuser/garnome/share/aclocal/gnome2-macros/ -I /usr/share/aclocal [I am almost 100% certain there is a better way] I got the whole mess working. Onward I go! I feel like a big part of my life is missing. But I'm not sure what part.
Today is December 20, 2002. I feel...empty. Unfulfilled, like a big part of me is missing. The feeling grows stronger every day. Its very presence consumes me, eats me from the inside out. I sit here, typing, Das Modell echoing in my head and I know, its over. I am a failure. But I CANNOT BE ONE. Why do I insit on this foolish generalization huh? Why the FUCK am I doing this? I am my own worst enemy. When I wake up each morning, my mind reminds me of all the ways I've screwed up the day before. My entire conciousness is consumed by the memories, never forgotten of the times I never measured up, the things I can never do but still think about - what is it that makes me ME? My cynicism, my hatred of my being. A fact I try desperately to hide by watching movies, doing work, hanging out with friends. For when I am alone, the truth stares at me, its very malignant nature painful. I do not want to be alone with myself because it only hurts. There are times, when with being alone I simply want to sit in a corner and cry, scream anything to just gobble up the emptiness that's inside. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I'm good at. Its eating me up inside. I don't know where I fit. Please...somebody tell me where I fit. Please - tell me what I'm doing. Please.

Whoa! Almost a month since I last posted. Sounds like just about the time I dropped off the map for a lot of stuff. Today was an interesting day...to say the least. The new Eudoramail looks really nice and clean. Unfortunately, while they were at it, they destroyed any chance at POP3 access. Joy. I spent most of the day getting frustuated about Apache and its absolute *refusal* to display the page I have with SSI. I know its a problem with how I've set it up because other people's stuff works. Now, my issue is tracking the bastard down. As of this moment I have a university page with an SVN repository, a personal page that should give you a 403 and finally a third address that serves as a freenet addy. Which brings me to another thing - I spent quite a bit today setting up my freenet node. Currently, the biggest problem is searching through it and actually finding information. Takes *quite* some time. Until that is resolved, it wouldn't be a credible or very useful way to get information. The only solution at this moment seems to be having people actually index freesites. That is not very scalable. Its an interesting problem though. Its another item on my "list of interesting projects". Currently that list inclues:

• GNOME
• Fresco (X replacement - more in a few seconds)
• Helix
• Freenet
• Gnutella
• Linux Kernel (Yeah Right!)

It's an interesting list. Gnutella and freenet are on because I'm extremely interested in projects that are distributed at their core. The idea of scalabilty and resistance to external attacks are ones that I find extremely appealing. Fresco is my personal favorite - although I am unsure about its long term viability. It has been created as an X alternative. Everything about is is being rethought and redesigned. As a result, they're moving away from some of the design flaws of X and they don't have a crippling backward compatibility to deal with. That works both ways though - because it isn't backward compatible, no existing apps will run for it. Freaking... Aight. Just been informed that I have to make a library run. So I'm outta here. The last few days have been nice - I've been sitting around and doing what I need to. Absolutely no issues. Everything is nice. Oh, and BTW - Racheal Leigh Cook is really *cute*. It's unfortunate though - I suspect her real persona is quite different from what is portrayed on screen. Too bad, being a 'nice person' never sells. Its much more interesting (and acceptable) to be a 'naughty' individual. Bah, now that I got that testosterone induced bit of trivia out of my system its back to playing with computers for me. No girls to speak of yet ;) I'm not sure whether to be ok with that or what, but suffice it to say - it just is.

Well...yesterday was a monster post. A truly huge one. Today was ok. I am going to buy a disposable camera. I'm going the humiliation route when it comes to Kay. If there is one person I..."DISLIKE" it would be him. And I am comfortable in saying that I am not the only one. He has managed to piss off everyone where I live. His lack of cleanliness is starting to affect us all. We can't open the door when his door is open because the stench is so powerful. He *never* washes his frying pan - evn though he cooks eggs, fish and chicken in it. His personal habits are....lacking. He managed to get shit all over the toilet bowl and *under* the bloody seat on the rim. (How he manages this I do not know - he's worse than a dog that hasn't been housetrained...well maybe not as bad - just barely better). He smells foul, leaves his nail clippings over the place, doesn't clean up the stove after himself and doesn't flush.... Right. I think that's about it. I'm taking Allister's advice. Everytime that guy dirties up the place horribly i will take a picture. At the end of the term I will post all of them on the bathroom door along with a diatribe. Hopefully that'll teach him a lesson. What happened over the past week? Well...I had horrible sleeping habits. I got 3 hours of sleep one day, 6 hours the next, none on another. It was bad.... On the last day I had to hand the project in I was coding all day. Almost 12 hours straight. After I handed the stuff in my back was paining like crazy and my wrist felt horrible. I had tried out two different algorithms, and the one that I thought would be more efficient turned out not to be so. I think I know why - it was a combination of things. Suffice it to say - in a perfect world everything would have worked out :) Ah...what happened today - did some Calc, very little VHDL. I'm very worried about the exams. Will start studying today (It's 12:30 as I write this). Ah well...have to leave - gotta sleep. Oh yeah - managed to fix one of the little problems with Apache2 location and cleaned up my subversion stuff.

It's been a long time. Almost 7 days. In the past few days I've been very busy. However, I have not used today and yesterday well (depends on you definition of well). I've always been fascinated with blogs - they give a rare glimpse into an individual's mind - with the caveat that this works *only* if the individual is honest. It can be a way of letting off steam, of talking without the - fear - that you'll be derided. Simply because its your world - your page. Its interesting to consider technologies like Wiki that allow pages to be dynamically updated by their readers. I don't think anyone reads this page, so I don't think anything of what I say will actually make it to the outside world. Suffice it to say though, that I consider it important enough to write here as often as I can. Maybe someday in the future I will look back to this page and consider the state of mind I was (am) in. Wow...just looked at my changelog for the Java project. I just realized that the times are 12 hours off. Synced with the NOA server and the X server faded out for a second... All my times are right now. Listening to the Braveheart Freedom theme and getting depressed, because I realize now. I have been struggling with myself for a while. I have my exams in two weeks, so this really isn't the right time to struggle. I am...I think, not quite like other people. Maybe I like to think that as a a panacea for my inadequacies. I suffer (is that the word) from massive mood swings at times. The least thing will set it off. I can be wildly elated, or reach for depression. At time, I feel like simply breaking down. It gets that bad. Like now for example, listening to the Freedom theme I am suddenly struck by a deep sandess and a moment of pure self pity. I exorcise the self pity, since it is useless. I am interested in a lot of things...I'll list them down below, but am hampered by the fear of failure. I sit on the sidelines, wondering what it is like to be recognized, but for some reason afraid to take the first step. Maybe I am afraid of failure. I am sad when I 'waste time' like today. I prefer to do all my work, and am happiest when I perceive that I used my day well. I feel unhappy just sitting around because there is so much I could be doing instead. Except I never do it. I spend a lot of my free time reading news/tech sites and getting interested in stuff. Unfortunately, I take the weight of the world on my shoulders. I can get depressed by the way things are going online. Yes, I know this is unusual - but it is true and it is a problem for me. I know that my being unhappy and worrying about something will never change the way it improve/moves forward/dies and the only way to change the course of events is actually to get involved myself. I'm surprised right now by how fast my fingers are flying over the keys. BUt I'm also surprised...maybe not really, but I am knowledeable of the fact that I can't type well if I don't look at the keyboard. This is another problem I face. Sometimes I can be easily distracted by other things. There's also, the flip side - if I get into something - I *really* get into it. Witness the Subversion incident. I spent quite a bit of time understanding how that works - to the detriment of my sleep. Sometimes I just want to die. I talked to Justin about how I saw myself like I a guy that I am good friends with. I told him that "I see elements of myself in him and the scary thing is that I know if I let myself go just a bit more I will go off the edge like him". I meant off the edge not in psychological terms, but in behavior patterns. In some ways, Justin is by far the most balanced guys I know. He's content with himself, with his place in the world - is balanced, hard working, and intelligent.... He reminds me of what I used to be before I hit university and it makes me sad. I want to improve myself... He does not seem to be suffering from the emotional turmoil that most of my days are filled with. Feelings of inadequacy, failure, inability, and introspection mark most of my days. My Mom says that I analyse myself too much - that I should just get down to doing stuff. But what happens if I get bored of it - will I - like in the past, move on to something different or do I have what it takes to stick to what I've chosen even though the going may be tough? I don't know how the Gnome hackers do it - because they're really doing what I'm saying. I don't know how they manage knowing that all the work they've done may come to nothing. Does that even faze them? Every day must be a mental battle - one that I am not sure that I am able to face. Today will be the last day I read the tech news for two weeks. I am sure the world will be able to do without me. I don't know who I am. I don't know what makes me good. In what ways am I better than anyone else? Or am I forever condemned by myself to be a has-been? A wannabe?

A list of stuff I've done over the past week. This will be a long blog entry - far longer than others, simply because it spans so many days. My excursion into the world of the weird started on Wednesday. I went to Office Depot and dropped 56 dollars on photocopying for WARG. Got back and cut the tickets up and wrote numbers for the tickets. Got back home at 8:45 and Geoff stopped by to start the work on our Java project. Thus begins the week of hell (TM). I got Geoff's Windows machine hooked up to the router. Then I realize a number of foolishnesses. First, I had not shared the dir and Geoff wasn't (understandably) interested in working with emacs in an ssh terminal. So I spent quite some time setting that up. Under Linux, I simply did a checkout of the latest source and symlinked my sources dir to my Eclipse project dir and worked through Eclipse. Of course, the sam technique didn't work in Windows. So I was reduced to simply copying files to his build folder. Then I faced Samba problems and because we *really* needed to get work started I initiated a horrible hack (because Windows of course doesn't allow you to log into a share using anything but the username you logged in as). Joy. Then I started Geoff off. A number of points - version control systems are great. The first time we both commited - I met a conflict. The file was self explanatory and I was able to resolve the conflict.Unfortunately, I made a mistake while working on my source dir and had to wipe it out (it was in a permanently locked state - have no idea what happened - and it has *never* happened again). After that things calmed down and for the following days I was able to use it with no problems - which was nice. Something I made/setup worked. Something to say - never expect to get someone who doesn't like computers interested or willing to use version control systems. Whatever.... TBC tomorrow...

Ping pong demo went greeeeat. Troubles with the script at the end tho. Bah - problems on the Java tree front - hopelessly obfustcated. Glimmers of hope on the WARG front. Talked to some potential sponsors - good responses. Hopefully the terror will end. I really lock up when I talk to people.

Apparently lack of sleep catches up with you ;) I woke up today at 9:16 - on the dot. Shocked and horrified that I would be missing my first two classes, I stumbled out of bed and rushed off. Arrived in time for ECE 223 to find Allister late as well. Heh - both the Bramptonites are late. Suffered through mild eye-twitchiness the entire day. Showed off the site to Geoff. He did not seem impressed *or* keen to use it. Man...I feel kinda pissed. I'd hoped that he understood its purpose and the value it had. Now he no longer had to call/contact me to find out what I did - he knew I'd be making regular commits - so he could take a look at the website and work from there. Owell. Got home and realized with some trepidation that I was making commits and reads without (!!) submitting my password. Thrashed around for a bit aimlessly trying to find the problem - got mixed up with mod_ssl. I now want an Apache2 book - my google searching skills appear to have failed me. At any rate - found out the problem was that subversion was by default set up to cache the authenication data! Oh man...started doing stuff with --no-auth cache and ended up modifying the user subversion directories to prevent this from happening. In the future (soon) I will setup the global settings to prevent this. The last thing I need is for the person to be able to make commits the moment I finish checking out stuff into their home. Now I need to implement a logout function in the webpage - prevent caching the password somehow... Talked to Erik from approx 10:00 to 2:00. Lots of interesting stuff. Long time no talk. Found out more about his schizophrenic roomate. Hmm. Also found out how to get SSI. Might move webpage over.

Depressed - no work done. I need to do productive stuff to feel alive. I mean that seriously. Got somewhere with the kernel. Now GDM and X will start and display but I have to mouse/keyboard input. Sweeet. (Not!). Not bad though - walked over to Justin's computer, examined the logs - apparently no errors. Rebooted. Hmm...Mom and Dad came today and dropped off some food. Now - for the most interesting part of my day. I was talking to Geoff and I mentioned that it was too bad I didn't have a subversion repository set up, cause then we could work on our stuff at the same time since we'd be using a version control system. He said that it sounded cool, but given our limited timeframe it was something we couldn't implement. I said that given 2 full days I could have done it. (Looked back and realized that I *had* two full days - but I didn't do it). At any rate, I then started poking at the Debian package list and lo and behold - I found an apache2 subversion module. Thus began my perilous descent into Apache. Right now I have a small (tiny) personal site set up at razorblade.dyndns.org and with a link to the subversion repository. It's viewable online if you have the password ;) Not only that, if you have access to a shell account on a *nix box and have subversion installed, you can check out the source from the repository. Pretty cool huh! Yeah, I think so too :) Amazing what one can do given motivation. Talked to Fady and it looks like I'm going to sleep for 5 hours tonight. O well. Things to do now - find a way to enable SSI. Also ensure that the password is transmitted via SSL (gonna have to do research on that) and finally, lock down Apache. I have to understand a lot more about what is happening in the config files. Thankfully, the Debian maintainer is extremely smart. The config files have been neatly organized and I was able to understand how things worked very quickly.

Found out that I require a ton of references and what not for the job I have. Ah well - time to call my previous boss and see what I can dig up. Watched three movies today (read: could have used time better). Went to the lab and completed off the ping pong game - one bug and one feature implemented. I like hardware now - now that I understand how to use/design basic things. Its pretty cool. Oh, and digital hardware is way way better than the analog stuf ;) Umm...to continue, went out for dinner with Barry, Jess and Geoff. Felt kinda weird there. I was the slowest person in terms of eating. I think I ate too much too. Also - my rear brake froze up on the way to the lab - which led to a near miss when I was crossing the road. Not fun. On the way back it was snowing and I skidded twice - joy. Sat around when I got back and around 12:00 got pissed and tried to compile RB 0.4.0. No joy. Game up and compiled 2.5.47. No joy again - hard X lockup on reboot. Oh man - turnedd off the computer. Things were *not* going my way.

Slept quite a bit today. Watched a few movies. Lazy day - nothing much happened, so I don't feel like writing anything ;)

Hmm...I guess this is *really* a November 14/13 writeup. It's abeen a crazy past two days. I'm writing this at 1:33 AM on November 15, 2002. I woke up at 6:30 on November 13, 2002 and I have slept exactly 3 hours in the intervening time period. And I feel great! Interesting comment - why is that you ask? Well...here goes. Woke up on Wednesday morning and went to class as usual. Realize I had a WARG meeting (ah well). Couldn't meet Geoff at the lab so he went home. Went to the WARG meeting at 5:30. As usual didn't say much :) I don't like doing sponsorship tho. Umm..tried to get letters of endoresement photocopied and ended up wasting $2.00. Copied first time in DC, went back (stupidly) and realized that all the addresses were cut off at the top. Then, all the photocopiers in E2 are BUSTED. Walked over to Physics. The only photocopier there kept flashing L4, L4. Went over to Dana Porter. Apparently all the copiers are on the 3rd floor. Unfortunately, the space is occupied by a buncha Artsies with massive Socialogy textbooks who take forever to copy. Ended up walking back to DC to copy and guess what - missed the meeting. Since I missed the meeting - went to the 223 lab. Geoff wasn't there and we had the game to finish, so I attacked it. I decided to just attack the problem and get on with it. So I stayed there, designed the state machine and drew 2 six variable K-maps. (Not fun!) Implemented more and more of the circuit. Debugged the circuit initially. I felt so overjoyed when I hooked the counter up and the light started flashing. Whee!!!! Worked more on the circuit and finally when I bdumped it it worked...sort of. The light counted too far ahead and there were a host of minor problems. As I found each problem I wrote em down and solved em. It took me quite some time. And that's when the INCIDENT happened. The INCIDENT occured by ACCIDENT (!!) with Allister. I know what I'm talking about and I will never (nehvar!) speak of it again. The truth is though, that the guys will razz me about it as long as they know me :) It's all cool. That's ok though, we gave the people in the lab a good laugh. Had a weird problem with the direction not changing at the correct time. Fixed that by storming out into the hall, standing behind the lockers and thinking. That worked (woohoo!) At around 1:30 everyone except Allister, Barry and I left. I fixed my dir change some time later and spent the rest of the time working on getting miscellaneous problems + the score fixed. I found out later (much later) from Barry and Allister that I shouldn't have hooked my increment up to the C, and but instead the CLK to the C and INCR to the CE. That fixed my problem. Bah - spent a lot of time trying to fix it :) While I was there, they worked on a whole range of stuff and tried to fix their light counting too far ahead problem. On that one though, same issue - turned out to be a 1 min fix. Good times :) Ate pizza, found out Osama Bin Laden is still alive and left the lab at around 6:15 or so. Got home at 6:30, made myself some soup and fell into bed at 7:00 AM on November 14.

Woke up at 10:00 AM on November 14. Immediately, did what I had to do, ate some food, breqed my tea for 30 mins and drank it. Found out that I was to start work on January 13th (Whoa! - that's *extremely* late. Kinda worried about that - I was quite unhappy. Just before I left, walked into the bathroom and realized that my erstwhile bathroom sharer had left some splatter in the toilet. Joy. Put on pairs of lab gloves and cleaned off the toliet. Result: 10 mins late for the Calculus lab. Went to the lab at 11:30 and then proceeded to spend the next 9 hours and 30 mins working on the longest Calculus assignment I have ever done. (Still haven't finished it - I have 1 more question to do, but apparently it is simple enough). Worked hard, lot of work done, lot of stuff learned. Razzed by the guys about the incident. Worked with Barry, Allister, Geoff and Rob in Physics till 4:30 (when we were kicked out). Continued working elsewhere. Particularly proud of tackling two long, hard questions with Barry. Rocked their asses. Finished Calc at 9:00 and went over to the guy's place for movie + dinner + end of long night. Raining and extremely chilly outside. Watched T2 and bought em pizza. Happy to do so - they bought me steak and I was unhappy that they wouldn't take the money... Great time there. Everyone as tired (I still am not very tired at all). Actually, here's the truth. I feel *really* good. Weird. Although I feel tired, I have a feeling of lightness and happiness. Why is that? Because I did a whole ton of work. I understood it and finished it and I *didn't* waste my time. Excellent! Sleep 2:30 (after I finish Calc and some stuff...)

Class. Called sponsors. I hate trolling for sponsorship. Worked on a couple of linux issues. Got my ssh server up and running. I am now able to connect to it from anywhere. That's extremely helpful :) Made a lot of much needed changes to my desktop. Very light, very open now :) Umm...found a way to get my console into 1280x1024. (This was of course - after I entered a resolution that was waaay too high. Immediately got an "Out of Sync" signal. Tried to sleep early - didn't work out... Got up and screwed around with gstreamer. Video works on my other account. Doesn't seem to want to work on mine. Not good. leave that for another day. I am just about to try see if I can get a splash screen for grub up. Wish me luck.

Oh yeah - and I'm not using the computer for the following week. Need to wean myself off it.

LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, LOW, LOW, BOTTOM, MEDIUM, HIGH, HIGH, MEDIUM.

Hi. My name is Allen George and I'm a fucking asshole who shouldn't have been born. As to why I'm still alive - this is a question to which there is a very complicated answer. It is better if I disappeared is it not? Perhaps things would be better then. Why do I say stupid things? I said stupid things today. I was inconsistent. So I can better make a fool out of myself. What happened today? Ate more food than normal. Woke up after a good sleep. Finished MSCI. Went to Barry's, Allisters and Geoff's. Hung around. Good time. I think I will work better with them from now on. I am not smart. I am not good. I am stupid. I know I can say this here because no one will read it. This is a little corner of the world where nothing matters. Where things can happen, but...no one listens. I stopped on a road and I realized that the cars were very far away. It was weird...I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere just watching the road. The streetlights went into the distance and now I remember the time I drove down Bovaird in the fog. It was the most beautiful thing I've seen in my life. The soft sodium bulbs drifting in and then out of view. Like markers in a long peaceful tunnel. Their presence was enough. I remember being so awed by their beauty. I've never seen anything like that again. It was so quiet. But I had to sleep soon. And I couldn't enjoy that time. I don't enjoy my time. I stopped opposits a white house with flouresent lights glaring out. Looked down the road. So long, the lights on either side. The cars in the very far distance and I felt like falling off the bike. Just falling off and crying, screaming anything. I feel so wrong. I made a mistake and I'll lose my friends. I have so few and this is such a bad thing to do. I wanted for a brief second to get hit. But a brief second. I'm too much of a wimp. I can't stand the pain. I don't know how it would feel like. I remember when I'm so angry, I want to fall down and just lose it. But I can't. I won't. Do you know what it feels like when you are are nothing? Do you remember that exact moment when you realized? My curse is that I'll relive that moment every day. You listen to me and pray that you don't become like me. You pray that you don't turn into a failure.

Something must have happened when I didn't get any sleep. I'm not afraid of making mistakes and I seem to have spaced out a bit. Weird. Went back home and did more programming. Pseudocoded before I programmed, which resulted in very clean code. Debugging took 1/5th the time as opposed to no pseudocoding. It was at max..1 line mistakes. I felt quick, did things quickly. Rock! Eclipse really does rock. I found a weirdness with its Javadoc comments though... Which meant I had to rewrite all my Javadoc comments. Then, 30 mins before the project was due I found 3 bugs. One was major (1 line fix), 2 minor (formatting issues...). The last one could have been something more serious, so I spent time and I fixed that. Again..1/2 line fixes. All good. Created my nice little jar file and submitted it 10 mins before deadline. Watched American Pie II while I ate. Decided to work a bit with subversion. I want the last project we do for ECE 250 to be revisioned. Created a subversion repository and added Project 2 - Project 4 on it. Wow! Very easy to use. I like it a lot already :) If I'd known about version control software in Gr. 11 I wouldn't have had to create over 30 different backups of a major project I did because of branching/various optimizations and backups. I have every intention of learning to use subversion well. Talked quite a bit to Angela (my sister) and Barry/Allister. Sleeping early today. Will be a long, healthy sleep :)

All right. Today can only be described as horrible. Truly horrible. Woke up today early. Java/Calc hang over my head. Start on Java and break off in the middle. Take a look at my comp and realized that ~70% is full! My gosh...try to clean it out. First use debfoster, localepurge and deborphan to clean out unused programs, libs and cruft. Remove the 2.4.19-pre7 kernel build and the 300MB of mozilla build files. Got rid of the garnome build files as well. Dropped used to 58%. Hmm...checked and found that my multimedia accounts for a good chunk of that. Which means - I'm up the creek without a paddle in terms of cleaning out my HDD unless I get a new HDD or I transfer my files elsewhere. And I can't write to my Windows partition either. Joy. I also have over 125MB of emails. This is not good. Hmm.... Stumbled across Subversion which is slated a CVS replacement. Apt-got it and was about to play with it until I realized I had "work" to do. Started again on my Java and worked on that. That's when I realized in horror that I had to double my work because there were separate implementations based on the input type of the class coming in. Oh no! Did not go to sleep. Code is good to write late... I feel...nice

WARG again today. Talked to Jennifer Fleet and got the info I needed. Relayed that info off at WARG. Decided to skip out on the Laser Quest. Fat lot of good that did me. Got back home but did not do much (unfortunately). I must talk to Fahidy and send a letter off to the DRDC. Another thing: Kay - you can go to hell you large, unclean idiot. I hope that you suffocate in the STINK that you let permeate in your room. Pfff. Bah...I have calc and Java to to. Haven't started either. Started Java...not much done - its hard getting started - even though its such a simple program. I think I have to get into the feel of it again.

Well...it was an interesting day today. Completed the ECE 223 lab. I think we could have done it much better. Got really depressed today and started on my Java project. 2 days to go. I anticipate sleepless nights ahead. Cove night tonight. Got 1 (?!) slice of free pizza. Hung around a bit with Allister and Barry until I found Justin. We left Allister and Barry playing Foozball and went over to Pizza Nova. On the way there of course...started raining. Ate a delicious pizza (was ravenous - hadn't had anything for 6 hours). Then of course found out that it was snowing. Biked home on the back streets with the icy rain/snow pounding my face. I felt lacerated. Almost skidded on a street - the ground was that slick. Got home and when we talked to Kayleigh found out an interesting thing. First, background. The bathroom we use is meant to be used by 3 people. No more, no less. Last week, the upstairs bathroom was being constructed. People started to use ours (probably because its the only CLEAN public one). We were (of course) not told about this until I witnessed a random guy saunter into the bathroom. Joy. So what did we find out today? Well, apparently last week a guy and a girl were in our bathroom.
Together - in the shower.

You should have seen our faces. I was livid. WTH? I mean yeah sure - use the bathroom. But *I* have to use it too. The last thing *I* need is for two horny individuals to be fooling around in the shower of the bathroom *I* use. No decency man... Pissed off. Went to sleep early finally.

Oh man. So so tired. I had less than 5 hrs of sleep. Couldn't stay awake in Calc. Resorted to a massive caffeine boost (tea) to keep me awake for the rest of the day. Found out I have a job match! Oh man! Meet the newest employee of the DRDC. I hope I will enjoy this job. I'm not sure what to think of it. AFAIK, I will be doing a lot of work on/with Linux. If that is the case then I'm definitely happy. I hope it will be a good experience. Really...I do. Worked on an finished the lab. I dislike implementing carry lookahead adders - especially in Xilinx Foundation 4.x. Talked to Justin quite a bit. Found out he wants to travel. I want a laptop ;) Emailed Kurt, finished up a lot of odds and ends. Got rid of the damn letter of endorsement. How the heck do I end up doing stuff like this? Did I ever tell you that I really *dislike* sponsorship? Well...I do. COuld have used time more productively today, but, on the whole - a decently used day. Rebuilt mozilla with --enable-crypto. I need the PSM support. Sleep at 1:30. I anticipate strong tea today morning at 6:40.

W00T - got good food today! Freaking Access. Has been down all weekend... Resolved to eat more. My weight has been steadily decreasing. Somehow I doubt a person of my height should ever hit 108 lbs. Went to the lab at around 5:15 (got there at 5:30) and didn't get back till 1:00. Suffice it to say...long long day. Not only that, I didn' finish the lab. I think a lot of the time I spend with BAG I end up dicking around. For me it is definitely more productive to work alone. I think I will actively make that choice in the future. Sleep at 2:00.

Gotta like Alizee. Heh - French does sound nice. Pity I can't understand it. On a related note I'd like to understand Hindi and Malayalm sometime. Which means I have to learn it... Hmm. Anyways, Geoff and I started work on our Lab 2 today. Got quite aways and then spent a largish amount of time trying to round a sum of numbers without using an extra adder. Argued with Barry in front of his girlfriend about this. That wasn't exactly our most spectacular moment you know. We separated fuming. We cooled down though and I hope by the end of the night we didn't have feelings. (I calmed myself down and I don't!). Not my best moment. Helped Geoff make fajitas (he cooks well!). We watched the "Hunt for Red October", "The World is not enough" and the Simpsons (weird). I got there at 9:15 in the morning, got back at 1:00. Slept at 2:15 or so... Great day though :)

I think there's possbily nothing more boring than sitting at home on a Friday night - don't you? Had an interesting cultural quiz in MSCI today. Everyone failed - we don't know about other cultures. Thankfully enough - it wasn't worth anything. Interesting though. Oh - and which jackass thinks that Indians nod their heads slowly back and forth and side to side to indicate that they are listening to you?? And also - since when is pulling your damn ear meant to mean something? Gotta update the site more - it looks like the blog hasn't been updated - but that's not true - I'm writing my stuff here but sometimes I don't upload it on that day :)

Ah - Halloween. Hmm...I didn't do anything today. I managed to write "Kiss me 4 candy" on Justin's door. Unfortunately, the girls in our house weren't drunk enough to attempt that feat. Darn ;) Justin almost tackled me though :) Heh! Oooh - submitted a tiny nautilus patch today. I feel better! I want to get started in earnest on nautilus. It looks *really* interesting! Hmm...noticed that when Danielle and Kayleigh come over to talk to Justin and I we end up wasting too much time. Gotta do something about that. Heard the drunken seance commence outside my door. Thankfully they weren't too *cough*cough* loud :)

Ah....weird day today. Got my 250 exam today. Did decent - not great. Got the indoctrination talk from our resident MS representative. "FREE STUFF" [blah blah] XBOX [blah blah] C# [blah blah]..." Well, apparently C# is the solution to all our programming woes ;) Oh - and they're hading out over 4G worth of software at the cheap price of 5 bucks to us. What's wrong with this picture? [Can you say overpriced]. Ah well. I'm biased. Got ok marks on my ECE 250 exam. I wish they'd ask for code. I can rock with code.

Talked quite a bit with Geoff about housing situations, things that tick us off and what not. He gave me some concrete suggestions as to how to improve studying with Barry, Alistar and himelf. Intend to implement that immediately. Felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. We have a non-flusher sharing our bathroom with us. F****** bastard son of a whore. I say that with perfect equanimity. I als discovered that we now have another guy from the front of our house sharing the bathroom (?!)...and apparently a girl as well (WTH?). "Clean it and they will come". I wish they'd stay the heck away. Hmm. Got calls about possibly renting the hosue out. We'll see how that goes. Owell. Talked to Justin about the Torque game engine, Blender and CORBA. I gave my opinion that I will probably end up doing some behind the scenes glue coding. He doesn't want to do any application development at all. He wants to do game programming (I kinda figured that). I heard it often ;) I got into program x [substitute comp related program here] because I like games. Well - its a valid statement. I got into Comp Eng because I like computers. BTW, do you know how disturbing it is to have 5 people staring at a single spider consume its prey? Didn't think so. Heard some wierdnesses about drunkeness and people's encounters with it. Oh my.... Worked on my TPPE. Hopefully that will go well.

Confidence shattered. ECE 223 midterm back - results were not good. Destroy me now...please. I don't think I will be with WARG much longer - this is not what I want to do. Worked on and completed most of my TPPE. Now I simply have to put down stuff to say for it. Listened to a lot of violent aggressive music. Matches my mood perfectly. On the whole, not a very productive day. Read a lot of GNOME news. I disagree with jdub about the fileselector. I think MM had a much better file selector. I really wish haddess and MM get together and improve the file selector that exists. I know the person with the code wins, but I think that if MM's work is disregarded, then the community's confidence in having a say in GNOME 2 will be shattered. I think I'll let my views be known on the page. I also think this is getting pretty stupid - the separation between GTK and the underlying libs. I think one of the main reasons QT does so well is that its packaged together. Therefore you can always rely on the existence of certain things. OTOH, the GTK+ philosophy is different and the anonymous poster and dobey put it well. It is retarded that developers build an extensive vfs backend for GNOME (not perfect - needs a *lot* of work) and then most of the time is spent pissing away trying to figure out what to do when it isn't there. I mean...come on. Have vfs as a requirement! This would simplify development like crazy. There's a whole lot of stuff like this.

Giant weight placed back on. I have to create my TPPE and write my MSCI stuff up. Not only that, I have to sign us up for the 223 labs. Oh my...this will be brutalicious. Bah - WARG stuff. Did a lot of website work today. Had another long chat with Justin today. Now I feel positively weird in comparison to him. Grief. Listened to a lot of Eminem, Rammstein and Metallica. My music tastes are definitely swinging towards the heavy side. Decided to give up looking at computer news sites for the following week. Will do me good. Cooked a bit today. Nothing came out well. I'll try again next time. Hopefully things will work out! Talked to Fady today. As usual - good talk. Great friend! Gave me a lot of confidence...

Lazy day. Then suddenly - off to Geoff's to get a Thai lunch. Helped cook it. Good stuff :) Met some people - kept reserved. Rushed off to MSCI meeting. Stayed at meeting till 6:00. Back but didn't do any work. Didn't feel like it ;) Got Mozilla1.2b working with AA support. YEAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

W00T! Midterms are done. Its like a giant weight's been taken off my chest. Ate DQ (for the first time). Too much to finish. Dumped it. Don't understand how people can eat an entire Blizzard without feeling guilty. Man... Crashed over at Justin's friends place. Played "Up and Down" for an hour+. Watched "National Lampoon's Van Wilder". I don't think Tara Reid (or whatever her name is) is pretty. She looks idiotic. But then again, I'm sure I do...so I'll keep my comments to myself ;) Got back at 1:00. The time I've spent away from GNOME and my computer has done me good. I was getting emotionally attached with the computer world. I was feeling sadder about stuff that happened online than in the real world. This is getting problematic. it's been hard for me to give up reading the computer news...but I have to. I feel tied up in everything that's happening.

Had my Calc exam today. I've been so worried about this exam. I've been doing my calc regularly. Working hard on it. I understand almost everything I've learned. I think I did ok on the exam. Barry, Geoff and Alistar were a great help when it came to clarifying those last few points. Felt so happy that I went back and crashed at their house :) Ate pizza, Crispers, Bugles and what not and studied a bit of 250 until around 11:40. When I was too tired I couldn't concentrate at all and I became a bit ... 'off' ;) Heh Heh...

"Do you want a cooookie?"

Had my DRDC interview today. Didn't get the job. Oh well. Continuous - here I come. Mr. Franklin Lue was a complete contrast to Peter. Very polite, explained what they were looking for (more experience obviously). I intend to apply next time - they're doing some very cool stuff there. My ECE 209 exam was not fun. I found out after that a question I had left because I was sure I was getting the first step wrong was...misguided. In fact, if I had taken a closer look I would have realized that I had done the right thing! Bah!>?)(_)@! Discussed with Justin that I'm thinking of quitting WARG. I have stuff to do in school, GNOME, gnomedesktop and coding. I want to seriously start coding again and I don't know if WARG will fit in this plan.

Had what was probably the worst interview of my life with Soma Networks. I was interviewed by P.J., an individual who took some pleasure in the fact that he was an IBM Fellow and "almost certainly smarter" than I was. Restrained my anger at his rudeness. If this is the attitude that they generate at Soma, I will *never* apply or consider a job at Soma. Here's something Peter - some good advice - write it down. You can be the smartest prick in the world but if you're going to treat people like shit it'll be an aboslute waste. And it *will* come back to bite you in the ass. The rest of the day went horribly as well. ECE 209 will be brutal.

Justin's dog died today. He was pretty upset. I'm not the best person to be with at that time. I guess I don't empathize well. Also, I'm not fond of animals in general. Made do.

Will attack bugzilla at the end of the coming week. Also have to send off reams of emails, prepare and do a whole bunch of stuff. Time to lose the stupidity and move forward. Yes, I think this time has been long in coming. I hit it once but this has been the most protracted. Its Waterloo. I'm lesser.

What is fear? What does it cause? Does it make people want to focus on other things? Anything but the problem at hand? Does it lead them into soul and personality destroying bouts of questioning and self doubt? Does it perhaps cause them to be more extroverted than usual - hoping that the false hilarity will mask their inner hopelessness? Does it cause them to think about "I will do..." as opposed to "I am doing..."? Perhaps it is all these. Now imagine if these manifested in one person? What do you think of the emotional and mental state of this person? Perhaps this was never experienced before? How does this person shake these feelings off? How does this person understand and realize that the only way to improve is to make mistakes? Why is this person afraid of rejection and making mistakes? Perhaps it is because he's always been the odd one out and hopes that by doing everything correctly he won't stand out as an idiot? Who knows. Perhaps this person has tried in the past but has always pushed back? Why? Especially if they know they CAN do it. They know they have the ability - it just takes time...

I am a normal guy. Yes. i handed my work term report off today. Apparently Professor Barby picks up the work term reports up personally. Hmm. Made pasta + meat sauce. First cooking I've done since I came here. At least I'm eating a bit better now. Fire alarm is randomly going off. Justin and I got fedup with the clanging and we removed the metal shield. Now the alarm just vibrates loudly. Yes I know. Do you know why the GNOME project doesn't get developers? Because the quest for tutorials is met by "Read the Source". Helpful for accomplished coders. Not for anyone else. Apparently I'm a disturbed person according to other people. No. I'm just not very social with people I don't know. On the other hand I'm very friendly with people I do know. No I don't know how I got from point A to B. Apparently I did something right though. I'm going to read some ECE 223 now. Made Biohazard sign. Apparently other people have noticed the horrible smell that emanates from Kay's room (Subject of previous swear word ridden rant). They've also noticed the foul smell that permeates the hallways whenever he opens his door or cooks.

Remove yourself.

Not a great day today. Collapsed in bed @ 1:00. Woke up @ 5:30. Finished Calculus. Completed Work term report.

A lot of stuff happened. But why kid myself - you don't want to hear about it. Serious considerations must be given to the usefulness of this endeavour. I mean - why bother - I'm screwing up anyway right? Might as well stop the stupidity now. What am I really? How do I define myself? What do I think about? What do others think of me? Sadly enough - I don't think I have the knowledge to answer those questions. Which explains the results on the EIQ. Why kid myself - I never had much of it in the first place. Talked to Justin about a whole bunch o stuff again. Walked off feeling like an ass. Pissed away the rest of my day. Great. Now I feel worse. If that's even possible. Someone should just shoot me. It would be better for all parties involved. I can't take myself anymore. Freaking hell. What do you think it is like to wake up saying "Oh great - another day as me"? Imagine living your life as a failure. Imagine that. Every day - you know that you're a failure.

Interesting line by the last replicant in Blade Runner - Roy Batty - "Time to die". So calm. Very focused. Talking about himself of course.

Another one bites the dust. Today Justin decided to install XP. I guess I should have expected that. He really doesn't have a problem with MS at all. He doesn't think that their continued encroachment into every facet of computing is an issue. I hope for his sake that he enjoys his freedom while it lasts. I'm not too thrilled of course. He's a friend yes, which is why I don't say anything more. At any rate, no matter what I said I'd get an "it doesn't matter" kind of answer. One can't argue with that - cause it means that whoever said it really isn't concerned at all. Its depressing actually. Being in university I expected to meet people who thought differently - especially in the area of computing (being as I'm a CompE). But I'm one of two (Dave being the other) people in my class who actually run Linux. Everyone else is content with Microsoft. Everywhere I turn I can see MS only and its tiring. I wonder what I can do to change this. I'm thinking laptop and the newest version of Red Hat. Too much work... Got accepted as an IEEE member.

Talked to Justin a lot about a lot of deep philosophical stuff. As a result almost no work done today. Also slept late. Yay. We disagree about emotions and what "love" is. He brought up parallels to religion. Fair enough I guess - he knows I'm religious. Have a sneaking suspicion he's gonna be using XP soon. Depressed again. I should stop reading the tech news. it only hurts. Took the plunge and subscribed to Red Hat Network. Quite cheap actually - 60USD for a full year basic subscription. I would be intensely cheap if I stated that I couldn't afford 10 dollars a month for an operating system I believe in. Not only that, the money also goes to support GNOME developers, which is always something I'm interested in. Shaved and go a haircut. Like myself much more now. I have even reasonably long hair on my head - it looks unkempt.

Depression weighs heavily on my person. I feel tired, like I don't have energy. Why?

Posted a lot of stuff on gnomesupport.org. General cleaning. Worked with Geoff on the ECE lab from 1:00 to around 5:00. Great! We work well together. Talked about the lab and got everything up and running. It was quite interesting too. Rode back to his place. Interesting :) Met Barry and Allister. Allister helped us complete the last piece of our lab - thanks Al! Minimized pieces of it down to around to 15 - 17 gates. Also can work it so it only uses 4 ICs. Had a good dinner there - Geoff cooked steaks (around 9:00ish)! Met Barry's girlfriend and we all sat around watching Monsters Inc. BTW - mixing 7Up, Pepsi Blue, Cherry Pepsi and C plus actually tastes quite good :) Talked to Allister and Geoff quite a bit - left at around 2:00. Great day - I enjoyed it!! Got back around 2:20 something and realized that garnome hadn't built properly - version mixmatches btw the Xft I have and the newer one. Ok... Got all the RH CD's. Cool - now I need a computer to install them on :) Fixed the gdm problem - apparently it was libpam-modules screwing up. Amazing what a google search can do. Downgraded and went to sleep at 3:10.

Slept badly. Neck is paining quite a bit too. Very depressed today. Finished off the gedit documentation (that felt good). Sent it off for examination. Talked to people who're helping me do the raffle for WARG. Hopefully that'll all work out. Watched Face Off. I don't really like that movie. Felt very depressed. Reading about DRM, DMCA. It seems like no one cares. Justin is a prime example. Smart guy - but he believes that everything will magically turn out ok. I don't think so. I think people like him are what allows politicians and those who wish to screw us to get away with this stuff. He doesn't care - a lot of people don't. Not only that, MS seems to be oing everything possible to gain supporters. I wonder if we'll ever see a world in which there's a real competitor? I look to the developing countries. Don't fail me please. They're literally bribing the students at Waterloo. We get an extremely cheap version of Visual Studio .NET + free copy of XP + free Visio. I know a lot of people are taking advantage of that. Not me... I find myself disgusted by this. We'll take advantge of anythign without thinking of the consequences. I wonder what everyone will think when they *can't* pirate their next copy of Windows. When they *can't* pirate the next copy of XP. Then MS will have them locked in. Too bad guys. Finally downloading Red Hat 8.0

I think this could possibly have been one of the worst days I've ever had to deal with. To start I woke up at 8:00 - which meant I had really only 2 hours to do my calc homework before I hit the tutorial. Luckily I had done half over the course of the preceeding week and I was pretty sure I could do three questions without issue. That left the final, horrible three. But I also had to write my letters. I rewrote the Sun letter and focused it. I think I got my determination for the job across. At least I hope so. I was about to start on the next when I made the bad decision to run acme (a program that allows you to set the multimedia keys). It crashed X (first time in about a year...). Ok, being a Linux user I immediately Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc and restarted the Xserver. That's when I hit my second logjam. GDM mysteriously stopped working. What? I thought it might have been because I upgraded to the newest pam in experimental - but that didn't make sense. At any rate, I wasted the next hour trying every single combo of gdm (from testing + experimental) and pam (testing + experimental) that I could. All of them came up with "Authentication Failed". Aight....so with twenty minutes to go before my tutorial started I installed plain old xdm. Of course - that magically worked. (Hint: its not pam). Then, I tried to run gdmsetup. No no no...apparently Xlib can't create a connection to my display when I'm logged in as another user and su. WTF? Oh yeah - forgot xhost +locahost. Run that - no dice. Now I'm really concerned cause things that I took for granted aren't happening. Time to tutorial - 5 mins. Rushed out. (Still haven't figured out what I did wrong - the penalties for running a bleeding edge desktop :) ). Rode to school, arrived 10 mins late. Did the tutorial w/ Allister, Barry and Geoff. It worked wonders and I was able to finish 4 questions. Which left the hardest. Finished part of one before I left. I was over schedule. Talked to Jennifer Fleet about the raffle. So, now I was 1 hour over schedule and I still had not written my last cover letter.

And this was when it all went horribly wrong. I raced back home on my bike. On my way there is a slight incline on which I usually go top speed. It was blocked by a mass of schoolgirls. So of course, daring as usual I decided to cut through the grass. Silly me. Apparently the lawns there aren't level at all. I was over the first lawn and the second one was a good two feet lower. Slam. Knocked the wind out of me and I was very concerned about the bike. But I was still upright and riding (pretty fast too). Then another pedestrian was in my way. Decided to cut around her and miscalculated. Thr ground was pretty wet so when I hit the ground at a slightly weird angle I skidded. That's when I hit the grass and it all went to hell. I pile drove myself head first into the ground at some speed, rolled and the next thing I know I'm facing up thinking "I hope the bike's ok". I hear the girl ask "Are you ok?" to which I reply - "Yes, of course" (?!). I jump up and attempt to roll the bike. Which won't roll of course. That's when I notice I'm bleeding profusely from my palm, my head feels okayish (headache now), my lip feels cut, my hip is sore and my shin hurts like hell. I walk the bike back home (getting blood over it) and stash it in the shed. Go in, wash up and come out to investigate the damage. Realize the reason why it was so hard to roll was because the front wheel was turned around twice and all the cables were tangled. Untangled them. Checked the shifters and brakes (hope everything is ok). Noticed the seat is out of alignment, the brakes themselves (not the pads etc) have been knocked out of alignment. Striaghten everything and clean the mud off the bike. Put the chain back on the sprockets. Realize now that the brake bads are touching the rim.... Oh man. Ask Justin to help and we adjust the bike and get it working somewhat ok. Now of course, I have one hour to write a cover letter and another half an hour to get back to Waterloo, post the resumes and get to my next class. Of course - now I'm sore all over and I don't want to do anything. Struggle and write my cover letter. Attempt to print out and realize that I've run out of exactly one sheet of my series. Print out a copy - but now the font is smaller so the page is mismatched. Have to log on to quest and reprint my transcript 3 times. Print out my resume. Realize something that is not supposed to be bolded is and vice versa. Sigh. Reprint my resume. This takes a long, long time. Get to university and hand in all my resumes. Realize that I handed in a resume + another job description (Company Y) into the bin of (Company X). GROAN. Met Kyle and made it to the movie on time. Nice movie - "Vertical Limit". Get back home at 9:05 and have to make myself dinner. Cause you know - I haven't eaten very much. Realize I have one last question to do. Oh man... This day should end....NOW.

Ah the calm before the storm. Wrote a cover letter for Sun, but I didn't get the effect I wanted - will rewrite tomorrow. I really would like that job... Did a bit of calculus homework. Downloaded Roboocode - fun Java game :) Stayed up till 1:00 trying to figure out some neat stuff about plotting and intercepting. I need to remember more of my Physics... Not all that bad of a day. Figured out with Justin how much money we owed each other collectively. Tried to sort out credit card bills and what not. Phone bill came - I thought I was going to die. Sent off required emails... Figured out that a year long subscription to RHN does not cost that much at all - I think that's the route I'll take. Plont down $60USD for an RHN basic subscription. That's a great deal actually - and the money will go to support a company I really like! The mirrors are clogged with people trying to get RH 8.0 and my puny connection doesn't have the throughput to get the ISOs fast. I think I'll wait until I have the subscription. Tomorrow is going to be brutalicious...

Completed watching Blade Runner today. Great movie! What is it to be truly human? I'm not sure now... Memories? The tenous fact that we can't be manufactured (yet)? Hmm. Submitted 6 jobs for posting today. Hoping for a interview. My my... Started reading the case. I'm screwed. MSCI kinda fell by the wayside. I've got to get better at doing this human interest stuff. Found out that apparently we 'signed up' to demo today... Horrified since we thought we we going to demo our 223 lab next week. Sorted the garbage out... Now we're demoing on the 15th. I don't know how this happened, seeing as Geoff and I specifically talked about signing up for the ninth. Weird. Interestingly, joined the IEEE and the Computer Society. Well - I submitted my application anyways. Let see if all goes well. Joined the EFF. One last thing to go - buying Red Hat 8.0. The problem is

• I want to support them
• I know that 8.1 will be a massive sight better because all the GNOME apps should be ported along to GNOME2.

That's what I want - a fully GNOME2 desktop. I want Xfree 4.3 from CVS with support for translucency, Xft2, fontconfig, GNOME2, CUPS and all the goodies... Maybe I should wait for RH 8.1? I don't know - it'll be 64 dollars (before tax).
Maybe I shall buy it... Gotta call TD then and also find out if they'll simply leave the box at my current address (that's not good). It would be nice if I could actually be here to pick up the package... Noticed some startling problems with IE (*!(*!!) and a slight misalignment at lower resoultions... Must investigate and fix

Picked up the work term report (check list resubmit) and the damage isn't bad at all. I was worrying! The best thing that happened today? RH 8.0 was released (w00t!). I know some will think its sad that I'm happy about a Linux distro being released - but its not :P Hmm...I'm going to buy a copy (put my money where my mouth is). The next version will probably come out in March and that should (hoping) have G2.2.... Maybe I should buy that one instead? Don't know... Looking forward to it because all the apps shoulf be completely ported over. Extremely interested in Ximian's efforts with OpenOffice. I wonder if the result is good whether RH and Ximian will come to an agreement regarding it (I hope so). I also hope that the situation improves muchly with a buncho' stuff ;) Hmm....quite a few jobs to post to... I also have to improve the look of my page. Don't know how though!

I also want a laptop (HAHAHAHAHA....) My my...with Waterloo taking so much of my money that's not going to be possible....

Nothing done yet... Considering membership in EFF. Talked to a poli-sci student yesterday and realized with horror the way society is going. Concealed horror and adopted a "Ok - please go on" attitude. Stated by individual: (paraphrased) 'I'll only speak up for those who actively support me. If you didn't support me...[shrugs]". Money is the best way to get support (obviously - everyone and their grandparents knows this) and letters apparently aren't worth it. Also - 'Im not interested in stands I'm more interested in issues'. Yeah that makes sense. I mean stands are just that much less likely to get you gobs of money. Whereas issues - my my - the screentime there is awesome. The conversation was disturbing... If this is the way society is going - we're screwed. It also brought home one point. All governance structures are set in place to ensure their own continued survival. Which of course explains a lot of things... Dad and Mom came by today. Chatted about Angela and university... Interestingness :!

No work today. My fault. Watched Resident Evil and Blade 2. Mixed opinions. Both are aching for sequals I guess. Which brings me to the main point of today's excercise. As I write this I am mad. Very f****** mad. Justin and I share the bathroom with another individual. This person never cleans the bathroom. He's also quite lax on his flushing habits sometimes. We're trying and cleaning it every week. At any rate - today we cleaned the bathroom out. This night I walked inside and was greeted with sh** stains on the rim of the f****** toilet. I mean WTF? Can he not sh** properly? Has he not learned the concept of sitting on the DAMN toilet and take a crap? I don't even know how he got the friggin crap to hit at such a f**** bizzare angle. I AM SO MAD!!!! Those who know me know that I like things very clean - especially the bathroom... I just cannot stand a dirty bathroom since it destroys my day. I can't say anything like this to him so I'm venting my bile, rage and frustuation out here. Why is it so F****** HARD TO MAKE SURE YOU TAKE A SHIT PROPERLY? I sure as hell have no problem - WHY CAN'T YOU?

I've used so many swear words here... I don't like swearing but I feel like I want to punch a wall or something. Now I've got to clean the f****** toilet up again tomorrow. Not just that but Mr. CRACK ASS doesn't see the need to help out with cleaning. Does he think that the bathroom cleans its f******* self? And magically gets a new, non mouldy shower curtain and rugs that aren't the equivalents of sheepdogs coats? Pissant little piece of crap. Listen chickens*** you'd be a lot more careful and a lot more considerate if you had to clean up after your own DAMN self.

Note to self: Don't get any more movies.

Posted again today. Hmm...met Kenny and Ricky on way to posting. Invited me to 77B Cardill Cres. for a BBQ. Hit there but noticed that there didn't seem to be anything happening. Went home and watched Bridget Jones' Diary and Royal Tannenbaums. Good movies. Brought home a couple of points.

Much more productive day today. Finished MSCI Group Contract, Calculus homework and the Java proggie. Liking Java a lot. C++ has some things over it ;) but there's a lot to be said for automatic garbage collection... Got a lot done on the ECE 223 side. Looked at the jobs to be posted (that took some time). Hmm - decided on a shortlist - but it still has to be narrowed down. Dinner extremely late (10:45) at the Pita Factory. This is getting to be a damn disturbing habit. I'll be home early tomorrow just so that this doesn't happen! Bed @ 12:00.

Posting #2 today. Yay. Met Alistar - realized I didn't post for one job. Moments of indecision - decided to stick to original plan. Went to WARG meeting and I guess I'm now known as the raffle guy ;) Gotta call Future Shop! Took a look at Plane_sim.c (Emacs rules). Gonna have to start reading some books about modelling - this could get very messy. Did a bit of calculus and collapsed into bed. Dinner at the Pita Factory.

Looked at coop postings again today. Did quite a bit of 223 hw. If I focus well I can get all my homework finished in two days. I will! Decided I had to start on my 250 project. Hunting around for the ideal IDE. Picked on Forte (weirdnesses with Linux), Borland JBuilder (Hmm...the 7.0 download never finishes and apparently the personal edition doesn't have support for generating JAR files or Javadoc - strike from list), Visual Age (Nope - no linux version - I'm not switching to Windows just to write a Java program). Hmm...then I happened to look back at Eclipse. I'd ignored it because the GTK2 version I had couldn't compile C (it was a nightly build - highly unstable). It turns out though that the Java support is very well done - so I tried it out.
Oh YEAH! Everything I want and more. This thing rocks hard! Definitely my IDE of choice. Hmm...must. do. more....

Went to the GM session today. First posting you know... Saw (and sat in) the Hummer H2, the Saab 9-5, the GMC Denali (w/ Quadrasteer) and the Chevy Avalanche. First - the Avalanche really is as versatile as they claim. Within a few minutes I saw Hal (the guy I was talking to) change it from a SUV with space for 5 into a flat bed. Wow! The Hummer is massive - the engine inside that thing looks bigger than I am ;) Finally - the Saab. Oh my... What can I saw - beauty mated with a turbocharger! I love Saabs and I finally got a chance to sit inside one! The moment you close that door - the outside sounds are completely drowned out and you're enclosed with the smell of leather. Shweet :) Dropped off 4 resumes today.

Chewed on mail (10 cents if you can figure where I lifted this phrase from) and looked at coop postings. Sucks up too much time. Bah.

Work up late (8:15) and Kurt Justin and I talked, walked around for a bit. Saw Kurt off to London. Back to the same old same old. The human condition. Drabness interspered by brief bits of light, color and laughter. Embarked on a massive cleaning job with Justin. I can't believe the people before us were that dirty. Apparently no one realizes that "If you don't clean it - it'll keep getting dirtier". I couldn't stand it and I guess I bitched enough (1 week) that we finally got down and did it. I feel a lot better now. I like things clean. Umm...not much use out of today. Unwinding a bit. Thinking. Keeping a positive attitude :) Wrote up an entire description of the events of Friday. I'm getting worried about forgetting things. I don't like that. Not much else done. Checked out the coop stuff. This is going to be harsh... Sleep @ 11:30

Omigosh what an amazing day. Ignore school - that was nothing. It was just a precursor to the rest of my day. Played UT2003 when I got home. Then Kurt came over from Burglinton (w00t!). Then the three of us went to Philthy's for a N2Crew reunion. I think that our first year res must have been the best. Everyone still likes each other :) Drank, ate and partied it up till the wee hours of the morning. Had giant, sprawling conversations. Kurt and I were the most effusive among the three of us. Justin as usual was more reserved. The best thing about that night was the memories. I think its the last time most of us will see each other. It had that air of finality about it (now that I think about it). Kinda sad again. But the best thing was the sprawling conversations we had. Laughter, jokes, ribald comments ;) Good times were had by the three of us. I loved it :)

Calculus. A lot of calculus. Must use time better as well.

Long day today. Went to lectures, attempted to do some calc - busting somewhere. Hmm. Will ask Justin tomorrow. Started using Forte to do some basic basic Java programming. Apparently the Linux 'file system' is unsupported (?!) Yeah. I thought that was odd too. Long, long WARG meeting today. Asked Dave Kroetch about the structure of the WARG code and starting points. More complicated than I thought. Email to gedit w/ the first bits of documentation. Must start getting into the WARG code again. Pizza for dinner. Joy. Not the greatest of days. Note to self: increase volume of voice.

Sleep 12:45 (Something has to be done to rein this in)

Horrible sleep. I think I'm very very sick. Well actually I know I am :P Rogers is horribly slow. DO NOT USE IT. I'm attempting to download the freely available Java SDK/JDK and the IDEs and its taking forever. Long long WARG meeting today. I like the group but I feel like I don't belong. Weird no? But the feeling is there and very strong. Have to start working on the sponsorship for that. Wasted a lot of the day today. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Hmm...gotta read more Materials stuff. Fell asleep in that tutorial. Looking forward to the N2 reunion on Friday - mostly cause Justin and Kurt will be there. Cool! Great friends! Sleep @ 11:30 (usual).

Oh my - 10 days since the last update. Partly my fault - partly not. First - I moved to Waterloo on the 8th. Unfortunately, my computer was packed away on the 7th. I've been without the net for a week (horror!!). When I finally got the net on Sat 14 (sharing) I found that Rogers is dog slow... I also found out I can't update the sympatico page because I'm not ftping in from a sympatico account. Garbage. Worked on the work term report and handed that in today. Found out that I messed the page numberings up royally. Also worked on my resume a bit. Will have to do more work tomorrow. Got more involved in WARG. This is supposed to be our easiest term. I like it so far - but Calculus is for some reason again proving to be uncooperative. Actually I blame my brain.

Man, seems like today is a repeat of yesterday. Same problem continues over... Worked quite a bit on the report today. Finished the letter of submittal, summary, conclusions, recommendations, started on the figures, included the table, got some information into the ranking sheet, cut the report down to 20 pages... Yet I could have done more. If there's one book I definitely will read its "How to use each hour effectively!"... I'm sure I could do more with my time. Last day before moving it. Kinda anti climatic. Feel like I'm in a void or something. Erik is a lost cause. Oh well, not much I can do about that. Watched pieces of The Matrix and read up datasheets. Whee! Talked to Dave on ICQ... He's starting his report today.

Today was a horrible day. I worked on my report - got somewhere but not much. It feels like I'm winding the entire thing down after all it is over the limit. Talked to Jaron about Linux and where it should go. I'm of the opinion that if people are interested they should try it out and recognize that it'll involve a bit of dissonance (for now). He wants things to become pain free before he'll move. I guess he's waiting... Talked to Bell, set up the phone line. That took a lot of time. Asking about the billing, Sympatico and on and on... Finally got in touch with Justin on ICQ. It's like he's a mirage - you can almost *never* catch him. Set up Internet with Rogers - reasonable price for the first three months. Extortion afterwards since we don't have TV. Talking to everyone tires me out :( Rest of the day unfolded badly.

Started working much more on my work term report today. The anaylsis was just started and while writing the rubric the report extended over the 20 page limit. !$%!! I contacted my landlord and asked that I move in @ 3:00 on the Saturday. Bought the remainder of my books, filed for OSAP online and bought the router. Posted quite a bit on help.gnomesupport.org/forums/. Played with Wanda the fish. You know - the GNOME fish :) It will be a very busy day tomorrow. I have to finish the report and set up the phone + internet. Someday I'll have to find the time to get a bike. Sleep @ 11:00

An eventful day today. Went to Waterloo to clear up my OSAP and associated student loans. Called first to conifrm that the Student Awards office didn't mysteriously close as they as so apt to do. Met Mike and Alex. Good to see them. Dropped over 600+ dollars on books - can you say R.O.B.B.E.R.Y? Obviously the Waterloo bookstore can. Tried to find the bike store I saw earlier - apparently they went out of business or something. Also, I think I'm getting addicted to the Pita Factory - great pitas! Got back home and drove my sister to watch Vin Diesel in XXX. Final Verdict: "Great if you like big explosions, overstressed music and a weeeak plot - good timewaster." Somebody should tell them to turn the volume down - my ear drums are ruptured. Sleep @ 2:00.

Been somewhat of an interesting day today. Got to talk to four friends that I haven't talked to for over 6 months - 1 year. Got along well with 2, struck out with the other 2. Unfortunate. One of them really didn't sound enthusiastic about hearing from me. Wondering what the heck went wrong. Was unable to concentrate on the work term report fully. Turns out that the situation is more convoluted than I had expected. Consoled myself by dragging out my suitcase and arranging/destroying the detritus of my stay at Leitch. Talked with people about how I react to situations. Confirmed things I've always suspected about myself when I'm interacting with others. Worried about getting my next job. Also found out that I won't be able to buy the books second hand. Damn. These books will cost me a fortune. Sleep early - 12:00.

Woke up late - the results of staying up late reading John Lescroast books. Quite like them actually - the only lawyer based books I can stand. Went to church. Sermon was about how people didn't think about what went right and always focused on what went wrong. How true! We should give thanks for what we do have... Got back late - went out bought foodstuffs for Waterloo etc. Sent emails off to Kurt, Justin and others. Long emails - lots to write. Read through the mass of emails I have (hitting almost 200 per day). Took too much time. There has to be more of a culling process. Talked to Parthipan about a distro. He decided to download the newest Redhat beta. I want to hear his opinions on its usability. Ended up reworking the page.

I've got to stop staying up late. Lazy day today. Wrote some GTK2 code (just a bit). Helped my parents around the house. Talked to my landlords about what time I have to make it to Waterloo. Finally hammered out the time to next Saturday. That's probably when Justin hits the place. I'll have to call them back with the time. I'm not very comfortable talking to people - disturbing...

Work is over. This was in fact a wreck of a day. Almost nothing got done and it felt like I was in stasis. It appeared like both sides (my employer and I) wanted out. I cleaned out my stuff in the directories etc. Put the macros in the right place etc. etc. Left the Linux stuff up ;-) Hopefully the next coop will be interested enough to take a look @ what the weirdo before her was interested in. I had some Calvin and Hobbes up too - gotta love that comic strip :-) Talked to Parthipan, Tom, had a game of pool with Greg. Played Rally cars on Grand Turismo 3...nice game. Finally said my goodbyes. Kinda sad leaving the place...

Found out the name of the coop who'll be working in my place. By accident actually. Dialed my extension by mistake (1 button) and found myself staring at an S.D. What the hell? Kinda interesting feeling actually - everything's changing under you. Worked on the work term report. I hate reports. I don't want to see them as long as I live. Damn.

So, I got my sendoff meal today. We went to Mandarin and the people I've worked w/ for 4 months will be no more in 2 days. Hard to believe time flew by that fast. Back to university in a week. Crazy indeed. I'm not sure I want to be back - its a depressing place. Noticing that I've been listening to a lot of heavy metal and rock in the last week or so. This, along with dance music (?!) are the two genres I listen to the most. For the longest time I listened to dance but something happened. In the last few months, I've found myself unable to stand the music on the radio - especially Z103.5. My work term report just became harder to complete. Freaking. Found out today that the other coop I work with is actually a pastor - pretty neat! I've got to ask him some stuff. Increase in cynicism noted - worrisome.