November 1, 2004
3 day week

i meant to put these up on friday, but i had dinner instead.

well, i really meant to around the helix birthday, but i didn't know where they were.

anyway, nat and miguel didn't know that i did some freelance visual design work when they hired me. one of the first things i did after we built the first round of gnome packages was to make a new splash screen:

i did another when we started work on gnome 2:

and the last one was done for the gnome 1.4 packaging effort. it was around the time of the whistler beta (XP):

hmm, maybe i should add some ascii logos to lustre startup.

November 2, 2004
catch it

i was going to say here that i have election fever, but really i just want to go back to sleep. with the time change i can't fall asleep until 5. and staying up until 9:30 saturday morning probably didn't help. at least tomorrow's friday.

November 3, 2004
i'm going to canada

last night 50M+ americans, and possibly billions world-wide, got to experience what it's like to be a cleveland sports fan.

as for me, my voting experience last night was not unlike what i imagine the old iraqi elections to be: one unopposed democrat after another. i got kind of excited when there was one thing with two democrats listed, but then i read the instructions for that one which read, "Select not more than TWO." it's like i said, my vote really doesn't matter.

the only reassuring result was that Mass. voters don't like the patriot act. oh, and we didn't ban gay marriage or elect bush. way to go, ohio!

i'm flying to canada tomorrow. i don't know when i'll be back.

i wonder what other people were listening to while they voted. i thought about bombs over baghdad, but when push came to shove it was a punch-up at a wedding.

my flight leaves at 11, but i haven't been able to fall asleep lately sleep until 5 or so, so i decided to put my radiohead buttons on my monkeys. if i were more artistic i'd make them do poses and stuff, but i'm not.

November 5, 2004
i wonder how much freedom costs here

i am half-way through my trip to canmore. canmore is very different from boston. as you can see, in boston we have squirrels and abandoned box offices. canmore has mountains and wind.

it has been a good trip so far, meeting some people for the first time, and many others for only the second. we've been talking about some things which have me very excited, like focusing more on code quality and design over meeting (often insane!) deadlines.

which is good, because sometimes it feels like meeting insane deadlines is the only thing i can do well, and it's not always fun the morning after.

it's also been pretty windy. we lost power and internet for a couple of hours this afternoon, because a tree fell on the power lines. later, while looking out of this window, i actually saw a tree fall down.

i've had a punch-up at a wedding in my head since i voted. i really like that song.

November 6, 2004

we saw this band in canmore tonight, and they were pretty awesome. they are also on iTunes. that's all i have.

November 7, 2004

this is what i'm walking about when i talk about being a cleveland sports fan. when i saw the opening kickoff before i got on the plane in chicago, i had a hunch something like this might happen.

we could see the northern lights on our plane. it wasn't exciting.

November 9, 2004
careful what you're wishing for

at some point united started letting you listen to the pilot's communications radio thing on the internal radio thing. o'hare's ground traffic was insane. do the air traffic controllers work in like 30 minute shifts there? i can't imagine they can take much more than that without having at least a heart attack or two a day.

flying east is strange, because you relive the weather. it was really warm in canmore on friday, then pretty cold saturday. then sunday night was warm here in boston, while yesterday it was cold...

after a solid 3 days of listening to the jimmy swift album i can say that is excellent. i was worried that having been locked in peter's basement for 3 days may have distorted my judgement when we saw them saturday. now i just need to find out how to get their first album...

November 11, 2004
what freedom means to me (or, dinner and a movie)

i think it's totally awesome that people are over in iraq fighting so that i can spend my evening playing halo and eating reese's pieces and a loaf of (buttered!) bread.

November 12, 2004

i just beat halo 2. at least i think i did. the credits went by and stuff, but there weren't any parts i was stuck at for over a week like the first one. i don't know if that's because it's easier, or because i'm better. surely, i am not going to try to win on legendary. it was hard enough on whatever level i was playing; i do not yearn for more frustration. also i have a job.

it snowed today; my apartment is so quiet. well except for all the disks and fans.

i almost gave myself a heart attack just now. earlier today i was talking with my mom about whether or not i pay for the heat in my apartment: i get a gas bill (i have a gas stove), but there's no thermostat up here. she said i'd know the next time i got a gas bill. anyway i just opened my electricity bill thinking it was the gas bill. the heart attack bit is because the electric bill is a lot higher than the gas. i guess you kind of had to be there.

November 15, 2004

it was a bitter and brutal winter, but the snow is finally starting to melt; springtime has returned to beautiful brookline!

i spent most of yesterday reading internet porn.

now i just need to drum up some VC money...

unlike some people, this weekend i found myself wishing i had more evil apple hardware. i want an apple designed gaming console which has bluetooth controllers and plugs into my tv via firewire. i want a slot-loading toaster. a touch-wheel stove. brushed aluminum pillow cases.

i just realized wednesday night is now in its sixth year. i can't tell if it seems like a long time or not.

between joey moving out and the coming onslaught of christmas dvd releases, i have been buying dvds at a pretty steady clip lately. but i haven't been catching up. so i bit the bullet and started an amazon wishlist. just in time for the holidays.

November 18, 2004
this is where the magic happens

over the last week or so, i've been getting our packages working better on sles 9, starting with navigating the twisty maze that is the sles 9 install, to finally realizing i had to rm the K05network scripts in /etc/rc.d/ to keep it from downing eth0 before it was done using (nfs) /.

the real fun has been getting our .spec file to make %post scripts and kernel-source rpms that work on sles 9 as well as rhel and rhl, in 2.4 and 2.6. it takes about 30 minutes for a build to get to the point where i can find an error, and i only can fix (at most!) one error per build. it's fun, because i sit at my desk and look at the GTA box.

November 19, 2004

today has started off terribly.

if there is one thing that makes me really angry it is playing wiffle ball with people that have no ability or desire to play wiffle ball. and that's what i was dreaming about before i woke up.

so now i am angry, and probably will be all day.

November 22, 2004
there's a sun on the horizon

flying back from canmore 2 weeks ago, i was on phil and peter's flight to chicago. they were nice enough to bump me up to first class so i could sit with them. it's totally different up there. you get palatial seats, and some water while the common folk are boarding. i was so excited, that i poured it all over my pants. phil made me get off the plane, and take a later flight.

November 23, 2004
out of my element

this article about sim city pointed me to the new urbanism movement. i am interested in subscribing to their newsletter, or at least reading a book on it. but i am in cleveland, and i can't think of any bookstores within walking distance. is that irony?

• east cambridge: the pittsburgh of boston
• shaker towne centre: a city on the... grow?

i wish i had my simpsons dvds. now i want to watch the monorail and casino episodes. oh and the globex corp one. (btw that synopsis is terrible. homer never realizes anything about globex and scorpio, i think)

November 27, 2004
it doesn't make much sense at all

this week i violated my cardinal rule of web development: change the layout, or something else. three days of writing php, css, and perl later, and i can make purple pages again. i apologize for the rss spam, but sometimes things happen that are out of our control.

last night joe and i went to a cleveland barons game downtown. i got the tickets that morning, so we only ended up front row by the blue line. i'd have some awesome pictures, but my camera's batter was dead.

the game itself was fine - a couple of nice goals, and sitting right against the boards is pretty exciting when hip checks start flying. but it really made me miss going to bruins games. i mean, the last game we'd gone to was a sold out game 7 in april. an early season minor league game with 2500 people just isn't as exciting.

and we didn't even get a puck. but we did get to cheer when they showed a little kid in a bruins jersey on the jumbotron (of course joe and i were wearing ours).

November 29, 2004
when push came to shove i became a slack-jawed gawker

i heard some yelling, and when i looked out of the window, there was some guy with some dogs jumping around them. he tried to kick them and his boot flew off. then he jumped in his truck. the dogs ran around a bit, then into the backyard of the house across the street.

the man waited in his truck (it turns out he is a chimney sweep!) for a while. when the coast was clear, he got out, grabbed his shoe, and ran into my next door neighbor's house.

a few minutes later the police arrived.

November 30, 2004

yesterday i realized it's going to be 2005 in 4 weeks or so, which totally shocks me.