cat slave diary

LCA
Having a ball. Finally met a few people who I had e-mailed over the years, and someone whom I respect believed I was a Linux guru. A little bit wrong on that one.

Finally met Alan and Telsa. Unbelievably nice people. It must be frustrating going to places where everyone sorta worships you, knows your name, but you have no clue what their name or their stuff is.

My talk on adding software engineering to the open source mix went reasonably well, and tonight’s Mom&Pop(tm) talk by maddog backed my views on world domination to the hilt. I’m so glad that one of the grey beards of our community is saying these things to the young ‘uns, for they so desperately need to hear the message, and I feel that I didn’t really get the message through.

Rusty Russell is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard, and I’m not just saying that because I am now in the cult of Rusty. If you have a conference and need a keynote, bribe or kidnap Rusty. IMNSHO, his is the best talk so far.

Tonight’s dinner was excellent for the company and the auction at the end. maddog won the first round bidding war on a t-shirt that all the speakers had signed, and then he immediately gave it back to be re-auctioned. Extraordinarily generous!

hackery

Went to the QT/Embedded talk. Bulb went off. Immediately wanted to design secret project for NetBSD, but couldn’t cos I was the next speaker. Later that afternoon, did brain dump to my friend Luke.

Jeff Dike has patches to try and make User Mode Linux work on NT. I’ve just core’d patch several times under cygwin. Apparently, once the patching has completed, it barfs and needs much attention to complete the port.

I met Raph (the guy who made this place, cool dude), and he and I are going to have an e-mail conversation very soon about GS 7.0 print drivers for ink jets. So is maddog so I can get him via LI to pump HP once more for PPA info.

Too much to do, not enough hours in a day.

13 Jan 2001 »

the blue pill or the red pill?
Have a cold. It’s the middle of quite a balmy summer. This is wrong. I have pills that help suppress all but the most determined coughs and sniffles. But the question remains, which color to take?

lca: drinking update #1

Only a few of the fresh victims^W^Winternational speakers have arrived, and already we Australians are drinking too much, saying “strewth”, or “oath” for no apparent reason.

I didn’t take an evil picture of Sarah (caution 460 kb image). She promised much pain if I did. If I had known she was there tonight, I would have bought her present for my indescretion the last time I took the last shocker.

hackery

Xfree86 has made it onto another platform today with Simon finishing the merge of my set of patches of his original patches to XFree86 4.0.2 + some stuff that needed animal sacrifice and a waning moon to achieve. NetBSD-current and 1.5.1 will now have XFree86 on the Alpha platform. Still more work needed, but it’s nice.
4 Jan 2001 »

life
Just got back from a midnight drive to the Great Ocean Road and back, mostly to charge my mobile phone, partially to see my friend Margaret for the last time and partially as a method of politely disentangling myself from a set of friends I had been with all day*.

It was exhilerating to see all the lightening strike the earth in a huge panorama through the car windows and sunroof, great big rolling strikes everywhere followed almost immediately by crashing thunder. It was dark and light at the same time. Fun.

I’ve had a great few days, seeing most of my Melbourne based friends and plenty of films. It’s my last day today before driving back to Sydney on Saturday.

Films

Most disturbing film: Dancer in the dark. Extraordinary.

Most entertaining film: Meet the parents. Which isn’t saying much. Where’s the fine art of fart jokes gone? The single pathetic dream sequence in the Klumps doesn’t count.

Film I enjoyed the most: O Brother, Where art thou? I thought George Clooney to be a lightweight doctor-wannabe. This film changed my mind, and not just because he was in a Coen brothers film.

hackery of a different kind

In a few hours, I’m off to the doc to see if any of my moles (the dark things, sorta like big freckles) need hacking out of my body. The downside of being Australian with fair skin.

disclaimer

* I am on a tight schedule. I’m not getting rid of them, I just have many friends who don’t see me often, and I needed to see Margaret as she doesn’t see me all that often.

1 Jan 2001 (updated 1 Jan 2001) »

life

It’s great not using computers for days at a time. I’ve managed to log on and check my mail so irregularly, that it’s started to annoy some of my friends who seem to expect near instant response.

house cleaning

I’ve archived 140 MB of e-mail from the last six months and cleaned out all my folders. Then to top it off, I defragmented my hard drive.

I’m sure you’re all impressed with that.

new year’s

Had a great time at lukem and his wife Inger’s last night. Got totally wasted on evil “champagne cocktails”, which, okay, involved sparkling white wine but also involved vodka and cranberry juice, and a later more evil one involved alcholic raspberry cassis. This inebriation saw me trying to make Inger the world’s smallest G&T, as she gave me a shot glass. It dawned upon us both that she wanted a shot of gin to add to the tonic, not a 30 ml G&T.

Domain Chandon, the Australian outpost of Moet and Chandon produce excellent sparkling white wines. I’ve been a fan since going there for vintage in 1995 or 1996 (memory’s a bit fuzzy :-). They have excellent tours and have great grounds for a little picnic or staying in their buildings for totally hedonistic afternoons. Bring a designated driver.

These last two days, I bought and helped drink three bottles of their 1997 Vintage, and quite frankly for $AUD26.95 (about $US13) it was damn close to the 1993 Moet and Chandon which set me back $80 (about $US40) we had for dinner tonight with my family. If you’re ever in this part of the world, you owe it to yourself to get some and savor it. Excellent, and even better if not pissed.

26 Dec 2000 (updated 26 Dec 2000) »

schoen: HHGTG

Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in Java.

Enjoy poetry only works in certain places.

family

I think my mum is losing it. People shouldn’t retire unless they have something to do.

Not good.

hackery

Paper is being worked upon. Very late, 6 pages and counting, and I still don’t like it.

cats

My cats are both outside and being fed by various people. I wonder what my little furry ones will think of me when I get back.

sleep

I’ve been affected by insomnia since my uni days (about 12 years now). I need about 3-4 hours sleep every night and I feel crap when I manage this amount. Mostly I sleep 4-6 hours most nights, getting to sleep around 2 or 3 am and arising at 8 for 8.30 am. I’m doing this cycle as I type, and haven’t had more than 5 hours of sleep per day since Saturday (it’s now Wednesday morning).

Occasionally, I sleep 10+ hours when my body can’t take it anymore. This is usually on the weekends, but recently I slept in for the first time in a very long time on a work day. I got up at 10.45 am, and went directly to the Christmas party. Not good.

That wasn’t the first time that I thought of getting some drugs to manage sleep, but bugger that. I’ve tried all the tricks: various alcohol “nightcaps”, exercise before bed, chamomile tea, setting the alarm for 5.30 am (through to 7 am), going to bed only when I am tired, getting out of it as soon as I wake. You name it - if it didn’t involve prescription drugs, I’ve done it. Getting up as soon as I arise for the first time (if you have cats, you know that the little buggers love to wake about anywhere from 4 am til 6 am and nudge you or put a paw on your nose or crawl under the bedsheets; to me that wake up nudge is not a real wake up) doesn’t work either - I just end up being real tired the entire day through.

After turning 30, I decided to forget all about the sleep issue. I don’t really miss that extra 2-3 hours, and I get to read a whole lot more, I usually recuperate on the weekends. I’ll manage.

21 Dec 2000 »

unhappy families
Last Sunday, my cousin’s wife of five weeks, Sang, was riding her motorbike around a double bend, and didn’t make it around the second one. Gordon, my cousin, and the other rider did, but it was too late.

That tragedy was compounded by the fact that I didn’t even know my cousin had been married, let alone been engaged for over two years.

My cousin, his parents and my parents

It’s the first time all of them have been in the same room, or even spoken to each other in real time in over six years.

My parents and his parents had a petty argument about six years ago (the details of which are long, tedious, and intrinsically snobby), which resulted in the family not speaking to each other.

My message to you all in this frivilous season is life is too short for this sort of shit. If you’re in the same boat as me, go and see your family now before it’s too late.

16 Dec 2000 »

hackery
Not enough time. Need 30-40 hour days. I have nearly hacked WinVNC to use a far more secure API (LsaStorePrivateData() if you’re interested) rather than stashing passwords in the registry. But due to aforesaid lack of time, I don’t have time to finish this, and the patches I posted to the vnc- developer list got stripped by a bloody-minded automated de- MIME thingy.

life

off on annual leave for three weeks, but…

work

Not enough time. I still have 3 (largish) documents to finish, time sheets and an extensive expense claim to submit. All before Monday 9 am. Might get some sleep soon, but…

cars

helped a friend buy the right car today. Took two and a bit test drives. Got Adrian (who was just along for the ride) and Rebecca to sit in an Audi S3 (like my friend Luke’s) for a couple of ticks. Very nice. She bought a Subaru Forester. Faux off-road 4wd’s make my teeth ache, but compared to the real thing that are also never taken off the road, this is only a minor twinge compared to the complete fscking arseholes who believe the road is theirs to hog, add a pedestrian killing bull bar (which will never touch the sweet flesh of any of our bovine friends), and steal my average mass-based safety net via their superior mass (and thus momentum) when they plow right through my baby car.

time

Need more time.

14 Dec 2000 »

hadess: Xfree86 on ppc
4.0.2 is out soonish (like dec 15 is code build day). 4.0.2 fixes a number of known PPC-isms as well as introduces a bunch of new servers and features, whilst improving the stability of the 4.0.x code base.

4.0.2 is not just a point release. I recommend this release for all of you who are still sticking to 3.3.x for whatever reason.

I’ve said it before, but 4.0.2 will kick ass and take names.

13 Dec 2000 »

pjf: going, going, gone…
Paul, just in case you’re stuck, the deal with those sort of letters is:

be brief - one, maybe two paragraphs of a couple of sentences each maximum
do not slag anyone off or burn bridges
just say “You’ve been wonderful to work for, but I need to …”
do not waste effort stating the reasons you’re moving or tell them what you’re doing next
be factual; include the last date you are going to be there and be firm about it
I like to tie my finish date to pay runs so there’s a _last_ pay which should contain all your accrued benefits and you never need to return once you’ve packed your desk.

Two weeks is the minimal acceptable period, four is typical. They are legally required to send you a group tax certificate within a short time of you leaving. Make sure you get it. I didn’t a couple of times, and it’s never stopped giving me grief.

If you have personal stuff that you really care about, take it home Thursday night (this includes data!), just in case your employer has a selectively enforced “escorted off the premises” termination policy. I’ve seen people go this way, and it’s never pretty. Bring any stuff you have at home they own back in on Friday morning. They usually give you like 5 minutes to pack your desk in these situations.

Just remember, this letter is business, not personal - even though personal reasons are the reason everone does stuff.

Good luck!

12 Dec 2000 »

life
I’m a Win2K MCSE after passing my final MCP exam. Woohoo.

That last exam was Designing Network Infrastructure, which funnily enough is what I do for a living. I do network security architecture on a first-world country scale. I am currently working on a project that will re-engineer how my telco client communicates internally and externally. Their network is larger than most third-world countries’ networks, and supports approximately 40% of Australia’s data and voice traffic. So you can see that I sort of know what I’m doing there. So when I sit down to do this MCP exam, I was fairly surprised to see that it SUCKED. I’m almost ashamed to have a MCSE out of this.

The marchictecture was unavoidable, the “best” answer and all of the alternatives in several questions were just plain wrong. They gave marks for answering certain select and place questions that were fundamentally flawed, or ignored industry best practice with respect to security implementation. They ignored timing in several places, where the correct answer in some cases was not even possible to select. Sometimes the “correct” answer is lots of servers, when in fact, I know that capacity planning and hard earned knowledge of large data networks says that 2 or 3 is about right for most applications and then you add some when you need more, not just because you might have 12 sites that *might* need a particular type of server.

I’m going to write to the MS traincert guys to get that exam pulled ASAP. It’s just not a credible test of networking infrastructure know-how, not even if you were doing smaller-scale work like a Uni campus rejig.