cat slave diary

4 Feb 2001 »

cancer of the neck, update
According to the doc, it’s a sebacious cyst, one that is in a bunch of nerves that’ll need very careful surgery to remove the next time it really gets inflamed.

However, since the antibiotics really didn’t make much of a dent on the sucker, I’m going to keep a very close eye on this one.

hackery

My laptop’s hard drive has just about expired. I’ve lost my PST to the god of missing sectors.

I received patches from Jeff Dike for the Win32 version of User Mode Linux, but until I can get my hd problem sorted, I can’t really work on it.

I’m working on trying to get a bunch of security fixes out for XFree86. If David or Matthieu are reading this, my mind is back on the job.

I still need to find the advisory I wrote up for it, but I have this sinking feeling it’s in the PST that was.

4 Feb 2001 »

oooooaf, turn off the sun
Woke up this morning, still drunk. Had a shower, and considered but didn’t do the ol’ technicolor yawn. Went back to bed to sleep it off more.

robey: crap medicine

echin acea is crap and is for soft-minded idiots who also tend to believe in crystals and the wonders of “natural” supplements. Cyanide is “natural” as is tetrodotoxin. Echinacea, like most of the staple homeopath rubbish, doesn’t work. What works is stuff with symptom suppressors, like Codral Cold and Flu Day/Night. These wonderous little babies have pseudo-ephedrine in them, which is like speed but legal. I had the flu two weeks ago, and with the blue pills I was able to work, present a talk at LCA, fly to Melbourne and back, with some pain go for a short bush walk with Matthew Wilcox in the Blue Mountains, host a BBQ for 30, and finally spread the flu to at least three others (my brother’s fiancee, Skud, and my flatmate’s girlfriend). With the red pills I was able to sleep all through the night and I only used about 3/4 of a box of tissues for the entire two weeks.

Don’t waste time with medically unproven crap, go for decent, medically tested suppressors. If you must take ze ‘erbal remedies, I suggest scotch on ice with a dash of lemon juice.

3 Feb 2001 (updated 3 Feb 2001) »

mp3nb tbnedede to follpow

I w2iolll translate ater

fuck i’mk oiusssed

pleraser ajvread me lkatrer

3 Feb 2001 »

so pisdsed,
I’m writing this ompletely outy of my mind. Much talisker adn aberlour have been dreunk, as well as rtteee bottyles of wine.

Fanstiashoigc

Lidytnrennh yo Suaan Vego, washer name the one with tue rape song, fuck.

sgtytt

Ipnm pissed

31 Jan 2001 (updated 31 Jan 2001) »

life

I’ve resigned as SAGE-AU President and I’m going to free myself up for things I actually enjoy.

A couple of years ago, my uncle died when he was the grand old age of 49 from cancer. At that time, he did a lot of stuff that came off as being terribly self-centred.

Now I understand.

30 Jan 2001 »

cancer of the neck
It’s official: I have a cyst the size of a marble in one of my lymph thingies in my neck.

I see a specialist next Monday, who will probably use a needle the length and diameter of a drinking straw.

Take that, Terrence and Philip!

28 Jan 2001 »

hackery
Working towards an XFree86 patch kit for 3.3.6 and 4.0.2 to address the recently re-released LWN moans.

life

Have a cyst or some other awful lump turn up in the last couple of weeks. Going to the doctor to get that sorted out.

Also visiting the dentist today to get temporary fillings replaced with real fillings.

What fun.

25 Jan 2001 »

hackery
not much happening. Laptop is getting better.

mirwin:

Keep up the drugs, good buddy. I’m not sure what you’re on, but I want a couple of kg sent my way.

22 Jan 2001 (updated 22 Jan 2001) »

life
jerry! jerry! jerrrrrrry!

work

Trying out RH 7.0 on Mr laptop. Work provides me with a Citrix session, so basically I’ll install the Citrix client on Linux and see where we go from there.

Problems noted so far:

I have a USB mouse. RH has a screenblanker that’s set offensively low (it’s like 20 seconds or similar) that blanks the screen if I’m just using a mouse (like when I’m browsing). Using xset s off doesn’t help, so it’s something else doing it.

I’m going to install KDE 2.1 beta 1 and see how that works.

21 Jan 2001 (updated 21 Jan 2001) »

LCA speaker’s BBQ

Had a great time organising this, managed to get a goodly percentage of the open source mavens in one place eating all the same food under a huge tree in my back yard which might blow down one day. You can tell I’m in security because I wondered if it was a good idea to have so many really talented people in the one spot at one time.

I missed skud not coming, but we had a good time nonetheless. Skud sounded crap on voicemail, so it was probably better that she tried to recover before flying anywhere. Flying with a cold is like torture; I hate it with a vengenace. I’ve just got over a really nasty bout of flu, and I think I might have passed it along to Skud and Ang, my flatmate’s girlfriend, who now has a sore throat.

We had fun getting our guests working on WaveLAN as Linux seemed real finicky about ad-hoc mode. FreeBSD didn’t have any problems and Greg Lehey got it working shortly after powering up. Luckily, Tridge had his Apple basestation with him, and that made the Linux guys work fine. Dan wired up his 8 port 10/100 MB switch, daisy chaining off my identical switch. Very geek-studly today.

Managed to keep up with Raph, and showed him pnm2ppa actually working on my Alpha, something I hadn’t seen for a while. Talked to him about Ghostscript features PPA printers (and all inkjets) need. We agreed that further talking on this issue is necessary. I’m going to try and import the ppa portion of the driver into GS 7.0 as a dynamically loaded module, but due to the worse CMYK and dithering algorithms in GS, the output will be worse than pnm2ppa does at the moment.

The bizarre moment du jour pour moi is watching Alan Cox playing SSX (snowboarding game) on Mr Playstation 2. Folks, Alan is a human, and a nice one at that.

Last note for the Australians: we didn’t run out of beer, and we didn’t run out of food. I qualify this BBQ as a success.