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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
So much for my update yesterday ;-) I managed to get the date and framework typed in, then two kids jumped into my lap (er, plus my laptop) and demanded my undivided attention -- and there is was, gone; the the execution part of my Grand Plan...
Ahem. As I was saying... Thursday night we had a feast of royal proportions. My brother-in-law nabbed a 10-12 lb. Spring salmon from a friend, which I dressed up with butter, garlic, fresh dill/parsley, and... well... the rest is a secret: I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you ;-) Add in some BBQ'd chicken breasts, several salads, baked potatoes, fresh corn on the cob, and you have a meal fit for kings and, of course, queens.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day debugging several troublesome PHP/LDAP scripts (I'm still slogging -- making progess, but it's slow and painstaking work).
Today the kids and I went to a family picnic at Central Park. Several interesting observations came as a result of this outing.
One, Vancouver has taken upon itself to build a "HOV" lane on the main highway into the city (the 401 for those who like numbers). But they set some strange conditions on who can use the lane. "Cars with two or more people". Mmm. First and foremost, what exactly is "high occupancy" about a vehicle with two people in it??? Second, and perhaps most interesting, EVERYONE wants to drive in the HOV lane. So here I am, driving in the center lane (to the right of the HOV lane), making better time than everyone else. Reminds me of my days trucking -- we called it the "Giddy-up-or-go lane: Giddy up, or GO. Guess as I get older I just miss some of the finer nuances of life.
The second poignant fact: I realized today that as a "visitor" to Vancouver, I was in the minority because I was white and spoke English. Yep, the majority of people who live in Vancouver now are not only immigrants, but they don't "compredee" English.
I feel like I'm in a foreign land. White, English-speaking, and all. No, I'm not a bigot, nor am I opposed to immigrants. They, after a fashion, founded our country. But when I, as an English-speaking citizen, find myself out of place in a public place, there is -- IMHO -- something very wrong with the system. If someone wants to immigrate to Canada for valid reasons -- welcome. But welcome to Canada. Be a part of the culture. Nuff said. End Rant.
Other than cultural oddities, I'm well. Leah's away for the weekend with her Mom, Mom's sisters, and a couple cousins. So I'm not only writing, editing, and researching, I'm also providing all manner of child services, changing diapers, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, and yes, looking after the infamous partridge that resides in the pear tree.
Be well, as my friend Moshe would say...
...
Happy July 4th to all my American cousins!
Rain today. Yeah, I know... surprise, surprise. No matter to me, however, as I've been heads-down since O-dark-hundred editing an article, investigating LDAP resources, researching stories for the Buzz, and generally hammering on the keyboard.
I intended to return last night and post some further notes, but I got buried in Programming PHP, Lerdorf and Tatroe (O'Reilly and Associates). Before the evening came to a close I had gobbled up 100+ pages; needless to say, I like the book and find it easy to follow even as a non-programmer. I tried to learn Basic about 20 years ago when I first got involved in computers, but alas I had nothing to apply my skills to so it became an excercise in theory. Ten years later I tried valiantly to learn C, but I just could not for the life of me get my head around some of the concepts, so that attempt died a noble death as well. Since then I've simply accepted the fact I'm programming-illiterate, but I don't mind telling you, it's been a stumbling block for me on more than one occasion. So I decided this spring I'd give things another go -- this time focusing on trying to get at least a rudimentary handle on PHP. This time around, however, I'll at least have something to apply any learned skills to. I'm going to revamp my site this fall on an underpinning of Apache, PHP, and mySQL. If remaining two-thirds of Lerdorf's and Tatroe's title is as clearly written as the first, I just might from this process with enough framework to at least discuss programming constructs intelligently.
A couple notes/carryovers from yesterday:
Although implied, I didn't really get into any details regarding my wireless configuration adventures. I finally experienced success installing and configuring the wlan-ng drivers (which had, until Monday, always eluded me in one form or another). It took some serious wangling, but here's what eventually worked...
Finally, I downloaded an installed Mozilla 1.1-alpha last night (sorry for all you Konq lovers, but I find the program just too flakey for daily use) and so far I'm impressed. Load time has been dramatically shortened, the browser overall seems better behaved regarding option settings, and to date it's been as stable programmatically as 1.0. Again, YMMV.
Gotta fly... more edits to wrap up, and we're off to the relatives for dinner tonight.
Cheers.
We arrived, safe and sound, in Vancouver late Sunday night. It's been a pandamonium ever since. As noted, I'm here on a working holiday. Which means I get to work while everyone else shops and visits. Which generally speaking, is a-okay with me. Problem is the chair I'm currently sitting in is NOT my office, and either everything I need is out of reach, or still in Saskatoon. Bleh. Sadly, I didn't do a great job of prepping for this trip. I forgot to make CDs of my data on Hydras and every time I want access to even the smallest file, it means logging in via SSH over a less than speedy connection (my father-in-law finally broke down and got HS access, but I'm here to tell you, they don't make high speed here in BC like they do in Saskatchewan ;-).
My other major frustration is that I couldn't get a key system file to compile under Gentoo before I left, and given that I was running out of time, I ended up putting Red Hat 7.3 on my notebook. I have RH running on my development server at home, and overall I'm pleased with it. It works, it's easy to do a quick re-install, and I don't have any GUI's on the system. But on my notebook... well, that's another story. After working on a highly optimized Gentoo system for several months, Red Hat (on my Dell notebook, anyway) plain sucks! It took me most of Monday to get wireless working (I brought my wireless hub along so I could work wherever the noise was least pronounced); I finally had to DL and built a new kernel from scratch, plus dig up a bunch of config files the RH engineers conveniently forgot to install. I see RH have not fixed the routing problem I spoke of several months ago either. I finally added a line to rc.local that deletes the eth0 route table so I could use my wireless connection. Oh well. So it goes some days... perhaps this weekend I'll find time to do a clean Gentoo installation... or maybe not. At least what I have now works -- after a fashion.
On the bright side, the weather here has been pleasant. Not too hot, not too cold. And the Granparents are frothing with delight to see the kids.
Me? Busy, busy. Finished a 5500 word article on GnuPG for a corporate client today; tomorrow I dive into some serious LDAP research and configurations. More as time permits. Be good all.
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