* dual, built-in convection ovens
* stand-up mixer
* cookie sheets, baking pans, etc.
* oven mits
Charlotte and I are off to make some chocolate chip cookies :)
Quotation of the Day for December 23, 2007
bq. “Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government.”
– Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in a December 10th speech commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
(via the Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
A completely over-the-top review of a Bic pen:
Amazon.co.uk: M. Williams “Matt Wil…’s review of Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, b…
Some of the comments on this review are equally hilarious:
bq. I often use pencils to write notes on paper, but have been thinking about changing to a pen. Is this pen a good starting point for a novice?
and so on…
Schneier on Security: The War on the Unexpected
bq. We’ve opened up a new front on the war on terror. It’s an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it’s a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested — even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats.
In particular:
* “Fathers can’t hold daughters’ hands”:http://www.bloggernews.net/18108 (Grr. Grr! this is appalling.)
* “iPod terror”:http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11211166&pageNo=1&sid=1 (yes, it happens here in Canada too)
I noticed at my son’s hockey arena recently that the anti-photography signs have changed; now in addition to reporting to building staff that I’m using a camera, the sign claims that I’m only allowed to photograph the people I came to the arena with. Why is this relevant? Because policies like this are both driven by, and feeding into, the societal paranoia that defines this decade.
Several years ago at Niagara Falls I saw a child who was climbing, on the wrong side of a safety fence, on the rocks near the river. I told her it wasn’t safe to be over there, and that she should come back. One of her parents finally noticed and came over to scold the child; not for being in a dangerous place, but for talking to a stranger! (She hadn’t actually said anything to me, for what it’s worth :).
I’m sure I could come up with more stories, personal and on the Internet; it’s too easy this days…
Ugh. Refuse to be afraid, people!
I’ve been a big fan of computer automation for as long as I’ve been computing. Computers are partcularly well suited for repetitive, mundane tasks. I used to have a system set up at Alias, based on “track”:ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/track.README, that would automatically keep all of the system software and configuration files up-to-date, long before HP Software bought Radia :-). My PVR is probably my current ultimate example; it automatically downloads TV listings from the source, searches those listings for my favourite shows, resolves conflicts, etc.; all without my input!
Anyway, it always surprises me when I power on an infrastructure server, and the LDAP server or Perforce server or whatever isn’t configured to start automatically! I mean really; who runs around manually starting essential services after a power outage? I thought we stopped doing that in the 1970s…
(We had to power down our labs over the weekend, because the A/C cooling tower on the roof was being refurbished. It took me all day today to get everything running properly again…)
I decided to try out “Linode”:http://www.linode.com (300Mb RAM, 8Gb disk space for $20/month), since they support Ubuntu 7.04 and have a better memory model and kernel support. So far so good; persephone.cfrq.net has been a virtual server since Wednesday! The migration was trivial; I bought a new linode installation, booted it up, and used rsync to copy files from the old server to the new one. It took about 6 hours altogether. Then I shutdown all the services on the old box, did one final rsync, and updated the DNS to point to the new server. Everything came up right away; I’m not sure if anyone even noticed the change :).
I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep it here or not yet, but I’ve bought myself some procrastination time!
It’s been 5 long and blissfully problem-free years, but now it’s time to find a new host for persephone.cfrq.net. For various unimportant reasons, my server needs to move out of the server room it’s been hiding in. I have a few options:
* see if I can find another free host. Unlikely.
* follow Reid’s footsteps and switch home ISPs to one that allows servers. He’s had a lot of problems with that over the years, but I’ll consider it.
* Move to a virtual server provider (e.g. Linode or Tektonic). I already have a Tektonic VPS, but now we’re talking about real money ($15-$20 per month).
I may have to evict some of my high-resource tenants in the process, which sucks… Still, I can hardly complain, having found free hosting in one place or another for about 15 years now!!!
I’m looking at moving my two domains (third-bit.com and streetknit.ca) off the aging Linux box in Jonah’s machine room, and onto Dreamhost or something similar — if you come across any good deals, I’d be grateful for a ping (and I’ll ping back if I find any).
wjr says: What are your bandwidth and storage needs? I’m happy to add more virtual hosts to http://www.flopcat.org... my ISP is quite happy with servers.
back from vacation. House still in one piece, thanks to Pene!
* trailer: awesome!
* altantic canada: awesome!
* two kiting events: fabulous!
* 3.5 weeks with the family: The Best!
More later :)
I’m not sure if this is irony or hypocrisy. The Carpenter’s Union is outsourcing its picket lines to random people off the street, paying them $1 above minimum wage ($8/hr) to protest … low wages.
Megan McArdle: Harry Potter: the economics
bq. The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?
An interesting touch on the subject. It seems true that in the Potterverse, magic is free, something that never works very well for story telling. C.S. Friedman just published _Feast of Souls_, the first book in a trilogy based on the opposite extreme; the source (and cost) of magic is life force. in _The Magic Goes Away_, Larry Niven deals with magic as a finite resource, to interesting effect. There are lots of other examples in SF&F literature.
So why don’t we care about this inconsistency in Rowling’s work?
Because nowadays, dissing Rowlings works in public is much like going to Rome and picking on the pope?
I think it goes something like this:
1. Magicians can conjure up anything, so why would any of them be poor?
2. Hey, if they can do that, why would any muggles be poor either? Or have diseases?
3. Hm… Why are so many people in the real world poor/hungry/sick, when we could clothe/house/feed/cure them if we wanted to?
4. This train of thought is making me uncomfortable, so I’m going to stop worrying about it and get back to the story.
From Bruce Schneier’s security weblog:
bq. Here’s a “clip”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig from an Australian TV programme called “The Chaser”. A Trojan Horse (full of appropriately attired soldiers) finds its way past security everywhere except the Turkish consulate.
bq. At least they remember their history.
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig
This sounds familiar:
“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue
A-yup. Painfully so.
We picked up the trailer yesterday morning; got a nice walk-through of all the features, etc.; as well as instructions for setup and tear down. We ended up spending three hours at the dealership, but they fed us hamburgers, so all is good!
We drove back home, picked up the kites and the camping gear, and headed out to Valens Conservation Area near Cambridge. I took Gerry’s advice and set the cruise control to 100km/h on the 401 and let everyone else pass me. It wasn’t perfect; I kept catching up with slowpokes! The truck uses more fuel towing the trailer; 15l/100km instead of the 10-11 we get normally on the highway. On the other hand, it accelerates well; we had no troubles with merging, left turns, or hills. I don’t have the trailer brake controller installed yet, so braking needed more distance than normal. I made sure to leave lots of room, so I never had trouble stopping anywhere, even when idiots were cutting me off in front of a traffic jam on the way home. (Trailers are like trucks; everyone wants to be in front of them, not behind).
It took us about 45 minutes to get the trailer positioned on our site, opened, and all the gear unpacked; about what I expected. We walked over to the camp store but they were out of milk, so we had to drive out to the local general store and (butter tart extravaganza!) to get milk and snacks. On the way back, we stopped at the beach to play for a bit, so we didn’t start dinner until 7pm, At which time we discovered that our camper’s stove isn’t quite hot enough to boil water, at least not in any reasonable amount of time. Fortunately I had packed the old kettle for coffee and dishes! By the time dinner was hot the mosquitos were organized into squadrons, so we committed a cardinal sin and ate inside. (I washed up outside, though; by 10pm the skeeters were mostly gone for the night).
We discovered a few problems other than the stove:
* The fridge does not work on 120v power; only on 12v and propane. We’ll have to get that checked out.
* It appears that the water pump was left on during our demonstration. Somewhere between Toronto and Valens it started sucking air; I have no idea how long it was running like that, and I hope it’s not damaged!
* The camper has a nice large drain pipe, but they gave us a garden hose adapter, and I had a small-bore garden hose. It seems that if there is enough back-pressure in the hose, not only does the sink not drain, but the interior drain vapour-locks, and so even after removing the garden hose the sink remains full. Blowing air into the system releases the lock, and can give a face full of sink water. (Fortunately I was faster than that :). I’ll have to get a larger diameter, shorter drain hose.
* The sink trap leaks; we’ll have to get that fixed or the wood holding that part of the camper together will rot out.
It took us about 30 minutes to pack up the trailer once we formally started (I’d already been loading out boxes and doing the dishes before then), and about 5 minutes to pack the truck and hook up the trailer. We spent the afternoon in a kite field, then drove home into a traffic jam; half of the 401 across Toronto was closed! We got home early enough that the rain started as we were putting the trailer into the garage and loading back in the bikes and lawnmower. (The trailer currently eats my garage; I’m definitely going to need a storage shed out back).
All in all it was a good weekend, and I’m very happy with the trailer. I’m looking forward to the Pinery in three weeks!
I cleaned out the garage a few weekends ago. I hauled everything out, sorted it into four piles (the usual trio of throw out, give away, keep; plus recycle). Then I put it all back in! Fortunately the majority of it was trash; stuff we’d never gotten around to sorting through after the chaos of our move from Treverton, plus other detritus acquired over the years. (There’s always something more important to do than clean out the garage :-). I even found a box of old printouts from fourth-year computer science; I though I’d ditched all of that stuff a long time ago! At least these days it gets recycled…
Since then I’ve been hauling garbage and recycling to the curb every Tuesday morning. One more week of garbage pickup should give me the space required to store the trailer; good thing, since we pick it up from the dealer on June 2nd. I still need to take one more trip to the transfer station; got some more old (dead) monitors to get rid of, as well as a box of misc. hazardous waste.
Of course, there’s still too much stuff in the garage; we have two desks, part of a bed, an ancient kitchen table that’s probably worth real money to an antique dealer, and a few more boxes that still need to be sorted. Like Gerry and Diana, we’ve reached the conclusion that we need a shed to reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be temporarily removed to get the trailer into (or out of :) the garage…
Nita says: When do you need the table gone? (Wondering if I can contact my brother in law, who’s an antique dealer – if nothing else to provide some semi-useful info).
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect
bq. Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”
“Bruce Schneier”:http://www.schneier.com/ has been collecting a bunch of these stories lately. His point is less about civil liberties, though. If police and emergency services are kept this busy chasing false alarms, it’s that much easier for the real criminals to slip past unnoticed…
I’ve linked to some of his recent entries:
* “A Rant From a Cop”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/a_rant_from_a_c.html
* “Stage Weapons Banned”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/stage_weapons_b.html
* “How Australian Authorities Respond to Potential Terrorists”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/how_australian.html
* “Another Boston Terrorism Overreaction”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/04/another_boston.html
We drove up to the trailer dealer yesterday to make sure that the truck has everything we need to tow our trailer. We do! The trailer wiring connector is even completely hooked up already, contrary to what it says in the Saturn owner’s manual. The trailer guys were all quite impressed with the Saturn; the hitch is apparently well built, and the rest of the truck looks cool :).
I was a little confused about trailer brake connections. I was under the impression that the Saturn tow package included a brake controller that just needed to be wired up. It turns out that we still need to purchase a separate trailer brake controller and hook it up ourselves. However, there’s a connector for this purpose already wired under the dash, and the Saturn towing kit come with a wiring harness that connects to the brake controller and plugs into the existing connector, so it appears that we’re all good. McKenzie sells the controllers, so maybe they can wire and install it also, if our Saturn dealer doesn’t have an “official” model already.
We tried to use the new DVD player on the way home from Pene’s party last night, and it was dead! It appeared to be a problem with the power connector. When we got home I discovered that the cigarette lighter power connector comes apart, and there’s a 5mm x 20mm 5A fuse hidden inside; yes, the fuse had a broken wire. It doesn’t look blown (usually there’s an ugly black spot on the glass when that happens); I think it broke from being whacked around somehow.
I went to two different stores today looking for replacements without success. I even ended up buying the wrong size at “the store formerly known as radio shack”. Their website says they carry both 1 1/4″ and 20mm fuses, so I’ll have to go back tomorrow and try again. If these fuses are this hard to find, I may have to replace the lighter plug adapter with a different one that takes standard fuses. I’m thinking of re-wiring all of my 12V junk to use Anderson Powerpoles anyway, since that’s the standard ham radio power connector these days, so this would be an excuse to do so for the DVD player :).
Next up: clean out the garage and build a loft, so that we have somewhere to put the trailer, so that we can pick it up. Gerry and I are tentatively planning a Saturday night trip in early June to “shake down” the trailers before our three-day Pinery trip, so we need to get it sometime before then…
I picked up the new truck today; it is beautiful! Long story short (and coming later), we ended up with an entirely different configuration to the one we originally ordered. For one thing, it’s charcoal, a colour we like :-). On the other hand, it has one of those ultra-decadent powered rear liftgates, which I’m sure is going to be a maintenance nightmare in the future. But the ultimate in decadence: heated windshield-washer fluid!
Most important, it has the towing package: trailer hitch receiver and cabling, extra cooling capacity in the engine, and alternate settings for the transmission computer when towing. Now I have to make sure all the wiring is in place (there’s a mention in the manual that fuses for trailer brakes and trailer battery charging are installed, but the wires aren’t hooked up; this seems entirely backwards to me), and get a drawbar with a ball that is the right height for our trailer. Then I have to clear enough space in the garage to park the trailer, and then I can go pick it up from the dealer!
Two, actually.
Gareth’s team won their game against their arch-rivals (the Leafs) on Saturday. They were up 1-0 after the first period. The Leafs scored one to tie early in the second, but Gareth’s Oilers took it back almost immediately, and then scored four more goals to win the game 5-1. I think the main difference between last Saturday’s 1-1 tie and this game was that the forward lines remembered how to score goals :).
Meanwhile, Rick’s curling team (on which I play second) won the 2nd flight championships on Monday night! We’ve had three upset games in a row the last three weeks. We went 10-5 against a very good team, then 15-0 in our second game, then 14-1 in the final. With those scores, we ended up the second highest team in the overall standings! Not bad for my first year playing skins…
Gareth’s Oilers battled the season-winning Leafs to a 1-1 tie, forcing a 2-minute, 3-on-3, sudden-death overtime period. Alas, the Leafs’ star player scored a little less than a minute into the period.
It was a hard fought game; lots of aggressive defense on both sides (although there were surprisingly few penalties to go with it; they were playing clean, at least!). The kids were exhausted when they came off the ice, especially the Oilers who only have 12 players (Goalie, 2 defense lines, and 7 forwards rotating through two lines).
Goulding Park plays a double elimination tournament tournament, so The Oilers go to the semi-final game on Thursday at 6:30, and if they win that they play the Leafs _again_ in the final on Saturday at noon. Go Oilers!
Gareth’s team won, although it was a tense 2-1 win. Kudos to our defense for shutting down several plays. (I don’t think I’m too biased, even though the boy plays defense :).
The Leafs won also, so the top two teams play each other on Saturday. Our record against them goes both ways; they clobbered us early in the season; we clobbered them in the middle; we had very close games at the end. The winner goes to the final; loser goes to the “last chance” game, and gets one more chance to be the other team in the final…
You don’t really need to do anything at all to attract scorn. After the Trans Siberian Orchestra performance at ACC, I sat watching the roadies take apart the stage for 5 minutes or so and was approached by security and told I should go home. I had been watching the security guard’s behaviour earlier in the evening. He was obviously a mental case. He probably thought the same of me, in his eyes there was nothing left to watch so my behaviour did not make logic sense to his limited mind.
He probably didn’t even hear the lead guitarist announce that band members would come out into the stands after the show.
He probably reported seeing a suspicious person to his management for all I know, and some bureaucrap is busy writing up a sign to cover the infraction right now. Something like “last person out at each performance will be shot.”…
I get lost of grief for not blindly following the “teach children stranger danger”. fear of things that should be feared, fine. Fear for it’s own sake? I call bull.
Had another one today! The cashier at Costco asked me for my membership card, so I stepped up and handed it over assuming the tendering of the previous transaction was drawing to its usual conclusion. Alas, the lady ahead of me was paying for her purchase in $10 bills. Augh, I thought, a waste of another 10 seconds of my life. But then… she glanced at me. So I said “Hello.”. She then continued, by my estimation, on the 60th $10 bill, and glanced at me again. Now I thought, uh-oh, she must be paranoid about something, but I saw a child wandering close by and wondered if she glanced at him. ..but then after $10 bill #70 she glanced at me again and said “I would like you to move away from me, I have a lot of money in my hands, and I do not know who you are.”
I was aghast, so I said, “What? I made $15,000 on IMAX on Friday, you think I care about a $10 bill in your purse?”… and stepped back.
She said, “I’M NOT INTERESTED! I WANT SOME SPACE!”.
To which I said, “This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve had in a long while..” (that would be since the security guard asked me to leave the ACC after the show last week).
After the 80th $10 bill found its way out of her purse and she received her bill and was off to pick up her ever so valuable merchandise at the counter, I said to her, “Buy IMAX…”, to which she turned and glared, and then said nothing.
Anyway, wish me luck, I’m taking the heavy equipment to a Skate-Canada event today. Nikon D200 with IS/ED 400 f/5.6 glass. Come bail me out after the show, I’ll give you a free stock tip.
Here, I’ll pay in advance: Stay the hell away from CIBC shares.
Yep, I was harassed. I actually decided to put the 85mm f/1.4 lens on, its better for such a venue. The first security lady said I could not bring a camera like that in, but I thought I’d ask the lady right behind her who was selling tickets and sitting under a sign with 30 point letters that said that cameras with lenses “200mm and less” *were* permitted. After some discussion it turned out that she did in fact know she was sitting under the sign. Once this fact was discovered, some unwritten rules were mentioned about how I could only take pictures of my skater. I simply said “Okay”, and it appeared to be the correct answer. Unfortunately, I was not told which one was my skater, so I had to take pictures of all of them so I did not miss her. Now I’m stuck sorting out hundreds of pictures.
My elder daughter asked me on the way to our seats, “Daddy, why did the first lady say the camera was not allowed, the second one did not know that 85 was less than 200 (duhhh) and the sign on the wall doesn’t say anything about which skaters you can take pictures of?”.
…oh well.
I’m pretty sure that Parks & Rec has no legal basis for the photography claim, and I’ve been planning for a while now to give them a call and find out what’s going on….
Hm, some (persons) apparently unloaded 1000 April put options on CIBC today for about a $300,000 profit on CIBC’s wonderous 5% drop this morning. Thus expireth my stock tips. You are now on your own. Keep the $300,000, maybe we’ll sue the camera-nazis next time.