i went to see quodlibet last night -- it's the choir taavi's been in for as long as i've known him. they do a concert about twice a year for around $12 and every time i go i'm so very impressed... this time was no different. the choir had selected a number of songs with a spring theme, but had decided to sample music from a number of sources. most songs came from a european background (some even in german) but the most impressive production of the night was a series of haiku poems put to devastatingly complex music. it's hard to explain it, but while i didn't really like this part, i was tremendously impressed at how well the choir handled such a difficult piece.

taavi also wrote his own song for the night and as such managed to draw his own fan club of six (myself included) who cheered him on relentlessly after the performance. at the intermission, he was kind enough to introduce me to one of the lead sopranos, an absolutely stunning girl named "jenn" who'd only been with the choir for a year but had one of the most beautifully controlled voices and an equally impressive range.

i got a number of pictures, most of which didn't turn out, but there were some jewels among the blurry shots. if you were there and would like a copy of the set, let me know and i'll hook you up when i can.

it's april 28th and it's hailing in toronto.

why did i move here again?

in most cases (when using the NOARP option) you need alias support. Some Unices have no support for aliased interfaces or only limited, such as QNX, Aegis or Amoeba for example. Others have interface flag inheritance problems like HP-UX where it is impossible to give an aliased interface a different flag vector as for the underlying physical interface (as happens with Linux 2.2 and 2.4 - Joe). So for HP/UX you need a special setup because with the standard depicted setup for DR it will NOT work. I've done most Unices as Realserver and was negatively astonished by all the different implementation variations of the different Unix flavours. This maybe resulted from unclear statements from the RFC's.

my company has me learning how to setup a linux virtual server and it's kicking my ass. anyone understand what the hell the above means? and if you do, i'll buy you dinner if you can explain some more of this.

i found all sorts of fun links today and thought i'd share:

first of all, apparently my site is 49% evil. that is to say, according to the crazy algorithm the site uses to analyse the content of this site, the letters and numbers somehow add up to that 49% figure... but since the site changes all the time, my rating is likely to change as soon as i post this. odd.

and on the america is crazy front, it's official: there are no weapons of mass destruction in iraq. funny how that works if you think about it. the United nations had all sorts of people professing this truth years ago and the americans wouldn't listen. they trivialised the UN and claimed that hans blix wasn't doing his job... but now that an american has said it, well i guess it's true then. ...and they wonder why they have trouble making friends on the international stage.

i found the above two links on a blog called moxiegirl. she's fun to read, so i thought i'd post a link.

a personal daily favourite in the same vein as changing the climate (link appears to be dead at the moment) is fuh2 an ode to hummer's new "h2". just check out the site, it's funny.

lastly, for the joss fans out there, his firefly movie (titled "serenity") has finally released it's official trailer and i gotta say, while it looks pretty damn cool, i'm already worried it's going to seem hurried or compressed. and it looks like joss has turned summer into some sort of buffy-esqe ninja chick. regardless, i'm going to see it opening night (september 30th) anyone wanna come?

good day so far and it's not even noon yet.

i dropped by my soon-to-be new home and dropped off the first & last month's rent. even after subtracting the $100 deposit and the half-month's rent, i had to cough up $1025 this morning to secure the place as my own. but now that it's done, i can stop stressing about where i'm going to live come june. now i can start stressing about how i'm going to move in there and when.

and while i was cursing up a storm yesterday, trying to get a custom kernel to compile on my new debian sarge system (my boss called to ask how i was doing -- my response was "debian is kicking my ass") this morning i came in and after 10minutes of hacking away, i finally have my first working custom kernel. i guess sometimes you just have to step back and give it a rest for a bit.

here's hoping the day maintains it's good mood.

the answer to life, the universe, and everything: "42"
lol.

pavel, you rock.

k i've never been a fan of the game (why exercise while you play a videogame?) but for those who are, you really should check out this guy.

this past wedesday i had the privilege to enjoy a workshop on something called "backcasting". it's a tool that teaches you how to see the future the way you want it to be and understand how to get there by looking at the present as if it were the past of said future. make sense?

it works like this. say that in the future, you want us to have a lunar colony. now, take your temporal position and move it into that time frame and look backward. what events in history had to happen for this colony to exist? determine those steps (to the greatest detail possible) and map them out over a timeline. now (back in the present), you know what needs to get done to make that future happen.

the workshop included the lot of us breaking up into groups of 6 or so and doing this exercise in a limited fashion (<20min). i joined my group and as always, ended up being the leader. it's no so much a position i got put into this time, so much as one i took since no one seemed willing (or capable) of doing it themselves. i didn't do a very good job of it though since we ran out of time before coming up with anything concrete. the group was scattered and more interested in complaining about current issues than actually focusing on the task at hand. all bitching, no action. i know that as the leader i was the one responsible for directing the group, and in that role i failed. i'd like to chalk it up to the fact that i was feeling terrible (called in sick the next day) or that our time was short, but to be honest, i'm still having a tough time figuring out how to direct people with that personality type. all that energy and no will to focus it anywhere...

edge has a new blog. i'd use his real name, but i'm not sure he'd appreciate it. even if you don't agree with his opinion, it's always a joy to read. anyway, i've created a new blog button for him here: