Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

January 02, 2004 11:32 -1000 | Geek Stuff 4

this post is strictly a geek rant, so if you don't know what ssh, x11, or linux is, you probably don't want to keep reading.

my desktop is not responding.
it's been 3days of me trying to get in, to figure out what's broken. my yahoo mail account is almost full and if i don't get in and run kmail soon, yahoo will likely start bouncing emails.

so what's wrong?
essentially the box is up and running, but the cpu load is at 4 and has been there for an unknown number of days. something (i'm thinking it's arts from kde 3.2-beta2) has run away with my cpu. linux is nifty there friends, but stay the hell away from that beta stuff. of course any number of other processes might have blown up, but without a working shell, i can't really speculate.

however, it would seem that the gods were indeed smiling last night (or maybe just taunting and laughing) 'cause after repeated login attempts, i actually got in. see, it basically lets me login, then waits..... forever. then dies with "connection closed by ". but this one time, it actually let me in. slowly going through each stage of the login until i finally got my prompt (this is where i saw the cpuload). so what did i do? diagnosing the problem seemed somewhat improbable, since just typing "su" took about 10min. so i just put in the following:

su
[password]
reboot

i got the "this system is going down now!" bit and got kicked out. yay! i thought, now my box will work again! but it would seem that the box never actually rebooted 'cause my continuous pings never dropped a single packet.... i'm trying something similar now and if i get in again i'll let you know if it works. otherwise, i'll be doing this half-awake when i get home in a few days.

January 01, 2004 19:49 -1000 | Personal Life 0

sometimes i forget how very beautiful british columbia is. mountains, rivers, lakes... and this time out: snow! nearly a foot of it in fact. i've not been all over ontario yet, but somehow i doubt that i'll ever find anything that tops the sight of the rocky mountains overlooking english bay.

i'm on "the big stinky bus" now, heading back up to kelowna to stay with the parents a few more days before my return "home" to toronto. i'm sorry i didn't get to see everyone this time out, but i'm glad i got to spend time with those i could scrouge together for a new years party (well, jeanie did most of the scrounging really). my grandparents were very hospitable, but chris rhodes' computer just wouldn't behave. overall though, i think the trip worked out alright. i even got to hang out with quinn & paula -- two of my more entertaining friends. i miss you all. maybe now's a good time to think about saving up your cash and vacationing out in toronto eh?

December 31, 2003 23:35 -1000 | Geek Stuff Personal Life 3

i'm downstairs in jeanie's room trying to fix a number of seemingly broken things that blew up for the new year. my blogger's theme engine broke and right now, i've just hacked it to *look* like it's working. not only that, but my desktop box isn't responding to my login attempts, even though i can ping it... not sure what's going on there, but it can't be good.

new years here @ the sebastian household was kinda nice. i got to hang out with family #2 and quinn @ paula even came out to the party. i've missed everyone terribly and it was really great to see them. we're all spending the night and i'm looking forward to waffles come morning. then, if the roads are friendly, i'll be getting on a big smelly bus and heading back up to kelowna to spend my final days in western Canada. it's a beautiful place to live and i'm sure i'll end up here again someday.

when i was younger, i used to use new years to look back on the stuff i did over the year. and typically it was centred around the ladies in my life (why is this not surprising?). i think for now though, i'll end it here -- 'cause apparently "god" is calling for me to come upstairs. i think we're going to watch "pirates of the carribean". i'm sure jeanie's excited.

December 27, 2003 21:23 -1000 | Geek Stuff Personal Life 1

it's late saturday night here and i'm just piecing together the bits of my father's computer as i download the bulk of his backups i uploaded to my server yesterday. windows98 sucks dude. and getting it to work with scsi stuff is just plain bad. it seems that every time i nuke n' pave this box, i forget how i got it to work the last time... if anyone has scsi tips for this stupid os please let me know eh?

anyway, the trip up here with the parents has been really wonderful. kelowna is beautiful, though don't let the locals fool you, it's not a real city. everyone here still has that small town mentality, people know their neighbours and the weather isn't nearly as hostile as ottawa's.

meeting with the family has been great. it seems that i'd forgotten the special relationship i have with my cousins, namely ashley to whom i've long been very close. it's always nice to see them all around christmas and catch up on the details of their lives that i've been missing on the other side of the country. i hope one day that they'll find the time (and i suppose, the money) to make their way out to my place in toronto to visit.

lastly, i've found and fixt another bug in my blogger. this one being an issue with the calendar module that displayed links to blog entries outside of a user's privilege. once the thing's considered done i'll have to write up a changelog for this stuf.....

December 22, 2003 16:06 -1000 | Personal Life 2

so what do you think of the winter theme?

...it would appear that i'm going to be with jeanie and the extended fam for new years this year... come to think of it, i can't remember the last vancouver new years i had that i didn't spend with mom #2 and the sorta-sister. so yeah, chris, noreen, quinn and all: that's where i'm thinking i'll be doing my big thing, and as you can see in her comment from earlier today you're all invited. quinn, if you wanna come, you wanna do the meat?

i'm currently fighting off a semi-violent strain of the flu and a debilitating case of jet-lag as i type this into my dad's windows98 box (ew). apparently, my knoppix cd didn't like this box... actually no bootable cds seem to work dispite bios settings... must be this flakey cdrom. so yeah, windows it is.... for now ;-)

as foggy as my head is, i keep thinking back to this past weekend and how crazy it was... and oddly enough, about the amazing vegetable soup i consumed at the elgin street diner in ottawa. really excellent stuff -- i do reccomend.

i'm rather scattered though, so i'm going to stop now. happy christmas to all... or yule, or ramadahn (sp?) ...whatever floats your boat i suppose.

December 21, 2003 19:17 -1000 | Personal Life 2

i'm just now back from ottawa after a somewhat trying bus ride home. see, as a native bc'er, i'm not used to having more than one option for moving between points "a" & b", so when the driver deviated from the only course home i knew i started to panic. but after a few daydream fantasies of having to incite a mutiny, bind & gag the driver and take control of the bus, i calmed down and actually asked the guy:

"so... are we going to toronto?"

"yes".

"but, isn't this highway 7? that goes west doesn't it? isn't toronto south?" <panic>

"yes. this is highway 7. it goes to belville, then to toronto"

i didn't want to push, but didn't see the map in my head. so i remined somewhat panicked until i saw the lights of home.

that's a funny statement i think. thinking of toronto as "home". i never saw ottawa that way, and while vancouver is still my real home, toronto and i just sorta groove well. i just like the "hum" i guess.

but yes, i still hate ottawa, but angela is there, so i guess i'll be visiting quite often. any suggestions for mp3 players? i'm thinking i'd like to get one that'll double is a nifty pda that i can put linux on.

anyway vancouver's next. can't wait to see the fam. i'm really quite excited.

December 19, 2003 10:18 -1000 | Miscellaneous Nifty Links 0

this is absolutely priceless....

http://omwh.gloria-mundi.net/

if you're a buffy fan and dig lord of the rings, do go there. ...personally, i'm waiting for the mp3s.

December 19, 2003 10:15 -1000 | Geek Stuff Personal Life 0

i had originally planned to be in with angela right now, having hopped a bus last night, but i just didn't have the time & energy to be ready to leave last night. so instead i elected to take today off and kill some time just relaxing on my own -- something i haven't been able to do really since i moved in.

but much of my day's been spent fixing a bug and adding a feature to this blogger here. jeanie, thanks for the mentioning of there not being any line breaks in the comments. it's fixt now, and i've edited your post to compensate (hope you don't mind). i also built a new module into the blogger that lets me edit/delete posts in the comments arena. this isn't a democracy after all ;-)

i'm off to pack and get my stuff together. i'll be with angela in a little over 24hours ;-)

December 18, 2003 14:47 -1000 | Employment 5

i no longer work for the porn company that was cool enough to take a chance on me when i moved to this city. oddly enough though, my reasons for leaving had to do with just how much they were willing to risk... see, they offered me this job, with miserable pay, an hourly wage from which someone else was forever taking a cut, and absolutely no job security. the official position being "temporary full time" so they could can me whenever they pleased without notice or severance. i need more than that -- and i don't think that's unreasonable.

which brings me to my first rant (yay!) geeks are selling themselves way to short lately. sure the .com bubble burst, and sure you can't walk into an interview expecting them to buy you a new car just for signing on anymore (personally, i think that's insane anyway). but people have got to show some respect for themselves or they wind up with lousy pay, no security and zero respect. we have skills people. wake up and realise that this is an equal partnership -- your skills and time for their money and respect. they're not doing you a favour, you're co-benefitting.

alright, i'm done ranting. i'll miss the people there, but i know i'll be happier where i'm going. they're offering better pay, reasonable security and a good amount of stuff to learn and play with. 'course it's advertising, but hey -- everyone has to pick their battles and i'm gonna lay off the ads... for now.

December 17, 2003 19:18 -1000 | Geek Stuff Personal Life 2

it's 12:06et as i begin writing this, my first entry in my shiny new blogger. and as late as it is, i'm not going to write much -- i still have work in the morning... for the time being. the theme engine is done, complete with a new style setup for winter so i don't have to worry about that for a good long time. i think most of the bugs are worked out and all that's left is some good old fashioned "putting it live and watching it break". i just hope there isn't too much breakage, as i just don't have the patience required to fix it.

i'm going to see the girlfriend this weekend. and to say that i'm excited would really not be doing it justice. long distance relationships are hard... but i think that maybe this time, it just might be worth it....

alright, to bed now. enjoy the blogging ;-)