A slightly more belated Happy Birthday to the ArcterDad, whom didn't get a phone call of birthday wishes on his actual birthday on monday partly because of the above crud, but the other part being that I'm a horrible son :) Sorry dad, happy birthday and lots of love to you (belated may it be).

Been playing around a lot on Everything2, trying to write more and so on. It seems that it's come a long way from the first everything, where simply putting in a description for something has turned into a war of XP, GTKY nodes, "old time" noders, and the like. It's cool though, as it forces you to use your mind and stretch your writing muscle a bit. Hitting 25 nodes got me to level 2 (whoooooohhoooooo!) even if it doesn't mean anything (oh, never mind then).

Watched the Star Trek: Enterprise premier tonight with the gang on the big screen at the office. I would have liked to be home vegging on the couch, hitting bed right at 10:01, and sleeping for my allotted 8 hours and 59 minutes till I had to wake up in the morning, but that's not going to happen, especially as I'm writing this at almost midnight. The show itself was, IMHO, pretty good. The theme I think everyone has agreed, has to go, and there were some concessions made to try to merge tech created in the 60s with what we can do today, and not make it look completely hokey so that no one will ever watch it again. There were some tired stereotypes examined, and a (minor) time travel reference thing was called in. I agree with Engel and Foz, the time travel stuff has to go. I hope that it drifts into the sidelines for 99% of the time, like in the Original Series, where it was only used occasionally. Actually, was it ever really used, or was it just planets that look like ours with human like people doing things from earth's past that they encountered (GangsterLand, RomanLand, NaziLand, etc)? I'm going to continue watching it though, and give it a chance. Looking back on some of the series premiers/pilots (Encounter at Farpoint, The Menegerie(sp?)) those shows came a long, long way.

The 2 hour show felt very much like a movie to me, simply in that it wasn't restricted to 5 camera angles and set configurations like the TNG and ST:Voy that we're all used to. Lots of outdoor sets, character development via the past, and what seemed like a lot more angles and freedom of movement and camera work. We'll see if that goes away now that they are on their mission into space.

Argh, and galeon is crashing with the new glibc that is in debian unstable today, best avoid updating it for a bit.

09/19/2001    -{ "You can count on.... oooh! macadamia nuts!" }-

Well, saturday we all went diving. We went over to some place just below Whytecliff park which had a sandy, sloooooowly sloping out bay bottom. We went down to about 40 feet or so but there wasn't much there. Saw some large sea anenomies (sp?) and a midish-sized ling cod. Our second and third dives were done at Anneses point, the one with the really crappy walk down. Oh, and Firefly got rented flippers that were far too small, so she was out of it :( Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for a call from the dive shop about a refund or something. Seeing as this was supposed to be the dive that convinces her that throwing oneself into the blackness of the ocean with little more than a tank of air strapped perilously to your back is "fun." Hopefully it will be better next time.

Tuesday I had the lovely task of dealing with ICBC (again). Last week while having dinner at an awsome Indian food place (The GM) in Maple Ridge a nice big truck decided to swing his nose wide while pulling out of the spot beside me and put a nice big scrape/dent in my passenger side rear quarterpanel! Bah Bah Bah! Luckily I got the bastard's license plate and called the fuzz on him. Seeing as it's not polite to ignore someone running after you out of a parking lot, I'm quite happy that he's responsible for the $800 (estimated by ICBC) damage. Course, as a new car, you get one tiny scratch and it's immediately a huge cost. Oh well....

Oh, and to top it off because the accident happened in Maple Ridge I had to go to the claim center in Maple Ridge, so instead of just a noon-hour jaunt from work I ended up working from home and wasting a good two hours of time dealing with this. Of course then you add in the time for getting the car repaired...

Today I'm home again with a cold... hit me the other night at 2am, 4am, and 6am. You know it's bad if I get up at 6 and start working :) Anyway, drugs and copious amounts of juice seem to be kicking it, at least a little. I'm still sniffing, but not feeling like death at this point (well, maybe a little bit like death... the diet coke of death...).

Oh, and un-reproducable bugs SUCK!

09/15/2001    -{ Redmond at Dawn! }-

1:19am
Diving tomorrow. Sleep now. Bitch about car being scraped in parking lot while dinner and calling cops after got the bastards license plate # later.

Night.

09/12/2001    -{ I think everyone would like to turn back the clock right now. }-

The last couple of days has been draining. I'm so glad I live in Canada right now, and that the people that I know in the New York area are all ok. My heart goes out to those who are not as lucky as I.

My parents know exactly where they were when JFK was assasinated, and when man set foot on the moon (or a soundstage in the desert if you believe that sort of thing). Perhaps my generation will be asked "where were you when the World Trade Center was destroyed?" I'd have to answer that yes, I do remember where I was, and no, I have not forgotten (but I'm typing this out just in case). I was sitting here, at my computer, as I do every morning, eating my bowl of cereal (does cereal go stale? should I really care that the "EXP DATE" is "Mar 10 00" or something like that?) and surfing my favorite sites so that I don't do too much personal surfing at work when I got a call from Engel asking for the bosses number. I gave it to him, and he said "oh, and as an aside, you might want to turn on the TV." What channel? "Any channel." I did, and sat in horror until I left for work to spend the next 8 hours in a semi-dream state, at some times barely holding it together, with a huge well of something in my throat, threatening to come out. Most of the day we all clustered around the TV, waiting to see what was happening next, watching as information was slowly stirred and the false bits and the true bits (or rather, the completely out of wack bits and the other, "real" information) were stirred by CNN in an attempt to let the world know what was going on. Some thought it was a prelude to war, others like myself thought that it was terrorism, and at least hoped that it was "only" that. Too many books have been written by Tom Clancy and the like which started with some distraction such as this.

Needless to say I'm glad that the worst appears to be over, and I can only sit and wait like many others for any word from the media as to the toll. I can hope that it isn't as high as it could be. A few bright spots I've found however. All around the net, people were rallying to mirror news sites that were un-accessable or down. CNN switched to a single page of text and a single graphic in an attempt to keep the news flowing out. In the aftermath, X10, whom I would normally hate (they are the ones with those pop-under ads), modified all their pop-under ads to this image, a plea to give blood. Around the net now there are other sites arranging check-ins where people can let others know they are all right, or search for loved ones.

Even the noders over at everything were putting up nodes with news as well as stories and sadness, spreading news and feelings. Other sites have similar.

Through it all the people in the midst of it all seemed calm and collected. A state of shock perhaps, but there was no mass hysteria that I could see on the reports, which is a huge credit. Like I said, at times I barely held it togeather and I was across a continent, in another country, many degrees north.

All around the world people have been rallying behind those affected. Huge sums of money have been donated Hint: Look at the number in the mid-right of the page (currently I see $1,854,891.55). Now reload and see how much the number has changed (now I see $1,855,578.80). $687.25 in a few seconds... not bad. Oh, now it's $1,856,767.80. A call for blood has not yet gone outside the country, but all around the world huge supplies of blood are from what I understand ready to get shipped. I plan to see if I can find a center somewhere locally and head there tomorrow night. I suggest that you may consider doing the same. A lot of "what can I do" is out there as well, and donating at the above page (Amazon is waiving their usual take of donations, very good of them) or giving blood. If you don't have time right now, that's probably all right. Blood has a storage span of something like 21 days, so they will need more as the first batches run out. Even if it's not needed by the NYC victims, it's something you (and I) should be doing regularily anyway. That and spread the word, spread the links, and spread your good wishes and love.

I really pity anyone wearing a turban in the states for the next while, after hearing some of the reactions (through CNN) on US radio ("what more does it take before we nuke them!" type stuff). A quote from Ghandi that I heard was something along the lines of "if everyone took an eye for an eye everyone would be blind" (mis-quoted I'm sure).

fishbowl:/boot# uptime
 22:33:01 up 127 days, 53 min,  2 users,  load average: 2.64, 1.85, 1.58
fishbowl:/boot# reboot
...