Imablog Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.

Roomba in infrared

Just for kicks and giggles, I dug out my Sony video camera and used it to take some video of Roomba. It's one of those Sony cameras that does the 'Nightshot' thing letting you see in low-light conditions by illuminating the area with an IR emitting diode. It also lets you see the IR lights that Roomba and its various components use. The pictures are posted over in the gallery.

This is a picture of Roomba in infrared. You can clearly see the 4 floor-directed IR lights.

This is Roomba's base station. The IR signal it broadcasts out the top is what Roomba uses to find it's way home. It comes on automatically when Roomba is turned on or is removed from the base station.

This is the light pattern broadcast by Roomba's Virtual Wall. It's actually a circular beam. It just looks like that because I have it pointed obliquely at the wall. The VW has 3 range settings which simply controls the intensity of the IR beam that is broadcast.

I just thought it would be a fun geeky thing to do.

You can make people line up for anything

The parkade I'm assigned to at work has 3 entrances, but only two lanes leading up to them. The left lane goes to the middle entrance, and the right lane goes to the right entrance leaving the left entrance laneless. Invariably at the busy times there are cars lined up in the two lanes in front of two of the entrances, but for some reason nobody ever uses the third entrance to the left. Every now and then someone (like me) will turn off and use it, but for the most part that third entrance goes unused. It's very odd. People here are always in such a rush once they get into their cars, but sit patiently in front of the parkade entrance waiting their turn and ignoring that third entrance.

Now there's a bunch of construction going on for the new hospital next to the parkade, and one of the lanes is blocked off leaving just the lane going to the middle entrance.

Do you know what they do now?

They all line up in front of the middle entrance and leave the two side entrances unused.

I don't know if I should yell or laugh at them for their stupidity.

Remembering École Polytechnique

15 years ago on Dec 6, 1989 14 women were killed and another 13 injured by a gunman in a terrible incident at École Polytechnique in Montreal.

On Dec 7 1989, schools and universities across the country were unusually quiet and muted as word of the tragedy spread.

I remember the day very well. I was in my third year and had been busy studying the previous night so I didn't watch any news that night or the next morning. Got onto campus and noticed everything was strangely quiet. There wasn't the hustle and bustle or the regular chatting you hear on a normal day. And just about every woman I knew (even my friends) gave me a nasty cold stare or looked kind of sad. Still had no idea what had happened but there were a lot of sad, bitter and angry women around and I wasn't about to do or say anything else to set them off.

It wasn't until I made my way to the Physics Common Room later that morning after classes that I learned about the events at École Polytechnique. And then it all became clear. It was a sad time everywhere. Some guys joined in the sadness and remembrances, some stayed clear for their own safety, and others like me weren't quite sure what to do. I wanted to be supportive of my friends, but didn't want to get pounced on just for being a guy. And for several weeks afterwards, it seemed like just about every guy on campus was stepping on eggshells.

Eventually everything got back to normal, but nobody ever forgot what happened that day.

ME LaZerte Class of 1987, where are you now?

I happened to catch My Coolest Years: The Geeks on VH1 last night, which got the wife and I talking about our high school experiences.

I'd say I was definitely a geek in high school, but I wasn't nearly as tormented (at least I don't remember being tormented anyway) as some of the geeks on the show were. I roamed among a fairly diverse crowd and had a lot of friends in just about every group you can think of. But I was definitely a geek. I did things like Reach For the Top (one of those team-based answer the question type games) and student council.

While most of the guys opted for the machine shop/industrial arts type options or band or sports, I chose Food Studies because I knew one of these days I'd be out on my own and would need to know how to cook and feed myself. The three years of Food Studies (10, 20 and 30) I took turned out to be one of my favourite classes in high school.

Unfortunately I've since lost touch with many of my high school friends, except for an occasional e-mail from someone who managed to stumble onto my email address. Every now and then I wonder what some of those people are doing now. Maybe some of them will stumble onto this blog and find a former classmate. If you are one of those people, leave a comment or email me!

Babylon 5 movie!

Sweet! Seems a movie based on Babylon 5 will start filming in April.

Can't wait to hear more about it.

Heads up from Slashdot

NIST Time services

All you ever wanted to know about NIST time services

Link from Nicholas

More digital crack to get addicted to

I decided to check out Bejeweled 2 from Astrawre to see how it compared to Bejeweled.

I swear, this game is just pure unadulterated digital crack, even stronger than the first one. It's got cool music, exploding gems, lightning, 4 different variants to play, talks to you and looks absolutely stunning. All you have to do is see someone play it and you're addicted. Those of you with addictive personalities would probably be better off not even touching this game.

It's big, taking up 1.5 MB of space on my PDA and another 755 kB if you install the music file. If you've got the space, it's definitely worth a try (if you dare).

A Stargate:Atlantis nit

There's one small nit-picky thing that bothers me a little bit about Stargate: Atlantis. When McKay talks about the ZPM, he pronounces it with a 'zee'. But he's supposed to be a Canadian scientist and should be saying it as 'zed'.

Of course the most obvious explanation is that he's been working with Americans so long that it's corrupted the way he says things. I bet he probably uses the '-or' spelling instead of the '-our' spelling too.

Well, it's just a TV show I suppose.

I just realized that 4 out of the 5 main SG:A characters are Canadians after reading the cast profiles. I thought some of them looked familiar.

Amusing sigs

Saw this one belonging to jjshoe in a comment posted in Slashdot and got a kick out of it.

botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount} /dev/girl -t {wet;fsck;fsck;yes;yes;yes;umount} {/dev/girl;zip;sleep}

Computing with Lego

This is pretty cool. Logic gates built with Lego. Who knew Legos could be so versatile. With a few of these, I imagine it should be possible to build a simple Lego calculator.

How geeky cool would that be? :)

Found on Slashdot.

A busy holiday season

The holiday season is always busy for me. Not with holiday things, but just work things. Most people see things slowing down at work during the holidays, but for me that's usually when I'm the busiest. New equipment installations for some reason seem to happen most often between Oct-Jan as companies push for sales and installations to close out their fiscal year. Departments with new budgets buy new equipment which just happens to get installed this ime of year.

And then there's me trying to get the last of the surveys done in the remaining few weeks of the year.

This year has been busier than most because of some of the new responsibilities I've taken on and have assumed. A couple more research studies to support, other projects to work on, and lots of web stuff to wor on.

It just never ends. In a few weeks it will be time to start the whole equipment testing cycle all over again.

25 Questions

My friend Mike sent me another one of these things, so I thought I'd answer it in my blog again like the last one.

1.) IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE ANYWHERE WHERE WOULD IT BE?
Somewhere high in the mountains.

2.) WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING?
My sandals, Tevas.

3.) IF YOU COULD HAVE CHOSEN YOUR NAME WHAT WOULD IT HAVE BEEN?
I kind of like the one I have now.

4. THE LAST CD THAT YOU BOUGHT?
Blue Rodeo's Casino and Lost Together. Lately I've been wanting to get a lot of the music I grew up listening to. Mostly Canadian groups that the wife doesn't understand.

5. WHERE IS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE TO BE?
Home.

6. WHERE IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PLACE TO BE?
Away from home.

7. WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE IN THE MORNING?
Around 6-6:30 or so.

8. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE?
The dish washer.

9. WHAT MAKES YOU REALLY ANGRY
Stupid people who think they know what they're talking about.

10. IF YOU COULD PLAY ANY INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Drums. Those big Japanese ones that you pound on with the big sticks.

11. FAVORITE COLORS?
Blue.

12. FAVORITE CHILDREN'S BOOK?
Harold and the Purple Crayon

13. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Fall/autumn.

14. IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Teleporting, like Nightcrawler.

15. TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
No tattoo.

16. CAN YOU JUGGLE?
No. I have a hard enough time not tripping over my feet.

17. THE ONE PERSON FROM THE PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO.
Buddha.

18. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DAY
Friday.

19. WHAT IS IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR?
An old computer that I'm supposed to drop off at the Recycling center.

20. SUSHI OR HAMBURGER?
Hambuger. Thick juicy one. With bacon and cheese.

21. OF THE PEOPLE YOU SENT THIS TO, WHO WILL BE FIRST TO RESPOND?
Hmm, don't know. Not sure if anybody reads this weblog anymore. But I'll say Rick.

22.WHO IS THE LEAST LIKELY?
Mark, because he's dead.

23. WHO DID YOU RECEIVE THIS FROM?
Mike.

24. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CARTOON?
Battle of the Planets.

25. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MEAL?
Lasagna and garlicky garlic bread.

Spammers must be dumb

Man, those comment spammers are relentless. All month I've been logging 404 errors from comment spammers with spammy referrer URLs trying to hit my MT installation. If they were actually hitting the scripts (a few are), I might be really annoyed. But the fact that they're all going to a bad URL and just getting 404 pages only has me mildly annoyed at the moment. What's more puzzling is that none of the spammy referrer URLs are even real. So what are these guys tring to point people to? And if they keep getting 404 errors, why do they keep trying? These guys are either incredibly stupid or their spambots are incredibly stupid. Or more likely both.

Condo-ification

According to one of the maintenance guys for the apartment complex I live in, it might be getting turned into condominiums sometime in the near future. So that means either we'll be moving again sooner than planned, or we'll be buying sooner than planned.

It seems to be a growing trend around here (and probably elsewhere) for apartment complexes to turn into condos. An apartment complex down the road from us turned into condos earlier in the summer.

I suppose if the price is reasonable, then buying is definitely something to consider. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Where oh where has my dial-up gone?

Ok, so for the past two days my Earthlink dial-up has been giving me nothing but busy signals. Checking the Network status page hasn't yielded any information in my area (maybe I'm the only one here using Earthlink dial-up?) and the first response from support just told me to try the three numbers I've already been trying. Gee, thanks.

No net access from home, so I have to get my fix at work. But I haven't been at my desk much lately, so there's not much of that either. Hopefully there will be some resolution by tonight or the weekend.

They're my toys

At work I have a number of phantoms that I use for various purposes. The techs always know i'm up to something when I roll up with one them. I call them my patients.

There is one set in particular that the techs always give me grief over, the solid and fillable breast attachments that go along with my cardiac phantom. They always get a good laugh when I pull them out to work with. "Playin' with your boobs again?" and other cracks like that.

All in good fun though I suppose. They are kind of unusual tools to work with.

Beep bwoop bwoop beeep bwooooooooop

I've managed to figure out what my dial-up problem was. I should have guessed this earlier but I'd forgotten about some changes I made to my local phone plan which seemed to have done away with the 'disable call-wasting' feature or changed what you have to dial first to disable it. After taking that out of my modem dialing string, everything was just honky dory.

So I'm back online at home now and will stop silently bad mouthing Earthlink support off-line for my own stupidity.

I want to buy stuff again!

You know, as much as I enjoy the holiday season, I'll be glad it's when it's over and so that I can start buying stuff for myself again without worrying that someone's already bought it for me for Christmas or my birthday.

Let the holidays begin!

We finally got a start on our Christmas baking. A little later than usual. All of you people expecting cookies will just have to wait a little while. They're going to be late this year. But they'll still be just as tasty!

The tree is up too, with a few presents underneath it even. Christmas cards are coming in, but we've just been too busy this year to send any out. So to those of you that sent us one (and those who didn't send us one), I apologize for not sending out a card. But we do wish all of you a happy and fun holiday season and all the best for 2005!

We've been thinking of doing one of those Christmas form letters people seem to be so big on. You know, those ones that you get from your friends and family telling you about all their accomplishments and big events over the past year. I thought it might be interesting to take it a step further and do one as a blog entry. The wife thinks I might be a little too ahead of my time though. I think I'll give it a try anyway. It's not like there are a lot of people reading this anyway. Or are there...

The holiday menu

In a couple of short days, we'll be headed to the wife's folks place again to work on another holiday feasting. Their feasting and our working :).

This year we're doing the turkey and macaroni and cheese as usual, maybe the greens too. For the day after, we're going to be roasting up a bunch of those little chickens. The things people call Cornish hens. 18 of them. Prepared like the turkey so they'll be brined and all. Should be interesting. I don't think we'll be able to fit more than 5 or 6 of these things in the oven, so we'll be using every oven on the compound to do this one. Fortunately they only take an hour to cook. We tried out a few of them on a couple of friends last week and they turned out pretty good. If we can get the timing right and manage the 3 separate ovens I think this should turn out pretty good.

There's just one thing that bothers me about these little chickens. You can Google up plenty of pictures of cooked or uncooked Cornish hens. Finding pictures of what they look like alive is a totally different matter though. Kind of makes you wonder if these things are actually real, or if they're really some kind of manufactured food. Like Soylent Green or something like that.

Christmas pains

Heard one of the more amusing variants on 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' on the radio today that I've heard in a long time. It was a song called 'The Twelve Pains of Christmas' and I got a pretty good chuckle out of it. I particularly liked the guy trying to rig up the lights.

The Twelve Pains Of Christmas

Chorus:
The first thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
Is finding a Christams tree.

The second thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Husband:  Rigging up the lights,
  Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The third thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Inebriated man:  Hangovers,
  Husband:  Rigging up the lights,
   Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The fourth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Frustrated man:  Sending Christmas cards,
  Inebriated man:  Hangovers,
   Husband:  Rigging up the lights,
    Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The fifth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Five months of bills,
  Frustrated man:  Sending Christmas cards,
   Inebriated man:  Hangovers,
    Husband:  Rigging up the lights,
     Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The sixth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Frustrated wife:  Facing my in-laws,
  Chorus:  Five months of bills,
   Frustrated man:  Oh, I hate those Christmas cards,
    Inebriated man:  Hangovers,
     Husband:  Rigging up these lights,
      Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The seventh thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Angry man:  The Salvation Army,
  Frustrated wife:  Facing my in-laws,
   Chorus:  Five months of bills,
    Frustrated man:  Sending Christmas cards,
     Inebriated man:  Oh, Jeez!
      Husband:  I'm trying to rig up these lights!
       Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The eighth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Loud kid:  I WANNA TRANSFORMER FOR CHRISTMAS!
  Angry man:  Charities
   Frustrated wife:  And what do you mean, "your in-laws"?!?
    Chorus:  Five months of bills,
     Frustrated man:  Oh, making out these cards,
      Inebriated man:  Edith, get me a beer, huh?
       Husband:  What we have no extension cords?!?
        Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The ninth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Another frustrated man:  No parking spaces,
  Loud kid:  DADDY, I WANT SOME CANDY!!
   Angry man:  Donations!
    Frustrated wife:  Facing my in-laws,
     Chorus:  Five months of bills,
      Frustrated man:  Writing out those Christmas cards,
       Inebriated man:  Hangovers,
        Husband:  Now why the hell are they blinking?!?
         Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The tenth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 Mother:  "Batteries not included",
  Another frustrated man:  No parking spaces,
   Loud kid:  BUY ME SOMETHIN'!!!!
    Angry man:  Get a job, ya bum!!!
     Frustrated wife (sobbing):  Oh, facing my in-laws,
      Chorus:  Five months of bills,
       Frustrated man:  Yo, ho!  Sending Christmas cards,
        Inebriated man:  Oh, Jeez, look at this!
         Husband:  One light goes out, they ALL go out!!!
          Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The eleventh thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 TV Critic:  Stale TV specials,
  Mother:  "Batteries not included",
   Another frustrated man:  No parking spaces,
    Loud kid:  I GOTTA GO TO THE BATHROOM!!!!
     Angry man:  Charities!!
      Frustrated wife (sobbing):  She's a witch!  I hate her!
       Chorus:  Five months of bills,
        Frustrated man:  Oh, I don't even KNOW half these people!
         Inebriated man:  Oh, who's got the toilet paper?
          Husband:  Get a flashlight!!  I blew a fuse!!!
           Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

The twelth thing at Christmas that's such a pain to me:
 A few guys:  Singing Christmas Carols,
  TV Critic:  Stale TV specials,
   Mother:  "Batteries not included",
    Another frustrated man:  No parking?
     Loud kid:  WAAAAAAH!!!!  WAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
      Angry man:  Charities!
       Frustrated wife:  Gotta make 'em dinner!
        Chorus:  Five months of bills,
         Frustrated man:  I'm not sending them this year, that's it!
          Inebriated man:  Shut up, you!
           Husband:  FINE!!  If you're so smart, YOU RIG UP THE LIGHTS!!!!!
            Chorus:  And finding a Christmas tree.

From the album "Bob Rivers Comedy Corp: Twisted Christmas."

Lyrics from LaughNet

We're being condo-ified

Well, it's official now. The new owners of our apartment complex bought this place to turn them all into condos. According to the letter found on my door this evening, we should be getting an official letter soon about the conversion process. I'm just hoping that the prices will be reasonable so we'll be able to scrape together enough dough to buy our unit so we don't have to move again. I'm sure this will be an interesting process. Hopefully not a painful one.

Detecting compromized Linux kernels

Over at Security Focus there's an InFocus article titled "Detecting Rootkits And Kernel-level Compromises In Linux" that I thought was an interesting read.

These things have gotten really sophisticated.

It's raining in the apartment

I'm stuck here at work while the wife deals with a bit of a crisis with leaking water. Just as I was about to call her to pick me up from work, she calls and says there's water leaking into our place from the apartment above us. So she's trying to contain the dripping in buckets while the maintenance guys come over to see about damage control.

And we're supposed to be buying this place sometime in the future. Maybe we will be moving after all...

Update: Well, the apartment's a bit of a mess mostly from having to pick everything up off the floor and everything from the kitchen closet being out on the balcony or on the couches and tables. The apartment itself is reasonably ok. A few more water stains on the walls, and rugs were a little bit damp. A couple of the light fixtures need to be emptied out.

On the plus side, parts of the carpet did get a good steam cleaning and deodorizing.

On the down side, the kitchen is a bit of a mess, so our Christmas cookie baking is probably over for the year. And we probably won't be getting any Christmas cards out this year. We'll be busy trying to get things cleaned up before heading out of town.

It's Christmas...isn't it?

The wife and I were doing a little bit of shopping Sunday gathering a few more supplies for Christmas baking. One thing that struck me odd as we were walking around was just how un-Christmasy things were in the stores. Stores were relatively empty (although it was a little late on Sunday evening). All the racks and shelves of Christmasy things had been relegated to the back corners. There wasn't even any Christmas music playing in the Target (I'm sure it was a welcome break for the employees). Couldn't find any Christmas cards to save our lives either. If I didn't know any better I'd have thought it was just another day rather than the holiday season.

Maybe I'm just going to the wrong places.

FDA: Rock. Hard place.

It certainly didn't take long for lawyers to jump on Vioxx. Just a couple of days after Merck announced they were pulling it, I saw TV commercials from local legal firms urging people who'd been taking it to contact them. With Vioxx as a warm-up, I'm sure it will take even less time for them to jump on Pfizer and Celebrex.

It kind of strikes me as ironic that just a few years ago there was much hubbub about the FDA's lengthy drug approval process and how it was keeping potentially life-saving/altering drugs out of the hands of people who could benefit from them. These drugs can help peeople. These drugs can save peoples' lives. Why isn't the FDA approving them for clinical use? What's taking them so long? The FDA bureaucracy must be overhauled so that these wonderdrugs can be approved faster. Speed up the process!

So the FDA did streamline their drug approval process so that drugs would be approved for clinical use faster.

Now all the commotion is about how the FDA didn't spend enough time studying the effects of things like the COX-2 inhibitor class drugs. They're releasing drugs too soon. They shouldn't have approved these drugs before knowing the long term effects. Why didn't they study them longer?

Either way, the FDA is stuck between a rock and a hard place and someone at the FDA's CDER gets screwed. Drug companies and potential drug beneficiaries (the patients) clamour for the newest drugs to be released expediently. To do that you shorten the time the drugs are studied and evaluated. That means fewer long-term studies. But then if a long-term adverse effect is discovered, the FDA gets blasted for not studying the drug long enough and rushing drugs to market before knowing the long-term effects.

People seem to forget (or conveniently ignore) the fact that for every drug that does get approved, there are several more that are blocked because adverse effects were found or failed to show as much of an effect as expected.

So how do people want it, over easy or fried hard?

Navigating Grantland Part 1

A few weeks ago I received word that a small research project proposal that I submitted had gotten funding approval from the sponsoring company. Terrific! My first research grant! This is a big event for me. Most of the grant funds will be used to purchase another phantom, but first there's paperwork to be filled out. And I'll have to navigate the hospital's research and grant administration process. Fine, no problem. There are plenty of people around here with lots of experience in this kind of thing.

First snag I encounter is that I learn is that the hospital takes 25% off the top for overhead. Ok, nobody told me about that when I was coming up with a budget for my proposal so I might have to go back and say I'll need more money. But the people helping me with this tell me that I can probably get an exemption from this overhead charge. Good.

Then, I discover that because I don't have a faculty appointment I can't be the principle investigator (PI) for the grant. I guess the hospital doesn't want to take research money brought in by the unwashed and unlearned masses. But there's yet another exemption that can be applied for that will take a couple of weeks for approval. Fortunately the physician I'm going to be working with is faculty, so he can be the PI instead. I'll just be the one doing all the work. Maybe I'll be able to call myself a co-PI. In any case, I don't think it'll be a big deal. Sounds like it's just one of those administrative things. My project, my paper/poster/abstract. First author is what it's all about.

So now all I need to do is finish up responding to the questions from the sponsoring company, wait for the paperwork to be filled out and hopefully I'll be able to start this project soon.

Condo-fication: Part 3

They want $181 900 for this place as a condo.

$181 900???!!! Holy crap, who'd have thought this place would cost so much!!

The official letter from the new owners of our soon-to-be condo came yesterday, and now we have a tough decision to make. I'm torn over whether we should buy or not. On the one hand, we really love the location and our apartment (despite being leaked on) and would love to stay. Plus we hate moving. On the other hand, the asking price was waaay more than I was expecting. Coming up with a down payment by August will be tough, especially since I'd want to put down at least 20%. Borrowing against my 401k would be an option, but I'm a little hesitant about taking on that much more debt at this point, especially considering the credit card debt I've been trying to dig out from under for the past year. Doing some rough calculations putting down at least 11% on a 20 year mortgage would make the mortgage payment about the same as what our rent is now. That would mean I'd also have to factor in that darned PMI as an additional cost.

Well, we have a little bit of time to make a decision. The first thing to do will be to head over to talk to one of the sales reps sometime next week. I'd like to find out what they have planned for the condo-conversion process (new flooring, appliances, other upgrades?) and see if there's any wiggle room in their price.

Festive glowing cheer

I thought the USB Christmas tree on my desk was looking a little lonely, so I thought the USB Snowman would be good company for it.

It's cute looking, about the same size as the Christmas tree. Black painted eyes and mouth. The noze is a funny orangy thing that curves up. The toque and scarf are pink though, which was a little bit unexpected. Good thing I'm confident enough in my manliness that it's not really a big deal for me. Arrrr.

It cycles through the same colours as the Christmas tree does and looks pretty neat in the dark. There are stars decorating it's belly, although they're not all that obvious. Maybe I"ll touch them up with a little bit of paint.

I still think at $13 it's a little overpriced though. 3.5 stars out of 5 stars for this one.

A trip down CPU memory lane

Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts, because here we go. After 12 weeks of grueling and meticulous testing in our Munich THG lab, our biggest CPU test of all time is complete. Marathon, all-night monitoring sessions, system hiccups and crashes and the logistics involved in coordinating such a feat often short-circuited our caffeine-addled nerves. But then again, this project was about more than just tallying up CPU benchmarks

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve, and there are a surprisingly large number of presents under the tree with my name on them. Santa must think I've been a good boy this year.

Preparations for tomorrow's feasting started today with the Tart Cranberry Dipping Sauce and the mac & cheese. We ended up with a monster 24lb turkey this year because the wife didn't want to waste her time on a measly 13 pounder, which was the next smallest size they had at the store. We should have plenty of leftovers to take home with us.

Just about to get the turkey prepped for a nice long soak in the brine. The bird will soak for a good 12-15 hours or so before it goes into the oven for roasting. Then I get one of my favourite jobs, carving it up.

From the wife and I, we wish all of you a happy and safe holiday season and much prosperity and happiness for 2005!

Stuffed like a Butterball

Back home the day after Christmas, Boxing Day, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. In the US, Boxing Day seems to be the biggest day of the year for returning things.

The wife and I spent our Boxing Day preparing and roasting 24 little chickens (those alleged Cornish game hens) for a party of 20 or so people that never materialized. So instead it was just a party of 13 or so people. And now there are a lot of extra little chickens filling the fridge.

They were tasty though, and I certainly won't mind taking a few of them back home with me.

The problem with my holidays is that they usually aren't. Unless we go away somewhere, we always seem to end up working, mostly catering for parties the wife's folks are having. I guess it's partly our fault...we seem to have developed a reputation for cooking really well. I suppose there are worse reputations to have.

Christmas day was a pleasant event. The wife's family opens their gifts at the stroke of midnight (or as close to it as she can get). So we were up until about 2 AM Christmas Day exchanging and opening gifts. Santa was surprisingly good to me this year. I must have been a very good boy.

Then it was off to bed, and then breakfast at her brother's place. Followed by more gift opening, and then the roasting of the turkey. Christmas feasting was at 5, and then everybody lapsed into a food induced coma for a few hours before heading off to the airport at 9PM to pick up the wife's cousin. Then it was back to the compound and her aunt and uncle's place for more gift exchanging and gift opening.

All of that made Christmas a long, tiring but satisfying day. Lots of good food, lots of presents, and best of all lots of family to hang around with.

Plunging into home ownership

We've decided that since we have to either buy or move again, we might as well look into buying a house. $182 000 can get a reasonably decent house around here and if we have to spend that much we might as well make it a house instead of a condo. Plus with a dog on the way a house will probably give us more space to deal with it.

A trip to the bookstore got us armed with a couple of house buying books which we've been reading to learn about the process. Quite frankly, it all seems quite overwhelming especially with the time frame we're looking at (moving by July/August), but I'm sure that's a sentiment many new home buyers experience.

We've already started with combing through various local real-estate sites and checking out MLS listings for areas we want to live in to get an idea of what's out there and what kind of prices we'll encounter.

I guess the next thing will be to find a good real estate agent. We'll have to tap some of our friends that bought homes recently to get recommendations. And then navigating the home mortgage maze...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2005 turns out to be a happy, prosperous and interesting year for all of you!