Off By One

So, I spent the greater part of yesterday evening ploughing through, or more accurately, slogging through John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism.

Yeek, that’s a workout. It might be the circuitous sentence structures, it might be the content. But either way, it’s hard going.

So, of course, I grabbed some Lagavulin 16-year scotch to sip as I educated.

Life is pretty good.

Oh, and in other news, my local hockey team beat their local hockey team. And what a game, it was. Wow.

In yet other news, did anyone notice the geographically-relevant link list down and to the right? I’ve added “Sites near me” to the sidebar. It’s possible that there’s even a useful community of bloggers in Edmonton. Although, odds are slim.

Yeah, I’m a bit poor at the posting, lately.

Mind you, I’ve got nothing on one of my site’s tenants when it comes to letting cobwebs collect. It’s too bad, too, because he’s a good writer. Char and I spent a late night there the other day, and had a blast. As expected, of course. I’m concerned that they may not feel the same, though, because I have an uncanny knack for finding (not causing, I hope!) flaws in any electronic device that I go near :). Their coffee maker spat up, and the next day their gamecube wasn’t playing nice with their VCR. I swear it’s not my fault, but the correlation between my presence and these issues is a bit disturbing.

Anyway, I’m just ticking along, here. I tinkered with the blog layout again. I decided to try something I ordinarily find to be a bit hard on the eyes — the black background + white lettering scheme — and get REALLY geeky. Isn’t that a slick death star? Other than work, I do little. I’m still poking at the programming environment of OS X, looking for a way to make my iTunes reconciler work. I imagine that once I get through the “how the hell do the GUI programming tools work?” steps, I should be cackling.

I have to ask — it’s been a few posts, is comment posting broken?

Does that mean we want them to come back?

If you’re not sure what I mean, I’m referring to the travels of my father and sister, whom I have entreated to provide a web-based journal of their experiences. (Matt, can you vet. that last sentence for structural correctness? I got fancy, and it seems subtly wrong, somehow).

Anyway, the site is hosted beside this one, and is named Morruz. Clicky on any of the obvious links in this post to get there. In the instance that links are not clear (the style of my page doesn’t do a good job of highlighting them, a shortcoming that I plan to rectify One Of These Days) then… well, hunt.

I just realized: For all that I bug Char about her propensity for redecorating the house at what I deem to be excessive intervals…

What do you all think of the new look? I’m playing around with the details of colour and image, but the layout and clean style of this new theme really appeals to me.

It seems that I’ve hit the 10,000-spam mark, sometime last week.

Wow, that’s depressing. You guys don’t even keep up with the spammers

Hey, all.

I’ve noticed a huge spike in spam coming in to the site of late — 2,900 in the last three months, which is bloody ridiculous. Which is why I’d like to ask anyone that posts here with some regularity to please use the register link below, or “this one”:http://www.offlineblog.com/wp-register.php.

If you register, and log in (see below for login link, in the “Meta” section) then your info will always be filled in when you post comments, and there is exactly 0 chance of you getting caught in my increasingly more draconian spam filtering.

I regret the need to even bring this to your attention, but I’m running out of options. The volume is so high that there is no way I can check to see if a normal person got caught in it, which just… sucks.

Life is pretty good, these days.

As seen over on :simon:’s site, I just finished helping him haul his whole life over to Vancouver for school. While there, we visited the grandparents, who are well, and at their urging got to go skydiving out by the ocean. It’s pretty sweet, seeing water on three sides of you while you fly. Not something you get here in the flatlands of Alberta, I guarantee.

Other than that, well, sorry about the spam bombing of the last few days. For some reason, my blog spam filter got overwhelmed, and just… quit. It’s gone now, but if you commented in the last few days on something, it may well have vanished in the purge. I thing I killed only spam, but I can’t be sure.

I wish I had more interesting things to report, but I don’t.

It’s been a bit since my last update, much to my chagrin. Sorry, folks, I’ll try to keep on the ball.

So, here’s the rundown:

I went skydiving last weekend, did another AFF(Advanced Free Fall) training jump, this one having to do with making myself fall faster and move forward. It was amazing. As always. A couple of fellow geeks came out too, and a good time was had by all.

I got all of my marks back. I was leery of posting these, because in one case I’m not too proud of it. However, here they are:

• Cmput 391: B (This is the lowest mark I’ve ever gotten in a CS course, and the one of which I am un-proud)
• Cmput 325: B+ (This is the second-lowest. Not too happy about it, either)
• Cmput 301: A+ (This one really doesn’t surprise me all that much. I kicked that course’s ass. It was fun, too. 96% overall mark)
• Cmput 340: A

That last one doesn’t seem like it belongs in that order, does it? Except when you take into account the nature of the course. Cmput340 is a numerical methods course. It’s probably one of the harder courses, in terms of theory and understanding, that I’ve ever taken. The class average for the course was 67.3%, just to give you an idea. My mark, however, was 87.6%. I couldn’t possibly be more proud. The course was hard, required a lot of work, and taught me a lot. And I kicked its ass. It’s one of the marks of which I am most proud, right alongside the Cmput366 mark from last semester, which was just as surprisingly high.

Work is going well. I’m actively contributing to the big project we’re working on, putting together snippets of code for a tools library. It’s satisfying, sometimes. Other times it feels like I know Nothing At All about the job, and am going to demonstrate my incompetence in some hyperdramatic fashion. Still, it’s mostly good.

Char is a sweetie.

How do you all like this look for the site? After Char commented about some difficulties commenting with the pinup layout, I moved over to this. I like it decently, although I can think of a few tweaks I’d like to make. Maybe later…

Also, re: politics: Fuck ‘em. Let’s nuke ‘em from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.

Well, I can’t resist this one, at least for a while. Pinups!

Let’s see — Work is getting interesting, in the sense that I actually got to do some coding today that will be used, at least in the company. This makes me happy, since it means I’m not totally useless from day one

Mom got her new toy today, and is quite enamoured of the little beastie. That’s one family member converted to Apple, and I haven’t even owned one yet! Truth is, having used it, I think I’ll like having one — once I can afford it, that is. The mini is too dinky for my use, but it’ll serve der mom quite nicely.

I miss Char

Tomorrow is a friend’s birthday party at a pub down near Whyte, at which I might even have a few drinks. This is madness! Softcore porn on the frontpage, Apples being used, and alcohol?!