Off By One

Well, shit. Another week, another dry spell on the blog.

Actually, two weeks. My, how time flies…

So, I was in Omaha for a week doing some integration work for the team, taking the opportunity afforded by proximity to get some grotty little details hammered out and hopefully to sell my southern compatriots on the value of the tools we make up here. I think I was successful, but I haven’t heard a lot out of them this week (mainly because I’ve skipped the morning meetings, being disinclined to lean too heavily on the good graces of my carpooling coworker).

This past week…

Well, I’ve got a new respect for (and fear of) character set encodings. And, if you wonder what that means, there’s A) wikipedia and B) wikipedia.

Suffice to say it’s hellish, but I believe that the end is nigh. I think I’ve got the very worst of it nailed, and I hope to be on to something less nightmarish next week.

I’ve got only three days before Ms. Charlotte and I take off into the blue yonder, across the pacific (a first, at least as far as reaching the other side goes — Hawaii doesn’t count) to Japan, where we’ll be roaming around and posting pictures (over at Morruz), as per SOP).

I’ve got just about everything taken care of, on this end; I’ve finished (as far as I’m going to) my paper for Cmput 401, I’ve got most of the written assignment for 414 finished, and a deferral on my 3000-word essay to a week after I get back.

On the work front, I’ve been putting in a bit of time off the books because I wanted to get some coding done, which wasn’t happening with all of the container management stuff I was doing. Oh, it pays the bills, but struggling with IBM’s toolset was one of the least fun things I’ve ever had the … pleasure … of doing.

So, that’s it.

I’m taking one of the few real vacations I’ve had in my life, since leaving home. Oh, I’ve been unemployed, and I’ve been off for a few days here and there, but this type of thing is rare, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to travel with Char; we’ve never done this together. Wish us luck!

Sitting here, alternating between idle web browsing, reading Amber novels, and dozing on the couch…

My life is pretty easy this weekend, despite the lingering aftereffects of a nasty cold that I’ve had all week that has left me with headaches, poor sleep, and a sense that the world is passing me by in a grey haze. I got some housework done, although not too much. I’m lazy, after all.

In school-related news, I’m working on a Perl CGI app for an assignment. It means that I get to write code in what is effectively a write-only language — Perl is legendarily difficult to read — and generally do a bunch of web-hackery in an old-fashioned sort of tool. I’m more of a Java fan, myself, but this does the trick, I guess.

I didn’t get to go jumping today, because the fog outside combined with a sense that I needed to get some laundry done to keep me home.

I want to build something, damn it — I want to have a project to put together that has a defined scope, a real purpose, and is small enough that I can make a realisitic start to it. I had idle dreams of remaking a game, but I’m not that hardcore, and can’t be arsed to become that hardcore. My other project ran up against limitations in the known information about the iTunes library format. All of which leave me with a periodic need to have an itch to scratch.

Grr.

If you happen to be a reader of either of this site’s child blogs, Morruz or MildIllSon, they’re sort of moved now.

Oh, the content already moved, but the blogs themselves are best reached at a slightly different address:

Where, before, there was “http://www.offlineblog.com/morruz” and “http://www.offlineblog.com/mildillson”, now there are “http://morruz.offlineblog.com/” and “http://mildillson.offlineblog.com”. The sidebar links are updated, and feel free to head over there at your convenience, although somebody doesn’t update often enough, and another somebody isn’t traveling at the moment. Still, it bore mentioning.

In addition, I’m trying to convince Beau to upload something of his own to the web. This something will NOT be work-safe, which should surprise nobody who knows Beau, and might well be offensive to some, if I’m lucky.

Well, no news on the legal rights front — my queries to Ask.Metafilter went well-answered, but the message I sent to the CCLA didn’t get me any response, so I’ll be sending something again, in the hopes that someone there will answer.

Not a lot new — getting ready to end the internship, mainly, and return to the academic life, poverty and all. I’ll be part time anyway, but it’ll be interesting, being back on the grind.

Saw Valerie for lunch today, she’s in town only briefly for the Folk Festival, and then she’s off to Sechelt, near my cousins’ place, where she has a short-term teaching position. All over the place, she is. I miss having her around for epic theological debates, but life moves us all, I suppose.

How’s everyone else? Anyone care to touch base, let me know what’s going on in your lives?

After reading about some disturbing events in the US detailing the arrest and mistreatment of citizens whose only apparent crime was the recording of police activity (see here, with discussion here, and here, with discussion here), I’m interested in looking out for my own rights in that respect, as a Canadian citizen.

I’ve realized that much of what I expect to be true in my interactions with the Police is informed by my consumption of US media, where, for example, there are property rights enshrined in the constitution, and the 4th amendment exists. Here in Canada, neither of those things are true.

I’m not so much interested in what the practical rights are, but rather what my legal rights are.

I’ve contacted the CCLA (Canadian Civil Liberties Association) on the subject, and will be posting this to Ask MetaFilter later this evening (Update: Did so, it’s at the other end of this link), so follow along as I try to find out what my rights are.

Maybe I’ll get lucky, and actually learn something.

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.

So where am I at?

Oh, this isn’t going to be a “life story” sort of post. It’s more of a corny way of saying “Here’s what I’ve been up to over the last week.”

Char and I have been doing well, thanks for asking.

I’ve seen some pretty funny theatre in the last 24 hours, and a well-written play not too long before. The former is, of course, Die Nasty, and the latter is a Stuart Lemoine piece called The Velvet Shock. The play was enjoyable. A bit dark in humour, which I like, and with a hint of a happy, romantic ending. And a talented cast, bolstered in no small part by a skilled (and attractive!) supporting actress in the role of the niece.

I’ve come to a conclusion that, practically speaking, there is one thing that irks me more than anything else when dealing with friends. I don’t mind if plans change, and someone can’t do something with me that was planned. That’s cool. But in this age of mobile and ubiquitous communication, for christ’s sake, call me. Just dial a damned number and say “Sorry, Chris, I can’t make it to [thing].” Is it that bloody hard?

Grrr…

I just realized that the above complaint was the blog post that had been tickling about my head for the last day and a half. Glad to get that out of my system.

So, no big plans, really. I think I’m going to investigate writing my first serious OS X program, to do some bookkeeping and synchronization of my pair of ITunes libraries. Just metadata, I think, but you never know… I might get ambitious.

Kind of a sum-up, here.

I’ve been busy at work, putting together some interesting bits of design on configuration and deployment of one part of our application. I’ve been pulled in about three different directions, lately, so it’s been a bit hard to decide what needs doing.

I really do like it there.

School is.. well, let’s just put it this way — once I get back from Peggy’s place this weekend, it’s to the books for me, and no mistake — I’m slipping, and I need to get my shit together.

As noted before, delays in getting my new laptop. I’m getting antsy, because I have to somehow have this thing sort of under control by the time I take it to EclipseCon in late March, and at this rate I’ll get it mere days before.

Faugh.

All told, not a lot to report. I’m tired, this week, and somewhat cranky, but I’m getting by. I’ve been reading a ton, and bit by bit cataloguing my books on LibraryThing. You should all try it — it’s great!

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Anyway, that’s all for now.

Thanks to the hard work of the Linux development team, and the latest drivers from ATI, I now have a computer that is capable of 3D acceleration.

This makes me oh, so happy!