shaver

Today was a day of net-zero work. Tried a few things, they didn’t really work, started over. Ah well. (And now Andreas has discovered that a really clever fix from a few days ago was, in fact, a disaster in disguise. What a sweetie.)

Phil arrived today, and we talked about lots of geeky stuff over sushi. “Nine Queens” was an OK movie. Maybe even better than OK, but I’ll need to think about it a bit.

Tomorrow, we’re going to go climbing in the middle of the day, because nobody else will be doing so. And since we have lots of interesting stuff to discuss, it’ll probably even count as work.

It was very sweet of Mom to mail me and say that she wasn’t at all hurt by my flagrant disregard for her birthday. Even if it’s true, though, I still feel kinda bad.

More bug fixing at work, and 15 minutes of utter terror on the phone with Phil before we realized that we hadn’t actually designed a requirement for Impossibilium into our precious software. Instead, I just have to throw out a few days’ work on recovery fixups, but I’m not too upset. (Just between you and me, I’d done some pretty ugly stuff.)

Jacob is correct, of course, in his assertion that language needs to serve its users. Aven and I discussed this briefly — well, she lectured me a little bit, and I made some pointless and content-free reply — as well, and the OED has, as we all know, always been built on submissions and whatnot. But once you wipe away my overstated and bitter interjections, my real point is that, as in software design, you don’t just add somethig because a user asked for it. More than just the submitter has to use the resulting language, just as a given application will be used by more people than set-of-one who thinks it needs a big red button for flipping the display upside-down. People who use the language are obviously — maybe not obviously, OK, but if I say obviously it will perhaps keep people from disagreeing as casually — the right people to be guiding it forwad, but simple ignorance shouldn’t be the basis of the evolution of a language. But maybe I shouldn’t come down so hard on ignorance, because I used to be very annoyed at the simple existence of “administrate“, before I discovered that it wasn’t simply a faux root of “administrator”. I guess I simply fear for the loss of beauty, elegance, and even function that so frequently accompanies universal input. (mpt can tell you all about that.) What happened to the glory of elitism, anyway?

I’m really frustrated with Mozilla right now — the project, I mean; the software still serves me admirably — and I’m wondering if maybe I don’t need a cleaner break than simply not doing it for a living. Might be time to get off the staff and drivers lists, but then the vast majority of my email would start to bounce. Boy, that’d be a pain. Ah well, back to complaining about sloppy approvals and bogus “design” documents.

I’m pretty cranky these days. I think I need to get more sleep, or something.

I was going to write a bunch of stuff about how I wrestled a big bug to the ground today, and talk at some length about why I’d like to go to law school, to say nothing of actually elaborating on the history profiling stuff I mentioned yesterday.

But none of that matters when compared to the fact that I forgot my own mother’s goddamned birthday, which was, of course, yesterday. I suck, and she deserves so much better. Bah.

Sorry, mom. =(

I had a bit of a heart attack this morning, when Brian reported that he was crashing before he even got to the interesting part of recovery, but it turned out to be an easy fix, and then we were very much off to the races. I’m psyched to run a pile of recovery tests this week, and get them behind us.

Em had a pretty rough day today, starting with an apparent cancellation of a very early class, and then followed by the discovery that her office building had caught fire quite recently. It was clearly a sign that she should come over and watch Buffy for 6 hours, so she did. Good on her.

I spent the rest of the day chasing a really frustrating bug, for which I think I now — finally! — have a solution, and being generally grumpy about some nonsense in the Mozilla universe. I hope I’m degrumped by the time I sit on that panel in a few weeks, or I’ll be giving them a very different perspective from the one they’re likely expecting me to provide. Hrmph.

I also had a good chat with my friend Deb about the pricing models for online games, and a pleasant dinner — with, of course, drinks — with Em and Sara Kirouac and Tyla, and then picked up the last book in the series I’m reading on the way home. Queen Video didn’t have the DVDs of the first season of 24 available for my rental and subsequent enjoyment, so I’ll have to find them elsewhere. And soon, since the second season starts tomorrow, and I won’t be able to resist watching it for very long, once it’s taped.

I wanted to write something about dougt‘s blurb on history mining — I did a lot of thinking about that when I was at ZKS — but I’m too tired now.

I’m even too tired to book the rest of my travel stuff. Tomorrow, I guess.

I am such a good person. I got up early today, jogged to climbing, climbed for three hours — even with just Madhava, Tyla and I, it was a fun trip — and then ate a yummy lunch. And after that, I went to work and had a fantastic evening.

We are so much closer to feature-completeness for my portion of Lustre than we were on Friday, and it’s a tremendous boost to my spirits. When Phil comes to visit this weekend, it’s quite possible that we’ll actually be able to take time off, and perhaps even have fun.

This whole Russian theatre hostage thing led me to brush up on my aging knowledge of special forces techniques, which in turn led me to crave Raven Shield more than I have in recent weeks. I think that, and Splinter Cell may be enough for me to risk marital strife for the acquisition of an Xbox. Mmm.

So much drinking this week. So much. First the Johnnie Walker event on Tuesday, and then yesterday’s Madhava Celebration. Next week will involve very, very little alcohol, I predict.

After our hangovers were eliminated, or at least muted, Tyla and Emily and Madhava watched Buffy while I sat on the computer. I had intended to do some more work, but I couldn’t really get into it and ended up just playing AC2 instead.

I had my heart and stomach set on Korean food, so after we managed to actually get out of the house, we had a tasty and very large meal at Mul Rae Bang-A (formerly “World Pop’s Sportsbar”, it seems). While Koreans tend to be on the small side, the portions at Korean restaurants are usually quite generous. Maybe it’s some sort of overcompensation thing. Once we declared defeat, the rest of the crew headed to the Bloor Cinema to see tonight’s the Mental Hygiene film festival offering, and I walked home to nap. On the way, I picked up a copy of Massive Online Gaming, which actually looks quite good.

I’m going to go fall asleep in front of the TV now.

Here’s this week’s Friday-morning mystery: why did I use the word plaintiff in yesterday’s entry, when I clearly meant defendant? Ponder that one as you go about your end-of-week business.

Up early to beat the recycling truck to the curb, so I’ll be at the office before 9AM. Phil’s poor heart probably can’t stand this sort of shock.

Christ. This is the last thing the English language needs: random internet losers puking all over the OED. And I thought it was ugly when “wrong” became an adverb.

A US appeals court has overturned a multi-million-dollar verdict in the case of a Jenny Jones guest who was killed by another guest after the first guest admitted to a homosexual crush on the second guest. Yes, well. I find myself wondering if that case would have turned out differently in Canada, where the “thin skull” rule holds that a plaintiff is responsible even in cases where the victim is unusually susceptible to the injury in question. In this case, the rule would perhaps apply to the murderous guest, whose mental illness and apparent potential for tragic violence wasn’t known to the show. Maybe one of my lawyer friends can point me at some case law that’s isomorphic to this case. I’ve found some cases like this one which indicate that the US has a similar “thin skull” rule (second paragraph), but maybe I’m not interpreting it correctly. It’s been a long time since I actually studied anything resembling law, and that was in a pretty shallow manner. (That case also cites another case, called “Brake v. Speed”, which is a pretty cool name.)

The vet called back, and Chester does have a urinary-tract infection. No uric crystals in the sample, though, which means that a simple course of antibiotics should be enough to get him back in fine working order. Yay!

I didn’t write a lot of code today, but I read a ton. And Phil and I yet again combined our massive, throbbing brain-organs in search of solutions to some of the problems that crop up when a thousand clients all try to get the attention of one metadata server. I have a lot more work to do for our November 1st milestone than I had previously expected, which will interfere only the slightest bit with my other plans for the remainder of the month (eating, sleeping, being at home). If all else fails, I could just get a new face and head for the hills.

Last night’s Johnnie Walker shindig was quite fun, and very well orchestrated. Good food, good booze, interesting presentation, and, of course, great company. Made my otherwise-not-so-great day much, much better.

We got heat today. Turns out that in addition to the radiators being stone dry, and the autofiller being seized, the thermostat was wired in backwards. In the words of our nice heating-repair man, that’s the only thing worse than it not being wired in at all. (If we’d had central air, it would have turned on the cooling cycle, in fact. What fun that would have been!) Of course, I asked about the thermostat on the very first conversation with the landlord’s handyman, 15 days ago. Alas. Toasty now, though.

Chester had a bad day. Tyla took him to the vet to get his outdoor shots, and to see if there is any biological or medical factor contributing to his recent transgressions. (I half-suspect a urinary-tract infection, but I’m no vet.) By the time I picked him up later that evening, he had thoroughly soiled his cage, due to a combination of terror and the diuretic drug they gave him to help with the tests. Poor thing. He didn’t much like the bath we gave him when we got home, either, but the alternatives were too horrifying to contemplate.

I managed to get some work done today, though I’m not especially proud of it. Remember, this hackery is going to be protecting the American nuclear stockpile. Have a nice day!

I got a really long mail from my Mom today, as, apparently, did everyone else she knows. I feel that I should make a point of not replying to it, just to provide some stability and continuity in her life.

I didn’t go climbing today, because I suck. Tomorrow, though, oh sweet tomorrow.

If I’m going to keep Madhava in my prestigious other-diaries sidebar, he’d better keep up with the updates. Or come by tomorrow with a really cool shirt.

Happy 14th Birthday, Phil. This is for you.

In addition to being Phil’s birthday, today also marks the solemn occasion of two weeks elapsed since we first told our landlord that we didn’t have heat — not that it should really be our responsibility to point that out in early October, when Toronto law requires, I believe, that it be functioning and available to the tenant on September 15. We still don’t have heat, and he’s going to hear about it today, when I get to the office. Sweet heavens, is he going to hear about it.

Tonight, Madhava, Tyla and I are going to go hang out with some people from Johnnie Walker, and sample their wares. Should be fun, especially the drinking part. (Remember, kids: you don’t need to be having a good time to drink alcohol.)