Bright lights shining upwards obscures the stars...
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Jeff Bailey's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 5:03 pm |
Taxes; Bixi
Finally filed our Quebec, Canada, California and US taxes today - two stops for local tax agencies and then the post office. Another "How awesome is Montreal" moment: Biking downtown on a rental bike for which I pay ~$80CAD/year, going past cars that were stuck in traffic, past the jazz festival on a warm sunny day. Drop off the rental bike a stand, and walk the 2 or 3 blocks to the destination, pick it up to return. Less than an hour of time to make up for work, all included. Bixi takes a bit of getting used to since they don't have all the supply and demand quirks worked out, but I've been remarkably lucky with it. | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 7:17 am |
| | Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | | 7:00 pm |
Composting!
We just signed up for Compost Montreal! I've been looking for something like this. We moved from Toronto just as they were getting Green Box curb-side pickup in. As vegans, almost all of our garbage is compostable food scraps (the rest being primarily diapers). ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) scjody had told us about the composter he got, which makes mixing the compost quite easy - but it has a $40 delivery charge and requires us to do something. And that plan has one critical flaw: We haven't done it yet. Week by week, we continue to toss out garbage instead of doing something. Fixed. If you have a guide from conscienceverte.ca (similar to those useless Entertainment Guides that band always makes you peddle in high school, but actually with things I want), it's 50% off the first month and the cost is $5/week. We just signed up for a year. They apparently will also do corporate pickup downtown, so I'm going to try and pitch my work on signing up for it. Google Mountain View is starting to handle compost now, so hopefully other offices have budgets for it as well. | | Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | | 10:24 pm |
Recent Roll-Up
We're all doing well. Life's just insanely busy. Will try to post more than 140 character snippets to Facebook more often. =) Random things from today... In the playground...Leif exploring a rope bridge: Leif having less fear than auzure_skies would like: In the news...Overall, 37 per cent of teens in the survey said they were sexually active, but some didn't know how to define "sex."
"Very surprising to us was that many kids were unsure about whether they had had sex or not," said one of the study's authors, Sarah Flicker, a professor of environmental studies at York University.
(CBC) Go figure, most people I know can't come up with a definition of sex that isn't penis-meets-vagina intercourse - and those are people who've been to Opus, UU churches, taken OWL and all ought to know better. My favourite definition is still from Cheers, when they were talking about "When is it sex?" Norm replies: "When the first breast appears." | | Sunday, May 31st, 2009 | | 9:19 pm |
| | Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | | 4:52 pm |
Stupid Locksmith
Our place has a fancy magical lock on the front door that has been sticking lately. We phoned the locksmith who put it in to discover that he apparently can't talk to us because we're not the registered owners of the lock. Right - when we bought the place, we apparently don't automatically get the title to the locks on our front door. The former owners could phone at anytime and get into our place. If we were locked out in the middle of the night, he couldn't let us in. Fuck that. Will replace the lock myself with a crowbar if I have to. | | Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 | | 11:05 am |
Mother's day
I subscribe to the iRobot mailing list for new products, discounts, etc. Today I got an email talking about great deals for mother's day. In case of you out there think this is a good idea, let's state this clearly: This is not a good idea.Giving someone a gift that reminds them of housework is a fast path to tears. Even if they're a geek. Just say no. | | Friday, April 24th, 2009 | | 12:37 am |
Language lessons
Through a program at work, I just got access to Rosetta Stone. I've been a bit worried that with a primarily English-speaking workplace and an English-speaking home that my French would stagnate. It turns out that my account has access to all the languages, not just French. So which other language should I learn? For fun, I did the first lesson of Latin (got 81%) and Japanese (83%). And now I'll have dreams of this voice going "Hoooah toe teh mah jusa". Mmmm. and now I want juice. Zzzzz... | | Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | | 11:01 am |
Cuteness
This morning Leif and I were playing and I looked at him and said "I love..." and point at him. He looked up at me with bright eyes and said "DOUBLE-YOU!" It's his favourite letter at the moment. =) | | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 6:59 pm |
Suggestion for renaming of Karmic Koala
Dear Ubuntu Technical Committee, Please consider the following proposal to both delay the 9.10 release slightly, and also to deviate the naming sequence slightly to use a previous letter that was skipped. I propose that the next release of Ubuntu be 9.11, and be called "Bumbling Bush" Sincerely Yours, Jeff Bailey, Ubuntu Core Dev. | | Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | | 1:20 pm |
Creationism Museum
On our move down to California, Angie, Leif and I stopped by the Creationism Museum. I mentioned this a couple of Augusts ago. Unfortunately, I didn't want to post about it without having the pictures, and I've only just finally got around to uploading them. I suck, news at 11. http://picasaweb.google.com/kaladron/CreationismMuseumWe went with Stephanie, and had a great time. We got there a bit late, so didn't get to see the floor show and stuff, but we did get a chance to see the exhibits. The people there were a little reminiscent of the TV show Circle Square, where the people were just a little too friendly, and blinked just a little too rarely. How we heard about the creationism museum was from an Interview on CBC, where the guy who opened the museum talked about how they were trying to show a different interpretation of the results of archaelogical digs, and how they saw this as a religion, and that science is just another religion. We were a bit shocked when we got to the US to discover that the guy is somewhat less rational there, claiming that what they're doing is good pure science, etc. The premise is an interesting one: They start with the literal truth of the bible and then interpret everything against that backdrop. The argument is a vaguely reasonable one: Scientists do this all the time using what they've learned in school. They've learned that the universe is billions of years old, and therefore will do carbon dating a certain way, etc. If you start with the bible saying that the universe is 6000-odd years old, then results wind up getting interpreted differently. The key to most of how the world wound up the way it is is apparently tied up in two major events: First, the story with the apple (Sorry I'm a little light on details, I didn't grow up Christian) caused people to start eating meat and wearing clothes. Aside of the moment, my in-laws have a great fridge magnet from restoringeden.org: "God's original plan was to hang out in a garden with some naked vegetarians" The second big event was the great flood, which killed all the dinosaurs, caused turbulence, moved continents around, and some other stuff. Amusingly enough, when looking for a link to the CBC review, I found a review of a complaint about the interview: http://www.cbc.ca/ombudsman/ombudsmanweb/39.htm
Anyhow, had a great time. Enjoy the photos. =) | | Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | | 7:20 am |
A set of thoughts
- Leif slept through most of the night most nights last week. Then was sick this week. We haven't got back to that space yet. I'd say "I have faith", but I think that's when god looks at the little Unitarian and chuckles to himself with an "aren't you cute".
- Apparently I have thousands of photos that I hadn't uploaded. This is going to be more work than I thought.
- What sucks is waking up at 4am not because Leif woke me up, but because I was hungry. Taking until 5 to figure this out. Until 5:30 to fall asleep, to have Leif wake me up at 6.
- We get communauto tomorrow. I'm so excited! First trip: Ikea. And of all the exciting things I could want from there? I want kitchen knives. At 5, I put the margarine on the toast with the back of a fork.
- I really hope I can get to the gym today.
- In 4 minutes, I will wake Leif and Angie up and we'll start our day.
Showtime, synergy! | | Saturday, March 21st, 2009 | | 8:17 pm |
Citibank
Apparently Citibank doesn't even trust Citibank. Citi Mastercard took my minimum monthly payment out of my account despite me having paid the account down to zero, so had to issue me a refund check. It's drawn on the Royal Bank of Canada. Awesome. =) | | 5:28 pm |
Jaunty pre-beta
As an Ubuntu core-dev (although a lazy one. I really should hack on something again. I blame having a toddler), I try to at least do a run of testing around beta time on my machines. So far I'm really impressed. For the first time wifi, suspend, sound, 3d, and youtube all work out of the box. Usually at beta time, I expect that none of those will. Playing a DVD kills X, though. (Well, if I do it twice. The first time it'll kill the app, the second time it'll kill X) Tried with totem-gstreamer, xine and mplayer so I'm pretty certain that it's X. Luckily it's an Intel card, so hopefully it's early enough to file bugs and get them fixed in time for release. Nice work! | | Friday, March 13th, 2009 | | 11:40 am |
The 70's called...
My coworker scares me. He wants 70's wallpaper. From the gallery that he's looking at:  | | Monday, March 9th, 2009 | | 8:19 pm |
| | Sunday, March 8th, 2009 | | 8:01 pm |
One-year surgery update
It's crazy to think that this is just past the one-year anniversary of my surgery. A year out and I can lift about 12kg (25lbs for the Americans and Iranians), I'm not on routine or regular pain killers of any sort. I still have to take it easy and need to make sure I get to the gym more often - when I don't I start to get pain and have trouble keeping up with Leif. I have discovered that I can't sleep on airplanes anymore, even in Air Canada business class. So, no more red-eyes for me. It's hard to shed a tear over that one. =) I suppose I have a lot of little limitations like that, but a year in I don't notice them so much anymore. I shudder a bit to think that at this time last year, I was just home from the hospital. A long walk for me was a trip to the mailbox: I was only up for it every couple of days, and it took me about 30 minutes, including stops for sitting. Thanks for your love and support, everyone. | | Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | | 11:50 pm |
Leif's second birthday!
I'm going to post pictures and such later, but we celebrated Leif's second birthday yesterday with 20-or so of us. He had a great time running around and dancing and seeing everyone. As a fun side-effect, it was our first big house party. The place is finally setup enough that it feels like most things have a place to go. Yay! Sandy and Angie did a wonderful job with decorating while I was in California last week. | | Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | | 7:58 am |
Snow in Montreal
I think it's funny how the weather here drizzles snow like Vancouver drizzels rain. There's a light dusting of it coming down now, and this seems to be able to happen for weeks at a time at the beginning and end of winter. I know so many people who are so sick of winter by the time March and April roll around. I suspect growing up in 200 days of rain per year and really liking Vancouver weather makes me a little more resistant to this than most. | | Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | | 9:30 pm |
Wa[t]com
You'd think that sometime before today I would've learned that Wacom and Watcom were not the same company. And that I might've learned it from someone other than a non-geek friend who was bored in her Japanese business class. =) |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
