trip to the past

I was going through some paperwork (invoices from a decade and a half ago, when I ran my own company), and came across some pics I hadn’t seen in a while. I believe they were taken in the summer of 1990, but it could’ve been 1991. In any event, it was from one of the summers on Sunnyside, when my roomies (and pretty much everyone I worked with at Oliver’s) all worked at Wilderness Tours. The sequence is here, and was taken while our raft hit Coliseum, part of the rapids up in Beachburg, Ontario.

As you can see, I didn’t quite manage to stay in the boat. I still remember the hit vividly, as well as saying “awww, fuck”, then falling in the water and being plucked from said water by Mike and Kevin. Every single person, with the exception of one of the guides, was one of my friends at that point. It’s weird how time changes everything, as I haven’t spoken with anyone except Carlos (who manages the Big Daddy’s on Elgin) in years.

I can still name everyone in this pic (except for the second guide, who is at the back of the boat and appears to be leaning into the water). Starting with our guide (and my roomie and friend) in the red jacket and working clockwise they are: Dave (Shtuke), Michelle, Caroline, Mike, Kevin, Sandra, me, Carlos, Maureen, Sheri, Val, and Denis. While I’m normally not one for living in the past, these were all good people, and I’m sorry I have lost touch with pretty much everyone in the pic. That said, 16 years is a long time, and a lot changes.

It makes me a little sad, and I feel kinda old, all of a sudden.

dude. _dude_.

Ok, I don’t have kids, so perhaps I see more of the humour in this than someone who does, but Amalah’s latest entry struck me as fairly hysterical (although, I suppose that word can be used in a couple contexts as it applies there). It involves a night out on the town, and forgetting something that’s somewhat important out in the car. No, it wasn’t a wallet.

DUDE is right, because I now have something to hold over Jason’s head FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE, and I couldn’t be happier about that, since maybe now he’ll stop asking if Noah looks a little cross-eyed because I sort of let him fall off the couch that one time.

Poor Jason, and yes, poor Noah.

Walt, have you done this yet? Coop, take notes.

the new pornographers

I’d say “w00t!”, but that’d be… oh… I just did.

Why would I say that? The New Pornographers are playing Bluesfest this year on July the 16th. I am so there. They’re also playing Metropolis in Montreal a week this Sunday. I think I’m gonna try and be there… but who knows. I can’t get “These Are the Fables” out of my head these days.

They’re definitely getting the most ear-time of any one band lately, and I’d love to see them live.

Aside to little: They’re also playing at UBC in April with The Saltines and The Weakerthans. Looks like a fun show.

good to know

Toilet flush handles have a reverse thread. This information is useful if you’re trying to replace a broken one, as it may spare you the use of the brute-force method to remove the old handle. Next time I’ll try both directions, or having a look at the threads and determining which way is the right way to turn.

At least I didn’t crack the tank while applying said brute-force method.

a little irony to start the day

While driving along the Queensway this morning to meet my brother and sis-in-law for breakfast, I saw a funeral procession. One of the cars in the procession had the license plate “LVESTRNG”. Right.

got spam karma?

So, there’s a whole bunch of people who I know that use WordPress for their blogging needs, and Spam Karma for preventing those WordPress blogs from getting overrun with spam. They’re the default choice on any of the WordPress sites here on deadsquid.com, and both are outstanding pieces of software (in my opinion, for what it’s worth).

Spam Karma’s creator, Dr Dave, has had a few life changes of late, and has gone back to the world of being a full-time student. As we all may remember, this usually means lots of work and not-so-much cash. Maintaining the Spam Karma software can take a lot of time, and when your time is required for attending class and making money so you can continue to eat and sleep while attending class, the time for continued development of things like SK can suffer.

Dr Dave has written a great overview of the current state of Spam Karma, as well as a number of new challenges that he is facing on a few fronts. The net of which is he’s hoping to get a few donations to allow him to continue to combine time spent developing Spam Karma with the time spent keeping a roof over his head, books on the table, and fuel in the belly.

If you’re happy with Spam Karma, I encourage you to donate to the project (or his Bombay Sapphire fund), and help out a little. I know I’ve seen evidence of the new bot, and a couple tweaks did fix everything, but it’s reminded me of how much time SK2 has saved, and I thought is was worth a little sumthin-sumthin’.

something to remember

A glass of good red wine added to your tomato-based pasta sauce is an excellent idea.

A glass of good, dry, white wine added to your cheese-based pasta sauce and/or cheese fondue is also an excellent idea.

myspace is not my space, which isn’t your space

I was browsing through my weblogs over the weekend, and discovered that my bandwidth use is waaaaaaaaaay up. Most of it comes from a clip of the Drew Carey show where Richard Simmons plays the part of various props. It’s one of those clips that brings tears to your eyes, so I’ll share for a little while longer, then change the URL in a day or so.

The other area that it comes from is people who use myspace and a few forums hotlinking to images as part of their sig. I have no problems with folks downloading and hosting them elsewhere (and with all the free image hosting services, there’s no reason why they can’t), but don’t use my fircking bandwidth. It’s a common problem, unfortunately.

Thankfully, apache’s rewrite rules makes dealing with the large majority of the requests originating from myspace pretty straightforward. If the browser sends a referrer (very few don’t, although programs like Norton Internet Security block them by default) from a myspace hostname, they’ll get a different image than what their browser requested.

Some folks use an image that is somewhat distasteful to punish hotlinkers, but I figure a simple message is more effective, and the image they get is only 900-odd bytes. (plus the image itself makes them look funny in their forums, because their sig is supposed to be an expression about them). Once they clue in, they usually change things pdq.

A little thing to be true, but I feel better about it.

The rewrite rule, in case you were wondering, is a whole two lines:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([^/]+)myspace\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ /images/leech.gif [L]

Update: If you’re hosting your site on Apache using a provider, you can usually add rewrite rules using .htaccess files. JavaScript Kit provides a well-written overview on .htaccess, which includes a section on blocking access by referrers. Have a look-see, as it’s a great starting point for understanding how this stuff works, and what you can do to control how Apache handles page requests with your site.

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