Kev

Christmas Day was much better than I had anticipated. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, because I always expect the worst and am surprised when it doesn’t happen.

Because we did the family deal last Wednesday, there was no pressure to do anything or go anywhere. I woke up fairly early, and finished fixing the new mail system. The only thing remaining there is to integrate mailman, which should take a couple hours. It’s pretty slick, I must say.

I met up with dad and Sue for breakfast out in Kanata. While I passed on the mimosas, I did enjoy some of dad’s fresh fruit salad and pulla. It’s the traditional Needham Christmas breakfast, going back as far as I can remember. After breakfast I headed back home and watched a bit of ball, the Canadian juniors preview, and then it was off to Matt’s mom’s place for dinner.

We watched the Canadian Juniors dominate the Slovaks, get a little shaky in the second, then come back to lay the hammer down 7-3. Dinner was fantastic, with an incredibly moist bird (Mrs. Kealey says the secret is to cook it for the first hour at 425, then dial it down to 325), heaps of mash, a killer gravy prepared by my sister, and a yummy salad provided by Sue.

I got a little time to catch up with Matt while cleaning dishes, and chatted with Angie while everyone else was eating dessert. Kieran is a cute kid, and eats like a horse. I think he’s a lot like Matt.

There weren’t quite as many jokes flying across the table at dinner as we’re accustomed to, but the eve was awesome. Very enjoyable, and a great way to finish the day.

I was lucky enough to spend Christmas Eve with the Rudnitski’s last night. I managed to arrive a half hour late because of the 3 inches of ice covering all the sidewalks and my complete inability to read directions (Karen writes excellent directions which, if read, are simple to follow), leading me to overshoot the street I needed to turn up by a kilometre or so. I thought I knew where it was… honest.

Dinner was fantastic, with multiple courses, good wine, and wonderful company. The conversation at the table reminded me a lot of our family, with some strong personalities exchanging differentiating points of view on a multitude of subjects. There was also a wee bit of teasing, and I even learned some history on why some ornaments are more important than others.

I also discovered that there was not one, but two past presidents of high school AV clubs. I discovered this by making a crack about the geekiness of the AV club, and having the table go silent. Nothing like placing my foot squarely in my mouth, but it was pretty funny at the time, and it explained a lot 😉

I’m not a big fan of this time of year for a variety of reasons, but I must say last night was awesome. It reminded me of dinners gone by with my extended family, and how it’s all about the people around you that make it special. Thanks very much to Sharon, Don, Karen, and Kristina for allowing me to share a great evening with their family. I had an awesome time, and you’re an exceptional group.

Merry Christmas all! It was funny, I was rummaging throw a box earlier today (well, yesterday I guess) and came across this pic. In addition to being Christmas-themed (it’s the kids table at Christmas dinner with the fam), please note that I actually had hair. I was probably 12 in this pic – four years from that point I’d start to lose the damn stuff. But I digress…

Hope you’re all enjoying a safe and happy holidays. Enjoy the time, and give everyone a hug for me.

This one has been going around. I don’t remember seeing it before, but it’s probably an oldie. It made me laugh, and I think my faves are “Paranoid” and “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”.

Schizophrenia: Do You Hear What I Hear?

Multiple Personality Disorder: We Three Queens Disoriented Are

Amnesia: I Don’t Know if I’ll be Home for Christmas

Narcissistic: Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

Manic: Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and
Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and…

Paranoid: Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

Borderline Personality Disorder: Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

Personality Disorder: You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll tell You Why

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

Agoraphobia: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day But Wouldn’t Leave My House

Senile Dementia: Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House In My Slippers and Robe

Oppositional Defiant Disorder: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House

Social Anxiety Disorder: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate

And the men who hold high places
Must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality
Closer to the heart
Closer to the heart

I just listened to this at high volume. I feel better.

Sometimes handles make you think different. I saw the title to this entry on slashdot, and thought it was addressed to me. It wasn’t.

I really must learn to delineate the real world and the interweeb.

I know why I don’t like Mondays, so I guess I don’t really need anyone to tell me. Today was one of those long, tiring, annoying Mondays that start off poorly at 5am. I can’t go into specifics for a couple of reasons, but thankfully things got better at the end of the day. I may go into specifics later.

On another note, I came up with my definition of a good sales rep: someone who doens’t make promises they’ll benefit from at the expense of others. I got into an argument over that one with a rep who characterized me as “one of those techno-weenies who doesn’t want to do the work required to close the deal”. This after telling me he “didn’t care what proposals writers thought” after bringing them an RFP due on Monday at 5pm on Friday. Interesting guy, and I didn’t smack him, although it was tempting.

My all-time favourite rep is a guy by the name of Calude Paquette. Claude works (worked?) for Cray Research, and was without question one of the best people at managing relationships I have ever seen. He knew everything about his customers, what they needed, and what we had to offer. He brought in the right people at the right time, and never chased bad business. At Christmas he’d send out close to 500 cards, all personalized. It’s too bad he’s one in a thousand.

Oh yeah – holiday travellers need to be beaten. They still don’t get it.

Hrmm… Mike‘s blog closes posts after a certain amount of time (presumably to cut down on comment spam), but doesn’t tell you until after you’ve spent a couple minutes typing it all out. Frustrating.

In any event, because I refuse to throw away those two minutes of my life, here’s my comment to one of his posts.

Back to the President’s Choice grinder – did you know it had vanilla bean in it as well? I’m thinking the vanilla/cinnamon combination may not be the culprit. I’m wondering how much salt is in the ice cream, as I would suspect that may have more to do with it. I’ll have to try it out, because I really need some creamy genoa goodness (I’ll leave the salami out of that visual, thank you very much).

Coop – you saw both of them with Axe. Doesn’t that count as being informed? That said, I will admit, I consider both movies “not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good” – especially that whole rave-sprinkler thing at the start. And Kris Kristofferson – what a riveting performance!

Always bet on black.

Ok, that’s all for now. Does Moveable Type allow you to let people know comments are closed for an item, like WordPress does?

Mat pointed me to this post comparing NHL hockey players to his 4 year old. It’s pretty much spot-on, but it doesn’t adequately address the ownership’s irresponsibility that led to this, because you know that there are enough idiot parents out there who can’t think past their nose, and will continue to spoil the kids and wreck the curve no matter what.

Still, great post, and the closing line is awesome.

So I’m still working on getting the new deadsquid server up and running to my satisfaction. It’s now using recent software, and I think the upgrade went well. It still works, and I admit I am afraid to reboot it until someone else looks at it and says “looks good to me”. That’ll happen sometime in the next couple weeks when Walt comes up for air.

The last obstacle is an up-to-date mail system, complete with a MySQL backend, user manageable preferences, and decent spam controls. I have been fighting with the MTA for almost a week, and have finally conquered it.

Long story short, it wouldn’t authenticate against the MySQL 4.1.7 database installed on the server, so couldn’t do any kind of lookups. This makes it difficult to use a database as a back-end. Had I read the documentation, I would have come across this section, and saved myself about two days of effort.

If you’re using Debian with your own build (or an unstable build) of MySQL 4.1.x, and a package you are installing makes use of debian MySQL client libraries that use 4.0 or less (essentially libclientmysql1x), make sure you set the database user account password using the OLD_PASSWORD directive.

It will save you a lot of pain. Trust me on this one.

i.e.:
SET PASSWORD FOR ‘user’@’host’ = OLD_PASSWORD(‘yourpassword’);

Ah well, the things we learn.