Well, I've been getting chastised for not updating again, so now I am. It's getting cooler in Montreal, which is nice. Because it was hot. I'm going to try Kendo again next week. Should be interesting. I'm not in shape. Not even close. Office job + really nothing else to do == weakling. So, I'm going to work on that. So I don't die at Kendo.

Cringely's new article says what everyone else is thinking about 'big business' in the US. I think it would be hard to disagree with him. 'Innovation' is a completely meaningless word to me, it seems like you can't be in the computer industry unless you say it every third sentence. This morning I was innovative in all sorts of ways. I used my razor in a way I never had before. I filled my cereal bowl just a little bit fuller. I clicked differently. I plan on being increasinly innovative all day.

Cringely says that 'innovation' is replacing 'invention'. I think he's right. Grammatically it's pretty painful to see people writing that they 'innovated' something (which I've seen). But that's not the worst of it. You can argue over 'invention'. Either someone invented something, or they didn't. New thing + particular date == invention. But you can't dispute 'innovation'. When you put it in a sentence (correctly) you have to write something like 'company X is an innovation leader' or 'what we did was very innovative'. Sure, I can disagree, but it's like two people arguing over who likes something 'more'. It's up to interpretation. And people seem to be interpreting it very loosely....

In case you read Cringely's article and were interested, The Final Days of Autodesk is part of the Autodesk Files. The guy who was the driving technological force behind Autodesk (Autodesk makes AutoCAD, maybe you've heard of it) is John Walker. Basically he wrote 'memos' to his partners and employees that he collected and published in a real, live book. It's interesting. Kinda long, truth be told I only read the sections with interesting-looking titles. Anyway, Autodesk was (is?) one of the companies that was really behind the whole PC revolution thing. Interesting bit of computer history, at least.

That's all for now. I leave you with an article that someone forwarded me which I thought was greaty. Reprinted without permission:

Almost 2 in one day! Boy, you guys are lucky. IBM apparently has a linux commercial out. It's on the internet too, here. It's pretty dramatic. Sort of makes me giggle.

If you're in the mood for internet videos, there are some spoofs of those PSA's that used to be at the end of GI Joe cartoons here. They aren't great. But they're something.

Microsoft thinks Asia isn't playing fair. Right.

Johnny Cash died today. Sadness. I heard it on the CBC radio this afternoon, then they played Ring of Fire...

I hooked you up with some Cringely last week, and now I'm going to do it again. This time it's about identity theft. Particularly relevant to me, since, you know, somebody already tried. This Pamela Ribon lady has a pretty funny journal on her website. Here's a sample. I didn't know 'snark' had such a rigorous definition....

Finally, some short fiction. If you have a few minutes to kill. It's not long.

Not much else to say, just wanted to close Mozilla...

Hey, did you know the RIAA is bringing suits against children who download music? The link is actually about the 'culture of theft', and there is a gem on page 2:

Nice. There is an interview with Scott McNealy here. He's the CEO of Sun, maybe you've heard of him before. IE the guy behind pushing Java thinclients / 'network computers' on everyone. Kind of interesting, anyway.

I read some articles a few days ago about robots and I was meaning to rant, but I've sort of lost interest. Anyway, this guy Marshall Brain posted a short essay about how robots are going to take 50% of the jobs by 2050, called Robot Nation. It was pretty good, interesting stats, etc. However, he then proceeded to follow it up with Robotic Freedom, which is just embarassing. Basically, he says that when we lose all the service & blue collar jobs to robots by 2050, 50% of the population will be unemployed. What will they do? Well, he says basically that government welfare will have to support them. Which is true.

(Those of you who are about to say "fuck welfare, if they can't find a job, let em starve" - don't be so bloody stupid. I mean, obviously that makes you a heartless bastard, but that's true even now. However, when you are talking about half the population, that's just stupid. Do you think they're going to just sit around and starve ?? You think hundreds of millions of people are just going to go away?? No. They will come for your head...)

Anyway, ok, some sort of socialist system is going to be necessary. But where does the money to support half the country come from? He overlooks the obvious - take it from the rich (duh), and suggests - are you ready for this? - banner ads !!!

Yes, banner ads. Salvation for the masses will come from banner ads. Not internet banner ads, mind you, but banner ads on dollar bills. In fact, he suggests a lot of other money-making schemes, all based on advertising. Is he on crack? Yes. Nevermind that half the population HAS NO BLOODY MONEY TO SPEND. Nevermind that the ones with the money probably aren't going to be carrying a lot of cash. Coke will definitely want to advertise on dollar bills...

Right. So a mini-rant. The end.

waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is that
frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not
raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe. --

(you've all probably seen this 500 times, but I don't get many forwards any more...)

Why does no one else get weird phone calls? I was at Brutopia tonight (the ACME burger is scrumptious) and my phone rings. I answer, and some guy says "marry me, please". Really. At first I thought he was saying "May I please", and I was losing the rest of the sentence (or he was having some trouble getting it out). But no. I said "what?", and he repeated more clearly - "marry me, please". Rinse and repeat - "what?" - "marry me, please".

Needless to say, I was a bit thrown. So I said "No". He said, "Oh, sorry" and hung up.

WTF?

(The person I was eating with suggested that if it happens again, I should say "Yes". Might make for an interesting conversation, anyway...)

I wish I had a scanner. From a pamphlet for a dentist office near my place:

So, I got a submission. Somebody sent me something and said (I quote):

Remember in compilers when Chester wanted to make C+-? Probably not, unless you were in compilers....I didn't realize people actually read this. Maybe the denizens of the Shack...and I guess Les said he did...but now respectable businessmen, too?

(Chester: what's with the skiing picture in the about section? Where is that picture saul has of your head? He projected that one at banff, full-screen...20-foot high Chester head....c'est formidable!)

This phidget project is great. Just the picture. fantastic.

Hey, if there's any grouplab people out there, I'd like some pictures of the projector wall thing. The MAD boxes, if they are still being called that.

A Submission. I feel so....important....

(Although...I have to say that I'm curious who Chester thinks will benefit from the Intercal manual. Unless, by benefit, he means "cringe in abject horror at the mere sight of".)

So my social life picked up a bit...uh...yesterday. At least, I went out of the house for a reason other than work or groceries. First up was a production by the McGill English Department called Black Comedy. The play itself was not spectacular IMO, but the performances by both 'neighbor' characters totally made it worthwhile. Unfortunately I can't remember their names (or the character names). So no google-hits for them. If you happen to click on the english department link (until the picture changes), the guy on the red couch plays a flamboyant antique collector who sort of loses it... he completely made the final scene as good as it was. See it, if you happen to be in Montreal, uh, next week...

We then proceeded to Bar Des Pins - hotness factor -5 / 10 according to montreal-clubs.com. I'd been to Miami, I was at the old Den at UofC - I thought I knew dirt bars. I was wrong. Bar Des Pins - "a reassuring glimpse into Montreal's social underbelly", according to Yahoo Travel, notes the orange tables but doesn't mention the foul smell. Then again, after about 5 minutes you don't really notice the smell any more. We were there on a Saturday at 11 at it was completely empty except for a table of students singing Beatles tunes. Actually, they were really good, at it made for a nice atmosphere. We played some pool (I was thrashed) and had a pitcher. The beer is cheap and there wasn't any trouble getting a table. Sounds like my kind of place. Plus, there was a mini-disco-ball in the jukebox, and the door is orange with one of those half-circle brushed aluminum pads to push on. It was like stepping in to the 70's, as seen on television...

Ok, so the pitcher is down, and we head to Cinema du Parc to see Harold and Maude. Cinema du Parc is a "repetory cinema", which seems to mean that they mostly play old movies or independent films. Which is great. 6 bucks (I can still pass as a student until my ISIC expires in december) for a movie is dirt cheap these days, and they play all sorts of good stuff. I saw some Kurosawa films there - now I know what the Barenaked Ladies were talking about - and a few others, when I lived a few blocks from it in the moldy apartment. But tonite we saw Harold and Maude.

Apparently Harold and Maude is something of a classic. I maybe had heard of it before. Anyway, it was great. I don't know what happened to Harold, but I've never seen anyone do "somber-faced" like he does. There is one brilliant bit - after he fakes self-immolation to scare off a dating service date his mother has set up for him - where he does like a 10-second mug for the camera, and I swear your don't notice that he's actually doing it for the first 9 seconds. Fantastic. The rest of the movie is good too, some parts I thought were a bit over the top, but it was made in the 60s or 70s, and it was a big political statement / satire then. Anyway, I liked it.

So, that was last night. Today I got up and forced myself to leave the house during daylight. I took a sick day last Monday - I will not describe the problem, in case you are eating. By the afternoon I was feeling better though, so I went for a walk. It was fantastic to be out in the city during the day. I haven't done that for months. So today I forced myself out. And I looked up.

I don't usually look up. In the mornings I'm on my way to work, I'm tired, I'm just trying to get into the metro...I watch the traffic and try to to get run down by cars / busses / people. But today, today I looked up. It's weird, but when you look up here the view of the city totally changes. The ground floor view of most buildings is pretty fantastic already - stone archways, paintings in art gallery windows, etc. But above that are great balconys and gargoyle-type things and rooftops. Especially on Sherbrooke, which is a really old street with lots of great buildings. Old churches with belltowers and other things that I don't know the names for. There is this massive building that looks like a castle...I think it might be an expensive hotel? I'm not sure. But it looks great. Some days I wish I could get up onto rooftops and just look at the top-half of all these buildings.

Anyway, then it got dark and cold and I came home. But it was nice. I miss being out in the city...

If anyone knows how to get Oracle 8i 1.7.1 to install on frickin Windows XP, you email me. Now.

The maintenance workers for Montreal Transit are on strike. The buses now run from 6-9am, and 3-6 pm. Weekdays. No night service. No weekend service. This sucks...

Today the metro actually shut down at about 5:30, leaving me trapped, oh, a couple hours walk from home. Nice. I split a cab with some co-workers who were likewise trapped.

I got Oracle to work. JIT compiling does not work on P4s. C'est ridiculous. But more in French...

Well, the transit strike is over. It wasn't so bad. Only had to take one taxi and walk for about 20 minutes one day when the Metro shut down one stop from where I work. Adventure. Excitement.

Apparently the last strike went on for over 6 months, so in the grand scheme of strikes, this one wasn't so bad.

I went out not once, but twice this weekend. Both nights. Unheard of. Naturally, it was to the same place - Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel - a Montreal microbrew house. I thought microbrew just meant that the beer company was small, but here it means they actually make the beer in the same building. The beer-making vats are right there, in the same room as the tables and chairs. I was there once before but I didn't even notice. On the one hand, it's neat to be right there, beside the beer while it's fermenting. It's the great cycle of beer-life - from beer-making stuff (has something to do with hops and barley, I think), to the beer, to...the urinal. Ok, so the end part isn't so glamorous. But knowing where the beer comes from has a downside, too. It takes away some of the magic. It's not being delivered from on high, flowing from blessed taps into your hallowed glass. It's coming from that giant brass bucket over there, out of the red rubber hose. It's like knowing how white cake donuts are made...

Anyway, I went there, and to a restaraunt, La Belle Thailandaise. It was pretty good. It's Bring-Your-Own-Wine (or "Apportez Votre Vin"). My French is improving. Anyway, I had teriyaki chicken ("poulet teriyaki"), and also tried some sort of duck ("canard"). But don't order spring rolls ("spring rolls") and expect to get actual spring rolls. They bring you something else, something not spring rolls. Luckily, someone else at my table ordered some other kind of roll and got spring rolls. So we traded. But I can't remember what she ordered, so you'll just have to guess-and-test.

Bring-Your-Own-Wine is another great thing about Montreal. Lots of restaurants don't want to pay for having a liquor license, and have to keep up a decent wine selection, etc. So they don't get one. But you are allowed to bring your own - they even supply glasses and pour it for you. It's great. Unfortunately, you can only bring wine. No 40s of Olde English or flats of Pilsner. You could probably sneak some Jack Daniels in and pour into into your iced tea, if that's your bag...But the wine thing, the wine thing is cool.

I had to buy more RAM because I couldn't run Oracle and Notepad at the same time. It swapped for 5 minutes whenever I tried to switch tasks. Thanks Windows XP, and your need for 80 megs just to have a desktop with some icons...And what's with creating a Database in Oracle? It took over an hour to create an empty database!?!?!? And it takes up 1.2 GB. It's fucking empty!!!!!!!!!!!. Ok, enough rage, I'm going to bed...

The utterly brilliant Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team:

It's snowing in Montreal. Snowing. I know it's been snowing in Alberta for weeks now. I know that in BC there are cities without gas and spot floods in Vancouver. But it's snowing in Montreal now and it's bloody cold. The cold here is nothing like cold in Alberta. I can't explain. It'll only be -10 and it's absolutely fucking freezing. Some days I wonder if they are lying about the temperature. I'm told it's the humidity or something. Whatever it is, someone needs to put a stop to it, now.

Last night I went to a christmas party at Altitude 737. It's a trendy dance-club / restaurant place. It's on top of the highest building in Montreal:

The lights are spotlights - four of them, they sweep out over the city whenever the club is open. I think that's probably my favorite part about the place. I've never been in it until last night - actually, I was just in the restaurant. I went home before the crowd I was with headed into the club (because I'm a lame-o).

Being on top of the tallest building in Montreal, it has a great view. The shot below is basically what I could see while I had dinner last night - I had a window seat. It was very surreal:

You can actually see 360 degrees, all around the city. It's nice. It's the only spot in the city that is higher than The Mountain. If you're from Western Canada, The Mountain is really just a big hill. It's right in the middle of the city - you cannot miss it, it's the hill with the giant glowing cross on it. (They love their religion in Quebec...). There is a bylaw that says no building can be higher than the mountain. This does still allow for pretty tall buildings, because the mountain is the highest point on the island, and everything is downhill from there. But the building 737 is on top of was built illegally - it's higher than the mountain. The constractors lied to the city inspectors, but the city can't really make them take down a skyscraper. You know, hazardous to pedestrians and all.

I went to Miami Bar on Friday night. Miami Bar is the first Montreal "dirt bar" that I went to when I was here. I would have never found it by myself, and if I had, I probably wouldn't have gone in. To get there, you wander up St. Laurent past Des Pins until, on the left side of the street, you see one of those marquee signs with the lights around it that says Miami in big letters. You know it's the right one if the sign is really dirty and only 2 of the bulbs actually light up. You go in a narrow doorway up some rickety old stairs and into a tiny place with one pool table and maybe 8 small tables. Usually, it's packed with people. Not Montreal club-scene type people. Interesting people who sometimes smash pool cues when the miss a shot.

Anyway, I was there until it closed at 3 am. Then we got pizza. It was absolutely the best pizza in the whole wide world, if I remember correctly. I may have been influenced by the fact that it was the only sustenance (other than beer) that I'd had in about 5 hours. Then I walked home. It is cold cold cold in this city. Cold in a way that you never experience on the prairies. The freezing wind blows in from the St. Laurent river (weird how in Alberta they tell you the name is the St Lawrence river - like we couldn't pronounce the French version...). With the humidity, it doesn't really matter if you have a warm coat on. The cold sticks to you, and you have to take a hot shower when you get home. Of course, if you come from Miami Bar at 4 am you have to do that anyway, because you don't just smell like an ashtray, you actually have a thin layer of ashtray-molecules covering all your exposed skin. At least it feels that way...

Before I went to Miami Bar I chilled and played some video games and drank a beer. A 9 percent beer. In a big bottle. Now, if you are from Alberta (and I am), the only 9 percent beer that comes in a big bottle is Big Bear, and maybe Olde English. These are not the kind of beer you drink unless you only have 4 dollars and don't mind the cruel hangover. But in Quebec they make all sorts of big beers that are actually pretty cool. They have neat names like "Fin du Monde" (End of the World) and "Maudite" (The Damned One). Did I mention that they sell these at convenience stores. Friday night I had "Don de Dieu" (Gift of God) - 9%. Pretty tasty, and only about 8 bucks.

So, Bar Miami. I recommend it, if you are looking to get away from the ribbed t-shirt people...

And now, some physics jokes (you've been warned):

If you enjoyed those, see if you can handle these ones...

Ulmer and Cory say I'm supposed to update. Nothing has happened tho. My life is boring. Montreal turned into a slushy hell for a week and my shoes were wet for 3 days. I rented videos. That's about it.

I'm not sure if I can even describe how it gets here. It snows basically like it does in Alberta. Then it melts. But it doesn't go anywhere - it just melts into huge pools and sits there, waiting for you to step in it. The metro station I have to go to had a fucking moat around it one morning. Hence the wet shoes.

I went to The Last Samurai last night. I've heard / read lots of bad reviews, but I thought it was pretty good. Then again, I have a Samurai-Are-Cool bias. There was lots of bad-ass Samurai action - swords clashing, that sort of thing. There were also lots of morons in the crowd yelling stupid shit, and even bigger morons trying to "shush" them. Where are those code-of-honour Samurai when you need em, eh? I bet yelling out in movies is totally a dishonourable thing to do. The Samurai's would be obligated to, y'know, do something. Cuz they have that code. Of honour.

I need a haircut.

Anyway, this is a waste of your time and mine. But I'll post it anyway...

PS. Will Ferrell is funny.

Apparently the US is warning law enforcement agencies to be on the look out for people carrying almanacs and maps - beacuse, naturally, they are probably terrorists. Anyone wanting to know how to determine which direction North is using tree moss is obviously a threat to national security. And, of course, lost tourists pose the greatest danger to freedom this planet has ever seen.

The article says that the almanacs have lists of the tall buildings, as well as maps of downtown regions. In the same book. Obviously a goldmine for terrorists, who are unable to cross-reference. Just in case, maybe they should collect and burn all encyclopedias. Just think about what terrorists could learn from those weapons of mass destruction...

If you click on one of the sidebar pictures, you will find this great bit:

I've made a terrible mistake. I didn't realize my celebrations were supposed to be shadowed. Cancel all your plans! Stay home and hide under your bed!