zen.org Communal Weblog

“accelerated learning” outfit (whassatwhenitsathome?) The Training Camp, have determined what type of music professionals in the wonderful world of computing listen to.

Are you in the right job?

M
(currently listening to FolkAlley.com, and therefore well beyond the pale… )

Those results in full:

Job: Microsoft-certified professionals
Favoured genre: Mainstream pop

Top three bands:

Britney Spears
Dido
Beyonce
***********************

Job: Security
Favoured genre: 60s “Alt” Rock

Top three bands:

Grateful Dead
The Doors
Hendrix
***********************

Job: Linux
Favoured genre: Electro

Top three bands:

The Orb
Underworld
Kraftwerk
***********************

Job: Developers
Favoured genre: Heavy Metal

Megadeth
Iron Maiden
Slipknot
***********************

Job: Database administrators
Favoured genre: Indie

The Smiths
Haven
Suede
***********************

Job: Project manager
Favoured genre: Rock

Pink Floyd
Queen
Rolling Stones
***********************

Job: CIO/IT director
Favoured genre: Classical

Mozart
Handel
Vivaldi

I landed back in Ireland from California on Monday evening. We left San Francisco at a bit past 7pm PST on Sunday, and finally came into Dublin at 5:30pm GMT on Monday, making the first day of the week effectively vanish. I slept really well on the 10-hour flight, went to bed Monday night at a reasonable hour, and woke up Tuesday morning with a brief sleep-in from E. I had a full day Tuesday, and went to bed around 10pm….and found myself wide awake at 2am after only a bit of sleep.

Gahhhhhhhhhh. Now it’s 5am, and I might be tired enough to be able to fall back to sleep—for a couple of hours maybe. Perhaps I wasn’t quite as well-adjusted (open to interpretation) as I thought. The flight went so well, and Tuesday was on a good schedule, that I thought I was all set. Maybe it was arrogant of me to think it would be quite that easy. Another guy on the trip slept for 11 hours straight once he was home after resting for only one hour on the flight. Even though he suffered a lot by being awake for so long, I bet he’s not awake right now… 🙂

Just to let you know: One week, six days, 17 hours, 30 minutes and 52 seconds. 164 cigarettes not smoked, saving €51.48. Life saved: 13 hours, 40 minutes.

So. B’s in San Fran. And I’m home with P. And…the DSL box dies. A quick, sudden death. No lights, not even power. Can you say PANIC?! I mean, what am I supposed to do with NO INTERNET?!

Talking to B, it turns out that Declan, our friend up the road, has his brother-in-law’s old dsl box. I RUN up the road. Plug it in. And start geeking. Man, this is frustrating. It took a day and a half, 4 phone calls to Eircom (“We’ve never had that DSL box model…are you sure that’s the right model?” Yes, I’m sure, and we’ve had it for 3 freaking years, and you got it for us!!) Finally got Eamonn’s box working, and I have access. And at the same time, eircom (fondly called eircon by most of the net community in Ireland) finally realized that they were supposed to replace our dsl box a while ago with a Netopia. So that’s in the post now (supposedly…). Using the word supposedly is a requirement when speaking about eircom.

So I’m back up. 77 messages waiting for me. And I still don’t have all the normal features that I did with the other box. But I just have to wait for B to get back and finish the full install of the box.

If I can just get eircom out here to fix their shoddy wiring where the dsl comes into the house, then we’ll be all set. Oh, don’t hold your breath….

Sent to David Farber’s Interesting People mailing list:

“United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of
turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong
terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from
Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their
ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the
Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in
President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional
processes in South Vietnam.”

– Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, ‘U.S.Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,’ September 4, 1967.

Though I have nothing interesting to say, I just could not let a Wiccan holiday I remembered go by without saying something. So Merry Imbolc.

I tried to round up a group of people at work to go to a local pub for lunch and toast Punxsutawney Phil, but I had no takers. Sigh.

Here, where I work, two Japanese gentleman are visiting to learn about one of the projects I’m on. I think I impressed them as yesterday I was given a script to demo for them a few hours before the demo. I did my best to test it in an artificial environment, but when the real demo came around in the correct environment it did not work well. The demo turned into a shell script debugging lesson, but in the end all worked out.

A little while ago, today, they asked me a Windows question. How to copy a file from the Debian system to there Windows laptop. As they where using PuTTY as a terminal I just got pscp.exe. I launced a DOS prompt and then looked at the keyboard. It was Japanese, giving up on stumbling through the Japanese directory name I had to relinquish the keyboard and dictate. Again, all went well, but the language barrier was there the entire time.

Maybe I should of just gotten FileZilla instead.

About a week age we got a good foot of snow, since then the temperature has been well below freezing. Yesterday morning we got another inch, just enough to cover up the the dirty snow. A heat wave has just started hitting the area, and temperatures are getting just above freezing. Perfect for a walk.

My Mother, Zoë and I left on a walk along the Delaware Canal leaving 余艾蕾 home painting the powder room green. Zoë was nestled all snug in her jogging perambulator. Along the canal the snow was firmly packed and all was well. The few bridges we had to use where a little perilous, but we had few problems. Until the last bridge.

We had to go up a steep ice and snow covered mound to reach the bridge. On a bike in the summer I usually get off and walk up it. Today I went first pulling Zoë in her perambulator behind followed by my Mom. Most of the way up the mount I slipped forward, Zoë’s perambulator sliped forward fell on it’s back. Worried I quickly slid down to check Zoë’s status. She was laughing having the time of her life, I could almost hear her saying “again, again!” I didn’t do it again, and we are all lived to tell about it.

I cared nothing about the Simpson trial, and I care less about the Jackson trial. Please, somebody make the coverage go away!

I’ve been in California now for almost a day, back in the old stomping ground after we left nearly 5 years aso. The Silicon Valley town where we lived, married, and finally decided to leave for Ireland because we didn’t think it was our final stopping point. It’s all quite the same, but only to the extent that familiar sights try to cling onto strangely-faded memories. Streets look similar, but the smaller veins running through Ireland make these roads now seem monsterous. Freeways are unimaginable, yet flying along 101 in the evening sure does feel like more fun than the crowded stumbling of the M50.

We went out to dinner in last night (out being away from the hotel), still awake after getting up in Ireland on the same day 19 hours earlier. The group of seven who came to CA for a week’s serving of meetings all sat down at a restaurant in Mountain View for dinner. Sushi Tei is a very fond memory of living here, and the source of the best sushi we’ve had anywhere. Run by a Japanese fellow named Isaka and the woman who worked with him for years at another sushi restaurant, Sushi Tei was their effort to put into reality their own idea of the perfect sushi experience.

Tonight back at the hotel, I discovered that Wi-Fi works in the bar letting me write this on my Zaurus. Hee hee. Tomorrow morning is early breakfast, then lots of meetings being introduced to hordes of names I’m not expecting to retain just yet. (Name memory in that situation: double-plus un-good.)

Went to Fry’s today (more later about that) and got a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 which I found is (again) supported under Linux. The big project is to make it happily communicate with E’s iSight and see/talk to both of them at home for less than a long-distance phone call. 🙂

Off to sleep, just as everyone in Ireland is waking up. How weird.