Archive Journal Entry: 20021210

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Now here’s a neat backup system: HD Rosetta. On a similar topic, I would love to build a cheap backup server using an old full-height tower case, a P133 (or thereabouts), software RAID 5 and a bunch of inexpensive disks. I think I could probably put something together for about US$800 that would last several years. Most of that price would be for the disks. I would probably go for 80 or 100 GB disks and put 6 of them in a machine (giving 400 to 500 GB of
storage).

I’ve been reading a great series of books called the “Liveship Traders” by Robin Hobb (also known as Megan Lindholm). “Ship of Magic” is the first title in the three book series. I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s a hefty series. The characters are believable and heroic at the same time, and the action is continuous. They are not the typical quest-style of fantasy that I have grown very tired of. Rather, they are more like hundreds of small stories seamlessly woven together into an epic adventure that explores the limits of both the characters and the fantasy world itself. Robin Hobb is catching up quickly to Orson Scott Card as my favorite author.

Jersey City in my area (Newport) is barren of good places to eat. The Japanese and Indian restaurants are way over-priced for their quality. But there is an interesting grocery store called International Foodmart (mentioned in the link). I lost about 8 pounds when I was sick a couple weeks ago. I have gained back one or two of those, but I am trying to moderate my eating and increase my exercise. I want to get to 180 pounds by Jan. 19th, my 31st birthday. I started my six-month-old weight loss attempt at about 210 pounds. I am now at about 195. Losing another 15 pounds in a month, particularly the Christmas/new years season is going to be tough! I’ve become very moderate in my breakfasts, and usually very moderate in my suppers, but I’m still having trouble with lunches. There’s a food court nearby my Jersey City apartment that has a Panda Express – I love orange chicken way too much 🙂 Well, tonight I’m going to go to the gym and do some running so I’ll burn a few Calories there, but I need to do more, more regularly to get my metabolism going faster. Let me know if you have any good tips…

One last thing. I write this using Macromedia‘s Dreamweaver MX. I’ve tried lots of html/website tools and this is the nicest by far. I even bought myself a copy 🙂

Archive Journal Entry: 20021209

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Another brief update… Melanie and I have been worried about the kids. Their behavior has been terrible. Justice in particular is throwing things, angry, yelling, and frequently disobedient. Melanie and I consulted about it and decided that while I am away during the week, Melanie will spend most of her time just playing with the kids. This is tough for her partly because she never really played as a child (too much time in lessons)! Her habit is to always take care of responsibilities and never have fun, even with the kids. I have tried to play with them too. With Justice, I play with Lego, wrestle a little bit, read stories and tell stories that I make up. Lately I have been telling a continuing story about Tahnok and Tahnok Va (Lego Bionical characters) and their adventures with many colored masks. With Haifa, it is a little more difficult, but I try to read her stories, play with stuffed animals and just spend time holding her and showing her things. So today, Monday, Melanie tried this plan out and aparently it worked very very well… both Justice and Haifa were happy and well behaved. Justice even started singing a love song about how he loves God, Mama, Dada, himself, and Haifa and how he has to help everyone feel love and the Baha’i spirit (not in exactly those words – but close :-). When Melanie told me about this I got a little teary-eyed. This evening Justice sang the song to me over the phone.

Archive Journal Entry: 20021203

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Hmm… It’s been quite a while since I have had time to update my story here. I’ve been very busy. I found an apartment in Jersey City, applied, and I am now living in it. It is not yet comfortable: I just got a thin foamy to sleep on, and a small lamp for lighting in the living room. It’s a nice one-bedroom on the 15th floor. It has parquet (sp?) hardwood floors. It is also line-of-sight to a Starbucks so I’m hoping to set up an antenna and connect to their wireless T-Mobile service. Tonight will be my second night here.

We also moved from San Francisco to Toronto last weekend! Melanie did all the packing (even tho the movers were going to do it). We met in the Toronto airport on Thursday afternoon, rented a car (actually we got upgraded to a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4×4), and drove to our new place in Markham. It is brand new and really big (for us). It’s about 3000 sq ft finished on two floors with an unfinished basement. We now live very close to our good friends Chris and Jeanne. We are very happy to be back in Canada, and near to family (Alexei and Kristine) and friends. Today all our stuff came – Melanie has unpacked the kitchen so far (plus a few other things). I’m hoping that she leaves some for me to do when I get home on Friday 🙂

So I’ve still got a lingering cough from my flu two weeks ago. Justice also was quite sick with a slight fever and a bad cough this weekend. And of course Haifa is getting a little sick too. I feel very sorry for Melanie and the kids… It’s very hard to take care of sick kicks/be sick.

So I will end this entry with some more links: more about voting systems, someone designed a hobbit hole, some thoughts about Baha’i economics, and a good collection of links about unit testing and other XP stuff.

Archive Journal Entry: 20021119

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I’ve been very sick for the last two days – a bad fever and serious bowel trouble. I slept 14 hours last night and I have only had two bowls of chicken soup broth to eat in the last 48 hours. Ug. I am feeling a little better now but I’ve missed work today and only worked a few hours yesterday.

I’m writing a story for Justice. He is very interested in knights – he has some Lego castle stuff (Harry Potter) and Melanie got him some books from the library. While I am travelling for work, I think I will try to write a story for Justice every week.

I also just finished reading “The Promethius Deception” by Robert Ludlum. It was okay, but the ending was a little weak. Very good convoluted plot that could have ended well, but really was almost accidentally ended. I also watched “Serendipity” with John Cusak and Kate Beckinsdale. I admit that I got a lump in my throat… but that may have had more to do with my weakened state than any inherent virtue of the film. I was impressed by how well the story kept me wondering how our characters were going to be reunited.

Archive Journal Entry: 20021109

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The course went well. I now remember why I want to be a teacher. Someday I will be one.

Today is the second day of Melanie being away on the house-hunting trip. Justice and Haifa and I had a great day. We spent the entire day building the new Lego sets we bought yesterday. The main accomplishment was the completion after six hours of the Rebel Blockade Runner, the Tantive IV. I got a little short tempered by the end of it, but Haifa helped quite a bit and Justice had incredible endurance. The whole experience reminds me very much of when my dad bought the big Auto Chassis technic set for Alexei and I. It was an amazing experience for me as a kid (maybe eight years old), and I hope it is likewise for Justice. Mind you, after all that effort, I really don’t feel much like letting Justice play with it… We also built a few Harry Potter sets. Unfortunately Justice ended the day by throwing a small tantrum about not being able to build the set we bought for Melanie. I decided that the best thing was to take all the new Lego away for the rest of the night (about 2 hours). I don’t mind him expressing his desire to play with it, but getting angry about it is unacceptable and I want to encourage the idea that getting angry backfires.

Melanie has called with excellent news about our prospects for finding a good rental home in Markham. One place she visited she considers absolutely perfect and it is well within our budget (for those Canadians who might read this, our budget is a bit atrocious: CA$2500/month – but that’s substantially less than we are paying for our place out here in California). It also seems to have high speed internet access through Rogers Cable. If I can get a decent business-level connection it would be ideal. If not, I will settle for a normal residential level of service… it will still be better than the crappy service we have here in Daly City from SBC.

My poor dad is having computer troubles again.

Yesterday I also bought myself two computer games. I’ve been waiting to get Civilization III for a long time now. I noticed that the price at Fry’s was lower than it has been in the past so I grabbed it. So far, I’ve only played up to the 1500’s in a no-opponents, easiest level run-through to learn the new stuff. I’ll try my hand against some AI players shortly. Mind you, I’m still all for fast-twitch type games like Quake 3 Arena. I also bought Age of Mythology which seems to be a sister product to Age of Empires (which I liked very much). I haven’t played it yet. And yes, they are both Microsloth products… an organization that large can’t be all bad.

Archive Journal Entry: 20021103

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Here’s some interesting links:

Mathematicians have apparently been able to analyze various forms of elections. All the types they mention in the article are with a limited set of candidates for a position. I wonder how the Baha’i election system would rate?

I’m a big fan of computer graphics and animation. Disney/Pixar are coming out with a new movie next spring called “Finding Nemo“. The link is to the trailer in QuickTime.

I’ve been in a lot of discussions about philosophy that eventually get ground down to the issue of the validity of logic. Here is an interesting article about Alternative Logic systems.

Finally, a couple of Microsoft links. Microsoft’s Windows XP is bad for people to use. And Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows NT are all fundamentally insecure. Don’t use Microsoft operating systems if you can possibly avoid it. Instead, consider Linux (such as RedHat’s distribution), or Unix (such as MacOS/X, OpenBSD or FreeBSD).

Archive Journal Entry: 20021030

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In a few weeks we are moving from San Francisco back to Toronto. Melanie is going to go house hunting next weekend. We hope to find something in either Markham or Mississauga. We are moving because I will start a long-term contract at Schwab Capital Markets in Jersey City. I’m going to be doing software and system architecture analysis to start with. I also hope to introduce some concepts from agile methods. When I was working at Q-Soft (now MegaWheels) in Calgary, we used an extremely agile methodology. We developed a prototype and then every few days brought in potential customers to view it and provide feedback. We then integrated the feedback and showed it again. We also did a little pair programming. I consider that experience to be one of my best development experiences. I was also working with two of my best friends: Jesse Burns and Christian Gruber. We’ve gone on to work together several more times: Sun Microsystems (really Lighthouse Design), Troba, and then with Solution Architects.

Archive Journal Entry: 20021026

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I just wanted to add links to some of my favorite books about software creation and methodologies. Software Craftsmanship by Pete McBreen presents an ethical framework for the discipline of software creation by master software craftsmen. Object Solutions by Grady Booch presents a good introduction to incremental and iterative development for object-oriented software. Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn presents a theoretical framework for software creation based on the central concept of communication. Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck presents a radical approach where various software creation practices are taken to extremes in order to support each other. Refactoring by Martin Fowler presents a rigorous method and catalog of examples for redesigning software without changing functionality. The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper presents an approach to software creation that focuses on making the user happy about interacting with a software system.

When my parents (Garry and Valerie) were still together, we lived in a house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada at 1222 Temperance Street. That was a really nice neighborhood. We were only a block from my elementary school, Brunskill School. I remember walking to school every day. I remember the leaves on the street in the fall. I remember running down the block. I remember the odd blue apartements at the corner of Temperance and Wiggins. I remember that the large high-rise known as "Luther Towers" went up while we were there. I also remember the corner store and getting yoyo’s there and seeing a fabulous yoyoing demonstration. We moved out when I was pretty young: maybe seven years old – I think it was when my parents split up.