Heh, fun. I got my dad on LJ. Welcome, ddbailey!

Glad I keep the smut elsewhere... ;)

... paint.

What were you thinking of? =)

I went to the Canonical support office today to attend while the Bell technician installed our ADSL line. It's always neat being on construction sites and watching the trades interact. Onsite there were some painters, cabinet makers, phone, network, and air conditioning. The place is looking quite nice.

As always in construction, nothing's perfect. The only thing horribly wrong so far is that part of the ceiling fell down because whoever put it up hadn't bothered to anchor it to the cement. Repairs will get made, and the guy it hit only got minor scrapes. In another few days, they'll all be finished, the carpets will be cleaned, and the space will be ready for us to move in.

It's going to be weird having an office to attend to again.

Next office steps: Get insurance, hire junior support techs.

Angie gets too shy to tell people things that she does well sometimes. So in case she fails to tell everyone, she got 100% on her practical exam this afternoon. Yay, Angie! She's now certified as a CanFitPro Personal Trainer!

Dan Savage writes in his column this week,

The American Taliban doesn't think married heterosexual couples should be able to use birth control. If you care about your own freedom - not just your right to have premarital sex, but your right to decide whether, when, and how many children you're going to have you need to read "The War On Contraception."

I have trouble imagining what people are thinking. A world where couples don't have sex? Can you imagine how much fighting there would be?

Okay, okay, so that's not the point. But with articles like Chicago economist links abortion to falling crime rates, it's incredibly distressing to see another attempt at taking away freedoms. While things like birth control and abortion are not in immediate risk here in Canada, it's hard to predict how long it would take for our our current Conservative leadership to start entertaining those thoughts.

I'm all for a principled discussion on sex and sexuality. But why don't people ever consider the concept that providing more tools to people is better than providing fewer?

I went to my first BodyJam class yesterday. Like all Les Mills programs, the first time totally sucks because you haven't a clue what's going on and know that you look like an idiot surrounded by people who've been coming for a couple years. Then you remember that if any of them have time to notice you looking like an idiot, then they're not working hard enough and get back to learning the choreography. auzure_skies is a group fitness instructor, so I've done alot of these type of classes. BodyJam is a bit different than most in that the moves are pre-set, but *how* you move is not. If your spirit is taken over by Saturday Night Fever then your welcome to strut. If you're a standard aerobics baby, then there's no problem if you're just plodding through the moves.

Given the problems I'm having in my upper back, it'll probably be a couple weeks before I go back. I had a great time, but I'm a bit too sore this morning.

In A recent CBC article, Stephen Harper is quoted as saying that his plan for the national child care program is simply a part of the budget. Failure to pass a budget is seen as a failure of confidence, and triggers an election.

This puts the opposition parties in a tight place. Specifically, the Liberals aren't ready to head to the polls yet. Paul Martin hasn't been officially replaced, with a successor not expected to be chosen until October or so. An election in May would go very poorly for them.

Since getting elected, Prime Minister Harper has managed to trigger an ethics inquiry into his government, and is already taking a hard line that risks bringing it down or screwing the opposition party. He told us that he would bring new things to our government, and certainly he has. This type of maneuvering can only be described as "incredible" for what, the second week of parliament?

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Stevey-baby.

First - I've switched the feed for http://planet.debian.org/ to RSS instead of atom. Atom doesn't work, and apparently never has despite there being a fair number of registered atom feeds.

Second - I'm likely to start blogging comments about religion. I think most people who know me know that I'm a UU and have been now for about half of my life. So this isn't new - I'd avoided posting religious things in my blog before because the software that I was running at home had no method for trivially separating things based on tags. I moved to LJ a while ago, and I think it has this. The question is what's the best way to keep things posted to planets without those entries? Is there some sort of a thing I can setup that says "make a feed for everything that *isn't* tagged religion?" If you have an idea, let me know. Or perhaps people don't care, in which case don't worry about it. =)

(Why doesn't the LJ spellchecker include obvious things like "RSS", "Blogging", and "href"?)

Last weekend I found myself looking for something to hack on that wasn't something I see during my work day. I took a look at <a href="http://www.hula-project.org/Hula_Project">Hula</a>. I've wanted something like this for use at home. It would be nice if <span class='ljuser' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0;' /></a><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/'><b>auzure_skies</b></a></span> and I could see one another's calendar, have our own Jabber server, and have easy access to our email through a local client or through webmail.<br /><br />There seem to be a steady stream of commits to Hula's SVN, but almost no discussion on the mailing list. I've sent in <a href="http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/maillist/archbrowse.php/hula-dev/2006-March/001012.html?id=1613&amp;prjname=hula&amp;mlname=dev">one patch</a> to the Makefile so that make dist would run (<a href="http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/maillist/archbrowse.php/hula-dev/2006-April/001014.html?id=1613&amp;prjname=hula&amp;mlname=dev">accepted</a>), and sent <a href="http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/maillist/archbrowse.php/hula-dev/2006-April/001013.html?id=1613&amp;prjname=hula&amp;mlname=dev">another</a> asking for design information (No answer yet). In general, the codebase seems crufted with a bunch of legacy NetWare concepts. It's written in at least four languages (C, C , C#, and Python) and doesn't seem to have a testsuite. The code also currently doesn't run on powerpc without segfaulting.<br /><br />Ah well. Anyone know if there's another project that has similar aims and goals? Basically some sort of server software that will handle almost all of what evolution can hand to it, plus some sort of extensible interface so that it's reasonably easy to add things like Jabber servers, RSS/Atom Aggregators, etc.

I remember when Twinkies finally went vegetarian. I hadn't had any in something like 8 years. Bought a box, ate them, and didn't feel compelled to ever again.<br /><br />Now someone has come up with healthy <a href="http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/pixievite.aspx">Pixie Sticks</a>. I might have to try a box of them, just to see if my adult mouth has outgrown my old junior high sugar tolerances. =) I got this from a blog called <a href="http://veganlunchbox.blogspot.com/">Vegan Lunchbox</a>. It's a lady who makes healthy vegan lunches for her kid and then documents it. I haven't actually tried any of her recipes yet, but I've book marked several.<br /><br />Unrelated to this: Montr al weather is really weird. It was +22 C yesterday, but it's warmed up so quickly that there was still a pile of snow in the back lane yesterday evening.<br /><br />(Please consider this post to have been made either on the 31st or the 2nd, as you see fit)

Wow. Crisp morning. Temperature dropped to -3 C last night and we didn't turn the heat on in the house. I *love* this temperature. When it's sunny out and the morning is so cold that I have to wear my Birkenstocks around the house. I used to get up at 6am and bike to school in this weather. Then the day will warm up nicely to 8 or 10 degrees. Not quite t-shirt weather, but really close. There have even been birds singing outside the last two nights.<br /><br />And next weekend we have daylight savings time, so it will even be dark when I wake up. I'm excited!

Yay to Bicycling! I don't think I've been on a bike in what.. 5 years? I didn't ride most of my last year in Vancouver, and it's been almost 5 since we left (eep!) Benjamin Mesing had been here in Montr al from Germany for a year and was selling his bike on his way back home a month or so ago. Today, I went out and bought a helmet, then hopped on the bike to take some library books back.<br /><br />The bike is in fairly rough shape. I'm a bit spoiled in that I'm used to buying new hybrid bikes, but as I work from home there's no point. In Vancouver I would travel up to 40km/day on my bike. I've taken it into the shop, and should get it back next friday. Handlebar alignment, rear wheel trueing, replace front tire, align all breaks, grease and tune gear cables, and generally hose the thing down with oil.<br /><br />On the walk home, I discovered that there's a fairly large Rachelle-B ry at Rachel and Berri. (I don't know why I never looked there...) All told, a very wonderful day.

Microsoft has a new slogan, "People Ready".<br /><br />Sounds an awful lot like "Linux for Human Beings", doesn't it?<br /><br />The race just got interesting.

The cat wouldn't need to wake us up in the middle of the night to tell us she's hungry if she'd eat slower and not puke up all her food.<br /><br />*sigh* Just my luck to have a bulemic cat.

Went to a step class at the new gym last night. As usual, I was the only boy in the class. The teacher refered to me as "young man" a couple times, since it was the easiest way to do so. =) I enjoy taking step classes and am surprised to not find other guys in there. It seems to me that if the women I see at the gym manage to look really good and have decent strength and endurance by doing hour-long cardio and pilates/yoga classes, that they are probably better to follow than the weight room full of generally out of shape guys who look like they're risking a hernia when they exercise.<br /><br />The interesting part was that the class was in French. While my French is quite good, it seems that my parsing is a bit slower than the teacher's ability to hand it out. It took me several times hearing pas de base , before I realised the teacher wasn't telling me *not* to do something, but was in fact asking us to do the basic step. Other things which I understood quickly enough simply made no sense like carr e .<br /><br />Afterwards I came home and had a snack of some Soya Nova Westcoast Smoked Tofu. It tastes quite good, and I've had several people who still eat cheese tell me that it tastes much like Gouda. When I was in Vancouver recently, I picked up several blocks of it. I phoned them today and spoke to the owner. It seems that the Metro stores here might carry it. If not, they're expecting them to in several months as part of a deal with Sunrise Tofu.<br /><br />I remember when we first moved to Toronto, that few of the stores carried the vegan treats that <span class='ljuser' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0;' /></a><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/'><b>auzure_skies</b></a></span> and I are used to eating. Places slowly acquired them until there was a whole range of products that we were eating in Toronto that we hadn't seen when we were living in Vancouver. Despite the fact that there's a few large chains of health food stores here, we're still having trouble finding a number of them. Some companies like Toffuti Canada refuse to return phone calls. Many others, like Tofurki, don't get information on which chains carry their products, or beleive that their products are being sold in stores like Provigo even though they're not.<br /><br />Perhaps one of these days I'll have spare hours in the day to contribute to the Association V g tarien de Montr al / Montreal Vegetarian Assocation.

<span class='ljuser' style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/profile'><img src='http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0;' /></a><a href='http://auzure-skies.livejournal.com/'><b>auzure_skies</b></a></span> and I just passed our 4th year wedding aniversary. We went away and had a good time enjoying one another's company. This partly because we managed to pick a town to visit that had little else to do on a Saturday night. The main attraction in the city is a large catherdral that seems to take up most of "downtown". <div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/91538913@N00/111678841/" title="Cathedral in St. Jerome"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/34/111678841_d75a5acdec_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a> <br /> <span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/91538913@N00/111678841/">DSC00030</a> <br /> Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/91538913@N00/">jbailey</a>. </span>.<br /><br /><div style="float: left; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"> <a href="http://photos/jbailey/111678837/"><img src="http://static.flickr.com/35/111678837_0b3cd503b8_m.jpg"></a></div><br />Had a good time, though. It's nice to get out of the city for the weekend.<br /><br />Meh. This entry was going to be longer. Took too long to figure out how to do redeye reduction in the gimp and how to work <a href="http://www.flickr.com/">flickr</a>.</div>

I've stopped running my own blog software. I hadn't realised that the one I was running was capturing comments and saving them, but not notifying me or posting the comments on the website. Sorry for not replying to some of the well-thought-out replies that folks had made to entries.<br /><br />I think planet.debian.org is the only place where I'm syndicated, and I've updated that with the new feed information. I've also taken all of the old py,php blosxom entries and put them into the LJ. Maybe I'll get around to making a Hackergotchi one of these days, too.<br /><br />I guess this makes me officially "Web 2.0" compliant. Puke.

I've often wondered why people still run Windows? When I ask folks, sometimes I get comments of "I tried Linux 4 or 5 years ago, and it seemed too hard.", or "I just couldn't do without the latest features in application FOO.". These comments have always struct me as odd - As far as I can tell, GNU/Linux with Gnome is at about the state that Windows was, say, 1997 or 1998. While it's probably a step back in terms of raw functionality, it's incredibly usable. I think today, I've figured out the real reason why people run windows; The problem is, I think, reflective of a real problem with our thinking in general: Is it possible that people are simply unwilling to give up the idea that the world around them should protect them from themselves? It would explain recent trends in North American and Western European government elections, magazines that talk about how our cancer rates, death rates and such are all other people's problems. Maybe it's time for us all to buck up and take some responsibility for our lives. If I'm out of shape, perhaps I haven't gotten off my ass and worked out in the past week. Maybe if this winter weather is unusual, I should stop driving the car and find a gym closer to me. Maybe if the world out there feels a bit dangerous, it's because I'm not willing to go out and meet my neighbours and become friends and build real local community. Maybe I can remember to make a difference.

I turned 30 recently. For the last five years I have felt my body change (sometimes in undesirable ways, ie. first wrinkles, gravity in full effect), and I have also neglected my health like I would live forever. I have not gone to the doctor since 2000. Haven't got my blood tested for that long, nothing at all. I felt well, so who cared?

I don't know why I went to the doctor last week. Maybe because I am not comfortable with playing this health lottery game anymore. He wanted blood tests and the results are a bit worrying. Everything is within the average ranges, but it is a bit fucked up to be a vegetarian and still have high cholesterol. I have lost from 10 to 15 Kg since last May, I do moderate activity most weekends (skating). I walk home from work (25 min, slow pace) most days. But this sheet of paper reads:

Cholesterol (HDL)...0,56 g/L [0,50 - 1,20 for women] -> This is good cholesterol, and it is low.
Cholesterol (LDL)...1,27 g/L [1,3 max]...............-> This is bad cholesterol, and it is high.
Triglycerides.......1,42 g/L [0,40-1,50].............-> Also high!
Iron..................35 g/L [40-150]................-> Ground for anemia?
Glucose..............0,91 g/L [0,65-1,10].............-> Ground for diabetes?

And no surprise: I have low iron levels. And high glucose. This means I (still) eat too much fat and sugar. I can hear jbailey whisper to me: "more green, more green!", which was what he told me when I showed my dish to him for advice, in the first vegetarian meal I had when I decided to "switch". I have not been eating enough green.

So, why is this happening? I thought I was drinking too much whole milk with my coffee, but there seems to be a much better and funnier explanation: 29 Common Reasons Why Your Vegetarian Diet Isn't Working. I love it :)

CBC reports that fisheries around the world combined consume the same amount of oil per year as the Netherlands. They go on to explain:

1. Depletion of fish stocks because boats are travelling further out to sea in order to meet demand causes higher fuel consumption.
2. The fishing industry is still more efficient than other meat based industries.

Another way that your dinner can contribute to global warming and US-style "anti-terrorism".