Sunday of my Life

Irony is when the component of the Postfix mail server that’s supposed to monitor the rest of it and report errors crashes, and takes the rest of the mail server with it.

To anyone who uses business-speak (bizspeak, as the kids are calling it these days. Eventually I’m hoping to get that changed to just ‘bs’):

ACTION IS NOT A FUCKING VERB

Thank you.

The familiar road winds back and forth. Not so familiar anymore, as they’ve recently paved it, but the country is still there, around the new asphalt. Rolling hills, largely green after the recent rains; here, a herd of Black Angus cows grazing on fresh grass; there, the yellow-white clouds of sheep, gathered around the edge of a dam, drinking their fill. For me, this will always represent peace. A serene place which was always safe. A place where there were animals, and things to do. A childhood full of adventure to be had.

And always there, there were two people. Two special people, who meant the world to me. My grandparents, who owned the farm. The Farm on the Mountain. Another home. A place that was always there, and that I always had a part of with me, even when I wasn’t there. And they were always there.

It felt strange to go up there this year, for the annual family get-together. Always before the sight of the familiar hills brought a feeling of serenity over me. Peaceful, that’s what it’s always been. Quiet, and peaceful. But this year, each moment that brought us closer to the farm gates made me more and more apprehensive. Something was different, and I knew exactly what it was. One of the people who made the place special for me was gone, never to return. It didn’t make the place any less special, nor did it in any way diminish what the remainder of the pair, my grandmother, brings to the place. But it just felt… strange.

I had a good time, though. I’m never comfortable in crowds. Large gatherings of people always make me nervous, make me feel out of place, and very much like I’m being watched, and judged. But it’s different, with these people. Every year my family gets bigger, and every year the gathering gets bigger. People marry into the family, and children are born. New partners are gained, and introduced, and welcomed. But it’s always comfortable, and always fun. This year was no different. There was a current of sadness through it all. Someone very special to the whole family wasn’t there to share the day with us. He loved nothing quite so much as having his entire extended family in one place, so many people, all talking and laughing and being together. And that’s something which should make these gatherings all the more special for us, I feel. By doing it, we become closer, and we honour his memory.

No one ever really dies, so long they’re still remembered.

On MSN, my current (and by current, I mean at least the last two years) display name is ‘Adrian - Quoth the Server, “404.”‘

A good friend of mine, Jibril, sent this to me tonight.

“Let this error be a sign of our parting, client or server,” I shrieked upstarting
“Throw thyself back into the tempest, of the debuggers plutonian core.
Leave no core dump as a token, of the error thy code hath spoken.
Leave my codeliness unbroken, quit the stack upon my core.
Take thy bug from out my stack, and take thy dump from off my core.”

Quoth the server, “404″

It’s somewhat… cleaner than the parodying of ‘The Raven’ I got my display name from. But, oh, the geek in me absolutely loves it, both for the classical literature and the compera reference.

Thanks to the good graces of one of my good friends, I was recently offered a teaching position as a lab assistant for my University. Did I accept? Did I ever!

So last night I had my first real lab, with an unexpected preamble. I was asked to take over someone’s tutorial, just for last night. It wasn’t a terribly long time to prepare, but I don’t think that I did too badly. The students certainly seemed to enjoy it.

(As a side note? When it comes to teaching give me adults every time. Give me people who actually want to be there. Give me people who actually have maturity, and who know how to ask the right questions.)

Because of this, though, I ended up missing my train home, and got home near-on midnight. Needless to say, with a start at 6:30 the next morning, I was a little tired today.

Okay, I was a lot tired today.

Getting off the train tonight, I was getting some funny look. Now, I’m no stranger to people looking at me in a funny way. Been happening one way or another for most of my life. But this caught my — somewhat addled — attention. I didn’t find out why exactly people were staring until I got back to the car. See, my usual winter attire includes two coats. Otherwise, lately, I’m just too cold for comfort.

It turns out that, since I was tired and wasn’t paying attention, I’d zipped the left side of my inner coat to the right side of my outer coat. I think my father only just finished laughing at that.

…

Nope, there he goes again.

So, for those who keep up with such abstract geek news as the newest version of Debian, you’d know that Debian recently upgraded it’s stable release from Sarge to Etch.

(They went Potato, Woody, Sarge, Etch… all cahracters from Toy Story. The things they count as unstable belong to a version called ‘Sid’. Sid, unstable, get it?)

Anyway, internally, Debian uses the apt package manager. Apt references the current version it’s supposed to be sourcing packages from either using the name of the version (sarge, etc) or its alias (stable, oldstable, testing, unstable, etc). Unfortunately, a lot of systems tend to use these aliases. This is a really bad idea, as some people are only discovering now that stable has stopped being Sarge, and has become Etch. Think about it. There’ve been some fairly major changes between the two versions. They’re simply not closely compatible enough for this to continue working.

That’s why an upgrade I did recently on a server said to me: “Sure! I can upgrade <this long list of packages> for you! First, though, I’ll need to uninstall my kernel.”

This has now resulted in me having to do a complete survey of all the servers I work with to make sure none of the others do it. Oh well, here’s to job security!

Okay, so I just got out of my C# mid-semester exam. One hour of writing source-code out on paper. Joy.

We were warned at the start of the exam:

“Students should note. This is an actual exam. All University exam conditions apply, including those in regards to plagarism and cheating. You have been warned.”

“And now that we’ve warned you, you are allowed to use books, paper, notes, MSDN, Visual Studio 2005 help files, Google…”

Exam conditions… rii-iight…

I swear, I live with a three-year-old. A 6-foot-tall, 100+kg three-year-old. My father, who’s idea of conflict resolution is “I’m not talking to you! Neener neener neener!”

And you know, that used to be the way of things, a while back. He and I would have a fight, spend a while not talking to one another, then pretend nothing happened. Not healthy, as I finally came to see (after having the concept beaten into my head a number of times). I thought, now, years on, that we’d moved past that. I’ve changed over those years. I’ve gained maturity (at least, I hope I have). I like to think that the very least I can do, if a conflict situation comes up, is let it slide. And that I don’t do the least I can do. That I see it’s resolved in a half-way healthy manner.

That’s why all of this came out of left-field. A few nights ago, he springs into the room, saying,

“How many eggs do you want for dinner?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What else are we having?”

“How many do you want?”

“I won’t know until I know what else we’re having with it. If we’re having a lot of something else with it, then one. If we’re having a small amount of something with it, then two. If all we’re having is eggs, then three.”

And, quite suddenly, I was recieving one of his inspiring lectures on my attitude, and how I “always go out of [my] way to cause fights.” His words, not mine. I will freely admit that, back in my immature past, I did do that, or something like it anyway. Arguments made me think, and made me feel alive. But I don’t do that anymore. I’ve been making a concious effort to get along with him, or at the very least not let his shit get to me.

But this, though, is simply childish. “I’m not talking to you until you apologise for what you did!” Yeah, that solves a lot of problems. It’s a sad thought, to be honest; to think that I’ve moved on and grown up in the space of three short years, and he… hasn’t. He’s still stuck back in whatever space he’s been in for a long time. It’s saddening to think that he actually likes it there, that it’s so comfortable for him, that he’ll never want to try another way of living.

Ack! It’s official! I’ve been tagged! So, then, here’s Five Things You Didn’t Know About Me.

1. I elected never to take mathematics classes beyond year 10. Despite the fact that it severely damaged my immediate University prospects, this was the course of prudence for me. Better to not take a class at all than to fail it, and better to fill its space with classes I can pass.
2. Okay, this one some people probably know, and some don’t: In year 7, my first year of highschool, I played the Tinman in the school’s production of the Wizard of Oz. And nearly choked doing one of the dances when my costume caught on itself, and the collar jammed up hard against my throat.
3. I once spent an afternoon with one of my oldest, dearest friends at the local swimming pool, convincing a group of people I came from some tiny and unimaginably distant freign country. I spouted absolute gibberish, and my friend pretended to translate for me.
4. Another of my friends, and she knows who she is, formed the basis for one of my roleplaying characters. Some aspects of her appearance carried over into this character, and some of her manner. I hope she’s happy with what I’ve done with her.
5. Finally, I’ve always harboured a dream of being a stage actor, professionally. It’s not something I think I could ever achieve, but it’s a nice dream to hold close, every once in a while.

There… I may or may not tag people via IM or email.

Okay, after my esteemed host did one, I couldn’t resist.