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Jul 01st, 2004 - Weekend up at the cottage
Things you need to bring to the cottage to ensure an awesome four day weekend:
  • many bottles of coca-cola: cuz, let's face it, I'm addicted
  • goodies from a corner store grocery run: where would a weekend away be without junk food?
  • books: finishing up an Iain Banks, Wicked, a re-read of the Diamond Age, and some geek books
  • projector: for displaying wall-sized movies
  • movies: including the Harry Potter 3 DVD that you should all be jealous about
  • laptop: for getting some writing done, and for doing some work when I get twitchy about time off
  • Mud: cuz she'll pull me away from the laptop and make me go kayaking with her
  • BBQ cookbook: I miss not having a BBQ at my place. It'll be nice to have one up there.
  • CDs: everything from the FF9 soundtrack, to St Germain, to Prodigy
  • UofT course book: so I can try to figure out how to avoid some of these damn prereqs
  • big thick socks: for when the floors are cold in the morning
There's no way this weekend can fail in coolness. And just think -- all you suckers are stuck here, reading this entry, rather than out having fun. Pretty lame....
 

Jul 05th, 2004 - Educating the masses
"What are you doing?", the kid asked, glancing over my shoulder. He was about eight years old, waiting for the streetcar (just like me), and his mom was obviously unhappy that he was talking to a stranger. A stranger with green hair no less.

"I'm visiting some friends' webpages", I explained, pointing to the blogs open on my iBook.

"How do you get the Internet here?"

His mom shook her head. "She doesn't, Steven. She probably downloaded them earlier and is looking at them now."

"Actually, there is Internet connectivity here. See that building there?" I pointed at the Drake Hotel which was across the street. "They have a wireless connection for anyone to use. And it's strong enough that I can reach it here."

His mom looked even more unhappy. A green-haired stranger who contradicts her. Her son, on the other hand, moved closer.

"So you can visit any webpage you want from here?"

"Yep."

"That's cool. Show me?"

I turned my iBook so that he could use it, my hands acting like a table for him. He typed in yahoo.com and was rewarded with the webpage. There were a few "coooool"s and he went to some basketball page.

He raised an eyebrow. "How does the laptop see the wireless from the Drake?"

I quickly found a picture of an open iBook with the wireless card showing. Explained briefly how it worked. He nodded. Then I opened KisMAC and showed him the laptop scanning for networks. Four were found. Two open, two WEPed.

"What's doubleyou-eee-pee?", he asked. So I explained. What it is, why you might want it.

"Why do only half of them you can see use WEP?" The voice was a new one. I glanced up. It was someone else waiting for the streetcar, on the other end of the stop. The other two people who were waiting were watching too.

"Could be several reasons. Some people don't use WEP because they don't know about it. Others make a conscious decision to keep it open so that it's a service to those in the area. Like the Drake."

The streetcar arrived and we all got on, jammed into a little tiny space that would barely have fit a single person comfortably. The guy who had asked the last question asked a few more. How many wireless networks are in Toronto? How far does a router reach? Is it against the law to use someone else's wireless connection?

When we got to Bathurst, the kid and his mom got off.

"Thanks for letting me see your laptop", the kid said. "Cool hair."

His mom just scowled.
 

Jul 06th, 2004 - My bike has been stolen :(
The epic of me trying to be a downtown cyclist somehow reminds me of the Chucky movies. Not because there's a deranged evil doll. And not because the part that's really scary is the fact that they're making yet another one (Seed of Chucky) and think that it's actually a good idea. But because the same goddamn thing keeps happening and the audience is left to wonder "do they really expect me to believe that history really repeats itself that often?"

That's what I -- being the audience of my own life -- wondered as I stared in awe at what used to be my bike...before it magically turned into the absense of my bike.

"Hey!", the guy who I will henceforth refer to as ObliviousMan screamed from across the street. "Hey lady with the hair!"

I assumed that he was talking to me. Not because I had hair, which I do (though so did everyone else in sight), but because he was pointing at me while he screamed.

I patiently waited while he crossed the street, wondering what useful information he'd be able to share with me about the sudden increase of lack-of-bikeness in the area.

"Yer bike's stolen," he said, pointing at where my bike did not stand. He looked at me. I looked back at him. He looked down at the bike-shaped air. I looked too, and sipped on my coffee.

It didn't appear that he had anything else to say about the matter, so I decided to take the conversation into my own hands. "Did you see what happened?"

"Someone stole your bike."

ObliviousMan gets full points for being a decent human being and coming over to inform me of the situation. It would be nice, however, if ObliviousMan had had slightly more acute observations to report.

"Did you see who it was?" "No, but he was blonde." "What he was wearing?" "Not sure." "How did he cut the lock?" "He picked it with a little wire thing." I sighed, "He was fast." "Yeah, he was fast."

I had locked my bike to one of the bike holders just maybe two minutes before. Ran into Second Cup to grab a coffee. When I came out my bike was missing. There was no sign that it had ever existed except for ObliviousMan screaming from across the street. Gone. In less than two minutes.

This was the fourth bike that I've had stolen in the past two years. Every time it's been locked up well, and every time (except the first) it's been the crappiest bike I could find, in order to prevent it from getting stolen again.

I visited a downtown bike shop today, to see if they had any used bikes lying around. The guy there said that I'm the fourth stolen bike he's heard of this week. The other three were decent bikes with excellent locks. He said that campus was just a bad place for bikes in the summer, and it probably wasn't anything that I was doing wrong; more likely, I was just around campus so often that the odds just weren't in my favour.

So now I don't have a bike. Again. And I'm in a crappy mood.

Not even my cup of coffee was able to make it into a good day.
 

Jul 07th, 2004 - OSX apps, and random thoughts about the future
The two are completely independent thoughts, but let's start with OSX.

xcham was asking me about the apps I have running on my iBook, since I have all the cool OSX applications. I might as well list 'em here, for permanent record:

  • Son of a Weather Grok - for telling me how cold it is outside. An absolute must for those of us who spend all of our time inside, so we can sometimes pretend that we're beneath the day star.
  • Safari - my normal browser of choice for OSX. Note: if you haven't typed the following in a Terminal (while Safari is NOT running), then you're missing one of the few reasons I can tolerate Safari: % defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
  • FireFox - when I'm doing web devel, the FireFox plugins are priceless. See the rest of the reasons here.
  • AIM, iChat, ICQ, XChat Aqua - I've found that I prefer all the native clients over the combined ones like Fire. iChat's Rendezvous is awesome in an OSX-concentrated area.
  • SubEthaEdit - If you know anyone else with a mac, you should be using SubEthaEdit. The live HTML previews, code highlighting, and just unexplainable coolness of collaborative editing possibilities are stunning. I squeal happily everytime I get an excuse to write something up with SubEthaEdit and a friend (or enemy).
  • PulpFiction Lite - RSS aggregator of choice
  • OmniGraffle - Brilliantly intuitive OSX drawing program. If you're making diagrams of anything and not using OmniGraffle, you're wasting your time.
  • KisMAC - A warchalker's best friend.
  • NMap - I use NMap on a frighteningly regular basis. And I'll probably only discuss half the times. ;)
  • Quicksilver - In the age of the information firehose, maps are worth their weight in gold. Quicksilver is to your mac what Google is to the web.
  • PythonCard - It's so damn easy to make little Python GUIs that are soooo pretty in OSX, that PythonCard is officially an essential OSX tool, as declared by me.
  • Frozen-Bubble - Official timewaster of choice.
On a completely different note, I went to see F-9/11 again with fLufFy and CPwr last night. Got home and was flicking through some e-mail, mostly by people who I didn't even like but pretend to like because they're "good contacts", and wondered what the hell I'm doing with my life. I think I've started to slip a little -- get caught up in the game of trying to be known before I've done anything worth promoting -- which makes me feel a little sick inside. I drafted a rant about internet surveillance and felt better. At the very least, I can teach others. Now I've just gotta figure out if I'm going to teach the tinkerers, or do the tinkering myself.

Lastly (but not leastly (and 2670 webpages agree that "leastly" is a word)), a happy birthday to Mud and Dr J, who are both a year older today. I send them both official insanecats w00ts.
 

Jul 08th, 2004 - Geek vacation
I'm not usually one to let herself get pressured into things, which is why I can only assume that at heart I wanted Lao to keep repeating "VanPy! VanPy! VanPy!" for days on end. Either that, or I found the pun of saying "...re" at the end of each of his "VanPy"s funny enough to hope that it would continue for days on end. But I suspect the former.

VanPy is the Vancouver Python Workshop taking place July 31st to August 2nd this summer, in (and this may surprise you, given the name of the event) Vancouver. There are several little sessions I'm interested in, like PyObjC (which I discovered a few days ago and has been my latest pet project with all of that free time that I have between 7:04:02 and 7:04:06 am), Pygame (which is how I'd be spending my free time if I had more than four seconds of it), and PythonCard (cuz, well, y'know, it's cool and stuff).

Add Guido, Ascher and Udell to the mix, and you've got a tempting little mesh. Finish it with daily chants of "VanPy[re]! VanPy[re!]" and the opportunity to spend some time with some of the more angry insanecatsers who I rarely get to see, and the result is a package that's hard to refuse.

In the end, the temptation won out; this year I'm having a little geek vacation.
 

Jul 10th, 2004 - Frightening the lil 'uns
Today I'm engaged in the task of helping out at the CS New Student Orientation Session: showing those who will shortly be First Years the Bahen building, talking about the courses they'll be taking, answering questions, etc.

"Please ask any questions that occur to you -- doesn't matter what they're about. Some suggestions are: What's the best programming language?, How many CS students get caught cheating every year?, Why does everyone in every other department have half as much homework as I do?, and Did a can of green paint explode on your head or do you just have no fashion sense?"

They're so little and vulnerable at this stage. Frightened by no longer being the best in their class, excited about the change of scenery, and still full of enthusiasm for life and academics.

Anais was over this morning and chuckled at this prospect: "They're getting you to do this? Did they go through the entire list of everyone else in the department first? It's like revenge time for you: frightening and corrupting the seventeen year olds. That's such a scary thought."

Pah. You people have no faith in me. I'm not going to traumatize them!

........I'm going to instill them with false confidence and let their first year do the traumatizing! :)
 

Jul 11th, 2004 - Catspaw's Law of Conservation of Happiness
The total amount of happiness in the universe is constant.

If you're having a good day, someone else is having a bad day because of it.

I'd like to apologize in advance to those whose share of the happiness pie I plan on eating throughout my life. Suckers.
 

Jul 12th, 2004 - Excluding the little stuff
"You put this stuff on your CV?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at Noah. He nodded. We were sitting on the steps of a room in Bahen, listening to presentations being given to the frosh-to-be. Naturally, this was an excellent opportunity to talk about life, the universe, and everything.

I continued, "I just find that strange. You put little one day volunteer stuff on there? What do you write?"

"UofT Day. Student Orientation Session. Frosh Invitation Calling. Whatever the name of the event is. And I just say what I did at it. You volunteered at all of those too. Why don't you put it?"

I shrugged. "Too small. It feels like it demeans the rest of what's on there if you put the little stuff."

"So you don't mention any of your volunteer stuff at all?"

"I mention the volunteer stuff where I spent over 50 hours, say, doing it. As for the rest of the little one day stuff, I think I kinda put it in a lump somewhere. I say 'Various volunteer activities' or something, and then list half a dozen examples. But I certainly don't list them all."

"You should. Get credit for what you do."

I shrugged again.

I hate this sort of thing. Now I'm all paranoid. Should I start listing all this crap? Or not? Quality or quantity? Is anyone ever going to look at this and actually care? Bah!
 

Jul 13th, 2004 - HeliumMonitor.app
Looking for an excuse to learn PyObjC, I found a few free hours this evening to read some documentation and make something useful out of it. HeliumMonitor.app is an application (the OS X version of an exe) which sits in ones dock and checks the Helium unit test results page for the current status of our project's tests.

HeliumMonitor.app sits in my dock and periodically checks how the tests are doing. If it can't find an internet connection, the green ball turns grey. While it is checking, it turns yellow. If tests are failing, it turns red. And if all is well, it stays green.

I experimented with adding sounds to it, or having it bounce when the colour changes from green to red (or vise versa) but found that the simplest implementation ultimately felt the best. I'm happy with it.
 

Jul 14th, 2004 - Missing the hacker grow op
I miss the Citizen Labbers. It's nothing against my Helium team this summer -- Jason and I share a fair quantity of giggles -- I just miss the "lab homies" (as metac0m might say). This was made stunningly obvious to me this evening when I met up with them for a few hours to talk with some CBC dude about a show he wants us in. Between my arrival after work, and when the CBC guy arrived, we had a bunch of catching up to do.

We giggled about Deebs calling us a "hacker grow-op" in a Wired News story that came out today. meta shared stories from the Fifth HOPE where he presented hacktivism and got to sign in behind Bruce Schneier (I'm so unbelievably jealous). We talked about projects this fall, how stuff's going at the lab, and how much I miss the free coffee there.

Then CBC dude arrived and we immediately went into talking to the media mode, which I believe we've mastered so well. We know what all the questions will be, what the answers to them will be, which of us is going to answer them, etc. When Graeme starts talking about us being accountable for our research findings, I know that meta is going to continue by talking about our responsibilities as an academic institution as opposed to simply an activist organisation, at which point I'm gonna say something about the advantages and disadvantages to both. It's like a dance. If one of us misses a point, the others catch it up. We swing the conversation into directions we like to talk about; from five minutes away, I can tell that meta is gradually setting up bringing corporate accountability into the discussion.

Aside from this well-rehearsed dance, when Graeme says "Guatemala was quite an experience", we're all seeing the same things in our head: the poor Zone of Guatemala City, the bones of the children, hearing the old men tell the massacre stories. We don't have to say it; we all know.

I miss that feeling of belonging to a very tight team. Having contests with Nart about who can lean back further in our chairs without falling over. Graeme singing along to The Darkness as high-pitched as he can possibly manage. Monday morning updates. Meetings in The Cage. Poking at what you're not supposed to be poking at. The absolute rush of starting on a new country, about to explore what's out there, and starting a brand new map on a clean field. It's been far too long since I felt that pride-caution-excitement combo of finding something that you're not supposed to.

But taking a summer off to work on Helium was good for me. For a variety of reasons that I won't bother to enumerate here. I'm having fun with what I'm doing, and that's something that I don't take for granted.

I've been damn lucky with jobs so far. Let's hope my luck holds out.
 

Jul 16th, 2004 - Inadequate teen angst
I was sabotaged by the reporter, camera guy, and small herd of lackeys, while sitting on the curb on Queen street, waiting for the streetcar to arrive. My thoughts were on the time, and whether or not I would be late for meeting Mud at the Paramount, rather than on the group walking towards me.

"Excuse me," the reporter said, as he stopped infront of me and looked down. I looked back up at him, quickly glancing at the camera which had no obvious TV station affiliation branded on the side (though I've learned you can't always rely on those, anyway). "We're doing a documentary on teen angst. I was wondering if we could ask you a few questions."

Before I could answer, one of the lackeys piped up: "Would you like to be on TV?"

How do you answer that without giggling? Do they normally get a response of people jumping up and down and begging at their feet for the privilege of being on the air? There's no proper way to say "this would be little change from my normal life" without just glowing in arrogance, so instead I played along: "What sort of questions?".

"Well, we'd turn on the camera and ask you a little bit about your life."

Ah. There seemed to be some sort of confusion. I blame the green hair. "Actually, I'm neither in your target age group for 'teen angst', nor am I very angsty. Cynical and sarcastic, yes, but I wouldn't say that I suffer from 'angst'. If you were doing a documentary on 20-something apathy, maybe I could help you out. But I'm not sure if I'd be much help on your topic."

"You're not a teen?" "No." "How old are you?" "Nearing 22." "Oh. And you don't have anything to say maybe about angst that you used to have when you were a teen?" "Not particularly." "Oh, well thanks for your time."

They walked off, talking amongst themselves. Only a few minutes later did it occur to me that I should have played along. I do a mock-angst so well. I can't believe I let that opportunity for over-dramatics slip away. I must be losing my touch.
 

Jul 18th, 2004 - techy minus minus; nonsense plus plus;
I've received two complaints today that insanecats has become too "techy". First of all, I'd just like to say: "Of course it's techy! That's what I'm spending all of my time doing all day!" And then I'd like to steal that big chocolate chip cookie that you're eating and eat it myself instead.

And then I'd like for someone to write me a song about radishes, which I would then describe using an adjective that doesn't exist but sounds negative, like gurnt. And then I'd add an entry to Wikipedia for my invented word, so that when you -- while trying to figure out what I was saying about your radish song -- look up gurnt on google, you see my entry which would just say:
gurnt. adj. To be gurnt or gurnt-like: his song was gurnt

And then you'd know that it had to be a real word because Wikis can't lie, but you still wouldn't know what it meant. But while you were at Wikipedia, you'd also look up "mongoose", since I said mongoose a little while ago but you don't actually know what a mongoose looks like.

And then you would go to your local library to learn more about the noble mongoose, but bump into that guy you always hung around with in elementary school but haven't seen since then. And that really embarrassing feature that he had while he was a kid is now gone but you don't know how to ask why it's not there anymore without drawing attention to the fact that he once had it and you figure that he probably doesn't want to talk about it anyway.

But then he tells you that your Grade 5 teacher has been saying bad things about you behind your back. The teacher started calling your early work gurnt and also doesn't know how you've made it this far in life without having someone spoon-feed you three times a day.

And then you realize that it's not your old friend who you're talking to, it's a tube of toothpaste that you brought to the library with you for some reason. And then you realize that you're not at the library, you're at home reading insanecats.

Specifically, a non-techy insanecats entry. But you're no longer sure if that's a good thing.
 

Jul 19th, 2004 - Choosing courses: the non drama??
Remember all the hassle I went through in First Year while trying to pick courses? And the flash movie about it? And then Second Year wasn't much better. Third Year still sucked enough to warrant another course-selecting related flash movie.

I figured that this year couldn't possibly be any different.

Within approximately a minute and a half, all of my courses were properly signed up for. HUH?! What kind of freaky alternate universe is this?!?

I'm frightened.
 

Jul 23rd, 2004 - Scary?
"Why does everyone know you?", one of my co-workers, WV, asked over lunch.

I glanced up from the Burger King coke that I was trying to get into my caffeine-addicted bloodstream as quickly as possible. "What do you mean?"

"Profs and stuff. Are there any profs who don't know you by name?"

I grinned. "They just know me cuz I'm loud. Doesn't mean anything."

"It is good for them to know you," the quietest of my co-workers added. "If they do not know you, they do not know to be scared of you."

I laughed. "And they should be scared of me?"

Both nodded without hesitation.

I think too much of my personality is showing ;)
 

Jul 24th, 2004 - The fate of Catspaw
"In the end, you'll be running around selling pencils in a jar trying to explain to everyone how you can rewrite the software in their brain, if they'd only hold still long enough." -- Dr J
 

Jul 25th, 2004 - Worlds merging
"So how do you know [Anais]?" Patricia asked. It must have sounded weird how the three of us started giggling at that question and fumbled around for an answer. "Well," Patricia continues, "how long have you known each other?"

Though this question wasn't accompanied by any further giggling or fumbling, it was actually the more difficult of the two. I glanced down at my menu. We were going out for dinner, Patricia, Anais, Mud and I. Patricia is an old high school friend, Anais is a MOOer, and Mud is, well, Mud.

"I've known her since, hm, maybe around Grade 8? Grade 9?"

Patricia's eyes went wide. "And you never told me?! You've known her longer than me?! Where did you meet?"

Mud fielded this question. "Online."

There was silence for a few seconds, and then the giggles resumed. How else can you say it? Yeah, we met on the same online community when we were kids. But it wasn't like some scary chat room with randoms coming in all the time. It was a closed environment. And of course we didn't tell you. Of course we kept it to ourselves. Heck, by Grade 11 only half the people I knew had e-mail addresses. Just cuz everyone has them now doesn't mean it was that way a few years ago. No one would understand meeting people online yet. It would just seem too weird.

"So you had some secret life all throughout high school that you never told us about?", Patricia demanded.

"Certainly we must have told you at some point," Mud said.

It's funny how telling people about an online community just felt so wrong back then. I couldn't have said, "Yes, I've only met soandso twice, but we've known each other online for five years." They wouldn't have gotten it. It would have sounded lame.

Slowly, we enumerated the MOOers that we had introduced Patricia to over the years. There were a good half dozen of them. We just didn't introduce them as our "online friends". Now all that secrecy just feels weird. Everyone talks to each other online.

Moments like these are what serve as a reminder of how fast things have changed.
 

Jul 26th, 2004 - Good deed or evil deed? Or both?
Yesterday a pair of brothers in Toronto were forced to question their beliefs about magic and the significance of their own lives in this huge world. Whether or not they left believing any of it I'll never know, but the wide-eyed stares seemed to suggest that at least their lives had been shaken a little. I like to do that to people. ;)

I'd first seen them on the streetcar along Queen street. Their mother called them both by name, which I'll dub Aaron and Brian, for anonymity's sake. I also learned that the oldest was seven years old and that they both thought that Harry Potter was the coolest movie that ever existed. You can learn a lot about a pair of brothers in a ten minute streetcar ride.

I saw them again almost four hours later in a Chapters store. Their mother was telling them that they each had $1.50 to spend on stickers ($3 if they chose to buy something together), and then she went off to look at magazines. They were standing by a stack of stickers, admiring some that had Harry with sparkles coming out of his wand that changed colour as you moved the sticker back and forth. This pack of stickers cost $5.00. The older explained to his younger brother that even if they put their money together, they wouldn't have enough to buy the really cool sticker set. "Maybe magic'll happen and more money will appear," Brian (the younger) said.

Anyone's who knows me well enough would have immediately recognized the gleam in my eye.

I dropped a toonie on the table and flicked it over towards them. The older stopped it with his thumb and they both stared in awe. I could see counting happening in his head.

"Who are you?" the younger asked.

I smiled. "You asked for magic, didn't you, Brian?" His eyes went wide at the fact that I knew his name. "Magic doesn't just happen in movies."

"What do we have to do in exchange?" Aaron asked, picking up the set of stickers eagerly. It's curious that payment was the first thing to occur to him.

I shook my head. "Nothing. But....." I probably should have just left it at that. But obviously no one had taught me any better. "...you are both special. One day someone will need your help very badly. And only you will be able to help them. When that happens, help them out, okay?"

Aaron looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his skull and roll around on the floor. "Wow...really?"

I nodded.

"Okay", he said. "Okay", his brother echoed.

They walked off, whispering furiously. I quickly darted away in case they looked back: I wanted to be gone.

If this was a novel, ten years later one of them would be in a psycho ward, and the other would be President.
 

Jul 28th, 2004 - Hacktivista revisted and dictatorship
Our documentary has been repeating on TVO over the past couple of days. Nothing is more frightening than turning on the television and seeing your own face. Well, perhaps being chased by a giant flesh-eating zebra that only you can see would be slightly more frightening. The point is: it's disturbing.

Tonight Nart and I were over at Graeme's house and we watched the second episode. It was the first time that we've been able to watch the hour of footage and talk to each other about it while we were watching. "Dude, that was so disturbing." "Remember when that guy did that thing?" "I can't believe I said that. It wasn't what I meant. It's so out of context." Not surprisingly, very theraputic.

On a completely other note, I took a quiz cuz I fell to fLufFy's peer pressure. I don't think anyone should be surprised at the results:

You are an SEDL--Sober Emotional Destructive Leader. This makes you a dictator. You prefer to control situations, and lack of control makes you physically sick. You feel have responsibility for everyone's welfare, and that you will be blamed when things go wrong. Things do go wrong, and you take it harder than you should.

You rely on the validation and support of others, but you have a secret distrust for people and distaste for their habits and weaknesses that make you keep your distance from them. This makes you very difficult to be with romantically. Still, a level-headed peacemaker can keep you balanced.

Despite your fierce temper and general hot-bloodedness, you have a soft spot for animals and a surprising passion for the arts. Sometimes you would almost rather live by your wits in the wilderness somewhere, if you could bring your books and your sketchbook.

You also have a strange, undeniable sexiness to you. You may go insane.
If I'm gonna take five seconds to answer online quizzes, they might as well at least make an effort to tell me something I don't know.
 

Jul 30th, 2004 - Airport Interrogation
"Okay, that's all, you can go through," said the nice friendly airport security guy. I grabbed my laptop, my handful of change, and my knapsack. Started heading off towards the lobby.

"Miss!", a guy yelled after me. I spun around, and a security guard was waving his hand for me to come back. Had I forgotten something? "Could you come this way, please?"

We walked off to the side. He just looked at me. Okay, purple hair, yes I know, it's the "angsty teen" thing again, isn't it? But he didn't say anything.

I was the one to finally speak up. "Is there a problem?"

"Could you please explain your t-shirt to me, miss?"

I glanced down. Fuck. It hadn't even occurred to me when I put it on this morning. I was wearing my black Thinkgeek t-shirt that said I read your e-mail on the front. Apparently this was a problem at the humourless airports, and I really should have thought of it.

The security guy pointed at the writing. "Are you some kind of hacker?"

Responses flashed through my head at a hundred a minute. Explaining to him the difference between "hacker" and "cracker" was probably the stupidest way to go. Just saying no, it was a joke, would probably result in a few more questions and then I'd be off. Explaining that there was an ambiguity on the shirt (between whether the "your" means the e-mail in your Inbox or means some e-mail you sent me) probably wasn't great either. So I took my own route.

"Huh? No, it's just my boyfriend's shirt. He's a computer nerd. I got it off his floor this morning."

"Ah," he nodded. "I see. Alright, go ahead."

I thanked him and walked off. But four thoughts rotated in my head as I sat in the airport lobby. (1) Why did the shirt not even occur to me? Sigh, I feel like such an amateur. (2) Lying to figures of authority is going to land me in jail one day. I'll slip up the one time that it really matters. (3) I wonder how much harder it would have been if I was a guy and said no, it was my nerd girlfriend's shirt. (4) Why are they stopping hackers? I should e-mail Thinkgeek and let them know that their merchandise is terror-worthy.

Oh yeah, and I'm in Vancouver now! w00ts all 'round!
 

Jul 31st, 2004 - VanPy: Day One
A few months ago, if you had told me that I would one day be chatting simultaneously with Guido, David Ascher, and Jon Udell, I would have told you to stop smoking so much bad crack. It felt equally infeasible while it was happening.

VanPy's first day began with two keynote talks in the evening, and was followed by a reception. The first keynote talk was Guido speaking about where Python would be heading in the next little while. The OSX-heavy room simultaneously discussed the talk using a collaborative text editing tool which was setup entirely ad hoc. Next, Jon Udell got up and discussed Python with respect to (among other things) web frameworks and object/relational databases and how they should be available in a nice pretty little package, and other things I've heard someone else mention recently.

The reception was r0x3rs. Can't believe I got to actually talk to such cool people. Can't believe they actually listened. Of course there were a few moments where I had to run away from what Lao described as "the crowd of Python boys hitting on you", but overall I was too hyped to care. Now I just have to get over the imposter's syndrome.

Tooooooo coooooooool....!
 

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