Month: April 2008

need for speed

If you are finding your Ubuntu upgrade slow, I found it worth changing my default download server. Under System -> Administration -> Software Sources you can choose a new server. It has a Choose Best Server test, which pings all 185 Ubuntu download servers and picks the best one for you.

The default Canadian server is swamped at the moment, but the good people at Rochester Institute of Technology are the fastest for me.

banjo nails from the axis of evil

I tried taping pistachio shells to my fingers to get those perfect frailing nails. It was, at best, a partial success.

But why axis of evil? Well, these were very fine Iranian pistachios from Rafsanjan. If we lived in the USA, we couldn’t buy them. We’d have to make do with the tasteless little California pistachios. Go Canada!

tat, too

Props to the older gent in the Tim’s at New Hamburg. “What’s the tattoo on your arm? I can’t make it out”, asks the server. “It’s supposed to be a panther’s head, but it’s not finished”, he replied. “I was meant to go back the next day, but I sobered up.”

uh …. Calgary?

Look, I know the Flames won last night, but that’s no excuse for all the snow we’re getting today. C’mon, it’s spring!

coast plaza = dodgy dns

Coast Plaza hotel has a broken(ish) DNS — most web sites won’t resolve unless you hit reload about 8 million times (or use a shell loop to ping many many times). Aargh!

But it does completely block my office’s Citrix connections, so no work e-mail for me!

the cure for hockey

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The above is a pictorial representation of the 11 additional pucks required so that they wouldn’t need to fight over one. Please donate generously, and you can help Canada become a world-class country with a proper sport …

someplace no place

In Calgary, and walked (likely illegal here) from the hotel up to a restaurant that Kenn had recommended. It’s called Oriental Phoenix, and it’s just off Barlow by Sunridge mall. (It’s really good, incidentally.)

Walking through the colossal mall parking lots, I had a real sense of ‘no place’ – this could be Lebovic Dr in Scarborough, or Liberty, MO, or Richmond, BC, or Napierville (a town with better backs of necks). What makes is what to create identical beige industrial buildings with colossal setbacks? I’ll leave this to smarter folks like Byrne or Kunstler; me, I’ve got my pho to walk off.