Pierre Phaneuf's Diary

Was going so nice this morning, but now I'm all stuffy, and I've just "discovered" that charming lack of a type system in C. I was changing types around in parameters, trying to find out some information about the code I was looking at, but silly me, anything can convert to and from void*. Awesome.

When run on Quadra, Valgrind tells me the following:

More than 100000 total errors detected. I'm not reporting any more. Final error counts will be inaccurate. Go fix your program!

Sir! Yes! Sir!

Update: Thank goodness, it's now down to a number I can count on my fingers.

Now, someone has to explain to me why I'm not geting any interest on those bloody daylight savings?!?

So, I hear it's snowing back in Montréal?

This week, there were people going to the beach in France, both along the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The latter is especially nice at this time, I'm told, as it's warmed up all summer, and now the air is in the low 20's, the difference isn't as harsh.

Yeah... So... Snowing, eh?

I've been notified that I was slightly confused (as usual) and that fall is here now. :-P

Favourite people of mine seem to chat me up on a semi-regular basis, which I appreciate muchly!

Did some cleaning of the apartment and (finally, as they were long overdue!) of my boots this weekend, with much welcome encouragement from azrhey, but didn't do laundry after all. Oops. Hopefully, I won't have to show up naked at work this week...

It is 15.5 degrees Celcius at my desk right now (up from about 14, before we opened the windows). The stupid A/C is totally out of control, gah!

Got an e-card from archdiva! Thanks!

Someone dreamt of me cuddling with them. Some possessive asian girl tried to stop her from doing so, but she blew her off and resumed the cuddling. Apparently, it was nice, so good for her! Hehe!

azrhey made me cake! Chocolaty goodness awaiting me when I arrived from work! Yay!

Saw some footage of the Dawson College shooting on the French news, azrhey and I switched over to the CBC eventually to get more info. Apparently a woman has been confirmed to be dead? Crazy. Good luck to anyone involved, or knowing someone involved...

Lalala, I'm a lazy arse, news at 11...

Friday, went to visit cloquewerk and messiahdivine with tygrbabe. After some fiddling around at the video store (which is of surprisingly fine quality, on Sherbrooke, just east of Decarie, beside the Subway, recommended!), we picked up The Hudsucker Proxy as a backup for our planned Meet the Feebles. Turns out it was excellent, and has Bruce Campbell in it! The future is now!

Saturday, there was some hanging out with swestrup and taxlady at azrhey's place, where I had way too much coffee and those "palmier" thingies. Whoa. Then, I took the lady azrhey out in the boonies of Mont-St-Hilaire to go to a sort-of high-school reunion. It was actually just of people from the "enriched" program our high-school had, at one of those person's house, after she decided to do a search for the alumni. Yeah, I'm easy to find, no kidding. One of my good friends who also worked with me, one of the finest programmer I've had the pleasure of hacking with, is also giving up on the computer industry, like many others are doing. I'm pondering it, sometimes, I have to admit. It was generally great, though, seeing what my schoolmates had become and all. azrhey commented that, compared to her high-school reunion, it was more of "what we're doing now is cool" than "do you remember how cool it was back then", which I agree and found rather nice.

Sunday, I don't remember leaving my bed much. There was some messing around with my computer infrastructure, unclogging an email jam and assorted things. I think I have an addiction to Perl, but who says that's bad? ;-)

Monday, I stayed home after work. I hacked feverishly on getting more of my computer situation sorted out, which I have to do before I can move my server to my mom's place. Almost there, almost there! Ugh.

Tuesday, tygrbabe and I went to visit Rem and Coco down in McMasterville. There was some BBQ, some weird cheese, some porto, some computers, some geekery, finding a lost book and subsequent forgetting of the lost book. I broke stuff. The usual silliness.

Today, I picked up my new glasses. Yay, no more broken eyewear that barely clings to my nose (it's handy having a big nose, sometimes!)! I then went to azrhey's place where we took some photos of ourselves to give away to some people, like moms and such. I took my tripod, but forgot my quick-release plate (which allows one to put the camera on the tripod), so I was basically carrying around heavyish aluminium tubes and fittings, for fun. Cuddling and watching some shows, as well as getting a great massage (thanks again!). I was worrying about the lady muchly recently, but turns out that tonight, it's me who's sleepless (my tummy is rebelling against me, I think, but stress probably isn't a stranger to these things). The irony...

Tomorrow, I'll be going for some pools with azrhey, gregorama, as well as possibly jul3z and others (I didn't keep track too closely... I'll also be paying the wonderful people at the SAAQ a visit, aren't I the nicest person ever?

ayria is coming over to visit this weekend (which I'm told is allegedly a long one, but I know nothing of these things), and I have to admit having a bit of a hard time containing my squeeing.

*squee!*

I've re-factored some rather nasty code today, and one can almost understand what it does. But not quite. More of that tomorrow, I suppose...

Some dropping by Hurley's tonight, with a bit of free Guinness, couldn't really turn that down, could I? I had some interesting discussion with wlach and apenwarr, among others, although I did get a bit too talkative, I think. I missed apenwarr, apparently, when he's away for too long, my rants build up to unhealthy levels and I can't stop! It would seem that while I am rather friendly, I can also be quite abrasive. Yeah, I think that's true.

I then had a ride home from mich, in the back-seat of his Mini, with wlach in the front. Ow. Thankfully, it isn't very far between Hurley's and my place!

Upon arriving home, I fed the Diva while the bathtub was filling up. A proper bath (with non-icky water!), at my own place, how good did that feel! I reflected upon my place of residence a bit. It's rather far from perfect, and I might neglect it a great deal at times, but it is my home nonetheless, for what time is left here, and I like it here. I hope I will feel as good (or better!) in our new home. I think we will.

Watched some Invader Zim while drinking some more beer, trying to read my news (of which I had an horrible backlog) and relaxing (yeah, I just refused to worry for the day, come back later for that). This was all rather successful, pretty amazingly.

"I was the turkey all along!"

Had a nice evening at tygrbabe's place, fleeing the failing electrical system of my apartment, where all the 220 volts things (like heat boards, the water heater and the stove!) don't work. liberation_now had me nearly die of shame, but it was rather amusing overall. I was semi-formally introduced to Download (since when do I do anything formally, anyway?), good stuff!

I'm really looking forward toward some hanging out with liberation_now. But I have this feeling he might leave a virus in my mind and corrupt it irrevocably. The bastard.

Came in to work very early, to get a head-start as I was planning on the electrician calling me in the morning to fix things (I'm back at home now, waiting for him, argh!). Had a few small changes to make to the source code of the "cleaning up" nature that cpirate was supposed to review. As I was done but he still wasn't arrived, I saw another easy picking. Then another. And another. When the poor man arrived at the office, I had a nice pile of cleanups to review, instead of the "few small changes" I was supposed to have, hehe!

Then, there was also the yelling at various supervisors, landlords and electricians... There better fucking be heating here tonight, or there will be bloody murder!

In the gems of coincidences, as I finally decided to go get some things at Ikea, and thus take care of my long-standing credit with them (I have an Ikea credit card that I mistakenly paid the bill for twice once), I received a check for the amount they owed me. Well done.

They're all nuts, I say.

And the US are changing some things to their daylight saving times in 2007.

I fucking hate discontinuities in the flow of time. Particularly when I have to write software that keeps track of the flow of time. Which I do.

Through the magic of daylight savings, you can have a weekly international meeting in a company shift by an hour, but only for some people, only for a week or two a year. All so that people can go to bed an hour (or two, depending on exactly how insane your country is!) earlier. Why can't they just be sane, and fucking go to bed a bloody hour earlier? I already have to deal with damned leap seconds, but these have a physical reason (slight difference between the rate of rotation of the Earth versus it's revolution around the Sun). Now, these people, they're just making my life difficult just because they can. There's absolutely no logic to it, it's all make-up crap, that politician whimsically put together because they've got nothing better to do.

I leave you with this to ponder:

5.1M /usr/share/zoneinfo

This is the space used by the time zone information files on my system. An average file is about 800 bytes. Some are smaller, like Canada/East-Saskatchewan (381 bytes, I believe they don't have daylight savings?) and others are larger, like Riyadh (which has about 11343 bytes for it, spread among multiple files because it is very complex there, apparently!). There are 1620 files. When some some wacky country decides that their daylight savings are going to jump by two hours instead of one every year that's a multiple of 7 (except those where the froobs are not ripe), these files have to be updated, and sometimes even actual code has to be modified. By people like me.

And people wonder why I don't wear a watch.