Pierre Phaneuf's Diary

Ahem, having to catch up a bit! I don't know if I'd say that I'm being lazy, but I'm not writing much, anyway...

Monday morning, I dropped the Linux Mobile at the garage for regular maintenance and changing the tires. Although I'm rather happy to have the grippier four-season tires on, there was a bunch of tiny details that made this a rather expensive visit. Nothing bad, but it was time for one of those more thorough inspections, supposed to change the brake fluid at 50,000 kilometers, and so on... When the guy at the garage called me to tell me what needed to be done and how much it'd cost, he almost forgot to mention that the rear-window wiper was worn out. Worth $12, at that point, it didn't really matter. :-)

Monday evening, tygrbabe had the genius idea of taking a laptop and an Invader Zim DVD, and go watch it in a park. We stopped by Pho Lien on Côte-des-Neiges and Côte-Ste-Catherine for some food first, which sort of pointed us at the goodness of the Mount-Royal Park as our selection. As we were cuddling near the Beaver Lake, bats were swooshing above us and we had a very nice sunset, as we were laughing our asses off. The deep blue of the sky outlined the building on the edge of the lake very nicely, as it has bright orange panels, would have made a very nice photo. The ducks quacked at us a bit, and we told them... MONKEYS!

Tuesday, I had the lady azrhey over. We were supposed to look for apartments, but it seemed like our willpower was all but exhausted. We watched Kinsey instead, which was rather funny. It was rather funny that the very stuck-up Thurman Rice character was played by Tim Curry (who, of course, is remembered as having played Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away), or Clyde asking Mac whether she'd like to have sex with him (and then Kinsey calling out for her while she's in bed because they're going to be late for a dinner with a guy from the Rockefeller Foundation). Some of the things people asked were quite hilarious, but at the same time, it's amazing how badly America was in a kind of sexual dark ages (some would argue they still kind of are, but really, that's nothing). Watching that movie was a lot of fun, in any case. Maybe I should buy it.

Yesterday, I fixed a really subtle bug in a quite wonderful way, at work, I was rather proud! azrhey and I finally did some apartment searching, and we did find a place that has a number of temporary apartments for rent that seems very nice (rooms and studios), I hope they'll have something for us. Watched some "CSI: NY" and cuddled. Cuddling is good. I like cuddling with the lady.

Tried to take a more scenic route to the office today, but man, this was way more scenic than I was looking for. Blocked streets, detours, traffic, the works. Oh well.

Went to see my friend Jean today, with the lady azrhey. He's still as much fun as ever, with his distrust of Germans and carrots. He'll be hooking me up with a remote switch for my camera, which I've been meaning to buy before leaving, as they're so much more expensive over in Europe.

Tomorrow, trip to Ottawa!

I'm not ridiculously sick, I'm doing all right, but interrupting everything to blow my nose all the time is getting on my nerve, though.

Okay, some catching up to do, before I just drop the ball! What was my last week like, you may wonder? Well, okay, you probably don't, but here it is anyway!

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Did the demo of the thing I was coding up recently (including over the weekend). It was well received, that's nice!

Yesterday, we had been discussing the current lack of pop and juice in the company fridge, and today, I went to the fridge, half-heartedly, expecting to be disappointed still. Nope, still no pop, but I looked around, thinking there might still be something to steal off someone (we put labels on personal stuff). I see a bunch of Waterloo Dark lying about, with labels on them. I check whose they are, and it says "platform". Hey, wait! I'm part of the platform team! Score! So I drank one before my presentation, and another after. :-)

I'm stressed a bit, these days, with all those things I have to do... Went to get quotes for international movers and to the optometrist yesterday, so it's all about spending money. I mean, I've got some, but this is just insane and out of my reach. A grand for the plane ticket, a bit more than half for a year of travel insurance, I ought to get glasses (my glasses have been broken for the longest time now!)... Got the first quotation for moving back yesterday, and it was five grands!

Thankfully, it turns out that it's way overpriced, got one that estimated three something, and got another that will do it for two grands, door-to-door. Lots of money, still, but this was just looking appalling yesterday and I was rather discouraged. But with those news, and my demo having gone well, I'm much better now! Also, had quite the solid support to back me up, between azrhey hanging out and taking good care of me (*purr!*), and tygrbabe's encouraging words! Thanks!

I cooked a bit yesterday. Something low-risk (an omelette), but even then, syncing it up with the soup didn't work out at all. I'd make a terrible chef. The food itself was good, I'm not so bad this way, but I'm so inefficient at cooking, and since time is one of my most expensive resources, I'm quite reticent about it. Probably beyond what is reasonable, though, as I keep forgetting to make myself sandwiches for lunch, even though I have all I need, but that's just me being forgetful, I think. :-)

Busy schedule, these days, but it's looking quite good and enjoyable! Cleaning my apartment tonight (so I can have tygrbabe over tomorrow without my apartment eating her or something!), going to a co-worker's going away party, going to C.O.M.A.3 Saturday (with tygrbabe, who likes the noise!)... Whee!

Had a chance encounter with ryss_rhiannon yesterday at the Eaton Centre, while I was gobbling down cheap sushi. That made it much more enjoyable, despite nearly choking on wasabi. I mean to see more of her, and *poof!*, there she is! Excellent!

In the evening, curled up at home with azrhey and watched The Brothers Grimm (for free, thanks to gregorama!). Frankly, rather disappointed, for a Terry Gilliam movie. There were a few funny parts, but we're far from a Twelve Monkeys or a Brazil. There wasn't nearly enough Monica, although Lena Headey was rather tasty. Thankfully, I had most excellent company.

Tonight, visited ryss_rhiannon (her, again?!? well, why not?), where we ordered in some crazy Copoli burgers (which had more to do with pizza than with burgers, if you asked me) and watched both Inosensu: Kôkaku kidôtai (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) and Armitage III: Poly Matrix. Dropped by the office on the way home, as I left my laptop there, in my hasty departure. Oopsie.

This allowed me to try to fix my music. Since I killed off iTunes' database in the process of getting this in order, I can't really use iTunes, so I wrote myself a tiny Perl music player (less than 13 lines!), using ogg123. I love being awesome. :-)

jwz is at it again. I am purple with envy! Brushed aluminium (optionally anodized), satellite time source and Nixie vacuum tubes, oh my!

Edit: Seems like I'm not alone in my musical sufferings, jwz too. *grunts*

Went to gregorama's place yesterday for dinner, with azrhey and jul3z as well. I got treated to some Me Mom & Morgentaler, to my delight! Ohh, the food. And the wine. And the vanilla ice cream. No fucking "dessert glacé" for us! We then played some Xxxenophile, which was highly amusing. I got this 9 point card (one of the highest scoring cards) that had this "take off one article of clothing" thing on it. I think it's supposed to be a deterrent. I just laughed and snatched it away! I also got a card that ordered me to let out a bloodcurdling howl of victory. It wasn't so bloodcurdling, but I was certainly amused! I got called a chicken when I more or less turned down a faceful of jul3z's cleavage. Hey, I'm shy.

Re-prioritized my things, and it makes more sense now. Let the fun begin! Well, there's also the dentist, in there, to keep it balanced, I suppose?

I'm much happier now. Excellent. :-)

So, this great weekend? Ah, yes!

Timed and checked the distance on the way there. 5 hours and 22 minutes, including a 23 minutes stop for food (at the Arby's in Kingston, of course!). This makes for an average of 120 kph, or 129 kph, for just the driving part. Doesn't sound so evil, but it includes the slow parts in Montreal and Waterloo proper, so my average on the 401 looked more like 140 kph! Yowser! Peaked at 180 kph three or four times, and oddly enough, most of the way to Kingston, I had someone following me, no matter what (including a number of those peaks!). This is a ridiculously nice car to drive, and I can't say I won't miss that when living in Europe (at least, rental cars won't have ridiculous automatic transmissions).

Arrived at around 11:30pm, straight at ayria's place, and stayed there until 2am or so, being shiny as hell. Chatted a bit with my host, Mr Langmaid, before hitting the sack. He was a wonderful, if only slightly invisible host (as he was completing a contractual obligation during the weekend, due for the Monday!), providing all the facilities and unrestricted access. Quite handy, thanks again!

On the Saturday, picked up musicdieu, ayria and thatsthetruthki to head over to morethanreal for some tasty pancakes and tea. sfllaw contacted us there, and we then headed over to ayria's place for meeting with him, as well as holdenk and math_foo for some Chez Geek. Stylish, as was mentioned.

We then all raided Ellison's Bistro in sfllaw's van for some tasty dinner. Back to ayria's place (with a stop at the LCBO for supplies!) for drinking, silliness and some photo slideshow. More shininess followed.

The Sunday, I pretty much already summed up, but there was a few more things. There was a stop by musicdieu's place after leaving ayria's, to try to fix up my dead music player (seemed to have worked, but this morning, trying to put some more music on it killed it again, gah!).

Some people, who obviously didn't see me today until later in the day, seemed to be under the impression that my parting time had been much worse than it had been in reality. Reading back the entry, I can understand that, but I think the following little story should dispel that myth. :-)

Quite ironically, since I was driving much less aggressively than when I arrived, I got pulled over on my way home, somewhere between Toronto and Kingston. 138 kph, I'm told. "Oh my" is my response to the officer (I wasn't surprised by the number when she told me, but when I saw her car, I glanced down, wondering how fast I was going, and had been a bit surprised). Asks me a few questions, and I answer. Now you have to picture this, this guy gets pulled over, but he's all cheerful and smiling. She must have thought I was pretty weird! The cherry on the sundae was her last question, which was whether I was in trouble with the police. I paused to consider her question, then bursted out laughing and told her that "no, not with police, at least"! I must have seemed quite charming, as she let me go with a reduced speed on the ticket. :-)

See, my weekend was going so well, even getting pulled over had to be all right, and almost fun, even!

I destroyed so much cruft in our code today, it was mind boggling. I interrupted cpirate (who sits at the next desk from mine) so many times, it was silly. But then, I often do. Sorry. :-)

Didn't really feel like being all by myself at home, so I went to vegancafe, to abuse their free wireless, as well as get myself some crack-brownie and green tea, while doing job hunting. This worked out pretty well, as I sent a bunch of emails, including one to a company founded by a former NITI coop.

I was also introduced to this interesting French band called "Nouvelle Vague (french for "New Wave"), which does covers of New Wave songs, in Bossa Nova (portuguese for "New Wave", I'm told? but has nothing to do with New Wave, just a cross-language pun of some sort!), jazz and sixties pop styles. They use younger singers who have never heard the originals, apparently, to come up with their own version of it. Pretty cool.

As I was about to get kicked out of the café, I hooked up on IM with bee_york, who lives right by. She took a break from her studies to go have some hot chocolate with me and chat, was fun!

I was even home before midnight! Ohh, be amazed!

I saw this hilarious video, thanks to evildrgo.

Chatted a bit with the favourite people, as well as with some dude I should go hang out with soon enough.

Diva is snoring beside me.

Okay, so yesterday was made of a great many fuck-ups, leading to a few strings of muttering swears on my part. Timing for watching the Grundstück DVD was a bit messy, which caused quite a few stalls in my brain and dramatic cutting on time I wanted to spend with a certain favourite person. Another favourite person's brain was also on the brink of self-destruction and had to be fixed with evil medication.

Then we thought of having food, and that we could treat musicdieu to thank him for having us over (considering how he feels about this!). A roommate offer pizza. I thought this wouldn't fit the plan, even that's what I would have done normally. So we figured out a restaurant to go to. This was fairly long and painful. We ended up heading to the Mongolian Grill. It was stuffed with people, with a 15-20 minutes wait. Okay, let's do Jane Bond instead. But upon arriving there, azrhey realized it was a vegetarian place, when she was really requiring some kind of meaty sustenance. We knew that, but she didn't, as she had been busy contemplating the menu earlier from the Internet, which featured meaty-sounding things such as tacos, burritos and pizzas. So we headed out once more, to where the evil lurks (that's Kitchener), to a Korean BBQ that is, quite adequately, named "Korean BBQ". But they were out of rice, as well as of various side-dish things, which just as well meant that they were out of food. So we ended up hitting up the very closest Vietnamese restaurant (the one we had parked in front!).

The ordering happened at 8:30pm. I had told the favourite person that we would be joining up for hanging out at 8ish. Crap. This was really frustrating and annoying me massively.

When all was said and done, and all the shit together, we hooked up at 10:30pm, and she was already exhausted (that stupidly long game of Munchkin cutting on sleep time didn't help either!). But damnit, we did hang out, and I have to say that getting some time with both my favourite people will get a stupid smile on my face pretty quickly!

– Get closer to her.
I move my chair.
– Get a little bit closer.
I move my chair some more.
– Turn a bit to your left.
Turning a bit.
– Ok, perfect. Now, poke him!
Other favourite person starts poking me savagely!
– Didn't you suspect anything when me, of all people, told you to do stuff?
– Yeah, I did figure there was a trick, but getting closer, I liked that plan anyway!

Drove her back to her place, and chat one-on-one a little in the car, which, while wasn't the bestest thing ever, was much enjoyed. I like my hugs.

I think I should really drop a few words about elliptic_curve's omelette here. Apparently, it tasted a bit like... old dog. She even told both the waitress and the manager that. Ahh, the joys of food in Waterloo!

For breakfast, we of course went to the same place, with elliptic_curve, again (as well as sh8der_boi and libertinette, who were also there the night before). No, she didn't have omelette. I explained some photography principles to elliptic_curve, in preparation of her trip to Thailand, and then headed off back to Montréal.

There was some Arby's again, of course. azrhey's parents also greeted us with food, because you know, I think they assume we never eat when we're out of their sights, LOL! We made it in a bit more than 5 hours and a half this time, not nearly my best, but plenty efficient still, and a fair amount of speeding. The moon was awesome.

Went to Archambeault to take advantage of my gift certificates, for some extra music on the road. I got myself The Arcade Fire's "Funeral", as well as the Violent Femmes' deluxe edition of their self-titled debut album, which rocks so much, it's amazing! The latter, at least, is excellent road music, we'll see about the former. Speaking of the Femmes, they have the most awesome trivia page ever, check it out, it's hilarious!

I'm still looking for Me Mom and Morgentaler's "Shiva Space Machine", which is possibly one of the most kick-arse ska album in the history of the world! Before the Planet Smashers, there was MM&M, described as "the Montreal supergroup of ska", stuck between the second and the third wave of ska, but doing stuff that would still fit right in today. Speaking of them, where are they now? Heh, their sax player was with the Planet Smashers for a while? How am I not surprised...

Was joined by gorbash_dragon for some coffee, where she also gave me a chocolate rose as a Christmas present. She was saying it was getting important that she gave it to me, before we got to Valentine's Day and that I'd start getting ideas, hahaha!

Got myself some new wipers to replace the fucked up ones I had (one was crapping out and the other I damaged while de-icing), so I can see what's happening in front of me when I'll be driving to Waterloo (quite important). They're pretty damned fancy "frame-less" wipers, never seen those before. Being frame-less, they're good to use during winter (as there is no fragile frame to damage), but they are also very aerodynamic, so you can use them in summer too! Am I ever easily entertained, or what?

I think the plan tomorrow will be to hit the Huether for a stout float upon our arrival (which should be at 8-9pm). There are rumours of andukar, pcolijn_rss, jbdeboer and Mr Wise (where is Mag?)! Then off to elliptic_curve's farewell party. Then we'll see and make it up as we go, as usual. :-)

I feel very inspired these days for all sorts of programming projects, but while it's very exciting, it's also rather frustrating, as I don't have time to actually work on them, and I also have ideas of what the previous idea would allow me to do once it would be done (but I need to do the first one first!) and so on... Also, they tend to all run into each others, so I sit down at the computer to work a bit on one of them, then I get an idea for the other, so I stop and start thinking about that... The net result being that I have a huge pile of reason for wanting to sit at a computer to hack instead of doing whatever I should be doing, and when I do so, I'm not really that productive. Scatterbrained me, gah!

Now, off to cook myself some tacos. Yes, I said cooking (although it's not really, just cooking the meat, adding spices then rolling them up)! Fear me!

Man, am I using exclamation marks, or what? It's so exciting! Whee!