Pierre Phaneuf's Diary

Today, I apparently felt very optimistic.

You see, Monday I went to Cycle Technique and asked them if they had some used bikes, having in mind of getting a rain/winter bike. Turned out they did, their summer rental bikes, they were pretty nice, and (allegedly) they had a large one that would fit me. I figured I'd give it a thought, then decided it was a good idea, and went on the Tuesday. I figured I'd walk there, pick up the bike, then ride to work. Except that large was actually a medium. So I walked to work instead.

Today, I figured I'd head over to Beaudry metro, check out Vélo Espresso and Revolution Montreal, for sure I should be able to get a decent used ride between the two of those, right? Well, no. Well, maybe. But mainly no. I had forgotten that Revolution mainly does custom built bikes, meaning that, no, they did not have anything for sale right there. Vélo Espresso had a used bike, but while it could have done, it was quite used. On their main floor, they had this rather weird bike, a Norco VFR 3 Internal. It's a fairly sporty frame, although not too aggressive, and it actually has space and lugs for fenders and racks (although I hear that it's not always the best fit ever), but it has an internal hub and a chain cover. An internal hub and a chain cover, but no fenders? I keep seeing utility bikes that have fenders, racks and lights, but no chain cover nor internal hub, and this bike has the reverse? Well, uh, it so happens that this is the exact set of things that you can't add, so I guess that's cool? I tried it out around a few blocks, and while it's not nearly an upright riding position, it's still surprisingly relaxed. It also comes with clipless pedals and clip-on platforms like those I already have?!? What a weird bike!

After that, I went to ABC Cycles & Sports, but it was closed (only on Wednesdays, argh!). I stopped by Brakeless, since it was just down from it, but they only had the one fixie, it seems more trendy than a place I'd actually want to get a bike from. I then headed over to Le Yéti, where I had a rather informative chat, and saw a ridiculously fancy German bike (I think? don't remember the make/model), which, while complying with pretty much all my requirements, and piling on disc brakes on top (because I really like brakes that work well), is also almost three grands, although it's now on sale at a bit past two grands. Uh, tempting as it is, I'll have to pass.

After that, La Bicycletterie JR, Sport Dépôt, and Pignon sur Roues. The latter had an interesting bike, the Louis Garneau Cityzen One, but is oddly missing just a chain cover (even though a blurb about the bike in Vélo Mag claims there's one?). Why is there almost no bike with chain covers?

I ended up going back to Sport Dépôt, and after some pondering, getting a Marin Belvedere. I had already spotted that bike from some research on the web, and while I knew they had Marin bikes there, turns out they pretty much only had this one, 20% off, so it was a happy coincidence. But... Their mechanic was off today, so they couldn't prep the bike, so I did not ride to work, once more.

Tomorrow, I shall ride home on my new ride! There's no stopping me! They may try, and Jeff might try to jinx me (I beat his Space Invaders high score to ward it off), but I'll be riding back tomorrow, rain or shine, and there'll be no stripe down my back if it's raining!

Uh, there was a traffic jam on my small street today when I left for work?!? Complete with no less than two city buses, trying to work around the cranes and other construction equipment currently cluttering the street... Weird.

Oh, man, I've been meaning to post for exactly two weeks, yet didn't. I did this thing where I thought about hypothetical posts that I'd be writing while on the metro and biking, then forgot to actually post it.

It helps that there has been a fair deal of biking going on, beginning with what I called the Weekend of Doomed Awesomeness for a bit (if only in my head). This started by going to Mutek's Nocturne 3 with tygrbabe on the Friday. Then, went to the Mondial de la bière with azrhey in the afternoon, after which tygrbabe joined us to go to Mutek's Nocturne 4. How to follow this best? Sunday, I showed up at cpirate's place almost in time (9am-ish, after going to bed at 5am!) for, you know, a little Tour de l'Île (with scjody as well), after which we stopped for well-deserved poutine at La Banquise (and a coffee, so I could stay conscious). Then (the same day!), azrhey and I met with rezendi for a quick pint before catching Le Salaire de la peur at Cinéma du Parc. In case I might have survived, tygrbabe invited me to see She Wants Revenge for my birthday (got me brownies too, woot!), on the Monday evening (we were joined by fuzzyilla too, ahoy!).

While I thought Nocturne 3 was quite excellent (Millimetrik and Modeselektor were awesome, Kid Koala very good, although I've seen better sets from him, and the other bands were quite fun too), Nocturne 4 let me a little bit down. Most of the bands didn't "click" with me much, and the whole programme was running late, which combined with the act I wanted to see most (Deadbeat, was excellent!) played last, made for leaving the place extremely late. Still, it was nice too, I just wish I could have slept in the next day!

I'll have to agree with tygrbabe, She Wants Revenge was good, but they'd have to put out a killer album for me to go to their next show. Some of their opening bands were really wacky and not all that good either, including a "punk" band that sounded like Avril Lavigne on speed.

So after that, I, uh, didn't do much for the two last weeks, as you might have guessed. I did bike to work a lot (for which there was tremendously good weather!), played with my own early birthday gift to myself (a new top-end 24" iMac, Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz and GeForce 8800 GS, smokin'!) and coded (mostly on Quadra, more than 20 commits just this weekend!). There was a visit from musicdieu and cpirate, watching of Euro Cup games, and Munchkins.

azrhey and I went out on the city last Saturday, was quite nice, and I got myself a nice watch (Danish design and titanium? sign me up!). We ended up going to the cinema and watching You Don't Mess with the Zohan. Yes, I know, I know, but it's actually pretty funny, mostly due to the weird cultural references (fizzy bubbles and hummus, baby!), and was saved because I have a small idea of what's going on in that culture, and would probably have been even funnier if I was actually part of it. I don't really expect it to do well, although there's a fair share of stuff that a lot of North American would find funny (silly fight scenes, sexual jokes), but I laughed really hard at the hacky sack, fish and hummus jokes, myself.

On a closing note, I've had a weird email recently from OkCupid (which I do find entertaining, for various reasons). I often get the "come back to our site so you can see and click ads" emails, but this one was different, telling me that there was one particular user I should message where there was some sort of category 5 crazy outlier match. Apparently, the love of my life is in New York state, which is too bad, because I'm not, ha! It then showed the usual "you might be interested in those people" bunch of people, but as opposed to the usual, this morning it was a bunch of my friends, so, well, I guess it sorts of works? I do like my friends, they're nice and everything. :-P

A few weeks back, I found myself having dinner with tygrbabe, where I discussed with her the fact that I rather enjoy her company. She is one of my favourite persons, after all! She seems to be enjoying my company as well, which I find to be a relief. After all, this was fairly high on my list of things that I didn't think would be happening any time soon, after the events I mentioned in my previous post. But here I was, at the movies, holding hands and giggling. Life is weird, sometimes, but it could be much worse than this, I think!

The movie, by the way, was Charlie Wilson's War, and to make a quick summary, it included much more boobies than I would have expected. It's actually rather good, with some excellent work on the part of Philip Seymour Hoffman, an often underestimated actor, in my opinion. He seems to be often put in quirky roles, does well in them, and I like quirky.

Upon leaving the movie, I glanced at one of the buildings downtown, wondering what is happening at Google with my application there... Oh, yes, I was keeping a lid on it (well, mostly, as I'm hardly the most secretive person around!) until things were becoming a bit more solid, but I have been interviewing with Google recently, after some ex-Nitiot who's now there pointed them my way. tygrbabe pointed out that they wouldn't exactly hang a giant sign out on the side of the building, so we proceeded to go on a walkabout, where she threatened to push me in a number of snow banks.

After that, as I entered a metro station, I pulled out my mobile phone to send an SMS to the lady azrhey to let her know that I was coming back, as we had agreed. Doing so, I noticed that I had left it on silent mode, from the movie, and that I had a voice mail message. I check it out, and it turns out that it's an offer from Google! Heh, while I was wondering what was going on, they had contacted me. Which makes me wonder if they have some kind of mind reading device...

A few days after that, I decided to accept the offer. Turns out that this leads to a two weeks orientation that is to be done at their Mountain View campus, the fabled Googleplex. Checking schedules, this lined up to be starting the week after azrhey and I moved into our new place. As in, we're doing the actual moving on the Saturday, and I have to be there at 8:00 on the Monday. It certainly seems that I'm not content with my life being a roller-coaster, it also has to be doused in kerosene and set ablaze. Otherwise, it's just too boring, right? Thanks to the cpirate for the extra help!

Our new place is pretty awesome, if a bit dark (there isn't much lighting included, we have to get our own). The bathtub is big and deep, the shower is spacious and has a neat pane of glass instead of a shower curtain. There's a secret passageway to the bedroom. The toilets are fancy dual-flush models (about time we get them here!), albeit with non-standard fitting sizes (argh, the joys of being an owner, I guess). The shower and bathtub faucets have fully separate temperature and flow controls, like I maintain is the proper way (and is the normal way in sane countries like Denmark, and very common in the rest of Europe). We're missing a few items before we can actually have people over properly, like proper lighting so that we don't just sit in the dark.

Now, I'm writing this on the plane from Chicago to San Jose, which is going pretty well up to now, as opposed to my last trip to New York City (which the quick-witted among you will have associated with my Google employment, on top of visiting the fine people I know over there). On top of the Google orientation and overall excitement of being a "Noogler", I hope to visit morethanreal, see the Computer History Museum (which I've dreamed of for almost twenty years now!), and generally visit San Francisco. Maybe a bit much to pack in my free time, I'll see.

P.S.: You're reading this, therefore I didn't end up in a flaming plane wreck.

Saturday, I attended BarCampMontreal3, which was quite fun. I figured that I should really practice my presentation skills, so Thursday, when I found out it was this Saturday (not the next one as I has thought!), I had to find something to talk about.

I figured there would be a lot of web developers in the audience, and having noticed that a lot of web application platforms tend to disable many HTTP features that helped the web scale to the level it has today, I thought I could share a few tips on how to avoid busting bandwidth caps, deliver a better user experience and overall try to avoid getting featured on uncov.

It was well received, mostly (see the slides), although it felt a bit like a university lecture for some (maybe the blackboard Keynote theme didn't help, and I was also one of the few with a strictly educational presentation that was also technical). Marc-André Cournoyer writes that just one simple trick visibly improved his loading time, so it's not just for those who get millions of visitors! Since at least one person thought that, I guess I should clarify or expand on a few things...

( Read more... )

I've been lagging behind in a lot of things (sorry if you've sent me mail and are still waiting for a reply!), but I think it's been good for me.

The day after we arrived, I managed to catch serendipity_wpg's last show on the Fringe, where I met wlach, cpirate and scjody, without anything being scheduled. After a choriço poutine at Mondo Fritz, I even crossed pzion on the way home. This was pretty cool, for a first day out, having such nice random encounters even in a city of three million people!

After getting all my money turned into Canadian currency, I tried to pick myself a nice Linksys WRTSL54GS, to hook ourselves up with some wireless Internet (with some hackability in mind!), to no avail. I ran into the WRT350N the next day, which seems to be the replacement model (had some issues with it at first, but it works perfectly for me once I restricted it to "b" and "g" wireless).

I also went for a drink with azrhey, cpirate, liberation_now and tygrbabe, which had me somewhat fiddly, but (of course!) proved to be quite enjoyable.

There was a visit by sps, swestrup and taxlady, where Settlers of Catan was played and I was soundly beaten to a pulp. I had cheese curds to console myself, which I was missing terribly!

I saw some of my old gang from cégep, where Mare Nostrum was played and I almost won, but Brain won finally. The usual...

I got myself some new shoes, which I find pretty nifty, but I then had the very silly idea of going for a walk before going to lab-synthèse-01. Going for a walk with new shoes, gah. I had soft ice cream to console myself. I had to leave before lautreamax got on, due to logistical constraints (also known as "living way the hell over there"), but I did catch (and enjoy!) his co-conspirator's set. More electronic music, more!

And today, we went downtown where I chatted with people for a bit while sipping coffee, walked around lazily and managed to randomly catch a 60% off deal on memory for my laptop at Compusmart's closing sale. Now writing this sitting on the lawn of the Place-des-Arts, from a spot in the shade, taking it easy with the Jazz Fest in the background... Nice!

Last weekend, I got my residency permit turned down, which, to make a long story short, means that we'll be heading back to Canada. Seems like I was misdirected by the Consulat de France in Montreal, and from what I hear, it seems to be something they've done a few times (azrhey worked in a place here where they hire a lot of foreigners, due to language skills).

So, it looks like I'm going to be looking for a job back in Montreal.

My weapons of choice are C++ and Perl, but being a Unix/Linux hacker, of course, I am not limited to those, they're just the ones I'm most deadly with. I am comfortable with meta-programming (mostly, but not limited to that of C++ templates), continuations/coroutines, closures, multithreading, as well as event-driven state machines. I am quite effective at code refactoring, particularly in strongly typed languages, where I can use the typing system to my advantage.

I am deeply intimate with Unix/Linux, mainly in the area of network programming (sockets, networking protocols, other forms of IPC). On Linux, I am quite familiar with a number of the high-performance APIs. I have a deep knowledge of the HTTP protocol (and some of its derivatives). I have experience writing Apache modules. I know the difference between bandwidth and latency (and wish more people did too). I have some experience with developing distributed software. I have a higher-than-average knowledge of ELF and Mach-O binary formats, particularly of how symbol resolution works. I know a good deal about component software (dynamically loading modules, for example), and ABI stability issues. While I am not a master at it, I have some Linux kernel development experience as well. I know what make is doing, and why.

Finally, I also have some experience doing project and release management, where I feel I did a pretty good job, and would certainly like to do more of it. I am familiar with the free and open source software community, belonging to a number of projects, including some that were part of my work.

Did you know that, for the price of a pint of Guinness in Montréal, you can buy a whole freakin' five litres of fine Cabernet-Sauvignon here?

Now, is that a good or a bad thing? I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.