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 That's purely unintelligible.
BTW, can we get an RSS feed for this board as well? Since you use it as your personal blog, I'd love to be able to drop an RSS feed for it into my aggregator. 
Hawaian shirts and shorts work too in Summer.
People assume you're either a complete nut (in which case not a worthy target) or so damn good you don't need to worry about camouflage...
-Anna-Jayne Metcalfe on Paintballing
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- On landing, the captain gives you the current temperature and the current hockey score
- It's snowing
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I've been doing the travel thing for the last couple of weeks and had some fun experiences:
First, while trying to taxi out a power unit failed in the plane we were in so they had to jump start the plane. No biggie. Happens all the time they tell us. Then as we're taxi-ing the copilot comes on and says, a little sheepishly, that the landing gear is playing up a little. NOTHING to worry about - it just means they'd have to keep the gear down for several minutes to let it cool down. The point nis that it was about -6C with a howling wind outside. The landing gear had been sitting out in this for hours. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how landing gear that has been out in sub-zero temps for hours needs to be kept exposed to the cold to cool it down after a single take off. No - not gonna think about it.
Had to land in Toronto the day after their worst ice storm in ages. Did you know that planes don't have anti-lock brakes? We found that one out. Screeeeeech! Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech!! Very disconcerting.
Got out of the taxi in Toronto and experienced first hand what an ice storm does to steps. zip! WHAP! Lucky I had my laptop, diskman and camera in my backpack to cushion the fall.
I was walking out on those moveable walkways out to a plane and a luggage car crashed into the base of it. Why do these things happen to me?
Contrary to the scaremongering airports are not actively screening for SARS. A girl sat behind me from Toronto to Vancouver and coughed up - at a rough count - both her lungs. Oh - and if you are going to wear a mask, you need to place it over your mouth. Having it hanging around your neck doesn't work quite as well.
Security on greyhound buses is a joke. Actually it's worse than a joke. It's not a big issue in my mind but it was almost painful to watch how uninterested and how incompetent the guys at bus station were. Oh man...
Australian customs offices are the best. I'm not sayin' why though 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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o,god bless u
Are SARS very epidemic in Canada? and how many people have die of it?
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The street sweeping gnomes came out at exactly midnight tonight, and they drive big yellow trucks - three in a row.
I'm just wondering if they are cleaning up the piles of dirt and stones I see on the footpaths each morning - or replenishing them.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
I'm just wondering if they are cleaning up the piles of dirt and stones I see on the footpaths each morning - or replenishing them.
ROTFLMAO... I don't know why but this had me in the knots for about 5 mins.. thanks Chris.
Regards,
Brian Dela 
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LOL
About two weeks ago I flew into Edmonton to interview at BioWare for a job. My first thought was "CRAP, what a dirty town."
Damn snow dirt.
Tim Smith
I'm going to patent thought. I have yet to see any prior art.
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After 15 years of driving I now have my driving learners permit. The indignity of it all...
Those coming to Canada as free-loading, snowboard wielding, beer guzzling, questionable-substance imbibing, no-fixed-address back-packers are encouraged to hire cars and drive all over the Canadian country-side, scattering Moose and Mounties alike. But as soon as you step onto Canadian soil with the intent to pay Canadian taxes they suddenly get all nervous.
If you are a tourist you can drive for up to a year on an international licence. If you haven't seen one of these things then I encourage you to go and get yourself one. Or, if you want to save the $10, use a friend's digital camera, cheap HP printer and the poorest quality cardboard you can find and make your own. They really are that pathetic. But - they do have the singular advantage of being accepted in Canada. As long as you don't actually have a fixed address or social insurance number.
So in order to drive I need to pass a driver's test. In order to pass a driver's test I need to pass a written test. The written test involves standing in front of a Kiosk monitor and pressing 1 of 4 buttons in a way that makes the computer happy. For instance, a question will come up such as:
When approaching a stop sign you should:
a) Accelerate through the intersection while sounding your horn.
b) Attempt to run over the stop sign.
c) Lean out the window and throw an empty beer bottle at it.
d) Stop.
So I proceeded through this grueling exercise for about 5 mins until eventually the screen went blank. Dead.
I had crashed the driving test computer.
There was no Ctrl+Alt+Del so I went to front desk for tech support. It turns out that the test had finished and all I had missed was the final 'Congratulations!' page. The 'congratulations' page is, by the way, shown to everyone who takes the test. It doesn't mean 'congratulations you passed!' it means 'congratulations, you didn't pass out'. The testing officer looked up my results and was a little shocked to find that not only had I passed, but that I'd got a perfect 100%. She seemed genuinely amazed. Quickly glance up at the sample question above and tell me if you would feel comfortable driving in a town where it's an event for someone to get 100% in the written test.
So now I have to book my driving test. I figure that booking online was the easiest thing to do since the waiting room I'd entered 15 mins earlier had gone from 2 sorry souls plus one sorry Australian to about 500 angry souls and one startled Australian.
So I go to the online booking site and fill in the form. Licence number, post code, licence expiry. The post code on my learner's licence is wrong, so I enter the real post code and hit submit. Bzzzzzt! Wrong post code it says, and asks me to do it again. Fine. I reenter the info, including the wrong post code, and try again. Bzzzzzt! Wrong expiry. I check. I double check. I check a third time and ensure that everything on the online form matches exactly what is on my licence (which begs the question: why can't I just enter my licence number and get it to look up the damn info). But no - it refuses to accept that the bit of paper it printed out for me not 2 hrs ago contains accurate information.
So I'll keep trying and keep ringing. The problem is I can only keep trying to book online because, and I quote "Road Test Booking Online is available: Monday to Saturday: 6:00 a.m. to Midnight, Sunday: 10:00 a.m. to Midnight".
That's right. The first website in the world to have opening hours.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
That's right. The first website in the world to have opening hours.
At my college, we could only view our grades, schedule, etc. online from 7am-7pm, M-F. Major PITA for those of us who worked AND went to school.
Jon Sagara
You know the world is off tilt, when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest basketball player is Chinese, and Germany doesn't want to go to war.
-- Charles Barkley
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Chris Maunder wrote:
When approaching a stop sign you should:
a) Accelerate through the intersection while sounding your horn.
b) Attempt to run over the stop sign.
c) Lean out the window and throw an empty beer bottle at it.
d) Stop.
Maybe they figured you're an Aussie...;P
OK, just joking...
Vikram.
-----------------------------
1. Don't ask unnecessary questions. You know what I mean?
2. Avoid redundancy at all costs.
3. Avoid redundancy at all costs.
"Do not give redundant error messages again and again." - A classmate of mine, while giving a class talk on error detection in compiler design.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
When approaching a stop sign you should:
a) Accelerate through the intersection while sounding your horn.
b) Attempt to run over the stop sign.
c) Lean out the window and throw an empty beer bottle at it.
d) Stop.
Ahh, an easy one C, right?
Matt Newman
Sonork: 100:11179
"Two things have come out of Berkley, Unix and Acid, we do not belive this to be a coincidence"
Linux sucks twice as fast and 10 times more reliably, and since you have the source, it's your fault. -Ca1v1n
Post best viewed with lynx
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The thaw has started in Toronto. After an interminable Winter that was at first exciting, then comforting, sometimes exciting, but generally just plain old cold the ice is finally starting to melt. It's something I was told (warned?) about by friends. When the sun comes out and the birds are singing and the piles of snow start disappearing you're going to go a little silly. Everyone is happy. Issues that looked unsolvable in the middle of last week are suddenly no problem at all. Spirits are high, tempers are calm and jackets have been left at home.
The picture I have in my head that says it all is one of an extremely severe looking middle aged woman who had just pulled up to church. We were just walking past on our way to breakfast and there she was sitting in her car, fixing up her makeup, and listening to some very loud and extremely funky reggae.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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sweet! I want to get a pair of these[^] for around here (ft worth, tx). I ride city trails and streets more than hardcore trails, and my tires get eaten alive!
- Nitron
"Those that say a task is impossible shouldn't interrupt the ones who are doing it." - Chinese Proverb
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Nice! They good in the city? I've got the studs on at the moment and they are brilliant on the sheet ice we have here at the moment, but get clogged up a little on soft snow. Once the melt happens (this weekend by all accounts - w00t!!) I'll be moving to some narrower, higher pressure slicks.
One thing that is interesting is that my shocks (Judy Rock Shox) are bottoming out a lot in the cold weather - even though they are cranked up to maximum resistance.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Nice! They good in the city?
Much quieter and faster!  I used to be a roadie but my wife is into MTB and forced me to get one, so I really miss the speed. Combine those tires with a nice pair of bar ends and you got a nice "sport utility bike" 
They are also good on paved park trails and stuff. If it weren't for my disc brakes (disc brakes == $$ wheels), I'd keep a set of city tires and a set of these[^] permenantly mounted (you know, for those rainy days ).
Chris Maunder wrote:
One thing that is interesting is that my shocks (Judy Rock Shox) are bottoming out a lot in the cold weather - even though they are cranked up to maximum resistance.
The oil properties change (thicken) below 35F which slow the effectiveness of the damper, resulting in an overshoot (or bottoming out). You can change your oil to compensate. Check here[^] for details from the source. 
- Nitron
"Those that say a task is impossible shouldn't interrupt the ones who are doing it." - Chinese Proverb
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Chris,
I can't seem to find a link to start a new thread, so I had to pose my boring question to this incredibly interesting one. Sorry about that.
I read your article "Cross language inheritance in .NET" Posted 26 Apr 2001 and Updated 16 Oct 2001. The "easy-sound" linking problem between Managed C++ and C# has given me lots of trouble. Since I couldn't find in your article the technical details about how to set things up in .NET, I experimented in this way:
Start up with a Blank Solution. Add in the first project, which is a C# Class Library. Typed in the code you had for the C#, compiled it and got the DLL. Then Add in the second project, which is a Managed C++ Application. Use the #using thing to import the C# DLL into the C++ file. Typed in what you had for the C++ file. Compile. No Error. But when I tried to run them, the Debugger tells me that the C# file cannot be found.
What have I done wrong? I appreciate any reply you have. And thank you!
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The left nostril freezes at -20C, and this morning I found that -24C does the right one. This is a very strange place to live.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
BTW - what does 'fair' mean in weather terms? That's the forecast for tonight and I'm thinking it means 'at least it isn't blizzarding'.
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It's a vague term they like to use because it encompasses everything. That way, they're covered no matter what happens.;)
--a former Canadian resident
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So both were frozen... lets hope your mouth doesn't freeze or you'll be finding breathing a bit hard to handle.
Regards,
Brian Dela
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Yep - The Evil Twin has finally succumbed and is no more. Webserver #2 will be postmortemed tomorrow and it's organs donated to a worthy successor.
After the exorcism, of course.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing I've decided to redo parts of the submission wizard to make it a little more user friendly.
One issue is always that to make things easier invites lower skilled users which can mean lower quality submissions. If you're a programmer then you should at least know HTML, right? Not necessarily. Also, knowing HTML doesn't mean having style, class or restraint.
The new system hopes to make it easy for people to get articles formatted and posted quickly while also coaching and guiding new users in the correct methods of formatting an article. Maybe this will work, and maybe it won't, but the acid test for me with these things is that I use it for a week and then try going back to the old method. So far for me there's no going back.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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So the new editor went live at midday. Owning a website is like having thousands of people rummaging through your house all hours of the day and night. I'm just wondering how long it will take for someone to open that particular cupboard and find the new toys.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I'm having serious, serious issues with the technology level of this country.
1) Canada gets the crappy cast-offs the rest of the world doesn't want. Take a look at the offerings of phones, laptops, cars - anything fun - and you'll see that everyone else has the fun stuff and Canada gets shafted.
2) What is so insanely difficult about paying a bill over the phone? Companies here want cheques. That's paper. Through the mail. OMG. I'm so insanely used to either paying everything from my online bank account, or at the absolute, stone-age, throw-back, I-can't-believe-this-company-is-still-in-businness worst, by credit card over the phone. So much so that when the angry young lady on the other end of the phone responded to my 'I'd like to pay my hydro bill please' with a 'that's nice - when?' it completely threw me. An odd come back, so I countered with 'Now', which she parried effortlessly with 'How'. Hmm - cunning. I tried a quick thrust with a 'my Visa?' but that was commandingly knocked aside with a 'you can't'.
Give me a frigging break.
3) Hydro here means electricity, instead of the usual 'water'. I think this comes from the power companies wanting you to have the idea that your electricity comes from environmentally sound hydro plants nestled in the pristine mountains surrounded by picturesque snow covered pines.
Update: I have managed to work out how to get registed on the hydroelectro companies website. I now have the ability to view my bills online. I can't pay them, but I can look at them. Brilliant.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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I assume electronic payments are far in the future, then... What is it that draws you back to the land where the last Ice Age never ended?
It is ok for women not to like sports, so long as they nod in the right places and bring beers at the right times.
Paul Watson, on Sports - 2/10/2003
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