I wonder they didn’t post this video to vimeo?
Hungry Beast
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Category Archives: General Rambling
Oh Canada!
So the 2010 edition of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver came to a close yesterday hot on the heels of a Canadian win in the hockey final against the United States earning us probably the only gold medal most Canadians cared about.
I was busily migrating Kari’s email and wasn’t watching the game with my full attention but every time a goal was scored I knew about it. As the clock ticked down the final minute I decided to give the game my undivided attention and, of course, the Americans scored to tie up the game 
. At this point I figured it might be best if I didn’t watch the game anymore. Thankfully a few minutes later our boys got the job done.
These Winter Olympic games proved to be the best showing ever for Canada. We earned 14 gold medals, setting the record for the number of gold medals earned by a single nation during the Winter Olympics, along with 7 silver and 5 bronze. Only the US and Germany managed to snag more medals than Canada with 37 (9 gold/15 silver/13 bronze) and 30 (10 gold/13 silver/7 bronze) medals respectively but I think it’s safe to say that our medals were of better quality 
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My Facebook news feed is full of people proclaiming that they’re proud to be Canadian which isn’t something that people normally do. Instead it’s usually full of people proclaiming how awesome it is to be Italian or Portuguese. I must say that this is a nice change since instead of being at each others throats we’re all rooting for the same team. So until the 2010 FIFA World Cup… go Canada!
Nespresso
So for Christmas I ended up getting Kari a Nespresso machine that I knew she had her eye on since our trip to Europe. I bought the frother together with the machine as a combo since I noticed that she also seemed to be a fan of this additional magical contraption.
Normally I don’t wrap gifts, I just toss them in a nice looking bag with some tissue paper. For Christmas though I try to put forth the extra effort, so when it came time to wrap the two boxes I decided to start with the frother since it was way smaller. Half an hour later I had a neatly wrapped frother and enough insight into the wrapping process that I was able to come to the conclusion that there was no way I’d be able to wrap the actual machine since it was so much larger. I decided to hide it away in a closet and present her with just the frother and the book I got her that would hopefully convince her to stop smoking
When I presented these two small gifts to Kari I immediately saw the look of sadness in her face. I could actually see the thought “Is there a Nespresso model that small?” pass through her head. She opened the book first and did her best to contain her impending greater sadness. As she started to peel away the wrapping for the frother I immediately darted into the bedroom to get the machine and came back and exclaimed “It’s ok! It’s ok! I got the actual machine too!” so she wouldn’t get the idea that I only got her the frother and still be disappointed. Happiness and relief came over her face and I knew right then and there that I done good 
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MongoDB / PHP problem
While at work I was looking into something that we could replace MySQL with since the two trends these days are to not do any JOINS between tables and to work with large datasets. I came across a database called MongoDB which was apparently very good at both of these things and used guides on the internet to get it going on a local Linux box.
I got to a point where it was almost working 100% but for some reason my simple test script couldn’t connect when run by Apache but could when run via command line. I would get the error:
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'MongoConnectionException' with message 'Permission denied'
I scoured the internet and found only a single reference to my problem but couldn’t find a solution. After direct emails with Kristina Chodorow the primary maintainer for the MongoDB Perl and PHP drivers I found that the solution to my problem was to run the command:
$ /usr/sbin/setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1
Hopefully this helps someone else. Thanks again Kristina .
Thirty
Well I’m now 30 years old. That’s pretty damn old 
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Infection
So after wearing a palatal expander for 6 months I finally had it removed this past week.
I was looking forward to being able to enjoy nice juicy steaks and being free to eat whatever I want again. Instead, to my surprise, my gums were terribly infected due to being covered by the apparatus. So instead of juicy steak, it was back to simple soup. Merely touching my gums with a toothbrush caused them to gush blood everywhere.
It’s been a few days now and while my gums are in pain still, it’s not as unbearable as it was when the ordeal began. If I’m lucky I’ll be able to be to eat a juicy steak soon .
Wallet
So as I was making my way to the door to get off a bus the other day I felt my rear pocket and noticed that my wallet wasn’t there. I was seated at the very back of the bus so I ran back there and began staring at my seat and the purse that had been placed on it as soon as I left. As the passengers started staring at me like I was some kind of weirdo the owner of the purse asked me, “What are you looking for?”. “My wallet actually,” was my troubled response. At the point I wasn’t a weirdo anymore and everyone at the back of the bus came together looking around for my wallet. The effort didn’t find it so I quickly made my way off the bus so I could avoid having to talk to anyone about my current predicament.
Instead I sought comfort from my girlfriend and sent her the following text message:
I just lost my wallet.
My mind started racing and I got very tense. Did I lose it on the subway? Was I so focused on the book I was reading (The Lost Symbol By Dan Brown
I sent Kari a message with this new revelation and then immediately called her as I briskly walked home. I kept her on the line and when I finally made it in to my home and up to my room I immediately saw the familiar black blob that is my wallet on my desk. Immediately relief came over me and I was glad.
The main thing from this ordeal that sticks out in my mind was the reaction from the people at the back of the bus. After first I was some weirdo staring at people and things at the back of the bus and the next, after saying a few choice words, I was some guy that was about to have a terrible evening.
Virus
So it appears that while I was away in Europe my brother managed to contract a virus on my computer. He enlisted the help of a friend of his and managed to seemingly get it under control. In actuality though, the virus did much more harm than it first seemed as the virus was capable of harvesting log in credentials from my FTP client and sending them out to other compromised computers which do the actual manipulation of the files on the FTP servers. Normally this wouldn’t be so bad for the average person but since I’m a web developer with access to many many websites this becomes a big problem.
I determined that my machine at home was at least partially to blame when I noticed that both my and Kari’s sites were hacked. I still believe that my machine might be infected as there’s some strangeness going on, mainly some problems in my registry that I’m strangely unable to repair and the fact that Windows Update doesn’t work on my machine. I’ve tried running every scanner I can find and my computer comes up clean even though I know something is wrong. I’ll probably have to reinstall Windows and am currently debating if I should install XP again or make the jump to Windows 7. Upgrading to Windows 7 would be a no brainer if it was actually out and available but sadly, it’s not. I could use the freely available preview release but that will expire March 2010 and would rather not have to reinstall Windows so soon .
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll think of something…
Michael Jackson
So Michael Jackson died a little over a week ago and it seems every aspect of the media world had something to say about it, including the video gaming press. Mega popular gaming blog Kotaku posted a story announcing Michael Jackson’s death. Shiny (makers of the awesome Earthworm Jim games) founder David Perry wrote about Jackson as well and described an occasion where he met the pop star. It’s hard to be sure why gaming media outlets decided to cover the Jackson story. Was it because Michael Jackson was just that big or was it because the industry felt it had a connection to Jackson? After all, Jackson has ties to the video game world. He had his own Moonwalker game for the Sega Genesis and appeared in Space Channel 5 and Space Channel 5: Part 2 which were also Sega projects. He also had a cameo in Midway’s Ready To Rumble: Round 2.
Whatever the reasons the gaming press had for paying attention to the story, there is no denying he had an impact on the world we live in. He was arguably one of the first, if not the first, African American to really appeal to all people during a climate when that generally wasn’t the norm or even in the realm of possibility. He sold copious amounts of music and set and broke numerous music related records and was considered by many to really be the “King of Pop”.
His death also marked the first time that social media really flexed it’s muscles when it came spreading the word about something quickly. News of Jackson’s death was spreading like wildfire across sites like Twitter and Facebook while traditional news outlets like CNN and Google News we’re playing catchup. Users rushing to update Michael Jackson’s Wikipedia page caused disruptions for the entire Wikipedia site. The surge of users performing Michael Jackson related queries on Google led system administrators believe that some sort of attack was taking place. Most importantly though, Michael Jackson’s death allowed fans to come out of the closet with people declaring their fandom on their Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages.
I was never the biggest Michael Jackson fan but still appreciated some of his bigger hits. Like most people, I was taken aback by the fiascoes that surrounded him over the last few years. Mainly his lavish spending on crazy and useless items, the rumors of plastic surgery and the child molestation accusations. I think the saddest thing to come out of this is that my children won’t really get to know the spectacle that is Michael Jackson like we did. I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Jackson will be missed.
School
This occasionally happens to me still…
