Diary of a CrazyFrench

If you read this, then this blog has finally moved. Let's hope it is faster now.

Nothing is better to prevent me from posting something than the laptop that decide to switch itself off when I delicately lift it to move downstairs. I had the feeling I had to save the post. It will have to wait.

Half a decade ago I landed in Canada. Not sure what happened since, but that's surely 5 years.

Sometime the shit hit the fan. Good thing I have the EEE PC. The bad thing is that I might be slow replying to email as I dont have a mail client here, nor do I have my ssh key.

Update: wow this post has the number 666.

I'll do them in reverse order.

• The ugly is that I got downsized. I won't comment on what I read on the Internet when the CEO talks about acquisition, but then lay off his own people.
• The bad is that I only have an aging laptop left with keys that don't work like arrows and return. See above if you plan to suggest I buy a new one.
• The good is that I'll have more time for my projects. See the second item to see if that will really be productive. Can't be that bad.

Nonwithstanding that it was the 3rd hard drive to die in a month, when I went to buy a new one, the car broke down on the return. And by broke down I mean the gear got stuck in 2nd. Fortunately it is a stick and I could safely stop the car to get it towed by the roadside assistance. I'll know more Monday when the dealership is actually open: the car is still under warranty.

Since you can read this, that means the hard drive is back in and he machine back up.

Using Cheese, here is a shot of my forehead after a trip to the ER.

Funny... NOT!

I'm on vacation until new year. That does not mean I'll be un reachable, but just that I have a lot of copious spare time.

Maybe I'll have time to push some new release for exempi, libopenraw and hack on my pet project.

Done recently:

• Read Motoral RAZR with Linux to see what could be done with only USB connectivity. Works great with RAZR V3 and V220. Ended up making a couple of rind tones for my phone. I still hate the software on this phone.
• Experimented with boost::thread. Looks nice although the documentation seems to be a bit vague. I'll talk more about it when I wrangle it better. I like Boost, even though sometime g++ does not help.
• Installed openSUSE 10.3 beta3 on the brand new X60 for work. This laptop clearly blast my personal one.
• Welcome IBM, seriously ! Delighted by Michael's post.
• Saw my workstation being gutted to replace the whole system board due to a fried USB. The Xeon "dual core"^[1] look very small... much smaller than the fan / cooling unit that sits on it.

Back from a ten days trip to Toronto (with two week-ends including the long labour day week-end). Highlights are:

• had a training on OpenOffice.org where Michael transmitted all his knowledge to Jon and I.
• catched up with other folks from the team, including Florian and JP.
• BBQ at JP place, visited a Novell office for the first time.
• went to the CN Tower for the second time and jumped on the glass floor.
• went to the CNE (took a few interesting shots, will post later).
• fixed a bug in VCL where the menu bar in OpenOffice.org was not drawn using the right color... which was very visible with Darkilouche: black on dark gray just does not make it.

It is Canada day.

Tonight we attended my first July 1st fireworks, seen from the Quebec side over Parliament Hill, from the Musée des Civilisations to celebrate the 140 years of the confederation.

The number of the day is 0x20.

I just wish I could be at FOSDEM in Brussels. I would have been in France at that time, I sure would be there. But my trip set at that time and had no way to move. I looked for last minute ticket, and YUL->CDG through AMS was CAD$1400, less than just YUL->AMS (forget a flight to Brussels). But both the price and my current work schedule does not allow me to do that.

I hope people will enjoy it.

Events I surely be there are DDC, and eventually OLS.

The weather is crazy is Canada. Crazier than usual. In one night, it snowed, melt, froze. Here is how the car windshield was this morning:

And it is not snow. It is ice ! (apologize for the crappy picture, it is a CAD$30 camera)

I accepted a job offer from Xandros to work in their development team based in Ottawa, Ontario. So I moved to Gatineau, Quebec, which is just accross the Ottawa River.

In 5 days we managed to pack and move all our stuff to our new home in Gatineau (with help from movers), to acquire a much needed vehicle (mass transit is mostly non-existant, unlike in Montreal) and other needed stuff.

ADSL is back online with a little advance, but with a little glitch: I should congratulate Magma tech support for solving the issue quickly (unlike for Rodrigo with a different ISP). I'm quite impressed, as I usually have really bad experiences with tech support in general. My servers are now working fine.