At the end of September, my laptop decided to stop working. I spent a frustrating few days trying to resuscitate it, but that effort failed miserably. After six years of faithful service, my A20m was dead.

So I ordered a new laptop. I had been looking at getting a new ThinkPad over the past two years, but had never gotten around to it. After all, my previous laptop was portable, connected to the Internet, and let me do my thing. I was prepared to go through a terrible experience. I looked at various websites, decided that I still like ThinkPads and tried to order a laptop from Lenovo through their website.

This failed miserably, so I sent them an e-mail and forgot about them. The next day, Shanley e-mailed me from her office at Lenovo Canada. Apparently, she wanted to sell me a ThinkPad T60p with the specifications I wanted. And it was cheaper than I could have possibly ordered online. In fact, Shanley was so nice at taking my money in exchange for a new computer, that I'd recommend her for any of you wanting to buy a ThinkPad. It was surprisingly painless. Just ask me for her e-mail address.

I received the machine after a weekend of waiting. It just showed up at the office is a big cardboard box. I pulled it out, assembled it, and looked at it. This is one of Lenovo's first ThinkPads and it seems like they haven't ruined it. The TrackPoint is still there, the keyboard is just as nice, and the machine is solidly built. Satisfied with my inspection, I looked around for an installation CD. That's when I realized that I had an Ubuntu beta CD I was hoping to try out. Why not?

Grabbing the CD-RW I had recently burnt, I popped it into the laptop and found that everything showed up fine. I had a brief struggle with the proprietary hardware inside my computer, but that was something that installing the linux-restricted-modules-generic package solved handily. I did, however, manage to find quite a few bugs in the whole process. And as the QA person, I certainly reported them.

I'm still getting over how fast this machine goes. With two processors, gobs of RAM, and a plentiful hard disk, this machine is going to last me for a good long while.

I'm back in Montréal from a ludicrous amount of travelling. It's been exciting and beautiful and grand, but I'm a domestic at heart. So I'm enjoying my cozy, cluttered home and it's just divine. I don't have to live out of a suitcase anymore! I can just sit in my armchair as the sun goes down and peruse my bookshelves.

I bought books as I travelled. Do you know how annoying it is to lug around a backpack full of hardcovers? I did, however, get some much neeeded exercise out of it.

makemyway is staying in my guest room right now. She's been an awfully good influence for someone who claims she can't relax. I have spent the past couple of days doing luxurious things. We've gone to Romados and bought some pastéis de Nata and ate them in Parc Lafontaine. I've become converted to the joys of roasted fennel. We've indulged in homemade strawberry ice cream, bagels with prosciutto, and peaches and cream. We climbed to the roof and watched fireworks. I haven't left the house except for small errands. And then I got to photograph someone drawing on a wall.

Bliss!

I never want to leave Montréal again. Which is patently untrue, but I'll stay for a while. I promise.

Last weekend, I rented a car to take a little trip to Toronto. It seems like that city keeps drawing me in. It's quite inescapable now. In fact, I seem to like downtown Toronto more and more each time I visit. It's very different from Montréal, but when you fall in with the right crowd, everything thing seems to just taste better.

Anyway, I rented a car. Surprisingly enough, the Pontiac handled itself well at fast highway speeds. A little on the loud side, but it handled very tightly for an economy car. So I was fairly happy about it. And gorbash_dragon did a lot of sleeping during our nighttime drives.

We arrived early Saturday morning during a thunderstorm. She got out of the car with her luggage and then I drove to where I was staying. letoams had kindly left me the keys to his apartment, so I was rather happy that there was some place to drop my stuff and collapse.

In the morning, it was time to take photographs. I had a little breakfast at the corner café, a place called Java Jive. The coffee was terrible, but the grilled-cheese was fine. Then I walked up Yonge to go to a tea party, but was mugged along the way by a cookery bookstore.

After a bit of walking with some rather heavy books, I made it to the place where makemyway was housesitting. She had two friends along, Chiara and Mariapia, and they were sitting at a table with a teapot and a plate full of cheese. There were no tea cups, but we made do with various random bits of glassware. The house, by the way, is rather beautiful and was furnished properly. But something seemed a bit wrong. The kitchen was mostly empty, even though they had a wonderful gas stove and high-powered range hood.

The house is ruled by a small white cat named Blizzard. He is so adorable and friendly. He seems to love everyone that walks through the door. He was also quite lazy in the heat. Toronto was quite hot that weekend.

After meeting more people, who arrived slowly throughout the afternoon, I decided that I had to leave for sachachua's barbeque. I hailed a cab and went to Graduate House, where I peeked into the courtyard and saw a bunch of people eating at tables. Down the stairs I went and was welcomed to a bunch of food. We were treated quite well, including some very tasty cheesecake that Warren made himself. But it was so rich that I couldn't finish it.

I met quite a few geeks at this party, and we had a pretty geeky discussion. Then, secretsoflife and Makemyway showed up and we had an even geekier discussion. We talked well into the night, until people kicked us out of the courtyard for being too loud. Then, I decided it would be a good time to retire.

On Sunday, I had a little photowalk before meeting makemyway and her friend (whose name I cannot spell) in Kensington Market. We sat at a little place called i deal Coffee which is really serious about their coffee. In this little shop, they have their own roaster which takes up tons of space. And they have a piston-driven espresso maker, so they are literally pulling shots of coffee. How cool is that?

We walked around the market buying tasty things to eat. Then we went to Chinatown and got ourselves a fresh fish. Which we barbequed. Oh man, was there some good barbeque that weekend. heinous and Joe showed up in their super-awesome Fiat convertible. We took it out for a spin. Wow!

After dinner, I packed up my things, cleaned up the apartment a bit, and then took a nap. Then it was off to collect Gorbash and drive home. By the time I got her back to her place, I was so knackered that I slept in the front seat of the car until the sun came up. It's actually surprisingly good for that, because of the way the seats work.

My shipment of earplugs has arrived!

If you voted in the poll, I'll be trying to find you in some way or another. Their unit price is $10.37, but I'm chill with rounding down to $10 per pair. (GST and duty are pretty expensive.)

I also ordered some extras, so if you're interested, please let me know.

N.B. The picture on the right shows beige earplugs, but I ordered the clear ones.

It's a little disorienting to wake up in a different place every night. When I opened my eyes on Saturday morning, I was sleeping on maradydd's daybed. I padded off to the kitchen to get a drink of water and then tried to figure out what to do.

It was very late in the morning and I was exhausted from the late nights and early mornings. But I did manage to rent a car and get spider88 up and about before the sunset. We drove to Google and tried to get inside.

We managed to park the car and find our way to Building 43, where I convinced someone to let us into the front door. In the lobby was a projector that showed a scrolling list of queries that were being submitted to Google right that second. I stole a couple of smoothies for Spider and myself, while we waited for Jim Morrison to come downstairs.

I had to sign an NDA on going inside, which I did by putting down a large X. What can I say? I'm illiterate!

We walked about the place and were introduced to some co-workers. I noticed that he had my inspirational poster up on his door. I'm glad that I'm making a positive impact at Google, even though I don't work there. I met some of his co-workers, strolled around the building, and noticed that many of their inflatable meeting rooms lacked straitjackets.

They have amusing whiteboards all over the place, which are used for generating collaborative ideas. It would be neat if we did the same thing at NITI.

Shopping needed to be done, so we went outside and drove to some supermarkets. There, we picked up the ingredients for dinner. Man, I still can't get over how small the produce sections are in U.S. stores. And their yuppie-food stores are a lot less charming than ours. But I was happy to be able to get melon and prosciutto in the dead of winter, so who am I to complain?

Once done, we went to Jim's place. It was there that we found wealhtheow waiting for us. As well as Joel and Rhoda, whom I only see at parties and I cook for. Rhoda had brought some ice cream which was now slowly melting, so Jim went to quick work making vodka creamsicles.

I started making meatballs when other people started arriving. I recall a Justin and a Jeffrey. Oh, and Katelyn because Jim had borrowed her mobile phone. Jim is really difficult to reach, he doesn't have a working telephone number at all. Not even at work! Lucky bastard.

We put the meatballs in the oven and started making pasta sauce. Then the linguine went into a pot of boiling water and dinner was basically ready. Unfortunately, the meatballs had overcooked a bit in the oven and the dish they were in had shattered. Whoops! I need to practise more cooking in different conditions, I think.

In the end, we had a very decent time and I was the only one who abused alcohol. Which led to Rhoda identifying that I had moved to Québec and segued into a discussion about swearing. :)

Each morning, CodeCon started later and later. This is not just because us volunteers couldn't get there in time, but also because the attendees would show up more hungover and sleep-deprived as well. Thankfully, it's a hacker conference so we started at about noon. Or 12:30. Which is "morning" for some.

We kicked off the day with a talk on Dido which is meant to help you write voice-menu systems. Quinn did a neat demonstration involving a real telephone, which was quite novel. However, since I despise voice-menu systems, I have to hate his project on principle.

In the Q&A period, I nipped over to Bill Pollock's booth. He runs No Starch Press which is absolutely fabulous. He gave me a free mug, some tea, a book, and a T-shirt. In exchange, I had to buy a few books as well. I'm afraid that my book buying habit is starting to get uncontrollable. Every time I return from a trip, I bring five or ten books back. Now I have a copy of madduck's book which I will get him to sign at DebConf 6.

I completely zoned out on the Deme presentation. I think I was talking to someone who wanted to convert me to Evil, after hearing that I was a hacker. I'm afraid that I'm too noble for that. But what I did glean from the presentation is that deme is an actual English word.

My presentation on UniConf came up next, so I put on my red "Speaker" badge and hopped on to stage. You see, I was at CodeCon as a backup speaker, in case one of the others missed a flight or fell down some stairs. I had to resist doing any of them bodily harm. For my altruism, I gave a talk about how UniConf glues configuration systems together, and why people should use it instead of writing their own. I got a lot of questions afterwards, which was pretty cool.

At lunch, wealhtheow and Bill came by to ask me what I'd like on my pizza. Wow! I said that it didn't matter, and thought little of it. Then they showed up with boxes and boxes from the local Costco. Bill had just bought everyone lunch! We organised a queue that would have made the British proud and everyone got a slice to eat.

I remember first hearing about Monotone from Graydon, back at GCC Summit. So I was a little surprised to see Graydon sitting on stage looking pretty while Nathaniel was presenting. Monotone has inspired a couple of version control systems but it's never really gotten popular. But one thing it hasn't passed on is its use of Merkle trees to express differences.

All throughout the conference, I had been selling drinks from behind the bar. Standing for all that time really hurts the feet, so I was sadden to discover that my shoes were not good for this. Still, I had a good time there. I've definitely found a calling in the service industry, if the computer bubble bursts again, I'd make a great bartender. I never knew! You make eye contact, smile and say something friendly. Then you chat as you pour a drink, take an interest in someone, and just be nice. If you give a little extra, smile and wink, like it's secret just between you.

I was busy chatting to my customers for the Rhizome presentation. Reading its description, I'm not really sure that I could tell you what it is. And I work with computers!

As I was selling drinks, I was also selling CodeCon T-shirts. Very snazzy T-shirts. Every time I sold a drink, I tried to sell a T-shirt along with it. Show off the front, show off the back, offer an appropriately sized shirt. Flattery seems to work very well, as does smiling when the person looks at it. You know they're sold when they're holding a shirt, so you offer to fold it for them and name the price. It was so easy!

Daniel came up again to do his Cqual++ presentation. Not only was this piece of software more difficult to write than delta, it's also less popular. Alas! He does some very impressive static dataflow analysis on C++ to find nasty, horrible bugs. But parsing out C++ is scarily difficult!

After the presentations were over, we had a very nice set of closing remarks which made all of us blush. And then we tore down all the stuff we put up and packed everything away. This is where I packed my own T-shirt in a box by accident. Jonathan's going to send it to me by post, which is very nice of him. Then I bid sad farewells to gorgeous Wealhþeow and charming akashayi who went off to dinner without me.

Six of us climbed into a taxi and we went to a sushi restaurant called Osaka, where we met up with breezip. Bree was the friend that the lovely and indefatigable spider88 kept trying to meet, but failed to. We were all quite exhausted from socialising with people since, after all, we are a group of introverts. So we enjoyed an excellent dinner with subdued, but fascinating, conversation. I was treated to the best uni I have tasted in my entire life. I think Bree was quite amused at my sea-urchin ecstacy. After dinner, Len paid with a thick wad of cash, which in conjunction with his suit, made him look like a mob boss.

I had a very good night.

I lost my hat in San Francisco.

I've gone for a couple of days without one, but my head feels funny. So I went on a quest to get a new one.

I went to the Bay, where I originally got my hat, but they were sold out.

I went to a hatter on Mount Royal, but they were closed. Curiously, their hours and sign both claimed that they were open.

I then went to Ste-Catherine, where I remembered there was a hatter. Unfortunately, I walked east instead of west.

Fortunately, I didn't give up hope. So I found Henri-Henri and picked out a cap that resembles the one I lost.

I think I shall have to return to buy myself a bowler.

I woke up to a breakfast of pancakes, cooked by the wonderful riseorbleed. I don't know about you but waking up to a hot breakfast is heavenly. After some morning ablutions, we hailed a cab and along the way we chatted with the cabbie as I looked out the window. Luxor cabbies are really nice, every time I travelled with them, they had some interesting story to tell and big, broad smiles. Smiling is the way to fatter tips!

The weather in San Francisco is supposed to be rather variable. You know how that is, rain one minute and then sun the next. Well, the entire time I was there, it was bright and sunny and gorgeous. San Francisco really put on her best to charm me and she really succeeded. I didn't think that postcard-perfect pictures were possible, but I saw them everywhere.

I was happy to walk around without needing a winter coat. And everyone else smirked at how happy I was.

Daniel seemed to have recovered from the previous night's revelry. His talk on delta was excellent because he's a very good public speaker. Which is good, because he gave two presentations at CodeCon. When I talked to him on Thursday night, he seemed a little embarassed at how successful delta had become since it such a simple piece of software. But people like GCC use it to fare down their bug reports to the lines of code that reproduce its bugs.

Rob and Tristan sidled up to my bar and asked me if I could get them some juice. For their laptops. They were working on their presentation all the way until the last minute, which involved a drunken Tristan stumbling around on stage. Except that Tristan doesn't drink, so his imitation was quite poor. They were presenting Djinni, which is their implementation of a fast simulated-annealing algorithm that takes also pressure into account. Sadly, they didn't explain their algorithm but their talk was entertaining nevertheless.

At lunch, Spider snuck me out of the building and she showed me around San Francisco. She pointed out the Eagle Tavern with a glimmer in her eye. I think she's trying to corrupt me. Or she's trying to pimp me out. Then we went to Stompers where she tried on some boots. We were stymied, however, by the fact that a very annoying woman and her husband were trying on every single pair of boots in the entire store.

iGlance is a real-world video-conferencing and screen-sharing application that has some fairly good usability built into it. It also has a fairly sensible privacy model and does some NAT punching to boot. Although it's only got a Win32 port for now, it's free software so someone will fix it up.

Sometime in the afternoon, the beautiful and fair wealhtheow came behind the bar and surprised me with a hug and a sandwich! I was happy with the random hug from a new friend, but the sandwich was wonderful. I had not eaten lunch on Friday so I was very grateful. She put a huge smile on my face.

I munched on the sandwich while listening to the OASIS talk. This technology is a locality-aware server-selection resolver, which is pretty good for distributing servers around the world and finding the fastest one. They implement this as a DNS redirector so that lookups are transparent to normal Internet software. This made me feel a little bad for holdenk, whose SelfDirectedProject happens to be on a very similar topic. It does, however, validate his approach.

maradydd's presentation about Query by Example was up next. She did a very good introduction to data-mining, which segued into her hack on PostgreSQL where you can specify examples of things you want to search for. That is not how SQL normally works, where you specify constraints. With QBE, you just specify things similiar to what you want, and things similar to what you don't want.

I was chatting with Rob Pascual when I noticed Len lining up in the Q&A queue. Suddenly, my ears perked up as I sensed something important was going to happen. So I pulled out my camera, stepped on some toes, and got into position. When it was his turn at the microphone, he started saying random stuff that wasn't question at all! Something cheesy like how Meredith had changed his life and how he wanted to be with her. Then he got up on stage and asked The Question.

It was beautiful. The audience broke out into cheers and applause, except for the heartless bastards beside me. But who cares about them? This was such an awesome occurance that an interview was taped.

After teardown, some people were going to head to a franchise Mexican restaurant. Spider insisted that I get real food, so we walked down to the Mission. We made a detour to Good Vibrations which is a San Francisco landmark if ever there was one. I swear that she's trying to corrupt me. Anyway, as we were walking out, I must have mentioned that I was from Canada. Because Cohen, a Torontonian, came out of nowhere and introduced himself to us.

Well, what was I to do but to invite my fellow countryman to dinner? So we set off to find a Taqueria that served nopales. This failed since Californians don't seem to like eating cactus. Instead, we went to Pancho Villa where I ate enchiladas and salsa verde and guacamole and churros and I was so very happy!

We bid farewell to Cohen after exchanging contact information and tried to find everyone else. Unfortunately, we couldn't reach anyone by cellphone, so we sat around dejected for a while. Then we realised that we could go to Annie's Social Club where an event was happening. This turned out to be a good and a bad idea.

It was a good idea because we found everyone at CodeCon. It was a bad idea because Annie's Social Club double-booked us with bad karaoke! And then were quite rude when we complained. And then kicked out John Gilmore. So I just want to say that Annie's Social Club hates geeks and freedom. So Len hailed a black stretch limousine, we all climbed into it, invited some reporters along and moved the entire party to the XYZ bar.

The XYZ staff were very awesome, accommodating an extra hundred patrons and getting an extra bartender. And they were very nice about it. Unfortunately, the bar was full, so I had to lead a bunch of introverts in the fine art of taking over an establishment. We walked in, started talking, I encouraged people to sit down in empty spots on the couches. They did a very admirable job of taking over the back.

I got the stunningly adorable akashayi a seat and a drink, before I taked to the people sitting with us. They were a couple who had moved from Florida to San Francisco, and a man from New York who was quite the boor. The man in the couple knew the New Yorker and seemed quite embarassed about him. After twenty minutes of conversation, they excused themselves and bid us good night. This gave us plenty of seating space to talk about geeky things until the manager kindly kicked us out.

I made sure Akasha got safely to her hostel and then took a taxi back to the guest room. It was quite the challenge to direct the cab driver, since I had lost the directions back, but I managed!

Coming back to Montréal has been good for the soul.

Last night, I had a fun evening with jbailey and auzure_skies and Lithuanian mead. As the night wore on, they were finding it more and more difficult to play Settlers of Catan properly. But we shall have to do it again because (a) it was their first time playing, and (b) they were getting quite tipsy on 50% alcohol-by-volume.

I managed to get up bright and early this morning to go to Lotte Furama for 點心 with kyotto. We were there before most everyone else, so we had the pick of the freshest things as they came from the kitchen. We spent a good two hours eating breakfast, drinking tea, and chatting about life. We finally kicked ourselves out as the restaurant filled up.

Then, I went on a fruitless search for lunchtime sushi. Sushi bars are just not open on Sunday afternoons. Despite this, I met up with posixeleni and we had a pleasant lunch at Soup and Noodles. I then took her to Nicholas Hoare where we browsed the stacks and chatted some more.

My life now seems to centre around dining and chatting with lovely people! I am not complaining one bit.

I have been going to concerts for a while now and one of the few smart things I've done is to pick up a package of earplugs. Some of the shows I go to are really loud, especially because I stand really close to the stage and speakers, so I can get good photographs. Plus, it was great to have a pair in my bag for flying: do you know how loud it is to sit on top of a jet engine?

Unfortunately, the earplugs I bought are disposable, construction grade. Not that there's anything wrong with them—they block out sound really well. And if I were operating a jackhammer, I'd want 29 dBs of noise reduction.

However, they block out sound too well because they block out as much of it as possible. This means that high-pitched sound like voices are damped far more than low-pitched sound. So the music I listen to live is a little muddy. The lack of hearing loss is a good tradeoff though, so I keep these earplugs in.

Etymotic Research specialises in making hearing protection for musicians and the like. Musician's earplugs have their frequency response designed to be flatter, so high-pitched sound is damped about as much as low-pitched sound; so things are evenly quiet, not distorted. But I'm not a musician, so I don't care to pay hundreds of dollars for an ear mold and special earplugs. But they also sell a slightly cheaper product for casual usage. Instead of $120 a pair, they're more like $12.

The ER-20 earplugs come in a little carrying case and are reusable. I talked to their sales guy and they'll last you a long time, as long as you clean them with warm water. So I've been thinking of ordering two pairs for myself. But then pphaneuf wants to put in an order with me as well. And look, bulk purchases qualify for discounts!

So I'm wondering if any of you would like to chip in for a bulk purchase? I'm not looking to profit, so I'll sell them to you at cost.

Poll #660818
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 20

How many ER-20 earplugs would you buy from me?

"Visa Canada says that over 2.5 million Torontonians will be out shopping today, spending an average of $320 each."

There's an all news radio station in Toronto that gives you this strange snippet of reality every fifteen minutes or so, with breaks for driving conditions and the weather report. I remember drowsily listening to the radio talking about the very traffic jam we were stuck in.

We had decided, foolishly, to drive to Yorkdale. And I was hopped up on anti-histimines, so that I didn't have to carry around a dozen tissue boxes.

Boxing Day is one of those strange Canadian holidays. One where people wake up early after a night of revelry, go to the mall with everyone else, and fight over who gets to spend money. It's a truly bizarre way for merchants to get rid of their year-end inventory.

We dropped off my mother and f_law at the front door and went over to a nearby hardware outlet to pick up some things, when I noticed that their paint section had a display of painted poinsettia. The plants didn't seem too happy with this, because they had gone brittle and droopy. After purchasing a new snow shovel to replace the broken one, we drove to the mall's parking lot.

There were all sorts of cars, many of the SUVs, which seemed to be quite upset at the situation. They'd drive around and around in circles, obviously looking for a free spot. Meanwhile, dad and I decided to relax and wait. Like an island of calm in a sea of road rage. We stopped the car close to an entrance of the mall so we could see if anyone was leaving. Soon enough, some family came out and put their shopping into their car. They pulled out and we pulled in.

After going inside the mall, we called Flora and discovered that they were looking at cosmetics. We found each other and I found that everyone was interested in finding me some new clothes. I think we spent the rest of the afternoon going from store to store until we found things that were (a) not tacky and (b) fit. This was far more difficult than it should be.

But we prevailed. And I think we succeeded.

I showed up at iangurudata's gift-exchange holiday party far, far too late.

I blame this on slipping through the cracks of capitalism. You know how it's supposed to be based on the exchange of currency for goods and services rendered? It completely failed me yesterday. I ended up with no less money and still ended up poorer.

But enough about IKEA.

I managed to give a pair of Anthony Bourdain books to Lindsey who was less than enthusiastic to receive them. This is because she has yet to read Reasons Why You Don't Want to Be on Television: Number Four in a Series. I do hope she'll enjoy them after she does.

Apparently, a lot of people at this party knew me, but I had forgotten about them by accident; as opposed to purposefully. They're such nice people that I wouldn't have done that.

Ian gave me a sake set, which is nice because I haven't owned one before. I suppose this will be a good excuse to have him over some time to try it out.

The weekend was super busy.

On Saturday, I showed up to a wicked party at l'Utopik where I met tons of wonderful people. Sadly, this party was held to wish Athena goodbye and good luck. I only met her recently, but I'm already sad to see her go.

helf showed up directly from California to see her off. No, literally. He even had his luggage with the baggage tags and everything. Isn't that wonderful?

On Sunday, I went to stocking stuffer fest, which was organised by emjayne. I dragged Jeff along, because I thought he'd be happy to get out of the house and browse around for gifts and such. He had never been down to Place Jacques-Cartier, where all the buskers are in the summer, so I took him down that way. Overlooking the courtyard was the loft that this sale was being held.

I don't think Jeff bought anything, but I ended up with a bowl that Freida had fired in her time at Waterloo. It's now sitting prettily on my sideboard. I'm still wondering what I should put into it? Cookies or candles?

I'm surprised by the number of people that I knew there. It seems like a good chunk of a social circle appeared and it amassed a large conversation in the centre of the room. I walked around from stall to stall looking at the things for sale and listening to the live music. I also saw a unique computer keyboard and was offered a chaotic child to take home. I politely declined.

Then on Monday, I went with Damian and angorian to the Salon des métiers d'art for the Encore! arts and crafts show. This was a huge show compared to the one on Sunday, where lots of people looked quite serious about (a) shopping and (b) selling. We walked about together for a while, but Damian and Angorian eventually went off to look at shiny jewelery. Which left me to walk around looking for housewares.

I eventually bumped into Wai-Yant whom I've also met at a party. She had told me about her pottery work and so I was excited to see it. Look at that plate and bowl. See the smiley faces? Doesn't that make you want to smile? After talking with her and her classmate for a while, I promised to get in touch with her to order some custom dishware.

I walked around some more to find Angorian and Damian, but they were nowhere to be found. This was basically when they announced that the show was closing, so I put on my coat and left, tired but enthused.

I think kitchen supply stores are now as dangerous as used book stores.

I have just washed a sinkful of new glassware.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Yesterday, I woke up bleary-eyed. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I looked at the alarm clock and realised that I had probably hit the snooze button over a dozen times. This is disturbing, because the alarm clock is on the other side of the room.

I got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, then ran out to catch the bus. But missed it. So I walked to Damian and angorian's place. This didn't take too long, and I was only fashionably late. We then headed off to Marché Jean-Talon. There, Damian and Angorian bought many tasty things. Whereas I just picked up a wooden crate of basil, over a kilogram of parmigiano reggiano, five heads of garlic, and a bottle of olive oil.

Oh, and a sausage in a bun, which was both tasty and satisfying.

After finishing our purchases, we went back to their place, where we dropped off their purchases. Then, Angorian snipped some fresh mint from her balcony garden, and we set off for my place. We had a mission: to lay down a good supply of pesto.

Damian and I spent several hours washing basil leaves until they were sand-free. Angorian spun them dry and then we had basins upon basins of basil leaves. Through the wonders of my favourite kitchen appliance, we whipped up about three litres of basil pesto in short order.

After this was done, we were all very famished, so I pulled some ravioli out of the freezer, cooked it, and tossed it in our wonderful sauce. With the spice of hunger and hard work, this meal tasted especially delicious!

Post-dinner, we sat around being drowsy and sated. Of course, this couldn't last forever, so dishes were done, and a batch of red pepper pesto was made. As a side effect, I discovered an amazingly good drink. I was so impressed with how astoundingly good it was, I was compelled to write it down.

Too soon, I had to say goodbye to my kitchen buddies as they headed home. But I made sure that they took home a bag of tasty treats.

I'm having a Thanksgiving dinner party tonight. You know, where people get together and stuff themselves silly.

So yesterday, I spent most of the day organising food. In the morning, a trip to the Marché Jean-Talon, where I picked up some fresh produce. The weather has definitely decided on autumn: not only have the leaves begun to turn, but the air was thick with mist. You couldn't even call it a drizzle, it was like standing in the display cases in a supermarket produce aisle. People were out selling ornamental squash, which I presume are left on the dining room table until they stop being pretty.

One of the things I brought back was bunches of basil. I did this the last time I went to the market, but I sadly let that batch of basil dry out and rot. I resolved not to let this happen.

One of the things that changed is that I've now got a food processor. I actually bought it a little while ago, but only cracked it open yesterday. Like a little boy opening a present, I read through the user manual, fiddled with all the parts, and washed it. Then I washed the basil and made pesto.

I made pesto last summer, which was this grueling two-day trial. I washed all the basil on the first day, and then churned teeny tiny batches through my blender. After which, the blender decided to commit suicide because it was too difficult. This time, I kept on feeding leaves through the tube at the top and the processor just ate it. A two-day torture became a two-hour trivium.

I have now decided that a food processor is my favourite appliance ever. In fact, I have to admit that I like it more than my computer. And definitely more than I like human beings. I have the urge to use it for everything, but this is obviously silly and impractical.

But food processor! Whee!

I was beating my head against the wall, trying to revise Linux 2.4.21 such that GCC 4 likes what it sees. This, my friend, is not an exercise I'd recommend for fun and games.

That was about the time that Julie called. She had arrived in town and was calling to let me know. As well, she had been visiting S. W. Welch, a used bookstore down St-Laurent, right near my place. This is important, you see, because she stumbled upon Les Diners De Gala, a cookbook illustrated by Salvador Dali.

Wow, oh wow. I went down there, found a whole bunch of other used books, and picked up this cookbook of awesome. It's absolutely gorgeous.

It's starting to get a little chilly, so I'm doing the standard settling-in-for-the-winter things. Pulling out the warm clothes, putting away the summer clothes, and battening down the hatches. I've taken out the air conditioner, with Konstantin's help this time, which made it incredibly easy compared to installing it.

I had also decided that it's time to get a fall coat. My previous coat was getting rather tattered, so I started walking west on Ste-Catherine last evening. I entered goodness knows how many stores, trying to find a size 36 men's coat. I never conceived that it would be this difficult to find something that fit, nevermind something that looked good.

I went to the Bay, where the saleslady tried in vain to find something in stock. We tried on numerous small coats, but they were always too wide. She shrugged, and suggested that I check out Maxx. There, they had only one fall coat. I tried it on, and the salesman tried to convince me that it looked good. Nope, too wide across the shoulders. Plus it had this strange cut that I didn't like at all. For one thing, it didn't have buttons. And it also made me look like an inverted candlestick.

Next, I tried Simon's. I figured that the younger set shopped here, so there must be something for smaller people. I found one small coat that fit properly, but it was polyester and filled and made me look puffy. And it needed alterations because the sleeves were too long.

At this point, I was starting to get discouraged.

The next stop was the Ailes, where I talked to this nice Korean salesman who tried to find something for me. Nothing in stock for a 36, though; they only stock from 38 to 44. Argh. I only men around here weren't so large! He looked at me apologetically, and admitted that he too had trouble finding decent clothes.

Finally, I stopped in at a 5th avenue, where I lucked out. One wool greatcoat, size 36, that didn't make me look wide, bulky, or immature. We bargained for a while, and I walked out of the store poorer, but warmer. It's a little heavier than a fall coat, so it will last from now until the first snowfall.

Now that I've gone through this much pain looking for clothing, I really see that I should have done more clothes shopping in Hong Kong. Lots of items fit me over there, if I tried on a medium. Here, it's extra-small. And who stocks extra-small? I'm worried when the season comes to buy thicker shirts, people might start telling me to wear sweaters under Oxfords.

The following advertisement for telemarketting positions was found on page 60, of the 8 September 2005 edition of the Montreal Mirror.

Pretty horrible, eh?

Yesterday, elliptic_curve and I went off to get a messenger bag for her. As we turned the corner on Duluth, we noticed that Santropol Roulant was holding a garage sale.

Not just any garage sale, but a fashion show as well! There were awesome people parading around in designer clothes that were up for auction. They had boxes of books, racks of clothes, and a chest of toys. It was really awesome! Julie got a garbage bag full of clothes, and I managed to pick up some books, music, and casserole dishes. One of which I broke by accident.

After our little spending spree, we went to Propulsion, where they had held a black bag for Julie. We spent almost an hour trying on bags, whereupon I ended up with the black one and Julie got an olive green one. We strode out of the, already closed, store in style.

Today, we went about the town and couldn't walk two steps without bumping into more garage sales. I had wisely chosen to bring my new bag and soon it was briming with our marvellous finds. We eventually ended up at St. Viateur bagel, where we procured smoked salmon, cream cheese, and bagels. We sat in a giant chair and ate brunch greedily.

That was about when we saw joenotcharles and vierge_en_trop, who had switched places and appeared to be stalking us! I don't mind, though, as they are fun people to be stalked by. Joe told us that "it looks like other people sit in these chairs, but you guys look like you're living in one." I can only be flattered by our ability to make any place homey and awesome. We offered them some bagel with cream cheese, and then they ran off to do their things. I swept the sesame seeds off my shirt, and we let some kid take over our chair. Then we went home.

But not before bumping into yet another garage sale, filled with books about "failed ideologies of the twentieth century."