Author: Paul Tomblin

Getting my linode on

As I wrote in a blog entry a few weeks ago, I added up all the money I spend on Gradwell web hosting and domain registration, and realized that because of the exchange rate, I hadn’t realized I was up over $400 a year.

I decided that I could do everything I’ve been doing on my Gradwell account with a $20 a month Linode virtual Linux host, and 5 domain registrations at GoDaddy, and a couple of free dns entries at ZoneEdit, for a total yearly cost of about $285.

The rest is even more boring than what’s come before, so I’m putting in a cut line.
Continue reading “Getting my linode on”

Goodbye old junk

I made another pass through the computer junk today. Two weeks ago I pulled out the stuff that I thought had some potential and tried to sell it on-line. I sold a couple of barebones computers (one of them an AMD Athlon 1800+), a motherboard, a power supply, and a hard drive and a few other miscellaneous bits. I think I made $75 total. Today I took the rest of the junk out (including a Pentium 90 computer and a couple of old Macintoshes, and a SPARCClassic that I never got working) and put it at the end of the driveway for the scavengers to pick through.

The stuff I sold was probably worth a lot more than I sold it for, and there were a few things in the junk pile that would probably sell if I was willing to take the time and hassle to list it on eBay or take it to a swap meet. But hassle is the operative word here – I just wanted to get rid of it, because right now empty shelves are more valuable to me that potential sales.

However, it’s quite amusing to watch the scavengers at work. One of them drove past, slowed way down to have a look, and then sped off. A few minutes later he came back, and parked well away (like nearly 50 metres). He ran over, and furtively and hurriedly grabbed an armload of stuff and ran back to dump it in his trunk. He ran back and grabbed another armload. I swear he looked like a chipmunk collecting nuts, or a person worried that any moment I was going to run out of the house yelling at him for stealing my stuff. If I didn’t want you to take it, I wouldn’t have put it at the end of the driveway!

After he left, our neighbour phoned me to chuckle about his behaviour. Heh.

I’ve got some more stuff to put out later, including some even older Macintosh computers (a WGS-8550 and a LC-III), but I have to wipe the hard drives first. I think I’m going to wait for another time when I can watch out the window.

Not my fault, I hope!

Computer Problem Causes False Stock Quotes

I spent nearly two years working for a company that made the software that, at the time, was responsible for over 75% of all the trades that took place on NASDAQ. My bosses attitude towards quality assurance and testing would have been laughable, if it wasn’t the fact that they could have cost people millions of dollars, and the fact that when I was working there we were losing market share hand over fist to a company that made a product that was faster, easier to use, and didn’t crash all the time.

I’m torn between hoping this failure wasn’t the fault of any of my friends still working there, and hoping that the people in charge will some day get what’s coming to them.

Most of our customers were “market makers”, which is a large step up from stock broker in the heirarchy. A lot of our customers, and three of the people in our company, were at work in the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. One person from our company got out. The other two didn’t. One of the people who died was somebody whom I was scheduled to have a conference call later that day when she got back from WTC. I think about Julie a lot when 9/11 comes up in conversation.

Stigmata

Warning: Even for a blog posting, this one is pretty pointless.

For the last several days, just as I’m getting out of the car at work I’ve noticed that there is a damp spot on my left thigh. It’s been mystifying me, especially since it never seems to hit my right thigh. So today I tried to pay attention – when I put my bum bag on I checked to make sure it’s not damp. I checked the car door and the steering wheel. No dampness. And on the way to work I noticed that spot was back, but not as damp as it usually is by the time I get to work. So I put my hand over the spot to see if I could feel more dampness arriving. And it got damper under my hand!

Cue the Twilight Zone music.

That’s when I noticed something else – my new watch has a nylon and velcro band. My old one had a metal band. Oh. The light dawns. This watch band absorbs water in the shower, and then it leeches out onto my pants when I rest my hand on my thigh when I drive.

Mystery solved. I guess I should take off my watch in the shower?

Remembering

I forgot something I meant to put in yesterday’s post about VE Day.

My mother tells a story of how during the war she was a young girl living in St. Ives, Cornwall. For part of the war they had a Canadian commando billeted with them. She says he’d come home after a hard day storming ashore in rubber boats and climbing cliffs and he was quiet, polite, and he always offered to help out around the house. And he would tell them stories about his home back in Canada. She was quite impressed with this young man.

I’m sure my father had his own reasons, but my mother says that the commando’s stories were one reason why she wanted to move to Canada after they got married.

I have no idea about where the commando was from, what unit he was with, or if he survived the war. But I know that when I’m honouring the service of the soldiers who fought in the wars, I always say a silent prayer of thanks for that quiet young man, whoever he is, because without him I might have grown up British instead of Canadian. And growing up Canadian is something I’m profoundly grateful for.