The beaver is a proud and noble animal

raspberrysalmon is currently enjoying herself at a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, led by guest conductor Bobby McFerrin. We'd made plans for me to call her on her cell phone to listen in to part of the concert while I was at the office.

So I buy a calling card, but I couldn't connect to her mobile phone with it. I can get her house line, but I not her cell. I tried calling her directly with my cell phone, but the nice people of Telus do not enable overseas direct dialing by default (and you need a credit check to get it – sometimes even a 1000$ safety deposit, if their credit department thinks you're a credit risk). Finally, I asked my boss if I could call her on the office phone, to inform her that the plans had fallen through, and I was finally able to connect to… something. I got an automated phone message that spewed a bunch of stuff in rapid-fire german I didn't understand.

I don't know if that was her voicemail or something, but I got a call from her shortly after. The sound was completely horrendous though, but it was a quirky moment nonetheless; to be listening to a live concert 6000km away :)

I'm giggling at the office, and my coworkers are giving me strange looks :)

Edit: I just received another phone call from her, so I could listen to parts of Ravel's Bolero. Unfortunately, travelling through 2 cell phones didn't do it justice, as it sounded like it was being played on a badly tuned harmonica :D

Edit #2: I changed the picture that was being displayed by one Tia sent me this morning, showing where she was. The original picture is still here

I hate wasting my time like this…

I've been writing a lot of code on my laptop, which works perfectly. I must now merge this code on our dev server. Of course, the dev environment doesn't match the environment in which I've been slamming away. I know the environment on my laptop is sane, stable and well configured. I can't say the same for the dev env.

I've just spent the last 2 days trying to find out why the code I know works on my laptop explodes quite dramatically on the dev machine. So what do I do? I install the dev env on my laptop (basically, the Java Web Services development platform), which runs on Tomcat 5. Through hours of tedious testing, I fix bug after bug and setup everything properly.

I've just found out why the last thing wasn't working. The TLD parser of the input taglib was throwing a fit on initialization. In a nutshell, input1.0 – which works fine in Tomcat 4 – doesn't parse under Tomcat 5. Input-1.1 works hunky-dory.

Too bad it only took me the better part of a day to figure that one out.

Sheeeeeet.

I had sushi with moonlightjoy last thursday, and I ordered waaay too much. When I got to the office, I told the guys I had leftovers and left them in the fridge. 5 days later, i.e. today, they're still there and somebody just started eating them.

Now I'd be leery as hell to eat 5-day old sushi, but he's not. So ladies and gents, place your bets as to what will happen. So far, I'm betting he's going to hurl before the end of the day, and a coworker believes he's going to have nuclear diarrhea. What do you all think?

Some of my better typos, according to raspberrysalmon:

1. I'll go jump in the snower (for shower)
2. I'll go hump in the shower (read above)
3. snartass (a perennial favourite)
4. good lick on your exam
5. don't exaferate

I'm sure there are more, but those are the only ones I remember now.

Edit on 27/05/2004:

– ooh, I love it when you walk dirty to me (talking to straysparrow)
– bookbinging (instead of bookbinding)

The sound of 40 kg of finely tuned cucumbers, leeks, potatoes, radishes, peppers, aubergines and marrows entertained a German audience at a weekend concert by the Viennese Vegetable Orchestra.

The nine-piece orchestra plays a range of original compositions on instruments constructed from vegetables – including a flute made from a carrot, a saxophone carved out of a cucumber and a pumpkin converted into a double bass.

“I would never have thought you could get sound out of a cucumber,” a young woman at the concert said.

Others commented on the raw vegetable aroma accompanying the melodies.

The Austrian ensemble, three women and six men, say their instruments are freshly sliced and put together only an hour before each performance to enhance the sound. Size, texture and water content are vital to achieving the correct sound.

“Ordinary vegetables work better together than organic vegetables,” Matthias Meinharter, who plays a violin fashioned from leeks, said.

The musicians must also work against the clock. To protect their instruments from drying out during the performance, they place damp cloths around the vegetables when they are not in use.

At the end of the performance, the instruments were turned into vegetable soup.

–Reuters

NooOOOOOooOOoooOoOoO!

So here I was, minding my own business on the train back to Montreal, when my cell phone rings. CallerID says “unknown caller”, which is not really uncommon. I answer, and a very nice-sounding voice says: “Hi, it's raspberrysalmon“.

It's the first time I've ever done a vocal double-take. In my defense, I was a bit groggy from having slept the whole trip and I really wasn't expecting a phone call from Austria. Still, it's a pleasant surprise! We really didn't get to talk all that much, as I was minutes away from the station, and my cell phone died when we got underground. DAMNDAMNDAMNDAMN! *pout*

I wish I had a camera right now. I'm sitting on the big recliner in the living room, reading a book. The dog is curled up in a tight little ball between my feet, with its head resting on my leg. She's soooo cute. Once in a while, she'll let out a big sigh or a little whimper. I'm curious to know what dogs dream of… maybe steak-growing trees or edible cars… She's awake now, or at least her ears are. Every time a truck goes by, she'll look up to see if it's my dad. She doesn't do that for cars, only trucks. She's waiting for him to come back. Every time he leaves without her, she'll sit down in front of the dining room window, her chin on the sill, and wait for him. Such is man's best friend…

I want a puppydog.

From Go-Quiz.com

I'm going to make this quick, for those of you who want to know. Met up with eniran at Hurleys for a quick pint. Dusty wasn't there, which was uncool. I like her :) I think she's on vacation. Anyway, the cute barwench replacing her was fun nonetheless. I got the present for raspberrysalmon from eniran, which was good for a few laughs as we wanted to use it to clobber some biddies who were dissing Angelina Jolie near the fireplace.

We parted ways round 7pm and I headed to Weinstein & Gavino's to meet up with France. Had a great dinner, with fun conversation. After dinner, we went to a cigar shop and I indulged in my quarterly cigar. It's the only nicotine I allow myself, but it was a good night for it. We crashed on the McGill campus for a smoke and more talk. I like the girl, but there are some personality issues that might prevent me from really becoming attracted. Namely, she doesn't get the importance of silence and the joy of doing nothing. She doesn't understand how just sitting in a comfy chair, with good music and a cool drink can be a perfectly fine way to spend a weekend. She's the type of person that's always on the go, always doing something, always seeing people. I don't know if I want that. I like my quiet time… Anyway. It was a good evening, so that's fine for now.

Got home round midnight (and no eniran, I did not get lucky – nor did I really expect to :P), got everything ready for my train trip to Ottawa today and watched Muppets from Space before going to bed. I'm paying for that one today, as I'm seriously tired.

The train ride was good – as usual, it took me 15 minutes to go from Montreal to Ottawa. Talked a bit with mekez before falling asleep for the whole ride. I'm really happy that he's found someone, and things are looking really up for him right now. Yay! What a difference a few weeks make :)

So now I'm home, and the kitchen smells really good – freshly baked apple pie. My mom spoils me :D She saw the gift I'm sending Tia and her reaction was priceless. I wish I'd had my camera close at hand.

I'm going to wrap this up now, as a nap on the couch sounds like a really, really good idea. And then there will be pie…

† Quoted from Daffy Duck.

This is way beyond the ridiculous.

I hate Tomcat. It's evil.

And having someone tell you “I'm sure it's a simple thing” when you've already been spending 4 hours hitting your head against a wall does wonders for morale…Thanks boss.