Notes and Jottings

One more night of bitty testing with JBoss! Got it to work with PostgreSQL,
time to get down to work properly now.

We’re going skiing! 9 March 2002, Livigno here we come! We’re staying very
very near to Doss 18 this time, it’s gonna be such the coolest holiday again -
Livigno is the best ski resort I’ve ever been too, the town (actually it’s
three towns amalgamated) being duty free is only the beginning of its
wonders…
And of course, Marco is one of the best ski instructors ever
I ripped out a major part of MatchMaker’s JavaScript in the last two days and
rewrote it so that it made sense to me - it feels SOOO much better now.

And I think I’ve given Juan yet another cool technology to think about and
implement (J2EE). Yay

Of course, when I bought that DVD, I did so in the full knowledge that I
didn’t have a DVD player! But I thought the advantage of having both subbed
and dubbed versions of the animé outweighed not being able to play
it, since I presumed I would EVENTUALLY get a DVD player - a PS2 if nothing
else!

But then today Gareth pointed out a really really cheap DVD player on sale
on the IOL site, it was less than £110 before VAT! And I checked
some reviews, and they were far from scathing. So yeah that sounded like
a good deal, put in my credit card details, I should have it next week
hopefully!

With Dermot getting *stuff*, I tagged along to buy some sooper dooper extra
things before Christmas…

Firstly, I got a DVD of Princess Mononoke! An animé which
has got wonderful reviews everywhere.

Secondly, I got a wine atlas How can that not come in extremely useful??

Thirdly, I got (mumble mumble) a Java book. A bit nerdy, but
when balanced against the other two, the set of purchases rounds out nicely!

Well well my birthday approaches - and I HAD the great idea of going to
a restaurant somewhere, would be nice and cosy. BUT what I heard about
the problems with getting a restaurant booking for work make me think
twice - going to a pub earlyish is probably best at this stage!!! I should
have been booking a place weeks ago otherwise. The main curse of having
one’s birthday near Christmas

Check this out. Jamie
Zawinski talks sense about what the web has in many cases turned into.

Make pages readable in Lynx is basically what he says. Though he’s a
Netscape 3.1 user. Flash sites generally don’t have the content, so they’re
just really trying to cover up for that…

The end of an era… sort of.. last night. Last swimming lesson, it was
kinda sad really. Ah well The whole set of lessons was pretty cool,
I really do recommend learning how to swim at the Marcievicz if you don’t
know how yet…

Sigh, next swim instructor won’t be nearly as cool though
And later on, I met Juan and his cohorts in Mahaffys - that was pretty
cool too - I knew about half of the people, maybe a few less, but it
made me feel like I belonged there, while getting to meet lots of people
I didn’t know before - fun
I gave Juan the deposit for going skiing, so it IS going to happen - yay!
It’s a common talking point these days - well it is SO cool…

Well well! I have seen the mighty Harry Potter movie, and it was…
extremely faithful to the book IMHO. I did feel I knew exactly what was
coming up in every scene. Not necessarily a problem. But it did also feel
that the film was a bit too drawn out for my liking! Too much happening
which was a separate “bulking” chapter in the book, but which just killed
the atmosphere somewhat at times… oh well. It was a fun film to watch,
it was just the first film in a while that I’ve fallen into the hype for
(no, I didn’t expect a lot from AI), and it didn’t quite live up
to that for me.

Next film, of course, is Fellowship of the Ring, and I’ve fallen
into the hype for that too… a short review of that may follow in a few
weeks.

Harry Potter coming up later… another hour and a bit and I’ll
be at the cinema!!!!!! It should hopefully be a pretty good movie - the
book was pretty good (thanks for the pointer, Eoghan!). My inclinations
lie slightly more towards The Fellowship of the Ring of course,
though… and we’ll see what that’s like a bit before Christmas.

The socializing HOWTO for geeks…

1. Introduction
2. Buying Rounds
2.1 Always Buy your round
2.2 Even if you don’t like everyone.
3. Make Small Talk
3.1 The Weather
3.2 Not latest Kernel Versions (unless you’re all geeks)
3.3 Sports are good
3.4 Geeky sports like Karate, Judo, Fencing are ok, but don’t go overboard
3.5 Chess is right out
4. More drinking
4.1 Drink less than Alcoholics
4.2 Seriously, don’t try and keep up
4.3 Don’t get sick on the Boss
4.4 Get Happy, not stupid.
4.5 If you buy rounds when everyone else is drunk, you’re not obliged to drink alcohol.
(otherwise known as ‘chuffing heck, he didn’t even look drunk after 15 pints of lager!’
4.6 Do Not Call the Boss a Wanker even after 15 pints of Lager.
4.7 Be able to Discretely Go Home early if required. (Wives are good for this)
5. When you get home
5.1 Drink Plenty of Water, eat something
6. Next Day
6.1 Don’t be Hungover
6.2 Don’t Show the Photos of the Boss and the inflatable Sheep.
6.3 Reserve them for Staff Appraisals
6.4 Eat fried egg and bacon sandwiches in front of the worst offenders from last night.
7. Summary
7.1 Don’t get too Drunk
7.2 If you must get drunk, don’t be obnoxious
7.3 Rember people who are obnoxious drunks
7.4 If they piss you off, portray them as alcoholics to the management.