Older blog entries for ajh (starting at number 21)

Today we released our FreeS/WAN 1.97 for RedHat 7.3 RPMS. We encourage everyone to take a peek, the annoucement and links are at www.steamballoon.com.

The Linux Symposium is pretty much sold out now. The mix of developers who will be attending is very, very, impressive and June should prove to be a very interesting time in Ottawa. Of course I'm pretty much insane from the pressure at this point.

If one person can be more lazy in posting regular diary entries I haven't met him yet.

Seems I was worrying for nothing, seemsOLS is nearing 90% sold out despite the 'economic slowdown'.

Somehow managed to extricate myself from the timewarp that always seems to surround OLS. At some point someone will need to explain to me exactly what did happen during the Symposium.

Other than my Laptop going missing (grrrr) my recolllection of details is somewhat fuzzy. This is presumably due to lack of sleep for 3 days as I did not consume nearly enough alcohol this year (unlike 2000 where entirely too much was quaffed.)

Today courtesy of Mesaba Air and NorthWest I got to fly Ottawa-Detroit then Detroit-Raleigh. The Saab 340 turboprop was reasonably nice if old, but the landing in Detroit in clear weather was quite disturbing as the pilot seemed to experience difficulties finding the runway.

Well that said, I made it safely without any noticable delays and am now sitting at Red Hat and wondering if I can avoid the Brycecam all week or not.

Down to about 40 more spaces available for the Linux Symposium which means I soon get to move on to more exciting work (yea!) so people, sign up and fill those spaces!

Well, time is getting really short for OLS registrations and we're still about 50 people away from selling out this year.

Seems the tech crash has affected far more travel and training budgets than we had anticipated. I'm sure it will sell out, but the slowdown is very noticable.

By tomorrow noon, I need to have a quote/slogan for the 2001 OLS t-shirt. The first year we quoted ESR's "I'd like to live in a world where software doesn't suck..." (which we're still waiting on guys!) and last year we used the preamble of the Gnu Public License. We need something interesting for this year! I've even put a bounty of 5 t-shirts to the person who sends me the quote we choose. Suggestions should be sent to ajh@linuxsymposium.org

Been busy, OLS is nearly all planned. Still looking for about 50 more people to sign up in the next few days.

So far, everything in the tank has survived and seems to be doing well. If I only had any money left after the move, now would be the time to add some more wildlife.

Spent yesterday in Montreal visiting Zero-Knowledge and SecureOps (interesting trip to say the least, and I'm afraid the least is exactly what I can in fact say). Then spent 4 hours freezing to death on the way home, at night, with a tinted motorcycle helmet visor in 3 degree Celcius weather. I think my bones are beginning to thaw now.

Ok, one week after we started moving and ALMOST everything is out of the old place. Spent all day today moving fish, filters and rigging up the new aquarium hood with the lighting. This time it is a proper salt-water hood with room for 2 45.5" VHO bulbs and up to 2 250W Metal-Halide bulbs (once I get another $600 for lighting, yeesh) I just hope everything is still alive in the morning.

Off to hand up things that should be hung on walls and try to get some more things out of boxes and into their correct places. Yeesh, did I mention I *HATE* moving?

Secured more prizes for the OLS early-bird draw, this one should be pretty interesting. I'll probably post an article about OLS 2001 and the draw on Friday. We're over 31% booked and the interest from the major corporations is higher than ever this year; I really want to make sure all the hackers who should be there find room.

Well, we are finally moving on April 1st. Our new apartment is in Conservation Co-Operative; a housing co-op with a strong environmental angle to it. What this really means is that we lose our dishwasher and air-conditioning. The housing market at the moment in Ottawa is utterly insane so we're not complaining as this will allow us to save enough to purchase and renovate a house next year.

Woke up to a 2nd Cleaner Shrimp in the tank, oh wait it molted again except this time left the carapace clinging to a large rock. The tank is finally mature, the calcium level is near 350ppm and stable, small feather-duster polyps are growing all over most of the rock surfaces, baby snails are propogating like mad, and best of all coraline alge (purple stuff) is spreading to most of the rock surfaces; all signs of a healthy well established tank. Now we have to move it.

So, given that it has to move anyway I've sold my existing tank, stand and hood and purchased a 90G drilled tank and 15G sump tank to replace the 55G tank. The new one will have an overflow skimmer to drop water to the sump where all the filters, protein skimmer and heaters will live down out of sight where they won't get in the way of the livestock. It also has the nice effect of maintaining even top water level since water loss is reflected in the sump rather than the main tank.

Now I just need to determine how to move 55G of water across Ottawa, ok well across about 8 blocks... it is still a major hassle!