Random Acts of Kindness

So. I get to BCIT for an appointment. A parking pass is waiting for me . . . behind the locked door of the Security Department. Good forbid campus cowboy clerks should be there later than 3:30. Parking is only 2 bucks, annoying but not a big deal. As I park it starts to rain and the parking pass ticket dispenser doesn't work. Schlepping across the parking lot I drop my toonie into another parking pass machine that produce a lot of noise but no pass. No more change, not that I really wanted to trek even further a field. Walking back to my car in a thoroughly foul mood a horn honks. What the hell does . . . oh . . . he's waving a parking pass. On his way out of the lot he proceeds to give it me.

Bad: 3 / Good: 10

Practice random acts of kindness, the person you help might be me.

The Sister

My sister is in town for a "new" teachers conference. She's a year away, but they let her in anyway. We had coffee, just the two of us, no distractions.

I wish we could do it more often.

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

There's a euphoric kick, a quintessential moment of "YES!", that happens when I get a "high degree of coolness" technology working. It doesn't happen as often as it should, but when it does it lasts a long time.

I promised myself a notebook computer when I got the new job and much to my surprise I didn't procrastinate. I envisioned a home network where my Windows, Linux and Macintosh menagerie would seamlessly interoperate . After a year and a half of Java courses, whoring every webmaster job coming my way and getting the new job doing technical work I was burned out of the whole technology gig. I haven't used my PowerBook for much more than surfing the web, watching DVDs and a bit of word processing.

That's changing.

A Java practicum project has appeared and I thought it would be nice if that home network vision was a reality. After a bit of work I now have SSH public/private key single sign on between my Macintosh and Windows clients and my Linux server. I have a CVS repository on my Linux server that I can access over SSH from CVS programs on both my client computers. I also have a GUI program on each client that can transfer files in a style similar to FTP.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, maybe. But every time I click a button and one computer accesses another in a completely secure way without asking me for a password … I'm grinning like a fool just thinking about it. George Peppard in one of his TV roles said it best: "I love it when a plan comes together."

Books:
The Time Machine - H. G. Wells
The Ayre Affair - Jasper Fforde
The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde
Wings of Fire - Dale Brown
The Shiva Options - David Weber, Steven White

Movies:
Mystic River
Cheaper by the Dozen