Politics

I just went onto Facebook for the first time in a while, and found I have requests to join the following groups:

• If you support the Coalition, we'll burn your house down!!!
• I'm in favour of the Liberal/NDP Coalition Government
• Supporting a Liberal-NDP Coalition Government
• Canadians For a Liberal-NDP Coalition
• Canadians for a coalition government.
• Stop the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Attempt to Gag Democracy

So that's 4 in favour, and 2 against. I wonder how closely that mirrors the opinions of the general populace, or if my Facebook friends list is more liberal than average. Considering I have a lot of people I went to highschool with, I think they may do a good job of balancing out the more liberal opinions of most of my groups of friends.

Born in a bloody barn

I swear this one flatmate of mine was born in a barn. She keeps leaving both the inner and outer doors open. This evening , she's out sweeping the drive, and she's been out there for 5 minutes, with both doors open while it's 3°C outside. My room is now very cold, even though I closed my bedroom door as soon as I noticed it getting cold. Thankfully, she's moving out in a couple days. It seems pointless to even confront her with it, with her leaving so soon, but it's still quite irritating.

High performance

I love my job here. We had a long meeting this morning with a vendor, where we
talked about things like NAK suppression algorithms, JNI latency,
kernel/userspace transition latency, and kernel bypass network drivers. What's
great is that it isn't just "intellectual wanking", it's actually entirely
relevant to the work we're doing here.
One statement someone made, which I thought summed it up really well, was that
"2 milliseconds is forever, in our world." He's absolutely right.

Schmap

I just received a very interesting email:

Hi Derek,

I am writing to let you know that three of your photos with
a Creative Commons license have been short-listed for
inclusion in the sixth edition of our Schmap Paris Guide,
to be published early January 2009.

Wicked! I've approved the photos to be included in their selection process, and I really hope one of them gets through.
The selected photos are: (linked to Flickr page)

Ladybug, Ladybird

Some of you who read my blog may listen to the British electronica group, Ladytron. They have a song called "Ladybird". I just found out this weekend that that pretty little red bug with black spots that we North Americans call the ladybug, is called a ladybird here in the UK. I'm going to have to listen to that song again with that in mind.