It’s interesting to know what sorts of experiences that pretty senior sys admins have seeing Solaris 10 for the first time, having used earlier versions previously. Jim Cheetham’s Solaris 10 experience is food for thought, even though I don’t quite agree with him on a few points. I did note that they were running Solaris 10 3/05 s10_74L2a SPARC though, which is a little bit behind times.
Last week was pretty busy one. Indoor soccer on Monday. Tuesday involved some climbing at the Roxx. Patrick was climbing strongly, while Dave and me were flailing badly. On Wednesday, Dave, Emma and myself took a quick spin around Bottle Lake on the bikes – lots of fun single, winding tracks along by the beach. With the clocks turned back, we got caught out by the time, and soon it got really dark. Managed to stumble around enough to find our way back, before a charge over to catch Fistful of Dynamite at the local film festival.
Thursday had Dave and me out at the QEII for another roll session. Was a little bit tired and failed miserably to get a bomb proof roll, although did get the T rescues more sorted out. Friday had us out at the YMCA for a quick session, and met up with a few spacey Californians – I’ve never been hugely impressed with the quality of routes there, so I don’t think I’ll make it a regular occurance.
Saturday had Patrick, Dave and me out in Sumner to surf some waves in the kayaks. I’ve been learning in Dave’s playboat and he’s keen to keep me in it for as long as possible. It’s a slightly intimidating experience going out for the first time, trying to make sure you’re watching the waves all the time, and lifting your rail but really got into it towards the end and had an absolutely super ride on a big wave towards the end. Afterwards we headed out on the bikes up Dyer’s Pass road, and along the tracks of Victoria park. I’m not much of a biker, and found some of the switch backs a little steep – the trials half way down were rather fun though. Raced back home and out to the Weedon’s cricket club for the cricket afters – a thoroughly drunken affair out in the middle of nowhere, with some strippers, court sessions and some naked initiation tests which become much easier the drunker you are.
Dave pulled me out of losing my entire Sunday with a hangover and took me out to Castle Hill for some bouldering with Hilary and Aila – was good fun but didn’t feel particularly strong, or balanced. Watched Lord of War with Phil, Mark and Patrick that evening, and had a lovely Thai veggie curry over at Patricks, and some yummy caramel slices.
This week has more indoor soccer, more kayaking up at the Brunner weekend, more climbing and more drinking. As Dave would say, ‘play play play!’
Over the last month, I’ve taken Martin ‘Joey’ Schulze’s excellent Debian Weekly News format and done the same for OpenSolaris. I think it’s proved pretty useful so far, and I’ve been motivated enough to continue them. The results are here, here, here and here. Thanks Martin for the inspiration – owe you a beer, or many beers!
Had a relatively quiet St.Patrick’s day this year, given that I had a cricket final on Saturday morning – The Bog was a little disappointing this year, employing a band who failed to grok that the crowd may actually want to listen to Irish music, rather than the attempted Oasis drivel they subjected us to. And of course, when they did switch over to a bit of U2, they absolutely killed it. Patrick’s blog has a bunch of pictures. Lost the cricket game, felt generally low about life, and at the last minute headed out with Patrick and Mark to watch The Aristocrats at the local film festival which was pretty amusing, if a little sick.
Watched Ireland winning the Triple Crown [Goode blamed ‘Luck of the Irish] early on Sunday morning over at Pete’s house, complete with full Irish Breakfast. After, headed out to the Port Hills and the Tors crag with Patrick, for a bit of a climb. Then over to the Arts Center for a quick Dux pizza and beer, and to watch The Collective, a film about mountain biking – pretty cool if you’re into that stuff, although I can never really see myself quite at that level.
A couple of days ago I finished putting together some of the footage that I took down in Stewart Island. The result is a little 2 minute video here. I still need to figure out some better utilities to convert the high format QuickTime version into a decent quality video – some day I’ll get to it. In the meantime, suffer in your jocks, and enjoy one of the nicest places in New Zealand! [Contains minor nudity].
Marek sent around a great set of blog links – The Cost of Bootstrapping Your App [Part 1, Part 2], an interesting read. Eric Lowe [Solaris kernel developer] also has an interesting piece about the role of documentation in a development process – it’s a good read. Had a successful TVIC last night in the Sunny Garden – people even turned up this time around, and was a good night of food, beer and geek talk.
Had a great weekend climbing up at Mount Sommers with Patrick, Steve, Mark and Blair the other week. Mount Sommers is one of those crags that few Kiwi’s go to on account of the spectacularly shitty walk in. The walk in was about 3 hours, but with heavy packs, whinging Irishmen and darkness it wasn’t much fun for anyone. Fortunately the climbing made up for it. It’s the first time that I’ve trad climbed for about 2 and a half years – it’s just like riding a bicycle, you never really forget how to place gear. It’s more like riding a bicycle without a helmet, you’re just a little bit more cautious.
We did some pretty fantastic routes up the columned faces – mostly lower grade 16’s and 17’s. Steve joined us later on that afternoon, and did a couple of sport routes on the lower pinnacles. Patrick has a few more pictures on his blog. Check out those parallel lines!
Marney mailed today saying that she was leaving Sun – pity, she was one of those really great people that I’ve had the pleasure of working with, although our interaction wasn’t what you’d call frequent. Best of luck Marney!
On her office whiteboard, she’s had a list of questions on it for a long, long time. She calls it the Bonehead List because the questions weren’t rocket science – more often than not they were difficult to answer and rarely asked. For the most part, I think these are an excellent guide to software development. I figured they were worth a blog and pass this on. Marney takes credit for compiling all of them –
Seven years baby and I’ve come out the other side! It’s been my new year’s resolution to organize a dentist appointment this year, after a 7 year absence. It’s pretty embarassing, but somewhere along the line I got this mild fear of dentists – I think it might have been when they pulled out my wisdom teeth causing my first overnight stay in a hospital when I was young, and many tears. Anyway, having turned 28 on Monday, I finally went – and apart from a ‘we’ll give you the benefit of doubt’, things went well, really well. I’m now safe at home, and don’t feel like I have to hide under the bed anymore. Bonus is that I still don’t have any fillings.
Watching late night MTV while reading mail, I came across Jose Gonzalez – really nice acoustic guitar melodies. Predictably, Heartbeats is my favourite and a track I’ve heard before but not associated with. Much like David Kitt in many, many ways. Mick, if you’re reading this, you’d like this one.
