yesterday I talked about community stuff, washed dishes, bought food, got a little distracted by blogs, recompiled all of kde on my desktop, fixed a few little bugs in my project, puzzled over a weird crash, caught up on email, made dinner with pete, and did some other stuff I’ve forgotten.

today I discussed plans for my august vacation, did the weeding, washed dishes, had breakfast, started laundry, went to the chiropractor, then bought cleaning supplies and a curtain rod for the house, spent a while on the phone with fido ’cause they were overcharging me again, tidied up a little, did more dishes, threw out some bad food, made myself a sandwich, recompiled all of kde on my laptop, and it’s 5:30 now so pretty soon I’ll have to start on dinner again.

I’m supposed to be getting code done… but I still need to clean the bathroom, clean the fridge, finish the laundry, try and fix the broken drawer in the kitchen, buy more plane tickets for my vacation, and maybe at some point exercise or practice guitar. :/ there just aren’t enough hours in a day, and my head feels like it’s going to pop off even though I have all this stuff written down. :P

so today was officially the start of summer of code, but I wasn’t at my computer. I spent the day playing in the dirt ;)

We were woke up this morning by the arrival of a truckload of dirt - we weren’t actually expecting it until the afternoon. soon after that, my friend showed up with a bed for me. yay, real bed, no more futon mattresses on the floor :) so we got the bed set up, moved some of the dirt, and had some breakfast.

once breakfast was dealt with, I went out to help pete with the humongous pile of dirt. it was a LOT of dirt. a mountain of it. way more than we needed. anyways, he asked me to do some weeding - the morning glories needed to be pulled out. I was a bit disappointed at first ’cause I think they’re pretty, but then I saw why they must be killed: they were everywhere. around the deck, under the deck, *in* the deck, around the house, and of course in the flowerbeds.

so, I started tearing it up. the more I pulled, the more I got. I ended up kneeling in the dirt, following the root systems and pulling them out as much as possible. the roots had gone right *through* the planks that were the border of this flowerbed, and when I realised one plank was loose and pulled it up, I just saw a huge mass of roots. I was digging about 6 inches down getting as much out as I could. eventually I took off my shoes because they kept cutting off circulation to my feet. I was pretty dirty already by then. it was fun :D

while I was digging up roots, pete was shoveling and wheelbarrowing dirt around. he covered the backyard, gave some of it to neighbours, covered the space beside the deck (after mowing the area and putting down some layers of grass clippings and cardboard), put more dirt on everything, and *still* had a big pile of it sitting in the alley, and the sun was starting to go down… so he moved that pile as much onto our property as possible - I came to help with the last bit of that as I’d finished clearing the flowerbed - and then we headed inside for dinner. hooray for roommates cooking. (they weren’t around for most of the yardwork because they had to go to work.)

of course, I had to shower before eating, since my hands and legs were totally covered in dirt. :) it took a lot of scrubbing to get most of it off. I still have a little on my hand. :P

now I’m fed, and tired, and… holy crap it’s almost 10pm. the day is pretty much over, and I haven’t had any time to code. Tomorrow I should be back on the computer, though. lots to do. :) according to my schedule I’ve given myself three weeks to get plasma and a screensaver displaying properly together, but I do hope it won’t take that long… I’d really rather have that happen tomorrow ;) gotta have those unreachable goals to aim for, y’know.

oh, and keyboard shortcuts have changed slightly for the sake of non-US keyboards. they may change again (specifically, ‘zoom in’ probably will).

oh, hey, it seems my soc proposal was accepted.
…yay?

I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately, so I wasn’t jumping up and down when I found out. actually, I was dashing out the door at the time, to get waaay across town for a chiropractor appointment. now that I’m living in vancouver proper I really need to switch to seeing people that don’t work back in coquitlam. it’s quite silly.

I’m sure I’ll be enthusiastic about soc again soon… it’s just.. right now all I can think of is the huge amount of plasma stuff I wanna get done before soc begins, and all the evil X11 stuff I have to investigate to see how bad the painful parts of my project are going to be, and so on… it’s a good thing I don’t have any errands to deal with tomorrow. I can just sit at the computer and stay there until I start getting code written again.

maybe later I’ll blog about my proposal, too. I never did get around to doing that, did I? it’s gonna be pretty awesome when it’s done :D I just fear the pain I’ll be going through to make it work…

while aaron dealt with snow in calgary, vancouver decided to just take a quick hop through every season in one evening. friday (I think it was friday?) afternoon, everything was bright and sunny - so sunny that pete went down to the lake to watch birds and enjoy the weather. but around 6 or 7, there was a bright flash of lightning… we looked up from our laptops as a huge thunderclap shook the house. outside, there was hail falling. o.0 supposedly pete heard one more thunderclap, but I didn’t notice any. just that one.

after dinner, I looked outside again to see humongous fluffy bunnies snowflakes falling, and sticking. they continued all night - early in the morning I saw nearly an inch of snow on the ground.
the rest of saturday morning was beautifully sunny again, and pretty soon, all the snow had vanished, as if it had never happened. pete was out feeding the ducks again in the afternoon. I just wish I’d remembered that there was a camera I could have taken pictures with. >.<

I was kinda sad to leave italy, but happy to be going home. The world is just so full of awesome, I wish I could be everywhere at once. ;)

In some senses it’s still a small world, though. While I was waiting for the train to the airport, I was wandering around outside, looking at the few stalls that were open… I saw some hats for sale, and when I went up to look at them the chinese shopkeeper came out and started jabbering at me in italian… I couldn’t understand what he was saying, so I tried chinese, and we ended up chatting for a few minutes. :) it turns out he’s actually from hangzhou! (the city I was studying in.) there were some more people speaking mandarin on the train too, and iirc I’d had a short chat with a chinese guy on the flight from amsterdam to italy, but I wasn’t really feeling talkative then.

the flight back home was… tiring. I did at least get a small amount of sleep this time. I’ve noticed a few things about airlines: the ‘vegetarian’ meal option seems to be fully vegan (meaning I missed out on cake, but got more fruit), and yet snacks aren’t taken into consideration at all - I got cheese and meat sandwiches on the flight from italy to amsterdam. also, metal cutlery is returning… although security measures continue to get more and more crazy and annoying. I think I like KLM as an airline; their meals can be a little weird, but they get the little things right - headphones always works, the toilets have paper towel, etc.

one thing I noticed as the plane was taking off was that milan looks a lot… greener than vancouver. there seemed to be bright green fields everywhere. very pretty. :) another thing I miss about europe is the wildflowers - instead of just having boring grass everywhere, I saw pretty flowers that would probably be treated as weeds out here. yellow dandilions, white daisies, blue and purple flowers I forget the names of, and some others I don’t know at all.

now that I’m back, it seems my body is getting revenge for all the fun I had and sleep I missed. I’ve got a really annoying cough&cold that’s half-killed my voice. :P but I also have pete taking care of me and cooking me dinner n’stuff, so it’s not so bad. :) I think I’ll just curl up in bed and read books for a while - I’ll have to blog about the interesting stuff I’m reading. :)

wow. it’s over already. hard to believe.

on monday I got through the last of the things I needed to discuss, which was good. api review continued, and was quite amusing at times. I was feeling quite tired, and sick of pizza… sadly I didn’t get much programming done. just one of those days; my mind wouldn’t quite seem to focus, I had to get started on things that weren’t easy to start… eventually I wandered off to a quiet room to better understand keyboard shortcuts, and then aaron and I wrote a bit of code - him more than me, though. I did finally get started on stuff, but by then it was late, and everyone was going to bed, and I’d run out of coke, so I stopped for the night.

tuesday morning, pretty much everyone was gone - my flight is on wednesday, so I slept in. me and windowsuninstall and ruphy were hanging out at the house being tired, but then ruphy’s parents showed up and we had to clean stuff :P I’m not quite sure where the day went, but it went fairly quickly. with the sprint over, I was exhausted and cranky and really just wanted to be in bed. and now I am in bed, yay. :)

I understand why they’re called sprints now. it was fucking exhausting. it was still awesome, though. :) I’m really glad I finally got to meet the people I’ve been working with, n’stuff. it’s a shame we all live so far apart… clearly someone needs to make a teleportation plasmoid ;)
I’m gonna go collapse now.

italy is awesome. :) nice food, beer, wine… I was even talked into drinking some coffee, which I normally hate… and of course, I’m surrounded by intelligent programmers all day long :)
last night we took a break from hacking and went out to have a fancy dinner and see a bit of the city. :) there are such amazing old buildings in europe. they really don’t make things like they used to.
today I finally beat a bug I’d been fighting for most of yesterday (iirc - the lack of sleep makes my memory quite unreliable), got that ‘add activity’ thing done, watched api review, and got keyboard shortcuts planned out. yays! I feel productive. :) I wasn’t feeling so productive yesterday when I was beating my head against the wall with that darn bug…

anyways, so much to do… right now I’ve gotta see if I can prevent the notes applet from re-saving its configuration after it’s supposed to be destroyed…

so I’m in Italy now, for the plasma sprint. about a dozen plasma hackers (plus p.) all under one roof. it’s been fun so far :) as usual, I didn’t sleep much on the plane, so I’m incredibly exhausted. we reached the hotel around dinnertime last night (after some confusion with the directions), had some yummy pizza and wine, then hung out at the bar for a while. actually being able to chat with KDE developers face to face is pretty awesome. they’re a cute bunch of geeks too. ;)
by the time I actually stumbled off to bed last night it was midnight, which is part of the reason I’m so humongously exhausted. I think it was a good idea, though; I woke up around 4am for a while, but managed to fall back asleep, so I ended up sleeping through the night despite jetlag. :) yay. I was worried that I’d end up awake at night and dozing off in the day, but instead I’ve managed to be asleep at night and just a little sleep-deprived during the day. tea helps.

anyways, I guess I should go get some stuff done. the morning vanished pretty quickly with lots of general talk about what we want to work on. I got a chance to talk about screensaver stuff already… and given my current half-crazed state I should probably write it all down before it leaves my memory. I don’t think my longterm memory is functioning right now. tea doesn’t help *that* much.

so I was kinda without interwebs for a while there. last week pete and his friends unexpectedly got a house that was available immediately - they were planning to move for may. since pete’s landlord was being bitchy, I helped him move last week. the good: we have a 4-bedroom house all to ourselves until his friends get around to moving in. the bad: there’s no unsecured wireless in the area.

I was thinking of asking the neighbours if they’d be willing to share, but never got around to it - and today was the day the cable guy came, so now I have interwebs again, yay. :) life’s been quite busy, so in a way it was kinda nice to not have the internet distracting me. it was incredibly inconvenient at times, though - couldn’t look up bus schedules, couldn’t research things, etc… there are so many little things we take for granted.

so, yeah, busyness. mostly of the small-but-necessary variety. buying things, moving things, fixing things, making a vague attempt at househunting without craigslist access. I’ll be staying here for april, then actually getting a place of my own in may - or at least that’s the plan. between lack of interwebs and being about to head off to italy, there hasn’t been much time to look for a place, so… we’ll see how it goes.

apparently I forgot to mention this on my blog: I’m going to italy for a few days for a plasma sprint. lots of hacking, very little tourism. it’ll be awesome. :) while we’re on the subject, I’ll also be at akademy in august.

now I need to go panic about all the stuff I need to get done online. soc research to do (I haven’t even blogged about my application!!), email to catch up on, plasma stuff I never did…

plasma was a little frustrating last week, actually. I had just started on a ui for multiple desktop containments when I had to put aside that work to write a soc application… then I’d almost cleared everything away, and just had a bit of other code to do before returning to it… then I just had a few RL chores to get out of the way… somehow every morning there was another day’s worth of things in my way, and then I was offline and just as busy. since I spent most of today busywaiting for the cable guy (I’ve read most of the last harry potter book), I doubt I’ll get to it tonight… in fact, it may have to wait until I arrive in italy. there’s just so much to do!

well, at least I’m busy doing stuff I actually want to do. :) being back in canada continues to be awesome. hopefully after I get back from italy I’ll have time to go track down the friends that haven’t dragged me out or run into me at parties. and make some new friends. and… argh, there’s so much to do!! :)

I’m a bit late in blogging about hangzhou. too busy having fun. :)

I got back to hangzhou wednesday evening, got a room (in the dorm when I used to live) and had yummy korean food. didn’t manage to find any net access that night, but the comparative luxury of having a bathroom 3 feet from my bed was worth it :) I got a room in one of the buildings with new air conditioning too, so the room was all warm and comfortable :)

in the morning I went and got my suitcases, and somehow managed to stuff a few more things into them… I got a chance to check email, realised my flight was half an hour earlier than I thought it was… but didn’t worry too much ’cause I had plenty of time. I was planning to catch either the 12:30 or 1:30 bus to the airport, since it was supposed to take 3 hours, and my flight was at 6.

when I was done repacking and dealing with mail, I had to wait for my friend to finish his shower, then we dragged my suitcases out and found a taxi. I got to the bus station at 12:35, so I had loads of time to wait for the 1:30 bus. since I hadn’t got around to eating yet, some nice guard helped me get instant noodles. yay food-like-things. when the bus driver showed up at 1, he asked me when my flight was, and then got into a long converstaion with some other employee… he wasn’t too happy. thought I might not arrive in time, and kept telling me it was ‘weixian’, which usually translates as ‘dangerous’. he told me several times that I should’ve taken the previous bus… but, zenme ban? :P what can I do about it? it was a bit late for that. he said that the fastest he could go would take 3 1/2 hours, which would mean arriving at 5, but it would probably take longer… I prepared myself for a mad dash through the airport, tried to stay calm despite his nagging, and waited for the bus to leave. Two other people showed up to take the bus, and he got them to warn me some more in broken english. I was hoping that he was exaggerating (chinese people seem to have a tendency to make me worry about things I don’t really need to worry about) and decided that the best thing I could do at this point was have faith in the Armitage luck (something I’ve really been pushing lately).

so, we finally set off, and he was driving fast the whole time, weaving between other cars and trucks. we arrived at the airport at 4:15 - *less* than three hours. :) and that was after he took a small detour to let the other two people off at some hotel. I had plenty of time to sit around and wait for the plane. :)

as for the plane flight… I think I almost *like* flying at this time of year. almost. ;) there were lots of empty seats, so I had two to myself, and the vegetarian meals tasted quite good (partially because I’d had nothing but instant noodles that day, I bet). I alternated between watching movies and unsuccessfully attempting sleep.

it’s still kinda hard to believe I’m back in canada. my first night back I had toast, and grilled cheese :) yay food! every meal I’ve had so far has tasted delicious. I have my bike again, and I have a shiny new olpc to play with, and lots of people to see… I don’t think I’m gonna be online much this week. too busy having fun. :)