Dear Toronto,
Suck it.

Yours truly,
Adam

I’ve lived in my neighbourhood for what I think is closing in on four years. I worked at Queen and Broadview for three years before that. Yet I had never been to the Jimmie Simpson rec centre. I went there yesterday and went to their Leisure Swim, which is free (all non-instructor based programs are free).

It’s a good quality pool. I have no idea why I didn’t go before. If anyone ever wants to go swimming in the east-end, hit me up.

It’s a beautiful day in Toronto. While it may be the last day of winter, it feels like the final days of spring.  Im sitting in Riverdale Park looking at the sun hanging low over the skyline of Toronto  and all I can think is how it exemplifies everything I love about this city, and my neighbourhood. The city is filled with green, and it fades to the skyscrapers downtown. Humans and dogs alike are running around the large open field at the bottom of the valley, while I can sit on the slope taking in the sun for the first time in months. Soon enough we’ll be able to trek out to the island to enjoy the sun, the lake and feel like we’re running away from the city, if only for a few hours.

Tomorrow spring begins, after the poorest excuse for a winter ever, and the first day of spring will also bring a new Member of Parliament for my slice of Toronto. For those unaware, Jack Layton, the leader of the opposition passed away in August. Since then, Toronto-Danforth has been without representation in Canada’s federal Parliament. Today I cast my vote for the first time in recent memory for someone I actually respect and who I want to win the election.

Craig Scott, the NDP candidate took time to speak to me after a town hall meeting and I have to say he impressed me. The man is intelligent, well spoke socially aware and active, and seems to have a grand desire to make change in Ottawa and bring a voice for the riding.

He was able to talk to me at length about what he has done and also what he will do. He surprised me.  The only downside is he didn’t talk to me sooner than he did, as I was willing to volunteer if one of the candidates appealed to me. Maybe in the next general election.

Passport

I woke up this morning, it was around 3:30. I didn’t want to wake up that early but I did. So I put on my GSD¹ hat.

I waited around until it was a reasonable time, and then I headed to the Passport Canada office in Scarborough². After waiting way too long, they processed my paperwork, and OH YEAH! I’ll be getting a passport.

Apple Connect 2012

From there, I went up to Steeles and joined Apple Connect 2012 after the opening talk. I don’t really know what I missed, but oh well. What I do know I missed was breakfast, and after having lunch and dinner there… OH MY GOD! I was expecting shitty sandwiches and that kind of stuff like at other Apple events I’ve been to… but no, they’re pulling out all the bloody stops³!

The sessions I did go to were thus:

Apple Environmental Footprint
There was nothing else going on at that time, and my god was this a bloody boring speech. I really don’t care what Apple’s footprint is. It was long, boring, and *YAWN*.

Lion: Where is my server?
The title made me think of this. This was a discussion mostly of where to find pieces of Lion Server that aren’t preinstalled like it used to be. The vast majority of this was pointing us to the binary for MySQL or how to enable FTP on a server⁴. Those things weren’t that interesting, what was were the items that he had to take out of his presentation, because since the release of 10.7.0 and the release of 10.7.3, it is not easy, and builtin.

Lion Open Directory Update
Open Directory is an authentication protocol which Macs can use to authenticate to a server. It’s a decent system, has some advantages, though, honestly it would probably be more accessible to use Active Directory, but I do not. The presenter was a programmer for the OD services. Apparently the rewrote it from the ground up and she gave a very technical and detailed examination of the services. It was interesting, but barely useful.

Certificates and PKI: Concepts and Lab
This was my favourite of the talks, mostly because of Arek Dreyer.  He is very animated and he seemed to be genuinely excited about the subject. It was an excellent two hours. We had a lot of information thrown at us, both technical and practical. We had a chance to actually play with the self-signed certificates that are default to Mac OS X Server.

I missed two sessions, as they conflicted with others, including one from Mobile Iron a third party company who make a Mobile Device Management solution. Apple just released one called Apple Configurator, which I’m looking forward to playing with along with a cart of iPads. I just worry about the fact that the app seems to be thinking the iOS apps should be volume licensed, when there is no volume licensing for Canada, yet.

The other session I missed was Intro to iOS Development. I’m a terrible developer, and honestly don’t care.

After a tasty tasty dinner, I went to downstairs to the main event room where I wrote a test for certification. OS X Support Essentials 10.7 Exam was the test, and I passed! WOOO! That makes me an Apple Certified Support Professional, whatever that means. It’s a certification that will last until Mountain Lion is released in the summer. These exams were built into the cost of the event, so I took it on a whim not expecting to pass, and without having studied, but WOO HOO I passed⁵!

There’s many more tests I can take tomorrow, but I’ll only be able to take one more. I can go with OS X Server Essentials 10.7 Exam  which will make me an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator. That will be a much harder exam, which I could probably pass with study, but I haven’t studied whatsoever. I could at the least read the 30 page Exam Preparation Guide.

They also have exams for Final Cut Pro X and Aperture, which have very little actual worth in the real world, I use these apps nearly constantly. They have a Level One and Level Two for FCPX, and I know I wouldn’t get to level two with my knowledge, and wonder about Level One. As for Aperture, I’m sure I can pass it in my sleep. So I don’t know which I should opt for.

Bow ties are cool

In additional to all the fun I had with Passport and AC12, I also sent an email to Wickham House Brand who have a bow tie of the month club. I signed up for three months starting in February and have yet to receive my first tie. I was kinda worried, so I sent an email. I was told it should’ve arrived last week (but I didn’t say I was in Canada, and he answered from his iPhone, so he might not have looked my order up), he suggested I contact him again at the end of the week if it hasn’t arrived.

I got home from AC12 and checked my mailbox, which had been empty every day for the past two or three weeks. There was a notice from Canada Post in there. I checked the notice and saw that Shoppers was open for another 3o minutes. I headed down the street, and got a package, which was too big for a bow tie. sure it was flat, but it was about 12″ squared. I looked at the return address, and it wasn’t from the United States, it was from Halifax… WHO WOULD BE SENDING ME SOMETHING FROM HALIFAX?!?! Then I saw the name on the return address, “Mike O’Neill.”

It was Mike O’Neill’s new record! Hooray! I had figured it would come from Zunior.com owner Dave Ullrich, who lives a few blocks away from me in Toronto⁶.

Sad there were no bow ties, but WOO! MIKE O’NEILL.

Man I’m tired.

1. Get *expletive deleted* Done. [↩]
2. Eww, Scarborough. [↩]
3. Food did not contain blood. [↩]
4. which is omitted for good reason, use SSL. [↩]
5. Students, don’t follow my example. [↩]
6. I’ve seen him in the street a few times, he never noticed me when I waved. [↩]

My vacation video.

We went to the Diefenbunker in Carp, Ontario, we went to Centre Block on Parliament Hill, and mostly we just had fun in Ottawa, en route to Ottawa, and en route back to Toronto. We even briefly visited Quebec, and enjoyed a nice dinner at St. Hubert.

First I’m going to start with an apology to Helen. When it was suggest that four of us share two beds in a single hotel room, I had a bit of a sense of dread, but I bottled it up, because “WOO! OTTAWA ROAD TRIP!” Now here I am, 3:30 am on Sunday morning. I only got an hour or two of sleep the previous night, if that. This night, I was smart enough to stay in when Emily, Joseph and Helen went to meet a friend of Helen’s. I spent most of that time editing the video (except for the footage that has yet to be shot) that will hopefully be posted on Thursday. However, I did get an hour sleep before the rest of #ORT2012 crew arrived back at the hotel. The problem was I wasn’t sleepy and having a minor panic attack. My heart had been racing, since driving back to Ottawa from Quebec (and CFB Carp) in horrible weather with no street lights. When I finally got some sleep that was nice.

Since they’ve been back, I’ve been able to get 15 minutes here and there, but I’ve been in and out of bed so often, that I’m feeling really sorry for Helen. To the point that I’m now lying on the floor, playing with my laptop with the screen dimmed to the lowest level (which is very bright in otherwise pitch black).

I really don’t know what possessed me to think that I’d be able to share a bed with someone (especially a double, when I sleep alone, diagonally on a Queen¹). There’s only been one person who I’ve really successfully slept with² since Lisa and I split up all those years ago, and I loved her, even though I didn’t want to admit to myself that I loved her, yet. So it was either that, or the fact that she was (and still is) so fucking skinny, that the first time she spent the night in my bed, I woke up and thought she had left. So I have to apologize to Helen, for her lack of sleep. I’ll take the blame, and I’m so very sorry. Here’s hoping I have enough wherewithal to get us back to Toronto safely³. Don’t worry mom, I won’t do anything dangerous, I know my limits, and will work within those.

This was going to end with #ORT2012 playlist 2, but after this long post… I’ll save that for Friday. Next time on NH2F… Cosby Sweater of the Week.

Edited to add: At around 6am, I went back to bed, and three hours of fitful sleep. Not ideal, but enough to make me feel much better.

1. Insert joke here. [↩]
2. and I mean actual sleeping. [↩]
3. Right now I’m so bloody awake, that I could probably drive to Vancouver without a problem [↩]

Today would have been Calvin’s 10th birthday.

2012 is here, which means we can put 2011 behind us… finally.

I’m awake reluctantly, listening to Harmony Trowbridge’s record that was bought on Boxing Day. I still haven’t finished going through those ~20 records. I’ll soon be heading to the Millers‘ for New Year’s Day brunch. In addition to the Millers, I’ll also see some other high school friends I don’t see enough. It seems 2012 is starting well, but this is about 2011.

Now that it’s over, we can critically look at it. Okay, that’s a lie, it’s still too close to be critical.

Highlights of 2011:

• Beginning 2011 with Oldies 990
• Falling in love
• Cottage trip with Millers, Ginsberg, Anna, Emily, and Neumans
• Wild Flag at Lee’s Palace
• Sloan at The Great Hall
• Ending 2011 with Oldies 990

• New photo project: OH NO! HUGS!
• New photo project: Photo comic I want to propose for Static Zine… I should email Aviva.

As Rocktober told you, I was in Montreal and I bought a new sweater vest.

In addition to that. I fell, smashed my face in and broke my glasses. Ouch. As a result, I went to my doctor, and he was kind enough to fit my lenses into replacement frames… this time they were in blue. Lovely Jai Kudo 507s.

I decided to buy a second pair, just because I’ve been wanting to own two pairs of glasses for some time… excluding my shades. Thanks to lots of help from Twitter. I decided on a pair of Ted Baker B844 in grey. They’re purple on the interior. I’m wondering if they’re a tad too hipstery, but they kinda remind me of Buddy Holly, and who doesn’t love Buddy Holly?

I also recently received two lovely bow ties. One black with squares, and one in red with polka dots. I’m rather fond of bow ties for the simple fact that they’re ridiculous, and I am a rather ridiculous man. In addition there are an exceptionally large amount of cool people who wear/wore bow ties. From The Doctor, to Lester B. Pearson, to Bill Nye, to Less Nessman, to Winston Churchill. I could go on, but the first two are really the coolest.

I’m balding, quite a bit. I’m soon going to look like this guy.

I need your help, fellow Canadians. I’m trying to create slang, and I don’t have enough support from people.

Mad Lauriers!

Mad Lauriers means a lot of cash. It could be as specific as $5 bills, but it doesn’t have to be. It could just simply be a giant wad of cash. “Yo, I got my paycheque, I got mad Lauriers!” or “Michael J. Fox is so rich, he’s got mad Lauriers!”¹

Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy is the nickname for a $20 bill. Notice how the notes are thin? Notice how Queen Lizzy is on the bill? Perfect, it’s a Thin Lizzy!

1. Note the CanCon [↩]