Onion. v40 #20

 › cute     2004-06-22 21:16   ...0 comments

This article (which I found linked to on Google) is unbelievable.

According to the article, the average life expectancy in Swaziland will drop from 62 years to 27 years by 2010.

“Of the country’s population of a million, 500 000 are under 15 years old. Of the remaining half million, 200 000 are infected. The chance of a 15-year-old reaching the age of 35 is only 10%. Orphans, with an average age of 11, now head more than 5 500 homes.”

 › normative     2004-06-22 15:27   ...2 comments

Jen and I are engaged!

It’s something I had been thinking about for a while (since January or February at least). We had been talking about what we might look for in a house, that kind of thing, and it had always seemed a bit funny to be dancing around the question of the status of our relationship. Since we’ve known each other almost 5 years now, and have been going out for 4, and since we love each other very much, it seemed (at least in my mind) like the time was ripe.

Despite having entertained these thoughts, I really had not come up with a concrete plan involving places, dates, times, circumstances, jewelry. But when last Saturday (June 12) turned out to be a picture perfect day, and we had nothing else planned, I thought to myself “Self: Good day to get engaged!”

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    2004-06-19 15:54   ...3 comments

We attended Diana’s defence yesterday at 10am in the Dunton Tower.

It was a fantastic defence. Her talk was good, her handling of the questions — especially from the external examiner — was skilled, her committee was generally supportive and good, and the chair from grad studies was adorable (in a sort of a fussy, pompous kind of way).

After the defence we went to Social, which, for the old hands, is located on the old site of Cafe Wim. There I enjoyed an “Apple Pie” which consists of 7 year old cheddar, hot and runny, baked into butter pastry. The apples are served as a hot apple compote on the side. Mmmmm… cheese!

    2004-06-19 09:12   ...1 comment

Once again I deleted some important files from a UFS file system on Unix. Once again I managed to get the bits off the disk despite having lost all the directory pointers. This time was much more brute force however.

grep -a -B1024 -A1024 ‘text in the file’ /dev/rdisk0s9

A good idea from here.

 › technology     2004-06-18 23:33   ...0 comments

Well, mediaeval dentistry continued unabated today with the second phase of the implant procedure. No tooth yet though.

The summary is that the implant appears to have taken successfully, some metal is visible in my jaw now, and I should have a new tooth within 6 weeks or so.

Click for gory details if you desire.

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 › health     2004-06-16 21:36   ...0 comments

Ed is Back! Check out his rap.

 › cute     2004-06-11 09:41   ...0 comments

Just happened to see this blog entry today about a guy who has problems with drivers while riding his bike. Perhaps not the ideal set of responses to these problems… but kind of funny!

 › sports     2004-06-10 11:34   ...1 comment

Some interesting arguments in here regarding the debate on recycling plastics.

The head of the garbage truck contractor suggests that diverting organic waste to composting would make a much bigger difference. Of course, it is his organization that would get to create a new organic waste pickup network, but perhaps his arguments are good?

    2004-06-09 10:33   ...2 comments