Archive for April, 2008
April 29, 2008 at 11:30 am · Filed under F1
The Spanish Grand Prix sounds more interesting than it actually was. It was certainly a race of attrition, giving some of the smaller teams a chance at some points; it was nice to see Mark Webber and Jensen Button finally get a bit of luck. The result was a runaway for Ferrari though, with only the safety cars stopping them sprinting off into the distance.
Kovy’s crash looked really nasty, I was convinced he had at least one broken leg, especially seeing the gaping hole in the front of his pod. It’s a testament to the safety of those cars these days that he came away with just a concussion. He went almost head first into a tyre wall at 140mph, burying the car 3 tyres deep (luckily it was a 4 deep wall otherwise he probably would’ve hit something more solid), and came out with a headache.
In other news, the Max Mosley sex scandal has gone from bad to horrible for Max now that his bestest friend Bernie has joined the chorus calling for his resignation. Only three teams refused to sign Bernie’s letter: Ferrari, Torro Rosso (aka Ferrari Junior) and Williams (Super Aguri didn’t sign either but they’re busy with their own problems).
If Max has any love for motorsport left he needs to realise he’s damaging the sport and walk away. We can all wail and gnash our teeth about the horrible invasion of privacy the man has suffered, but the damage is done. We know what we know, it’s not possible to un-know it. Every time someone talks face to face with Max they will either be smirking at him or looking faintly disgusted. He claims he will attend the Monaco Grand Prix, so I’m looking forward to some of the banners the fans will have on display for him.
April 21, 2008 at 10:36 am · Filed under Travel, Work
I’m back from California, and it looks like I missed the last snowfall of the year. I enjoyed sun and warmth in Anaheim and came back to a warm night in Montreal.
While in Anaheim I walked a lot, went on five rollercoasters at Knotts Berry Farm, walked some more, ate at IHOP twice and at the Rainforest Cafe once, perused lots of Disney merchandise, went to Target, oh and did a bit of work.
The presentation went well. We had about four hundred people in the audience. I got a couple of laughs and some good questions at the end, including people wanting to steal my code (if it were up to me I’d GPL it, but it’s not up to me).
April 11, 2008 at 11:54 am · Filed under Travel, Work
Tomorrow afternoon I’m catching a flight to Orange County, California for 5 days of sun and relaxation work. I’m attending the Sungard Higher Education Summit in Anaheim, where I will be taking part in a presentation in front of up to 1,000 people. Worried? Me? Nah, as the refreshment lady says, it’ll be a piece of cake (only parents with two year old Thomas fans will get that reference). Apart from that nerve-wracking hour, the rest of the time will be spent listening to other people talk about all things university computer system related.
Although I’ve been within spitting distance of the border, I’ve never actually entered California before (I don’t count sitting in LA airport for six hours) so that’s another state to cross of my list even though I doubt I’ll get to see much of it.
April 8, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Work
I have a new job!
No, I’m not leaving McGill… Today I accepted a new position at McGill as a web developer in the Web Services Group, the team who look after the content of mcgill.ca and are involved in other web initiatives around campus.
It’s a step in a new direction for me. The WSG use mostly open source tools, which I’ve been playing with personally since I first installed linux on an old computer several years ago but I haven’t been able to use in a work setting. I’m stepping away from Oracle, the proprietary RDBMS that I’ve been working with for 20 years, to embrace open source technologies like PHP, Python and PostgreSQL. It looks like there might even be a bit of WordPress thrown into the mix.
I’ve had six good years here on the Finance IT team but I’m really looking forward to something new.
