Sitting in the dark right now as it pours rain outside, and the power is out. The UPS is beeping away, we're actually in the middle of a conference call over VOIP, using the internet which is connected over the lake via a wimax modem many kilometers away, using wireless to connect to the router. Go technology!

Interesting to see where I spend my at-computer time

(Java Platform Standard Edition is actually Eclipse for web development)

I would like to point out a few things that are awesome with this picture:

First, the office side of our loft is kicking some serious tech butt. I mean, c'mon... cabling, soldering gear, compressed air, cable ties, tools, power strip, set of drawers filled with countless tech bits (just off camera to the left), all within arm's reach. Good lighting, peripherals handy... what more could a geek ask for?!

Also note the installation of Ubuntu onto this lovely small form factor PC we just put together for the cottage. I'm both excited and nervous, being a relative Linux n00b and setting it up for family. But hey, it beats having them know just enough about Windows to be dangerous, and being a bazillion miles away when they get the thing loaded with spyware.

I think I'm both the saviour and bane of existence of family and friends who hang out up there. It's going to be rigged with high speed internet over fixed wireless for six months of the year, and I'm attaching a computer to the wall. I mean.. I know this is the place that people go to get away from tech... but really, you can just ignore it if you want!

The plan is thus: we're going to be working remotely from the cottage (in Muskoka, a couple hours north of Toronto) for most of July, hence the need for intarwebs up there. We're also bringing Chris's sons up there the whole time! Beats hanging out with us boring people in an Oakland warehouse :) I'm so excited. Not only have I not spent much time at the beloved cottage since childhood, but the boys will get to do all sorts of cool stuff... tubing, finding interesting people to hang out with, sailing, swimming, hiking, etc etc.

Yes, this will be the view out our "office" window for a month... please, hold your sympathy cards until the end.

We'll also be going up to Deep River to see Marg shine in the lead of Evita at the end of the month, then spending some time in Toronto too (and going to see Evil Dead, go Nug!).

The cottage itself is even getting a little bit of fame, as it is apparently featured in the current edition of all magazines in The Beer Store throughout Ontario, in a feature on, uh, beer + cottages. So if anyone happens to pick it up, check for my photo credit :)

Flights are booked in this complicated little dance that involves us flying to Madison on the 5th to retrieve the boys, and then driving on up to Muskoka. We'll be rolling back into California on the 2nd of August. Suzann is graciously being surrogate kitty mom for the month.

So right now, we're working our butts off for CivicActions after just having closed yesterday on our part of the first stage of a major project, and kicking off on another even more major one tomorrow, which is the new website for... dun dun dun... Amnesty International! Such an exciting and huge project. So psyched.

My role: theme (ie. take their graphic designs/branding -> Drupal template) a base Drupal install in two weeks (and I work part time on it)... in English and Arabic. Suddenly wishing I'd pursued that desire to learn some Arabic after taking that singing class...

Irony:  standing in line in the cold for 25 minutes to pick up an air cooler from UPS.

Awesome:  listening to SomaFM in the car through stereo connected to Nokia N800 connected via Bluetooth to Treo connected to web.

I've been wanting to get recycling going here in the building for a while. They don't offer it because a) it's zoned commercial so it's not free, and b) it's a high traffic, sketchy area and anywhere that you put out a bin, it's going to be rifled through and trash thrown into it, which they then charge you a fine for.

But screw that, I figured there has to be a way better than driving our stuff across town to a recycling centre.  Found this, which would be cheap and convenient, but they don't offer locked carts.  I asked what other options we'd have, and she said that the driver can't go inside a building, but it can be behind a locked gate that he would be given a key/passcode for.  Well, there's not really anything like that here.  But... wait, says Chris... if he can have a key for a gate, why can't we lock the bin on our own? 

"Well.. yes... I guess there's no reason you couldn't do that!" 

Oh, if I had a nickel for every time someone's said that to me  :) 

Home brew strap/lock coming up!

Then we get to be the building heros for maybe five minutes at least...

~~~

In other home brew news, we went to the Maker Faire on the weekend, albeit briefly due to the choir craziness.  Man oh man it was amazing.  And we only saw like half of it and didn't have time to actually participate in the tons of activities.  I missed a Nabaztag hacking booth, waaaah!  We were totally drooling over the rapid prototyping equipment.  These guys are running an interesting service.  Pay monthly to get access to work on all their machinery.  Pay for only the materials you use.  Groovy.

One of the things that reminds me why I'm in the Bay Area right now.... off to the Maker Faire we go!

"Can you pass me a blank basket?"   [referring to an empty gift basket that was to be filled with jam]

"I saw that on my screen"  [where screen = through the car windshield]

"It's like we're a big torrent and you're the only seed."  Followed by a "Oh god, we're defining our relationship in terms of BitTorrent."

And today: 

"Dammit, I meant to turn up the windows while I was over there"  [actually meaning "open the curtains"]

I know there are others, but I've forgotten now.

Ever done this?

While I love my home country, the US has certain advantages.  Like a generally better selection of e-commerce establishments.  Oh and there's cellular data rates, but that's another story.

Sunny knows what I'm talking about.  I've seen her discuss this same thing.  It's not that we don't have quite a few online stores in Canada, or certainly merchants who ship to Canada -- but it's no wonder I became such a huge fan of eBay.

First of all, there's no big department store, a la Amazon.com.  Sure, there's Sears.ca and Canadian Tire, but they're nowhere near the same league.  Amazon.ca only has books/media stuff, and Amazon.com doesn't ship most of their other stuff to Canada.  Our closest thing to a NewEgg is NCIX and a few other smaller shops, but nothing huge that has amazing deals across the board and geek-friendly reviews/search engines/etc.

Or what about a huge music store, like Musician's Friend, or Zzounds?  Art supplies?  Pet supplies?  Furnishings?  You can usually find stuff if you look hard enough, but there certainly aren't dozens of big warehouses clamouring for your business.

Case in point:  Suzann had told me about this online shoe store, Zappos.  You can order a whole bunch of shoes, huge selection of styles and size variations, ship them all to you with free shipping, then keep the ones you want and send the others back with free return shipping.  There is so nothing like this in Canada.  Not that I'm a big shoe whore, but I found another site that had the same shipping concept and got three pairs of potential shoes for Meagan's wedding.  Plus 30% off (yay for googling for coupon codes).

Almost all the stores actually in Canada are smaller specialty stores that end up costing a lot more.  Or maybe I should feel good about supporting small retailers... but the cheapass in me beats that part down sometimes  :)

Also, I'm spoiled here in that there are allll these other little states that have the nice convenience of not charging tax when you order from them.  Hell, I can even avoid it in California sometimes, since Provantage is actually shipping our NAS stuff from California to Ohio and back to avoid us paying tax!  I suppose I wouldn't complain about this if I had lived in Manitoba or something, but almost everything ships from Ontario (Toronto's the centre of the world in Canada, dontchaknow) so you're getting dinged with 14% tax.

And why does buying within Canada matter so much?  I'm glad you asked.  The evils of paying duties.  It's not so much the duties themselves, it's the bloody hassle and the couriers.  The tax I can deal with, but couriers (*cough*dieUPSdie*cough*) charge an additional brokerage fee for filling out the paperwork for you.  So you're constantly having to check on shipping methods, asking people to mark something as a gift, checking on policies.. agh.

I ordered an earring holder once without paying much attention and ended up paying $54 in duties/brokerage stuff for a $25 item.

Bottom line... Canadian e-commerce is constantly a good five years behind the times and I'm always in awe here of how fast/easy/cheap it is to get stuff online.

Although we do have Grocery Gateway  :)  I had barely set foot in a grocery store for five years, man!

~~~ 

Eeeee, the doorbell just rang... UPS time!  It's NASday!

Welllll a long tangent tonight started with looking for my CD of album recordings without vocals as requested by Jay to include in the CamGirls documentary (by god they actually got an editor a couple of weeks ago -- updates in the blog there).  Which I still haven't found yet.

Which DID lead me to discover my grade nine CD-ROM yearbook (yep, that's 1998 folks).  Which, as you can imagine, led onto a massive tangent giggling at old photos (good lord Meagan, you really haven't changed much in a decade... well, except for the boobs... and your group with Martine!  And the squish-in-a-bug contest!  And Grease!  And old boyfriends!  And and... is that Candice in a Xena costume??) and hunting down people online.  I think that needs to be a post of its own.  Lurid stories and huge crushes and reminiscing, oh my.  In my photo I'm even wearing what I still call my favourite shirt to this day!

Which then led to looking for more album stuff, and remembering to check CDBaby, and discovering I have over $100 sitting in there that I hadn't cashed out.  Woohoo!

It's nifty to see my album's digital sales stats:

 

Anthem for the Perverted has the highest number of sales.  Pervs  ;) 

Oh and we spent five hours (!!) today re-running cables, including our new 5' power strip and big, sexy UPS.

 

The back of my desktop area now.  I swear it looked a lot worse before.

And Spaz, proving once again that he is my web god and I must one day clone and steal him, is writing a wonderful picture rotating script that will clinch my victory for having all the pieces necessary for a harmonious Flickr/Gallery/StephTheGeek.com integration for images.  I guess now I just have to implement it.  Pesky details.  Go admire his large DVD collection.

So, when your father asks you very seriously what you and your life partner would like as a special and meaningful wedding gift for your home and future, your answer is?

Cookware?  Nah.

Furnishings?  Meh.

Something towards a car?  Naw. 

2.25 TB Infrant NAS?  Hell yes!

I love my dad.

I love that I was able to explain it and he understands we put a lot of thought into this and suggested something that has more impact than any kitchen supplies or bedding could.  It's something that we both desperately wanted as a foundation piece for our home, especially as our little shared Dell box runs out of space...  Our life is digital.  What better gift than fast, spacious, RAID5 storage?

It's officially on its way to us  :) 

*bounces*