Wednesday, December 1, 2010

A summer of bliss on the Long Trail

Watching the flurries land gently outside, adding another layer to the snow on the lawn, i finally realize that winter has returned after months of vacation.  Time really flies, but more so when one is in an entirely different world thinking up a solution to a set of intricate problems. There, dawn and dusk seem to be twins  and days blur into each other. Fall went by without noticing it and last week’s Thanksgiving didn’t do much to impress upon me that a season change was happening; seeing those cold feathery-like particles lightly descend from the heavens brought it home. Odd as it sounds, i do have the feeling that summer was just a few weeks ago…cue the Twilight Zone intro song.

Most people will probably have their own version of what la dolce vita entails. Mine is simply packing a backpack full of the necessary nourishments and gear for getting lost in the woods. Oh i forgot to add that all important durable dog tags just in case i end up being lunch for a bear or wolf pack.  That last item is primarily for closure purposes. I am of the belief that it’s absolutely cruel to leave a family with lingering hope of one’s return when in fact the individual in question is quietly working his or her way through some predator’s gut.  It’s the thrill of being disconnected from the “grid” and wandering off whilst seeing and hearing nature in it’s somewhat pristine self that draws me. Of course, the added advantage of having something to brag about to friends is another. I just cant resist making my colleagues feel like lazy bums.

The Long Trail stretching from the southern part of Quebec, right through Vermont up to its border with Massachusetts, offers many scenic and tasking trails for the avid hiker. In my opinion, the best thing about it are the smaller trails connecting it. So with the mercury hitting the nineties in the early part of the summer, i was already packed and yearning to be out there. Armed with the latest copy of the Green Mountain Club hiking book, my trusty hike partner and I attacked the Butler Lodge, Frost, Rock Garden, Maple Ridge and the  Laura Cowles side trails to name a few as well large sections of the Long Trail itself.  An exhilarating experience considering how many times we went “off course” attempting shortcuts. Admittedly, on hindsight, those were hare-brained and i was at fault since smarty pants insisted on being the navigator. Thank goodness i wasn’t a guide to those early explorers, they’d have been scalped! One of those moments where i suggested a detour ended with us almost being mauled by a farmer’s dogs, another with the skin on my arms  itchy, painful and bumpy from horse flies’ kisses. 

The best of these hikes was a 13 hour hike beginning at four in the morning if one counts the prior 45 minute drive to the side trail site. We aptly termed it the Insane Hike since we did it not on a typically clear blue sky summer day but rather in treacherous conditions: continuous  rain with visibility reduced to a few yards at higher altitudes, a not too gentle wind, wet rocks made more slippery by the moss on them….Try imagining being at almost 3700 feet clambering over those rocks with a sickening near 200 foot drop to the nearest ledge with the described conditions. Insane? I just love it when the adrenaline hits the bloodstream. I limped back that July day with a bloodied foot. Don’t ask how. In retrospect, i think i now understand why she never warmed up to the idea of us attempting skydiving together. I am still not sure whether the emphasis was on the skydiving or the together part.

I guess looking out now, what i am nostalgic for are those days when i returned with aching muscles, all dirty-yes i took a couple of tumbles-and disheveled but with a satisfied smile that i will be out there again doing something silly and..err…brave? Next summer, ah next summer…i keep telling myself.

I’m already reading about those famed Rockies.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Social networking & me

Often i find myself trying to come up with complex answers to this innocuous yet loaded question: “Are you on Facebook?”. At times, i do wish i was a geriatric or slightly more older looking-the daddy type with the beer gut- so i wont have to wind up in a conducive situation for that question to be posed in the first place. However, being a sprightly young and somewhat outgoing individual, there surely has to be some sort of cogent explanation as to why i am not swimming with the school like many of my contemporaries do. Obviously, I am one of the few odd ones out. Odd?How…odd?

Okay, let’s get this clear. I am not a sociopath with an abusive childhood history whose smile resembles a grimace; neither am i an anti-social  who grew up playing all alone in the sandbox at kindergarten and wouldn’t share his toys with others; nor a budding closet psychopath who loves to dream up dastardly deeds down in the dank basement or cellar and getting his panties all up in bunch just thinking of them.  I use the previous descriptions because when the first word of my answer to that question is a ‘no’, the range of expressions i get from my questioner starts from a subtly raised eyebrow to ones more pronounced such as the incredulously voiced: “No *#$!*&*#** way!”. The non-saintly reader is asked to insert an appropriate expletive for the last one. Good. Now that’s out of the way, on to more concrete plausible things.

First and foremost, i did have a Facebook account when it was at its nascent  and relatively exclusive stage-reserved for students of some certain colleges. Still do as a matter of fact. Back then i was just “trying” it out and being in the lab or library almost everyday with my close pals, the likelihood that checking for messages posted via Facebook from those same friends  and receiving something from them had slightly less than good odds to put it gently.  Using my all my fingers and toes, i can count the number of wall messages i did get from them. The problem today,however, is that i cant for the life of me remember which password i used to create it. Oh boo hoo, a lame excuse right… just a click on the “Forgot Password” and i will be emailed a reset link. Well, that only works if i still had my college email address up and running and could peek in its inbox from time to time. A little problem of graduation perhaps? So, effectively locked out of my account, why don’t i create another? Ah,the crux of the matter.

As with all social networking sites, an online presence must be updated frequently to stay relevant; from uploads of albums to constant updates about what one is up to or is planning to be up to? Being an engineer with a background in security, i naturally tend to see a lot of online stuff with a healthy dose of “danger”. Nope, i am not of the alarmist stripe. There’s a saying that the Internet is written in ink. It’s an apt statement. What i usually tell people  is that when they delete anything posted online, what they have done in reality is to deny themselves access to that data. Although something is “deleted”, a back up  may or may not exist somewhere for whatever reason and uses hidden in that never read yet agreed upon finely printed End User Agreement, Terms of Service or Use.

Contrary to what the reader may conclude at this point, the one overarching reason i did not create another account is that i don’t want to socialize via machines-servers, monitors etc- and have a firm define who a friend is to me. I already have a working one along with their qualifications: A good friend is one who bails me out when in jail, but the true friend is one who will be sitting next to me saying: “we really messed up”. I am an old fashioned fella who loves to travel to see, and chat with friends in person. Keeping in touch is okay. By that i mean the good old hearty gossip and reminiscing on the phone.  But keeping in touch and knowing their every single move exact to the millisecond is a turn off.

“Do you tweet?” usually follows…I am not of the avian species!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

A Kibibyte…. anyone?

So here i am after a pretty long hiatus. I somehow forgot i had a blog to maintain - no it was not due to amnesia or any form of dementia. A sudden onset of acute procrastination was the diagnosis; a disruptive trait  for which i am still strictly following the prescribed treatments. For obvious reasons, i decline to state what they are  as they are highly addictive for the curious minded.  Sheesh! I should have been a doc.

Hmmm, a while back,  helping do bug triaging for the KDE app Dolphin, i came across a  feature request for an option to change the unit of measurement for the various folder & file sizes per the user’s preferences. Whereas most are familiar with the good old kilo, mega, giga SI decimal prefixes; binary prefixes for digital data: kibi, mebi, gibi etc,  are totally off-radar.  Wikipedia does an excellent job explaining what they are here.  Although, this is really simple to implement –monkeying around with Dolphin’s source to produce a solution is fairly straightforward- KDE’s  maintainers were just not going to make changes to the trunk to satisfy those of us weaned on the SI Units. A 6 year long thread on this subject follows the arguments for/against including it.

Despite their best intentions, until  my granny can use a Linux distro without me on hand to explain what’s going on or the ‘apocalyptic’ event of Microsoft doing an Enron/Lehman…i pretty much have my shirt on folks not knowing what a kibibyte is. Say what?