The incredibly sad news about (e:joshua) reminded me of the last time I had a substantial conversation with him, in person. I think it was a couple years back at (e:Drew) and (e:Janelle)'s labour day breakfast (or was it July 4?) I remember it was a classic American holiday and (e:Drew) was making delightful pancakes. Obama had just been elected or maybe he was about to be elected... I am not very sure.

In between a mash-up cross conversation about current research and medical management of early-onset hypertension and where to get the freshest coffee beans in Buffalo, I was asking (e:Joshua) what he thought were the redeeming qualities of being a Republican and he said, "Fiscal Responsibility". He also gave me quite a run down of all the different ways that the US would not do well under the Democrat-led spendthrift government. He made a special case about how the debt of social security payoffs and public health programmes such as medicare and medicaid would cripple the economy in the near future. He stressed on how important it was for governments to focus on being debt-free as a long-term strategy instead of trying to bail out of trouble short-term and abandon ship after their elected terms were over.

I am not quite sure that I understood all the nitty-gritties of his argument. I remember thinking that he was being rather severe on the Democrats but I do agree that fiscal responsibility has been and will always be a crucial cornerstone to not only the success of governments but also individuals who make up the population that is being governed. I continue to believe that being responsible with our money shapes several aspects of our lives and makes our toughest of choices easier. Looking back, I think that was the core idea that (e:Joshua) was trying to explain to me over breakfast.

(e:Joshua), that was an interesting conversation and it has remained with me since. I didn't always agree with your ardent support of Republican policies across the board and your relentless criticism of a large number of ideas slightly left of centre, but I think we did agree that day over cilantro and mint chutney with crispy rice and raw onions. Hope you are having a swell time, wherever you are now! I always thought you looked awesome smiling (and resembled Major Healey from I dream of Jeannie). :-)

Does anyone else have their recently updated chrome pop-up a javascript dialogue to set time out (s), whenever it starts up for the first time? I thought it was a linux-related problem (amidst all my zillion other linux problems) but now this pop-up javascript dialogue has started appearing on my windows terminals as well... Wonder what it is...

GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0)

I get to bat my eyelashes at this gibberish every time my laptop boots. And every glib soul on the World-Wide-Web seems to be just as mystified as me about what it can possibly mean.

Oh, the joys of linux.

Seriously, this is what I feel like when do anything on Linux. Not only do I have no idea about how to deal with most problems, I also feel as if I am always trapped in a hung window somewhere in OS hell. There is always something waiting just around the twisted little linuxy jagged corner to vex me.

Today I almost learnt how to compile a tarball. The keyword here is *almost*. And yes. A tarball. To add injury to insult, I was constantly reminded with obsessive checks by the terminal on Linux that I needed a sane environment to build these "tarballs".
Only, a zillion errors and a gazillion "lib-that-or-lib-this" missing messages later, I gave up.

And I am not going to have the time to go to yoga today. Enough grounds to conclude that I obviously don't have a sane environment anymore. I might as well have K-dollar-sign-HA! tattooed in comic sans on my forehead.

Walking back home yesterday, I was beyond appalled to see an oversized red truck with a massive plow driving illegally all over the sidewalk and grass outside the Church of Ascension, on the corner of North Street and Linwood Avenue. The driver didn't just stop at the snow. He took a good chunk of the grass, dirt and pavement along with the snow and then, flouting all sense of common decency, tossed all that snow and dirt all over Linwood Avenue, over the driveway of (e:pmt)'s house on 24 Linwood and heaped the rest on the sidewalk in front of the LinNor Apartment building across the street.


Is this kind of plowing authorized by the Church of Ascension? I find it despicable that a church, whose main goals are to serve the community cares so little about its neighbours that it goes out of its way by hiring or authorizing obnoxious illegal plows to make life more miserable for them.

I was also extremely shocked to see this church-hired plow truck driver almost run over (e:Matthew) who told me later that he had stepped out to express his concern over this plow outrage. When (e:Matthew) asked if the church-hired plow truck had a city license to drive and plow all over the sidewalk and generally be a menace to the neighbourhood, the driver did not respond well and drove off in a huff, heaping even more snow over the lawn of 24 Linwood. (e:Matthew) was left to clean up the tons of snow he had just shoveled before the plow truck destroyed all his efforts.


Agreed that it is a church and churches do serve a religious purpose, but this definitely does not give them a blanket approval to do whatever they wish, break the laws and overstep common courtesies to their neighbours. At the very least, I hope city hall takes a stern view of this very objectionable, disruptive and quite possibly, illegal snow plowing authorized or encouraged by the Church of Ascension, issues a warning for future violations and fines the church authorities.

Who's next!!?? (e:enknot)? :-)

---

PS: I wish these droids actually had smiles... I was chuckling all through class, the poses were so extreme and I was discovering all kinds of hilarious asymmetry in my body. I think everyone else was smiling and laughing at some point as well...

Tallest yogi EVAH!



PS: Too bad they don't have piercings or earrings! Cramping my style here...

Okay, seems I have caught the mattandroidify virus as well! Modeling DroidyPaul on (e:paul,52884)...

Just wanted to let everyone know that the keyboard shortcut for bringing up lxterminal or the command-line window under lubuntu is: F10 or Ctrl+Alt+T

Couldn't this document describing the lxterminal have included this tiny bit of information about keyboard shortcuts: No, because you see, linux geeks need to do it the hard way and hope to build everyone else's character in the process. But I am all overbuilt on character so I really can't agree with their dodgy logic at all. As a result, I am going to be posting every single thing that I learn about linux here for everyone to see - IN PLAIN VIEW and eminently google-able.

Now, the next step is to change this shortcut and assign shortcuts to everything else. I need to figure out what this discussion is saying: Oh, and keyboard shortcuts are called "Keybindings" to make it tougher for you to google them.

Fewer words strike more terror into the hearts of aspiring yogis than when the teacher casually tosses out the term "yogi's choice". What it essentially means is that you could choose to stay on in a wimpy form of the pose while the rest of the class and the teacher go into the more exotic variation - that just might have given you an infinitely more effective muscle stretch had you been able to do it. The harder you try and reach that variation, the more likely you are to wobble out of balance and end up with no pose at all. At which point you "honour your practice", which is actually just code for accepting that you totally missed the yoga elixir that was dangled before you minutes back.

Yoga totally whipped all of our hands and hearts yesterday... well, all EXCEPT (e:Paul) who was probably born with a strong dose of yogi's-choice-power-goo in his silver-yogi-spoon. I meant to complete this entry after class but I was so washed out after practice that I fell asleep at my "desk" and pretty much crawled into bed 3 metres away.

(e:Paul), on the other hand has been logged in the entire time and quite possibly coding in a frenzy. That's what happens when you outshine the entire class in just about every outlandish balance-act yoga-pose that is thrown your way. And there were tons that I can't even find the names for.


For instance, the L-pose at the wall above with a "yogi's choice" extreme T-variation where you raise one of your legs up in the air till it's perfectly perpendicular to your other leg and parallel to your arms. While the rest of the class wobbled with asymmetry across the studio, (e:Paul) literally flew through several of the poses AND he did the T-variation on both sides.

Wait. There is more. Later after class, while I bemoaned the lack of moonwalk fluidity, he totally denied knowing how to moonwalk WHILE his legs were moonwalking the hell out of the yoga studio floor. If all this doesn't silently scream "Clark Kent!!" to you... well, then it's time to go and see the movies or you could come to yoga. Your Yogi's choice.