Go forward in time to June 2001.
Visitors: Took Daria and Aaron to the airport. It was good to have them here. Parked next to an extremely huge old Galaxie, which is about twice the size of my small Chevy...
I need to figure out the Miguel Ángel de Quevedo -> Tlalpan -> Viaducto route to the airport, because it seems to be shorter if you want to get there from home. I used the MAdQ -> Revolución/Patriotismo -> Viaducto route, which seems like overkill.
After having moved to Coyoacán my mental map of the city is changing its topology in strange ways.
Work: Productive day. It feels good when hacking just works.
Food: Good lunch with Chema at one of the myriad restaurants around the office; Japanese this time. Had a very good misoshiru and a delicious katsu-don.
Traffic: Sucks. Took Chema home in the evening; I had not gone to La Herradura in a long time. It was good to refresh my memory about how to get there, anyways.
While lying in bed pondering whether to wake up or not, I had a vision of what was wrong with the water heater's pressure valve. Hah. So I fixed it. Yay. But the shower is still being stupid; hot water comes out just fine from every tap in the house except from the shower. *That* will require a plumber, since I have no idea of what may be wrong.
My F2 may have a tiny light leak. This would totally suck, but it needs further investigation. The contact sheets make me worried. On the other hand, the spots seem to be bigger with the 28mm lens than with the other ones. Hmmmm.
Listened to a lot of Poulenc today. The concerto for two pianos & orchestra kicks ass. The concert champêtre kicks a lot of ass.
Nice dinner with Daria and Aaron; made a huge stir-fry.
Blargh. Our water heater is being stupid. Will have to get a plumber because our landlord is useless. Showered with cold water, which sucks.
Nikon has a very nice page of introductory photography. They teach you how to use a magnifying glass as a lens! Neat!
Aaron and Daria made a delicious spaghetti and many people came over. Luis, Luis Javier, Javier O., and Javier G. Had a very good time. Both Oralia and Daria was feeling ill, however, so they did not join us.
It was good to see all of them; we had not been together for a long time. I am thinking of hosting a dinner party every week or so.
Oralia and myself are getting married somewhere around July 5th. This is absolutely exciting and absolutely terrifying for many reasons which I still do not fully comprehend :)
Got a haircut. More expensive than the place I used to go to in my old neighborhood, but they did a good job. Afterwards, took a bunch of rolls for development; I hope the ISO 25 b/w pictures come out fine. Got some new rolls as well.
No one but Joakim in the office when I arrived; everyone got in later. Miguel and Pepe Chacón arrived later; it is good to see them. Yucatecan food with Chema, Miguel, and Chac.
Fiddling with GalView; fixed a number of memory management issues related to it across Evolution.
Went to the old monastery in the Desierto de los Leones. Took a bunch of pictures of the very photogenic buildings and trees and flowers.
The restaurant there is owned by some French dude or somesuch, and the food was awesome. Aaron and Daria had a baked trout covered with tarragon and bread, Oralia had a steak served inside a molcajete, and I had some delicious duck in huitlacoche sauce.
Aaron also had escamoles, which are ant's eggs in red sauce. Very good stuff.
Took Oralia to her parents' house in the evening, felt like shit.
Oralia had things to do, so she did not join us today. Sigh. Took Daria and Aaron to the National Museum of Anthropology, took plenty of pictures. Afterwards we went downtown for a late lunch or early dinner. Stuffed ourselves, went back home.
A beautiful day today, blue sky and sunny but not too warm.
I like Ravel's use of triads plus quarter notes in any combination to form a rhythmic pattern. Da-da-da da da da da-da-da da-da-da da da.
In the apartment building across the street from our office, two floors below, every Friday there seems to be a party with the same four or five girls who dance and scream to the street and look out the balcony and stuff. Next week I'm bringing my big camera and the long lenses. Dum de dum...
Got a strange mail from a cellist in Cleveland; it seems that my book on Pablo Casals is a collector's item; only 300 copies were printed. Neat. I knew used bookstores would turn up something interesting :)
Reading the GalView sources to see how to integrate them into the calendar. It *does* seem useful now that we have search queries; it used to be that you could only change the range of displayed times and that did not seem very interesting at all for the calendar views.
Jazz/food evening at Goliardos in Tlalpan with Oralia, Luis Javier, Daria, Aaron, Nina, and Alex. Had a very good time.
Wheeeee! Our ultra-comfortable couch got delivered, ahem, and the delivery people caught me while I was in the shower. Fortunately Oralia was just arriving so that I could jump back into the shower and she would watch the movers. The couch turns into a bed if you open it, but it is waaaaaay more inviting as a couch; once you sit down, it is hard to convince your body to get back up again.
The apartment feels much more homely with a real table and chairs and the couch. We need a coffee table or something. Need to go back to the furniture bazaar to look for something appropriate.
Aaron and Daria arrived today; they will be staying at our place for a week. It is good to see Aaron. Took them to the office where we met the rest of the hackers and we all went for lunch. Tacos al pastor, and they loved them. Oralia took them home later because they seemed really tired and wanted to sleep.
Unproductive day, mostly tangling and weaving Makefiles for gtk-doc in the particular way that the Evolution Developer's Guide likes them. The GTK+ makefiles are really nice for trivial-ish things, but it is still painful to set up gtk-doc for something large like Evolution. Listening to Frank Zappa made it a bit more bearable.
Quick dinner at home with Aaron and Daria; talked about life and Boston gossip. Made a good omelet for myself with camembert cheese. Adding a bit of tarragon to the eggs while you beat them makes the whole thing just delicious. And Oralia's black beans plus french bread, yummi.
Michael sent me a truly beautiful edition of Ravel's concerto for the left hand. I really need to have my piano moved in soon; I miss it a lot.
Did I mention that Michael kicks ass?
Oralia made black bean soup. Like, good black bean soup. Like, really good black bean soup.
Putting your coffee in the microwave for 3 minutes makes it
An intelligent microwave would have a sensor on the rotating platform. And it would have a big blinking emergency light and a buzzer or something to tell you, "I have started to make a mess". A really intelligent microwave would also stop itself when that happens.
Wheeee, got back the power adapter for my discman so that I don't have to depend on batteries.
Michael Meeks kicks ass. Not only does he kick ass, he is a kind man, too.
Wow, Arik has a list of CDs he owns. That should be a good reference for good stuff to buy. Arik may have a twisted mind, but his taste in music and comics is impeccable.
Plenty of cutting&pasting code while refactoring, a nice mind-numbing experience that wastes few brain cycles.
I should upgrade the Evolution makefiles for programmer's documentation; they should use the new stuff from gtk-doc. This should Really(tm) be the Last Time(tm) these makefiles get tweaked.
Big rain in the afternoon. Had a long blackout in the office; everyone left. The clothes that were drying themselves at home got wet. Ah well.
Visited Luis and his dad in the evening; his dad opened a new little business. Had a good time. His dad gave me a little cactus plant for the house; very nice of him.
Fell asleep while hacking at home, got woken up by my laptop beeping and pleading for its battery to be recharged. It is that beep that says "give me love or I will die very soon". Had to comply.
Organized some books. It is good to have breakfast on a real table; did some Bukowski reading and felt that life is good.
Read a good part of the BonoboUI stuff to understand how it works; it is nice to know that it is not magic :)
Late show, Xizao. Very nice movie.
Yesterday, nice walk around Coyoacán with Alex and Nina. We went around the park, the marketplace, and then to the Frida Kahlo museum, as cozy and fantastic as always. It is a shame Oralia could not come.
After that, lunch as usual at my grandmother's. Had an interesting talk with my uncle about a group of Astronomy amateurs in the University who want to use small telescopes to measure the parallax to nearby stars. A hard thing, since the angles are really really small...
Today we finally got a big wooden table. It is nice to leave the kitchen counter for random stuff and to be able to eat on a real table. Also got a nice chest-like thing; the stereo lives on top of it now. Better than having it on the floor.
It is amazing how a table changes things. The apartment feels much more homely now.
Cooked a semi-minimalistic stir fry with red bell peppers, wild mushrooms, and some lettuce. Not bad even though it was pretty much all the stuff left on the fridge.
Blah, went to bed at 5 AM last night. Woke up fantastically late.
Refactored the task deletion code, fixed a few nits.
It looks like we are using the subset_model and the model in interchangeably incorrect ways in the task list; need to sort this out. I wonder if it would be a better idea to not use the subset model at all and just do the filtering using a search query. That may be cleaner/better since all the filtering would be done on the server side...
Nice breakfast with Nina; Oralia joined us a bit later. It is good to see that she is having a good time in Mexico.
Found a very bad bug in ETable. Much frustration.
Fixing small bugs from Bugzilla; this is fun.
Every time I listen to Beethoven's 5th piano concerto I always remember F. Paul Wilson's Healer, a great little SF book. Maybe it is because I read that book on a plane while listening to that concerto. It is a good recurring thought, anyways.
Wilhelm Kempff's interpretation with the Berlin Philarmonic does kick ass.
Cleaned up a little bunch of alarm editing code.
Committed the first pass of the event and task editor reorganization code. Things are now split into page objects that can be shared by both dialog boxes.
A little jewel, Invocación y Danza by Joaquín Rodrigo. Sometimes you put on a CD and a particular track hits you in the right mood at the right time.
My brother has started practicing this. When he is able to play it all, he will get a very very big hug from me.
GNOME board meeting; worked from home afterwards. Although it sucks compared to the office, now that we have an Airport there. Anyways, had a chance to revive my desktop machine.
Nice lunch in the marketplace; took a bunch of pictures on the way back.
Spaghetti carbonara leftovers for breakfast. Yummi. Plus some delicious mamey fruit. Double yummi.
Some self-indulgence action. Got a light table and, finally, a good loupe. Got Ansel Adams's The Negative and some CDs: The Who, Radio Tarifa, Beethoven.
Installed the new hub in the office, with a majorly cool setup of blinkenlights.
Wow, the photo lab that is close to the office does E-6 in 2.5 hours. And they are open until late, so I can pick up my slides on the same day, i.e. today :)
Nina is in Mexico, back from Guatemala. We should have a coffee one of these days so that she can tell me all about her trip.
I am in an incredibly good mood tonight. When you feel as low as yesterday, I guess your mood wraps around. I hope it stays that way.
Sometimes it rains on your whole life.
Woken up by Oralia's call again. Damn, she wakes up early. She told me she would be going to the birthday party of which she refused to let me take pictures. So she will not be going to the afternoon's concert. Sigh.
Slept some more. Woke up late. Off to downtown with Luis. Got a new hub for the office, some writable CDs, and the whatnot.
Saturday OFUNAM concert. My reason for going was Shostakovich's 1st violin concerto. Boris Belkin, the violinist, did kick ass. The orchestra did not kick ass. I am very pissed of at Ronald Zollman, the conductor. It seems that every time he conducts some work for which he does not particularly care about he directs it in a very nonchalant, lazy way. I know that orchestra can do an excellent job if they are kicked around a bit; just see Zollman conducting Mahler (which invariably kicks ass) or last week's Beethoven, or whenever some particularly neurotic guest conductor comes in (what was the name of that guy who conducted Holst's The Planets a few years ago?).
If the conductor does not care very much for some work, fine. But he should try to achieve at least a rigid performance, not a messy one. I think it is a lack of respect for the orchestra, the audience, and in this case especially the soloist. Especially when the soloist does kick ass.
Back home. Loneliness.
Woken up by Oralia's call. I hadn't slept very well; went back to bed. Woke up late, blah. Finished reading Jordi Soler's La mujer que tenía los pies feos over breakfast. Great little book.
Abnormal amounts of traffic, wtf. I need to get a bike.
Went to the Jaramar recital at the National Arts Center. A wonderful evening of ancient Sephardic music. It is a shame that their flutist left the ensemble a few years ago; he seems to have been replaced with a not-so-good cellist.
Loneliness.
Joakim came back with our lunch and gave me my change. I now have three new 20-peso bills with consecutive numbers. Neat. I am keeping those.
This weekend the UNAM Philarmonic plays Shostakovich's 1st violin concerto. This is going to rule.
Last night I got home and the moon was beautiful, so I decided to take my F2 with the non-working DP-2 meter out of its bag and take some long exposure shots. So I turn it on and the meter magically works again. It remained unused in the bag for about a month and now it just works. Wonders will never cease. Needless to say, this makes me very very happy.
Mother's day. Nice, quiet dinner with my mom; listened to Prokofiev's and Shostakovich's concertos No. 1 for violin. She decided to join in for the Saturday concert. Goody.
An updated gallery in that collection! This is so cool.
Got frustrated with the DnD stuff; asked Owen for advice. Started hacking on splitting the event and task editors into different page objects. Sense of progress, a good thing.
Our Airport at the office seems to be working. It is good to get rid of at least a few network cables.
Sigh, reverted John Harper's XSetInputFocus() timestamps patch. It looks like Sawfish *will* have to be fixed for this to work right.
On the other hand, fixed a buglet in EText that was causing multiple EEntry widgets in the message composer to appear focused at the same time. It is good to finally know that this had nothing to do with the Bonobo focusing code.
Finally got around to listening to the Apoptygma Berzerk CD that someone left once on my desk in Boston. It makes for actually pretty damn good hacking music. Finders keepers, so any attempts to claim it now will be in vain :)
Our stupid government finally decided to go into daylight savings time, which is good.
Yesterday I got a nice stainless steel thermos. Today I made some good coffee and took it to the office. It is good to have some in the afternoon as soon as lunch starts to make you feel like a zombie.
My Rollei 35's meter seems to be underexposing by 1 or 2 stops. But this varies with the light level. I wonder if the battery is being stupid. That would be weird; it is not that old. The meter was very accurate a few weeks ago. Hmmmm. Will have to get a new battery to test it.
I have mixed feelings about carrying ISO 400 reversal film around. It kicks ass for street stuff because you can use a high speed, even while you are in the car, and get something decent. It kicks ass because you can snap something while indoors. However, the maximum 1/500 second speed in my little Rollei is not enough for large apertures while outdoors.
The sharpness of the lens in the Rollei 35 still amazes me, though. It yields beautifully detailed and contrasty pictures. I should have some of them scanned. I guess I should get a scanner soon or investigate some cheap PhotoCD labs; Luis may know.
OFUNAM concert last night; all-Beethoven program including piano concertos 1 and 2. Completely awesome.
We have a washing machine, and it washes! Wooo!
Breakfast with Esteban at El Parnaso, had an interesting nerd conversation about PLCs and wireless networks and stuff.
Productive day. I may be able to do some not-so-evil hacks to fetch event information while you are dragging across view widgets. Drag cancellation is going to be fun.
International Labor Day. Woke up past noon and missed the GNOME board meeting. This sucks.
Went CD-shopping with Oralia, then we had lunch and went to watch Miss Congenialty, funny all over.
Go backward in time to Apr 2001.
Federico Mena-Quintero <federico@gnome.org> Thu 2001/Jul/12 21:44:39 CDT