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By Matthieu, 2009-11-28 15:16

Early this morning I was at Tim Hortons. I had the opportunity to see this:

Tim Hortons uses LINUX!

tim hortons uses linux on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

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By Matthieu, 2009-10-14 15:22

With Microsoft set to unleash its latest OS on the world in about a week, the Interweb is buzzing with all sorts of new Windows 7-related material. Some interesting things i’ve found:

Michael Dell says when “you get the latest processor technology and you get Windows 7 and Office 2010, you will love your PC again; we actually have not been able to say that for a long time.” Let’s hope that’s true.

Windows 7 also improves touch and tablet support, bringing a wave of new touch and pen powered devices. You’ve seen the HP TouchSmart PCs, and the old Tablet PCs. Now Acer has announced a relatively cheap (799USD) 15.6″ touchscreen laptop, the Acer Aspire 5738PG. Looks interesting, but I won’t be getting one… my wallet is still hurting after being hit by that MacBook Pro.

On a more personal note, I’ll be heading to Ottawa on the 26th for some training on Windows 7 Desktop optimization… should be interesting; also, Ottawa!

Also, less in the mainstream but equally exciting, only 15 days to go before Ubuntu Karmic!

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By Matthieu, 2009-10-06 23:27

This past weekend was also Nuit Blanche in Toronto. Highlights included a giant silver bunny-shaped balloon in front of Sears in the Eaton centre, four-letter words on a light sign at city hall, and sweaty blindfolded men cage fighting in the bus terminal.

Also, waffles.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch15GMJfYGg

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By Matthieu, 2009-10-03 05:08

Yes, I know it’s 5AM on Saturday morning. Yes, I know I should be sleeping. Yes, I want to be sleeping. But I’m not. And for good reason. I’ll start from the beginning.

Friday night was awesome. I left work and drove Marie-Sophie and Sebastien home, then headed over to the Eaton Centre to hang out and have dinner. Later on, I met up with some friends at their apartment. Emma and Alina were just back from auditions for some sketch comedy. We then had a few drinks and headed over to Dance Cave and danced ’til the place closed, singing on the way there and back. Back at the apartment, we had some awesome 3AM pancakes and headed to bed.

Pretty good night so far. But now to why I’m awake at 5AM. About 30 minutes ago, I heard a loud annoying beeping sound. Turns out it was the carbon monoxide detector. So we called poison control, who told us to call 911. Emma and I waited outside for the firemen to show up. They did, sirens and all, and then proceeded to declare it a false alarm. The fire captain then proceeded to have Emma sign away her first-born child and wished us a good night.

And that’s why I’m up at 5AM on a Saturday. Also, now Emma, Alina and Muna have a notice from both the fire and police departments on their fridge :).

Emma checking out the damage caused by rocking out.

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By Matthieu, 2009-09-30 20:02

Yes, I know it’s Wednesday. However I feel that the first half of this week has been eventful enough to merit a blog post. I’ll start right from Sunday.

Sunday looked like it was going to be a low-key day. All I had planned was to clean up my room and do my laundry. Early in the afternoon, I got a call from Charlie who told me that they were having a surprise party for Alina’s belated birthday at Diane’s condo. Naturally, I had to go. Had quite an awesome time, between guitar, sushi, mafia and just hanging out, it was a great night.

[youtube_hd 4HjMokTvFFk]

Monday also started off pretty quiet. (Literally, because since David is away on vacation in Europe, we don’t have Fréquence 3 playing in our office) Then I got an e-mail from upstairs telling me that my new Macbook Pro had arrived. I must say, it is a damn fine piece of equipment – glossy and brushed aluminium, no evidence of air vents, backlit keyboard, large trackpad… kudos, Apple. That afternoon, I was about to go into a meeting (where a whole lot of new projects were discussed) when Emma called. The boss was waiting, so I called her back later. Turns out the laptop I gave her was stolen from her living room while she was sleeping. Not a very nice thought/feeling. I went over to her place after work and had dinner with her Alina, Charlie and Muna. We watched the season premiere of House (a week late) and talked, again a pretty good night.

Tuesday I woke up on the couch (a very comfortable retro couch 😉 ), got ready for work and said goodbye to Emma. Outside, I found a parking ticket. (No overnight parking on Baldwin St. without permit apparently. Also, I think it’s pretty cool that the parking ticket was printed on plastic… Is that weird?) I then proceeded to drive to work. I took Bathurst St. north from College to Finch, most pleasant commute I’ve had in a long time, probably because it was refreshing to see some old downtown neighbourhoods that I’ve never seen before.

Today was the least interesting day of the week so far, not that it was a bad day, just didn’t particularly stand out. Pretty busy day, sorting through cerberus, making phone calls, installing jabber clients, troubleshooting access points… I also discovered a fantastic FREE personal finance software for Mac, iCompta. As with most mac apps, it’s pretty, and it works very well. (merci Mathieu).

So, thus ends the week (so far) in review. But the week’s far from over. Yet to come are Dance Cave on Friday, Nuit Blanche on Saturday… and a haircut, sometime.

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By Matthieu, 2009-09-11 22:45

Ouf! First real week of school means lots of technical support tickets. And BlackBerrys. And phone calls. All in all, a pretty busy four-day week. Anyway, it’s Friday, which means time to relax. I made a bad habit this week of staying up ’til 1AM, despite knowing that I have work next day. We had absolutely beautiful weather this week, sunny and ~20°C every day; as Père Antoine said, last weekend was the nicest weekend of summer ’09.

So the Beatles remastered albums were released this week, I must say they sound a lot clearer, but I kind of like the old sound…. But at least now I can listen to Eleanor Rigby without feeling like I’m going deaf in one ear. I also realized that Queen has 3 Greatest Hits albums; I was wondering why mine didn’t have “I Want it All” or “Under Pressure” on it.

Weekend plans:

• Get my File/Web/MythTV/Media/KVM/OpenVZ server running properly
• Clean up my room properly/Buy a dresser or other furniture, probably fro Ikea
• Help a friend get her ADSL connection working
• Try to figure out RSP and investments and other money things

Looks like the weekend will be fairly busy too.

Last thing: http://xkcd.com/635/ Oh, Ender’s Game. Best book of grade 10. If only we could all become powerful by means of WordPress.

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By Matthieu, 2009-09-02 23:04

(Note: the post title is C’est la rentrée, for some reason the PNG generator doesn’t take accents. Just needed to set Cufon to “Extra”)

It has now been September for almost two days. Summer’s pretty much over, and students and teachers are getting ready to hit the books. But not me. Thanks to procrastination and administrative stupidity, I didn’t manage to get through the necessary paperwork and won’t be able to head back to university until January at the earliest. I have to say though, it’s a bit of a relief not to be going back…

Today was the first day of school for us  at the CSDCCS. “But wait”, you say, “it’s not Labour day yet!”. Well, effectivement, Labour day is next Monday. However our Conseil decided that September 8th is much too late to start school. Instead, it has been decided that the 2nd and 3rd will be the first two days of school, but that Friday the 4th will be a “holiday” for teachers and students. Go figure.

Anyway, today I also went downtown to visit Emma and Muna in their new apartment. They’ve got a little basement place, pretty sweet location not far from U of T campus and Chinatown. Honestly it’s a pretty sketchy-looking place, but hey, that’s part of student life right? Actually, it made me feel kind of nostalgic… I miss the sketchy places, and just hanging out, reading webcomics and such.

That’s all for now… I even tried out two new “things” in the post today; inserted some français here and there and used people’s names (gasp!). Not sure if I’ll still think these were good ideas in the morning, but whatever.

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By Matthieu, 2009-08-21 01:44

So I was off work today… It was a pretty good day, just generally relaxed. Spent the day at home, then out for tea and a movie with old high school friends. I left home at around 6pm and it had just started pouring rain, with a few fantastic bolts of lightning. I walked in to the coffee shop and while i was waiting for everyone to show up, I noticed that the TV in the corner was showing CP24 news. Apparently there had been a tornado in the area of Vaughan Mills shopping centre. While we didn’t experience much more than a severe thunderstorm (and some flooding, it seems Silver City was closed), the whole experience was somewhat surreal: friends together around a coffee shop table watching news reports and amateur video footage, while fire trucks passed by outside… It was quite nice though, we talked about all kinds of things, joked about horoscopes, discussed storms…

After we had chatted for a while, we decided to go watch District 9. It was a decent movie, quite entertaining, and I thought it was pretty cool that it was set in South Africa, instead of the USA.

A few videos and pictures from the storm (not mine, unfortunately):

“Take Immediate Precautions” … lol

http://www.blogto.com/city/2009/08/massive_storm_hits_toronto_tornados_reported_across_gta/

Aaand I suppose that’s all for now.

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By Matthieu, 2009-07-23 20:51

I’m sure this has been discussed many times before, but I feel I need to mention it.

Why are women allowed to be more generous with emotional words and expressions? Why can’t I close my e-mails with “Love, Matthieu” without implying something more than friendship? This double standard leaves us men with a serious shortage of words to describe our level of “liking” for other people. I mean, really, “like” is such an overused word. I like strawberries. I also like my job, and some of my professors, and all my friends and family. So how do I differentiate? Someone I share experiences and interests with and feel a connection with is definitely on a different level of “liking” than my discrete math professor…

Just a thought.