Last Post!

Not sure what happens tomorrow, when blogger turns off FTP. Rather than blogging in the coming months I can focus on installing a CMS on my server @he.net

See you on the other side.

It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression ...

I don't understand. It's San Francisco! How difficult could it be to find 12 gay men that like softball!

If it was Arkansas I could understand it, they wouldn't have enough eligible participants, they'd have to bring in a couple of hetros to pad your team.

Gay Softball League Sued for Discrimination

Stupid makefiles

Why do make files have their own language? Why is it that the crucial last step to build your app, as a C/C++ developer, is write a script in an obscure '70s language?

Why can't I write my makefiles in C? I know how to write C, I do it every day! But makefile, I have no idea how or why it works (or doesnt).

Once ever three months I'm forced to crack open a makefile and dick with some obscure jumble on non-alpha characters that dictate the relationships between some .cpp files and some .o files. No wonder I get it wrong and resort to copy/paste of an old 400line makefile from the 802.3 driver I tampered with 5 years ago.

Grrr, taxes

Tax season again.  Spent the whole day trying to figure out "cost basis" for ESPP shares that I bought in 2007 and sold in 2009.  Naturally, it being 2010 now, I can't remember what I paid for the shares, what they were really worth, how much commission I paid, how much they sold for, what the price was at the start of the ESPP period, whether I already paid tax on the discount ... fuck it's a nightmare.

Also sold some BT shares that I bought at the height of the dotcom boom.  since I bought them they split into two different companies and my broker got taken over twice.  What records I have of the purchase are irrelevant, and the records eTrade has don't seem to match.  Trying to calculate the cost basis on those took the rest of the afternoon!  There's the price I paid for the BT ADR, then the price on the "BT PLC ADR" that they became after the O2 split, which doesn't seem to match the price eTrade has listed as the per unit share.  Does that include the Dreyfus (or was it BrownCo?) commission?  I can't tell.

It's not worth the hassle!  But it was a tax write-off.  Sometimes I think it might just be easier to keep all you assets as $20 bills in the mattress.

Another Tahoe Trip

Took Ben up to Tahoe again last weekend. Drove up Friday afternoon and had Saturday and Sunday playing in the snow.

As with the last trip we stayed in Kings Beach (Ferarri's Crown) and skiied/boarded at Northstar.

Ben wanted to try snowboarding (finally, yay!), so I booked him in for a lesson Saturday morning. This of course meant that I was doing runs on my own.

He said he enjoyed the boarding, but Sunday he wanted to get back on the skis, as he wanted to do the black runs with me. Not surprising really, bunny slopes or back side black ... The boy's not stupid.

Like me, Ben loves going through the trees at the side of the slopes and taking on all the little jumps. There's a chance he could master the half-pipe! Which I've never dared to do.

We didn't get any fresh snow this time and the temp was in the high 50s/low 60s so it was a nice spring skiing weekend, no snow jackets required, shades not goggles.

The icerink in the village (at Northstar) is melted. I was please to see they were using it for a roller rink and they still have a band playing.

Skiing solo was definatly more strenuous than going with Ben. Less time stopped on the hill waiting for him to catch-up, I was more worn-out on Saturday night than I have been on the other recent snow trips. But it was good to do some long, uninterrupted runs by myself for a change.