Friday, January 20, 2006

Time flies when you've got good music

I've been reintegrating myself back into the Solaris Security community over the last couple of weeks, and doing a bit of traveling. (note: Canada is very cold in January). I'm working on writing up some stuff for how-to on the crypto framework, and considering doing a submission for our internal tech conference in May.

Today I've been listening over & over again to the Dogs Die In Hot Cars debut album "Please Describe Yourself". The songs are incredibly catchy - I'm already humming along (thank goodness I have the door shut). "I Love You 'Cause I Have To" and "Celebrity Sanctum" are very fun. The bands website claims they are indescribable, saying they were influenced by Nirvana & Red Hot Chili Peppers. Well, they don't sound a thing like those other bands, but are incredibly reminscient of XTC with their melodic harmonies & bright guitar.


Yesterday's CD of choice was the soundtrack to SPAMalot. Wow - what fun! The is different than when I saw the show in 2004 in Chicago (before it "premiered" on Broadway), but every bit as enjoyable. I love all of the Diva songs - especially "The Song That Goes Like This".


I'm coming to the realization that my CD collection has reached well beyond the limits of what I can actually reasonably listen to. I'm constantly finding CDs on my shelf that I totally forgot I had purchased. It might be time to go more portable and get an MP3 Player. Of course, realizing how I can be quite lazy, I think I'd need to go for a very large MP3 player so I can hold most of my CDs. This may be a time consuming process, but will let me experience some old favorites like Carter the USM, Front242, Ministry, Shawn Colvin & Annie Lennox, that are currently gathering dust.


Of course, that would mean getting a decent home computer to drive the ripping... hmmm, this is getting expensive. For now I'll just keep rotating my CDs at the office :-)

Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Ah, a new year!

Back in the office again.  Having a "winter break" at Sun US is great. Time to totally unwind, and not too many emails when you get back. :-)


I ventured back to the midwest for the holidays to visit my family, and see a couple of friends.  The weather was much more mild than it is here in the SF Bay area and the gas was more expensive - not exactly what I was expecting!  As always, it was a great joy to see my family, especially my niece & nephews (who are growing like weeds)!  These kids are growing up in a completely different world than I did.  As soon as I'd take any of their pictures, they'd immediately run up to me and demand: "Let me see it now, ok?"  No more waiting to finish a role of film and sending it off for processing, just "now". It's a good thing they are so cute.


Now that Solaris 10 Update 1 is out the door, I will get to start focusing more on Solaris Cryptographic Framework stuff again. Yippee!  All the same, I know I promised to go into more detail about how Solaris updates are created and I will... really!