Geek Philosophy

Following Jen‘s and Scott‘s lead, I’m doing the Relationship Who’s Who meme. Mel had the idea to alternate answers, so here are ours.

What are your middle names?

Mel: Eric and Lynne – Chris for his dad, and me for my godmother Lynn (but “with an e” like Anne of Green Gables).

How long have you been together?

Chris: This May, it will be 10 years. It hasn’t been completely continuous, but we’ll be celebrating a decade together on our second wedding anniversary.

How long did you know each other before you started dating?

Mel: I think we knew of each other throughout high school, but got to know each other in our first class together (Biology 12) a few months before we started “going out”.

Who asked whom out?

Chris: It was an awkward high school thing. Mel probably deserves the credit – she organized the first date, and asked me to the prom.

How old are each of you?

Mel: Both 28 in 2009; I’m about 9 months older.

Whose siblings do you see the most?

Chris: Definitely Mel’s. She knows them better, and they live close by.

Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?

Mel: Cleaning the bathroom.

Did you go to the same school?

Chris: Yes, for high school and most of university.

Are you from the same home town?

Mel: We both grew up in a number of different towns in 4 provinces and 1 territory, but ended up going to high school together in what we both consider our home town.

Who is smarter?

Chris: Holy Loaded Question, Batman! IQ, probably me, but what does that prove? Emotionally, most likely her. We’re both pretty sharp, I think.

Who is the most sensitive?

Mel: Me.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?

Chris: We prefer to try new places instead of going to the same place all the time, but we’ve been hitting up Dharma Kitchen quite a lot recently.

Where is the furthest you two have traveled together as a couple?

Mel: Hawaii. We’re planning a trip to Europe soon though.

Who has the craziest exes?

Chris: I don’t think either of us really have crazy exes. I have more exes, and at least one who acted a bit odd at the end of / after our relationship, so probably me.

Who has the worst temper?

Mel: Me.

Who does the cooking?

Chris: Mel, but she’s taught me a lot and I help her out. I’m referred to as the sous-chef come cooking time.

Who is the neat-freak?

Mel: Me.

Who is more stubborn?

Chris: We can both be stubborn, for sure. Mel’s more likely to be stubborn in the face of reason on an emotional issue, and I’m more likely to be stubborn in the face of emotion on a logical issue.

Who hogs the bed?

Mel: The cat.

Who wakes up earlier?

Chris: We’re both up decently early, even on weekends. Weekdays, I’m up earlier (only by 15 minutes or so). Weekends, it’s usually Mel who beats me by anywhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour.

Where was your first date?

Mel: We went on a group date with friends to see The Matrix on the big screen; Chris had seen it twice already.

Who is more jealous?

Chris: I don’t know if either of us are really jealous. I’ll say Mel, but only from logical deduction – I’m not jealous at all, so if she has even the slightest bit, she’s it

How long did it take to get serious?

Mel: 6 days and another 3 or so years.

Who eats more?

Chris: Probably me – I can finish off my plate and hers as well if I need to.

Who does the laundry?

Mel: I sort it, and am in charge of deciding what does & doesn’t go in the dryer.

Who’s better with the computer?

Chris: Well, I’ve got a degree in Computer Science and do it professionally… so I’ll say me. That said, Mel was the first of the two of us to learn HTML and have a blog (in the ’90′s, even!).

Who drives when you are together?

Mel: Usually Chris, because he will go to sleep if he’s not driving.

I’m late to the party, but I’m going to do this 25 things meme anyway. I won’t be tagging anybody, though – everybody I know has done it already.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

1. My name is Christopher Eric, after my parents Christine and Eric. If I was a girl, I would have been Erica Christine. Yes, my parents are mind-bogglingly creative

2. The first time I lived in a city larger than 30,000 people (after age 5, at least) was when I moved to Vancouver when I was 18. I’d be fine if I never lived in a small town again.

3. I recently became a manager at work. I’m enjoying this way more than I thought I would, but it comes with its own challenges.

4. Under the right circumstances (i.e. when I’ve recently shaved), I look very young. I’ve been asked for ID at bars for the past 10 years (since I first went at age 18), and whenever I go to student / industry functions everyone always assumes that I’m a student. I’m okay with that.

5. If I won the lottery, I’d do the requisite travel-the-world thing. After that, I’d buy a place near a university and take classes that interest me. I could see myself getting degrees in math, music, history, philosophy, law, and likely more.

6. In 1989 or 1990, several Bulgarian refugees came to the small town in Newfoundland where I was living. I made friends with one the kids, and we used to have sword fights with hockey sticks while he yelled “hockey”, one of his few English words. At one point I tried to teach him how to actually play hockey, but he wasn’t interested – sword fighting was more his thing, I guess.

7. Money Part I: I’m a thrifty person. If my wife was out of town for a week, I would probably eat a combination of canned goods, microwavable things, and instant noodles. It’s not that I can’t cook, I just don’t like spending money.

8. Money Part II: When I was 7 or 8, my parents rented The Adventure of Link for me. After getting stuck on day 1 of a 3 day rental, I cried to my parents in apology for wasting their money – I’m sure they were quite amused. I’ve gotten more reasonable, but I still don’t like wasting money.

9. Money Part III: My thriftiness helped me learn to like beer. I had never had alcohol growing up so I had never acquired a taste for beer. After spending my first year drinking $4 mixed drinks and ciders while all my friends drank 25¢ beer, I decided that I needed to convert. The first day of my second year, I walked into a campus bar by myself and ordered a pitcher of beer. My dislike of waste meant that I had to finish it, and afterwards (well, maybe a few days afterwards) I was a convert.

10. Speaking of beer, I’m not a big beer drinker (I rarely have any in the house), but I do enjoy a good local brew. I’m in a brewing club with some friends and we’ve made some delicious (and a few not-so-delicious) brewskis.

11. I didn’t think I was a cat person until grade 10 or so, when my parents effectively adopted a neighbour’s cat, Buddy. The cat and I bonded, and in December 2004 I became the owner of my own cat, Boots S. Kitten Esq. III.

12. I’ve been a video gamer for over 20 years, but I wouldn’t consider myself a hard-core gamer. I don’t really like First-Person Shooters, and although I love traditional RPGs (I’ve played 10 of the 12 numbered Final Fantasy games) I’ve never played an MMORPG (think World of Warcraft). That said, I’m really enjoying my (relatively) new Xbox 360, and there is a large (and growing) list of games I want to get my hands on.

13. When I was in grades 6 and 7, I often walked to school in the middle of the winter. In Whitehorse. That qualifies me to use the old cliché “When I was your age, I walked to school in -50˚ weather.”

14. I haven’t traveled very much. I recently went to Mexico, and I’ve been to Hawaii, but other than that I’ve only been to a few provinces and a few border states. Mel and I plan to change this in the near future.

15. When I was 8, I was the lead trumpet player in a Dixieland band. We were invited to play at a Liberal party convention in Gander. Someone took a liking to me, as I was invited to come back the next night to play a solo for newly-elected premier Clyde Wells. After I was done playing and was leaving the building, the first words I said were “Can we go to KFC now?” Hey, I was 8.

16. I’m very lucky to have known my wife for my entire adult life. I wouldn’t recommend that most people should marry their high school sweethearts, but I’m sure glad that I did.

17. One of my pet peeves involve websites that use arbitrary password strength requirements. You know the ones – everything from “password must be 12345″ to “password must be between 600 and 602 characters and contain the names of at least 3 popes”. Minimum password strength I can understand, but by requiring passwords to have, say, at least one number, they’re actually shrinking the problem space and making passwords easier to crack (dictionary attacks aside).

18. I hate having to pick favourites when it comes to thing I like. I really can’t say what my favourite band, food, movie, or game is. I can quickly list things in each category that I really, really like, but if I had to choose just one it would take me a while.

19. I would love to get my M.Sc., but I’m not willing to leave work to do so. I’ve seen some online courses available from American universities (notable Colorado State University), but they’re more than triple the price of local options. Unfortunately all the graduate-level computer science courses at the local schools are in the middle of the day at their out-of-the-way campuses so I’m unable to get to them. Perhaps in a year or two I’ll be able to convince work to let me timeshift a bit.

20. I’m a bit of a picky eater (no seafood, no broccoli, not a huge fan of baked goods), but nowhere near as bad as I used to be. For a brief time as a kid I would only eat the crusts of pizza as I didn’t like any other part. I didn’t start eating sandwiches or salads of any type until university. If you had told 17-year-old Chris that 27-year-old Chris would prefer a mostly vegetarian diet, the young me wouldn’t believe it (and probably say something like “yeah – NOT!”. Ah, the 90′s…).

21. For some reason I tend to over-think all of my blog posts, which really slows down my posting speed. This post is no different – I started it 5 hours ago and I’m only 80% done.

22. I enjoy watching hockey, but I wouldn’t really call myself a hockey fan. I’ll watch the Canucks play if we’ve been losing recently or winning recently with equal enjoyment, never getting on or off the bandwagon. I don’t “believe in our boys” or say things like “this year is our year” – come on people, it’s just hockey. The only reason that the Canucks are my favourite team is that they’re far easier to watch on TV than any other team. If I moved to Calgary tomorrow, I’d likely stop caring about the Canucks and cheer on the Flames.

23. My wife just baked cookies for us, and they smell delicious.. I take back what I said in #20 – she’s convincing me, one baking session at a time, that I actually have a sweet tooth.

24. I really like math, and always have. When I was in 1st grade, I borrowed my brother’s high school math books and taught myself about algebra and Cartesian coordinates. In university I did several courses in number theory (and learned more about the Chinese Remainder Theorem than anyone should know), and sometimes wish that my job involved more math.

25. For the past 3 years, I’ve spent 6 months of the hockey season in the top 3 of my hockey pool at work, only to plummet to 6th or 7th in the last month as my players fall apart. Currently I’m 2 points out of first – hopefully I can stick it out till the end of the year.

insanity, noun: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result

I don’t have the time or will right now to do up a fully researched, cited post on this subject, but I may in the future. For now, I just want to rant.

Recently, there have been a spate of shootings here in Vancouver – 7 in 8 days or something like that. Several people have been killed, and a lot of people are clamoring for the police to “do something” about it. Each of these shootings have been gang related, and we hear the same basic thing on the news after each one: “This was a shooting about drug money and turf, mostly to do with marijuana.” Only today has the news started mentioning what a lot of people are already starting to realize – marijuana should be legalized. Not decriminalized, not ignored-except-for-growing-and-trafficking, legalized.

This is not an argument about pot being healthy or anything (that’s a different argument, although a quick google or read on Erowid will show that it’s less harmful than, say, alcohol on almost any measurable scale). This is an argument that pot is better than organized crime and murder. Many say that this could never work, that the killings wouldn’t stop, that everyone would become addicts. Newsflash – almost half of Canadians have already smoked pot. If we were going to have a lot of addicts, we’d have them by now. As for the killings, is there any proof that legalizing the most commonly used illegal drug would cut the murder rate? Check this out:

US Homicide rates

After alcohol (which was the most widely used illegal drug during prohibition) was legalized, the national murder rate halved within 10 years. It started to rise again around the time that Nixon ramped up his “war on drugs”. This has been tried before in the past and has worked. At the same time, there’s an estimated $7 billion a year industry that’s not being taxed at all, while we’re running a deficit. Let’s kill two birds with one stone.

The same forces that created Al Capone and the Chicago gangsters are causing the violence here in my city. The majority of Canadians already want marijuana legalized – isn’t time to get democratic on this?

I’m trying to write here more, and in part this requires me to write when I don’t have a fully-formed, stand alone post. Here’s a random list of some recent things that are going on in my life or running through my mind.

• Work has been a bit hectic. Nothing bad has been happening, but it’s been a challenge to juggle several releases and get everything out the door this month. It helps that I work with awesome people.
• I’m looking forward to learning about git. Being able to work offline would be a benefit, but I think the real value that I can get out of it is being able to deal with branching and merging of multiple repositories.
• I’m watching Corpse Bride right now. It’s pretty good, sort of reminds me of Grim Fandango.
• I’m about to light a fire (well, a “hearth fire” brand fire log). It’ll be summer before we know it, so I want to take advantage of our wood-burning fireplace.
• There are a few topics that I want to do multi-post series on, but I’m having trouble getting the motivation to get started. I’ll get to them eventually, but the procrastination is annoying me.
• I manned the Sophos booth at a UBC career fair last week, and I’m going to an engineering event this Thursday. I enjoy doing these student-industry relation events, and I do probably 5 or 6 of them a year.
• I failed to get a haircut this weekend, even though I desperately need one. I’ll get to it tomorrow. Really.
• Last night we had the first Annual General Meeting of our home-brew club. My new official title is “Chief Cecil Firepower”. I’m willing to live with that.

I’m really starting to dislike the good folks at BMO Mosaik Mastercard.

In mid-January I realized that my trusty Mastercard was expiring and that I hadn’t received a replacement yet. I had a hunch that I hadn’t changed my address with them, so I phoned in and confirmed that yes, I was dumb and forgot to change my address. I updated the address and started checking my mailbox for the replacement card.

Around the 22nd my Mastercard stopped working. Tried to log onto the website, but no dice. When I got home that night I gave BMO a call, and it turns out that they’ve placed a security hold on my account since I had tried to change my address so close to renewal time. Also, a card had been sent to my old address in December, so that card would be cancelled. They told me that I would have to go into a branch to prove my identity and address, and that no new card would be sent until that happened. Bummer.

Sometime early last week I finally found the time to go into a branch during my lunch hour. After waiting in line and watching a thoroughly confused BMO teller wait on hold with Mastercard security, they eventually accept my identification and told me that a new PIN and card would be sent to me as soon as possible. I received the PIN last Friday and the Mastercard today, and attempted to activate it tonight. No luck.

Apparently the card that they had sent me, postmarked January 30th 2009, was the card that they had already cancelled and that they claimed to have sent in December. After requesting yet another card to be sent to me, I had to ask for the balance of my card – my bill is due on Feburary 9th, and I didn’t know how much I owed since I haven’t been able to access my account in any way for the last 2 weeks. I later phoned back to request a paper statement, in case there were any charges I need to dispute.

Yes, I realize that this situation is my fault for not changing my address in the first place. I don’t think that excuses BMO from sending me the wrong card, or from completely cutting off access to my account without so much as a courtesy phone call. My new card should arrive “sometime in the next two weeks” – I’m very glad I’m not the type of person who needs a credit card to get by – and hopefully that will settle things, but in the meantime I’ll be pretty annoyed with BMO.

UPDATE: About 14 hours after this rant my new Mastercard arrived. I’m not sure if the old PIN I received works with the new card, but I’m still glad to have a card again – how else am I supposed to collect Air Miles?

That’s right, another restaurant review. I should have some more diverse content soon, but Mel and I just got back from Dharma Kitchen ( 3667 W Broadway) and we enjoyed it so much that I felt compelled to write about it. Unlike my other reviews thus far this is a restaurant I’ve been to before, but because I enjoy place so much I decided go ahead and write.

Dharma Kitchen is a Buddhist restaurant. The food could be described as both Thai (lots of basil, coconut milk, bean sprouts, and tamarind) and vegetarian (plenty of tofu and tempeh – if not for honey, it would be vegan) but there are further constraints. Buddhist food omits any food that could lead to offense, such as in the form of bad breath – that means no onions, garlic, or ginger. (UPDATE: While the previous sentence is true for some Buddhist cuisine, I’m told that Dharma Kitchen uses both onions and ginger). The vibe is very peaceful and relaxed, so don’t expect rushing wait staff. There are also no stimulants or intoxicants, so you won’t be able to have a coffee or wine with your meal (although the herbal chai is great). I’m fine with all these things but it’s definitely worth noting before you come.

We were both pretty hungry, so we decided to start with a soup. Mel decided to to go for the miso (carrot, broccoli, zucchini and tofu in a miso broth), while I opted for the only other soup offered, the tamarind soup (tamarind, pineapple, beans sprouts, mushrooms, and tofu in a hot and sour lemongrass broth). We each enjoyed our cups, but while Mel enjoyed her taste of my soup the broccoli meant I couldn’t have more than a spoonful of hers. I’m pretty intolerant of broccoli though, so this wasn’t surprising.

Our dinner outing was precipitated by a craving for burgers, so we each ended up ordering one of Dharma Kitchen’s 5 available burgers. Mel chose the Bengal Burger (spinach, tomato, spicy Bengal sauce) and I went with the Thai Burger (peanut sauce, bean sprouts, tomato). Both contained nicely seasoned and textured tempeh patties and came on a sesame bun alongside a generous portion of thinly sliced baked potatoes. Between the two burgers, we both agreed that my Thai Burger was the stronger offering, although both were tasty. They were filling enough to make it a challenge to finish the lightly herbed potatoes, but thanks to the dropped sauce from the burgers and the small dish of delicious smoky dipping sauce I felt compelled to finish them.

As with most hearty vegetarian meals I’ve had, I left Dharma Kitchen feeling quite satisfied. I find that with vegetarian meals, even if I stuff myself I never really get that uncomfortably full feeling. This was my first dinner at Dharma Kitchen (having been their for lunch 5 or 6 times in the past), and I would heartily recommend it to anyone looking for a delicious and relaxing dining experience.