Joey “Shithead” Keithley, for those who don’t know the name, is one of Canada’s punk pioneers. He’s the lead songwriter and driving force behind D.O.A., formed in 1978 and still going strong.

Joe also runs Sudden Death Records and is helping new bands get a leg up in the industry, as well as releasing new D.O.A. material. He asked my good friend Bill to whip up a website for him, and Bill asked me for a hand with the massive online store.

After a ton of revisions, changes, and files being sent through iChat, I’m proud to say that the store is finally ready and working. Part garage sale, part punk rock museum, part record shop, and all lovingly handmade. Come by and check it out. Props to my homies Bill and Shithead. Yo.

Someone’s done up an interesting website with folklore and odd stories about Canada, from missing US bombers to bathtubs and Ogopogo, there’s a bunch of stuff in there.

Thanks to Bill for this one.

I love covers – people singing other people’s songs. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s better than the original. At least it’s interesting. I was talking with Bill this morning and he reminded me of a cover database site – as a feature, they’ve compiled “chains” of covers. The longest one is currently 152 songs long. Very impressive.

This is brilliant. I can’t wait for the drug companies to object, on the grounds that medicinal marijuana doesn’t have anything to do with them, and they’re not allowed to make any money on it.

My favourite quote:

“A pharmacist isn’t going to be able to teach a little old woman how to roll a joint for the first time. Pharmacists aren’t educated around how to teach people about dosing themselves with cannabis.”

Here’s the full article from the CBC.

I sent the following email (without clever and/or ironic hyperlinks) to Steve, a technician at Primus after getting a toll-free number in record time.

Hi Steve,

Thanks so very much for the very fast turnaround on getting this new 1800 number provisioned for us. We were under pressure from a client of ours to tell them what number they would get right away.

While other phone companies were telling me that it would be at least a week before I could even know the phone number that we would get, after a 10 minute conversation with you around 3 this afternoon, not only did I have a good number reserved, but I had an application form in my Inbox as well.

When I followed up the form with you, you asked me when I’d like the number to be active – having dealt with other phone companies, both here and overseas, I said “Friday” in a vain hope that I might be able to get it up and running by next Monday or Tuesday. When you offered to have it running by the end of the business day today, I was astounded.

You went above and beyond the call of duty here. This means that there was a three hour turnaround from my first contact with Primus to having a working 1800 number that rang through to our lines. This is astoundingly good. I am a very very happy customer.

You and your colleagues in the customer engineering department have never failed to impress me with your technical aptitude, speed and overall quality of service. I wanted to single this episode out as being the most pleasant dealing I’ve ever had with any telecom company anywhere.

I believe that it’s just as important to give praise as it is to send evil flames, so I’m copying a couple of people who I assume are your bosses – I hope they see this and know what a fantastic job you’re doing. I’ve also raved to my MD about the excellent service I’m getting from Primus. We’d actually like to do something tangible for you, not just words – where are you located?

All the best,

Jurgen Schaub
IT & Systems Manager

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?

I’ve actually thought about this before, and I think I’d serve a combination of multi-ethnic “comfort food” (everything from bangers and mash to ph� to congee to butter chicken…) to odd, interesting and unusual food combinations (like my honey salmon, lemonade chicken)...

Another (somewhat sillier) idea I had was the random restaurant. People would come in, they’d be directed to a random table. They’d all be handed random menus, stolen from other restaurants. They’d make their orders, and the orders would be handed to the chef, who might or might not make them. Once the food is ready, it would be delivered to a random table. At the end of the evening, everyone would receive a random bill.

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?

When department stores began, product brand names weren’t very strong, and the public needed someone to trust. Thus, names like Grace Brothers and Myer (in Australia), Timothy Eaton and Woodward’s (in Canada), Sears-Roebuck (in the USA) became popular. They stood behind the products they sold, often offering guarantees that the public would believe in. “Go to Eaton’s,” they would say, “he sells good stuff.”

That kind of faith in a store rather than a product isn’t around much anymore. I’d want to try to change that. I’d only stock the good stuff. If it’s crap, it wouldn’t be in my store. I’d do research and stock a half dozen really good DVD players, from whatever manufacturer, buy apples from an organic farmer in Tasmania (or my friend Bill in the Okanagan). That kind of thing.

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?

I’ve co-written a book. It was non-fiction, about QuickTime. I started writing a sequel, all by myself, but I’ve been far too busy to devote enough time to finishing it, so my publisher was kind enough to release me from the contract a few months ago. If I every try again, it will be some kind of funny crime fiction or sci-fi (think Douglas Adams – RIP or Carl Hiaasen crossed with Douglas Coupland or Kurt Vonnegut but probably something completely different).

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?

I don’t think I’d trust myself to actually teach anything, except for a healthy disregard for convention. I’d be a terrible nuisance, running from classroom to classroom (or around the fields outside, for if it’s a nice day, I’d insist everyone go outside and take class there in the sunshine) talking back to the teachers, getting the students to question everything, reminding them never to forget to ask “why”. Upon graduation, I’d tell everyone to piss off to the other side of the world for a while, and get a real education before going to any kind of post-secondary education. I’d assign Dr Seuss books to the 12th year kids, and make sure everyone knew how to cook a salmon. I’d get them into the habit of reading the news (on paper, or on screen, I don’t care) and paying attention to the sources. I’d randomly send everyone home because it’s too nice a day to have to do anything in particular, and generally have a kick-ass time doing it all. Parents would hate me.

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?

It would be highly unusual. I can play the table (that’s table not tabla) and that’s about it. I can sing. Sorta. I know it won’t be like anything anyone’s ever heard before. Picture Einst�rzende Neubauten covering 80s classics in the style of Irish drinking songs, and you’re probably thinking in the right direction.

It’s precisely when humour is offensive that we need it the most. Comedy should provoke, it should blast through prejudices, challenge preconceptions. Comedy should always leave you different than when it found you.

Sure, humour can hurt, even alienate, but the risk is better than the alternative: a steady diet of innocuous, child-proof flavourless mush! Demand to be challenged! To be offended! To be treated like thinking, reasoning adults! And raise your children to be the same. Don’t let a comedian, a network, a congressional committee or an evil genius to take away your freedom to laugh at whatever you want.

(From Duckman season one finale).

For the past year or so, SCO has been hassling Linux users and companies, creating more Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) than Microsoft could have – as well as creating a bit of a distraction to Linux leader types, taking up their time. Time that could have been spent making Linux better. When this whole thing started, I had a hunch that Microsoft was behind it, as SCO’s tactics sounded awfully familiar.

Happily, lawyers and law experts working in the open source community organised themselves and provided advice. I think that’s something that SCO and Microsoft didn’t count on: legal people who had been using Linux for years now felt that they could contribute to the cause, and help the programmers who had given them the software.

Anyway, the dots have now been connected.

So, we discovered on Thursday that Microsoft talked to BayStar Capital on SCO’s behalf months before the investment house brokered a deal that led to SCO getting a cool $50 million round of funding. Well, well, well.
And recently, when SCO finally announced a real, live customer for its Linux IP license, it turned out that the company, EV1Servers.Net, is promoting Windows Server 2003 over Linux for its customers and is featured in a case study showing how Windows is better than Linux at Microsoft’s Get the Facts Web site.

Well I’m a happy camper now, at least where hard drives and firmware is concerned. Turns out it was a problem with the specific version of the Oxford 911 chipset I had in the external case I was trying to use. I swapped cases with a newer one from work (also Oxford 911 based) and the new drive worked fine.

Last night was a file-copying night, and I now have all my music on the new 200gb drive, all video stuff onto the 120gb drive, and all are working fine. Better than before actually, since the work enclosure is smaller and more portable, as well as having a smaller quieter fan that turns off when the drive isn’t spinning. So I don’t have to sleep with the noise of a hard drive anymore.

Someone must have put a technical curse on me. Everything technical I’ve had a hand in for the past several days hasn’t worked.

Episode one: the fax server

At work, I’m trying to get another few fax modems hooked up to our FreeBSD based HylaFax server. This requires the installation of a couple more serial ports. No worries, I happen to have a spare PCI card with two serial ports on it. After 6 hours of futzing around, I learn that the SUNxxxx chip used on the card isn’t supported in 4.9-RELEASE. It only got included in the 5.2.x tree a few weeks ago. Great. So I dig out an old 4-port card. No joy there either. So in desperation, I’m building a Mandrake Linux machine on an old Pentium I to see if I can get the old card working with that one. I’ll use that other machine as a dumb fax-out machine.

Episode two: the hard drive.

As mentioned in my previous entry, I just bought a spiffy new Western Digital 200gb hard drive. The idea was to put it in one of my external FireWire cases, where the old 120gb drive used to live. I installed it in the case, plugged it into the iBook, and was just about to format it when I noticed the capacity listed: 128gb. I looked inside the Firewire case to make sure the correct drive was in there. Yep, there it is. WD200. Screen says 128gb. Where did the other 72gb go? So after a couple of red herrings, I discovered an interesting article in Apple support.

Not all Macintosh products can take advantage of the full capacity of large (128 GB or greater) hard drives that use 48-bit LBA when they are connected via an ATA controller. Other controllers (SCSI or FireWire) are not affected. [Emphasis mine]

Okay, so some Macs can’t use big hard drives internally because of a ROM issue. I wonder if the chipset in my external drive case (the popular Oxford 911 chipset) is to blame here? After a bit more poking around, I’m 80% sure that the chipset’s the problem here. But, as the curse continues, Oxford’s support site appears to be down right now.

There’s a Firewire enclosure at work, and it’s newer than either of mine. I’ll do some testing with it, and hopefully my hunch will be correct.