2006-12-30 - 2:52

Christmas break

Okay, I guess that I should sneak in one more entry before the end of the year. Since I last wrote, things got crazy busy at work but in a good way. Oddly enough, the week that the boss was away was one of the most productive that I've had in ages.

Basically, we've been coding one project forever (which sounds bad but is actually understandable, since there are really only two of us doing the coding and it's a distributed management project whose scope can grow indefinitely). At any rate, we finally got to the point where we could test the system with a huge number of IPsec rules in place, which exposed some major flaws. Those results gave us the excuse to fix a number of things that had been on the to-do list for months, as well as solve some problems that we hadn't realized were there.

That led to a very busy few weeks but everything came together excellently; and it was also the most fun that I've had coding in a long time. A few months ago, I was bogged down in some of the least enjoyable stretch of work that I can think of since I started this job six years ago, so it was quite a turnaround.

As a positive side effect, I think that this crisitunity forestalled the usual panic mode that my boss inexplicably enters at the end of every year; and the last week before vacation was actually rather mellow, with us chasing some hardware issues. Hopefully, things remain positive in the new year.

As for the vacation, I ended up splitting it oddly this year, first taking off the second week of December, so we could make a visit to Laurie's homestead in time for her father's 60th birthday. That was a good trip, even if her mother can be a little high-pressure in terms of making plans, which isn't exactly my style. It was good to see her family again, though; and we also met up with Matt, Erin, Laura, Stacy, Todd, Richard, and Leah. We also went up the CN Tower, which I hadn't done since I was five. I'd say it's worth a trip every quarter-century.

After one week back on at work, I've been back on vacation and loving it. I quite enjoyed doing Christmas in Ottawa for the first time. My motivation on not heading home was mainly saving money but it also saved a lot of hassle. Instead of worrying about packing and catching a plane, it was nice to be able to just take a night to walk around downtown, see the lights, and stop for sushi. And at least I'm around to water the Christmas tree for a change and keep the inflatable Santa Homer going each night (after a quick duct tape repair job).

I think that I'm skipping any "best of the year" lists, since I doubt that I have much to add to the flood. I will say that either people are forgetting about Calexico when making their lists or else they didn't like Garden Ruin as much as I did.

Oh, and it was a shame to hear about James Brown. I'm glad that I got to see him at Bluesfest a few years back.

J.