Things I did in 1999

Signed up for a free fax number from eFax. (the faxes are sent via e-mail, so now my faxes can get archived along with all my other incoming e-mail... cooool. Of course, I never use faxes anyway.)

April 10-12, 1999

Visited friends in Ottawa/Montreal. Photos/details coming soon!

April 12-14, 1999

Schmoozed with Bill Gates, Dertouzos, Metcalfe, TimBL and others at the LCS geekfest.

See photos I took at the reception.

May 8-25, 1999

Work/vacation in Toronto, Edmonton, and Newfoundland.

Photos/details coming soon! My itinerary was:

May 8: flew to Toronto, stayed at the Strathcona Hotel, ick.
May 9-11: W3C advisory committee meeting
May 12-14: WWW8 conference
May 14-20: Vacation in Edmonton
May 21-25: somehow ended up in Comfort Cove, Newfoundland

May 29, 1999

Saw Honest Bob & the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives with Yong-Mi and Dan.

June 11, 1999

Read "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson, very entertaining.

June 12-14 1999

Visited friends in Ottawa (Chris' birthday.) Photos/details coming soon!

June 16, 1999

Today I bought some peanut butter with a Y2K problem. ("BUY BEFORE FEB 1900".) (Skippy[tm] brand.)

June 29 - July 25, 1999

Vacation in Europe (Holland, Germany, Italy, France.)

Trip report/photos are in progress.

July 10, 1999

Missed Ian's wedding in Edmonton, due to Europe trip

Aug 21, 1999

Stayed up until 7:30am catching up on FoRK and reading (among other things) epinions company info/plans and ArsDigita Plans. It sure is tempting to pick one of these places and become a multi-millionaire within a year or two...

Aug 26, 1999

Upgraded my home machine to RedHat Linux 6.0 (from 5.2.) Spent several hours fighting with X, GNOME, and Enlightenment configuration; the Linux desktop still has a bit of maturing to do before it will conquer the desktop market. (which it will.) See what my desktop looks like so far.

Got a cable modem from RCN. Woohoo! (see also: FAQ) Impression so far: fairly good; peak speeds are amazing, my record so far is 360K/s on a large file transfer from a machine at work (rpmfind.net). Quality seems to vary depending on the time of day; occasionally there has been large amounts of packet loss and a couple complete outages. (New record as of 27 Jan 2000: 636K/s!)

Unfortunately I don't have enough PCI slots for the ethernet card and my WinTV card, so the WinTV had to go (for now, anyway.)

July/August, 1999

My 10-year high school reunion should've taken place sometime around now, I wonder if it did? (Apparently not.)

August, 1999

Thought about moving, looked around a little bit for a new place, but then decided it's too much trouble and I'll just keep the place I have now for another year or so.

Sept 10-13, 1999

Charles, Maggie, Hugo, Eric, Katy, and I visited Ian and others in New York city. See photos/details.

Oct 16-19, 1999

Visited family & friends in Edmonton (on a last-minute websaver flight)

Oct 3, 1999

UFOs were scheduled to attack today

Nov 17, 1999

Got an Olympus D-450 Zoom digital camera. Woohoo!

Dec 5, 1999

Happy birthday to me!

I ordered a free computer from MyFavoritePC today (free as long as I open an account at E*Trade and keep at least $1000 in it for a year.) I only had to pay $75 for shipping. (it's only available for shipping to US addresses.) I gave it to my mom for Christmas. (see: Intel 810 chipset on Linux clues, code/RPMs)

Also, I opened an E*Trade account to get the deal mentioned above; so far, their web site seems better than Datek's (better use of hypertext, web technology overall), but it's much more complex than it needs to be. (see also: my other investing notes)

Dec 22, 1999 - Jan 10, 2000

Visited family & friends in Edmonton:

Dec 22-31: Misc stuff (@@ photos)
New Year's Eve: Partied at the Sheraton. (see photos )
Jan 3-7: Worked from home, a little
Jan 8-9: Went skiing with family in Jasper (tried snowboarding for the first time, oh the pain...)
Jan 10: returned home