Things I did in 1999

by Gerald Oskoboiny


This page records stuff I did in 1999. See also: 1998, 2000, or who cares?

Jan 18, 1999
Started archiving all my HTTP traffic.

Jan 23, 1999
Bought a Umax Astra 1220S 600dpi color flatbed scanner from egghead.com for $136 ($160 + $16 shipping - $30 rebate.)

Feb 12-16, 1999
Visited friends in Ottawa. Kicked their butts at pool (again.)

Feb 26-28, 1999
Went to New Orleans for the annual HWG board meeting.

Ate dinner at Emeril's on Saturday, one of the best meals of my life.

What a cool city!

March 12-19, 1999
St. Patrick's day festivities in Boston. (3rd annual!)

Mark, Dave, Mike, and Ted from Toronto and Pete from Nfld all came down to Boston in search of green beer.

More photos/details...

March 21, 1999
Upgraded my home machine to RedHat Linux 5.2 (from 5.1.)

April 3, 1999
Bizarre email of the day (I have no idea why I received this.)

April 4, 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 (Password protected))

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

See also: 1998, 2000


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Gerald Oskoboiny, <gerald@impressive.net>