pokernut’s weblog

I was reading the Driving section in the paper the other day and there was an off hand mention to the BMW 1 Series and about when it may be coming to the Great White North.

This sent me on a bit of a news trolling operation looking for bits and pieces around the web. All of it was old news but I have this little flicker of hope within that burns with the idea that the 1 series might be headed this way. Maybe 2007 is our lucky year.

There is a complete and utter lack of competent rear wheel drive vehicles that are suited to city living. Mazda has the MX5, a lovely little package with the new for 2007 retractable hardtop… and that’s all I can really come up with. Oh, the Mini which is indeed nice but is in need of a face lift. It’s look is getting a little dated. The 1 Series would fill a nice gap that exists in the market.

Then again, maybe it’s just me wishing I could have been in a position to snag an M Coupe.

Wow, it’s been a while.

So much has happened in the past 3 months. Been working at a new job which has been totally awsome. It’s been pretty busy. I’m basically working on an Asterisk PBX solution. It’s much more involved than that though.

Mizard and I have moved into a place together in Vancouver. It’s been pretty hecktic trying to get everything unpacked. The computer was the first thing set up and we had ADSL installed and running before we had the furnature moved in

I’ve got some serious catching up to do around the old blog. OpenBSD 4.0 is around the corner and I’m thinking it’s about time I performed an upgrade to the server box. Not looking forward to that. Way too much stuff runs on this box.

Anyway, I’ll catch up on all the points mentioned above soon. No more slacking!

Highschool is an amusing time to reflect back on. The people you’re friends with then. The friends from then that you’re still friends with. Who you are as a person today vs. back then. It’s all just very interesting.

I’m reflecting on this because I’m on the planning committee for my 10 year highschool reunion. It’s frightening to think of how much time has passed and the things that have been acomplished (or not as the case may be ).

Anyway… one of the funny things that has stuck with me is this e-brake that was given to me as a birthday present by a couple of my best friends from back then (who yes, I’m still very much friends with). It’s a e-brake from a 80’s era Accord that was taken from a wrecker and mounted on a block of wood with a plaque that says ‘The Sacred E-Brake.’

At the time of it’s presentation it was accompanied by a poem after which this blog post is titled. I’m including it below out of…. not nestalgia, but that I had misplaced the poem for a while and it wasn’t till it was missing that I realized how much it meant. It’s one of those things that embody a period of time in ones life that is very close to your heart and… I think you probably know what I mean.

“Ode to an E-Brake”

O’ Mr. E-Brake,
So sleek and long and hard,
How I do wish to pull you,
Whilst in my neighbour’s yard.

You bring me so much pleasure,
You bring me so much joy,
Even though my mother says
That you are not a toy.

O’ Mr. E-Brake,
Your wonder reigns supreme,
Your beauty surpasses all the rest,
Your honour and esteem.

When I think upon thee,
Mr. E-Brake, what would I do,
If only a foot brake I did have,
And I could not reef on you.

In the parking lot I pull,
The E-Brake and come spinning round,
The blackness of my tire left,
Upon the pavement ground.

For there’s nothing quite as fun,
Nor anything so great,
as comming ’round a corner,
And reefing on the E-Brake.

Late at night when I’m asleep,
I dream on thee, O’ Sacred Brake,
I wish for yet another day,
For when a doughnut I may make.

Authorship credits go to Ben P. and Annelisa P.

Well, I’ve been getting over a wicked case of strep throat that has had me out of commission for that last week. So mizard got after me this evening asking if I was up to a glass of wine to mark my return to health. I figured sure, better that than a beer (what with the yeast in it).

So we’ve got quite a respectable wine fridge. Since we’re going to be having yew york steaks for dinner it was a question of which red to open. We’ve got about a half dozen bottles of the Burrowing Owl Syrah of varying years. There was 1 bottle of the 2002 and 4 bottles of the 2003. The other choices were a bordeau and a malbec.

I’ve been lusting after that bottle of bordeau for a while but am trying to let it sit a while. I’ve had it before though and it’s hard. We decided to go with a syrah because we had a bunch of them and wine is meant to be drunk sometime.

Boy am I glad we did. It’s been a while since we’ve drunk any of the syrah and it’s finally hit its golden years so to speak. It’s really opened up nicely. We’re really going to try and hold off on those other bottles now and let them sit that extra year. The difference it’s made with this bottle of 2002 we’re drinking is remarkable.

Well, mizard and I were asked if we’d care to go down to the New York Voices concert at the Orpheum yesterday evening. Although the orchestra has been known to be a little rough around the edges with the concerts in their ‘Pop’ series, I said to mizard that it’d be neat to go hear New Your Voices sing.

The Orpheum isn’t necessarily set up for a concert with mic’d singers but they managed to get the sound figured out just after the start of the 2nd half. Prior to then, the mic levels on New Your Voices was just a little low in comparison to the overall volume of the orchestra.

They did a beautiful rendition of Old Friends/Bookends from Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends album. NYV’s vocal control is amazing. It was so impressive listening to them without the VSO playing. Although IMO, the VSO makes for a descent backup group.

For those of you who read this blog, if you’re into this sort of thing I’d highly recommend you go down and listen to the concert. They’re singing again tonight at the Orpheum. Don’t buy tickets ahead of time. Just go to the ticket office at the Orpheum right before the concert and get ‘Rush’ tickets. Mizard and I paid $15/ticket. Much more reasonable than the Ticketmaster gouging.

There’s a remote root advisory for sendmail that’s been out since around March 25. It reads as follows (from OpenBSD 3.7 errata page):

A race condition has been reported to exist in the handling by sendmail of asynchronous signals. A remote attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running sendmail, typically root.

Scoobyd wants to run a mailman list from one of her domains hanging off of the box hosting this and a whack of other domains. I figured I’d better upgrade the sendmail version to include the patch to fix this vulnerability since it’s going to be internet facing now instead of just hanging off of lo0.

I started with the patch on the 3.7 errata page and applied it to 3.6 stable. There were about a half dozen rejected hunks across a couple of files that required hand merging.

In the hopes that I can save someone else a little time merging the rejected bits, you can find my patch at http://pokernut.net/wp-content/OPENBSD36_sendmail.patch