🍁 Kicou 🇨🇦 @kicou@kicou.info

The Stained Club

https://tube.kicou.info/videos/watch/c7b4865e-6b1b-496d-9ceb-55cb52765fb8

Yesterday during the snow storm, the thermostat sent me an email notifying me of a sudden drop in temperature that could indicate a furnace malfunction

Indeed, the home temperature had dropped to 18°C while the thermostat was set to 21°C

Upon investigation I found that the exhaust vent for the furnace had been blocked by snow, and had caused the furnace to stop heating. We had cleared the surrounding area but hadn't check the inside of the pipe: there wasn't much snow in it (it is facing downwards), but enough to block it.

I didn't know about this and it could have had dire consequences. So yeah: check your furnace vents, and make sure you have working carbon monoxide detectors on each floor of the house

https://youtu.be/rEbRMcFqwzs

Anybody remember Banyan Vines? I had to work on a large Banyan Vines network once, it was a long long time ago.

I don't remember much about it, but it's an interesting fact I can bring up at the Ambassador's cocktail parties, while gently grabbing a Ferrero Rocher from a silver platter.

Daughter is a volunteer tutor and helps kids with their lessons/homework online.

A kid said they needed to learn French. Despite being fluent in French, daughter was not prepared to give an introduction to the language, and teaching how to count to 10 made her realise how fucked up French can be, especially French orthography and all the things that you don't pronounce the way you spell them, or all the silent letters, that are silent until they are not.

Good thing she didn't have to go to 70, 80 or 90 because these would have been interesting ones to explain.

She also had to explain grammatical gender (which has nothing to do with biological gender), then moved on to pronouns and conjugation.

Poor kid must have been so confused.

I can't wait until the time she has to explain a phrase like "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette chose là ?"

I spoke too soon. The snow is not showing any signs of stopping and is accumulating on the ground.

Looks like the driveway will require several shovelling sessions today if we want things to remain manageable.

And I have to get out of the house today, so the driveway needs to be cleared anyway.

I have a teenage son eager to make a few bucks, so I know I'll get help with that :)

Ontario schools were supposed to return to in-person learning today, "no matter what".

However, Mother Nature thought otherwise and hit the province with "snowmicron", cancelling all transportation and switching everyone back to remote learning.

The school board was quick to cancel all transportation with barely 5 cm of snow on the ground. Usually it takes 30 cm and/or temps below -20°C for busses to be cancelled, and below -40°C to close schools.

WFH dress code

2019: Kids, you're spending way too much time in front of your screens

2022: Kids, turn your webcam on and spend the whole day in front of your screen, or else…

Currently replicating an Oracle 10g tablespace (yes, Oracle 10g) from a RHEL5 production system (yes, RHEL5, and yes, production) to a RHEL5 dev/test system (yes, again, RHEL5).

Thankfully, whoever installed the OS at the time did use LVM2, and the LVM snapshot tools are working, because the Oracle export/import process keeps crapping out, whether I use exp/imp or expdp/impdp.

At least with a filesystem-level snapshot I should have DB and redo log files consistent with a system crash, which Oracle should be able to recover from.

I only have 2GB of free space for the snapshot, but realistically it should be more than enough. I must remember to delete the snapshot when done, though.

Ya, sometimes I have to do weird shit.

Les N95/KN95/FFP2/KF94/DS2 sont réutilisables. Il faut éviter de les mouiller, et les conserver au sec pendant 5 jours entre deux utilisations (donc tourner entre plusieurs masques/respirateurs).

C'est bon à savoir car ils sont sensiblement plus dispendieux que les masques chirurgicaux. Et puis ça fera moins de déchets.

Le N95 est un respirateur* (souvent rigide, avec des lanières qui passent derrière la tête), le KN95 est un masque*, avec des boucles qui passent derrières les oreilles. Ils ont un degré de filtrage similaire, mais le N95 assure une meilleure étanchéité sur les bords (pour peu qu'on n'ait pas de pilosité faciale).

Le KN95 est facile à trouver en commerce et est accessible au grand public, le N95 est en général réservé aux milieux professionnels (santé, construction, et maintenant éducation).

*En fait je ne sais pas si la distinction existe en français, mais elle existe en anglais, du moins pour l'Amérique du Nord.

I am not too optimistic about the future of our society.

Why do our governments despise the health and education sectors so much, yet lean on them when facing a crisis, all the while cutting their budgets and personnel?

Health workers are leaving in droves (because they are overworked, burnt out and cannot take the abuse anymore, both from their hierarchy and patients).

Teachers and professors are next, for very similar reasons.

Soon, there won't be enough health personnel to meet the increasing needs of an aging population, and nobody left to teach the future generations.

What can go wrong?

I see this as sure signs of a civilisation that has passed its peak and is on the decline.

Le chat a réclamé à sortir mais il n'a pas tenu 10 minutes dehors.

Ça doit être "feels like -22°C" qui le dérange un peu.

Le prix moyen d'une maison dans la région de Waterloo a dépasé 1 million de dollars.

Même les gens qui viennent de Vancouver ou de la Silicon Valley trouvent que nos prix sont débiles.

Je suis d'accord.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/even-people-from-vancouver-and-silicon-valley-think-k-w-housing-market-is-bonkers-1.6307393

La France abandonnerait le projet "Health Data Hub" sous sa forme actuelle, car la majorité des Français serait incapable d'en prononcer le nom correctement.

(I'll see myself out)
🚪⬅️🏃

• Hello support? My {Windows/MacOS} computer feels very sluggish today

• It's fine, it's just your antivirus software mining shitcoins in the background

https://community.norton.com/en/forums/faq-norton-crypto

Bon sérieux, je devrais me recoucher.

Je suis sûr qu'il y aura des clients qui vont décrocher le téléphone à la première heure parce qu'ils ont des problèmes de connexion genre ils ne se rappellent plus leur password car ils ne l'ont pas utilisé depuis l'année dernière.

I got caught in a snow storm when going to the store today.

The ride in the night was beautiful, with the big flakes twirling in the wind and the snow-covered roads illuminated by Christmas lights.

I'm giving it four stars: will go grocery shopping again.

Emmentaler and Gruyere are easy to come by, so this is what I used for this evening's cheese fondue. I looked for Comté or Beaufort but couldn't find any. I got some "Canadian Emmentaler" instead, which tastes very different from "real" Emmentaler, and this is a good thing because I wanted a third cheese.

I had white wine left from cooking mussels yesterday. And of course there is always ground nutmeg and corn starch in the pantry.

The kids liked this fondue much more than the ready-made mix from the grocery store. From now on they want us to mix our own Swiss fondue.

Madame, qui a quitté la France il y a 20 Noëls, a hâte de regarder les films du temps des fêtes. Par exemple cette semaine elle a re-re-re-vu "Le Père-Noël est une ordure".

Et là c'est le drame: aujourd'hui elle apprend avec horreur qu'en son absence, il y a eu un reboot du "Sissi Cinematic Universe".

Je pense que la confusion vient du fait qu'on utilise le mot "micron" pour désigner le micromètre, et que dans ce cas le mot se termine avec une voyelle nasale /õ/