July 07, 2004

Better pack a pie...

Well, here I am, computerless. Again, dammit. My bloody iBook has failed for the fourth time in a month, this time taking the disk drive down. The past three times have been a dead backlight and several attempts on Apple's part to fix it. Third time was the charm there, but the seven hour lifetime of one of the repairs was, shall we say, less than impressive. Apple care's answer is, "Well, we'll fix it again" with a (barely) polite fuck off on the end.

Swell.

So here I am, stuck with no non-work computer access again. I'm going to be down for another week, at least, and depending on how things go I may well not get it back in time for OSCON. (I leave on the 22nd for an off-line week doing house repair) And there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to do anything significant on the pie-thon challenge between now and then, and I've not gotten fuck all done the past month on it because of this. It's likely I'm not going to have my OSCON presentation in a presentable shape either because of this.

I am so looking forward to this. I get to catch pie (unless Leo comes through, which is more than I can honestly ask for) and stand in a room and do shadow puppets for 45 minutes in front of a screen with a big "Shadow puppets and lack of slides brought to you courtesy of Apple Computer!" Oh, and any attempt to convince the folks at work that the crapulent windows laptops that the sales folks have should be replaced with apple gear is shot to hell too--while the windows machines are utter pieces of crap, at least if they do go back for repair they get fixed the first time. (And no, nobody really cares that Apple only screwed up the repair twice, not three times)

Fun. Or... not. Not, bluntly, that there's a whole lot to be done about it at this point, other than save up my nickels to cover the round of drinks I'm going to owe Guido, and the eventual replacement of the iBook the next time it dies. I'm thinking something in an IBM thinkpad may well be the way to go here, unless Apple somehow makes really good on this. I don't think Steve's Reality Distortion Field's that good, though I could be surprised. Posted by Dan at July 7, 2004 02:34 PM | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Hmm.. If one guy's HD crashing (even if it's Dan's) is what it takes to give up on the pie-contest...

Maybe there's a bottle neck in the way you people organize the whole Parrot project - looking back on other parts of the Parrot project seems to indicate this as well, IMHO.

Delegation is a nice thing...

Posted by: Yugo at July 7, 2004 03:05 PM

Well, given that this was a personal bet between Guido and me, the fact that I'm a bottleneck really shouldn't be a surprise.

Posted by: Dan at July 7, 2004 03:10 PM

You should drag Steve Jobs along and make him take the pie for you.

Posted by: Brent at July 7, 2004 03:16 PM

Hardly Job's fault that I didn't dig into the callenge earlier. I put this off way too long, and didn't get other people involved the way I ought to have, and let other things (granted, work and family, but still... not like I didn't know about this) get in the way.

I'm annoyed at Apple, a lot, over the way the repair's been handled. I'm very annoyed at myself, for leaving me this open to problems with the pie-thon.

Posted by: Dan at July 7, 2004 03:21 PM

Dan,

Will you take a loaner?

Posted by: S. Hearn at July 7, 2004 06:35 PM

I don't like The Other Microsoft anymore!!

Posted by: Sean M. Burke at July 7, 2004 08:19 PM

Equipment failure is the least of Parrot's problems. If Dan had spent less time over the last year thumping his chest and more time programming, he would have finished with time to spare.

Posted by: dog ate my homework at July 8, 2004 01:15 AM

This doesn't make a damn bit of difference to Parrot itself, and never has. (Up to a point, working on parrot's job-related for me) The pie-thon contest has always been extra-curricular, and the fact that I've not had a way to work on a python bytecode decompiler, or python bytecode to parrot bytecode compiler doesn't reflect on Parrot at all. (What it says about my time management skills is a separate issue, but if you're going to whine about those then you can run Parrot instead--the job is and always has been open to anyone who wants it)

Posted by: Dan at July 8, 2004 09:11 AM

Well, if people are goint to start flinging poo about who's late on which projects and why, do turn your critical eye in the direction most deserving of it, Larry.

Posted by: IMA GENE at July 10, 2004 07:25 AM

I just wish I had a machine to lend you. Good luck, hope you can beg/borrow/steal a new Mac and see this one through (without pie on your face).

You've acheived a hell of a lot so far (in a relatively short time). It'd be a real shame to lose this one due to not being finished on time.

Fingers crossed for you.

Posted by: Sam Phillips at July 10, 2004 08:35 PM

Well Dan, let me remember: you run Parrot! From that point of view, you did a hell better job ironing out events/strings/CPS specs/issues and writing Parrot compiler for your Big Work Project than playing catch-up with the Pythonians' evil test suite. And what's the big deals about not having slides? Just your words about Parrot's internals (IO/events integration, MMD ops, CPS) would stir up the discussion as they did in perl6-internals. Your are my personal hero for not being enticed to avoid the pie-in-your-face by spending the whole year implementing Python ops (solving your personal bet with Guido) but working on what's a thousand times more important (making Parrot a better system). And let me tell you what: Python will be always here to make it run faster on Parrot. So, take this pie as a decoration, shoot a picture, and put it on the wall to remember how you served the community better than your personal bet.

Posted by: RNS at July 11, 2004 04:42 AM