Email, sleep and a couch warming party

Had an interesting weekend, looked into mutt for mailreading again, alas, it doesn't meet all of my needs (most importantly, being able to have more than one active composition open at the same time), so I'll stick with dtmail & pine for now. The search for a much less lame mailreader continues.

Saturday started out with an incredible lecture on sleep and the brain at Stanford, featuring Professors Dement and Kushida. Wow! I never would've thought sleep could be so interesting. Both speakers were energetic and interesting.

Dr. Kushida extensively covered obstructive sleep apnea, different types of insomnia (including things to help treat this yourself - like, you should never lay awake in bed for more than 20 minutes. If that happens, get out of bed and do something in a different room that will make you drowsy and only then return to bed), narcolepsy and violent somnambulisms (sleep screaming, running, driving and killing).

Dr. Dement is a pioneer in sleep research and is the doctor who actually discovered REM sleep, which he noted is common in all mammals. There was a lot of information about REM and what happens to the brain after you fall asleep. For instance, the brain keeps sending signals to your body - it's only due to REM paralysis that you normally don't act out your dreams in the real world. He also covered, in depth, the concept of "sleep debt". Simply stated, sleep debt accumulates the more days you go without a full night's sleep, and one good night's sleep does not make up for all of your missed sleep. I've always felt that this was true, but so many of my friends said that it wasn't possible to accumulate a lack of sleep. Dr. Dement presented some very compelling evidence (including a study done at NIMH that accidentally proved his hypothesis that sleep debt existed), so I'm going to follow his advice and try to get just a bit more sleep every night.

And as a strange highlight this week, I went to my friend Val's house for her "couch warming party," where her Swedish friend, Lina, made us delicious Swedish meatballs, mashed popotatoes and herring pie. I was surprised, the herring pie was really good! At the party, I ran into a fan of Professor Dement who has now loaned me the book "The Promise of Sleep," Dr. Dements attempt at educating the general public about sleep and why it is so important.

Update 1 is rolling right along, still generating tons of emails. Most of the features targeting this release have been reviewed and are just "soaking" waiting to integrate. There will be a few driver updates later, but it's still exciting to see things progressing this far. It's a lot of work being a tech lead, but very interesting.

Trail Etiquette

So, I was riding on St. Joseph's hill this weekend, and as I was about to overtake a couple of walkers, I called out the standard "On your left!" Well, the walkers didn't move and continued to take up the majority of the trail. I was afraid I'd clip one of them as I passed, so I called out again and slowed down. Yet, as I got closer, neither of the walkers had moved, so this time I yelled out "On your left!" One of the walkers turned to me and shouted, "We heard you the first time!"

Hmmpf. In case it's not obvious, faster users of a trail not only announce their presence as a courtesy, but also for everybody's safety.

Still, had a great ride. It was much more difficult than it should've been, which means I need to get out more.

Email and Updates!

Working on a Solaris update generates lots and lots of email. My poor inbox is swelling and it's giving good old dtmail a run for its money. Now before you get on my case for using such an outdated mailer, let me explain: I like dtmail's WYSIWYG interface (it doesn't do any editing after I hit "send"), ability to open links in messages, plain text reading (I'm not forced to look at disgusting porn images from spammers), sorting with views, and ability to be editing multiple messages at a time. Now I do need to use pine every now and again to go in and delete tons of email to get the quantities down.

I hear Evolution has come a long way since I first gave it a try a couple years back. Perhaps I should give it another try...

S10 update 1 is moving right along - we're in the middle of our second build and all is still going smoothly.

s10u1

In response to the comments on the Update1 post - it's much to soon to post a feature list, the gate just opened! I don't want to count my eggs before they hatch! ;-) There is a lot of process involved into getting into an update release, mostly because updates are essentially a collection of patches and making a patch is more complicated than a standard integration. I'll post more on features as soon as I have more firm information on what is going into the ON consolidation.

Solaris 10, update 1

Is really ramping up right now! We've opened our gate and we're now taking putbacks for features that just couldn't quite make it into Solaris 10. This is my first time working on a "c-team" (consolidation team) since I've been at Sun. I'm no longer just getting a bird's eye view of how a release works - I'm in there with the wolves! It's all very intense, but exciting! I haven't been so closely involved with a release since I worked on SunScreen several years ago.

SPAMalot! The Musical

I was fortunate enough to secure tickets to Monty Python's SPAMalot in Chicago last week. It's a musical version of Monty Python's the Holy Grail, written by Eric Idle. This was a fantastic production - I've never laughed so hard during a musical! The show is world premiering in Chicago, getting ready to go to Broadway in February. According to the usher near us, the show is constantly changing based on audience reaction. Unfortunately, our "limited view" seats were even more limited by the castle walls built on the proscenium, still we had a lot of fun.

The cast featured Tim Curry as King Arthur, Hank Azaria as Lancelot and rude frenchman on top of the castle, and David Hyde-Pierce as an apt Sir Robin. The show had so many references to Monty Python sketches that I lost count, and even worked in the ever popular "Look at the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian as a singalong! The female roles were beefed up quite a lot - the Lady of the Lake/Guinievier/Cow was fabulous. John Cleese even had a cameo as the voice of God.

One thing that was surprising was that from our limited view seats we had a full view of off-stage-left, and apparently these professional actors had never been told about two basic rules of theater: 1) be in character the moment you step backstage 2) if you can see the audience, they can see you. So, I got to see several ensemble members getting into costume (usually as monks, which were played by women) and joking around with someone backstage. The program for the show was also a bit disappointing, as almost all bios were a very dry read of every role each actor had ever played and where. The two notable exceptions were the bios of Monty Python, Eric Idle and Brad Bradley (a former theater bathroom cleaner ;-).

SPAMalot! The Musical

I was fortunate enough to secure tickets to Monty Python's SPAMalot in Chicago last week. It's a musical version of Monty Python's the Holy Grail, written by Eric Idle. This was a fantastic production - I've never laughed so hard during a musical! The show is world premiering in Chicago, getting ready to go to Broadway in February. According to the usher near us, the show is constantly changing based on audience reaction. Unfortunately, our "limited view" seats were even more limited by the castle walls built on the proscenium, still we had a lot of fun.

The cast featured Tim Curry as King Arthur, Hank Azaria as Lancelot and rude frenchman on top of the castle, and David Hyde-Pierce as an apt Sir Robin. The show had so many references to Monty Python sketches that I lost count, and even worked in the ever popular "Look at the Bright Side of Life" from Life of Brian as a singalong! The female roles were beefed up quite a lot - the Lady of the Lake/Guinievier/Cow was fabulous. John Cleese even had a cameo as the voice of God.

One thing that was surprising was that from our limited view seats we had a full view of off-stage-left, and apparently these professional actors had never been told about two basic rules of theater: 1) be in character the moment you step backstage 2) if you can see the audience, they can see you. So, I got to see several ensemble members getting into costume (usually as monks, which were played by women) and joking around with someone backstage. The program for the show was also a bit disappointing, as almost all bios were a very dry read of every role each actor had ever played and where. The two notable exceptions were the bios of Monty Python, Eric Idle and Brad Bradley (a former theater bathroom cleaner ;-).