Well, that certainly took a while.
The update to Drupal 7 was quite the pain, but seems to be mostly working now. The theme is still busted and most other things are not working, but hopefully I can be back up and running within a week or two. In the meantime, I post tidbits to a Google+ account. We'll see how long that lasts.
Several weeks ago, three friends and I had the opportunity to visit the Cabane a Sucre Au Pied de Cochon. To read the comments on Internet forums you'd think it more likely to come across a spotted unicorn in your dining room than to score reservations to the Cabane. In reality, though, all you need to do is call well in advance. And by well in advance, we're talking about 6 months. So, if you want a table for next year, you'd better be getting your dialing finger ready sometime in the next few months.
And – unlike most things that are hyped up to be something they're not – in this case, it's well worth the wait.
The planets were so well aligned, in fact, that our reservation coincided exactly with my buddy Vahe's birthday, making for an easy, inexpensive and delicious birthday gift. We got into my lemon of a car, and drove the 30 minutes northwest of Laval, past the suburbia of St-Eustache, to the idyllic rural setting of St-Benoit-de-Mirabel. Unlike most “traditional” Cabanes, this one was much more lounge-like, smaller, intimate, and clean – make no mistake; this is a restaurant much more than it is a typical Cabane A Sucre. That doesn't bother me, but for the non-Quebeckers who come from out of town to get a “taste of Quebec”, it needs to be said that this is far from the traditional Cabane A Sucre experience.
Once inside, the hostess looked up our reservation and promptly assigned us to a table; actually, a double-table shared with a group of friendly seniors. The waitress came to our table and explained that there would be three courses, each with several plates of food to share between us. We also had a limitless supply of maple syrup and some of the best crepes I've ever had. We ordered beer – not a wimpy pint, but something larger that a pint, something... precious – and waited not-so-patiently for our food to arrive.
Lo and behold, arrive it did.
Everyone and their cross-eyed cousin already knows that I don't use Facebook. But it's not not untrue that I don't use any social networking services while I am bodysurfing on the Internets. I happen to visit a quite a few on a day-to-day basis - but unlike most of the folk on Facebook and the like, little things like “privacy” and “usefulness” come into play when I'm making a decision about whether or not I should cuddle up to the newest, trendiest Totally Interesting Thought-provoking Social Network (hereafter referred to as “TITSnet”). 
Not all social networks are created equal, and I don't treat them all the same either. There are networks where I'll use my full name as my username, and there are a couple very good reason for this - pseudonyms are for cowards, serial killers and fairies, and I want an easy way to keep track of all the stupid shit I say on the Internet. Fact: Over 100% of the corwardly / racist / ignorant comments that people see fit to post for the world to see are done behind the relative safety of anonymity. I think anonymity is a precious commodity not to be wasted on triflin' things like racism and such, so I save my pseudonyms for more important things like international espionage and / or dating websites. Sometimes I'll kill two birds with one stone and show off my multiple passports to my blind date and then we'll eat the birds. I get asked - yes, like, everyday - about which social networks I recommend / use. The short answer is none / lots. The long answer is "I'm about to tell you, so pipe down!". So, in the interest of pouring some much-needed chlorine into the e.coli infested swimming waters of the Internet, please enjoy this small collection of my S.N.O.T.S (Social Networks Of The Season):
If you're coming here via the CBC Daybreak show this morning, here are some relevant links you might be interested in:
Apart from my apparent inability to pronounce "irrevocable", that went rather well.
As per my usual modus operandi, I'm writing about Medellin after I've been back in Montreal for a few days. The various memories 6 or so weeks I spent in The City Of Eternal Spring have had enough time to soak amongst the various synapses that connect them to each other. I'm going to write about some random, disjointed events I happen to remember from my trip, and then some overall impressions on the city and the country. I will limit my thoughts to those lucid enough to make sense when written down. This generally - but not always - excludes those wherein I'd already consumed a certain amount of Club Colombia or, more unfortunately, aguardiente.
In this second part of this festive series, I'll dig a bit deeper into the physical, interface and usability differences between my 12" Powerbook G4 and 17" Precision M90. As always, everything is completely objective and accurate here, especially the parts that say "x sucks! or "y rocks!!!!11\\\"
Because of the obvious differences between a 4 lb quasi-sub-notebook (it's small, light and bring-anywhere) and a 9 lb "mobile engineering workstation" (it's huge, overpowered, unwieldy, and has More Cowbell(tm)), I also included in this comprehensive-ish review the new 17" Macbook Pro I recently had the chance to play with.
I won't be including comparisons of specific applications and tools on OS X and Linux; I'll save that for next time. Instead, we'll look at the initial impressions, feels, grooves and vibes one gets from the initial computational experience with each machine. Or something.