To infinity... and beyond!

Took my daughter to the HR MacMillan Space Centre on the weekend to enjoy the final days of the big NASA ISS exhibit. NASA sent up some big rig trailers that are modelled inside to be a replica of what its like INSIDE the space station. Very educational, and very enlightening. Funny thing was when the were explaining that the toliet has a camera inside it to work as part of the "centering module" for when you gotta "go". THe ultimate form of voyerism. Next thing you know... some id10t will have a website with a cam. :)

Besides the bathroom, I took a few pictures of things of interest. Most of them seem boring when I look at them now, but a few stand out:

• A picture of Jim Chamerlain. Those of you that know me well know I am an Avro Arrow fan, and proud Canadian about our technology heritage. In case you didn't know, most of the core engineers that actually got the USA into space were all Canadians, most of them on the engineering team at Avro before the stupidity of PM 'Baker. NASA had the forethought to hire the brains. Of course... isn't this a US tradition? :)
  
• A neat picture of the Crab in front of the Planetarium.
  
• A plaque explaining what the heck the Crab is.
  
• A really beautiful tree on the side of the Plantarium.
  

The digital camera just couldn't do justice to that tree. My favorite season is autumn, as I like to see the trees change colors, the crisp clean air brush by the leaves and rustle them in a calming symphony of delight. The tree is just starting to change, and it was nice sitting by it and listen to the peacefulness. Have you ever tried to actually LISTEN to rain? It is quite calming. It was weird
being in the middle of downtown, with a light drizzle of rain and hearing very little noise pollution.

Work is going pretty good. Finished the main SNMP Trap code and merged it into stable. Finished the actual SNMP Action code last night, and just working on the triggering mechanisms. Its kinda funny. I set up a logging event to log anytime someone "pings" me. I then set an SNMP Trap to catch that event on the main gateway, and fire an event trap to the monitoring agent. On the agent (CSM) I set up an SNMP Action to play a "sonar ping" sound any time I was pinged. Thought it was a neat little trick to do....

... atleast until I had my heart almost stopped. It was like 11:30 last night, and some script kiddie was on a probing high. I was in the middle of some complex code I was REALLY trying to concentrate; so much so I even turned off the music. It was deadly quiet as I stared into the abyss of vi. Out of nowhere all of a sudden *PING* *PING* *PING*. After I got up from the floor, I quickly turned off that event, shakenly walked up stairs to get some Earl Gray tea, and sat down and decided that although kewl, that action for that particular trap is a no go.