Friends

Today is the day of our Annual Solstice Dinner Party. And, as usual, there's a huge frenzy of last minute baking and cleaning being done in preparation.  We seem to be more-or-less on top of things this year, in as much as I started doing stuff in preparation at the beginning of the week.

I still need to do some vacuuming but that will only take 30 minutes, and I'm holding off for the moment because Linda somehow never got to bed last night and has just now lain down for a nap. It seems she decided to just keep going with the prep work rather than doing it before the meal, as she has in the past. I'm hoping that means the dinner will be closer to the intended hour than it has been in the past.

On my part I'm taking a short break to drink my second coffee since getting up. I've already had my shower, cleaned the upstairs bathroom, and done the dishes, so I think I can spare a couple of minutes.

The original intent of having today off no longer applies, but I'm trying to make the best of it. Which mostly means studying, and yoga this afternoon, and perhaps find a new pair of boots since mine are apparently unrepairable. Blah. And yet, I was still awake by 7:30.

I was reminded of this song recently, so in an attempt to capture some kind of holiday spirit, I give you a Fairytale of New York!




Counting down the days to Tuesday, then it'll be all over and hopefully I can find time to breathe and relax.

Also because this makes me laugh every time I hear it Graduate Students

Genre/Type: Party de Dance Blues; Blues Dance Party
Place/Lieu: La Sala Rossa
Address/Adresse: 4848 Boul. St-Laurent, Mtl, Qc. H2T 1R6
Start Time/Heure de début: Friday, December 18th 2009, 20:30; Vendredi, le 18 décembre 2009, 20h30
End Time/Heure de fin: December 19th 2009, 02:30; Le 19 décembre 2009, 02h30

Featuring/avec Rick L. Blues (Festival de Jazz de Montréal 2003-08, 2000, 1997), DJ Danny-O, & DJ Marilene!

Un cours de dance Blues (20h30), DJ, et un Blues Band!
A blues dance class (20:30), DJs, and a live Blues Band!

20:30-21:30: Intro. to blues dancing with Cat's Corner; intro. au danse blues grace à Cat's Corner!
21:30-22:30 DJ Marilene
22:30-23:15 Rick L. Blues!
23:15 - 23:45 DJ Danny-O
23:45 - 00:30 Rick L. Blues!
00:30 - closing/fermeture: DJ Danny-O

Semi-formal attire required
Tenue de ville requise

15$ en avance, 20$ à la porte (15$ étudiants)
$15 in advance, $20 at the door ($15 for students)

Billets aux http://www.montrealjasscoop.com
Tickets at http://www.montrealjasscoop.com

So now that winter is here, i've decided to embrace the cold and look for a decent place to ski. It's been a long time since i slapped on some skis and hit the slopes, so i was wondering if there were any ski fans out there who could give their opinion on the best slopes (would prefer the Laurentians, but will be willing to try other places in the Townchips

so in your opinion:

a) where is the best place to ski overall

b) not outrageously overpriced

c) best place for night skiing

d) is not outrageously crowded and has the least amount of hillbillies/speed demons

e) are there places that offer ski/bus packages? I know mcgill has them but they are only for McGill students.


I used to go to Greyrocks and was heartbroken when they closed. Have been to Tremblant but it's too "shi shi" for me. Went to Morin Heights for the night skiing, but that was more than 10 years ago.

I have also heard there are some places on the south shore (mont st. bruno)?

And Happy Holidays everybody :-)

Incoryable, c'est déjà le dernier weekend avant Noël!
Ne manquez pas le légendaire marché Madame Plume, débordant de choses magiques et de trésors inespérés fabriqués par plus de 60 artistes d'ici.

C'est l'occasion idéale de terminer vos achats de Noël dans une ambiance chaleureuse tout en découvrant toute l'ampleur de cette créativité qui réunit les artistes dans le design, l'art et l'artisanat montréalais.

MARCHÉ MADAME PLUME
ÉGLISE ST-MICHEL
COIN ST-VIATEUR ET ST-URBAIN
19-20 DÉCEMBRE 2009
SAMEDI - DIMANCHE
11- 19H            11- 17H

Mode ingénieuse recyclée, t-shirts et posters sérigraphiés, cahiers reliés à la main, savon et produits naturels pour le corps, cupcakes à croquer, lainages fabuleux, variété extraordinaire de bijoux innovateurs, toutous en peluche intéressants, les éditions Drawn & Quarterly, vêtements pour enfants, accessoires stylisés, bouffe maison, café équitable, meilleurs pierogies du Mile-End et encore plus, incluant des activités de bricolage dans le coin des enfants dès 13h, chaque jour!

Venez  partager la magie des fêtes avec nous. 10% des profits seront versés à La Rue des Femmes: http://www.laruedesfemmes.com/
JOYEUSES FÊTES!!


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Can't believe it is the last week...days before Xmas!!!
Don't miss the legendary Rusty Plum Holiday Bazar overspilling with wonderful, artful treasures made out of love by over 60 artists around town....
 
All in one place, a one stop shop pretty much something available for everyone on your list.....you can't miss how smart your local artists are and how crafty your christmas shopping can be....
This is your last chance to visit our cozy, community crafty fair...
 
RUSTY PLUM HOLIDAY BAZAR
ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH
CORNER ST. VIATEUR AND ST. URBAIN
DECEMBER 19TH - 20 TH
SATURDAY - SUNDAY
11- 19H            11- 17H
 
Talent abounds....
Recycled ingenius fashions, cool silkscreened tee- shirts, silkscreen poster art, handbound books, handmade soap and natural body products, cutie pie cupcakes, fabulous knitwear, extraordinary variety of innovative jewelry, interesting plush toys, drawn & quarterly press, kids clothing, great styles for accessories, artisanal food, fair trade cafe, best mile-end perogies and so much more including the kids crafty corner starting at 1 p.m each day....
 
Don't miss an alternative shopping experience that marks the season with a neighborhood tradition.... !!!!
Please help spread the d.i.y magic....
No one should miss this indie market to solve all gift giving needs....!!!!

If you are a part of the crafty city crew please add your indie genius to our facebook event link or make your own to proliferate among your own circuit....

And 10% of the profits will go to Herstreet: http://www.laruedesfemmes.com/

See you there....
and
Happy Holidays!!!!!!!

( Official poster )

this winter, it’s about affordable objects of beauty, decor and adornment. it’s about last-minute shopping. it's about everything being hand-made and everything being under $40. this saturday and sunday (dec. 19th and 20th) from 11am to 6pm, the studio béluga winter gift fair gives you all this, and more (cookies).

( invite clickity )

for even more details, please visit studio beluga's website hope to see you there!
i'm the one with all the octobunnies ^_^

Hey all! I'm moving in less than two weeks and I was hoping to use Constantineau Moving/Les Transports Constantineau. Has anyone ever used them before? Please let me know your experiences, good or bad. Thanks!

hey y'all

i'm in the process of closing my company and have to get rid of my leftover inventory which is basically alot of chocolate (i make vegan fudge).

( click for details )

if interested contact me at: blumonday at gmail dot com (no "e" in blue!)

This isn't a new, fresh or even remotely interesting topic, but it's one that's always worth reminding.

Now, I can't speak for all areas of town, but in a neighborhood I travel through on a fairly regular basis, that is, the Village, I can't really understand why, and certainly can't begin drawing conclusions of my own but...

Okay, let me put it this way: to you dog owners out there, do you ever imagine that because there's snow covering the streets and sidewalks, that it'll conveniently hide your canine's poop/turds/shit/refuse/by-products/insert clever euphemism here? No, I'm serious, goddammit! You can't walk two blocks without seeing dog turds on the sidewalk!

If it's like that anywhere else in the city, speak up and let us know! And to you bystanders and pedestrians (hell, the motorists too!), if you see a dog take a dump in the street and you can't tell if its owner has a bag at the ready, speak up!! Ask them. Make them feel bad. Call them out, shout, attract people's attention on them.

Or, if you like having a dogshit-covered road system when spring shows its blissful face, just walk on by and give them the thumbs up.

If you have a dog, it's your responsibility to pick up your dog's poop. And if you don't, it's OUR responsibility to rub your nose in it, just like you'd do to a dog if it pooped on your floor.

I'm looking to have a couple dresses taken in at the bust, however i'm not looking to pay 25$ per dress. that's the price stitch it gave me and it seems ridiculously overpriced! however, i'm not used to this sort of thing so maybe i'm just being cheap? also, one of these dresses is "leather" so i'm aware it would cost more than usual...but please tell me you guys know of some place i can go!


also, completely off-topic, but does anyone know of any places that can engrave money clips? i'm at a loss for this as well...


TIA!!
xx
Bianca

Oh Montreal. The most up to date information I found in the memories was http://community.livejournal.com/montreal/2840631.html from well over a year ago.

I'm looking for a massage therapist in this fine city (downtown, Cote-des-Neiges, NDG, Outremont, Mile End, Rosement... so within that loop of the Metro really) who knows what she/he is doing in terms of deep tissue massage and is able to give insurance receipts. All of the massage places near me are rub and tugs, so I'm not sure where to go. Googling massage therapy can give me a ton of places, but no actual recommendations. Price isn't too important, I just want someone who really knows what they are doing. None of those little oily massages...

Hello!!

Would anyone know where I could get some L'oreal Luocolor? A place that actually accepts to SELL the product or just any professional toners for the hair (that stuff is so darn hard to find)!!?

Thank you so much!

You are all usually a wealth of information. I know there has been some posts here before about teaching in Quebec. I was told my my ontario university that last week, a inter-provincial trade agreement was signed, that indicates that all professions that have certifications would now not need to recertify themselves when moving between provinces. For myself, this would mean that if I get my Ontario Teaching Certification, I could teach in Montreal, and not have to jump through hoops. Anyone know where I can find this document or what department of government takes care of it?

Thank you kindy,


Christine.

Someone told me about a club or society in Montreal for people who like really spicy food. Apparently, they meet regularly and sample seriously hot, spicy food and compare notes on recipes, ingredients, and good restos that will blow their palates apart.

Has anyone heard of this club? Do they have a website or a number I can call for more info?

Thanks!

Another day, another update. This is almost too frequent for me. Where do I find all this time? After a few presentations and such, things have quieted down a bit over at EQL Data, so I'm back to my "usual" (ie. maniacal) rate of development.

Every once in a while though, a person must reflect and write an entry about something nifty and new that they come across in the course of their work. Today, that new knowledge manifests itself in being able to delete open files in Windows.

First, a quick recap. Why would you want to do this? Let's look at a piece of code to find out:

int fd = open(filename, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC);
unlink(filename);
// do stuff with fd, because the file still exists

Why on earth is this useful? Well, let's say 'filename' is a temporary file. It's going to get removed at some point in our computation, and, unless we have debugging code, chances are we have no need of this file even if our computation produces some kind of exception condition.

The method above is a very simple way of doing this without keeping 'filename' around for removal at the conclusion of the temporary file's use, or within an atexit() or signal handler. Moreover, it ensures that we won't have any issues with name clashes if we use functions like tempnam() or tmpnam() to create our temporary filenames for us.

Of course, it works because every modern operating system only actually removes a file when all open file handles to it are closed... until then, it simply removes it from its parent directory listing, thus preventing any other attempts to open the file.

Conclusion: you can see a use for this procedure. And, until recently, I thought it was impossible in Windows. Windows disallows removal of files if there are any open filehandles to said file, which sounds discouraging.

... that is, until I decided to port bsdsort to Windows.

Bsdsort happens to use the above algorithm in the creation of their temporary files (for intermediate radix sort stages and such), and, rather than decipher the logic of the program and figure out where to insert a manager for removing temporary files (not to mention handling their removal on all the testing errors I stumbled upon during porting), I took it upon myself to discover how to do this.

The key, it appears, is to use the Win32 API, since the POSIX layer for Windows happens to be missing these (new?) features. Let's see what the code ends up looking like:

int fd;
HANDLE h = CreateFile(	filename,
			GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE,
			FILE_SHARE_DELETE,
			NULL,
			OPEN_ALWAYS,
			FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL,
			NULL);
if (h == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
    // handle error
if ((fd = _open_osfhandle((long)h, 0)) == -1)
    // handle another possible error
unlink(filename);
// Go ahead and use fd, and check your filesystem:  no 'filename'!

... ta da! What have we here? We've opened 'filename', and removed it... but our filehandle is still open! What have we done?

The key, of course, is the call to CreateFile. You'll note, upon examining the MSDN documentation for CreateFile, that the third parameter is dwShareMode, ie. all the permissions you wish to grant other processes (and your own process) on this filehandle while you have it open. FILE_SHARE_DELETE is the crucial part of this equation... it indicates the obvious: this file can be deleted while you have it open. I won't go into the other parameters to this call: I suggest reading the MSDN documentation to match this function to your needs.

In order to obtain a POSIX filehandle for the corresponding HANDLE returned by CreateFile, we call the less-known _open_osfhandle, which gives us exactly what we want.

A bit of error handling later, and we've accomplished our goal: we have an open POSIX file, and 'filename' is gone.

Another win for team EQL. The next challenge was to port bsdsort to C++ (mostly to allow interoperation with the excellent WvStreams library)... but that's a story for another day!

Today has sure seemed like a long day, despite it actually being shorter than usual. The shortness of the day came from the fact that I forgot to reprogram my bedside alarm after yesterday's power outage, so it didn't go off at 9:00 am as I had expected. As a consequence, I slept until noon. Considering I had conked out around 10:00pm the night before, I'm surprised I didn't get a migraine. I guess I needed that sleep.

Not being the fastest of wakers, it was something like 4:00 pm when I was actually ready to start my day. Linda and I were planning to head out grocery shopping then but a semi-infinite number of incoming phone calls prevented that until around 5:00 pm.

Hard shopping was then done, involving no less than 3 grocery stores, two liquor stores and a bank. It would have been 4 groceries, but our getting out the door late meant that one had closed by the time we were in the area to shop there. It will have to wait for tomorrow.

We got home with our tons of groceries and had a simple meal of Costco chicken and leftover potatoes and hot-blue cabbage (a Danish dish I cannot remember the name of). I rested for an hour before heading back into the kitchen.

Over the next two hours I tidied up all the dishes from supper and breakfast, made Green Goddess dressing for Friday, Made hard-boiled eggs and re-heated yesterdays 6 Liters of pasta sauce so it could be put away properly. Then I had to clean up again.

So, finally I am DONE and boy do I feel tired.  Still, I'm really pleased that Linda and I are actually getting things done for Solstice supper AHEAD of the actual day. Far too often we seem to leave everything for the last day.

I am planning to maybe apply to some minimum waged jobs such as loblaws, iga, walmart and stuff like that. I have I have learned a little french and can speak it functionally (minorly). My resume looks really good in english and I asked some people to translate it to french, and I don't quite like it.

Would it be okay if I just hand english resume to managers and tell them that I just moved here and need a job?

In my resume should I write that I have beginner french? Everyone that I know has said it doesn't matter if it is in english or french.

Also should I add in references available upon request?

-My highlights are quite too descriptive, is that bad? tia

Hello, you knowledgable people, you. I am wondering where to find listings of foreclosed condos/apartments/homes in Montreal? I can't seem to find any online -- do I just start calling bank branches? Thanks!