Dossy's Blog

Arrived in South Africa safe and sound as well as all our luggage. The kids were freaking awesome–they’re really cut out to be world travellers. I even survived the 18 hour stretch without a cigarette, without being all cranky and stuff.

Now, we’re at my mother- and father-in-law’s house in Victory Park, Gauteng and for now I’m using their ADSL connection. Here’s the speedtest.net results:

Tomorrow, we head into Cresta Shopping Center so I can pick up a HSPDA/3G card for my MacBook Pro and a few SIM cards for our BlackBerry phones so we can make local calls.

I’m being called downstairs for dinner, but I’ll try to fill in some more details when I get a chance.

Tags: family, travel, South Africa

I haven’t blogged about this yet, but tonight, we leave for South Africa for six weeks. We’re taking the kids with us, and they’re going to miss a few weeks of school in exchange for what will hopefully be an invaluable learning experience.

We will be visiting my spouse’s fairly large family all over the place. There will be places to go and people to see. We’ll be there through the holidays, returning in the new year.

I will be online as much as I can be through various connectivity methods–it’ll be interesting to see where and how I can get connected around the country.

If there are any South Africans reading this blog, feel free to share any tips or suggestions you might have. Thanks.

Tags: family, travel, South Africa

We recently had photos taken at church for the upcoming printing of the church directory. I think the picture came out really nicely, so I’m posting it here, too.

Tags: family, photo

I’ve always known that I’m not like most other people, but it’s funny when even my iTunes party shuffle knows how strange I am, even in my musical tastes. Here’s the last 5 songs, the currently playing song, and the next 5 songs right now:

• Pour Some Sugar On Me (Def Leppard)
• Man Of Mystery (Baronics)
• Summer Time (David Jacobsen)
• Something to Believe In (Poison)
• My Three Moons (Michael Manring)
• 1821 Rossini – The Barber Of Seville – Overture
• Snake Got Legs (Michael Manring)
• Burn Up (Siouxsie & the Banshees)
• 1854 Liszt: Les Preludes
• Overture (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
• Peter and the Wolf Remix (Greg Patillo)

Perhaps this isn’t as bizarre a variety as I might think, but I haven’t met anyone else yet who’d see this shuffle and think, “Wow, great listening!”

Tags: music

Kill it with fire. I don’t know why, but I’ve been saying this a lot lately. Epic lulz.

Kung Fu Panda. I might actually cave in and see this in IMAX. This movie is so obviously made of win.

Not only do I dislike Java, this past weekend I spent time decompiling it with Jad in order to make changes to an application whose source code has been lost. Strangely, decompiled Java is usually less obfuscated than human-authored Java. That says a lot about how bad most Java programmers are. Think about it.

After years of pondering, I’ve finally decided what I want as my first tattoo: a Penrose triangle. I love the idea of impossible objects as tattoo art.

I think I want to put it on my left forearm, just above the wrist. I still haven’t decided if I want it on the inner or outer arm, yet. I also have no idea where to go or who to ask to do it, either.

I received my BlackBerry code signing key today, so I can start using the “controlled APIs” in the application I’m developing. I’ll talk more about it when I have something that’s actually usable, but if you’ve been following my Twitter stream, you already have an idea of what it is.