Trends Emerge

I've detecting a pattern. Whenever Moby goes to a social occasion where the average age of the group is twenty-five, Moby drinks 750ml of vodka.

Ugh.

Yesterday in the elevator I ran into one of my former co-op students. he lives in the same building as I do and he had a party yesterday and invited me along. I figured what the hell, better than spending an exciting evening archiving emails and music.

He's a geek, his girlfriend's a geek and all their friends are geeks. Young geeks, so I didn't feel 100% weird (say around 33.3% or so). I did manage to play Rock Band for the first time and it was fun. And I met a very cute, very smart very young chip designer for satellite systems (!) who is totally into Firefly, Guitar Hero, traveling and theatre. I thought she was single but after the fermented potato left my system this morning, I realized we looked at photos from Japan that were taken about a month ago with her boyfriend. I had some real self-delusion going there. There's a part of me that thinks they may have broke up since then. The retarded part who should be euthanized (with fermented potato).

Anyway, got my tax refund and I was correct down to the penny. So big, big bucks for Moby to pay off his new machine and enough to store for when I get to do the 20% of my salary, the company matches 100% thing next month. I did the budget for the next year and it's tight. Thankfully I have two months coming up this year containing 3 paychecks (bi-weekly pay). That and (hopefully) the company semi-annual bonus in November means I'll get away with it but have to cut my impulse spending a bit. A lot. Completely.

Which means I gotta stop going to Best Buy and buying things like: "Cloverfield" (never seen it, love it now), "Heat" (A classic), "Juno" (funny-quirky), "Pan's Labyrinth" (which I hadn't bought yet for some unknown reason), "Lars and the Real Girl" (quirky okay), and "Babylon 5" Season 3 (the geek in me of course). What can I say, I kinda panicked today. And watched two movies. And groaned a bit. And went to the gym. And felt old. Older.

Update: No responses from Craig's List. Which is not surprising as it turns out the email I created for it defaulted to "delete suspected junk email".

This Week

Considering the fact that we've had more winter in the past four weeks than we had all winter, it's no surprise that I have little to report. So here are the blog-bites.

I totally forgot that Big Blue's data drive is IDE and Black Betty (okay I have a thing for alliteration) runs ATA. Li'l Bro B suggested I pick up a decent external drive, transfer the files from Blue and just use that. So I picked up a 400Gb external drive. I'll be doing the file transfers this weekend. Gods know what I actually have on that drive besides my ripped CDs, resume stuff and, er, "artwork".

Work is going pretty well. A little emergency project yesterday that I was put in charge of (yes, scary) so I got to work and coordinate almost everyone on the team. It actually got me to open up a bit so my sense of humour came out. No complaints to human resources yet.

I think I'm finally at the tail-end of the cold I think Capa just got, after a bloody month. I know the pack-a-day didn't help but the thing knocked me on my kiester, which then got progressively bigger as working out was an exercise in frustration (see what I did there?).

Last, and hopefully least, I spazzed out and posted a personal ad on Craig's List. I know, I know, I said I'm not looking. It's sort of half social experiment, half the true start of the mid-life crisis. Considering all the hullaballo about finding free 'n' easy "encounters" on there, maybe I won't need the "artwork".

Enter the New Machine

Got my new machine! Thanks PC Perspective! I got the High end setup but switched the quad-core CPU (which is nice) with a faster (3.0 MHz) dual-core. It's a new gaming rig and very few games take advantage of multi-core systems. So I went hard.

I need to Igor my old data drive to get all my files so I'm left without bookmarks and music for a while. Big Blue (the old machine) will go into semi-retirement as ... something. Maybe a Linux distro of some kind is in order. Black Betty (the new machine) is a near top of the line, sleek black and burnished titanium like whiz kid. It only took forty minutes to install Windows (well, and about another hour to install all the security patches).

My "bench marking" so far has been loading games on and trying them out with all the graphic setting turned up to 11. So far, so amazing. Except I haven't gamed in so long my WASD hand is all cramped up....

Anyway, out with the old, in with the new! Now, what's worth playing? Um....

Plan-Like

So week three at the new "jorb" is complete and I'm still liking it. I was actually able to make a contribution this week (Look at me! I'm useful) and the awesome power of the ludicrous benefit package is beginning to dawn on me.

My fortieth birthday is gonna be sweet!

Provided the 25cm snow thing doesn't happen again this weekend, I'm cleaning up the BBQ, going to my favorite butcher and charring some prime bovine flesh.

I don't know if it's the Springtime coming on, or if I'm just bored but I feel certain urges coming to the fore. Barely contained needs are rising up like a million tones of sap pumping in an arboreal forest. The sweats, the thoughts that rip you from the task at hand and plunge you deep into a misty-eyed reverie that leads to rumination of the possible. A drive, as undeniable and as ancient as Time has taken hold of my very roots.

Yup, gonna get me a new computer this week.

Update: Yes, I did get my damage deposit (a larger portion than I expected) back from the old place. And yes, I just placed the order for my new PC.

Return of the Return

After going over my taxes and re-doing it three times, I'm getting back (wait for it) $4200+. The plan was to buy the parts for a new gaming rig with the return. Now it's to buy parts for a nw gaming rig, a new monitor and hire a French maid.

Filed Life

It's tax season! While this usually inspires fear, loathing, hatred and confusion, this year is a little more interesting. Most years I have three forms to worry about: the one indicating income and taxes deducted, the one with my RRSP contribution statement and the remaining student loan interest (last year for that! Yay!).

This year though it was two jobs, two sets of RRSP forms, the tax form and other sundries. Moving twice and having two jobs last year made things ... confusing. I think I found almost everything (except for an RRSP form dammit).

In finding all these bits of paper, I purged my old files. I had tax returns going back to 1995. Not a biggie but stuffed in all those papers were a few things of note:

1. Cards, notes, tokens etc from ex-girlfriends (before the had the prefix appended of course). A tad depressing, but also a good reminder of the times that were better than the end.
2. My official censure notice of one of the "bad ol' days" of a former employer. At the time it threw me for a loop. Long story short, I was told I had a week to deliver something that should have been a month, it was critical to the business and there was a bug in the code. One bug. My boss at the time threw me to the wolves. It said I didn't take the time to test, that I didn't follow written standards (I remember asking where these were as I had never seen them. That did not help my case) and that my work was incomplete. This was dated two months after my annual review which stated I had "exceeded expectations" in all but two categories (and those I merely met). Looking back on it now I should have quit right there and then. I kept that notice to identify the precise moment in time I turned into a bitter curmudgeon.
3. My old school papers. Yes some of them were official (I kept the one showing I was one Fine Arts class short of a BSc Computer Science) but I had found some of the stuff from my college radio days. No pictures (I don't remember having my picture taken in those four years) but the radio guides, posters etc. The Rock and Roll years.

Mugged in Memory Lane nearing my fortieth.

So what's left is to do the actual taxes. I won't worry about the missing RRSP: I'll request a new form and do it in next years taxes. What with bonuses, profit share and purchase plans, I'm going to need the break with the new job.

Provided no one throws me to the wolves of course.

More Fun With Landlords

Just as I (think) I resolved the missing damage deposit, my new landlord has thrown me a whopper.

I found a note in my door indicating I was late with April's rent, that a report notice has been sent to a credit rating company and that I owe an additional $50 late fee. This was after last month's note that the processing of my application for pre-authorized payment had not been submitted to the bank for March's rent so could I please write them a cheque.

I gave them the pre-authorized withdrawal form in January. It is now April.

So I went to the building office (with all notes etc in hand) but the land-lady wasn't in, just her assistant. So she copied all the relevant info. I'll talk to the landlady tomorrow.

Mistakes happen: running a large apartment building is an exercise in frustration I'm very sure. So I'm hoping this can be worked out amicably. I'll give them a cheque for April when I see evidence that the credit report notice has been revoked. I'll also be asking for the pre-authorized withdrawal form back and giving them post-dated cheques. This little incident has not instilled any kind of confidence that when I vacant the building the auto-withdrawal of my rent will stop.

If things cannot be handled amicably, well I'll take it up with the management company and see what happens then.

Kinda Sorta Maybe

Having one of those blah kind of days. I'm on day four of a cold, I'm bored and a little antsy about work. Not in a bad way, just want to get something accomplished. It would help if I had my developer-strength computer but that's just a waiting game.

Speaking of which, since I'm bored, lemmee tell ya about my dating situation.

Nada.

Which is actually intentional. I'm pretty damn sure I explained the whole "not looking" thing before, but what the hell it bears repeating. I'm not looking. Well, I'm looking at women of course, but I'm not pursuing any kind of relationship whatsoever. Not like the opportunity has presented itself, but at least this way I can convince myself it's my idea and not a long-running cruel joke played by the universe.

All of the relationships I've had have been, at some point, unsatisfactory. And yes I know I'm the common element so I'm just removing that particular parameter. Now if the universe presents me with a golden opportunity, I'd be a fool not to take it. But I'd be a greater fool to actually think it will happen thus I'm handing in the towel. Politely, and with no rancour.

The relationship part I'm good with. It's the whole pressure to perform that leads up to that point. It all comes down to expectations, and frankly now that I have none, I'm good. Well, better at any rate. There's of course the whole es-ee-ex thing to consider but I never said it was a perfect plan.