Hit Me!

My company just did it's semi-annual profit share yesterday and although I just came under the wire with my starting date and got a small cheque, the potential for the next one is huge. Let me put it this way, the amount of the cheque I just received that covers off one week work at the new place is worth about 10% of the grand total of bonus cheques I've received in the past 10 years. Bling, baby.

And the stock purchase program (where you can contribute 20% of your salary which they match one-for-one) starts in a couple of weeks. Meaning the next year is going to be lean, but dear gods the payoff. Thankfully I have quite a nice little nest egg stowed away and there are three "three pay cheque months" in that time so the budget is tight but not overly restrictive.

On the game front, I just picked up Mass Effect for the PC and played it for about eight hours over two days. It's very reminiscent of KotOR (well, it is a BioWare game so no surprise) but instead of drawing on the Star Wars franchise they've created a milieu out of whole cloth. While they are sticking to many of the standard space opera tropes, it's extremely well executed and only enhanced by some fantastic voice-acting (including some Hollywood names, which is nice to see. I mean hear.). Too early for a final verdict but a preliminary rating of eight out of ten coffin-nails with a couple of screwdrivers so far. I was getting a tad upset about the convolutions I had to go through to actually get my hands on the game but now I'm thinking it's well worth it.

And despite the urge to fire it up again, I have too many chores to do for a Saturday (dammit) including, well ... no. Don't want to jinx it. And of course long time readers of this humble journal know exactly what that means.

Does Management Give You ADD?

I've noticed something about the new job. Or rather, I noticed something about myself at the new job. I can't concentrate for more than forty-five minutes at a time, even when I'm coding.

I suspect being a team lead has given me ADD.

For those who haven't been in lower-middle-management, it's basically fielding all the little problems that come along in the course of a day. Someone comes to you with a problem, you make a decision and either do some work to fix it or delegate. You rarely, if ever, get to really get into one particular thing for any length of time. "Multi-tasking", even though I despise the term, is almost appropriate here.

With my voluntary demotion, I'm out of that game. Before my rise into under-paid over-responsibility, I would lose track of time completely when I got into the zone. Now, the zone is just a dot on the horizon. I'm hoping I can make my way back there (it's only been two months) but still it's a bit scary.

And in other news: still single. Just thought I'd mention that.

"Hi Mom!"

Oh dear gods in heaven my mother just got on to Skype.

Now understand this is a woman who as resistant to technology as Teflon is to Jell-O. She still refers to the little checklist I put together to start a movie on the DVD player three years ago. The answering machine gives her nightmares (gods forbid the thing kicks in before she picks up the phone. Ten minutes of confusion followed by me giving her a message).

I love my Mom, really I do. But this simply does not bode well. She's the only member of my family who does not consider me the free tech-support guy. And I have been very, very thankful for that. The brain signals crossing the concept of "Mother" and "Support Client" simply cannot cope with the huge conflict.

Argh.

Diary of a Mad Zombie

To complete my weekend movie reviews, we have Diary of the Dead. It's Mr. Romero's direct-to-DVD release which does the whole "let's shoot it with a handy-cam" thing a la Cloverfield and Blair Witch Project.

It's not going to win the Oscar for best picture. The actors, portraying college students, are little stiff and the dialog is tad contrived. It does insert a new take on the handy-cam thing: footage from various other cameras (security cams, raw TV footage etc.) are sprinkled throughout. It gets the message across very well: right now we have so many media inputs, what the heck is the truth? How do you stabilize all the spin?

So the final rating is 7 of 10 smokes but I'm also giving it a full six screwdrivers for some of the amazingly creative ways to kill zombies. Two of the vodka-and-orange juice are just for the scenes where the walking dead are taken out by arrows. Mr. Romero, my hat's off to you (leaving my cranium exposed of course).

'K', Bored Now

A week of rain. The long weekend was so promising: the first May LW in about ten years where long-johns and scarves weren't required. And now, precipitation for five days straight. Bored and slightly blue.

So I watched a lot of movies. A alot of movies.

Lessee. Let's start with a block-buster. the social club at work sponsored a special screening of the Indiana Jones movie. I'll give it, er, what rating system do I use, oh yeah 4 out of 10 cigarettes. Not the best of the Jones franchise (that would be the first one) but about on par with the worst. No spoilers here, so let's just say a fundamental plot pattern was violated. There were a couple of times I saw this film racing up the ramp (you know the one, it has a shark just beyond it) but veered off at the last second. Still considering the tripe coming out of La-La land, not a bad film. Just, please, Mr. Lucas, please stop there.

For a bad film, go try Vexille. Or rather, don't. What is it about Japanese animation (a lot of it at least) where they go into the most intricate visual detail and nuance with the scenery (especially the technology) and then have the character's faces about as animated as a hammer? Wait, that implies some kind of movement. Rock? Wax figure? My love-life? Yeah that works. I actually managed to finish this one after stopping and starting three times (insert another love-life joke here). I picked it up for $20 which is kind of the "what the hell?" point of impulse buying for me. I am now thinking what I could have done with that twenty bucks. One old crumpled cigarette butt.

Now Hogfather on the other hand is quite brilliant. Made for TV this sucker is four hours long but keeps very faithfully to the Terry Pratchett novel with only dropping a few passages. For example no Librarian. Now I totally understand he wasn't cogent to the main plot, but still. The editing was a little, er, "loose" and I got the impression that there was a limited number of takes per scene, but this was made for TV, so I can forgive. Highly recommended for rabid Disc World fans and for those who like a little humor in an otherwise insipid Christmas movie list. Ridcully is perfect, and Susan (Michelle Dockery) is fantastic as Susan Death. And she has those big, dark brown eyes that make me ... er ... yeah sorry. It's extremely rare to find a holiday movie that I would insist my kids watch. If I had kids. Wanted kids.8 and a half out 10 smokes. And that's only because it took so damn long to be released in North America. Don't the Brits know how desperate we are over here for intelligent entertainment?

Now a movie that I think stood up to the hype is Cloverfield. There's a part of me that is really sick of watching beautiful twenty-something in everything so seeing them wiped out by a rampaging monster made me feel a little better. And it's also a good movie. Great concept which got me wondering what of the classic sub-genres would be good in the handy-cam style of remake. Seven of ten cancer-sticks. Bonus screwdriver for ending the way it did.

Which is why I'm watching Diary of the Dead tonight! That and the little brothers don't want to go to the peelers. Usually my life is sex or violence. Or at least simulated.

Cake and Kids

Whalp, .500 is a pretty good average in baseball. That's the correct sport, right?

Cake was amazing but way too short at just over an hour. I was hoping they would go at least 90 minutes but I got the impression they weren't thrilled with the folks here in Cowtown, so they busted out early. Anyways and regardless, great show. Thanks to Big M and all his friends for showing up and while still making feel old, I do feel better about it.

As for Kids in the Hall, well there was a move from a 7PM start time to 9:30PM. Now if I wasn't attending solo, it would have been no problem to retire to one of three pubs in the area I enjoy and have a few before the show. Since I was doing the singularity thing though, retiring to one of three pubs in the area I enjoy and having a few before the show by myself is just too sad to contemplate. Besides, past experience from my rock 'n' roll years says if it's delayed that long, it probably ain't gonna happen.

So I'm at a loss of what to do on a Saturday night. Not that unusual in and of itself, but this time it was unexpected. I did buy a whole pile of books when I went for lunch with Capa but frankly I don't feel very literary tonight. And I'm not quite so desperate to look on Craig's list for "casual encounters". Yet. We'll see how the ping is on my game servers.

Back to Normal

Okay it's obvious with my last few entries that my normal kvetching, never-ending gripe was put on hold for a little while. So, back at it.

Or rather, today was just one of those days. I was actually given a task of some merit and frankly I kept fucking it up, looking like a total twat in front of my new colleagues. I could probably say a bunch of stuff that would sound like excuses and evasions (and in one case that would be accurate). Let's just say that it's not fun walking into a giant system operation where everyone on your team has been working on it for 3+ years. One made a comment that "we are here to work" after I put on my coat to go have a smoke. Which I grant you I've been doing too much of lately out of boredom.

All in all the job is still good, I think (hope) I just had a bad day. An alarm bell went off though. The code I had to fix was a mess and the technical aspects of the promotion procedures left something to be desired, like fucking documentation or a reasonable sense of consistency. I quickly came under the impression that the entire system is a very large and functional prototype. I've had very bad experiences with systems like this: they tend to be outgrown by demand extremely quickly and become a nightmare to maintain, forget about expand.

I really hate the three month probation period. It makes me anxious and paranoid. More than normal I mean.

That and I'm sick again which is getting on my tits. I've had two weeks in the past eight where I was reasonably healthy. The other six have been filled with tissues and Tylenol; snot and sniffing.

I'm a little grumpy today obviously.

Ahoy!

I signed up for sailing lessons! It goes four Saturdays in July, it's on a reservoir instead of the deep blue and there's a fairly good chance I'll do myself some kind of nautical harm. It'll be with L'il Bro' G which means I'll be giving him rides and why he encouraged me to sign up.

It was that or sky-diving. Considering the phrase "worse things happen at sea" I think I took the more dangerous of the two choices. Sailing is analog: all kinds of things can go wrong. Skydiving is digital: you hit the ground at a safe speed or you don't. Either way, there's a great potential for a splash.

Well it gets me out of the house. And that sounds somewhat morose but I'm actually excited about it. Far too many pirate games and naval history books lately for me not to try it out.

That's about it really. Work is work, home is boring (and messy, need to clean up this weekend), gym is going along fine, love life is dead and buried, books are being read, games are being played, movies are being watched and food is being eaten.

Wait, what am I talking about? I'm seeing Cake on Thursday and the Kids in the Hall on Saturday. Geez... I'm a reg'lar mover and shaker. Okay, nudger and slight vibrator.

Van

Back from Vancouver. It was about a 14-hour day but still wasn't bad. The conference was okay, it's always good to talk to other professionals (even for a few moments) to know that you're really in the same place as most everyone else.

Vancouver though is gorgeous. There were leaves on the trees, pretty girls, the smell of the ocean, droves of hot girls in spring outfits. Did I mention there are a lot of women there? Coming back to Calgary was a bit of a disappointment.

I discussed the very thing with L'il Bros G and B. All the brothers concur that Cowtown is a sausage-fest. It's kinda obvious when you notice it. Going out on the town, you see mostly males. I wonder if it's because Calgary is very much a suburbanites dream. Everyone moves to the suburban wasteland around here. The "cultural" centers are focused on drinking and finding those things associated with being drunk at 2AM.

I'm not moving anytime soon, but lets just say I'll be using my flight deals to go to the coast more than a few times.

Ooooh!

Crisis averted!. That is all.

Now What?

Sigh.

After having reported yesterday that I was happy, or at least not stressed, I now find myself a little bored. The usual distractions of computer games, movies and books have lost their luster. I know, it's only been one day but the ol' ADHD kicks in at the drop of a Ritalin.

The only reason I'm writing this is to spend (okay, waste) a couple of minutes.

Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it'll get me to get off my butt and do all the stuff I keep putting off? Like, I dunno, drawing or writing or something. I had a passing fancy of buying a bass guitar and learning how to play. I mean I can't smoke continuously.

Idle hands are the devil's playings and all that. What about an idle mind. The Devil's Lego? Eesh.

How to Blind the Neighbors

Me wearing shorts. If it weren't the Wookie-like quality of my legs, I'd be blinding air-traffic.

So yeah, it's nice out, BBQ will be fired up in a couple of hours and all is pretty well with the world. I bet you never thought you'd read that here.

Big Blue is dead. I mean really dead, the whole motherboard is gone, not the AGP slot. Which means I'll have to figure out how to mount the old drives on Black Betty. I should probably rephrase that, but it's about the extent of my life right now.

So not much (again) to report. Maybe the key to happiness is being content with what you have? Nah, can't be that...

I may be going to Vancouver on Thursday for a one-day conference. I'll probably stick around for the weekend if I can, or at least Saturday. Hopefully they have some tall ships at the port. I'd love to have a look now that I know some nautical terminology.

Short and uneventful: now, I have to marinate a New York steak. And water the plants. Stress is now my bitch.