Need a Beach

Gah.

I think the office saves all the emergencies for when I'm on call. Have been called every day since I got the damn thing.

Still can't find any last minutes deals. Except the one where I spend 28 hours on a plane/in an airport. And costs over $3000.

Still I do so love the heat. Summer rocks. So maybe I'll spend the week on the bike path. Or drunk. Maybe both?

Although knowing my luck my appendix will explode at 5:01 PM on Friday. Then the on call phone will ring becuase someone got a hang-nail.

Rent and Blood Pressure

So I got a notification that my rent is going up andother $50 starting in september. Add that to the raise in rent of $30 3 months ago, and Im looking at $960 more a year on rent.

Of course they mention the increase in the cost of housing in our fair city. And everyone else is as well: groceries in particular.

Add to that the huge increase in gas prices and everything is going up in price. Along with my blood pressure.

And work, well, let's just say that they don't take anything like "cost of living" into consideration for their salary increases.

One of the reasons I'm going to Toronto in July is to check out the town and the work situation. Now I'll also look at rent.

Come September, I may have absolutely no reason to stick around. Which is too bad, I like this town, and of course the friendships I have here.

But no girlfriend, a losing salary proposition, higher cost of living etc. means I have a very tenuous link here.

Not to mention I can't stand the drivers and roads in this burg....

"One of Us"

Yep, I am officially a Pod Person now. 4GB worth on a nano.

So I'm in the process of ripping some of my fave-rave CDs. I'm actually quite surprised how compact they are on the Nano. I'm not nearly done but what I have ripped only takes up about a quarter of the little slab o' tunes.

So I'm still playing with it, still trying to find music I would actually purchase on iTunes, and generally trying to get my $300+ worth in the space of 48 hours.

In other news, I have a question. Fratricide is still illegal right?

Thursday after midnight, my little brother calls me from a "gentlemen's club". He wanted to get my cousin's (so his cousin as well) email address. She's a travel agent type person, and he needed to book a flight to Moscow, because one of his Russian clients apparently couldn't enter Canada due to him being in the Russian mob. Go figure. My brother sells lasers BTW. Fricken' Lasers.

Anyway, that was the start. He called back after I went to bed, saying he couldn't send anything from his Blackberry. Could I send the request? So I did.

Then he called again to get me to forward the email I sent our cousin back to him so he could have a record of it.

Now all the while, there's music blaring in the background, girls squealing at him (he's one of those guys who can actually date exotic dancers, bastard) to get off the phone, not to mention he was a bit drunk. Meanwhile I had to go to work the next day.

Bastard. Oh wait, it's mother's day, I shouldn't say that.

Oh, crap it's Mother's Day! Gotta go!

eybard

That's it, I'm buying a new keyboard tomorrow!

I spent a good chunk of my day at work doing documentation, and rarely had a misspelled word or typo.

I've been sending emails and posting on boards all night and can't type a single word without hitting the fraggin' delete key.

For the world at large, the ViewSonic Viewmate keyboard sucks. Even though it's a shallow keyboard, you have to lean on the keys to get them to register, nail the shift key down if you want upper-case, and the keys are set too close together (and I have narrow fingers).

Rant Over.

Sunny Sunday

Another day another bike ride. I love spring and all the, uh, blooms it brings on the bike path.

So I also went to the local geek fest today. I always find those shows a tad boring. Kinda neat, but really it's just a bunch of booths hocking geek toys. Which is good but I have enough.

Some of the artists on hand were pretty good, especially some of the stuff by the guy who does The Oblongs. Stuff was pretty expensive though..

Man I wish I could draw.

So on to the movie review! Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Didn't like it too much. The animation and models were, of course, fantastic. However the character models looked like the came from deep within the Uncanny Valley. Big anime-style eyes, spikey hair etc.

No real "plot" to speak of, just incredibly complex, over-the-type fight scenes. Alot of them. Most of the movie actually.

So when I thought about it, it's exactly like the FF games. Technically (as in game code) brilliant, rich, lush graphics but combat after combat after combat. To the point of annoyance.

But still, technically absorbing, but not something that will make it to the "comfort movie" list.

Bored again, maybe I should go get an iPod after all...

Eeeeeeeee!

I squeeled like a little girl when I saw the link to this new Spore video.
You don't wanna know what I did when I actually watched it.

Pod People

First thing. While driving downtown today, I saw a group of about a dozen people or so, all carrying signs and banners calling for the legalization of marijuana. They crossed against a light and almost got plastered by a bus.

Says it all really.

Secondly, I almost became a pod person. But once again I balked. The price tag for a 4gig nano is not exactly outrageous (a might steep perhaps) but it's not the cost that put me off exactly. When I listen to music, it's in tha car (stereo), at home (computer or piped in through the cable box) or at work (again, on the computer). The only time I need something portable is at the gym. So it's not really worth it.

What I will do is start buying music online. Alot of the stuff I listen to tends to be expensive on CD (Odd Electronica for a start. So a buck a song is reasonable.....

The third thing I'll save for tomorrow. I picked up Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children yesterday and watched it last night. I have mixed feelings on this film....

In the meantime, it's a gorgeous day. I've already been to the gym today, but I think a ride is in order anyway. Besides, I need to work up some appetite for BBQ-ing!

'Tis the season for charred flesh chunks! With sauce!

Rent Rant

Yeah, still bored.

So I thought I would illuminate an going battle for me: my rent. Or rather, the method of payment of my rent.

Now when I first moved into my current place, we had a different management company running it. Granted, the maintenance of the building was less than adequate, but they were pleasant people to deal with, and had no problem if I dropped of my rent cheque the last day of the month with the super.

About 2 years ago, the owner decided to go with a bigger management company. They've been better with the maintenance (outside of the apartments anyway). New carpet in the hallways, better locks on the doors etc.

But when they took over, they insisted on either giving them 6 months worth of post-dated checks or allow them to do automatic withdrawals from the bank. So I gave them the cheques (I've had issues with various organizations continuing to make withdrawals even though I had quit, left or otherwise stopped doing what I was doing).

This was in October.

December rolled around and lo-and-behold, they somehow managed to deposit both December and January cheques. Since this was near Christmas, it put a serious cramp on my travel and gift-buying budget. After I talked to them, they refused to refund the money (despite it was both their and the bank's error) but said they would carry it over until January. Not great, but not worth the hassle of trying to convince the bank that their error cost me money.

The 10th of January, I get a notice that, since I had not paid my rent, they were levying a $100 penalty and if I didn't pay my rent by the 15th (plus the penalty) they would boot me out.

Another round of phone-calls and trips to the head office with the deposited checks, bank statements etc.

And, because I am a moron, I gave them 6 months' worth of cheques in April. September, it happened again. This time, just before I was about to pay for my trip to Italy.

Since then, I have been dropping of my cheque, month by month, at their office. On the last day of the month.

A month ago, we got a new building manager. I haven't actually met her, but have been getting a steady stream of notices under the door. They were polite at first of course: for my convenience could I give them my bank info for direct deposit? Or howzabout 6 months of cheques?

And of course they have become progressively more stern, telling me the only "alternative" they can offer is for me to drop off my cheque at the head office. Which I have no problems doing. Except they want it by the fifteenth of the previous month.

Eventually I may actually met a real live human. Should be an interesting conversation, especially when I tell them about the paint falling (not peeling) off the walls in my bathroom, the leaking faucets, and the non-functional air-conditioning.

I've talked about these with the last three supers. Maybe it's their way of getting me on cheque-free payment.

Bored

Yep that about sums it up.

Bored, bored, bored, bored, smoked too many cigarrettes, bored, bored, bored.

Blech.

Need a beach.

Don't wanna go to bed. I should but I'd just toss and turn.

Nothing on TV. Why was I considering a digital cable box with a PVR (TiVo like thing) again?

Game. No then I will stay up too late.

Nothing to eat. At least that doesn't require pots and pans.

Lalalalala.

La.

Hmmm, have that Triops kit. But i need filtered water. Nope.

Too burned out to read. I already surfed and found nothing of interest.

Maybe I could kick-start my mid-life crisis? Never too early...

Nah, all sports cars drive stick and I don't know how.

The apartment is clean. Too late to vacuum.

This is a long and boring post. Obviously.

Well since I'm this bored, it means I will live in interesting times tomorrow. Chinese curse interesting.

Maybe I should get 40 winks to deal with it.

G'night all. And if you are reading this tomorrow, hope you rested well.

So Much for Karma

I know I said I would not use this forum to complain about work. I know, I know, I know. But gods what a day.

It actually began thirty minutes past midnight. I'm carrying the on-call phone this week and at 12:30 AM this morning it went off. Now understand that I've been doing this for 2 years and the ring-tone on the phone has been the same all this time. So when I hear it, it sets off a Pavlovian reaction of pure fear.

Wrong Number. Calling from California. Didn't get back to sleep until 3 AM.

Now we've had problems with an application at work that reports sales-staff commissions. Last week it busted because of a change in our payroll system that I wasn't notified about. I have a fix ready, but I needed to get a tape-restore done on the database to start from clean data. So they say my request for a restore was completed. I look at the data and nothing has changed. I look at the ticket system again and my request was closed on a completely unrelated issue. It took me the rest of the morning to convince people that it still hadn't been restored, and to get the ticket re-opened so I don't have 1000 phone reps calling me to find out when they can get their commissions.

And because of all this, I didn't have time to prepare the presentation I was to give to the directors and CIO on our new intranet site. After numerous laptop issues (MS Auto update and reboot, never could get it back and running again), the directors unanimously decided that the site provided too much information. So what it was pared down to I could put in a fortune cookie.

As for the quitting smoking thing, I think I would have burned through a whole pack at work but it's very cold, extremely windy and frankly between one thing and the next, I couldn't get 10 minutes to take a break. But I still have managed to smoke 11 of my allotted 13 cigarettes today. I may go over the limit tonight. Or the next hour.

Mmmm, vodka coolers......

Lag!

Eeesh, what a day. Not exactly stressful, not exactly busy, but a series of small tasks and "can you do me a favour" stuff. Add to that my internal clock was out by half an hour: it felt like 2:30, but it was actually 2:00. That sort of thing. So I left half an hour early.

Smoke count (by end of the day anyway) will be 19. So that's down six on day 1. Not much I know, but in 4 days at that rate, I will have quit smoking and strangled my first executive! Bonus!

Planetside is still fun. There's a statistic that shows your kill/death ration (how many enemies you killed, and how many times they killed you). I finally breached the 1/1 ratio!

Er, look, I'm not a homicidal maniac. Really.

Quitting sucks!

Buzz

So a couple very dull things.

Finally got onto the old velocicycle (bicycle in modern parlaiance) this week. It was a good week for biking. Instead of doing 20 minutes at the gym, I went for a 40 to 60 minutes spin down the bike path. Quite nice!

Second thing is, I got my hair buzzed to the skull today. Note I had it chopped, I did not do the duty myself. A hair-salon by my gym was donating $120 to the kid's cancer foundation (or something) so I figured what the heck, I wasn't using it anyways. It did my the mutton-chops went, but I got the impression they weren't doing much for me anyway except catching the errant insect. Still have the soul patch though, otherwise my face my freeze like that. Not sure why I did that exactly, maybe building karma up for yet another attempt at quitting smoking. Karma for something anyway. As I told The Lemming when he said he needed to give away a lucky penny, I need to get lucky. Now, I didn't quite mean it like that, but that single-entendre did have an element of truth in it.

Anyhoo.

I managed to book off the week of the long-weekend in May. Now if I can grab a cheap (meaning $750 or so) all-inclusive somewhere with a beach, I'll be tanning (okay, burning) drinking (okay, nursing hangovers) and romancing (okay, being laughed at) somewhere sunny, warm and conducive to bathing suits.

Note to self: bring extra sun-screen for my head.

The Tolling Bell

(sigh)

Well, looks like yet another component of my computer (my friend, my teacher, my student, my secret lover) is almost out-of-date.

I had heard pretty good reviews on the new Tomb Raider is pretty good, hearkening back to the first two or so installments. After that of course, it just got cheesy (and her boobs got more and more impossible). So I got the demo online.

Now, my video card, once a paragon of polygons, is now a minimum requirement. This is of course the death knell of anything digital. Minimum of course computer-ese for laughable.

So, despite my slick-daddy CPU (dual core baby!), gigs and gigs (or 2 gigs) of memory and more disk-space than I could conceivably need (unless I start to download music and movies), my poor graphics card is about to be relegated to the backup computer.

I'll shed a tear of course, rendered in 3-space.

Now, what's available under $200? Make that $300. $500?

Hackin' It

Despite my varied attempts (some successful, some not) at quitting smoking, currently I am at a pack a day now. I'm noticing that the "morning cough" is now at a tuberculosis level and there's a slight wheeze now. Add to that I'm sucking wind at the gym and on the bike (although I did make it up the hill without hitting the granny gear).

So I think I gotta quit again. For real and permanently this time.

I've tried the patch before, and it has worked. My attempt this January with it resulted in some nasty skin-conditions though. I'm going to try the gum this time around.

Here's the plan. This weekend, I buy a pack of the gum and use it to reduce intake: chew during my habitual times. These are: my "good morning" smoke, my after meal smoke, and my "my gods I'm going to kill someone at the office!" time. Etcetera.

By the end of the first week, I'm hoping to be at half a pack a day, the next week it's all gum baby.

I may be grumpy. Or homicidal. But not suicidal, because that's what I'm trying to avoid here.

The worst of my habit is actually playing computer games. I don't even realize I've lit up until I attempt to use both the keyboard and mouse at the same time and can't because of the coughin' nail wedged between my knuckles.

It will make some interesting blogging at least. Maybe a daily count here? The north-American, male, on-line version of Bridget Jones' Diary. Or something.

Speeling

Wow. Okay i am not liking my new keyboard one bit. Looking at my last post, my gods the typos!

I'm not a spell checker kinda guy. I pride myself on my spelling skills, probably stemming from the trauma of failed spelling tests in grade school. As someone noted yesterday I'm a Bible-style typist (seek and ye shall find) but i can do it rather quickly.

So I may have to hot-swap this out with a keyboard in a drawer somewhere at wok. I mean work. Dammit!

Man, I have lean on the damn shift-key on this thing!

So I was up at 5:30 this morning with a bad stomach so now I have no excuse not to bike into work today.

So fair warning, I'm coming into the office wearing tights!

Ah

So I have a step-niece. So there ya go.

Weekend was thankfully short: no over-exposure to the paternal unit, but was exciting as a turnip.

Other than that, I lead a really dull existance as usual. Those who swing by the Lemming's place already know that we ae bleeding people at work, and alot from upper management. Something big is in the works I think. I'll have to visit the Cancer Committee (those of us who smoke downstairs) and see what the scuttlebutt is.

Back on the regular gym schedule. Makes spring (and warmwather) twice as nice.

That is all. Yes H, I know that's not exciting, but that's life.

Oh Boy. Family.

So I got a call this weekend from my dad. He and the wife are coming to town for my step-neice's (or is it nephew's, I probably should find out) baptism. Which means that for a 1 hour ceremony, I have to entertain him for 72 hours.

I love my Dad, I really do, but one of the reasons I moved to another province....

Let's put it this way: he makes me look like a chatterbox. We'll have the usually "how's work, how's life" conversation for 5 minutes then the rest of the time he'll tell me he's worried about me. About everything. I actually told him I quit smoking (it was true at the time) and he'll find out I started again. So that's about 8 hours worth right there.

then there's the "why don't you come visit me? routine. I'll explain again that it's an 8 hour trip one way if I drive, or a $600+ plane ticket I fly. For Christmas, I'll fly but I willnever drive there in the winter again. Last time, it was the most harrowing experience of my life. He's retired, and very bored, which can be annoying enough, but add to that my memories of growing up largely entail how much he wanted to retire...

So yeah, I have issues with my father. But don't we all?

Don't all answer at once now....

Long Weekend!

Yay! 4 days off! And the first time in about 4 years where I don't have to go into work!

So it's a spring cleaning weekend, kind of. Air out this place man, whooo. 5 months of being cooped up there's a certain pong in the air.

Planetside continues to entertain and frustrate me. Turning into a love-hate relationship, but at least it's a relationship.

Picked up a new keyboard, nothing special. My old one, the "WASD" keys didn't work anymore. Go figure. Also picked up a new joystick. Much fun for blasting things.

Hmmm, maybe gaming is replacing having a love life. But it is cheaper and less confusing.

Laundry, be right back....

So it's not been an exciting week by any stretch, although I have been slacking gym wise. The view hasn't been good lately so my prime motivation is fading away. However after going today, I do need to get back to my regular schedule. I'm in pain.

So Easter proper, I'm going to my Mum's place for dinner. Her husband is away in Mexico for a school thing so my brother is already there. I'm delayed because of the house cleaning thing, which I am avoiding by writing this.

Okay I think the keys on my new keyboard are slightly smaller. Many, many typos...

I'm Baaaaack...

So I'm back from Redmond and the home of the Borg aka Microsoft.

Was a pretty good trip. Seattle is green! Forget how much you miss that when winter sets in.

The conference itself was pretty informative, but it also reinforced my opinion that MS needs to get out more. Now they have some incredibly smart people working there. But you can tell that they are pretty isolated when it comes to coding in a business context: coding products to sell is much different that coding for to support a business (ie they don't sell software).

Can't say much about what was said due to NDA, but overall I'd say they are listening, just hope their marketing department doesn't put the kybosh on some of the things that were suggested.

As for the trip itself, going there was hassle free but the way back.... Our flight from Seattle-Tacoma was delayed because the pilot reported problems with the suspension system on the flight into SeaTac. I did notice passengers grumbling about the hard landing as they got off the plane. An hour goes by, the techs show up, inspect the plane. I actually saw them shrug their shoulders and report nothing wrong. Our landing in Van was smooth as silk. I'm pretty damn sure the pilot botched the landing and then reported mechanical problems to cover up.

So it made us late for our connecting flight home. My two compatriots managed to get a flight right after but it was the last two seats. Now the reason I was last is because my luggage was the last bag to unload, so I had to wait for it. Now as I was hurrying up to catch up with them, I had to pause at an intersection to see which way they went. As I was looking around, some rent-a-cop stops me with a "Hey You!". The best way to describe this guy is podunk white-trash: the mustache and side-burns, the bad teeth, you could see the NASCAR baseball cap and ratty tshirt on the guy. So he comes over and gives me attitude, really being condescending: "Now what does that sign say? And now that other one". I really wanted to say something but slugging a security guard at an airport is a whole universe of trouble. Even thinking about it makes me see red.

Anyway, when I managed to get to the ticket counter, I got put on standby for a flight leaving a couple hours later. Thank the gods I managed to get on. So the whole journey from hotel to front door took 9 hours, when it should have taken 5...

So that was my past week, so not much more to report. Tuned up the bike today (pedal not motor). Start riding into work again, which saves me $16 a day in parking. I know I should walk but I got lazy. Okay lazier.

Regardless off the week "off" (I am dreading my inbox tomorrow) really looking forward to the long weekend.

Away and Gone

So speaking of computer games....

Er, just noticed my computer clock is an hour ahead. Daylight Savings Time has snuck up on me again. I'm a "Fall Back" kinda guy, "Spring Forward" just ain't my scene, man.

Coffee.

So for the past week I've been playing Planetside. Now they started an interesting thing "promotion" of sorts which I think is kinda brilliant.

Planteside is Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter (MMOFPS). So it's like Doom, Unreal Tournament etc. I've never been huge into the genre, but it's a great time waster, is all twitch (which I suck at) but what the hey, sometimes my brain just ain't up to managing a civilization over the scale of millennia.

So I did try the 7-day trial of the game years ago. I think I lasted a couple of hours. Like most MMOs, the more experience you get, the better equipment etc you have access to. So for someone just starting, you get owned (or rather pw0ned). When I first tried it, I usually went to a battle, found an enemy tank, or giant robot, or some guy in powered armour and got pounded. Not fun.

But someone at Sony Online actually came up with a great idea. Give the game away for free, but you can only go so high in experience. They call it the 'Reserves' but really its just cannon fodder.

Of course the idea is that some people will want to move beyond the cannon-fodder stage and sign-up. But I can see alot of kids (and adults) just playing for free. Which means there's alot more people playing.

So now there's actual battles. Some of the vets of the game don't like all these newbs running around and killing them. I think it's great.

In The Real World

So I'm going to the Microsoft campus in Redmond this week. The geeks at work were invited for a one week sit-down with the SQL Server development team: the guys who actually code the thing. There will of course be some 'marketecture' but I'm hoping to get some questions answered, see what the real dilly-o is with 2005 and plunder the MS store.

And that's about it for the week then. Have fun!