Still working for L***D**, despite the voice(s) in my head. It's not so bad right now, as I'm out of the office 4 days of the work week, thus avoiding having to deal with the Brothers From Hell. Working in brampton, close to the airport, commuting from my parent's place in markham.

Been meaning to work regularily on my homepage.. HA. It seems that jyseto has beat me to it.. *shakes fist in unjustified annoyance*

Playing Baldur's Gate.. my my what a good game. Oh it's simply delish.

I picked up (another) copy of Te of Piglet.. my other copy is with Johanna, whom I haven't written back to for a few months now.

I was having a heated argument with my roommate about whether using a microwave is healthy or not.. I was fairly certain that it was shown that certain foods have residue radiation after being "nuked", hence the term... but I can't quite remember how legit it was. My roommate didn't buy it.

I'm wearing my wrist braces regularily now, as i'm growing concerned about the twinges and pangs. Well, that's what you get for using a computer 12 hours a day over 10 months.

I'm very concerned about the antibiotic dilemma. If there is anything to worry about, it's this. Y2K has nothing on a medical crisis of epidemic proportions (not that Y2K was anything to worry about in the first place).

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Just some random thoughts...

(A desperate attempt to maintain reader interest..)

I'm writing this thing with vi, and considering that my html skills are greatly lacking, you'll excuse the "scientific journal" look of the page. Hey, at least I don't have rainbow page splitters or a link that connects to pictures of my dog.

I talked to Growl on the weekend.. he invited me out to waterloo for a celebratory party for Christine somethingorother, who is the new Fed president.. perhaps now that fetid boys-club of olde will display some of the innovative flash of its glory days. And maybe now UW spirit will be more than a ghost.

I wasn't able to go, however.. i hadda work on Sunday, and it's a bit of a pain to travel out to waterloo and back from toronto. If i take the car, i have to travel out to my parent's place in Markham. If I take the bus,I have to conform to Grey Hound schedules. Bah I say.

I ended up working from 11:30 to 8:30 Sunday. I was supposed to start at 10, but I lingered at Angela's... anyway, I wasn't in the mood to work and deal with the clowns. I didn't even know I was going to work Sunday until Friday night. Bastards.

I'm so tempted to just pick up and go.. I promised myself long ago that I wouldn't allow myself to get into some job and say, "God, I hate my job." But I'm there and I gotta get out. I never thought I could truly hate someone until I worked here at [censored company name].

Things aren't so bad now, as I don't have to deal with any crap daily working offsite (in Brampton). This client (like most of our clients)are genuinely nice, and I get an office with a nice sunny window. I share it with some IT people (ie. reasonably quiet, quirky sense of humor, curses users regularly - people I understand and can get along with). No cute girls here though.

Upon reflection, the past year since I finished school has passed by rather quickly. So much time spent in front of a computer, both at work and at home, which has resulted in me wearing wrist braces (which I picked up at a Shopper's for $25 each). They have a generic flesh tone to them, like bandages, and use velcro straps. A plastic tongue gives holds them rigid, keeping your wrist from bending forward (forcing your fingers to curl more). They seem to help. Reasonably comfortable.. takes a little to get used to, especially when using a mouse.

I started to get pangs and twinges in my wrists in late December.. which probably coincided with my hookup to HSE (Bell's trimmed-down version of ADSL, High Speed Edition). It's a pretty good system and the price is quite reasonable. Well, being on-line 24 hours a day pretty much steals a lot of one's time. Especially considering that there's plenty'o' stuff to look at/download/listen to/browse/sample/play. I've already filled up some 7 gigs of the 8.9 gigs available to me. That's a lot a lot.

Yes, I'm quite the net leecher.. mostly for downloading games though, and the odd browse here and there. I used to play Delta Force daily, but Baldur's Gate and Half-Life soon put a pause on that. Delta Force is a commando type game, with excellent sounds and wonderful multiplayer support. Nice death-sequences too.. reminds me of the old DOOM animation where the player grabs his squealing throat, having met an untimely demise. Repulsive as it may seem, you can also sneak up on other soldiers in Delta Force and knife them, resulting in a nice gurgling choke. Ahhh!

I've been trying to eat more healthily these days.. I mean, there really is no excuse for poisoning one's body with cholesterols and fats and oils and other shit dished out for the masses. Everyone knows the consequences.. and everyone knows the solutions.. so why do we condemn ourselves to unhealthy bodies and early deaths?? I haven't turned vegetarian, but I try to keep my meat intake to 1 or less portions a day. I don't eat anything burnt, and avoid anything barbequed.. Koreans are notorious for their BBQ'ed ribs, which are often trimmed with carbon.. which explains why we're also notorious for our high cancer rates (heavy smoking is also involved, but I don't smoke). Anyway, if you're going to reward yourself, reward yourself with something good for your body... it's rather ironic that people "award" themselves with some fatty treat/meal, which they later regret. I guess you just have to get into the right mindset, but once you do it's rather easy. I suppose that could be said about just about anything, that it's all in the mind.

Another important aspect of this healthy eating/living is for me to listen to my body.. in the sense that, I recognize what happens when I eat so and so food, etc. While browsing the menu, I'll visualize myself eating the items and discern from that feeling how much my body wants it. Hmmm maybe this isn't revealing anything to you (other than what a boring fellow I can be), but I think it's important. It seems that our medical system focuses so much on the cure/disease aspect of health.. very much of the "when there's a problem, we'll fix it" mentality. But I rather think the "avoid the problem in the first place!" outlook should garner a lot more attention. So much money/resources/time spent on curing people, fixing what's wrong with them.. when it's oh so easy for them to avoid these health problems! Sort of infuriating, when I think about it. If only people took better care of themselves.. instead, they'd rather suffer and pay someone else to care for them.

Working in Brampton means I have to drive some 90 minutes (45 there, 45 back) every day. While I'm generally laid back, I've noticed that I'm much more easily aggravated these days.. perhaps alarmingly so. It's probably stress from work, which in itself bothers me since I care so little as to what happens in that godforsakenhellhole. Anyway, I've had touches of roadrage.. ooh some drivers can really rub you the wrong way.. but often I'll pause and reflect and the rage goes away as quickly as it came. Singing helps.

Speaking of rage.. whilst speaking to Growl on the weekend, he mentioned that Curtis works at the Spectrum Internet Cafe (one of those miserable meldings of computers and coffee), to which I barred my teeth a bit. What happened was, at Growl's (and my) birthday party, Curtis dropped some inflammatory remark regarding Angela (my girlfriend at the time) with a couple of people around, myself included, Angela elsewhere. I'm not sure that it was directed at me, but he knew full well that I was within earshot. Anyway, my blood started to really boil.. I have a terrible temper that I rarely let loose (it often frightens me... that I'll do something really horrible.. sort of a Jekyl and Hyde.. or maybe Bruce Banner and Hulk?). I approached Curtis, put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Curtis, don't say such things.. please." all the while I was lightly trembling with anger. Well, he was drunk as a skunk, and replied,"You know and I know that I could have her anytime."

In retrospect, I shoulda pounded the sonofabitch. But I didn't want to take advantage of the fool in his inebriated state. I mean, he probably would not have said those things had he been sober (though I suppose, as Growl would say, "That's HARDLY an excuse!")

And don't get me wrong.. I have no fear of taking someone on in a fisticuffs.. I actually enjoy a good scuffle. I got into fights all the time.. as a kid. Nowadays, I try not to throw the first punch... well, that's what was going through my mind as I turned away, pretending to be deaf to Curtis' mocking.

Luckily, his brother (a really likable, nice guy.. I forget his name) stepped in. "Curtis, cut it out you're being an asshole.", and promptly escorted Curtis out of the house.

I pretty much want to disfigure that monstertruck-driving-deadman now.

An interesting UNIX app I came across today (whilst perusing sciborg's library) is "vacation". It toggles the state of your user-vacation status, thus turning on and off mail forwarding.. people who try to mail while you're "on vacation" receive a message (customized by you) about your whereabouts or whatever you want to say. Lightly interesting, sorta useful.

Something to think about... Baboom (If the text is too dark to see, you can use your mouse to highlight the text.. just click and drag and enjoy the wonderful technicalities of the International Weightlifting Federation...)

Kudos to qyv for finding and pointing out typos in my HTML.

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Well, they've gone and done it to me again.. those knucklebrained goons have decided that i need to work six days of the week. Augh. Like I'm not losing enough time as it is commuting to and from Brampton and to and from Toronto (I work downtown Wednesdays.. which doesn't make ANY sense since if I worked on Toronto on Monday or Friday, I could avoid one trip to and from, since I like to stay in Toronto weekends).

Oh god the whole jangle is driving me CRAZY. Not to mention, Angela isn't going to be too pleased to hear this either, as we hardly have any time together anymore.. she's working partime, but is also taking plenty of animation classes.

Played some more Baldur's Gate. I really can't emphasize just how fun I find this game to be. I'm almost done, but I'm pretty ready to play it again. It's quite obvious that the Black Isle people put a lot of time and effort into it. Wonderful spell animations.. plenty of NPC dialog.. and oodles of side-missions just to keep you busy. A fine world to explore.

I just had a talk session with Ruth, who has just got herself her very own domain! Well, it's actually a subdomain, but impressive nonetheless.

I gotta run to catch up with Angela for dinner.. y'all come back, ya hear?

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Oh I've got a splitting headache oh it hurts oh it smarts.. hmmm.. seems to have a abated a little.. hmmm... blue gummi bunnys are gross.

I nearly got into an accident driving into Brampton this morning.. the roads are slippery with packed snow and ice, and going across #7 are some pretty nasty winds. Going about 90 km/h, a stretch of highway just before Airport Rd. A car two lengths ahead of me did a nice pirouette, and the car directly behind them started skidding to a halt.. I avoided both by switching lanes, without thinking. Which was probably good. Afterwards, as I drove away, I could feel my heart pumping a bit.

I'm still torn about whether to stay or go (from L***D**, where I work). Things are getting better, on the business side of things; more contracts and money and such.. and the Bros. haven't done anything too too inane lately. As my other co-worker says (there are only four of us in the company now.. the Bros. have fired everyone else!.. when I joined last May, there were nine of us.. nine little indians), things aren't quite so bad in a certain light. He wants to stand it out, see where things will go.

But that's exactly how I felt some 10 months ago, wondering if working for these sausage-brained prats will be worth the potential success/money.

I'm not even so sure that they can become all that successful.. the head Brother (El Presidente) is not a people person.. he essentially is a paranoid egomaniac, a legend in his own mind. He says and does things that makes one wonder, "Is he saying that because he's such an ignorant imbecile, or is he just insanely delusional??"

sciborg> webster imbecile
im-be-cile \'im-be-sel, -,sil\ n
[F imbe'cile, n., fr. adj., weak, weak-minded, fr. L imbecillus, prob. fr. in- + -becillus (akin to L baculum staff) -- more at PEG] (1802)
1: a mentally deficient person; esp: a feebleminded person having a mental age of three to seven years and requiring supervision in the performance of routine daily tasks of caring for himself
2: FOOL, IDIOT
-- imbecile or im-be-cil-ic \,im-be-'sil-ik\ adj


sciborg> webster delusional
de-lu-sion \di-'l:u-zhen\ n
[ME, fr. L delusion-, delusio, fr. delusus, pp. of deludere]
(15c)
1a: the act of deluding: the state of being deluded
1b: an abnormal mental state characterized by the occurrence of delusions
2a: something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated
2b: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self
-- de-lu-sion-al \-'l:uzh-nel, -'l:u-zhen-)el\ adj
-- de-lu-sion-ary \-zhe-,ner-e^-\ adj

It's a tough call. I prefer to believe that it's both.

I'm not going to go into detail here why he's such a crazy madman.. I'm just too tired to think about it. Again.

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damn that girl annoys me..

and I'm sore all over.. mostly from sitting/squating/squirming on my bed, which makes for the poor seat from which i use my computer.

it's 2:37am and i only just now was able to begin my Quake3Test download. and i'm starving and my stomach is gassy. bah.

ok.. i went to the fridge and got some Mott's apple sauce and now i'm spooning up that gunk. it's something i picked up from an old friend of mine, Paul Hrubik.. i remember him eating it with his lunch, outside the Research building of National Defence in Ottawa.

hmmm... only 8KB/s.. another 37 minutes to go. and my back is killing me.

so yes.. for those of you who were suspecting it all along

I QUIT MY JOB

i've had mixed feelings about it. well, it was an okay job really.. i just couldn't handle working for the BastardsFromHell.. and listening to their endless tirade of absurd presumptions and unenlightened quips. they are just not people-persons. on the other hand, the company is (was?) doing well, and we had just hired on a new girl (i never got to meet her). i feel a bit sorry for Richard, my teammate/co-worker/latest-friend. we worked on the contract, and it was that contract that kept us alive for a couple months - it was the big money contract.. one that i had nursed to maturity (its infancy was marred by having been built by the BFH who, for all their offhand boasting, can be pretty shitty 'coders). well, they'll get along without me.. especially if the new girl is as good as she was all hyped up to be.

although, if she agreed to work for them, you gotta wonder...

the other thing i regret is that i left while the snack cupboard was still quite full.. i'm going to miss all those delicious handi-snacks and instant soups and microwave entrees. i'm not being sarcastic.. i really do miss them! i handpicked a lot of them.

my parents don't know yet. i want to find a new job first before i tell them. but before i find a new job, i'd like to travel a bit. well, i have a little bit of the pretty polly in my pocket.. first destination will be vancouver, to visit Pops... though he rarely goes by that moniker these days. other than that.. who knows? the world is my oyster! i don't even know where i'll work next! or what i'll eat next! *spoons another dollop of applesauce*

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Hey, another guy has left the company.. that makes about six in the past few months which is a helluva lot for a company of less than twenty people. Hmmmmm....

MIT is holding a gaming conference this week.. damn I wish I could go.

Another thing I wanted to mention - popfocus.com, a site about Britney Spears and 'n'sync, stole their entire site (email headers and all) from gamers.com (the Thresh-endorsed gaming site). It's really a sad rip-off job.. not to mention, it boils my blood to see someone steal web-content AND claim it was theirs. Sure, a lot of web-content is stolen, but only the truly pitiful fiends have the audacity to state:

"David is the owner and webmaster of this site. Everything you see here was made by him, not only the design but the graphics, news, and pretty much everything."

Some people are unbelievably dumb.. I mean, you think you can steal someone's content and then re-post it ON THE WEB?! *kicks popfocus* Idjiots.

Upon closer inspection, it might be a joke (numerous spelling mistakes, webadmin's email address is a hotmail account) but then why buy the domain names?

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Morning y'all.. right now, my throat is kinda lumpy - I had some pills with my breakfast this morning (vitamins, medicine, etc) and I can feel something stuck in my throat, right around the adam's apple. You ever get that? Man, I need a drink to wash it down *swallows*.

Well, no entries last night.. I couldn't ssh into risto.net... I guess the new ip has yet to get around. Not that I had much to say anyway.. also, I'm trying to curb my home-computer usage.. my wrists and elbow are starting to get a bit tingly. Well, it's not too surprising, as I've been averaging around 12 hours a day in front of a computer the last couple of months.

Oh, and Pops added a comment, who wonders if I'm worried about my work reading my page (and the consequent things I say about them)... I suppose I really don't care too much. Also, the chances are fairly slim of them ever visiting the site, which is a flimsy defense I guess. Actually, my greatest source of security is that, right now, they really don't want to risk losing me - the website goes online in a few weeks (I'll tell you when you can visit it) and the site means too much to my bosshole for him to get on my case about a few disparaging remarks. Ultimately, though, I don't worry about it since I can always find more work.

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Quick update.. worked another eight hours yesterday. Caught the last five minutes of the Leaf game. Played a lot of HOMM3 last night. Chatted online with some ole homeboy friends, gabbing about the dreamcast, neogeocolor, and martial arts. Woke up to a disturbing dream.. everyone's my enemy etc. Worked out a bit this morning. Gotta pick up some EDO RAM for Growl later today.

QYV's been busy with his page.. what interested me most was his link to a contest, a web page efficiency contest. The prize is laughable, but the honor and challenge are highly tempting/intriguing. I'm gonna enter something.

For now, back to business...

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Uh, yeah, we're still working on it.. soon.. very soon.. there's one small form to finish. Actually, Risto is doing most of the work now because I'm a bobohead and my stomach hurts. I decided to take advantage of my sleep-deprived state and ramble about whatever comes to my head.

Which is actually very little. Risto is wearing an elastic band around his head.. oh wait no longer. Me, I've donned my sunglasses.. auch, die sonne sheint! Hmm... I wish I could get a pair of those Bono Fly glasses.. I really miss Growl's pair (which actually belonged to his brother, I believe). My head buzzes a slight dull hum. Ah, Bluebeard.. I really like this song.

Well, I know that some of you will check out the site despite my requests not to.. because it's a shambles. Functional, but not much else. I'll make it cool later. Maybe 2004. Hmmm.. nice sunny day.. spring draws nearer, but I'm the same. I feel unaccomplished... so much to do, so much procrastination awaits. I've had four and a half fast food meals in the past few days (oh, I've been up since 11 am yesterday. So.. really, it's only been a few hours over a day that I've been awake. Hmmm.. Van Morrison sounds like Jagger.. DID NOT KNOW THAT! I had always thought he was just some old-foggie with a funny hat and beard. Maybe he is. Do I care? I think not.

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At work.. doing images.. lots to do still.

Hey! RAM prices are way cheap.. you can get 64 megs of PC100 for under $90! And CPU prices have also fallen.. the P3-550E (the mucho-overclocko one) is only $360 at infonec. Oh BOY I'm thinking of upgrading again.. that P3-550E can be overclocked to 825MHz or better... which is pretty damned good, considering that a P3-800 is somewhere in the $1400 range. Does anyone know if I can still use my PC100 RAM with a P3-550E running at 150FSB?.

Actually, it's a bit crazy for me to be thinking of upgrading.. especially considering that I barely play with my Dreamcast.. though that'll change next week when "Dead Or Alive 2" and "(Sword of) Berserk" come out.. OH BOY IT'S BIG. DC party, anyone? *rubs hands in joyish glee*

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Wow.. I've been missing entries left and right. Strangely enough though, it seems to encourage you guys into adding comments on the page. *rubs chin* I've been thinking of slightly changing the format.. there isn't enough trolling of my journal! *bangs fist on table*

I got into work early today (9am) because we had to get ready for the Canadian Mechanicals Exposition (CMX) show this weekend (23, 24, 25). Right now, I'm feeling way tired.. I got up around 8am today, and it's been several weeks since I got up that early. My eyelids are heavy.

Oh, I've improved the log script (still slow as hell though) - you can now sort on the columns. It's not perfect though - the dates are using a dumb string sort... I'll fix that later, as it seems problematic to amend. Oh, did anyone notice that I got a few hits from westwood? Cool, huh? Uhm, the 210.x.x.x hits are from Korea.. probably dial-ups. You know, I STILL get junk mail from people entering a @4mau.com email on internet registration forms. Mostly junk mail from porn sites *shakes fist*.

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The thing that confused me about Vengaboys -- they're not all guys. What's up with that? Beastie Boys are all guys. Backstreet Boys are all male (admittedly shameful ones). The Beach Boys were all guys. The Jerky Boys, Pet Shop Boys, Oak Ridge Boys -- they all pee standing up. So what's the deal with 2 guys and 2 girls calling themselves "Vengaboys"?

I checked out their website, and found this bit of trivia in their faq:

Why are you called Vengaboys, when half the group are girls?

Our producers, DJ Danski and DJ Delmundo, originally used the name 'Vengaboys'. They organised huge beach parties in Spain under their stage name. We used to be regular visitors to these parties and eventually, we wound up being a group. Danski and Delmundo are still the producers, so everybody agreed that it would be best to stick to then name Vengaboys.

Still applying to jobs left and right. Actually, I got an offer for work in North Carolina! Urk. Ve shal see, herr inspektor!

Ah the weather is great again. Need to get my bike repaired so that I can once again become a cycle-path MUHAHAHAH!

Day One -- No counterstrike. Wrists feel sore when I wake up -- perhaps playing cs keeps me from feeling the burn. Watched the first Leaf vs Devils game -- YEAAAAH BABY. Leafs were real lucklarians though, and they only got one shot in the third period. But they played the trap nicely, and now Cujo has another shut-out in the playoffs. FANTASTIC! ("Here's your $1000 cheque." "FANTASTIC!").

I also sent in my tax return. Very little paper work this year, since I lived at home (no rent) and am not in school. Just my T4 and some medical expenses. My dad got QuickTax software, so it only took a few minutes for me to do.

Oh, uhm, tonight I'll be going to Toronto with Kendrick and mike.kendrick. Probably just going to hit the clubs, not sure what else yet.

My dad got four tickets for television preview. Have you heard of it? Essentially you get to rate consumer advertisments, as well as a couple of shows that haven't been released yet. The tickets are for Monday night, and I want to rustle up some people to go. I think it'd be fun.

Speaking of tickets, I STILL haven't found those U2 tickets.. the agonizing drama continues..

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Argh.. we figured out what the problem was with the work connection -- roger's has a new non-static IP policy!! Is that not MAD!? Their business accounts don't get static IPs.. what a bunch of frog-jumping crockerbones. I just made that up. They don't know a flower from the heart of a diddlepump.

Anyway, the network guy is on holiday, and I couldn't figure out the linux config we have at work (it's a non-mandrake distribution). It's a whacked out setup anyway. The "expert" who originally set it up (a personal friend of the bosshole) used non-reserved IPs for the internal network. That is, he used IPs that could potentially be used by outside machines, instead of using the IANA reserved IP blocks. Some "expert".. more like "idiotic fatass". Oh I'm just being mean. I guess he doesn't deserve that. He's just eats too much pie, that's all. He can't help it if he craves a delicious slice of juicy pie every FRIGGIN hour, snorting the thing whole, inhaling pan and crust in one fantastic display of vacuum imitation.

Went to the jujutsu class (thursdays) today, was pretty tired. We did a lot of throwing and a little sparring too, which was a lot of fun though it really took the wind out of me (the sparring, not the throwing or falling). Tussling and wresting really works up a sweat. Annoying thing -- I ripped my gi! Everytime I got thrown I'd hear a little rip, and I wondered where it came from. And then, near the end of class, when I was in the middle of a throw, I saw the armpit of my gi and see that there's this HUGE hole there, like big enough for me to climb through. AUGH. That gi was like.. three weeks old! DIS-AP-POINTED!

I'm thinking it might be because I let my gi air dry, as I don't want to waste energy drying just two articles of clothing. Even so, I thought the whole point of a gi was that it could take a beating! *sigh*

Also, I got a whole foofle-load of mosquito bites last night -- I think my parents left a window open somewhere. So now I'm resisting the urge to scratch my knuckles, chest, shoulders, tummy, ankle, etc etc ETC!!! Grrrr.

Actually, I'm not all that annoyed -- I've had five good workouts this week, and survived with only a few bruises and a slightly sore ankle (fell on it today from an unexpected throw). I'm in a pretty good mood, actually.

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Oh what a headache. Today was all work work work. We had to move a lot of the major functionality from our servers to the rogers' machines. And, since we don't have static IPs anymore, we wrote update scripts that would automatically change all our links (.htm, .php, .pl, etc) to point to the right server. Well, most of the work was learning shell script syntax all over again.

Actually, an interesting side effect came out of this -- we figured out how to run commands on the rogers' servers without a shell account (they don't give them out). It's SCARY actually how much power we really have other there. I'm guessing it's a security issue, but I don't plan on pushing it too much.

Well, not until I can figure out a way to do it anonymously...

Anyway, I missed today's karate class, which totally bummed me out. I figured I should work out when I got home, except I didn't (which bummed me out even more). But, I spent a lot of my free time talking on the phone with Tenshi so it wasn't all bad.

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What a bloody bosshole.. he told my co-worker that yesterday he was TESTING our (my co-worker and myself) ability to deal with the situation (moving servers, changing IPs, etc). And AND he had the gall to say that the pie-inhaler could've done it in two hours. Rrrrriiight. If I were there, I'd have said: "OK! Well, I'm gonna go away for a month, but I'm just "testing" you. I want to see how YOU do." Chizzle-chest.

Lastest bossholism:

Bosshole: I want this window to close when the user logs out. Just program "Alt-F4" into a button.

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So the bosshole has hired someone to do the imaging work to replace the fellow that I hired many months ago. Thus far, her work has been sloppy, error-ridden, and of much lower quality than we have in the past been used to. Her knowledge of computers is laughable, and she had no internet experience of note. But the bosshole has fired the employee that I hired (a cs grad) and has put the new girl on full-time, despite my complaints amounting to what I said above.

And why does he hire her? Because she works for less. Because she does more images per day (but, like I said, lower quality with buggy scripts that are to go along with them). But also because SHE'S HIS MAID.

Actually, this has happened quite some time ago, I just didn't get around to writing about it until now.

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Bosshole and that cs grad I hired (and I thought he fired) walk into the computer room (which houses our servers as well as my and my co-worker's desks).

BH: Don't mind us, just keep working.
And so they watch us code and do whatever, our faces hard and our backs to them.
CSGrad: Yeah, I know how to do that *points to screen of my co-worker, who is unTARing a file*.
Hwan: *eyeroll*

And this goes on, CSGrad making comments on how he would do things, what changes he could do etc. Me, I'm laughing inwardly -- do they think they could replace the hardware guy (the co-worker) and myself with this CSGrad fellow? A guy who's afraid to install RAM into his own computer, even after we show him how simple it is?

BH: Can you check out that help screen?
Hwan: *silently pretending not to hear him*.
CSGrad: He wants you to click on that help button.
Hwan: What? *pretending innocence/ignorance*
BH: Click here *points in area of button on my screen*.
Hwan: Where? *feigning yet more ignorance*
BH: Here! *finally taps exactly on help button*
Hwan: OH! Ok. *clicks on button*

This is not my beautiful house.

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Saw my specialist today, and as expected he said since I'm beginning to show signs of recovery, I should begin stepping down my prednisone dosage, which means another 12 weeks (3 months) of steroids. Whee! Oh, and he said that my bone-density results were good, although they have thinned ever so slightly since my last exam, which was taken over a year ago.

Some more crazy seating-shuffling at work -- me bosshole is going to be sitting BESIDE me for a week or so while his office is being redone. As Growl would say, the madness can only grow....

What with the weather being so gorgeous lately, I went for a walk to the local CIBC and passed by a car dealership where someone had brought their brand new MINI. Heh, I checked it out -- it looks like a TOY! But, a very fun toy, what with that BMW engineering and 15" tires right at the corners, which I bet makes for a super-sweet ride. Honestly, I'm thinking of getting one! Gets great mileage too (32.5/54.3 mpg). Well, not right now....

And finally, BELLE AND SEBASTIAN are playing at the Kool Haus May 8!!! But the tickets are sold out :(. If anyone ANYONE can help me get into the show, I would be terribly indebted -- I only found out they were playing because I was looking through a Toronto Life magazine in the doctor's office. Man, I really want to go! Oh man, I'm bummed about this.

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So I've spent some of the past few weeks working on a website, which is almost done. Obviously not all of the content is there, and the Korean side still has to be made. But I think (hope) most of the graphical and functional aspects are done. Well, in my mind they are -- I'm reasonably happy with what came out. About half of my time was spent on the menu page, which features a lot of bloated code and funny techniques (especially so since I'm making the site cross-browser friendly) -- if you bother to check out the source you'll see what I mean.

And yes, the site uses a splash page which I absolutely abhor. They're an outdated element serving only to waste everyone's time -- the user's and the creator's (mine). I do love the little sushi icons on the top menu, they're so cute. I'm not 100% satisfied with the food menu using a floating image, but I think it serves the purpose well enough.

Hmmm.. and you may have noticed that some of the graphics are REALLY big (splash page, store locator page) and that's just me giving in to the requests of the client, who are Korean and have little experience with the Internet in general. They didn't understand what the e-mail address "info@hiswebsite.com" meant. They thought the website was too dark, until we looked at their monitor and turned up the brightness. Elementary things like that, which incidently almost pushed me into "raging Hwan" mode when we went over an earlier version of the website together. Heh, something about having to deal with such foolish concerns really rub me the wrong way. Thankfully, they were willing to give us the benefit of the doubt and leave most of the design issues to us (outside of absolutely wanting that splash screen). Actually, my mood cooled a lot when after the meeting our client treated us to a modest sushi meal. Yummers.

So yeah, I have a few potential website clients lined up, who are incidently all Korean. Which is a mixed thing, really -- I mean, have you SEEN Korean websites? They're pretty everything I HATE about the Internet, full of flashing attention-grabbing and/or unnecessary graphics, very little free space (areas on a page where you can click without anything happening) and no real user-interface logic. And the Korean users eat that crap up. Oh man tell them I hate them. I suppose that it's the sort of mentality you get when you live in a country where all the buildings and roads and people are crammed into such a tiny little space (some 48 million people in an area of under 100 sq. km. -- just larger than Ohio). Well, details about these jobs to follow, if things go well. If not, I'm seriously giving thought to getting an education degree and teaching.

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Le sigh. Nothing particularly bad happening, I'm just incredibly bored. I should be going over the vb.NET code for an application I'm supposed to be converting but my machine still isn't ready. Actually, they had a machine for me yesterday, but I had problems installing Visual Studio .NET on it. So they bought me a new machine and guess what? Same problem. For some reason the install doesn't like being done from copied CDs (at least, that's the latest theory). Unfortunately, nobody knows where the originals are.

And so, I have very little to do. Well, it's only my second day.

So yeah, it's a bit weird being here, in these offices. Not so much offices really, as the computer programmer area is just a bunch of L-shaped desks and chairs occupying an open space. No privacy at all, so I haven't been able to fall asleep all day -- quite a challenge. Amusing in that nearly all of the employees in this office (of the two) are female. Also, it's sort of surreal to visit QYV in his cubicle (in the other office), which I had only seen before via his web-cam.

I think the most amusing thing is that I was interviewed for a job (in the other office) a couple years ago. Didn't hear back from them. And now, here I am.. I wonder if the interviewer dude remembers me!

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Man, I forgot how much of a time-drain a job can be. After I got home yesterday, I went and got a haircut (the usual near-brushy sort of deal), had dinner, watched a bit of Ali G, talked on the phone, did some tutoring, worked a bit on a new soccer webpage and went to bed. And that's it! No gaming at all...

And there was this extremely irritating high-pitched winding noise, coming from outside. My dad thinks it's from some pool-cleaning machinery in a neighbouring yard. It went on all night, and was still going when I left this morning. It's not loud, but you can totally hear it when you're trying to sleep.

Which reminds me of this freaky thing that happened Sunday night, the night before my first day of work. I wasn't used to going to bed so early (still ain't), and I woke up a little before 3AM. I tried sleeping but for many minutes just laid still in bed, quite awake. The freaky bit is that my cellphone activated itself -- not a ring, but just beeped and lit up, as if someone had touched the keypad (and I had thought the KeyGuard was on). It was 3AM when I checked the display.

I stayed awake for a while longer, listening intently but of course nothing happened.

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Such a nice day.. and I'm inside, copying and pasting code. Like the code monkey me be. All in the name of money. Officially a working member of society now, signed and initial'ed that daunting "Employment Agreement". Although really, I'm on a three-month probationary period. No vacation time allowed -- so there goes my summer.

Had an amazingly difficult time staying awake yesterday morning, still not in "normal hours" mode. Today was fine, as I had actual work to do. Went for a run after work, I think that tailbone bruise has finally left. Those blisters on my feet are still present, but somewhat "deflated".

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I must remember to always bring some music to work, because all the chatter combined with the lack of partitions between me and that chatter is getting on my nerves.

Took some Tylenol and Gravol, am feeling extremely drowsy, fighting mental molasses to get some work done.

I am constantly getting my shaved neck hairs caught in my work shirts, which has never happened before. Annoying indeed, although right now I just want to lie down somewhere and take a nap. I keep thinking back to that under-the-desk bed George from Seinfeld once constructed. But alas, my desk faces a wall so that such a setup would be easily foiled.

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I'm sorry but I simply have very little to say these days. Or rather, very little seems worthwhile to be put here. Mostly all I feel right now is the gaping hole in my stomach as I skipped breakfast today and I have to wait until 1 PM because that's the EARLIEST that qyv will go out for lunch. And we often don't leave until later because his qyv-ness makes him ask all of the surrounding employees what their stance on lunch is, if they want him to pick them up something, etc. Which, I suppose is nice and considerate but a hella pain. I forgot my medication today too, having barely gotten out of bed by 9 AM (and thus not having the aforementioned non-breakfast).

My hip has still been bothering me on and off, mostly it's late at night around bedtime. Seems to be mostly gone by the mornings. I went for a walk Monday evening (at dusk, when all the mosquitos are about but I didn't plan on eating any) and halfway around the block my leg started to really give me problems and I ended up limping all the way home. I wonder, can just anyone get one of those electric wheelchairs?

Really, the only thing keeping me sane at work is my music.. well, not MY music, but the CDs I bring from home. Like I mentioned earlier, I work in a fairly open space and what with all the walk-through traffic and people getting ready to move, there's a constant barrage of noise and chatter. Plus, one of the employees often works out of the conference room (with the entrance a few meters from my desk), which isn't so bad except that not only does he keep the door open (for "ventilation" purposes), but he also insists on using the speaker-phone for his calls. Maybe I should call him and tell him to close the door. Did I mention not eating makes me grumpy?

I suppose I should be looking forward to the move, but my new office is one of the few internal rooms ie. no windows. Oh yay. At least that'll keep the sun out of my eyes so that I can sleep at my desk properly. Or it would, except that I'll be sharing the office with a couple other programmers so there isn't any opportunity to doze. Three doors into the office also greatly hinder such efforts. But don't worry, I have my best men working on it right now!

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First day at the new office. Took about 8 minutes to drive here, and that included a little construction traffic. They've moved most of the programmers (eight of us) into one big central room, making it feel not unlike a CS computer lab. At least the air-conditioning is better than the old office.

Had a pretty good weekend, although admittedly I slept from 3AM to 2 PM Sunday, with a nap session from 1530h to 1700h thrown in. This of course resulted in me having trouble sleeping last night. But otherwise a good weekend! Saturday I went out with Angela, Krista and Pops, walked around downtown, had a late lunch at C'est What! Good food. We then took advantage of the sunny though mild weather by visiting the beaches, observing the natives. Got a call from Growl inviting us to a BBQ at 51m0n3's place. Decided on having sushi (at Sawakawa or something on Danforth) before driving up, where we were greeted by a game of Truth or Dare. Some pretty memorable dares, but all in all reasonably tame.

Hmmm.. this new computer room still gets a lot of walking traffic, what with doors that lead to opposite ends of the office.

Oh oh yeah, and I had an appointment with this acupuncturist that Angela knew for my hip. After putting a couple needles in, he had me walk and stretch and run and eventually jump, increasing the amount of pain I had to endure. Oh so very sore. Did it work though? Hard to say.. I still had some twinges of pain when I was walking along the beach the next day, but then again that was a long walk, over ninety minutes. Sunday I didn't feel anything, and I haven't noticed anything so far today. But the day has just begun and who knows what wacky adventures yet await me....

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We got a free soft-cream cone today, some kind of promotional offer from one of those blocky ice-cream trucks. Ah, standing in line with other people dressed in office attire, exposed to the increasingly withering effects of the sun. I think people in lines is one of the worst aspects of modern life. Not that they didn't line up in the past, but more that we shouldn't have to line up anymore for anything. It just irks me to be waiting in a queue, the least satisfying method of propagation.

Everytime I go to type "Private" when I declare a variable, my fingers want to enter "Primate". Which would make for an interesting programming model/abstraction.

My right bicep has been contracting periodically for the past couple of days, entirely involuntarily, and in such a way that I can't reproduce it at will. Spider-senses tingling or too much mouse-handling? Find out tomorrow, same ape-time, same ape-channel!

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Hola, been coding like a monkey to get a project done by this Friday. A project, I might add, that I started only a week ago. Not a big deal, only a handful of pages, but there's a lot of business logic (i.e. stuff that doesn't make immediate sense) that needs to be implemented. This is the second piece of software that I've worked on since I've started this new job, but it's a bit more important to me because there are only two people working on this one, as opposed to the 4-5 people working on the last one. Which means that I'm responsible for a lot more stuff, and there wasn't any code to build up from -- it was typed up from scratch, more or less. More pressure? Certainly, but it's good pressure.

Oh hey, my sister's band is playing this Thursday around midnight at The Silver Dollar. I will probably be there.

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I was supposed to wake up early today.. which I wasn't quite able to do, as I was out past 0200h to watch my sister's band play. But I made it on time to work, where I was to drive to Whitby to go to a client site. We gave ourselves 45 minutes to get there, as Mapquest had indicated that it would take 30 minutes. The directions given said to get off at the Brock exit. Which I missed, but I figured I could take the next exit and come around from the other side.

Of course, the other street we were looking for didn't reach that far. And then, after close inspection, I realized that the Mapquest directions said to get off at the Brock Street exit.. I had tried to use the Brock ROAD exit. Brock Street was another 10 kms east! So back to the highway.. take the Brock Street exit, go north, take a right at Dundas, take a right at Hopkins (the road the client is on), go all the way down Hopkins to find a dead end where it meets the highway, see the client's building on the OTHER side of the highway! Mapquest bamboozled me, but it wasn't Mapquest's fault -- the card the client had given us didn't list a street number. Which, when we eventually got there (some 30 minutes late), was obvious as to why they didn't -- they occupied the entire other end of Hopkins St.

After the meeting we had lunch at a nearby Denny's, which I thought was neat. If I should ever feel the desire to eat there again, please remind me that it's entirely over-priced breakfast food. The hotcakes were pretty good though. OH and there was a Chucky Cheese there too -- I had thought they were all gone although I've been told there's another one in Toronto somewhere.

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Oh good gravy.. I just got my raise for finishing my 3-month probation period. I also found out that I'm going to be working in Brampton for the next while.. practically indefinitely, as I will likely eventually rewrite a huge piece of software. Perhaps now is a good time to find a place to rent. Do people live in Brampton? I mean, real people?

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I can't seem to SSH into hwan.com from the new work computers, which means no more updates from work... which will probably result in a lot less updates. But it's not the quantity, it's the quality right? Or perhaps the quantity is itself an attractive quality.

And I can't get Trillian to work there either. And thus, the days look to be quite boring....

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Oh man, I just watched that 12-minute Lord of the Rings:Return of the King preview... it's looking mighty good! Cute to see a horse with motion-capture sensors set on its body. And I'd almost forgotten how stirring the soundtrack is. Just another four months... *sigh*

No new tales to tell. I guess I could ramble a bit on how crappily written the software I'm working on is. Truly spaghetti code -- variables referring to assumed properties of others, inconsistant naming conventions, almost no comments, variables implicitly declared, functions that treat all variables as generic objects. And the interface is not pretty either -- buttons of different sizes, inconsistant button locations, images and icons that aren't meaningful to their respective situation. All packed into one HUGE application. Maddening to add functionality to? Yes.

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Man does my body ever suck. I mean really, why does my pancreas hurt so much during the day? I didn't even have anything alcoholic to drink recently. And this morning my left arm was killing me it hurt so much. So I wrapped it tightly with a boxing wrap, which seems to help a lot. I had to re-wrap it when I got to work because it was tied so tightly that my hand was getting purple and was cool to the touch.

Someone took my bottle of water that I had left on my desk when I went to lunch. I couldn't believe it at first, and did a thorough search of my area in case it had somehow fallen under some nook. I asked my fellow cubicle worker about it, and he said that someone had used my phone and perhaps they had "mistakenly" taken my water. I'd like to "mistakenly" kick them in the shin.

Long weekend coming up, but no real plans. I would like to go to the CNE, mostly for the Food Pavilion. A WHOLE PAVILION.

Last night I went outside to get a glimpse of Mars and all I saw was a bright, slightly reddish point in the sky. I even walked a couple blocks so that I could get a closer look. If there's life on Mars, it must be awfully tiny.

So I've been avoiding Diablo and Counter-Strike and just home computer usage in general, to give my mouse wrist a rest. It seems to be working, as most of the pain and soreness is gone. Not that I'll immediately start playing again. Actually,it's sort of strange because, here I am, with this super-duper new CPU, memory, etc but I'm just not interested in playing anything. Just what, I say, just WHAT is going on?? Perhaps I'm subconsciously waiting for Half-Life 2 to come out. Or maybe I've grown past videogames.

Ok, you can stop ROTFLOL now. It might happen,someday. Maybe I'll get West Nile, and it'll kill off those parts of my brain that like playing video games.

Oh hey, did you hear about that new archaeon, Strain-121? It's capable of surviving temperatures above 121 C, which has until now been the accepted limit temperature at which organisms can live. The other interesting bit, to me, is that the single-celled microbe uses iron oxide for respiration, producing magnetite. FEAR THE ANCIENTS! *makes gang sign*

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Hola.. sorry to be so.. uhm, not there.. with updates. I spent most of my evening playing Tron 2.0. There's a bothersome bug with my soundcard (which is built into the motherboard) that seems to conflict with the game. When a certain sound effect is played, the sound begins to get all rezzy and echoes and eventually reaches a point where the computer crashes, full reboot. But I think I'm almost done. Great game, btw, with a strong emphasis on action. And gorgeous, rich, colourful graphics.

That pain in my side (down my left diodes) is still acting up, and is currently plaguing me as of this moment. I think I may have done some temporary if not permanent damage to that side of my colon. Oh my sides!

But actually, the primary source of my daily misery is the piece of @#$& code that I've been trying to wade through at work. Oh LORD it's poorly written. Take the example of a variable called "Payment_Weight_Flag". Now, is it a string? A constant? The name of a column? A form object? A checkbox control? If you answered Yes to ALL OF THE ABOVE, then you'd be right! Also, I'd have to kick you. I mean, I'm all for flexible code, but this is just insane. The lack of coherent or helpful comments also add to the madness.

Another example... the code uses a global form variable, which each form points to itself before opening a "child" form (child to itself, not necessarily a real MDI child form). The problem is that if there are more than 2 levels of parent-child, the original parent's link is lost. For example, form A sets the global form to point to itself (G -> A), then opens form B. Now form B sets the global form to point to itself (G -> B), and opens form C. The user closes C, then closes B... but global form G doesn't remember form A, only form B. Of course, one solution is to use a stack of form pointers, and using push and pull methods to keep track of the form history. The point here is, the code doesn't even try anything that smart. It just goes on losing track of who the original parent's were. It's not a big issue, but it means that users have to manually close things that they shouldn't need to. They don't even notice it's a bug, they just think, "Well, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't."

This type of (il)logic is RAMPANT in the code, and when the other terrible coding practices are taken into account, adding features is akin to having to hack and stomp through a dark swamp. And unfortunately, everyone who's had to work on the code has kept with the (nigh unusable) model, adding and patching code here and there, which has resulted in a gelatinous mass of spaghetti programming.

In other news, Bombay or Mumbai? I only recently became aware of the name change.

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Just read Monzy's latest entry.. it's a big one, summarising the past few years of his life. Ah to be young again...

I was just thinking the other day of how much I like the fall season, and that I welcomed the temperature cooling. I suppose that I associate it with the beginning of the school term, which was for me a most interesting time. It was the feeling of starting all over with a clean slate, ready to do better than last term, equipped with the experience of the mistakes of terms past. Of course, I'd end up swamped with stuff because I'd goof off so much and just barely slide by in the end, but still... The start of term also meant that as student you had a lot of free time, mostly to socialize and catch up with people who you hadn't seen, especially if you were in different streams.

I've been counting down the hours every day at work, which is not a good sign. That means I don't have enough to do to keep me busy. I'm sliding back into my blog-surfing ways (thus re-visiting monzy.com). I actually had a dream that I was back working in the home office, which is strange because I didn't think that I did miss that place but I suppose I do prefer it over working out here in Brampton. I guess I'm dragged down somewhat by this crazy program and the unbelievably dumb code implementing it.

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I wonder, how long have I been miserable? Floating along with the rest of the flotsam, biding time until the next few big games and films are eleased. Looking into the future is quickly becoming an exercise in disappointment and depression. This is what happens when work doesn't keep me busy.. I sit around, surreptitiously surfing, looking for something to burn time away. And a funk develops.

So in way I was thinking that there isn't too much left to be done with this particular life. It's far too tiring anyway. I would like to get Babelle up and running before I go though. You know how everyone, after they pass away, are really only known for one thing. Certainly there is more to one's life, but in terms of association in history people are generally tagged with but one thing. Mine will probably hwan.com at this point, unless I decide to listen to those voices in my head and live in the arctic as a hermit. Hmmm and even then hwan.com would probably be more popular.

It's strange too because I'm pretty sure I know what I need to do to get out of this funk, but I'm reluctant to take the necessary steps. Reluctant or incredibly lazy, your pick. Blast, this passive stance of mine may have worked for me in the past, when decisions and results were thrust upon me but now that the ball is my hands I don't seem to know what to do with it. Perhaps old habits die hard.

Oh right, the colitis -- it's sometimes easy to forget that I'm still living with this highly intrusive and disruptive disease. That's been my excuse in the past, though I hope to soon escape its clutches. If not I may just have to switch religions. Fret not Jesus, Allah, Buddha: I love you all!

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Yeah, sorry about that -- the IP changed, and I wasn't able to fix it until I got home from work. It's sort of funny because the night before Pops was saying I should switch to DSL and get a news account with a strong retention for the same price as what I'm paying now for cable. I countered with the fact that the IP doesn't change very often. Which just shows that I should've kept my big mouth shut. And also that Pops is bad luck.

The thing that really gets me about the software I'm working on.. besides the terrible coding practices, the horrendous design, the gottaffel UI.. is the fact that there is NO literature at all. No documentation of the business logic, no charts or diagrams on how the datastructure is laid out. It's all passed on by word of mouth, painfully memorized by previous coders, like some kind of guarded esoteric ritual. Numbskullery, I say!

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Last night was my office's Christmas party, the first real "work" party I've been to since, well, ever I think. I had some five glasses of wine, second only to a senior programmer who got into the habit of clinking his glass on mine and then punching me in the shoulder, as if the two actions balanced themselves out. It was endearably nice to see all my old lunchmates again, and there were quite a few new faces too. I had a good time, but I'm a little tiffed because I didn't get to chat with everyone I wanted to. There is talk of a company karaoke night, but I am greatly weary of participating in anything that requires me to sing ever since that one time. Also, a lot of the (female) programmers don't drink, which is why I only had 5 glasses.

Afterwards I shot a couple hours of pool with Pops, who won an impressive number of games. I have, I think, a peculiar method of taking my shots. What I normally do, especially if there's a sizeable distance involved, is line up the shot so that the cue and object ball are lined up perfectly with my stick. Once I get that down, as I pull back I turn the cue slightly to account for the angle required to put the object ball in the pocket. That is, I only really aim a moment before I shoot. This method works surprisingly well, although I don't know if it's a good habit to rely on such a subtle intuition so much.

In other news, did you hear that the Earth's surface has been getting less and less exposure to sunlight over the past 30 years?

"...in 2001, when Stanhill and his colleague Shabtai Cohen at the Volcani Centre in Bet Dagan, Israel collected all the available evidence together and proved that, on average, records showed that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface had gone down by between 0.23 and 0.32% each year from 1958 to 1992."


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It is suggested that the increased amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere is responsible for scattering/absorbing the sunlight. I find this to be a fascinating theory. Amusing to read the reactions of meteorologists, who seem unwilling to even consider the possibility. A result of consensus science?

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I get goosebumps pouring over the Mars rover media.. it's just so.. incredibly amazing. I share a minutia of elation with those scientists. This is by far the most interesting news I've come across in a long while. And to think that there's another rover slated to land on the 25th! I just find it so very neato.

Oh yeah, I've been a bit delinquent in posting the birthday party pictures from this past Saturday, but I'll get around to that soon. My 120GB HD arrived yesterday (despite the ridiculous road conditions), so I have that to deal with that as well. It took me over an hour to get home, which was mostly due to people driving v e r y slowly. Personally, I like the slushy roads and the slippery turns -- makes things exciting. The funny thing is, while people go slower, they don't drive any more carefully. I've seen plenty of high risk maneuvers, sharp lane changes, making left turns into oncoming buses, and so on.

I don't understand why my hair is so stinky. I blame my new hair styling product. It's this goopy gel-like stuff, and after only a day or so begins to smell like.. burnt glue. Why can't Shoppers stock some real salon merchandise?

My cubicle is in the new wing of our building and I rarely have occasion to go upstairs (my keycard works throughout most of the facility). So even though I've been here for six months or so, I'm not exactly a familiar face. A couple weeks ago I was called to look at a user's computer, and when I got up there I asked one of the women where I could find that person's desk, mispronouncing the name I was given. The woman responded with, "How did you get in here?", standing there like some mastiff blocking a mailman's path. Fortunately, someone else recognized me and alleviated me from having to explain myself. In hindsight, I thought up some appropriate replies:

• "Oh, I waited by the door -- I'm stalking someone."
• "I'm here to inspect the tapestries!"
• "You'd be amazed by how much you can cram into the ventilation system."
• "I just followed you.. don't you know where you're going!?"
• "How did I get in here? Isn't it just like a woman to ask such a silly question. Now dearie, if you wouldn't mind removing yourself from my path, I've got some real man work to do."

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One thing that I've always hated about office environments were the attempts by management to maintain an appearance of professionalism, when such attempts do not have any direct effect on productivity. What does it matter what style of hair or brand of clothing someone wears, providing that they perform their job and complete their work? It shouldn't matter if I listen to music (on a portable device with headphones) or happen to place my jacket on my desk instead of using the office closet. And yet for both of these supposed transgressions I've gotten pulled aside and given a "we'd like it if you would" speech. Whenever I'm confronted by such meddling I feel an urge to move on.

If they ever put an end to my fruit juggling or comical slide-whistle antics, I am really gonna get mad!!

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A Weekend of Food and Drink

It's not easy, being queasy. Friday, we had gone to meet some of my coworkers for a drink at Archibald's, and I had imbibed a couple beers on an empty stomach. I'm glad I got to see some of these everyday strangers outside of the work environ. One of them actually went to my high school, so he filled me in on how everyone in the in-clique were doing. While our circles had overlapped at times, I didn't know them all that well. Beautiful people with their monster homes and big screen tvs, spotless kitchens and golf on Sunday. Hmmm... I guess that does rather describe my folks.

After they left, my friend and I decided to stay and eat; a chicken and pasta dish for me, a few whiskeys for him. Later on, in downtown Toronto, we picked up Ken from his apartment. For once, Raq-N-Waq was not busy, though one should keep in mind that this was also the first weekend of the smoking ban. Despite suffering from a cold, Ken was able to cleanly win most of our 8-ball and cutthroat games. To be fair, we were the ones tossing back the brews. I recall a fair amount of guy talk ie. women we've loved, we'd love to love, we wished we loved, etc. A simple but tasty meal of corn and crab meat soup, General Tso's chicken and thick, flat rice noodles with beef at Swatow followed.

Saturday I was, for some odd reason, able to get up early, the impending BBQ on my mind. I went across the street to the chinese strip mall with new clothing and hair my primary objectives. I spent a fair amount of time at the Club Monaco outlet store and the Winners, picking up two very nice pairs of pants (charcoal is my new thing) and two armfuls of collared shirts. I used to hate wearing shirts with collars -- now I'm all about mixing and matching them with tees. But tasteful shirts, in mute browns and creams. Shopping for clothes -- an expensive (but savings filled) success story.

I also got a haircut from my usual guy, and got my (usual of late) kinda wonky, vaguely butch-lesbian looking haircut. BUT I figured out why it looks so weird -- he thins out my top hairs, so that they're of two layers. One short, thick layer and the other kinda wispy and out there. And yes, perhaps next time I'll get him to do away with my mullet-encroaching nape hairs.

The BBQ, held in KW, was a mixed affair. Underwhelmed I think is the expression appropriate to the circumstances. I often wish I put more effort into introducing myself to people, but on the other hand I find most people terribly uninteresting (and they likewise, I'm sure). So you can see the dilemma. Well, I guess it's mostly my anxiety that they won't be able to get around staring at my awful haircut. Perhaps I should wear a small, dead animal on my shoulder, to draw attention away from the head area. One that was already dead, of course; it'd be barbaric to kill one just for anxiety-relieving purporses. Unless it was anxiety from it attacking my nest of antique Faberge eggs. In which case extreme, swift violence is entirely justifiable.

But back to the laid-back BBQ. To give an idea of the underwhelm factor, the activities consisted of tetherball, football and watermelon-rind tossing. The music consisted almost exclusively of that Guns'n'Roses redux band (no Axl this time). What's GnR without Axl? Crap, absolute rehashed, unoriginal, stale crap. Anyhow, the party pretty much was downhill from the get-go, never really leaving the ground, and culminated in a few bouts of Fight Night, wherein yours truly emerged as the winner! Huzzah for that!

Our triad of heroes, after the BBQ had dissolved a quiet death, drove into the night in search of sustenance. After passing over several other establishments (including two bubble-tea shops, a few sports bars, and an appetizer-only serving Kelseys), we finally arrived at The Keg. O frabjous day! 'Twas a meal that shall not be soon forgotten. The last of the prime rib, so the portions were quite generous. Growl likened the meat to what Cypher ate in the first Matrix film. Boring you may think it, but it was the most delicious meal I've eaten in many ages. And I've eaten ants.

The funny thing is, about this entry, is that I kinda like the new Britney Spears song.

Wherein The Guy Talks About His Monday

Man, I was so frustrated with the code yesterday -- I pretty much spent my whole eight hours rewritting a report form that should've required only a 30 minute adjustment. The problem was that the entire thing was everywhere, variables were being used haphazardly, confusingly and arbitrarily named.. all my old complaints about this software package I'm working on. Only it seemed a jillion times worse. And I was ranting and cursing all day under my breath everytime I came across yet another numbskulled snippet of code. I honestly wished I could strike down those who would leave such code, to show them the error of their ignorant ways. To strip of them their "programmer" status, to cast them out of the software world, where they cannot belong. But mostly just to strike them. Strike them to heck!

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Another Typical Workday

0815 Wake up blearily to alarm. Hit snooze, wonder why I'm so tired. Close eyes for a couple minutes. Radio alarm turns on, curse radio announcers. Eventually hop out of bed and get ready to go.

0850 Leave house. Arrive at work some 20-25 minutes later. Hope that a close parking spot is available. Note the numerous cars that "create" their own parking spots. Enter office, taking in what is probably the only "fresh" air I'll be exposed to until I leave. The quotes are sarcastic, seeing as this is a metal recycling plant, the air is as fresh as breathing through a burnt brillo pad. Try to identify today's array of oily, heavy odours emanating from the cafeteria.

0915 Sit at desk. Put lunch in cabinet to keep cool. Possibly say hello to desk-mate. If computer cannot see the network, sigh outwardly and reboot machine several times until it works (<-- actual solution). Once network starts up, connect to ICQ and MSN. Check with QYV if a VGAP turn has been released. Check hwan.com, The PIT!, cc.com, slashdot.org, the k*spot (almost wrote 'G', heh), misterpants.com, ninjalicker.com, boingboing.net. Time permitting, I'll also check on tMM.com, IMDB.com, rottentomatoes.com, and denbeste.nu.

Work happens.

Lunch is had. I eat at my desk, unless QYV happens to be at the office that day, in which case we go out somewhere to eat.

After lunch, I'll check many of those websites again if they weren't already updated.

More work happens. Endure salesman blather from adjacent cubicles. Lament not being allowed to use (new) MP3 player.

1720 Go home. Pray for change.

Homer: [To Lisa] "If you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American Way."

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Oh, I forgot to talk about my first day back to work! For those of you keeping track, I have now missed a grand total of 20 days. Six for the first bout, six for the second, eight for the last. Since the last two were concurrent over a weekend, that's 21 days of not showing up to work (1st of October through to the 21st). Having been so sick, I had vowed to change some of my more sloth-like ways. So I went to bed early and woke up early. Made a big breakfast, did some light exercise, dabbled a bit on the computer and drove into work on time for once. Of course, the one day I'm on time I end up leaving at the latest time I've ever been in; I stay until 1900 h, fixing a huge boo-boo one of my coworker's committed that very day. One of those "I undid everyone's work today" type boo-boo's. Yeah, serious stuff, he was totally panicking. I laughed a lot, taking in his freakout lightly. He's actually fairly lucky that I was there, not to brag but I was pretty much the only who could fix the things that needed fixing in a reasonable amount of time. Definitely a messy situation though, with lots of stress and eating of junk food.

For my efforts he bought me and a few other coworkers dinner -- a lovely Keg prime rib dinner. A comestible heaven for me, who was a scant week earlier eating Jello and drinking broth for meals.

Today I was really bushed though, and my legs were sore. So I just stayed home and puttered about the house. OH and I made some minor changes to the Recent Entries area; it can now be used to navigate (30 days at a time) to previous entries. I had the idea when I had originally built it, but was too lazy to do it. Turns out it was a one-liner (ie. one interesting line of code and a few uninteresting ones) and thankfully easy to do.

OH and before I go, I'm happy to note that Ludbr00kTreeFarm.com is now #1 for "ludbrook tree farm" on Google! Huzzah.

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Wah hey hey hey! We've recently set up a helpdesk at work, though we in the know call it the "IT Support Desk". However the email says it's the "servicedesk@ourcompanyname.com". Well, that's neither here nor there. Guess who has been given the esteemed privilege of manning the phone? Go on, GUESS!!

That's right. For the past three days I've been picking up the phone and saying "Support desk, Hwan speaking.", which is often followed by an awkward silence, as the caller is generally expecting our sysadmin to answer. I am now the IT personnel firewall, as it were. It's actually not too bad -- not like those nightmarish stories you hear on BoFH or Rinkworks' Calls from Hell. Neither the volume nor the quality have begun yet to hinder my daily enjoyment of work. *knocks on wood* Does knocking on wood work if your statement was partially ironic/cynical? It's actually not nearly as bad as I had initially anticipated -- ie. in great fear and loathing and stress. Typically, I don't have to deal with the issue -- I just pass it on to the appropriate person after recording the details into our request system.

I got an extra computer for my support desk work, which is actually better than my development machine. If you can ever get this set up for yourself, I highly recommend it, if only for the confusion that occurs when you're looking at one monitor and typing on the other computer's keyboard. Hi-lar-ious.

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Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have been extra-busy at my job lately, which is where I write the majority of my entries. Work has just been piling up and up and I am dangerously close to drowning at times. Friends often inquire as to how it is going.... and well, it's going. There are days that I'm calmly fighting fires, and others where I'm throttling near the annoyance redline. But it is not really all that bad. The "problem" is that it is not particularly good. No high adventure. No life-enriching experiences. Forget about expanding horizons. Sure, some friends are made, and much coding is learnt. But to what end? And do I really want what lies there?

Often are the days where I wonder what happened. Workday melts into workday, and I cannot tell one from another. Variety is not on my menu; I am starved for change.

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Oh fie. Tuesday was such a trying day for me. I was heavily involved in an immensely difficult programming task. Difficult not because it was technically challenging but rather due to having to deal with upsettingly poor code. I was seriously at my wits end, and was only able to arrive at a solution that was not at all satisfactory to my liking. To compound my frustration, my programming mate/nemesis decided that Tuesday would be the day that we move cubicles. Just like that, no warning or forementioning. I cannot pinpoint why, but I was rather put off by it. I nearly took out my anger on some decidely innocent furniture. I could feel myself getting more and more emotional, and talked it out in my mind. It was probably the presence of our junior IT member, who's rational, considerate demeanor helped to cool my nerves.

It must seem awfully silly to you. I certainly don't like to admit it. I just... working there, I have to try to chip away at the mess of an application that they're using. It's not easy; a huge base of code with very little in terms of standards or forethought, let alone any possible object-orientivity. Compound this with my nemesis' irritating reluctance to adopt any kind of standard. In fact, he has even gone though _my_ code and rewritten chunks to conform to what he likes. We've butted heads on several occasions, and it has not gone unnoticed.

I don't enjoy admitting it, but getting work done would be many times eased if our circles did not overlap.

My days pass in a furrowed wrinkling, and I can barely recall what I did the week before. I hardly have even ten minutes to myself, what with handling service calls, users coming up to me to ask questions, other programmers wanting my input, and my whatever two or three programming projects I happen to have my hand in. And I'm still on contract, have been so for about 18 months now. Not that I want to become a permanent employee; far from it, I would very much welcome a change of venue. Provided, of course, it meant dealing with nice people and a nice product. That's all I ask. Better location too, sure why not. And while we're at it, my pay is still kind of dismal, but then thinking about money never was an enjoyable experience.

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It has certainly been a busy time at work for me; I'm programming the interface between my client's custom inventory management software (aka spaghetti code; ugly modularity) and their accounting suite made by M$. Lots and lots of work, with me having to muddy my hands and get deep into the invoicing routines of the "scum". Well, the changeover is this week, including Sunday, but I have high hopes. The stress is kinda high though.

I didn't watch the Oscar's this year; I really did not feel any compulsion to watch. The only film of any note I saw was SideWays, which I did like a lot but I didn't want to risk seeing (or hearing) Halle Berry.

I saw that Kung Fu Hustle film, the new Stephen Chow flick. Eh. Lots of special kung fu effects, some slapstick comedy (with a strong leaning towards the cartoonish), a pretty flimsly plot with a poor ending. Not a worthy successor to Shaolin Soccer at all. There are a few impressive fight scenes, but those are the only redeeming features in this otherwise mediocre movie.

I've been drinking coffee in the mornings to help keep me up during the day. It helps to an extent, though I do notice an increase in heart-rate and trips to the bathroom. I started way back in November, right after I got out of the hospital and I was still on a schedule of sleeping around 11 and waking up once at 4 and again at 7. The one thing that I am not pleased with is the visible staining of my teeth. Urk.

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Don't you get tired of me saying that I have nothing to report on? Mostly work work work for me. I even worked Sunday on that accounting upgrade. The highlight of that day was driving back along Highway 7, a nice bright sunny day with light traffic.

I will begin in earnest (ie. actually calling and looking) my search for a new place to live. I really do have to move out; Markham is sucking the life right out of me. And me, murdering time oh the humanity. So many distractions, so much clutter that needs attending to. Simplify, simplify.

I am, however, happy that I was able to get a family of seven teenage Sims to catch up on their homework. Unfortunately, a bug has left a stack of unfinished homework in the house; not manipulatable, tangible nor removable. Poo.

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In a group email, a member of my IT group suggested that we may need to install the developer's edition of Crystal Reports 10. Another member replied saying:

We should have a licensed copy of this.

to which I replied

Do you mean we DO have a copy of Crystal 10 somewhere, or that we need to acquire a copy?

And this was his response:

Yes we should have a licensed copy of Crystal 10.

*sigh*

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"Hi, this is the service desk. Since [Network Guy] doesn't want to talk to you, we're calling you. Do you have any problems that he doesn't want to be told about?"

An email I wrote up (but never sent out) in response to an emailed request by [Network Guy] suggesting that we (ie. the people that actually man the service desk) call each branch of our company to get a list of their respective issues.

I saw a link on boingboing.net for an "underpants-only video game competition". It appears that a bunch of young, attractive urban hipsters have decided to pretend to be nerdy (yet risque) by playing retro arcade games in their jammies. Why does this make me itch so very uncomfortably? It's just wrong, is what. You can't have your Space Invaders and your hotties too! That just goes against the laws of nature.

SQL Server Service Pack 3 turns debugging off for previous clients. Login as sa and run the following statement to enable it.

Exec sp_sdidebug 'legacy_on'

T-SQL Debugger problem

This was a work-related problem that was bugging me for over a day; I couldn't figure out why the debugger that comes with Microsoft Query Analyzer would not let my breakpoints stop anything. Stupid Service Pack. Bah!

Sorry, this is not a very coherent post; it's actually three posts I wrote over several days and only now bothered to compile into one. But I'll write more, soon. Soon, more! Batman Begins, ultimate, CYE-isms!

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But now that I'm older,
my heart's colder,
and I can see that it's a lie.

[more]

Much has happened, though to speak of it is tiring. I went to Rattlesnake Point on Labour Day Monday with a bunch of people.. fourteen of us in fact, mostly UWites but not from my year. A lot of fun, I must say. The breathtaking views from the cliff are only marred by the nearby gravel pit -- otherwise the countryside is so lush and verdant, you can't help but smile. Shire-esque. We also had a blast climbing in and about the various crevices and hidey-holes, like so many ants.

Afterwards we went to this all-you-can-eat Korean bbq in Scarborough, another exhausting experience. While the prices can't be beat, the unsanitary conditions left much to be desired. You know, I must've eaten more than double of what I normally in meat alone, but just thinking about those juicy, charred strips.. mmmmm.

So yes.. this is the last week before the big switch. As such, they've got me doing numerous jobs at work, squeezing the last of my usefulness from me. That's one thing I never admitted before; there is SO much to do, and there are always problems popping up that interfere with the flow of that work. Problems that are infuriatingly due to us using the same old patchwork coding practices over and over again. We keep this ancient boat afloat which is often dangerously close to sinking what with its rotten masts and a fouled bottom. While I may look back on my experiences there fondly, I am pleased to be out of that loop, an application that dies a little more with every feature tacked haphazardly on.

Oh hey, I almost forgot that the day before I went to a LAN party at QYV's new place. We played a brief mission in StarLancer before moving on to Quake III, Halo 2 and a few games of 8-ball. We laughed, we cried, we got pwned by Brian who was ridiculously much better than us at Quake III. Again!

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First day of work has come and gone... they treated me to indian at Babur which made my belly glow warmly, full of butter chicken. I didn't have much to do; this week will be me trying to get up to speed on the new products and asp.net in general. I would've updated hwan.com from work, but they didn't have a machine ready for me and I didn't want to install PuTTY on Broken's machine. About half of the staff were off to a conference in LA, and the CEO was taking some vacation time to indulge in the TIFF. Lucky!

Friday was my last day in Brampton, a busy day but interrupted by pleasant surprises and goodbyes. The IT group went out for lunch together, something we hadn't done since January (which was a belated Christmas dinner). When we got back, I found a "Goodbye Hwan -- We will miss you" sign hanging over my desk, complete with streamers. Aw. And then one of the girls brought out this HUGE cake, more then enough for the 20 or so people who showed up to wish me well! Or, just to hear my lame speech. Most likely for the free cake. I also got a card with many fond farewells, which I find I treasure greatly.

Sure, I feel better for having left. Almost not real, this period of transition. Discombobulated, my senses. Need to get used to taking the streetcar again. This morning was a crowded mess of sardinery, a jostling mass of workclothes and deodorant.

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For once we ate in -- roti's today. I started with something safe, the chicken and potato roti, mild spice. The guys at work are really into spicy foods, and Indian cuisine often fits their bill. Me, I rarely eat Indian, mostly due to my mother's aversion to it. As such, I can't stand really strong, diarrhea-yellow curry. Just the smell makes me retch a little. Even so, I quite enjoyed the butter chicken at Babur Monday, and today's roti was tasty enough, although finishing it was a bit of a chore. Those things are huge! It's kinda like a bomb-sized, 5-pound burrito, but filled with Indian stew. The bomb imagery is not for the flavour explosion, but rather for the follow-up trips to the bathroom....

Yesterday we had some pricey dim-sum, at "Q Dim Sum". What the Q stands for, I know not. There were a lot of laughs though, as only two of us were willing to eat the baby squid ("I've filled my quota of squid for this year.", "Just imagine that they're martians.") and I was the only one who could finish the beef balls ("Those are the ugliest foodstuffs known to mankind."). Heh.

Oh! But work itself is.. well, I guess I'm beginning to calm down, but there's still a hella lot to learn. At the new job, we all have to be experts in our fields, and right now I'm just a neophyte, a novice, an initiate, feeling a bit wet behind the ears. On the other hand, it's hard to be stressed out when the atmostphere is so relaxed, and there are breaks throughout the day, and we send boingboing links to one another, and once in a while a game of Quake3 will break out. So really, there's nothing for me to complain about.

But you know I'll find something.

I did make it to my kungfu class today, although only somewhat just barely. I left work at about 5:10, got to my place around 5:40, and got to my parent's place around 6:30, enough time to grab my uniform and make it with a few minutes to spare for the 7:00 class. I had given thought to giving up my tenure at Yamanaka, it being a little inconvenient for me to attend. But after today's class I think I'll stick with it -- the people and the teachers are some of the best people around.

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I played no-limit texas hold'em with some coworkers last night, and we finished two tournament games. Only six people so the action was pretty fast. My latest strategy has been slow and safe, playing only high percentage draws and bowing out before turns if nothing came my way. So I folded like twenty hands in a row before I hit big with a pair of aces, taking out one player. And a few rounds later I lucked out with a full house on the flop, taking out another. So we finished the first tourney with me and one other player splitting the winnings. Unfortunately, the next tourney I bowed out on the first hand! I had two Jacks up against one other player, with the flop showing unmatching crap. He went all in, I decided to call his bluff -- except it wasn't, he had KK and I didn't pick up the extra J. It was the right move, but the wrong read. Ah well, I had fun and that's what matters. It was exhilarating to take out two people. I wish I knew what I looked like when that full house flopped out for me.

Well, this is the second -- no, third time that I've had some drinks at work. It's not bad. Oh, just celebrating some launch or something or other. I have been here two months now, and things are settling down for me though I'm still very much the new guy. Work volume has finally started to reach reasonable levels, knock on wood. But yeah, at least I'm not dreaming of changing jobs like I used to.

Oh, I remembered what the "two horns" note referred to: my sister's bf was saying that they should have two horns in cars, a friendly one and a warning/annoying one. Right now, cars can only say, "Hey!", but it'd be nice to have a "Hi!", for when you see your friend on the street, and a "WATCH OUT!" Makes perfect sense to me, just so long as we stay away from having ringtones in carhorns, in which case I will move to the country.

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So I got one of those wireless LAN adapter/router packages -- took a bit of panicky fiddling to get it working, but am now up and running fairly smoothly. My one quibble with this laptop is the audio. You can actually hear the CPU cycles -- when it's busy there's a fuzziness that's truly irritating. And just today the right output has started to actually buzz as if it's being oversampled. Buh. Hmmm.. upon closer examination I think it's related to video activity -- if I resize a window there's a distinct sound to go with it.

Anyway, I've been watching Little Britain clips on google.video (go look it up yourself, bummy) and good lord they're hilarious. Angela introduced them to me, but it was a few good friends who actually bought me the season 1 DVD set that really pulled me in. I pretty much like all the skits, though Davith always makes me chuckle. Whoo! This one's good too: "I've got the whole cast of Fraggle Rock here."

So this past week at work has been fairly quiet. Over half of the company was away to a conference. Backgammon and Quake III filled the lulls. Friday a few of us watched Robot Monster, which was a lot of fun. What a confused, mystifying film. I think 40% of it is Ro-Man plodding through craggy scrubland, hilarious through repetition. "You look like a pooped out pinwheel!", "It was a simple matter of strangulation."

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My computer at work has this annoying tendency to start picking up radio signals, which I hear in my speakers/earphones. It's quiet but just audible enough to hinder my enjoyment of music. I don't really have a point, it's just something I thought might be worth saying but obviously I was wrong. Wrong in a big way.

So I've been playing a lot of backgammon lately. It's the current distraction/stress reliever/competitive sport in the office. I've never really gotten into it before as I'd always found it so frustrating, being a game that relies so heavily on luck. Funnily enough, that's part of the reason why I like it -- if I lose, it's not necessarily my fault, especially if I feel I did everything I could to win. Unfortunately when I play against the computer, I do sometimes get a little agitated, irrational as it may be. At work though it's quite enjoyable. There's something about the sound of dice rattling in a cup and bouncing softly on the board, and the click-click of pieces being moved that I find very pleasant.

One time when I was a kid I jumped off the baseball fence (the L-shaped bit that protects people from foul balls) using a plastic shopping bag as a parachute. Or rather, jumping off and hitting the ground fairly hard with a plastic shopping bag in my hands. It came to mind while I was reading a thread on SomethingAwful about drawing your foolish childhood beliefs, an amusing read that had me laughing quite a bit. In fact, I think I'll read some of it now.

Here are two sentences that are likely to make me laugh, should you utter them within earshot: "It was a simple matter of strangulation." "Yes, I have already read this, I have read all..." Actually that second one is a very inside joke, but I'd like to remember it. It's one of those golden customer quotes.

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The party went off well! Actually not so great for me, but all I've heard are accolades from everyone else at work. I say not so great for me because I spent much of it so high that I was of two minds, and thus my recollection of the events are somewhat filmed over by a fog that diminishes details. That is, I do not remember it like it was two days ago but rather like it was in a recent dream, some parts ungraspable, others brilliantly clear. At least I didn't get sick like I did at New Year's -- this time I had the presence of mind to stop after six Stellas. I do lament that I didn't take more photos.. I always feel a little nerdy/intrusive going around and snapping up pictures. But a few pictures would be nice. Perhaps I'll have some in the days following.

Supposedly, it was the most successful party yet, if you were to judge by the attendance (over 150 people), the imbibing (399 of 400 beers consumed, numerous bottles of wine, etc all gone), or the length of the party (9 pm to 7:30 am, for some). The party has come and gone and I have passed through its flame not unscathed. What changes has it wrought? Time will tell.

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working in support for software developers involves a lot of puzzle solving, often with many layers. at the top level you're trying to understand what the request is about, a task made more complex by the user's ability in english or lack thereof. then there's the code, and if it makes any sense, and how it works with our product. in extreme (ie. highly annoying) cases, we have to wade through variations and combinations of controls. add on to that possible browser issues (from which I have deemed that safari is by far the worst for programming), and you've got yourself one spicy meatball..

this job has also revealed that there are throngs of people who have no business near a computer, let alone a programming language. how these people find work is beyond me. we should have a little quiz that filters out those who are not even capable of understanding the answers we give. oh, the human capacity for illogical thinking is indeed boundless.

Another hot and sticky and gross day out in Toronto. I went to Fusaro's for lunch and despite a delicious prosciutto panini (with breaded eggplant, lettuce, provolone and a generous slathering of garlic mayonnaise), I wilted under the stifling heat. last night I fell asleep on my living room couch, awkwardly sitting in front of my a/c unit.

One hopes that this Sunday is not nearly so bad, seeing as I plan to be riding my bike up and down the Don Valley. I'll be the one with black shorts on.

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I'm back from Montreal, and I didn't have a good time. All of the essential ingredients for a good time were there -- lots of good food, lots of drinking, plenty of time. But somehow I could not enjoy myself. Why me so mood?

The weekend started off poorly, as I mistakenly opened an attachment a co-worker had emailed out which contained a trojan. I was under the impression that he wanted us to open it up, and didn't think that he was actually saying "hey, look, here's that trojan everyone's talking about." Ha. So my machine was conked and we had to wipe it, which pretty much prevented me from doing anything other than re-installing all my essential apps for the day. Fun stuff.

I took the VIA train to get to Montreal. A pleasant ride, but it's not much better than flying. On the plus side you don't have to deal with customs or much paperwork. The downside, for me, was the bathroom; the toilet bowl is frightingly shallow, and what with the swaying motion of the cars you spend much of your "quality time" praying that the liquid doesn't splash out over the side! For a clean freak like me, it was a hellish nightmare. At least they ply you with lots of alcohol, though my heavy fish and chips lunch prevented me from really drinking much at that point.

The hotel I was staying at, the Delta Centre-Ville, is literally only steps away from the station. Even so, this little walk almost made my bringing an umbrella worth it. I met up with my friend and we went out with his co-workers to this euro-pop bar called Electric Avenue. While I was quite turned off by the blurst array of 80s music I've ever come across (including "Born in the USA" and "Ghostbusters"), I did like the synchronized mood lighting and friendly crowd. But it was not to be, and after a few Heineken's (by association, not by choice), we went to Blizzart on St. Laurent, a hipster dive bar, complete with amateur artwork lining the walls. I became mildly ill in the men's stall, and recovered quickly though I had little to say.

Most of Saturday I spent recovering, attempting to replenish my drained nutriments. Hotel buffet breakfast, a walk along Ste. Catherines, a tasty Commensal meal, a nap and a swim, and then a hasty McDonald's dinner before meeting people again, this time going to med, a pricey, upscale restaurant/bar/club. I hated it. A real phonies/snob hangout. Paying $25 for a double of Jameson certainly did not bode well for my temperament. Nor the unwatchful bartender for whom I gave $40 for two rum and cokes and received zero change. When I finally was able to ask her about it, she said that she placed it on the counter and it disappeared. I cannot remember the last time I was so upset. So I got my friend to take me to another bar ("Thursday's"), where his other co-workers went but they had left by the time we got there. It was pretty dismal for a Crescent St. bar, but at least the booze was cheaper. I also got a kick out of the ceiling fan belt system. With 15 minutes before 3, the magical line in time that demarcates fun from recovery, we chose to get our smoked meat and poutine fixes at Dunn's.

In hindsight I simply was not prepared to have a good time, despite my actual desire to forget my troubles. I looked forward to visiting Montreal again, but I was privately miserable most of the time. Perhaps there's no fun when everything is paid for.

Our plane ride back was booked for 10 at night, which I vow now to never do again -- walking about the city like a poor schmoe, nothing to do and getting rained on, wishing I was back home with my solids and gases. I had to check my backpack because they wouldn't let me bring my "fluids" onto the plane, which included hairspray, toothpaste, moisterizer, and contact lens solution. And there was a delay on the plane, cramped for me sitting between two people in those tiny seats, with the air sometimes failing and I'm imagining everyone panicking and clamouring for the doors and I'll just go limp and breathe shallow for as long as I can.

This posting doesn't get any more interesting. I took the Rocket to Kipling station, a 10 minute ride, and then another 15 minutes on the subway to Dundas West. I think the moral of the story is to always go first class.

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Eh... I should start working out in the mornings instead of at night. I am super grumpy and irritable right now, for no damn reason at all. I've had my coffee, the weather isn't awful, there's plenty of light out, and most importantly the office jerk hasn't shown up yet. So why me so mood?

A busy weekend, full of chores and running around and yet little done. Friday night was drinking with co-workers, though I drank nothing as I was still recovering from the previous night's barrage of Stellas. Saturday was karate/kungfu, where we did some weapon training including little stick techniques, I forget what it's called. I also went to Ikea to get something for my sister's birthday, but ended up picking up quite a bit for my apartment. Hopefully I'll get around to assembling some of it tonight, as I spent Saturday evening watching the Leaf game.

Curses, he decided to show up today. Well, it's almost lunch time, so that's something.

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It could just be the lack of sleep but I'm super unsatisfied right now. Am at work and Visual Studio is driving me up the wall. Why must it suck so? And supposedly 2005 is _much_ better than its previous incarnations? I'm just about ready to buy a gun, one that shoots bullets with VS2005's name on it. Of course, I guess that would just make the bullets slow and do odd, undesirable random things.

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I spent some time last night fixing the SQL used to generate the "Popular Topics" area in the sidebar. Turns out there are a lot of new bots out there and my code didn't recognize them. I also had to get familiar with REGEXP for MySQL. The only interesting tidbit is that "colitis" is by far the #1 most popular search on hwan.com. I do hope that my colitis/IBS handling tips come to be of use to someone.

We've been pretty busy at work, which I don't mind but for some odd reason I've been having trouble sleeping this week. I stayed up super late Monday night, ended up climbing out of bed and reading for a couple hours. This lack of sleep unfortunately resulted in my cold sore returning, and it's getting nice and juicy now.

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I've been busy, is all. Work itself has been getting more relaxed but Friday was a rush a minute, with so many things colliding (thankfully, none of them were worlds) that I was a little stressed out. Let us just say that after a couple of intense, frustrating StarCraft loses I lost it and kicked in a fence. Silly Hwan, kicks are for kids.

Let's see... what else... well, with the warmer weather (when it was warmer), I've taken to using the air conditioner for a few hours in the evening. Since it shares an outlet with my television, I've been avoiding TV for the past month or two. I watched nearly an hour Saturday and found I was missing nothing. Oh yeah, Friday night I went to Century Room with some friends for friends, ending up with 3 AM rooftop BBQ and more StarCraft until dawn. We are still getting trounced by a Protoss Carrier player, and I have yet to determine a workable counter. Just thinking about it make me want to practice some more!

Canada Day, but I've done little. I rode a little around the beach area south of my apartment -- there was some kind of country rock thing going on, plenty of cowboy hats and the like. I had considered riding to the other side of the city but eh... you seen one Canada Day, you've seen them all.

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Hey. Uhm, well, you know, not much going on. Long weekend is here and once again I am caught without much in terms of plans. I slept in until the early afternoon, drove up with my sister through nutty Caribana traffic to get to my parent's house for our yearly extended family get-together. Korean BBQ, pictionary, good times. I'm going to try to see Bourne Ultimatum tomorrow, and then a trip to kitchenerwaterloo for some exercise of a pugilistic nature. Kitchener-Waterloo. One of these days I'm going to resolve to not go there.

Work.. well, work has been kind of busy for the past week, in a decidedly stressful kind of way. Hopefully a lot of that will cool down a little this week, although Tuesday could be nutty as a lot of customers won't realize that Monday's a holiday in Canada. I'm not exactly sure why it's been so busy. Just a string of troublesome customers, I guess.

I'm on the 19th book of the Aubrey-Maturin series, and am already halfway through it. I am usually a pretty slow reader with these books, as I've wanted them to last but I can't help it -- these final few are real page-turners. What will I do when I finish? Not sure, not sure.

I've noticed that hwan.com's traffic has gone way down of late. For a while there I was getting over 100 hits for colitis per week, but it's dropped to about a third of that. I had meant to spend this weekend working on my other website, but that does not seem likely at this point.

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Dear customers who write in to support,

Here are a few simple points that I, as a technical analyst, have come to appreciate when hearing from you. It makes our job a lot easier, and in turn you'll get a faster response and a quicker resolution.

1. Do not threaten us with "Tell me the answer to this, or will I go to your competitors." That's an excellent way to piss us off. We do not need business with jerks. People like you who think you're the center of the universe are generally more trouble than you're worth to us. We will not care if we lose your business.

2. If I suggest something to you, THEN YES TRY IT. I do not have the time to build an entire project based on the vague description you've provided me with. If you are too scared to try my snippet of code, go to Jail and do not collect $200, because chickenshits like you obviously have no business in this game. Life is harsh; programming, doubly so.

3. When I ask for your code, please do not send a screenshot of it. It's text data, and is somewhat useless to me as an image. While not as annoying, sending your code in a Microsoft Word document is also fairly dumb. If your e-mail client does not allow you to send .cs or .aspx files, change the extension to something meaningful. This isn't rocket science, it's not that hard to fool the filters. Continuing on this, I believe you when you say you saw an error -- you do not need to send a screenshot, which, by the way, is of little use to me except as an indicator of your brain-level (ie. not very high).

4. Bugs happen. We're sorry but they do. Don't get flustered because you managed to break our software by using it in ways we never imagined, let alone tested.

5. Be descriptive. Saying "There's a bug in your control, please fix it." is not very meaningful. Those of you who are not only descriptive but also send us precise instructions on how to reproduce the issue receive our blessings and thanks.

Ok, that's enough for now. For those waiting, yes, I'll get around to posting those videos -- it took most of yesterday to upload them. I want to write up some comments too.

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Here's a tip: The next time you buy one of those fruit platters and you end up with leftovers, make sure to consume the strawberries first. With all that humidity in the platter, they mold over within a couple days. Also, if you mistakenly eat one, you can potentially get some sores on the inside of your mouth, including the tongue.

Uhm yeah. Ok. Some news -- I'll be in Washington DC for the weekend coming up. I'm looking forward to it, but I will feel bad for my job as we are currently a little short of staff. And it's been pretty busy of late. I actually got quite upset one of the day's last week, and unfortunately some of the stress was vented on one my co-workers, which I still regret. Oh well. I also get that way, irritable and unpleasant, when I haven't eaten. Yeah, I'm one of those people. I need to eat!

What else, what else.... Oh yeah, I'm watching "Hikaru No Go", an anime about this 6th grader who talks to the spirit of a great go master. I like it a lot, and it has inspired me to start learning go. I remember playing go with my dad, way back in the day, and he would always destroy me at it. I just didn't have the right mindset at the time to do well at the game. I should pick up a set of table and stones. There's something so Japnese about go, don't you think?

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Work has become increasingly busy of late. 'Tis the season, perhaps. In any case, I find myself wanting to spend more and more time doing work, actual work work. I was pondering the idea (though not really entertaining it) of what I would do if I were to find myself suddenly jobless. And I'm pretty sure I'd either go for a teaching degree or something much more humanitarian, you know, like volunteer teach or working abroad or the like. It'd be unlikely that I would be able to find another job in the computer industry that I liked as much as the one I have now, with the same type of freedom, atmosphere, and so on.

I cycled for much of yesterday, it being an unseasonably lovely and mild day, the wind holding a small reminder of the weather to come. I caught a bit of the toronto zombie walk along Queen, of which I took a few pictures but my cellphone's digital photo quality is quite the suck. That's partially why I haven't bothered posting any of those pictures. That and laziness, of course. Anyway, the good weather and cycling had a positive effect on my attitude, which was, very obviously, in the dumps, in a festering perdition of despair. More than that I cannot say, to speak of it is too much, merely thinking of it is enough.

Speaking of dumps, I saw my first Leafs game on Saturday, a 6-4 loss to Chicago. I wouldn't say that my Leaf-fever is returning, but the constant hockey talk at work did make me curious.

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Eh. As I mentioned before, I've been throwing myself into work, at work. It's busy enough to keep my mind occupied during the day, and even some of the evening. The weekend passed quickly, Saturday was lunch at HoSu with an old work friend and then some LAN-tastic stuff at QYV's condo. Sunday was sleep and Dawn of War, which I played most of yesterday evening as well. I've forgotten how fun RTS campaigns can really be, though I do wonder if perhaps I should be spending my time more wisely. Just a little.

Weather's taken quite the turn, and riding my bicycle isn't the usual fun cycle-fest it normally is, though my long hair does help keep my ears warm.

See? This is why I didn't post anything, because I basically have nothing to say. I remember wanting to mention a grief I have with focus of windows in Windows, like when you're typing a password and another window pops up that has a text field.. er, wait a minute.. I wrote about this exact phenomenon over a year ago! Oh man that really lays me low. Ok, well.. what else. OH (in more gaming news), I went and bought The Orange Box two weekends ago. I've played a few hours of Team Fortress 2, which is pretty much the same as the original. Episode 2 however has been great, although please no spoilers because I'm taking my fine time with it.

On the plus side (I think), I'm not tempted to get an XBOX 360 anymore. Is that really a plus? It's something. And speaking of something, we're thinking of buying one of those giant Toblerone's for work. I noticed one at the nearby Shoppers, for the upsetting price of $79.99. Yikes that's a lot of Optimum points.

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I seem to be pouring more and more of my time into work. Voluntarily, mind, but it does seem like I have less of it for myself. Which, when I have it, is spent either doing chores, reading Slashdot or playing StarCraft. Yes, even in this day and age I find that game hmmm.. shall we say, satisfying? No, more like.. entertaining. Indulgent?

Saturday I did get quite a bit of sleep... some 15 hours worth, making me just in time to be late for a friend's birthday. Late, and a little dishevelled. Speaking of appearances, I'm to get a haircut tomorrow. I offered to allow someone to use my hair for practice. I hope I can stay awake! And by that I'm thinking of how I often fall asleep when I get my haircut. Mostly because of how warm those places tend to be, what with wearing that non-breathing apron and all that hot air. But also because I can't see worth a damn without my glasses so I pretty much keep them closed all the time anyway. Sleep just a sniff away.

Oh right.. the birthday. We ended up at the Horseshoe Tavern and caught a few live acts, the names of which escape me but I did have the presence of mind to snap a bit of video of the last act. However, I do not have the, er, will to actually import them right now. It's a huge kerfuffle wherein I have to get my phone, plug it in, wait for the transfer to complete, label the images, transfer them to the website, and write up the links. I guess it's not much more effort than me typing it up was, but anyway, it'll be done at some later date not yet determined.

Sunday was busy busy busy. Groceries, then catching Control [imdb.com] at the Cumberland. I really enjoyed it. I only had a vague idea of Ian Curtis' life, and the movie gives a, erm, depth? Dimension to the music that I can visualize now, and to some extent empathize with. Heavy, life-questioning stuff.

I had a few hours to kill before the other movie I was to see, the new Blade Runner "Final Cut", which did not add too much to what I'd already seen in the various other cuts. But it had been quite some time since I'd last watched it in a theatre and I'd forgotten how impressive, how eye-filling that opening sequence is, with that familiar, wailing Vangelis synthesizer. Ah, it was good.

I spent the time waiting for the showing by eating at Lick's (disappointing) and walking across Eglinton, then south on Mount Pleasant. They've urbanized that area quite a bit! It was however a rather car-speedy/pedestrian-lacking affair on a Sunday evening. I did stop in a Rexall to examine their over-sized chocolate bars, of which they had the 1 kg Dairy Milk bar for $15. I purchased a 100 g Toblerone to keep the dream alive.

These days my sleep is all awry, my mind waking up in the middle of the night, resolve never stronger than after the night it was never weaker. Days, weeks and now months have passed, yet I remain for the most part unchanged, unmoved, my life in a perpetual loop, as if it is unable to step out of the little energy well that has been laid before it. An investment must be made if I am to grow. When shall I look into the abyss?

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Whoo, I was upset today. It's just.. man, Visual Studio is such a piece of garbage. PURE GARBAGE. Actually, no, it's not that bad but there are some strange bits to it. Like, why can't I change the references (that is, where files actually reside) in a Solution file? I asked around and the answer was "Use a text editor". Uhm, is Visual Studio ITSELF not one big fancy color-laden text editor???? Albiet, with debugging as well. Anyway, I'm beginning to wish we had one of those heavy punching bags at work.

What else... there was something but it has escaped me! I was mildly annoyed that the TTC raised their fare prices again, yet somehow the cash fare is the same? I was also disgusted to learn that my tickets I'd bought only a few months before now required an extra $0.15. What the hell is that all about? Is not one "Adult Fare Ticket" always one "Adult Fare Ticket"? Huh, well supposedly you can return them for a cash refund. Still.. bloody hell!

I've been listening to a lot of The Ricky Gervais Show. It's very handy when I'm doing chores, the time just swishes by. Good stuff, I recommend it.

Sorry, I can't remember the other thing and it's getting late and I miss my oxygen!

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Am at the parent's place, doing some work (hwan.com work) and checking for Boxing Day sales, of which I did not see any that fit my fancy. I've been thinking of really reducing my consumer footprint of late, and not merely because I am cheap. I just hate gathering things I never use, and I feel like I already have plenty of junk. Simplify, simplify.

I am however happy that for Christmas I received a pair of Grado SR125 headphones, which I first experienced at my friend's condo where they pretty much blew me away, giving a depth to music I had not known previously possible. Indeed, a blind man seeing the world anew. If you listen to music on any type of regular basis, I wholeheartedly suggest investing in some good headphones. What's the use of delicious food if you have not the palate to enjoy every aspect of its taste?

My sister brought her copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) and while it was indeed "darker" than what I had previously seen and read it was still more or less the same formula and I still find myself somewhat riled that people love these stories so. I guess I'm mostly annoyed that what is (seemingly to me) being done in 7 books/movies could have been done in one.

I haven't taken any time off work, so I'll be back in the office Thursday, Friday, and half of new year's eve Monday. I was in the office this past Monday as well, primarily to play NHL 08, StarCraft and backgammon and to eat gift basket food. I do not mind it much at all!

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Woo, 30 Rock is one funny show! Man, it really manages to tickle me all over. I just saw the Werewolf Bar Mitzvah episode (season 2, episode 2): "Boys becoming men, men becoming wolves!" Heh, good stuff.

A fire alarm drill at work this week got me acting on a desire to get a good white noise mp3 or generator or the like, to drown out the annoyance and any future annoyances. I did, eventually, find one but it was MacOSX only and figuring out how to copy it into MP3 form was not obvious (though I thought it was). I also learned that you actually want pink noise, which is softer on the ears or some such thing. In any case, I ended up with (thanks to a co-worker's Google help) Aire Freshener (scroll down to download directly), an excellent charity-ware Windows application. With my new Grado's this allows me to work with minimal intrusion from the outside.. and I can pretend it's spring time, or that I'm by the fireplace, or even in the bath. The program itself features a lot of my favorite things to look for in software: a) it's free, b) it's small in size and desktop space until you need it, c) intuitive and easy to use, and d) it just works! It's pretty much the best thing I've found for January. Is it? Maybe, yes!

As an aside, I was thinking of that it would be cool (or perhaps, it's already been done? Johnny Chung Lee, I'm talking to you! What I'm envisioning is using the wii's controller (or whatever) with the head-tracking system to aurally draw items in 3 space. That is, if you turned left, the tracking would paint the sound sources/vectors accordingly. I say vectors because there would be a certain amount of measurable distance involved as well as direction. Would it be as impressive as visual head-tracking? I'm not sure, probably interesting with your eyes closed anyways.

So yeah.. getting out of the habit of listening to music at work. As much as I sometimes enjoy it, it also (seemingly) acts as a distraction at least as much of the time. Our office, as you may know, hardly has any privacy and everyone has their headphones and music (actually, a couple do have those strong sound-deadening acoustic earmuffs). I am looking forward to many more days of clear thinking! For.. well, I've been letting my mind cloud, letting my body's sensations dissipate, fizzle away, thinking it would lessen my, hmmm, awaked-ness, as it were. And now I'm tired of it, tired of floating along, my thoughts remote from my environment. Does this mean much? I hope so, I really do.

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Tuesday after a few beers at the Wellington I found myself once again in the Distillery district, this time for Toronto the Good, some kind of architects party or some such thing. I was mostly there for the drinks and company, and soon found myself smiling like a fool and just nodding along. Yeah. And I did it all over again last night! That is, after work I had drinks with co-workers for several hours, leaving me less than rested today.

Thankfully, the American holiday has lightened our work load significantly. I am practically caught up in all my tasks! Well, as much as one can be in support, forever answering an unending fountain of questions, sometimes a trickle, oftimes a deluge. It was nice to have some free time for once, which I used mostly to play go or backgammon.

This Sunday is Ride for Heart! I'm hoping the weather is dry. It does rather seem that the weather office is having less and less success when it comes to rain predictions this year. Global warming? Or just my imagination? Does anyone keep a record of the weather office's range of success and failure?

Speaking of success, I think we may have a winner with that new all-you-can-eat sushi place on Queen, just west of Spadina. I forget the name, but it's only $11 for their lunch menu Monday through Thursday, which is a pretty hot deal. The interior of the place is quite the swankfest as well. I particularly enjoyed their handrolls with delightfully brittle nori, and their spicy salmon rolls.

On the other hand, I do seem to be getting REALLY good at growing a round belly.

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Curse this weather! Until the day I howl for a cooler time I find these -24 windchills quite upsetting. Thankfully today is the last day for this zaniness, at least for the forseeable, forecastable next few days. The cold troubled me yesterday during a workout, my ankles locking up as I stretched. It could just be the old in the them but I'm going to blame the chilly walk from St. Clair to Eglinton. St. Clair being where I participated in a group interview to volunteer for a camp counsellor position, something I kind of rashly (after much goading) decided to try for. I enjoyed myself enough, though I do wonder if my quiet (i.e. shy and introverted) nature appealed to the interviewers any. That reminds me, I need to look up what it'll take to get my Bronze Cross recertified. Hmm, it's changed since I took it. Which admittedly was back 1993.

The new office is fine. Did I mention they moved me to a new office? Well they did, it's on the floor beneath the main one, seats 8, has its own kitchen, bathroom and boardroom. There are now 3 of us in there now, not sure when we'll get more. You would think it would be quiet but actually in a much smaller space you hear your deskmates all the more. Eh, it's a change that I mind not much either way. I do get a nice view of the CN Tower, so I have my own LED light show when it gets dark.

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A busy week it was. Firstly, big news from work -- they're outsourcing my job! But.... they are also "promoting" me into development. The quotes are there because no-one's mentioned anything regarding a pay raise. I might be getting one, I might not. A lot more work, a lot more responsibility. However it is yet to be seen. Moving from customer support to development is a major transition and I'm not sure I quite know how I feel about it. On the one hand I'll get a chance to fix all those bugs and issues I'm always having to log. On the other, meetings, schedules and projects, oh my! Also, my days of getting into work at 10 are pretty much over.

Tuesday was karate, not much to say there. Wednesday I saw Up and really enjoyed it. I've only seen a handful of Pixar films and they have all been rather excellent and Up continues that trend. I found it spoke especially to me, an old man in my own mind.

Thursday was a social with some of the Session 1 Ooch counsellors, followed by drinks with old co-workers and friends until late. Friday I took it easy so that I could get some chores and laundry done, Saturday was a dental appointment, more karate, drinks at Hemingway's, and more drinks at Charlotte Room, followed up with Swatow.

Oh, I have been keeping an eye on condos/lofts/townhouses but with this rather thin market the pickings are rather meagre and oftimes unattractive. I am patient and believe that a match will come along. It's a strange business, this waiting game. I have certainly gotten a much better idea of what's moving out there.

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So, like, what's the word, boyos? Tired of writing, that's the problem. No, gosh, what an awful start. I was thinking of putting down some thoughts on the recent Michael Bryant cycling incident, now that some more details have been leaked. The cyclist had left his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend's apartment less than an hour earlier, with police called in to handle the domestic disturbance. He was also possibly drunk, and may still have been drunk and upset at the time of the incident. Bryant or his wife, the passenger, made a 911 call during the incident. The cyclist likely died of injuries received while hanging on to the side of the car, although it's possible that he was also run over at some point.

What I wanted to say is that the situation is not that black and white. People panic in high stress situations, especially if they're not used to it. Perhaps Bryant's flight instinct kicked in, wanting to protect his wife from a belligerent stranger. Maybe the cyclist grabbed the steering wheel and caused the car to drive on the sidewalk or into oncoming traffic. I still vividly recall the two times I was in the car when my mom got into accidents (thankfully no-one was hurt) and how she became this strange zombie person, not really responding to anything I or anyone else said. I do agree that Bryant reacted in the wrong way; by using his car to blindly escape the situation he endangered everyone. It is easy to forget how thin the line is when it comes to the safety of following the accepted rules of the road.

I've spent an undue amount of time watching The Simpsons episodes; I found a foreign website that streams them. It asks for registration but I figured out a pretty simple workaround to it -- installing AdBlock Plus. E-mail if you'd like to join me in catching up on 20+ seasons of good times, in easily digestable 22 minute chunks.

What else... work! Right. Uhm, well, it's going. Busy, very busy. Meetings everyday. Still doing old job, trying to find time to learn new stuff. Frequently stressed at how slow I'm learning. At least it seems slow to me. Woe! Oh, and a raise is coming.. but not for a while. WOE.

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Work.. it consumes us, surrounds- no, that's not how I meant to start. I have been pouring myself into work, a mould I am familiar with: staying late, stressing about deadlines, focused in my coding and procrastination. So many lines have passed through my mind and fingers, but to what end they will achieve is yet to be seen. I am not (yet) proud. I am a little worn.

Movies! Lessee...

1. Where The Wild Things Are (2009). I liked it. Not for kids, I'd say, though sure they'll enjoy parts. The look of the film is wonderful; I couldn't imagine it done better.
2. Paranormal Activity (2009). Awesome. Enjoyable. Made me laugh at how good it was. Even now I smile thinking of how masterfully they've managed to tap into fear, to draw it out and run with it. Dude, just go see it.
3. Some Like It Hot (1959). Pretty funny! Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon. I did find that I get uncomfortable watching beautiful women climbing over each other. How very odd.
4. Bullitt (1968). An incredible, jaw-dropping car chase surrounded by a flimsy plot. The car chase could be the best I've seen of all time.
5. Adventureland (2009). Entertaining, with plenty of familiar, talented faces. I do find Jesse Eisenberg to be a little too similar to Michael Cera in, well, just about every way except hair. Martin Starr is filling out the "dishevelled-sarcastic-nerd" role quite nicely.
6. The Queen (2006). A film I'd been meaning to see for a while and finally getting around to. I avoided the hoopla that went on when Princess Di was killed so I learned quite a bit from this film, on top of the insights into the private life of British royalty. I may fail to make it sound interesting but I was surprised to find myself quite liking it.
7. Zombieland (2009). Fun. Some gore. Again with the Michael Cera/Jesse Eisenberg thing. Woody Harrelson seems to have been created for his role.
8. The Graduate (1967). I liked the film, but I'm not sure I understand its impact on American film. Perhaps a second viewing is called for. I did find Ebert's two very different reviews (1, 2) to be quite insightful into what I might be missing. It is pleasant to hear so much Simon and Garfunkel.

What else.. oh, some dude broke into my neighbour's car. I'd always thought of our back alley to be quite safe from such acts. I surely hope this is not a sign, that it's merely a blip to be soon forgotten.

And... I've been feeling low, but that's nothing new, ha. Oh that's right; I had a coldsore and those damnable things always bring me down. Such an ego you have, Mr. Wolf. OH YEAH and I went to the AGO. On a Saturday, no less. But I went in the morning, before the crowds had time to accumulate and choke up the floors and doorways. I quite enjoyed it, the new architecture quite fine to behold, quite fine.

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The product I'd been working on has finally been released. And yet, after all that toil and trouble, I do not feel much better than before. Perhaps I'd grown used to the stress of a deadline looming over me. Indeed, I seem to recall saying something to that effect before but cannot be bothered to look that up now. Having it out there in a mostly usable form is a relief, certainly.

As a sort of reward for myself I purchased, and have since played, Dragon Age, the new BioWare RPG. Ah, that age old system of pausing battles, telling all your little dudes what spells to cast or action to take, unpausing to let them do it, and then pausing again. Artificial turn-based combat: delicious. Reminds me of my experiences with Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate, which is a good thing.

No news on the housing front. I'm averaging about 1 acceptable property a month, so it's slow going. I'm in no particular hurry and do my best not to get worked up about it.

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2010/08/03 Hwan I won't say that all is well (for I don't believe it to be so), but I am better. Thanks to all for asking!
2010/07/20 QYV Expected range for Creatinine for guys is 60 - 110 umol/L
2010/07/20 llamariffic Hmm, macrocytosis here as well, but to be honest I've had it since before I truly embarked on drinking as a proper hobby. Similarly, stopped drinking entirely, and it didn't go away. Just one of those things, I think.
2010/07/19 girl ack!! It's weird to think that I am now a parental unit. It was nice to see you hwan!
2010/05/21 Hwan I recall trying earplugs well back in my undergrad years, to mixed results. My sleep was troubled by feelings of claustrophobia. I also have a, perhaps unfounded, fear of not hearing the essential alarm in the mornings. However, I may give these another go, thanks.
2010/05/21 llamatron Have you tried sleeping with earplugs? My flat faces out onto a main road, so I've started using the standard foam plugs. It took a few nights to get used to them, but they make a big difference.
2010/05/21 girl The original swedish title: "Men who hate women". I'm not sure if it's the fault of the translation, but I never liked the reporter dude.
2001/03/07 Hwan Damn.. it seems Unweb has since died. http://www.gamegrene.com/node/183
2001/03/07 TY SHARDEL YOU CAN TRADE WITH THE UNIVERSE AND ENABLE SOCIAL NEEDS, OR PERHAPS POST WISH LISTS, HUG THE GLOBE LIKE A BIG OCTOPUS... TY
2010/03/24 Hwan I am amused by the John Irving comparison. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Irving#Recurring_themes