Bah, 2:23am and I can't sleep. Not sure exactly why, but foz always said that if you can't sleep cause youre mind is going around and around, go and do whatever it is that your mind needs you to do, and then go back to sleep. I don't want to be up late. I want to go to the gym in the morning, and then I have work to do on many different projects, people to call, things to do.

While I was lying in bed trying to get the right amount of duvet on top of me, so that I had the comforting weight over me but I wasn't boiling alive and sweating in the heat, I started thinking about an entry I could possibly make in the journal, perhaps in a couple of weeks. It would be the one when I am offered a job and decide to go to Edmonton, and I'd make a list of the things I was looking forward to and wasn't looking forward to, and the things that I'd miss and what I wouldn't miss. It was one of the "wouldn't miss" that got me thinking.

I'm not sure if it's one of my faults, winnings, or just plain wierdnesses, but I can always see the good side to something. Kinda. I think it's that I reject absolutes out of principle. Someone says that "windows is the best operating system out there," and I'll gently remind them that Linux is not that bad either, and that while it has it's faults it's better in x, y, and z. If someone were to say that "Linux is the best operating system," I'd do the same thing, pointing out the advantages of Windows or MacOS. It's the same for pretty much everything. If someone says that so-and-so is weird or annoying, I'll cite when they aren't annoying or wierd, and put forward that maybe they are only that sometimes, or in groups, but are quite sane one on one.

It's in this that I get into trouble. When you are friends with two parties on opposite sides of something, what do you do. Party A says party B did/said [whatever], and party B says party A said/did [whateverelse]. Me, being who I am will stick up for party B while they are run through by party A, gently and diplomatically. Then when talking to party B I'll stick up for party A. I do this not because I want to take opposite sides, but because I really truely see good in both sides. It is harder of course, when you are good personal friends with all ends, and are so out of choice, not obligation, meaning that you have to hear everyone be run through, sometimes more loudly than others.

Sometimes it's just not worth it.

Lately I've been allowing myself to give up more often. I guess it's partly my stubborn German side that is to blame as well. When someone is insisting that I'm completely wrong about [Concept X], or that Windows is the best OS, or that party B really is a crack monkey, I'll just stop my protesting and arguing (be it out of principle or actual belief of their lack of crack monkeyness), and nod and agree. Sometimes it's just not worth it at all, especially if it means me getting jumped on by a room of people about something. I'll know that they are full of shit even if it's just in my mind. So I steer the subject away, or conceed to some small point and hope to use jedi mind tricks to make them forget I was taking some other side, and let them have thier way. Who am I to fight other people's battles for them?

Oh yea, a friend. Damn, forgot about that.

I think the other problem/fault/reason is that I have a habit of choosing friends that are like me and are (stubborn) strong-willed.

2:43am. Damn, still going. This isn't as bad as it has been in the past though. I had an ok run this morning, so maybe getting down to work tomorrow would be ok. I have other stuff I want to do as well. My Linux workstation is having some strang font issues. Some of the fonts simply don't show up as anything but the default look of text, in some apps. I have also had a very wierd problem to do with fonts for a while. So I'm thinking a re-install is in order, as this box has been used and abused quite a bit lately. I am considering trying gentoo just to try something different. If I can get all my "non-system" data (movies, mp3s, fonts, personal files, custom files, programs that I've bought, etc), onto partitions where they can be safely hidden away until after the new OS is installed, then I'm ok, and if I decide that gentoo doesn't cut it I can go back to tried and true debian.

The problem looks like this:

	Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
	/dev/hde2             464M  117M  324M  27% /
	/dev/hde5             9.2G  4.8G  4.0G  55% /home
	/dev/hde6             9.4G  5.8G  3.7G  62% /usr
	/dev/hde7             8.9G  7.8G  1.1G  88% /var
	/dev/vg_1/lvol1        19G   18G  1.1G  95% /var/ftp
	/dev/hdb1              39G   34G  4.3G  89% /var/ftp/pub/mp3
	/dev/hde1             9.8G  9.4G  465M  96% /root/dosc

Not a lot of space to put anything. I'd like to move /var/ftp off to somewhere else so that I can move from the linux LVM (logical volume manager) system to a normal huge ass partition. Sadly, I don't see much room for 18 gig of data to be moved off to let me re-format that drive (/dev/hdf if you are interested). I suppose I could just buy a huge-ass new drive (they sell 120G 7200rpm drives at future shop for $399.99 ($299.99 after mail in rebate), and 40G drives for $179), but oh yea, no money, I'd forgotten about that.

Speaking of money, be careful while doing internet banking that you don't accidently pay your credit card bill to your BCAA membership? While I don't mind being ahead for the next 6 years, at this point in time I'd rather have the money in pocket you know what I mean? Not that I'd ever do that of course... (it looks like the stop payment on that has gone through so I've got a bit of money again... course, it being the end of the month and all, that'll go quickly enough... it could be worse though, much worse).

So anyway, to move stuff around I'm currently trying to burn off what I can to CD, a little bit here, a little bit there, and hopefully I can free up enough to shuffle stuff around. Luckily the aformetioned foz was kind enough to leave me some blank CDs when he left town, so I have enough to burn to my hearts content.

3:06am. That's more like it!

Came home today from a fairly un-productive (for me anyway) day of stuff. A bit after I got back in Zoon was at the front door talking up a storm. Her tail was all puffed out and her attention was up at the top of the door. At first I thought something was going on in the hall, but it turns out it was a bug. She got up on my shoulder, still talking, and tried to catch the thing. It was one of the strangest feelings, as this tiny little furball with minimul claws, basically dancing on my shoulder/back trying to get a good swat/bite at the poor random bug that somehow had the misfortune of getting into the house. She's still actually at it, chattering away and trying to get from high to low, from the tops of chairs down to the ground and back up again.... it's quite amusing.

Forgot to mention some bumper stickers I saw while up in Squamish last week. They were on the back of a van from Oregon. They were funny, but damn if I can remember what they were now that I decide to note them down. Bah.

Another good run this morning.... I think I'll take tomorrow off, or maybe just go for a long walk (if it's sunny, a good excuse to get some sun as well). Spent some time cleaning this evening as well, in anticipation of Firefly heading home tomorrow... wee, so fun to clean the bathroom. I hear through the grapevine that the prospects sound good for the Edmonton job. Not sure what that means of course, but good is better than bad. I also got an email from someone looking for game programmers, who has contacts on both coasts. Sounded like a job recruiter.... sent over a resume anyway. Any friends who are looking for work, throw me an email and I'll pass on his address.

In response to Dana's talk about how he is confused about how come everyone else is hot, well, the surrounding of trees, as well as the fact that you have a nice basement (being on the ground floor of an apartment is not the same as a basement for those interested). I totally envy being able to escape inside on the really hot days, without the need for multiple fans set up. Oh well, one of these days I'll have a house and be able to laugh at the people who are basement-deprived.

Oh, sounds like Yohimbe got some of the hellish code untangled and/or debugged into existance today, good job!

Oh #2, I updated my online resume today. It's a conversion from *ick* word, so it's huge and full of shitty html (and whatever else they put in there), but I haven't had a chance to convert it back to something sane yet.

Oh #3, scoobyD's story aboot milkshakes is just disturbing, and I will probably never ever have one again!

Well, it was a full day. I spent part of the morning at a Community Futures meet and greet networking type thing. Met some cool people as well. The talk that was given wasn't directed towards people who are creating a small business like mine (ie: not really one at all), but it is still good to get all the info possible. After that it was a wander out to richmond, then to PoCo to look over some of the work that's been coming in, or will be coming in, with Yohimbe.

The project that I look forward to least, and that it looks like I won't have to work on (*phew*) is a VB.net web based invoicing/accounting/reporting type thing. The original programmer was being a dickhead, so the person that was subcontracting him went to Yohimbe to get someone who knows what they are doing. Apparently the programmer has said that his part of the project is done (not in the "I'm done all that is needed", but more in the "I'm outta here" way), leaving the guy who was subcontracting him in a bit of a lurch.

The code is, in a word, fuckinghorendiouslycrackmonkeylikeandcouldhavecodeditbetterbyslappingmydickonthekeyboard. Yohimbe and I took quite a lot of the evening simply making fun of it.

Almost all the logic (if you can call it that) is done in stored procedures in the MS sql-server database. There are over 540 files in the project directory, and a lot of them (being named things like .vb, .asp, .aspx, and .aspx.vb) do not much at all, and are there only to implement some HTML, or initialize an object (hehehe, well, that's if you call VB as having object orientation), or do nothing at all. I saw no non-wizard or form created code from this guy, much less any comments.

Speaking of VB.net, my confidence was greatly shaken by the fact that just to OPEN the project file you had to have IIS installed and running. Just to open the project file in Visual Developer Studio .net!!!!

I left around 10pm, after a great Diva-provided dinner of a yummy burger. Driving home the moon was huge and orange, and I wish I had something to capture it beyond my memory, to share with ya'll. It was simply amazing.

Oh, almost forgot, had a great run today. Even with a warm up I managed around 25 minutes at 6.0 mph on the treadmill. Felt great. Actually only needed one break as well, before finishing off the 45 minutes. Wonder how I'll do tomorrow?

Been working to get myself more organized, and have gotten my pilot up to date, purging and/or moving away old information as best I can, and have got JPilot going to help maintain my data off the pilot. We'll see how it goes. What I really want is a web based calendar service (or better, something I run myself, so I don't get all sorts of damn banner ads and such BS) that will let me sync my pilot to a calendar that I can then update from the web, and sync them both together. I found a good list, but none seem to be quite right. That's the same problem I had with trying to find an organizer, there were some that fullfilled some aspects of what I wanted, others did other things, but no one (even the most expensive $100 leather one) did it all properly. So no organizer for me.

My requirements for an organizer are, for those interested.

• not huge, not tiny
• ringed binder so I can replace/add things like a different calendar view, or extra paper
• a space for my pilot, preferably built for it, not just a pocket to stick it, and better yet, with an open window so I can use it while it's in the organizer
• "wallet stuff" so I have a place to put paper money, credit cards, id, best yet with an extra zippered paper money slot (some of the expensive organizers have this perfectly)

Some of them worked perfectly with the pilot, others had the wallet-replacement part up, and others had the rest, but none had it all. What I'd like to do is replace my wallet + palm with a single item to carry around that lets me have the power of an electronic PDA along with the simplicity of paper.

Well, I have surived my first day climbing in a while. It was good, we did about 6 climbs, ranging from 5.6 to 5.11a (which I couldn't make it up... next time though!). It was a hot day and the weather was almost perfect. If the heat could have been turned down just a little bit it would have been perfect, but the sun was just a little hot. We had a good breeze going at times which helped, and the fact it was a tuesday was good as well, meaning there were less people on the rock. I survived longer than I thought I would for my first day back, and we climbed till after 4. After that we fueled up at White Spot, then hit the beach, and vegged out at Murin lake after a swim ("it's great once you get in").

Got back home around 7 and went to sleep late, the heat keeping me up. Having the fan in the bedroom turned to "high" helped though. Strangely enough it's settings aren't low, medium and high, but rather low, high and super.

Woke up this morning with Zoon loving my beard again, which is just far too adorable to stop, even though it was too early in the morning :)

Anyway, the exciting news. Remember the phone interview I did a while back? They got in contact with me today saying they wanted to fly me up on August 8^th to meet with them. Pretty funky if you ask me. Course, this means I'm almost at the point of thinking about starting to think/worry about the possibility of actually getting an offer, and think/worry about the possibilities of moving. Suppose I'll cross that bridge when I come to it though.

Yup, the weather is too good not to go climbing, so Lawrence and myself are heading up to Squamish in a bit. I managed to find all the gear I need except for the water bottle with a biner on it (someone thought it was old and ugly looking, and that the duct tape around it didn't look sexy or something) and my favorite bandana. With this weather it's hard to say whether we'll be spending more time climbing or suntanning, but I suppose we'll have to see when we get up there. If we're not on the rocks, we'll head to Murin lake and vegg out there until we fry to a crisp. Mmmmm..... fry to a crisp.... Sounds like Firefly will be coming back this evening as well, which will make the cats and I happy.

It's amazing what the sun can do to you. This afternoon was spent the same as yesterday afternoon, mostly anyway. I packed myself a lunch, grabbed a couple of books, my camera, and headed to sit in the sun and veg. Yesterday it was Mill Lake, today it was Cultas. After Cultas I headed over to Dana's and we chatted about life, the universe, and wikis. He pointed me to a way to make money while still on EI though creating a home business, like say, a consulting company, which would then allow one to make money while still on EI, and eventually do things like, write off part of the utilities, rent, etc. Best thing is (apparently) you don't have to pay any money to the gov't until you make over $32k a year, and (and I have no confirmation of this) you could probably make just under that through the company, and do the rest as yourself (IE: have jobs pay you personally instead of the company). Best thing, I already have a cool company name in Arcterex Heavy Industries. Have to get more info on this though. The whole point of this program is that people on EI can get a company started and growing, while still getting assistance. Cool stuff, now to find out more :)

It's damn hot here, which is an energy sapper for sure. They said about 32 (CND) in Abbotsford today when I was doing my run at the gym this morning. I've also been waking up early from the heat, around 7:30 this morning, which is disturbing to be sure. Of course, it also allows me to actually start the day at a decent hour, not stay in bed till 11 or noon like normal (though I wouldn't mind, but I just don't have the ability to go back to sleep after getting up and turning the fan in the bedroom window on).

Oh, sad news... the last of the fish died :( He died sometime yesturday I think. Didn't happen too long after being put in his new (old) fishbowl either, though I hope that wasn't part of it. He didn't seem all that energetic the last few days, so perhaps his time had come. This one has been with me since.... Christmas? Or maybe just after. A long time as far as fish I've had go anyway. He'll be buried in the appropriate manner (*flushhhhh*) this evening. I'll probably get another one though, but I'll probably wait for the heat to die down, so the poor little buggers don't boil. Speaking of boiling, it's dinnertime, though I won't be having seafood!

Well, just finished about 40 minutes on the phone with Mark. Seemed like a decent guy, a coder at heart anyway, which was cool. He didn't balk at the three object oriented funtime words, "polymorphism", "inheritance", and "encapulation". The interview went really well I thought, though they want a C++ person though, so I should have hyped that a bit more. Time to hit my C++ book and refresh my brain on how the whole thing works togeather. Hopefully I'll get a call back and maybe get flown for an interview in person.

Anyway, send me lots of good karma and whatnot k? <crossed fingers>

So I have a phone interview today. I've got some tea brewing to make sure I don't fall asleep on them, as I took the K Killer Run this morning, in my self-abusing way. It was.... unfun, though probably more so because I did a 45 minute run at the gym last night. Felt good afterward though!

One thing I forgot to mention yesturday was while walking back from the interview I happened upon a couple, and their dog, which was wearing sunglasses. Wonder if the dog was blind or just was owned by strange people. Maybe simply a stylin' pooch!

Well, the interview went ok, nothing exceptional, but being on the 18^th floor was nifty, and there was a lot of nice glass up there, with sexy offices and stuff. The interviewer dude, Ivan, was a nice guy and was even later than I. But before I go on, let me digress into the story of the trip out there.

I specifically was planning to leave around 11:45 (the interview was at 1), so that I could have the hour it would take to get me to downtown Vancouver (Zoolink is just up from Canada place at Hastings and Burrard). It was non-rush hour, so I figured hey, no problem. As fate would have it, I ended up hitting the highway at pretty much 12, leaving me only an hour. Turns out that it takes exactly an hour to get down there, with speed only going 10 or 20 over the limit. I get down there and find the place with about -4 minutes to spare. Then comes the dreaded parking. I found a place that caters to Canada place just down on Burrard, with a lovely "early bird" price of $9 for all day. When I parked and headed to the exit, I should have realized that down was a bad thing. It said exit, so I figured, "hell, that'll get me out right?" Well, it did, but somehow I ended up in the utility zone down almost at sea level at the pier :( The door didn't open up from the outside of course, and the direction of the building (or at least, the direction least away) was obviously not going to let me back to the streets, so I ended up running in the other direction, my UF shirt and "hire me" jeans getting a decidedly non-interview workout. I found some guys from someplace who were locked out of somejob who pointed me to a utility elevator that would get me up to Cordova. This of course left me about two blocks down, and three across from where I parked, leading me to a run that got me to the building sweaty and tired, trying to fan myself in the elevator as it rocketted to the 18^th floor. I arrived about 15 minutes late (you'll note that that was the exact amount of extra time that I gave to myself originally that was eroded by making sure I had everything I needed, and getting lunch on the way), but Ivan was busy apparently as well, so we didn't get to talking till about half past.

The person they were looking for was a php person to do stuff on their website, and the possibility of dealing with some cool stuff in the future (my C experience gave me a plus there it sounded like). They also have a contract to do stuff to deal with my Real Estate experience (again, another "yay" for me). I won't disclose what I was told about what they'd be doing, or what the successful applicant would be doing, not that it would be a company secret or anything, but they probably wouldn't want that, and I don't feel like typing all that much. The interview ended well, though Ivan and myself didn't get into a really chummy banter. The disadvantages should I recieve the job would have to do with the drive (an hour, plus cost of parking) and that they only want a part time person to start. However, I'll wait until I get a job offer before worrying about that :)

Speaking of job offers, looks like Tig came through for me! I just received an email requesting a phone interview with his company! Wh00p!

Well, just about to head off to my interview. I am wearing my new "hire me" jeans (no, not the buttless ones) that I got last week. I figured that when your pants have a hole in the crotch and the legs are about to fall off (or simply disintegrate), it's time for a new pair. So I headed to Marks Work Wearhouse, the only place that has jeans that fit me perfectly, and got not one, but two pairs! One was the normal faded blue, the other black, working on the theory that black jeans are not only comfortable (like bluejeans), but also professional (as in "please please hire me!"). A bit ago I realized that I really have no idea what to wear. I actually went through 3 different shirts and three different belts trying to find a look that was not too lame, and not going to make me boil while in the car. The end ensamble? Black jeans, brown belt, and the grey version of this userfriendly polo shirt. Not great, but not terrible. Anyway, wish me luck and send me good karma, I'm outta here!

Hi there. I'm trying to use the jobwavebc.com website to do job searches, but it seems to have a problem with the browser that I am using.

I am using the latest version of mozilla under linux (best known as the new netscape release), yet your site tells me I need IE 5.x. First of all, this is the sort of prejudice that destroys the purpose of the internet, that is, access to information. I understand not allowing or giving warnings for old versions of software, but not against the newest versions of browsers.

When I go to the "job catalog" page I get the following message:

-------------------------
Notice To All Users:

This is a private computer application and is the property of West Coast Group. It is for authorized use only. Users (authorized or unauthorized) have no explicit or implicit expectation of privacy. Any or all uses of this application may be intercepted, monitored, recorded, copied, audited, inspected, and disclosed to authorized site and law enforcement personnel, as well as authorized officials of other agencies, both domestic and foreign. By using this application, the user consents to such interception, monitoring, recording, copying, auditing, inspection, and disclosure at the discretion of authorized site or West Coast Group personnel.

Unauthorized or improper use of this application may result in administrative disciplinary action and civil and criminal penalties. By continuing to use this application you indicate your awareness of and consent to these terms and conditions of use. LOG OFF IMMEDIATELY if you do not agree to the conditions stated in this warning.

Your Session Has Timed Out, Please Logon Again.
User Name: joborders
Password : *******
   [Login]
-------------------------


When I hit that login button (going to the site with IE does not produce this screen) I get the same page except instead of the "session has timed out" message, I get:

-------------------------
Your Internet Browser is not compatable with this application. You must use Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x.
-------------------------

I am sure that there is a check in the .asp page for "netscape" or "ie", intended to keep older versions of netscape from accessing the page, however, this is preventing new versions of non-microsoft browsers from accessing the page as well.

If something could be done to allow me and others in my situation to access the jobwavebc.com page, it would be much appreciated.

Regards

Alan

What??? So I like to bitch...

Before I forget, thanks Tig for his take on the weekend and reminding me about the stripper at the club :)

Been a rough day. I did get back from Edmonton ok, after about 14 hours of driving (including stops for food, breaks, etc). To help me survive the drive I got myself a copy of the audiobook of The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I probably would have gotten something else (the book is long and creates about 28 hours of audio, so I'll be listening to the rest of it for a long time), but I wanted to support the fact that they were selling it on mp3-CD, which plays just great in my car stereo. Fit 28 hours on 3 normal CDs!

I have put the pictures from the trip that turned out in the gallery. I was quite disappointed by the number of pictures that didn't turn out. I'm not the photographer my dad is by any means, and probably have been doing something stupid by using the wrong type of film (400) for everything. Oh well... practice practice practice right? That's why the camera has a new film in it, ready to record cuteness in cats or whatever else comes my way.

For some reason today was really rough. Almost as bad as yesturday, when I had to drive down to Seattle and back to the SPUG meeting (forgetting SilverStr, and feeling really shitty about that). Somewhere along the way in all this bright sun I seem to have picked up a cold. The entire trip yesturday I had a lovely dripping nose :-~( Not a hay-fever type nose thing, just an ugly sniff and drip. Still had it all today and my energy has just been sapped out. I even ended up falling asleep for a bit this evening on the couch (that is why I love my couch, it's so good to sleep on....), which I pretty much never do. I didn't get any evening food in me till almost 9, and my lovely long list of things to do was left untouched until tonight (and is still only half done). I'm feeling a bit better now, more energetic anyway, but still sniffing like a bugger. Bah. My fish is however, nicely happy in his new (old) fishbowl, the one with a top on it so that the cats can't use it as an alternate water dish. Speaking of cats, they have forgiven me for leaving them for so long and have started bestowing love on me. It's nice, though when you get to bed at 4am and have a kitten decide that you are the greatest thing in the world at 8am....

Ah yea, the work situation. It looks like I'm going to get a contract to do some work on redoing the backend of the userfriendly site with Yohimbe. That'll be cool, though probably not that long. I also have left a couple of resumes in Edmonton with Tig and Firefly's friends's boyfriend, which have been passed on to those in power. The place that asked me to come in for an interview on one of the days I was in Edmonton, Zoolink has said ok to me coming in tomorrow for an interview as well, so fingers crossed about that. They needed a perl/asp type guru, and I figure I can fake that easily enough.

[Insert random bitch about the labor board claim, different information coming from different sides, indecision, ponderance, and all else that goes along with that.]

So much to do, so much to do. Still needing to be done from the list:

• clean out fridge
• vaccuum
• laundry (only two loonies, so only the towels and sheets)
• update journal (almost done)
• set up forum/blog/mailing list for the horse council people
• get battery for the cordless phone
• put hard drive into fishbowl

A relaxing, yet productive, couple of days. We arrived late friday evening after taking a wrong turn.... or rather, not taking a right turn. I figured I'd read Tig's instructions when I got to Edmonton itself, as there'd be signs up until then on how to get there. Well, one of the important things in there, was to watch out that I stay on the #5 in Kamloops, and not continue on the #1, or I'd end up in Calgary. Well, around Salmon Arm we looked at the map and went "oops." All the travel routs via mapquest et al took that route anyway. I've never gone the Calgary to Edmonton route before, so it was interesting. I'll be going back via Jasper though, so I get to do the curcuit.

Saturday was spent mostly vegging as the sun here is just killer. Firefly, Tig, K, and I spent most of the time in the shade outside trying not to melt. That was the vegging part of the day. The other parts where the start (where I was dragged screaming by K on an hour long run in the blazing sun, repeating under my breath "I drove to Edmonton and all I got was this coronary."). Sadly, the start of the day was my idea, as I asked her to guide me to godliness. Towards 3 or so she took me to the gym where "leg day" ensued, and I learnt stuff, and showed here that while I have body fat, I'm a muscled god underneath. After this, more vegging ensued. Following that the end part of the day. We went to someone's house and drank "Absinthe", as in "absinthe makes the heart grow fonder (in a drunken stupor)". 55% alcohol and pretty brutal stuff, I was buzzed after a couple of glasses (no more than a finger over ice by the way). It tasted like licorice. The plan after that was to leave the womenfolk so they could go dancing at a lesbian bar. After we found that the bar (the roost) was a gay and lesbian bar, so the guys got to come along, and I got to have my first gay (bar) experience.

It was pretty much the same as 99% of the clubs I've been too (not many, but more than 1). Overly loud music, lots of women dancing together on the dance floor, and that one weird guy dancing by himself with a jug of beer in the corner. No one got hit on, picked up, attacked, bashed, pinched, poked, slapped, groped, or invited to have kinky sex in the bathroom or behind a park bench. After all that organized religion has taught me, I find it's untrue! In a way I was really disappointed, thinking that it'd be a nice little ego boost to get hit on just a little bit. *sigh* Probably for the best though, I don't want to be a heartbreaker (though that doesn't seem to be a problem.... :-)

Before I got and tell about the exciting saturday of more vegging, I'll explain that the idea to go to the gay bar was that of a friend of Tig and K's, who is going through an ugly divorce right now, and was wanting to just get out and dance, and the roost is apparently known as "the last place left to go dancing in Edmonton." No meat market, which is cool.

Hangovers for some ensued, and apparently after a leg day one doesn't work out, so we vegged, got K to the airport for a wedding she has to go to, and did some touristy stuff. Firefly met up with her friend and I came back to Tigs, where we remain, hanging and watching a flick.

By the way, I've becoming obsessed with finding a cool digital camera. I'm looking for 3 megapixels+, with at least a bit of optical zoom. I've wanted one for a bit, simply for the ease of transfer to the computer, and the hassle of printing pictures. After I found out that you can get digital pictures printed out on photographic paper (for the cost of a reprint about, $0.50-$0.88 in the two places I asked), it has solved the dilema of "I want to have the joy of digital, but I also want to get real pictures so that I can have coffee table photo albums." Until now I thought that the only way you got a "real" picture from a digital camera was to print it out on an inkjet printer and really expensive paper (shut up, I just didn't know!). So if you're wondering what to get me for the arcterbirthday, now you know... but I'll list the model when I find "the right one" (or buy it with money I don't have, and sell my friends bodies on the street to pay for rent and food). It's a hard look, as I'm using epinions, dp-review and futureshop.ca to try to get an idea of a good camera, with a decent feature-set, that doesn't suck, and won't take me more than 98% of the way to the poor house. Don't worry though, there's enough information out there to keep me busy for a looooong time looking.

Speaking of money, thanks to all who gave me resume advice. My new one (not yet posted, see bitch an entry or two ago about word XP) got me an email for an interview only hours after it was sent in. I replied saying that I was leaving for the weekend, and couldn't make the friday appointment, but they never replied (yet). I do have some contract work coming up it sounds like from Yohimbe, who needs a minion to redo some of the backend of the userfriendly site.

Gads it's hot here. Guess they have to make up for the 7 months of winter though (last snowfall in May!!!!!!!).

Made it, alive, went through calgary instead of jasper... d'oh! Hot, long drive. Ugh.

Well, big news I guess. Firefly and I are heading to Edmonton to visit Tig and K. I'll leave her there, dumped on the side of the road no doubt, to visit her friend D, and I head back here on monday. So, a long, long drive ahead.... fun fun fun.

I finally got my resume up to spec, and was sending it off until about 2:30am last night. It's still pending "approval" from a couple of people who I've been testing it on, but I fixed most of the things they found and figure that was pretty good for now. What I get to do now is sit back and wait for the jobs to roll in. The online game may or may not go ahead... the work they are wanting done is pretty intense, and promises of riches beyond my wildest dreams isn't going to pay rent or sustain my enthusiasm for that long.

Saw the movie Lilo and Stitch last night (cheap night) and it was quite fun. It was a typical disney movie with fun, love, a good message, and just enough bad stuff to get the little kiddies all worried about how it would end (I wasn't worried at all) before the happy ending (phew!). Part of the plot involved the earth not simply being blown up because the aliens belived it to be harboring an endangered species, the mosquito. Well, after we got out of the movie the mosquitoes swarmed! It was crazy, there were 5 or 10 of them going after me at once, and I'm bit all over! The same thing happened going from the car to the fog and suds to chat with my buddy Sean, who came out to see the movie as well. It was crazy I tell you, crazy!

Well, I was almost impressed with Word XP while I was using it. It seemed nifty, had nicely integrated (and useful) help, and had a stylish new look. Sadly, under the hood it still sucks big hairy sweaty pimply donkey balls. The way they deal with "styles" and formatting is the worst I've seen yet, with characters getting formatting from nowhere at all, then loosing it for no reason at all. You can create hyperlinks in documents that show up as nice blue underlined text in the same font and style as the rest of that part of the document, but as soon as you apply another style on top of it, you loose the blue and underlined part, and even though the style says that it's "hyperlink" you have to retype the URL so that it regains it's hyperlink look. After this of course, the style still says that it's set to "hyperlink". There may be some way to get around this or deal with it, but I don't know it. Their "reveal style" function had the potential to be very cool as well, and let you get around things like this, just like in the old wordperfect days. Sadly, it doesn't give you nearly the power, and again, their style system is on crack. Highlight one section in one font and it's set to "style foo", move down a line or two (so you can apply the same style there) and you loose "style foo" from the list of all styles that are in use. When you get it back by selecting the show all styles available setting, "style foo" is there, but when it's applied it has a different font/size/everything than what you want (and what the other text marked as in "style foo" is).

I'd dump word like a hot potato in a second and use open office under linux, but it seems to be on crack as well. My once working-perfectly install was giving me errors, so I decided to re-install. Downloading the install files gives me install and setup executables, one of which gives me errors about "ln: when making multiple links last argument must be a directory" followed by "Installation Complete" and the other pops up a nice graphical progress bar, displays my LIBC version (2.2.5) in the console, and exits. I even figured I'd try the source, but the 1.0 code requries all sorts of strange shit. GPC files that it should be including in the tarball, the requirement for TCSH, and it goes on crack if you tell it to use gcc-3.x. *double-sigh* I'm downloading different versions just in case I got a bad one or something.

Another reason to use it is it's far superior doc->html conversion. For a 97KB document, Word XP creates an 87KB HTML file.... Openoffice creates a 17KB HTML document. Oh, and yes, they do look the same (though not exact).

Oh, more pictures in the gallery.

Yup, another late night, or early morning depending on how you think about it. I was over at a friend's place giving him a hand with some code I wrote, and teaching him the zen of CVS. There was no bowing involved though, sadly :)

I've spend the last few hours with photographs and memories. It started with me watching Kindergarten Cop and doing some more scanning of baby pictures. About halfway through I decided it was getting a bit tedious and boring, and that scanning some more modern pictures would be more interesting for a bit. Anyway, I grabbed a bunch of unlabled, unsorted pictures, and started going through them in preparation to scan and present the best of them.

All I can say is wow, talk about memories! Things I hadn't thought of for years, and people I haven't seen for longer suddenly jumped up at me. This is why people take pictures I guess ;) In the process of trying to figure out when they were taken, and who they were, I managed to employ my nifty online journal (that'd be this thing) and an even older journal that tracks some really scary thoughts and feelings and events back to 1992! One of the lines in there was "Grade 12, Finally!". Shit, that's 10 years.... (Aside: shouldn't there be a reunion or something coming up soon then?). Wow, that's a long time. Lots of interesting things as I went through the really old journal as well. Anyway, a lot of detective work was used to figure out things, and most dates and people were figured out.

I have started playing around with assembling a photo album. Must be something you do when you get older :) The start is here for those interested, don't be afraid to comment (esp if there's a "who the hell is this" in the description), or if you'd prefer, wait till the unveiling (not that there'll be much difference between then and now, except the homepage will change a bit to move pictures from the arctercam page to a gallery page. By the way, the software is from gallery.sourceforge.net, and works well.

Of course, being me, I wanted to just get one or two going before I went to bed.... grrr.... almost done now.

First, a dream...

I dreamt that at the end of the movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back there was a trailer for yet another Kevin Smith movie (something I've been wondering about I guess.... what's next?) called something like "The Empire Strikes Back... again". This movie was something like Empire, but.... new. Excited of course, and looking to make sure it's not a hoax lest becoming dissappointed, I emailed him. As the reply came from ksmith@mailmiami.com (which I figured was a free mail service he used while out of his home town of New Jersey), it must have been authentic. Kevin told me how he was taking a lot of old and unused footage from Empire and splicing it togeather with new head shots and backgrounds and special effects to make a new movie. He even showed me (somehow, don't remember how) some footage with missing heads, and unfinished special effects, as well as obviously added in characters into old footage. Pretty cool. This was going on up at Whistler (in the snow) an this happened to be in my backyard at my parents house. A bunch of people were going to go up the hill and watch the filming, but I had to take the garbage out. After I did this for some reason I walked down the road for a bit, and watched the sunset. While I was walking, I heard a great jet noise, and when I looked up, the concord was coming overhead! Very cool. Not long after I watched some skydivers come down (not from the concord though) in the neighbors field. Not long after that the cats started fighting and I got up to go and beat on them a bit....

Yesturday was a day of resume work, resulting in something that I'd be happy to show people. Sadly, it was done in MS word whose ability to produce good HTML has somehow gone away, and the resulting mish-mash of HTML, XML, and style sheets is almost as big as the original .doc file! Until xmlresume releases 1.4.n+1 I'm stuck maintaining multiple versions though :( I just feel dirty sending my resume off as a word attachment!

Went over to Firefly's to help load her horses into someone's trailer to move them to a new field... the field was totally overgrown, and when we tried to load them into the trailer.... well, let's just say it was an hour an a half (while trying to make a dinner date with Yohimbe and Webdiva) of beating, tempting, yelling, crying, and food treats before we finally gave up. And then one of them stepped on Firefly's mom! It wasn't serious I don't think, nothing broken anyway. This meant a lovely trip to the hospital though, although (I was following in my car behind them) halfway there they stopped to drop us off to make our dinner date.

The rest was uneventful. Chatted about various things, and then went home where I did some computer stuff and then flaked out in front of the TV, with one nostril plugged up (I took enough allergy stuff to keep me happy most of the day, but as I didn't know we'd have extra horse "issues" I ran out at the end).

Feeling a bit off kilter today. Not sure why. Changing weather or something. Anyway, time for some random rants and explanations of things that piss me off.

Ads with little kids in them

What is it these days with people using little kids in their advertisement. Sure it's cute to see a bunch of 4 year olds screaming "Blah motors has the best deal!" or some kid telling me how her dad has the best carpet deals in the lower mainland, but man, it's just as lame as anyone else trying to sell me their line of BS. You might say that this method is employed to make you remember because it's so annoying... well, I don't, I change the channel, and make a concious effort to put it out of my mind.

Advertising methods in general

On that note, what is it with advertising these days! You can say pretty much anything as true these days! Just stick one of the following phrases after anything you say as true, and it seems you'll be covered.

• Based on labratory results
• Actual results may vary
• Compared to other vehicles in it's class
• Not available in all areas
• Clients may incur some charges
• Results not typical
• ... plus cost of food
• Results may vary

Sensationalism in the news

Wow, seems like everything is turned into a drama on channels like CNN, or MSNBC to boost ratings. I must have seen hours* of footage on how the US is on "yellow" alert, the reasoning behind the alert level, how the july 4th blah blah blah.... gads, give us some good news straight one of these days! Course, "news programs", advertising, and tabloid programs are pretty close to each other these days anyway. And as I've said before, all programs gravitate towards being jerry springer.

* based on clinical studies

Computer games blamed for women's low self image

This one really pissed me off. I was surfing and hit SexTV (yes, I did surf to it, as it's not worth the hype). They had a story on how computer games featuring disproportionate, scantily clad females is affecting girls and women's self images. Excuse me????? Have these geniuses passed by a magazine rack lately and seen the shit known as Cosmo, Redbook, and the other magazines featuring women who resemeble anorexic 12 year olds? Good God, at least a computer game you know is fake, and the characters don't pretend to be real, or doing real things, but these magazines display their airbrushed and bulimic models as people who exist out in the real world. A lady being interviewed (a game programmer in Vancouver) was saying how of course computer game characters are generally exaggerated, as when you jump into the fantasy world of the computer game, it's far more fun to play as a muscle bound super hero, a brave and resilliant soldier, or a sexy, long legged oriental teenager in a skirt with a slit up to your ass than an out of work and overweight computer programmer, or a bored middleage housewife.

Christian TV Shows on when I can't change the channel

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem with pretty much anything on TV. If you want a show talking about how gophers are the best pets, or that intel is in fact, the devil here on earth, and that all good worshippers of amd should rise up and kill any intel user out there, or whatever crap they put on, as long as I don't have to watch it! Well, one of the advantages of this new gym I joined is that they have a "cardio loft" with all their bikes and treadmills, and they have TVs mounted on the ceiling to watch. Twice when I've been in there doing a run I've been stuck watching 100 huntely street (a christian tabloid show, pretty much like other tabloid shows, but with less flashing of breasts and swearing at the studio audience) and some world vision thing. The TV was right in front of me, and without excersing hotties down below doing weights (there were none at this time), there was really nowhere else to look. My one tiny shining ray of amusement was the bad, bad, bad job that the text-on-screen (what the heck is that called) was doing, giving all sorts of interesting modifications of words spoken that it didn't understand.

Speaking of World Vision...

Not sure if you're familiar with them, they are like CARE or the peace corps, and put out pleas for a dollar a day to feed a kid in a third world country, and they let you write them, etc. The show basically consists of two parts. Rich actors going to the most downtrodden parts of the world and showing us the most horrible conditions that people are living in, and a couple of rich white hosts with good teeth holding up pictures of kids and asking people to call in and sponsor them. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize, and wish I could help (see unemployed programmer comment above). My parents worked for CARE long ago, and if I'm lucky someday I will be able to contribute to lives in need like they did, and get the exposure to the world they did. However, why the hell do they have to talk about how every kid they try to get sponsors for is "cute", "adorable", or "precious"? I see there being only a couple of answers. All little kids are cute in some way, so don't bother mentioning it, and let people see for themselves that the kids are cute. Or all the kids they try to get sponsors for are the cute ones, and they are a secret organization trying to weed out the gene pool of the ugly gene. The latter is less plausible, so to the world vision network, please stop saying how each and every kid is cute.

Enough ranting for now. I'm starting to feel better. Had a few people look over my resume, and am in the process of modifying it to be more friendly, less geeky, and more hirable. Course, this has been an ongoing process for the last few months. Wish I could work at something :)