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It seems like an opportune moment on this Wednesday, of all the warm days, to take a moment to go back into the past and recap on that which has transpired and possibly delve into the future… I’m not sure what brought on the somewhat fantasy, dreamy topic or the introduction, but Andrew just informed me that I’m probably on drugs of some sorts. Well that part is totally false, but it does imply the sort of weird work environment that we have here. For the most part being all students, or college graduates *cough* Greg (how unexciting is that?), it is with a lot of sarcasm, jokes and odd behavior that we get through our days. If you’re ever interested in a whole lot of comic situations then there’s no time to drop by like on Friday after 12. Usually by that point it’s pretty much dead here in terms of our student queries and by then we’ve mostly given up on any of our other projects and with Adam seemingly on queue coming over to visit, good times ensue =D

I feel compelled to make a few more mentions of Casino Royale and how effin awesome it is. There’s a huge writeup from some kind of James Bond addict located over here, and in summary I agree. But let me make this distinction now, Sean Connery may be a god amongst men, but he is *not* the best James Bond ever. If I had to put my money somewhere, or go all in ala Casino Royale game style, my money would certainly be on Pierce Brosnan in Goldeneye (I actually view Goldeneye as the quintessential Bond movie of all time). That said Daniel Craig comes in in a very close second. The last few Bond movies had ridiculously silly villains, with ludicrous plots and cheesy effects to spice things up. Not so much anymore, we’re back to Bond, James Bond, with a developing attitude and just packed with pure action with a goal that makes sense and a villain that you understand and at the same time want to fail, I love it! On a closing note, anyone seeing this with someone, you’re probably going to want to look into a gym membership shortly after, because rawr at the beach scene ^^

Of course on Saturday we had a chance to practice everything we’ve learned about poker and social situations by playing a game at my place with friends and visitors from the DC++ hub. I think I’m probably going to end up missing people, but at least some of the notable people to show up: Syth, Angusto, Thad, Sharon, Nick, Mike, Eric, Justin with notable visits from AJ and this is what I’m talking about, another outstanding guy who dropped by to say hi even though he had a cold! How’s that for dedication, this does bring into question some people who didn’t show up XD to that, you missed out. Before it even started Sharon and me made everything to make some nachos later, so we’d be ready. I’d say the onions didn’t bring some tears, well they normally don’t, but then I think I managed to rub some in my eyes forgetting to wash my hands beforehand, touche to that. The game definitely had its moments! Sharon was off to an early lead by winning a solid 1st hand, then a few got traded and I definitely managed to grab a few good wins here and there. Thad was also making a nice collection of chips on the side, and I was well into my plan of stealing them all when he had to bail for a birthday party of another friend, which is fair enough. Best mistake, since can’t go without those, I had 3 of a kind and 4 cards on the table, 3 people in. I even called that one had a flush and the other a straight, the only thing I was wrong on is who had which, and I still bet — don’t ask me why I do it, but it was fun anyway =D We got it down in the end to Angusto, Nick and myself — it was getting late and someone was sleeping on the floor, so I pretty much wanted to get it over and went all in on A/3 and Nick called on pocket 2’s which held, one more hand later Angusto was out too and we had our surprise winner, we’ll call it beginners luck.

Apparently, everyone who left, still managed to make it to Phils that night. Which I guess isn’t surprising, it was only maybe just past 12 when we wrapped it up. I definitely had to call it quits though and just went back to fix the floor situation and get some sleep.

It’s been exceptionally warm, if not sunny, for the last few days — and it’s dissapointing to know that on Monday we’re going to hit negatives and on Tuesday next week it’s supposed to be -10. Icky to that, at least I grabbed my winter coat last time I went home, maybe I’ll even put it to use if it gets cold enough.

Read an interesting conversation on the hub. It was another person explaining their reasoning for switching out of CS and into something different. It was interesting to just read it over while doing something else, some of my feeling on the subject were mirrored perfectly. I’ve come to the conclusion that yes people drop the program because it’s hard, but I’m honestly starting to think that there’s a distinct group of people who switch because it’s just not that fun or creative. Don’t get me wrong, you learn so much, but everything I’ve done so far causes this learning process to happen through the most monotonous way possible, no wonder people look for alternatives. And one way or another once this switch is complete, well even before, I haven’t been happier with my decision. It’s not that I love what I’m switching into a whole lot more then CS, but what I do love is the amount of electives you get in comparison. There’s room to take creative classes, and classes that I want to enjoy as opposed to looking at more and more mandatory and required tags on course codes. I was in an arts oriented class in grade school, and maybe in someways that got cut off a little bit too early. I mean really, want to know what seems like a joke to me, I haven’t touched a computer seriously until I moved to CA. And one of distinct moments I remember is being in England at my mom’s friends house and their son calling me to his computer and going hey want to check this out and me answering no way let’s go outside and play some soccer, random memory I know.

Oh well, I’ll stop now before this turns into anymore of a running novel. Maybe I should try to break these posts up a bit more and just write more then one in a day, what do you my random visitors think? I know most of you in person, but it’s still a fun concept that maybe some random person drops by and reads this.

It’s 12:30pm, and it’s time to move one.

Theseus: No epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse, for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed

[Sharon] I got so good at it I could take them off while talking to someone in their room in a second without them realizing

I interrupt this important personal message to say that a new router is in, and I’m sure I’ll be making a seperate post about it in just a minute, but bear with me on another personal recap!

It was my mom’s birthday this last weekend, well the 17th to be more exact! I wasn’t there on the day itself, but more on that in a second. I was actually at a concert at the Bomber, or if you want to get all correct The Bombshelter, aka our on campus bar. Was going to skip the line on VIP privillages thanks to someone working at this place for the benefit of the poor and hungry students who attend this school. Now for a complete break, Andrew says he just dedicated the Enrique Iglesias I’ll be Your Hero song to me, very interesting, I’m coming up with a counter as I type this and of course cook my perogies in a frying pan with some wine sauce, god that’s going to be good. Anyway, since we couldn’t skip the line due to some extra friends along we totally though we weren’t getting in, but I guess this was another go home weekend as we were the 3rd group in line. 5 minutes later and one expired drivers license explanation later we were in only to be greeted by none other the Nitish!

Fun guy, he was there with some friends and mostly trying to not get kicked out by being in the corner : ) We saw him a few more times that night before I think they finally decided to move on. By the way, did I mention we were there for a while. Kinda figured the band would stop playing by 9 and they didn’t actually start until at least 11. Oh yeah if you’re wondering who the band was, it was definitely some Mudmen. What can I say, I like different kinds of music, but when you combine good lyrics and some rock mixed in with a little bit of something and add bagpipes you’ve pretty much got a gotta see combination.

For those that missed out… meet most of the band…

Oh look, a better picture! The guy with the bagpipes was pretty awesome, the drummer is super underappreciated in the back, the (pretty sure) base guitar player was just so odd. He had the most blank look for the entire show, it was kinda creepy! We figured out he might be Italian, because if we learned anything from watching a morning Italian news show is that none of them show any emotion. I had a good ‘oh really?’ picture for here, but I need approval first to post it

Anyway, walked back to Sharons after and I know I had to catch the bus at 9:30, so have to catch the regular bus to the Greyhound station at like 8:30, and this was probably 2am now — Dave, Chris, Alina and Tracy were over there already though, and pretty much at the ‘Nu Pozhaluista’ from Alina I pretty much had to stay at least for a bit. 4 or so hours of sleep later, I was on my way to London, asleep on the bus, it was actually kinda crazy how many people were there at 9am to catch it on a Saturday morning, usually people are gone by then. I got to London, got to the mall, and got on with my task of finding some flowers and a present which I already knew I was going to get, but it wasn’t in my posession yet before calling for a ride home. Calvin and Hobbes, oh how close I came to almost not finding it as the store person was just like no we don’t have it except for this $100+ set o.O After some walking around I came back and found it under the authors name, score one victory and one birthday present!

That evening I finally got to see most of my London friends, it was hella hard to actually find a place to go because I guess there was some big kick boxing fight on TV and just about every place was packed. After here and there and us sticking to our policy of not waiting in lines to get in when Mike wanted to go to some dance club where some more of his friends from work were we finally ended up at Crabby Joes where we know the owner. Pretty much finished the night off there, and oh yeah they have Rickards Red! They headed to Mike’s after, but I had to go home and call it a night if I wanted to have any chance of catching the morning bus that Sunday morning.

Which brings us to the crazy house on Sunday evening. Isn’t it odd when your parents are visiting and you gotta introduce a whole bunch of people who all don’t live at your house, oh well Tracy knows what that’s like along with the “writing on the wall” and the “mysterious P box” That said we made it to the new Casino Royale show at the movie theatre right about 7:35-ish, it was on at 7:30; With glee we entered the theatre to realise we totally only had the choice of the *dreaded* FRONT ROW! Either way it was fun, and I totally didn’t miss any location text (if you go and see the movie you’ll get that last part), I’d definitely recommend it though, great return for Bond, James Bond.

Oh well, that just about wraps it up for the public novel that continues to manifest itself around here, cya next time!

More on this developing story tommorow, or how I’m going to not only survive, but enjoy this weekend also. For now it’s time to just crawl into bed and hope I actually get up for the 8am bus trip tommorow. Au revoir!

It’s getting close to a month of this site living on it’s new, improved?, or at least hopefully improved home on the servers at (mt). As always there are some good things to be said and some really big annoyances that need to be solved soon for this service to be considered acceptable even by my current for personal use standards. The big pro’s were super easy activation, a very pretty and simple to use control panel, the amount of separation that is given between the various domains and subdomains and just about everything else really. It would probably be a lot easier to say that the service is good with the exception of and that’s where the story really begins.

MySQL - is slow and sometimes entirely fails to respond causing any database driven sites to totally not work. Granted (mt) have admitted that there is a problem and they’re working on it, I just wish they worked on it faster and/or with better results.

Database User(s) - yep, that’s right, for now you only have one. This is great and all if you manage all of the sites on the account, but somehow I’m hesitant to just leave my MySQL credentials in others configuration files, even if I do sort of kinda know them mostly.

I’ll stick with it for now, for another month at least as I don’t have any critical uptime demands for now. But if it doesn’t clear up by then I’m definitely looking for some new hosting. It’s been a fun adventure between all the hosts I’ve used so far and I actually have to say that I’ve really never had a bad experience, which is awesome I think and exploring is always fun

I don’t really know where to start for this one, but I’m already getting that feeling that it’s going to be long So in advance prepare for a well formatted wall of text with hopefully half decent grammar most of the way through. Even now I still have just one category for posts, and that’s the ‘you can never go wrong with it’ Uncategorized; really though I think pretty soon I’ll have to expand on that. It’s hard to write things that are more personal and things that are just interesting from a say technical point of view in the same post and still keep it interesting for everyone, or even to keep it all together for yourself, the writer. Oh well, we’ll see what happens: Adam did it right with devsushi and ah, maybe I’ll just copy that idea eventually. So without further time delaying and topic diluting words I give you this random composition of the day.

Adam (McEmo) and Sharon showed up on Friday with gifts of sweet and delicious candy. Half of which ended up being presented to ResNet staff since there was no way we could finish all of it and still be alive. For the record they still make Kinder Surprise and Emo got a monkey thing that kinda *falls* down a tree, Sharon got a soccer field, yeah what are the chances of that, and I got some weird bush tree that has leaves on its arms. Anyway we also went to Williams, it was supposed to be Bubble tea, but you’d be amased how popular that place can be on a Friday and there was no way we were getting in. But not all is lost and here are some pictures to prove it that fun can be had anywhere and at anytime, and no no drinking involved whatsoever

Meet Adam “Emo” McFarlane. We met at ResNet, as if that wasn’t a huge surprise for those in the knowhow of how I seriously meet most of the people I know. He’s emo, he bought us the drinks at Williams after a rare breakdown of happy generosity. Say hello to him and congratulate him on succesfully beating engineering.

Yeah, she’s awesome. Some of you may know her as Sharon, more affectionately known as Shrimpy the camp counselor you always wished you had until you electrecuted yourself with a fork in a socket. Anyway, she pretty much dominates English and East Asian studies and makes for great times.

We are trained professionals and know what we’re doing. Kids don’t try this at home or in public places until you are thoroughly certified. Please note the correct administration of the shocker.

Moments later… no charges were filed in the violation of this delicious chocolate muffin. For those interested the ingredients are salt, ice cubes from a chocolate caffeine thing, sugar, more sugar, love pokes and it tastes absolutely salty through trial and error.

After that adventure we got back and yeah, get this played Monopoly. By now anyone here from the super cool crowd is probably laughing, but eff that, who doesn’t love Monpoly once in a while, for extra geek points we got the Star Wars edition. Unfortunately most of the figures were missing, why didn’t I see that at this university. Oh well whatever, I cruised to 2 solid and fun victories out of the two games we played. Notable moments include me never getting the community chest, the tiger which Sharon brought over a month or so ago and I adopted being my play figure, Princess Sharon visiting the Jedi Council with all of it’s high class hotels 2 or 3 times in one game and the always underrated Moisture Farm (make your jokes here)

Back onto the serious subjects, I’m probably going to work for 4 more months and take some distance ed courses. That’ll give me plenty of time to get this faculty switch over with and a hopefully happier career in something that I’m not starting to seriously regret doing. Computer science and programming was fun, and I loved it, and I still do on some level. The times when I was writing those programming contest with Pat, Mark and Eddy were absolutely off the hook hilarious and always worth it. What’s that, Ontario finals, whatever we’re playing Euchre right before it starts other teams are studying, we come top 10… that’s the stuff. Speaking of programming, well not really, but I’m probably going to get a Wii at some point this year. After hiping it up huge at the office I decided I probably won’t want to wait in line and be one of the first. But Alice now is with her friend, and she used that against me today, so now it definitely has to be this year, and with an extra work term instead of another $6000 deposit that’s going to be at least possible.

For anyone curious right now, I’m listening to Starsailor - Four to the Floor (Thin White Duke Remix), if you get the original it’s a lot slower and doesn’t have the prevalent dance beat that this version has. I like both, but this one feel way more lively, Andrew is probably going to hate me, but it’s on repeat for a bit. Also we don’t know how, but the UWDC hub just hit 960 users online, quite frankly we have no clue how we got 100 extra users overnight, but whatever I have a screenshot and that’s all that matters.

Something dramatically and silently failed on my milkbox server. As of the latest the motherboard seems to be getting at least some power, but not powering on per-say. As I don’t have a power supply to test with I guess we’ll see in a bit what super creative things I can come up with

This is one of those interesting twists of life where on one side I am being employed by the Housing Technology department at this university here and on the other hand I’m a student of the university at the same time. So, it’s always interesting to kinda watch the story from both sides and try not to comment on either; normally you’re biased towards a specific side, where here I know both sides of the story and it’s kinda like you’re stuck in the middle and it sucks! Students: ResNet is terrible, rawr, rawr, pitchforks and torches ( I work for ResNet); ResNet: We’re doing our best to fix this asap ( Sup guys, where’s that router? ).

I am not even going to remotely deny that there is something entirely wrong with ResNet and needs to be fixed, and fixed like a month ago already. When I give up trying to do some ResNet work from home because ResNet doesn’t allow me to actually do it can you imagine how annoying that would be if you were doing an assignment. And it’s not intermittent, it’s like that every single night, with the exception of usually Friday’s and Saturday’s when enough people go home to make it usable.

I’m not even really sure what my point is, well I have several undefined ones, but ResNet needs to get fixed. The mob needs to calm down, and actually try and do this the proper way through *coherent* complaint emails to the proper people, maybe not flipping out on 2 or 3 people who are helping you with the hub about ResNet would be helpful too. In the meantime I understand the frustrations and take my chances on my Rogers cable line, for which yes I am paying extra, but hey at least I have a consitent way to get things done. What happened ResNet, you used to be cool, and then this

I got new toys!

For those who may or may not remember I was getting hugely tired of having to play dancing games with my Bell cell phone in front of my window to try and get some workable form of reception and sending SMS messages was a complete hit and miss. So, me being jealous of the 4 bars of reception that Andrew’s phone seemed to provide I did the only thing that made sense and tried to switch. Of course I wouldn’t be writing about it if that part wasn’t fun either, since I wanted to get a Motorolla L7, but that was coming soon, turns out that was basically coming like almost never. So after some more reading, the internet is not only for porn, I decided to just get the Sony-Ericson W810i, which was in stock, was smaller, had a better camera and was cheaper too.

The combination of above and the release of Final Fantasy 12 pretty much meant that the geeky side had to be satisfied and with good company in tag we made it to the mall. It was seriously cold yesterday, and today it’s warm and sunny — although with remnants of snow from last night, but back into the proper timeframe! The sales lady at Rogers seemed to be completely insane, then tried to tell me some lifelong story of her switching jobs or something like that, this was of course mostly prompted by the fact that their computers weren’t working right and at least for one point I seriously though she was going to break the phone trying to get the battery cover back on — but at least she was enthusiastic

Did I mention the phone has a 2MP camera, which is awesome considering all the uses I can find for it and at the same time when you think about it not that long 2MP was huge even in proper cameras. I’m still playing around with all the ‘oh cool’ features as I didn’t get to do a lot of that last night, the only bad thing I’ve found so far is you seem to have to put mp3 songs through this DRM encoder before you can use them as ringtones, oh well.

In other things, the UWDC Facebook group is well on it’s way to growing, it was feeling lonely so I decided to spam some suggestions that people should join it! I banned some people last night, but that was promptly reversed by Sharon, and it being her first ever hub admin command I couldn’t say no ^^

It’s Friday, sunny, and I can’t wait for the day at work to be over and go home, clean up a bit, get groceries, hopefully play my new game with a controller which I should be getting for copying the game for someone — yeah huge warning: FF12 won’t work with non Dualshock 2 controllers as I found out the hard way — and then catch up on some Heroes amongst other things later tonight.