Tuesday, December 2, 2008

School is Done!

At least for the term. I have another class next term, then it's still unknown if I'm done or not. I'm quite excited though. My class next term is Game Mechanics. I think it should be very interesting. It also lines up with my Nintendo DS memory cart coming in, which allows me to finally start playing with development for the DS. Also, my 3d Artist friend apparently is just leaving his job, to a more part time position, to focus more on getting a portfolio together. Which means I can likely suck an artist into some projects.

My class next term is a good time as well (4-5:30 Tuesday, Thursday) which means if I keep my current work hours, I can bank a lot of flex time. I'm intending to flip that flex time into working on some video game related development. I might talk to my boss to see if I can take a Thursday afternoon off, and just head to the University and do some work on game related code before class. That would give me like 4 hours a week, minimum. That would be nice. I'll have to get a laptop to develop on in that case, but I'm intending to pick up a MacBook after Christmas anyway. (At least after Christmas shopping... So I may end up with one in the next couple weeks)

So video game season is almost done. Tomorrow I can pick up my last pre-order. I've done better than I was expecting at completing a few of them before getting new ones. Not that I'm done them all, but at least a few. I'll likely be slowing down now though, as I want to focus more on programming. I'm hitting the time in my life where I need to start my move to the career I want.

Look at me, all growing up and stuff. Weird.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Hey, I have one of these

I should make a post. Time for lots of updates!

So I went for academic advising. It was a bit frustrating. They couldn't really tell me for sure if I need 1 more class that what I'm currently registered for, or not. So I'll maybe finish in spring? I was talking to the Dean of the Department as well, so I don't really know how I can escalate it to get any better answers. I might just take the class over the summer or something, if I have to. The longer I take, the less I'd have to pay work back if I leave. Not that big of a deal. Just very frustrating that they couldn't give me the answers I wanted.

I also finished my Bass project. Got all the electronics done, and have it strung and everything. I need to do some setup tweaking, like raising the action a bit, lowering the pick ups a bit, real minor things. I've been playing with it a bit though. The low B string is LOW. and with the drop trigger, it sounds pretty awesome. Definitely pushing the edge of audible tone. I have to retrain my hands though. I have some neat 3 octave things I can do now that my hands just can't find comfortable. I just have to start practicing with it more. Hopefully I can find a group to play it with. Nolto, get a live band together. We need to jam more.

Attached to that, it's still been crazy video game month. I hate that everything gets released to try and get in on the Christmas rush. As a result I have about 10 new games I've bought, and not finished. I have a lot of work to do, but I'll enjoy every bit of it. The one I want Nolto to rock with is Lips. It's a karaoke game, bu tyou can import songs from IPods, or network shares or whatever. I think it'll be a fun way fo rhim to learn his lyrics before a show. I have to start a binder of lyrics though for my basement, as it's not very good at finding them. Yet anyway. It doesn't help that some of the songs I'm doing are a bit obscure. (First song imported: Rain, from Cowboy Bebop)

I've been pretty busy at work too. Our biggest customer does this tech blackout thing all December, where they don't change anything for the month, so we've been rushing to try and get things done before that. Makes for hectic times.

On the sleep front (Don't know how many of you come here for that anymore) things are still good. I've moved my sleep setup inside to the server room, as it's colder here now. My morning nap has also slide a hair later, to closer to 9:15. Not a big deal. Due to time though, I'm running more of a 2 naps throughout the day, 23 minutes each, and about 4 hours at night. I have my afternoon nap around 3 or 3:30. I sometimes take an evening nap, if I'm getting worn out. It's still working well. I'd like to tighten it back up to 3 regular naps, and 3 hours, but I just seemed to miss my evening nap too much.

And that is all I can post. I have to head out to get lunch, and head to class right away here. I'll post some pictures of my bass later.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Entertaining Videos

I'm too lazy to embed these, and you know it's good to give credit where it should go. So I'm just going to paste a link.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/e062d7b4d5/take-on-me-literal-video-version-from-dustfilms

It's music videos, with the words replaced with what is actually happening in the music video. The first one has been around for a bit so you may have seen it. And maybe I'm just behind the curve... But I just saw the other two. I'm excited for the series to continue. Hopefully you enjoy them.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

School

I am trying so hard to make it work.

Once I finish the class I'm currently taking, I am 2 comp sci classes away from finishing my 3 year Comp Sci degree. I am already registered for one next term (A class on Video Game Design, sweet). So I'm going through my work schedule plans to see how many extra hours a week I'm spending at work. Currently, if I work 6:30-5 everyday, except Tuesday Thursday, when I'd leave at 3 (for nap, and travel time to class) I'll log about 46 hours a week. Which means I have 6 hours to work with. If I make a better effort to always get to work by 6, that bumps me up over 8 hours to squeeze one more class in. Then I can get my degree in the spring. Which would be awesome.

The hard part is finding a good time of day to fit a class. Monday Wednesday Friday classes suck, because I have to allot for travel time 3 times instead of 2, which is an extra hour a week.

Wait. Looking into it, I see that I may be able to change one of my EP classes to a CMPT equilvalent. Which means I may not need another class... That would be awesome.

So I have now booked advising next week. We'll see what the prof says I need to do to finish my degree. Maybe I can already apply to graduate.

I'm excited.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Interesting

First off, a new post! Celebrate!

I've noticed, as I monitor my traffic, that I seem to get more hits when I don't update, than when I do. I guess it's more exciting to not hear my thoughts? Maybe just as it's longer since my last post, people check more often, hoping for a new post. Maybe I'm just making it all up. Who is to say!

Ok, so today, I want to share a meme. I was quite surprised at how mine turned out. It works like this. First, you go here. It's a random wikipedia page. The first article title, mentioned in the page you end up, is your band name. (I got "Passenger Train"). Make a note of it. Then, head to here. It's a random quote page. The last 4 words of the last quote listed becomes your album name. Here I got "cannot be reasoned out". Finally head to here. It's just some interesting flicker images, somewhat random. The third image is your album cover. Now for the fun part. Take all that information, and make your album cover.

Mine all strangely worked out. I didn't load any random page twice or anything. This was the result.


I didn't alter the photo pretty much at all. I felt that to connect Passenger Train to the image, it pretty much needed the full image. I suggest all you folks with blogs do the same, have a bit of fun, and see what you come up with. I may do another one...

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Well this would be fun

Ok, so I know I'm a huge geek. I'm fine with that. When I was reading Wil Wheaton's blog today (Wesley, from Star Trek... I said I was a geek) he was mentioning this event in Illinois. For those who want a quick summary, It's essentially a large game of D&D where you use yourself instead of mini's to act it all out. Very geeky, but for folks who enjoy D&D, it would be a lot of fun. They got a 40 000 square foot warehouse, and are building a medieval city, and dungeon for people to play in.

I think this is the sort of thing that would be very well suited for Saskatchewan. We have lots of space. Prairieland Park has like 200 000 square feet. And you can rent smaller divisions of it. So I started thinking of all the logistics of getting something like that setup and running. Things like props become a concern. Getting a variety of weapons for people to use, building the buildings, and dungeon. So I thought, what untapped labour sector can I exploit? My first thought is always Kids, and Elderly whenever I need to exploit labour. Maybe I could contact some high school art teachers, and part of their program could be making props that are appropriate for a medieval D&D theme. To get the Elderly, I thought about using a small town instead of Prairieland. If a town of say a hundred residents all got on board, it could be a tourist boom, for a weekend anyway. Take a town like Clavet, get a hotel deal in Saskatoon, and setup a shuttle to go back and forth. Convert the downtown area into a medieval street. Setup booths on the street, a bit of prop work in the hotel to make it more like an Inn, and you've got your medieval town starting point. Find a nearby field, and pop up some temporary walls to make a dungeon, and you are pretty much done. Then just get volunteers from the town, or sponsored workers to staff the medieval town, and DM the dungeon rooms. I'm sure I'm making this more basic than it really is.

Attendance is obviously the hard part. I wonder how big the community is in town to support that, and how many people from say Edmonton, Calgary, and other major centers nearby would be willing to travel for something like that.

Just something that sounded interesting, and has made me think. I have some time to kill at work here, as I'm waiting for a co-worker to show up to fire a question at him, and he's awfully late today. Let me know what you think about it.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Opps

My how time can fly.

We had a release at work last week, so I've been pretty busy testing and fixing last minute bugs before that. Then last weekend a friend was moving, and I helped her move, and well, I've just been busy.

Well the 3 night gig I mentioned last post was the worst gig I've ever played. It was so poorly organized. The first night, Thursday, the room started as a private function, and was a public lounge when we started. No one mentioned that it was public though. And all the private people went upstairs to try the wines, and snack. So we had about 5-10 people come all night, through our 2 sets. Friday wasn't any better. There was no signage or announcements, and people just didn't know we existed. Awesome. Then Saturday, my parents came. They were told by the staff that there was no band playing anywhere. They weren't allowed to bring their drinks to the lounge, and the bar they had setup the previous 2 nights down there had been removed. Great. So end result was 6 hours of playing, over 3 nights, to a total of about 30 or 40 people. It felt far too much like work.

We discussed an album though, and it's sounding like sometime over the winter, or early spring we'll be laying down some tracks. Hopefully we can get something good done before the Jazz Festival pitch season, so we can get some bookings a little further away. Should be good though, I haven't been on a full album in a couple of years now. You will continue to get updates as things progress, largely so I can take your money once it's done. =)

I started the actual assembly steps of my bass. I have the neck attached, and all the tuning pegs hooked up. I dropped the pickups in, but I haven't wired them yet. I got held up because I need a screwdriver. All the PC based tool sets in our house just don't work awesome with the instrument work. I should be able to get something from work here. Hopefully I can finish it this week. It's looking pretty hot. I'm pretty excited to see how it sounds and everything when I get it all finished up.

My gospel group met for the first time this season, and played our first Sunday morning show. It went well. We're learning a bunch of new tunes this year, which are going to be a lot of fun. I was starting to get a little sick of our old material. I know some of you are thinking, "Toad? in a Gospel group? Isn't he an Atheist?" I get that a lot. I know there isn't a god, but some people believe there is. I can still enjoy making music, and they can interpret it as they want. I just enjoy making music, and entertaining. If they see divine inspiration from it, all the power to them. As long as your incorrect beliefs aren't hurting me, go nuts. Maybe it'll help me catch some nice christian girl to corrupt. I'm not holding my breath though. The crowds we play to are often out of my age range. And my parents age range.
If Hell exists, I'm definitely going there. (And I learned today that Hell is Exothermic! http://www.bash.org/?301963. Of course the flaw in his argument is ignoring the equilibrium condition of Hell expanding at exactly the same rate of soul increase, but I digress)

I got more invites to Halloween events this weekend too. Looking like I'll spend the 31st at a Nolto show (The Halloween Breakdown, Macguires), and the 1st at a techno show (Jeepers Creepers After Party, Walkers). Makes for an interesting weekend. Should be a lot of fun though. I should start thinking about a costume... Feel free to post ideas.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Busy week

So I am now starting a very hectic couple days. I have a gig that starts tonight, and is 2 sets a night for the next 3 nights. That adds one element of busy. Then Friday night, in the middle of it all, is a work keg party. I really want to go, as it'll be a lot of fun, and free beer! But I can't go until after my gig. Hopefully I can get there around 10, which isn't too bad. Then, because I'm a huge geek, I have a raid (2 actually) I'd rather not miss Saturday morning. So I'm going to get pissed drunk Friday night, and hope I can get home, and log into Final Fantasy XI before 9am. Why do I do these things to myself. And to top it all off, I haven't been feeling very good lately. Hopefully it's just stress from my upcoming hectic couple of days. No matter what I'm shooting for beer to solve all my problems. As per usual.

On a side note, work parties are super fun. We have no bosses going this time. The plan, as far as I know, is a keg going, a fire in the back yard, a Wii with games upstairs, and a full rock band setup downstairs. While I am NOT excited to have one co worker belting out tunes (he gets a touch annoying) I am stoked anytime Rock Band is involved, as it is killer fun, and it helps that I'm decent at it.

Roomie-N picked up the wireless Rock Band 2 drum set (got the last one at our EB) and it is much better than the old one. Add on my Bass I ordered (which is in transit, so I hope to get it today or tomorrow) and we have 2 drum sets, 4 wireless guitars, 2 mics. Which means we can play Rock Band on both TVs, with full bands. We're discussing setting up a green room, or warm up room upstairs, then the real show goes on downstairs. We probably won't. But it does open up some cool options for Rock Band Parties and such.

I've started the work on my Bass project too. I've got 3 coats of oil on now. It's taking a bit longer than I had planned, just because I haven't had a chance to get to it every day like I had hoped. Things keep popping up. Hopefully I'll be done Oiling by the end of next week, and can actually put all the electronics and such on. I'm excited.

And that's the update into my life.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Regularly Scheduled Update

So I picked up a Neti Pot from Shopper's Drug Mart. It was pretty cheap. I'm trying to get in the habit of using it every morning. I'm doing pretty good so far. As for results, it's hard to tell. I feel like I have clearer sinuses, but not drastically so. I think it will have a much larger impact on me in allergy season.

Rock Band 2 came out. It's pretty much the exact same game as Rock Band, with new songs, and some slightly improved interfaces. Since we played Rock Band a fair bit before, the slight improvements were greatly appreciated. I do want to get some of the new instruments. The Mad Katz Fender Bass especially. My one biggest complaint so far is the note boards look stretched. Maybe it wouldn't look as bad on a smaller display, but when something is slightly stretch, then magnified to 110", you notice. Our band (R-man on Drums, N-dog on guitar, me singing, and playing bass) is now playing all songs on hard, and easier songs all on expert. I need to learn the melodies to the tunes though, as I'm currently having problems. I did get props from the roomies for singing Alanis Morissette on Hard, getting 100%, AND singing the album version instead of the radio edit they have. I was swearing up a storm. Finally the exposure to three older sisters worth of chick music pays off, in Rock Band singing skills. hmm.

I picked up tickets for the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert this fall. I'm pretty excited. Should be a rocking show. I bought 8 tickets, and I think currently on 3 or 4 are taken, so if anyone has interest in joining me for the show, let me know.

I think I'm finished with my test finish for the bass I'm building. I ended up just applying Tung Oil to it, and it really darkened the wood. I think I'll finish the sanding on the body this week, and hopefully get the first coat or two on the bass this weekend. I'll try to take photos throughout the process to share them.

What other news is worth talking about? Hmmm. Nothing is coming to mind. Until next update!

(I think I'll start adding these things, so you all can be exposed to my crap)
Watching: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Venture Brothers, Six Feet Under.
Listening: TSO, Rock Band 2 Song List (gotta practice), Shiina Ringo (on recommendation from readers)

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Widgets?

So Blogger seems to have added a bunch of new widget plugin attachment things I can add to my blog. I guess they are trying to compete with the social networking aspect of successful web apps like Facebook. I might try a couple in the next stretch here. Let me know if there is anything you guys find annoying that I should remove, or something you'd like me to add.

I also removed a couple of the dead links I had in my link section. But now it's looking a little bare. If you have a polyphasic sleep blog, send me a link, and I'll check it out, and maybe add it. If you have any other blog or anything you think I should check out, do feel free to send it as well. I'll offer to buy a beer for anyone who sends me something new I like.

Also, I'm looking for a way to send beer via mail. Anyone know the shipping restrictions on that? If I want to ship like a 6 pack of cans, can I just toss them in a box? We need to find a way for me to make good on my offer to international folks. Maybe I'll just skype a delivery order for a beer joint nearby?

Friday, September 5, 2008

I'm back!

I am back home after my long holiday, which was awesome. Let's go over some of the exciting points.

The first weekend of my holiday started with a Friday night wedding rehearsal, Saturday morning final, Saturday afternoon wedding performance, and Saturday night drunken festivities. It was a pretty fun, but very busy, way to start holidays. There was a lot of liquor consumed. A couple people came over to continue the party after the hotel kicked us out. It was a good night. The next day, I slept, packed, and rode to Edmonton with the Edmonton House folk. I had lunch with the newlyweds, and they were kind enough to drive me to the airport to catch my flight to Vancouver.

Vancouver was great. I spent a fair bit of time at Six Acres, in Gastown, as I have a buddy who is a manager there. It's a very cool little pub too, so I had no complaints. I went to a Radiohead concert, which was super awesome, and Beck a week later, which was also super awesome. I visited the Aquarium, met up with a couple friends for drinks various nights throughout the trip, and met some very cool new people. I do really like Vancouver. I could see myself moving out there after I get my degree, if I can find work.

I spent a weekend in Victoria, visiting some friends there. Victoria is also very nice. We had some beautiful weather, so I spent some time on the beach, and walking. There was one rainy day, during which we stayed in, played Monopoly (where I had hotels on Park Place, and Boardwalk, risking all my cash to set them up, then got 2 very unlucky rolls in a row... forcing me to sell everything) then went to the movies. It was also a friend of my friend's birthday weekend. As a result, we spent a fair bit of time dancing at the bar.

The weekend after Victoria was PAX. The attendance this year was apparently 58500 people. It was pretty crowded. They had estimated I think 45000, so they didn't quite have enough space for everyone. As a result, there was some panels I missed, as the theater was full, and they wouldn't let anyone in. Also Saturday, the busiest day, the exhibition room floor was packed. It was rather difficult just to navigate to where you wanted to be. It was not helped by Darth Roadblock, a very big guy in a great Darth Vader costume that had an amazing talent to cause HUGE traffic jams. I got to check out some sweet games though. Rock Band 2, Guitar Hero World Tour, Fallout 3, Starcraft 3, Resistance 2, Gears 2, and my new favourite, Ninja Town! I am mad excited for most of those, which sucks, as I'm somewhat poor from my trip, and now I have to buy a lot of video games in the next couple months. Sigh. It's a tough life.

I started school again, first class was yesterday. I'm only taking 1 class this term, which, when finished, will leave me with 2 more classes for my 3 year degree. It's a little sad to think after about 8 years of school, I'll be walking away with nothing but one 3 year degree. At least I'm finishing something though. My class is a computer security course, and it sounds pretty interesting. The prof is quite a character. I'm looking forward to some good discussions. The class is smaller than I expected, only like 30 people? It reminds me of my Physics times, which makes sense, as that was the other degree I took to around this point. The course workload seems pretty decent too, not too much, but interesting stuff. We'll see what I think of it later on in the course. The prof also said he'd likely google me, so he may end up reading this post. I better not say anything too incriminating then. Although the first hit for my name isn't this blog, but instead the video Ryan did, but I think it's pretty easy to end up here. Hopefully he doesn't hack into my blog and make me sound like an idiot. At least, more of an idiot than I actually am. Is that possible?

Final Note! I am restarting the 100 pushup plan. My holiday really screwed me up on that (As well as sleeping). I'll be getting everything back on track this weekend.

Oh other note: I'm debating picking up a Neti Pot, and trying that out. PureDoxyk swears they are amazing. Allergy season usually hurts my sinuses a lot, and I'm curious if something like that would help. Plus it works me closer to my true life goal, to be as much like PD as I can. Next up, Sex Change, and moving to the States.

Monday, August 11, 2008

week

Hey.

This is a quick note to tell you to go away.

I won't be making another post for likely a full week. Likely not until after Radiohead. (Maybe if I'm bored at the airport, I'll make an iPhone post) I am just a touch busy.

So Friday is my last day of work before my holiday. Friday night, I have a wedding rehearsal, Saturday morning I have a final, Saturday afternoon is the wedding I'm playing at, and Saturday night is the wedding dance. Sunday morning, riding to Edmonton in a friends car... Oh, and a big project at work I'm supposed to have finished by Friday. Sweet.

So I have to study / learn an entire course in 4 days, while learning 4 songs for the wedding, and getting all my ducks in a row before my holiday. Awesome.

So yeah, I won't be wasting much time with any blog posts. I'll catch you on the flipside.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Seatbelts

You should wear them. They protect you in the case of a major car accident.

They are also a kick ass band from Japan. Yoko Kanno is the Keyboard player, and main composer, but it's essentially a super group of Japanese musicians. I very highly recommend them to everyone. You can find some of their live shows on YouTube. I recommend starting with Tank! It's Jazzy, but they play the crowd and songs like Rock songs. Freaking awesome. I may or may not have spent the last 45 minutes here at work watching a whole bunch of videos. Blue is also a freaking amazing song.

I always find it interesting when I listen to Japanese music (or other locations as well) that they have so much English in their songs. Morning Musume is another example. They use English regularly. I understand that quite a few people there speak English, but in comparison, our second language is OFFICIALLY french, but I never hear any English Canadian songs that use French as well. American music is similar. I think I'll make it my goal to start writing music that uses more languages in it. Nolto(apologies now for the MySpace link, I died a little inside doing it. I don't think he has anything better for a site...), get on that. (The better site, and the Non-English verse). I want your next song to have at least a full verse in not-English. We took that intro to Japanese course for a reason! Also, you need to do more concerts with a live back up band. I know a extremely attractive, single, awesome, humble, friendly, kick-ass bass player. I'm sure he'd play in a heartbeat with you, any time. Maybe after his vacation you should jam with him?

7 More days until my vacation! Couldn't get here fast enough.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Dreams

After reading a friends blog, she was talking about crazy dreams. I've shared some of my crazy dreams before, and this is no exception to that.
Recent weird dream I had, a Hockey Game. Nothing really that excited. I guess I was feeling very Canadian? We won. Actually, my team dominated. It was kind of a joke of a hockey game. I found it very odd that that was the entire dream though. Nothing building up to a hockey game. Nothing after the game. Just like a highlight reel of me playing hockey. What the heck is that supposed to mean? It didn't really instill any feeling in me either. It was like watching a hockey game on TV, except that I was in it, and I didn't really care which team won. Maybe it's a sign that I need to watch more sports?

I do agree with Ruby's statements though. I'd reply, but I have no livejournal account. I know she reads this occasionally though, so she'll likely see this. One of the side effects of napping a lot, is more situations to dream in. Some I remember, some I don't, but they always have a huge impact on how I feel for the rest of the day, or at least until next nap period. I don't remember the dream at all, but I know I liked it, and that puts me in a good mood. Now I can get all philosophic, and say does the dream exist, and what not, but that's not my style.

At least not when I'm sober.

8 Days until holidays.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Pushups Day 2

I did my second scheduled day of Pushups yesterday.
It was 12, 12, 10, 10, Max (13).
It's still very exhausting. Fortunately, my arms don't hurt as much today as they did after day 1's pushups. Maybe I've improved my form? I had 90 seconds between sets, so I tried to do some stretching as I was waiting, which may have helped a bit. If I can get my regular Yoga going, then things will likely be even less painful.

Reasonably uneventful weekend. Starting to get a bit nervous on how I'll manage my nap schedule over my 2.5 week trip to visit friends. Hopefully things will be laid back enough I can just lay down wherever I am for 20 minutes. We'll see.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

pushups day 1

so I did my first day of pishups today. My initial test was about 25 pushups. Today I did sets of 10, 10, 8, 6, 15. I was reasonably happy with that. The downside is I am not in shape, and my body is sore. From just a reasonably small amount of pushups. I guess that is why I'm doing them.

So my iPhone was having problems with time lately. Today, now, it has the right time, but it was totally an hour off yesterday. Weird other than that I am super happy with it so far. I'm actually making this blog post on it. The first time I types on up though it crashed safari (the web browser on it). This time seems to be a little smoother.

Well I want to go now though. I reading watchmen, the graphic novel, and I'm intendingto hit the fringe yet his afternoon. Hopefully the weather stays enjoyable for it.

Thursday, July 31, 2008

sick

Well, shortly after I made that post, I ended up quite sick. Thus my great plan to start doing pushups and Yoga did not start. I'm just now getting back to 100%. Not entirely sure what it was, but it sure kicked my ass.

So now that I'm finally feeling better, I did my benchmark pushup set yesterday. I got 23 pushups. Today, my arms feel rubbery. I intend to start the actual workout schedule this weekend. Maybe tomorrow.

I slept brutal last night. I think it's because I was working on a paper for school, which is extremely boring. My arms also were tired, and I had missed my evening nap due to a gig (which was a lot of fun, and went quite well). When I alarm went off I actually reset it for 30 minutes later. I still feel exhausted though. Hopefully my morning nap will correct that.

For folks to just can't get enough of me, I have recently created a twitter account. Largely so I can play with twitter from my iPhone. My account is Toad008. Feel free to start following me and make me feel popular. Adding that to my Facebook account, and Last.FM account, you can know stalk every aspect of my life! YAY!

Also as a heads up, you should watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long blog. It is entertaining. I quite enjoyed it.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

100 Pushups

Well I was checking some of my usual blogs, and one jumped out at my eye. Oh God, The Chicken! is a polyphaser who is doing a 100 push up program he found online. Now I am not in great physical shape, and I know it. I think I might try this program out too. Tonight I think I'll do my initial test to see how out of shape I am. Hopefully this will become a good habit of doing some pushups everyday. Back in university a friend claimed that if you could do one thing, every day for a month, it would become a habit. I wont be doing pushups every day for a month, this plan is 3 times weekly, but hopefully that logic will still put me on a schedule where I continue maintaining my fitness. I'll post my push up counts and results here so you can all publicly humiliate me.

I might do a bit of research and see if there is a similar plan for sit ups. Good easy exercises I don't have to buy anything to do, that will hopefully improve my physical well being.

Or an even better idea. I'll allot 30 minutes every morning (showing up a touch later to work than I do now) before my shower to exercise. I'll do this pushup plan 3 times a week, and actually get back into Yoga for the other 4 days. Yeah. That sounds like a good plan. Maybe I'll actually do it outside too on nice mornings, and do my Sun Salutations to the rising sun.

How fast can I make the neighbours think I'm crazy? Although I guess none of my neighbours will be up at that time in the morning... I think I will start tomorrow.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

iPhone

So I think I'm getting an iPhone today? I'm pretty excited. I have an appointment at 1:30 where I think they are going to get me all set up. It'll be nice to actually have a cell phone and move into the 20th century. I'm a little concerned that I'm going to get all sorts of calls I don't want now though. My privacy is going to be invaded, in a big big way.

So I expect to have a flicker account soon, to post all the random gps tagged photos I'll be taking. I'm excited to see if I can write blog entries from it without too much hassle, as that will help me maintain this blog. It'll be a big change.

I've been having weird dreams in my naps lately. I think a big part of it is the heat. I sleep in my car to get away from the office, and to get a bit of fresh air. I do leave my windows open for a breeze, and have window blocks and such to try to reduce the heat in my car, but it very often is a couple degrees over room temperature, especially in the afternoon. I still usually sleep fine, I Just wake up a touch sweaty, and have weird dreams.

Case in point: Yesterday, during my afternoon nap, I dreamt that I woke up, and walked upstairs back to work and sat down at my desk to get back to work, then I realized, in my dream, that I was dreaming, and woke up. In my car. So I had to get up, and go upstairs to work. It was the worst part of waking up, twice. My brain likes to torture me like that apparently.

I was going through my traffic numbers the other day, as I am inclined to every now and then. I have been getting a fair bit of traffic lately from a source I hadn't noticed before. http://jorel314.wordpress.com/contact/adventures-in-polyphasic-sleeping/ He's got a pretty decent collection of bloggers and other decent information. He's been doing a pretty decent job of keeping it up to date as well. I recommend it as a good starting point to gather resources if you are thinking about trying polyphasic sleep. PureDoxyk's book would be the other great resource I highly recommend. According to him, I'm the second longest sleeper he's found, second to only PureDoxyk. So I think that means I can say I'm the longest Canadian Polyphasic sleeper. That's kinda cool, in my books anyway.

Still waiting to hear from Ryan my photographer friend with the Edmonton Journal who did the video on me last year. He mentioned at my Canada Day Party that he wanted to do a follow up, but hasn't given me any details yet. Maybe it's because he has this whole wedding thing to worry about. I'll let you all know if / when the follow up goes live.

That's abou tit for today. In the future I'll be trying to seperate my posts more. There's a feed (Jorel's) which I might start contributing to, but I don't want to bother all the other polyphaser's with my useless drivel I Often post. So all sleep related posts will become their own seperate post. We'll see if I can actually get in that habit...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

WTF?

So I saw this article yesterday. The first thing that came to my mind was a song from the Jerry Springer Opera. I can't quote it here, as it involves a couple swears.
So I read the first 3 bullets, Electronic boarding pass, that's convenient. Personal info? they have all that anyway on my passport, so I can live with that. Position tracking of myself and luggage? If it reduces lost luggage, they can likely get most of that info from my boarding and such, well that's nice.
Oh Wait. Taser? Shocking me and making me immobile. Wait. I don't like that. Or do I?
No. I don't.

Here is an article where they talk about Dog Collars that shock being cruelty to animals. Now, I've tried those dog collars out (long story) and the shock it administers is not very big. For a big dog, that likely surprises it and nothing more. That was considered cruelty to animals. Now let's take the same technology, up the shocking aspect to the point where it will immobilize a person, bingo! That's not inhumane, or cruel or anything!

If this comes into law, in the states, I am not flying there anymore. Hopefully I can get some cross ocean flights out of Canadian territory. I refuse to fly while being treated lower than a dog. I am shocked this is even being considered. Have humans in the United States lost all claims to any sort of rights?

Sorry for the op-ed, political piece. I just saw that article, and was PISSED off. If anything remote close to this starts it's way into Canadian Legislation, I'll update you all, and find resources to fight it.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Survived

I'm alive!
I survived Jazz Festival. My schedule is just now starting to slow down a bit. A little anyway. I still haven't cashed any cheques from it, but they are all in my wallet. I should be able to hit the bank tomorrow. I ended up only attending two shows this year, as I just couldn't find time for more. I caught Ivana Santilli after my Broadway opening gig, and watching Kellylee Evans. I also caught Dave Brubeck. Both were pretty awesome shows. I preferred Ivana with a full band though, like last time I saw her, and not this keyboard based trio. Dave Brubeck was weird because the band was so old, but just rocking. He could barely walk, and talked extremely slowly, but then he just played like a madman. So very good.

My sleeping is pretty much back on schedule now. Only took me a day or two to get back to normal. I'm still hitting the snooze in the mornings a bit, so I'm getting closer to 3.5 or 4 hours in my core. Hopefully this weekend I'll correct that. I think I need to update my TODO list, of things to keep my extra time busy. I've not been productive with my time at all lately. One of the catches is just a lack of a good place to keep the list, that's always accessible to me. That problem will very likely go away in about a week.

I'm intending to pick up a 3g iPhone. I figure it's about time I move into the Cell world. Although the cell aspect is extra to me. More important is the calendar, and being able to check my email. It'll also be a convenient way to keep an extra copy of my nap mp3's, and a fun toy. It will likely end up being an expensive toy though. I'll write up some sort of boring review for it once I have had it for a bit. I'm reasonably excited.

Ryan Jackson, my friend photojournalist who did that piece on my a year ago, was discussing doing a follow up with me sometime soonish. I thought that was a pretty good idea, but I need to get some big things accomplished soon then to make it seem better. Hopefully the parts for the Bass I'm building arrive soon, and I can work on that. I think I'm going to re-edge the garden sometime in the next week or two as well. Those are likely some not too shabby accomplishments. We'll see.

But I should get to work, I have a bunch of things I really need to accomplish in the next month, before my very long and super awesome holiday.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Jazz festival

It's been awhile since I have had a chance to make a post. Writing for this blog is just not as high a priority as other aspects of my life. Sorry!

Big news items since my last post.
I have changed all my fall travel plans. I now work Friday August 15th, then I'm attending a wedding, which will be super fun. After the wedding weekend, I'm catching a ride to Edmonton with one of the folks heading into town for the wedding. Then I think I'll spend a day in Edmonton, maybe two. I need to be in Vancouver by Tuesday the 19th though, as I have tickets to Radiohead that night, which will be awesome. Then I hope to hit Victoria for the weekend to visit some friends up there. I have to be back in Vancouver for Thursday the 28th, as I am attending Beck that night. Then I'll catch an early morning shuttle to Seattle from Vancouver, to get to the Penny-Arcade Expo. Then it's September long, and I think I booked off the Sept 2nd too, as a recovery / cushion day. The end result. 18 days off in a row. I hear that's awesome. I am pretty excited.

It's Jazz Festival time! Which means I'm busy. Today is my day off, no gigs tonight. So I'm hoping to get a bunch of yard work done and housework to prep for the Canada Day party we're planning for this weekend. I'll have to get a hold of Visions too and check the status of my projector. We NEED it for Canada day... I think I'm going to pick up Karaoke Revolution: American Idol Version some time this week, and start getting some DLC for it. Then we'll have like 200 songs in Rock Band for people to jam on, and if we get ambitious, we can set up some singing competitions. Should be fun.

But I have to get to work, I have to find and fix this bug asap apparently. I'll try to post another update closer to the end of the week.

Heads-up: I'm playing at the Free Stage by the Bess on Tuesday night, 7pm. You should come out.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Return

So I'm back.
I gave a brief explanation of my hotel room. It was pretty nice. Good wide screen, plasma tv. Good stuff.

Conference was pretty interesting, at times. There was a couple panels on Federal Rules that were boring, as I'm Canadian and the US federal initiatives are useless to me. A panel or two turned into essentially ads for a company as well, which was a bit of a downer, but the conference organizers are aware of that, and are trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Trip back to Saskatoon sucked though. I got to Ohare around 3 hours before my flight, due to when the conference ended, and shuttle times and such. Not that big a deal. Then my flight got delayed by 30 minutes. No big deal, I had a 2 hour layover in Calgary, so I wasn't to worried about time. Just meant I had an extra 30 min to kill at the airport. Then it got delayed another 30 minutes. And another 30 minutes. All said and done, my flight was delayed 3 hours. Looks like I won't be making my transfer.

Sure enough, I get to Calgary (around midnight), and there is NO ONE around. My plane is gone, I run around trying to find someone from Air Canada or United Air to help me. I finally, after about 30 minutes of hunting catch a Air Canada rep, who lets me know I'm already booked on a flight in the morning, and gives me a phone number for some company that will help me find a hotel room in Calgary. I call the number. No hotel rooms, but try again in 15 minutes and we'll try to find something. So I start calling some hotels while I'm waiting 15 minutes. Now I need a shuttle or a cab or something too, and since it's already 1ish, I want something close, and preferably cheap. I can't find anything. The company that specializes in finding hotel rooms can't find anything. Awesome.

So 2 rolls around, I'm tired, as that's when I usually have my core. I'm still at the stupid airport. I say screw it. It'll just sleep here. Bundle all my bags up as a pillow, and find a decent bench to crash on.

I don't have an alarm clock or anything, but I figure I'll be ok. When I don't have a clock, from experience, I get up around 7 at the latest. But I wasn't comfortable. It was an airport bench, so I toss and turn a fair bit before falling asleep. No idea when, but it was late. Well, I must have been tired, as I woke up, and the airport seemed busy, and lo and behold, it was 7. My flight was scheduled to leave at 7:40. I was on the wrong side of security. I at least had my boarding pass from Air Canada the night before. But I hadn't checked any luggage. So I look at my bags, and figure, I can get away with taking it as carry on... I hope. And rush to Security. Security was actually really fast, faster than Saskatoon security going to Chicago. So I get to my gate in about 15 minutes, they aren't even boarding. Sweet. I start jamming my bags into that carry one check metal basket thing to see if I can get away with it. I barely can. I cheer quietly inside.

I didn't get to do any of the touristy things I was intending to in Chicago. The day of the White Sox game I was thinking about attending was rainy, and I didn't want to sit in the rain to watch baseball. It also didn't help that at the end of everyday at the conference there was a sponsored cocktail hour or two. That meant I wasn't ready to leave the hotel until 7-8ish, and usually reasonably intoxicated from the free drinks. SO I watched the game 5 in the playoffs at the hotel bar, and spent a fair bit of time there. Wasn't too bad. There was a couple cute bartenders I had some good chats with. Enjoyable.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Chicago

So I'm in Chicago.
I found out of Friday I was going. There is a electronics and trucking conference thing here that one of my co-workers was signed up to attend. However, that co-worker forgot to pick up his passport and was unable to leave the country. Thus I was sent in his place. I had never been to Chicago, so I thought it would be fun.
Had a long day of flying. Had a 3 hour layover in Edmonton. 4 hours in the air, and some very long lines to wait in. Saskatoon was even busy, and took almost 30 minutes to get through security. I didn't think that was possible.

The hotel I'm staying at is pretty nice. I have a corner room, which is a bit of an odd shape, but my windows overlook a golf course. It looks like a pretty nice course. Looks nice and expensive enough that it's not worth me playing it, as I will lose too many balls.

Due to a mix up though, I've already spent a lot more money than I was expecting. Everything was supposed to be left on a work credit card, and it seems like it wasn't. Now I know a little better how it was all set up in the first place, so hopefully I can get it all cleared up today.

But I should go, breakfast starts right away, and I want to hit the front desk first.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Rush

I had a freaking awesome birthday.
I went to Edmonton to visit some friends, and go to a Rush concert. It was sooo gooood!

Rush should be considered a super group. It has like some of the best players on their instruments. The concert was just overwhelming. I had an extra ticket too, and was able to sell it with NO effort at all on the street just before the concert started. I had just kind of assumed I'd be eating the price of the one ticket. Worked out awesome. Our seats were great too, 16th row. But there was an aisle in from of us, so we had a ton of space, and no one directly in front blocking our view. Couldn't have asked for much better. Big downside now, is I have to learn a bunch of new songs on Bass, which are pretty difficult songs. Should be fun though. Maybe I'll try to wait until I get my new kit and put it together.

Also did some shopping at Ikea. Picked up some new glasses, which are nice. I also bought a new Sofa Bed, as I needed a new bed, and with my sleeping schedule I don't use a bed too often. I'm pretty excited to get it all setup. I had to clean my room out though, which was long overdue. I ended up getting rid of an overflowing garbage bag of clothes. Downside is now I'm a little low on clothes, but I needed to get rid of a lot of them. Next paycheque I'll end up picking up a couple pairs of pants, and some new shirts. I could use a decent pair of shorts or two as well, now that allergy season is dying down, I can start going outside again.

Started some of the planning for our intended Canada Day(ish) party we'll likely end up throwing. If you know where I live, your invited. Not entirely sure what day(s) we'll be partying, but no one in our house has any plans. Might discuss picking up a keg with the roomies, and set it up Friday or Saturday, and hopefully finishing it off before Tuesday night. Shouldn't be too hard. One roomie is out of town until Sunday, as he has a cousin's wedding or something lame like that. Might delay the festivities a little.

Latest obsession: American Gladiators. A lot of the shows we usually follow have very recently ended their season. American Gladiators is taking over. It's very enjoyable. So far all the new gladiators are pretty cool. Phoenix is a babe, Jet and Rocket have bulked up a bit from last season. Crush still rules. I like most of the new games too, although the new game Vertigo is a little lame. No direct competition with the Gladiator? Plus Phoenix just worked the two contestants in the only time I've seen it so far. I'm pretty excited to see the rest of the new gladiators, and how the rest of the season shakes down.

Also very excited to get my projector back from it's fan repairs. That should make American Gladiators even more awesome!

And I'm trying to embed more links in my posts. Let me know if that's something you like. Takes a little more effort, but then people can actually look up more info when they want to, a little easier anyway.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

New Day

Yay!
Pollens are down to Moderate today, almost 1/2 as high count wise as yesterday. Which means I can see again. And I can trim my pill intake to closer to the recommended dosages. YAY!

Saw this today: http://dearjanesample.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/fun-with-brands/
It's someone how made a image of all the brands she used / was exposed to in a day. I thought it was very interesting, but also reveals maybe a little more about the person than you wanted to know. I disagree with some things, like showing a logo more than once in a time period. I'm not interested in how much starbucks you consume for instance, it's just interesting to see when you are exposed to it. Also putting weed in as a brand isn't true, as it's not a brand. I'm thinking about doing something similar. Maybe I will for tomorrow. I'll try to make a record, but after I finish, we'll see if I post it. It is a Friday, and I don't want it to be too incriminating. Hopefully I remember to start it in the morning.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Dying

I am.
I hate allergy season. I am typing this with my rrs pinched shut except for brief moments. I hope spellcheck can fix most of the words. My eyes are killing me. I definitely shouldn't' drive. and as a result, I haven't made it to work. I's only 9am, and I have already hitten the recommended max dosage in a day.
Now I'm torn between do I walk to the drug store to get some anti-hesitamines with a different active ingredient? or do I just wealk to minor emergency and try to get a presciption one that is much stronmger? he catch being, of course, walking means outside, which is where the bad stuff is, which means I will likely have an evenworse reaction.
I think I'll just ice my eyes while I'm trying to decid.

Any suggestions on what to do all day without using my eyes? I can only listen to music for so long beore I want to do something else, but being blind sucks.

Friday, May 16, 2008

FRIDAY!!!

Yay! it's the Friday before the long weekend!
So we had a big code lock yesterday, which made for a somewhat busy week. I've been a little ahead, so it hasn't been too bad. But as a result, and to welcome the 2 new employees, and to usher in summer, we're having a BBQ at work today. We also got Rock Band approved as a "Team Building Exercise." I'm pretty excited. I suspect that this afternoon will be spent playing Rock Band, and somewhat writing off the day. Due to the Xbox returns we had to do, and the fact all the bonus songs are on N's tag, we don't have access to all the songs we have off line, here at work. It is a reasonable amount though. I checked last night. While playing my band. I need more practice singing and playing guitar at the same time. I'm a little rusty.

My sleep schedule has been a little off lately. I haven't been sleeping well, because it's nice out now, and places get hot. Also, it's allergy season. So I have to open windows to cool of the far too hot places, which lets all the pollens in, which makes me cry. Hopefully the main pollen season is ending soon. Some very nice weather this weekend. Hopefully I can get some yard work done. I'd like to hit the water too, and get a bit of kayaking in. A friend is in town from Edmonton too, and an old co-worker is having a BBQ Saturday for a wedding anniversary party. It also should be very fun. I suspect the meat I take will be awe inspiring. There will be lots of beer consumed and likely even more Rock Band played. Shaping up like a great long weekend.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Movie Theater

I went to Iron Man this weekend. It was an awesome movie. But the entire movie experience was ruined by the Theater. I don't intend to go back. Ever. Through the entire movie, the bottom half of the screen was out of focus, and shaking. Text on the bottom of the screen was painful to read. There were times when it was making me nauseous. Oh top of that, I paid $10 each (with 3 other friends, that's $40) to get in, and can't get food because it's too expensive. So, for that amount of money, I can BUY the Blu-ray, watch it in my basement, where I know the projector is focused, and not shaking, Make whatever I want to eat, and drink whatever I want, while relaxing on extremely comfortable Bean Bag chairs.
To me, it's a no-brainer. The only improvement is I can see a movie in the Theater usually before it comes out on Blu-Ray. That said, the quality of Iron Man on the weekend I'd say was about as good as my projector looks upscaling a DVD. So I can download a DVD rip usually a couple weeks after it comes out in the theater. Save tons of money, enjoy it more, What's the selling feature?

My Corsica finally sold! So I'm getting a cheque that I wasn't budgeting for. Means more spending money at the end of the month when I'm going to Edmonton for Rush. I'm also intending to buy a new electric Bass guitar, but that was in the budget. Now I might get a couple more options I was somewhat sitting on the fence with. We'll see. I'm intending to get a kit, so I can assemble it myself, and customize it a little. Should be fun.

Other, and final, thing I want to discuss. I just recently finished a great book. It's called "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. It's a book somewhat inspired by 1984 (the book not the year... I had to make that clarification with a roomie). It's about a terrorist attack and a teenager who gets wrongly accused and mistreated because he is assumed to be a terrorist. This leads him to essentially start up a rebellion. It's quite entertaining, I've been trying to promote it as much as I can. It's released on the Creative Commons license, so you can get a copy online, for free. (http://craphound.com/littlebrother/) One of my favourite features is the technology used in the book. It's all real technology. The website gives some explanations, and how-to's to use, or make, a lot of it. Highly recommended.

But back to work, Setting up a lot of tests today.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Day 360

So I checked the math to see what day I was on for my sleep schedule, and I was a little surprised to see it's been 360 days. I'm getting very close to a full year. I have lasted a lot longer than I suspected I would, and I think longer than most people thought I would too. I see no reason to quit this sleep schedule. Until work decides I have to, or a girl appears with good reasoning to stop, I don't see myself stopping any time soon. I still like it.

My projector has a fan dying, so it's been out of commission for the last couple of days. I need to take it in to get the warranty work done to check it out. Makes me sad though. I've already conceded that it's going to cost me about $500 a year to keep it running, due to replacing the bulb... Just one of the sacrifices I'm willing to make for a sweet home theater setup. Hopefully this fan issue isn't something that occurs regularly.

Not much else new with me. Getting pretty excited for my trip to Edmonton at the end of the month. Rush will be fun. I got a "new" computer at work today. It's really Krystian's old one, but it's a significant improvement for me. Now I'm just working on getting everything on it working as well as my old piece of crap. It's pretty amazing how much crap I had built up on the old one. Lots of folders that aren't moving machines. I look forward to having sound, and a machine over twice as good as my old one.

That's about all I can think of on short notice for this update. Hopefully something really exciting will happen in the next couple days I can post about. I somewhat doubt it though.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

GTA4

Sorry to bore you with more of these posts. I'm just in love with that game. I wanted to relate a conversation we had at home last night. Both myself, and one of my roomies are playing through it at the same time. If you aren't as into Video Games you may want to move on now. We were discussing missions to see how far the other was.

We quickly determined that we both had fully finished Vlad's missions, as he's the first main mission guy. So I started talking about the cool part of one of his missions where you are jumping between buildings chasing him across the rooftop. Nathan looked at me like I was on crack. He never did that. At all. So I was dumbfounded. How do you finish Vlad's missions without doing that? That's part of one of Vlad's missions.

SO we went through the whole mission. So you chase a guy in your car, yeah, we both did that, then he gets to a construction site and takes off on foot. Yup, both did that. He runs up the site using some ladders to get to the top. Yeah, we both did that. Then he climbed up a crane. Nope. Not for Nathan. Apparently Nathan is a sharpshooter. Once Nathan got to the roof, he took him out with his pistol. I however, can't hit the wide side of a barn with my shooting, and my spraying the area with my sub machine gun did not take him out. Thus after following him up the crane, we jumped roof to roof, until he slipped, and I got to stomp on his hands to make him fall to his death (AWESOME!!!).

I was very surprised that this game allowed for that flexibility. We both had the same mission, at the same location, but very different means of getting to the end result. Both worked. Mine also had a choice to save him, and let him go free, but I'm an ass, so that never was really an option. Nathan never got that option. Makes me wonder about a lot more of my hits. How many of them am I just killing before I get to the point where they surrender? What sort of impact will that have on the future parts of the game?

The whole Nathan being a better shot than me wasn't news though. That's how it pans out in all video games. Nathan is the slow guy, takes him forever to get anywhere, extremely extremely cautious, takes a day to set up his shot, then snipes them. I slap on some armour, grab some sort of automatic, and charge all over town guns a blazing. Makes us a pretty good team, as I attract attention and gunfire, as he cleans things up. It'll make some interesting online team game dynamics. I'm excited to see where some other friends fit in the mix.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Done Finals!

I am done finals! I wrote my last (and only) final yesterday. It went OK. Not amazing, but I'm pretty certain I will pass. So I'm glad to be done school, for a little while anyway. Yesterday I also got my correspondence package in the mail for the course I'm taking over the summer, via Independent Studies. They sure don't let me have a break. So I'm taking one! No school related stuff for the rest of the week.

Unless there is some sort of school related mission, or side quest, in GTA4. Then I will be doing it. That game is pretty great. The lighting, and the changes during the day, from sunrise to sunset, the weather, the tons of things to do. And I'm not even very far into the game. I just unlocked weapon stores. I can finally buy my own gun. I have also already played like 20 games of darts, 5 games of pool, only gone bowling once, because I suck at it. And I'm in love with the radio stations. It's a little humourous watching me play (I'm sure) as I steal a car then drive maybe 1/2 a block away, just to get far enough from the guy I stole the vehicle from to make sure he's not trying to get it back. Then I usually park for 2 or 3 minutes, picking a radio station, and making some phone calls. Once I have my relaxing Jazz music pumping out the stereo, it's off to cause some chaos. I'm pretty excited to try some of the multiplayer modes.

Planning is well underway for my birthday trip to Edmonton, to see Rush. I'm getting pretty excited, and I am glad I finally have some people who are willing to come. Hopefully I can find enough space for everyone to crash. I might throw a tent in and pitch it in a friends backyard. I'll run that by the people who's house I'll crash at.

Finally, to wrap up this post, I feel I have to link to this comic. I found it quite enjoyable.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Fire and Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice." - Robert Frost

I had a crappy morning. It's just after 7am, and I already hate today.
I'll elaborate, with a long back story that I doubt many of you care about. Too bad, it's my blog, I'll ramble about whatever I want. You don't like it? Here's a video of a fat guy, a geek, and a midget dancing. It seems to be like the Mac arena, but not english.

OK so the weather this weekend was stupid. I ran some errands Saturday morning. swept the snow off my car, it wasn't too bad. The Garden Center was empty, which was nice. I picked up a nice window box for my herbs, and some more mint seeds. So I transplanted my current herbs (hopefully they transplanted well) and added a couple others. My living room window is now reasonably crowded with plants. It's nice. I can't wait until some of the herbs are usable.

After that batch of errands, I didn't leave the house again until this morning for work. I walked out to my car at the usual time, and found a good thick coating of ice covering my car. Awesome. So I start my car and start scraping. After 5 minutes, having made no progress, I give up, and figure I'll let the defrost do most the work. I come back 15 minutes later. I am now later than I like to be, but since I start so early, I'm still reasonably sure I'll beat everyone else to work. After 15 minutes, I still have a coating of ice on my car, but there is a crack at the bottom, where the defrost hits, so I can spend 5 more minutes scraping an area clear enough to see out. Awesome. I hop in the car. I can't really see behind me, or to either side, but I can see where I'm going. I just won't change lanes. Was maybe dangerous, but I know there is no traffic Monday mornings at 6 am. I should be OK.

I was. There was next to no traffic. I moved a little slower than I usually do, but I was also unsure of how the roads would be. If my car had ice on it, I'm sure the roads would have some spots too. So I get under the Warman Road bridge and there's a big 5 ton truck with it's hazards on ahead of me. It's still moving. It looks to have a lot of exhaust coming out. But it's cold, so exhaust is more visible, and he had his hazards on, so I just assumed he was way overloaded, and straining to move it's load. Not to worried. So I pass the truck. Now my visibility drops to 0 through it's exhaust cloud. All I can see is my windshield turning black from the oil that was mixed in the exhaust. Cool.

So I get out of the exhaust cloud. I try my wipers to remove some of the oil now coating my ice coated car. They don't do anything, as oil repels water, and they have some ice still on them. Sweet. I pull over, and grab the shammy I always keep in my car, and spend a min or two wiping the oil off my little ice cleared spot. Get to work with even further reduced visibility. Spent another 5 minutes at work wiping as much oil as possible from my windshield. I'm hoping that the rest of my car had enough ice on it still to protect it from the oil. Hopefully the ice melts off, and takes the oil with it. Well see come this afternoon.

End result is I got to work a good 30 minutes later than I like to be there (was still the first one there, by about 30 minutes or so), and I likely will have to wash my car today. I hate Mondays. Definitely was a very bad start to the week. At least I'm taking two days off next week. Unfortunately it's for my final...

Arg.

So on to lighter things. Those who know me, should (maybe?) know that I'm a pretty big tower defense fan. So when my Roomie was playing around the new PSN store on his PS3, and found a demo for a tower defense like game, with local co-op, I was pretty excited. We bought the full version after about 10 minutes with the demo. That was just before supper. We didn't stop playing until midnight. We didn't know it was midnight. The game is pretty fun. Here's some screenshots. It's reasonably cartoon-ish, and pretty basic and straight forward. Makes it easy to get into though. I think I'll have to make my own tower defense game soon though. I'll add it to the list of projects I want to make.

Well Work time. I'll keep you updated on the progress (or lack thereof) of my TD game.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Last Week

So the pending post about why the break in blogging. I was doing really well, and bam, week off.

Well, The first bit was just me being lazy. It is quite challenging to find something to write about every day. Sometimes it takes a couple days for something to come up worth writing about. That held me up for the first couple days.

I was hit pretty hard with the flu on Wednesday. Missed work Wednesday through Friday (inclusive). I'm a little confused though. My boss seems to insist I went to work Wednesday morning, then went home sick around nap time. I don't think I did. If I did, I was sicker than I thought, because I totally don't remember it. Come Friday I was feeling better, not 100%, but I could have maybe gone into work. However, I had 2 gigs booked on Saturday, and a wedding party that evening. I decided to stay home and get closer to 100% than to push it, and potentially be sick at the gigs. I think I made the right choice.

The gig's went well. The first, a wedding ceremony, was smooth, and I have heard nothing but good things. The second, an Art Auction, was a little more frustrating. I wanted to get out of there as early as possible, which I was told would be 8-8:30ish. I didn't get out of there until after 10. They were a bit behind schedule. That meant I missed a lot of the wedding party, but still had a good time.

Spent all of Sunday trying to get my sleep schedule back on track. It wasn't very successful, but by Monday, things seemed to be normal. We had beautiful weather that weekend, and I had intended to get some yard work stuff done, and just ended up not having time for it. So I was going to postpone it to this weekend, but our forecast says snow. And lots of it. I'll likely end up just lounging around the house. I do want to repot my plants inside. They are doing great, but I need to move them to a bigger container. I'm thinking about picking up a nice window box, about 10" wide, and 3 feet long, I figure. I'll probably pick up some new seeds while I'm at it, and start some more things in my current pots. Try to get a mint plant going again (stupid dud seeds) and get some things sprouting to transplant outside in my garden.

Maybe I'll get ambitious and take some pictures of my growing garden. I'll add it to the list after projector pictures, which are also a wee bit overdue. Someday.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Weird dreams are creepy

April 16th morning nap.
Weirdest nap ever.

I was at my parents house, except my grandparents lived there. No idea if it was their house now, or they lived there with my parents or what, that wasn't the important thing, it was just odd.
Then I went to the new basement, as there was one below the current basement. It was just like a unfinished concrete basement, but still had linoleum on the floor.
I curled up and had a nap, conveniently there was a sleeping bag there. (If you nap in your nap, does that count as two naps?)
When I woke up, there was a box beside me, and I knocked the box getting out of my sleeping bag, and a ton of mice ran out.
Then I noticed the small field of bamboo starting to grow in the basement. I kicked a couple and the cut cleanly with my foot, but then I noticed a little pile of dirt, so I proceeded to kick it.
It was an anthill, full of the hugest, fastest ants I've ever seen. Bigger than the mice. They were pissed off, and started coming after me, so I panicked and ran. They chased me upstairs, but gave up once I was around the front door.
So I was going to tell my parents about it, who conveniently enough had just pulled up and were loading some car I had never seen before onto a trailer.
Then as I was about to tell them, I woke up.

Weird dream.

Then, to make it even more ominous, there was a huge Raven sitting on the hanger right behind my car, caw-ing at me. Which of course, has bad symbolism.

It was a great nap... I physically feel very refreshed. Mentally taxing though, as I'm a little shaken up.
I am just having a warm glass of tea to calm my nerves. No alcohol to help unfortunately.



A Post about the previous week, how busy I was, and being ill to follow. Feel free to analyze my mental state from this dream. Post about it in the comments, We'll see how crazy I really am.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

I hate April Fool's Day

It is the dumbest day ever. Seriously. What good is doing a prank when everyone is expecting a prank? Why do we have a day specifically to do that? So essentially we make it so no one can get any reliable news for 1 day, just so people can be tense and especially attentive for a day? And why April 1st? I might have to start an elaborate day of Hoaxes in 6 months. I'll call it October Fool's Day. Give me 5 years, and I'll make it as big a holiday as Meatfest!

Played some Rock Band yesterday. Tried out the new GladOS song from Portal. It was most enjoyable. I was only on Hard, playing bass and singing, like I usually do in our band. I feel I did OK, like 90%+ on both. We actually set it up as the middle of a pretty fun 5 song custom set. It was most enjoyable. Then after that, the roomies headed to bed, and I tried to work on my solo guitar career again. 2 songs away from finishing it on Expert. So frustrating. I failed out at about 0% on Green Grass and High Tides. That song just goes on far too long.

Looking like no Road Trip for me to Edmonton this weekend. I'm thinking of rescheduling it to mid month. Hopefully that works for others. I suppose I should remember that I will have finals eventually too. Stupid late finals.

PureDoxyk is getting close to finishing her book on Polyphasic sleeping. I'm pretty excited to get a copy. That's currently a weak area of the field, and I think it will be a well written resource for all people interested in Polyphasic sleep, even those of us whom have been doing it for awhile. I'll update you all again when it's released. Let me know now if you are interested in a copy and live near me, maybe we can make a combined order and save some on shipping.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Busy Weekend

So I had a very busy weekend. Friday night I missed my evening nap, since I was out for drinks after work, and at a Kaiser Tournament with Point 2. My team ended up in second place over the weekend, and I won a $30 or $40 gift certificate to Galaxy Cinemas.Which is great, because I like free stuff, but I haven't been to the galaxy in a couple months. My basement is just too awesome, cheaper, better food, more comfortable. I'll have to find someone to take on a date to the theater to use it up (applications will be accepted).

Saturday was Meatfest, making me miss my evening nap again! But I ate a lot of meat. It was a lot of fun. A little upset Jason couldn't make it, as I was looking forward to meeting his girlfriend, whom is now bearing his child. Lots of good company there. We had a whole pig roast, and a lot of the meatfest staples (Rib O Pork, wings, bacon, burgers, sausage, lots of good stuff). Got home no too late, hit the sack around 2 as per usual, and slept in until 6:30.

Sunday, I didn't nap at all. 6:30am till 11pm. Boy was I worn out. But I got my cow, and we now have an extremely full deep freeze. Cooked up some steaks last night too. They were delicious. I think I will definitely be doing this every year from now on. So I went to bed Early, since I hadn't napped, and was exhausted. Got almost 6 hours of sleep, with just a couple times of getting up through out the night. It was weird. I'm a little concerned about how it will effect my naps today, but I'm feeling really tired right now, and I am due for a nap, so I think I'll be able to bounce back to my schedule pretty quick.

I think it's just like a normal person. Anyone who did all the stuff I did would be worn out. Was a fun weekend though.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Roomies Sleep / Cow

So I found it interested how dead my roomies were yesterday. They stayed up "late" and it killed them. They were up until 12:30 ish or so, which was surprising to me. But I enjoyed that it killed them. I was up at 5am that day, with only 2 naps, I missed my evening one, and I stayed up until 1:30ish, and was fine. They, with their normal Monophasic sleep we up like 7:30 or 8 ish (not sure exactly when, I'm long gone) and dead by just after midnight. I really hit home how much more functional I can be on much less sleep, which I think is a good thing.

This post is taking forever to make, silly work, making me do stuff.

My Cow is ready. I'll be picking it up this weekend, or more likely, make my mother pick it up. I'm pretty excited to have a ton of meat. However, I am broke. Probally not for too long, as roomies pay me back and we sell some of the excess meat.

If anyone has any advice on how to get a coworker to talk less / sing badly less, I would greatly appreciate it.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Weekend

Wow, two posts in a month. You guys sure are spoiled.

Had a fun weekend. A friend from Edmonton was in town. We tried out the multiplayer in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, on DS. It was a ton of fun, but we made the cardinal flaw when playing RPG's. We played for a couple hours, doubled our level, unlock a bunch of cool looking new armour, and didn't save. Then we hit a communications error, and lost all our progress. Turned us a little off the game. We'll likely play again, and get those same levels when we head to Edmonton next, and can cut another friend in.

Other than that, reasonably uneventful weekend. I started watching Big Bang Theory, due to a recommendation at work. I thought it was very funny, but very geeky humour. I can't imagine there is a large crowd who finds a father scorning his son for not knowing where to use a derivative versus and integral funny. But I do.

Also started watching The Riches. I quite enjoy it, I'm on episode 7 already. I like the premise of essentially faking their way into a decent chance at life, then working their butts off to keep it. It also helps that the two main female characters are quite attractive. I'm quite curious to see how the show progresses.

No news from my cow yet. I was a little dissappointed that I haven't heard from them yet. It'll make it more difficul tto get it, as this weekend coming up is Meatfest, which ties a lot of it up, and the weekend after is a planned trip to Edmonton. Hopefully I can sort something out.

But back to work. Short day due to school, so I should probally accomplish something now...

Thursday, March 20, 2008

I do post, occaisionally

So I decided to write another post here. I might just take some advice, and post boring normal day to day stuff. The Grateful Dead song pack for Rock Band IS fun! It also exposed Roomie R as a musical Fraud, as he apparently didn't know any Grateful Dead. Like come on! Truckin'? Not ringing any bells? He is a disgrace to the house.

Tyler IS THE BEST! No idea why yet. But according to my comments, that is the case. Maybe he should get a prize for being the only person who still checks this blog occaisionally? At least the only one who hounds me about not updating it. Although I'm sure Ash would, if I saw her more. So Ash IS ALSO THE BEST!

Let's see. Other cool things in my life lately.

-I haven't mentioned it in the blog yet, I bought a new car. It's a '08 Matrix. I quite like it. New cars are nice.

-I got a raise last performance review. Raises are nice. I'm not allowed to talk about it though, due to confidentiality in those matters.

-I'm on day like lots of my sleep schedule. 315ish I think? Last couple days I've been sleeping a fair bit extra. Tuesday I napped from my normal 8:30ish until about midnight, which was unexpected. I did miss my afternoon nap due to a meeting at work, and had a couple beers after work, which I think combined to make me sleep. When I got up midnightish though, I stayed up until 3:30 or 4ish, so it was reasonably close to just moving my core earlier. Lastnight I sleep similar though, which is bad, I'll have to crack down this weekend and adjust back to schedule.

-Work is busy, as per usual. My "department" is severly understaffed. I don't enjoy it immensely. At least it's keeping me busy.

-We started planning our annual trip to Seattle for PAX. Anyone who is interested in coming down this year should get more info at www.pennyarcadeexpo.com and contact me. I've got space in the hotel for 2 people Thursday night, through Sunday Night. Looks like Pax pass is about $45, and airfare is shaping up to be about $250. Lots of Fun!

-I've started doing Yoga. I find it pretty relaxing, and good for my body. My back is bad, and it's somewhat humourous how flexible I am, as long as my back isn't involved, but as soon as my back needs to bend or spin, I can't do shit. Hopefully that improves with time.

-School is going well. I was very concerned when I saw I got a 64% on my midterm, but then I learned the class average was like 42% or something, and I felt better. I was still in the top 25% of the class. That confidence was boosted when I got the lab exam back, and saw a nice 100% on it. I haven't found any histograms or anything on it, so no idea how well the class did. Typical of my performance in a lot of comp sci stuff though. The programming / practical parts I do very well on, and the stupid memorization of definitions or whatever, not so hot.

-BOONDOCK SAINTS 2 IS GOING TO EXIST!!!!! I loved the first one, so I'm reasonably excited about a sequel. Not sure how it will work out, hopefully they don't screw it all up.

-I'm going to have to cut my work hours back in the fall. If I keep my schedule as it is, I will bank an estimated 200 extra hours... That's a lot of overtime (5 weeks vacation?). Maybe I can do a 6am to 3pm work day. That would be nice. For stick with 6am to 5pm, and take every friday off? I'll have to talk to my boss about it. That said, with the lowered hours, I'll have to find some projects to work on this summer. Maybe I can get around to starting a game to put in a portfolio. Between me an dother friends who are also interested, we've fleshed out some decent game designs I'd like to make, maybe I'll actually start one this summer. Or right away...

-I bought a cow. I'm pretty excited to have a lot of meat just in time for the BBQ season to start. Might have to have a end of term BBQ early April. We'll see if I get the meat by then...

That's a reasonable update... I should get back to work... And I am getting close to nap time.
Feel free to comment / email me. Hopefully (like I always say) I'll start checking / updating this blog more often.

Monday, February 4, 2008

Ok, Ok

Fine, I'm write an update.

I never update this blog anymore, as my life is just too boring. Wake up, eat go to work, sleep, continue working, eat, sometimes go to school, sleep, continue working, go home, eat, sleep, play video games or watch tv / movies, sleep, repeat.

Sure sounds like I sleep a lot when it's phrased like that.

My schedule is not really any sort of static schedule anymore. I just go to sleep when I'm tired. I wake up at 5 everyday, usually go to bed between 12:30 and 2. I always have 2 naps a day (usually my 9am, and 2:30 pm ones) and sometimes 3 or 4 naps. I'd say my average sleep per day is at about 4.5 hours.

I've pretty much sworn off drinking. It makes me sleep too much. I have a single beer, maybe two, every now and then. I still binge drink on the occaisionaly weekend, but only maybe once a month, and I usually end up sleeping most of the next day away. Still Caffeine free though. I have maybe 1 can of coke or something every 2 weeks? If that. And boy that can of coke can hit hard now. Not sure if it's the sugar, or the caffeine (I think caffiene, because Slurpees don't keep me awake) but I end up bouncing off the walls.

Other life news. I bought a car yesterday. I'm now the owner of a 2008 Toyota Matrix. It's currently just getting it's final inspection before the lot will let it go. I should have it to start cruising around by mid week. It's pretty exciting. My first brand new car. I's coming to me with 12 km on it... As long as those bastards at the dealership haven't been cruising around on it much. It also has a ton of space, and tinted rear windows, which will make it a pretty nice sleep area for me. Hopefully will save me some money on gas too. I'm going to have to plan a road trip to Edmonton to visit friends there, and get some highway km's on it to try it out.

What other big things happened.. hmm... We lost out media server at home, due to a faulty power supply. We lost I estimate 600-700 gigs of data. Which sucks. Also means I haven't been watching TV at all. So I am far behind on the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report. Might have to invest in cable after all. Or at least get a new raid controller, and build a new array... It's going to suck to rip all my cd's again. Sigh.

That's about all that comes to mind for now. Plus, I need to get to work. I have a huge project that was somewhat dropped on my lap, and needs to be done by a couple months ago. The contract guy who was supposed to be working on it spent 3 months on it, and has nothing to show for it. We brought him in to reduce my workload a little, and all it did was delay it, and then increase my workload. Sheesh. When's performance review time again? Might be due for another raise.