jANUARY aRCHIVES
Friday 01.31.03
I had a busy day today. I spent most of the day spamming potential employers and was pretty happy with myself and the effort that I put forth. In fact the effort that I've been putting in has paid off in a small way as I got a call today and have an interview on Tuesday. w00t!
Today is also a sad day. cNet is no more. After almost three years of listening, I have no idea what I'll listen to come Monday morning. I've been trying Real but it sucks.
Hooked up with Neal and Ardie and had a look at their new apartment. Wow, what a view of English Bay! Absolutely spectacular. When we left a friendly woman from the tenth floor got on and rode down with us. She had very large breasts. It was distracting.
In other news, I've been playing around with a new layout and have decided to post it for comments. Now don't go and start complaining that the colors suck or that the cam doesn't work. It's beta and beta is just another word for "this sucks".
Version 3 is all mine as far as code goes and is my first attempt at using layers and stlyesheets for positioning and formatting. I'm still struggling with the graphical aspects and if I had any money, I would buy a book on Fireworks and speed things along. I don't know when it'll be done or when it'll go up but you can have a look at it by clicking on the Beta Site link in the navigation column.
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Wednesday 01.29.03
I went to the 'Nucks game with Neal and Ardie last night. We got discounted tickets as Carmen was trying to raise some money for her dragonboat team and getting a $60 ticket for $40 seemed like cheap entertainment. It was fun to go to the game and all, but not the most exciting game in the world. The first period was good but it was a snoozer after that. It was Brian's birhtday yesterday and it would have been great if he could have come along but he had to work. In the end, I think he might have be pissed to give up a shift and go to that game.
Chatting with Rachel today and she is working on a webpage of her own these days. I've added her to the navigation bar but won't be posting the link until she's done. I can handle Karan and Shnewt but she scares me on so many levels.
I also had the chance to chat with Jenny late last night and that had to have been the first time in almost a year. She's one of Aya's friends in Male and I'd forgotten how cool she was. Very nice girl.
Speaking of cool; apologies to Andrea for last night. I had rebuilt this PC and late last night I was finishing things up around 12:30 and called it a day. Missed you by five minutes!
Still looking for a job and finding a few more new postings out there but it's frustrating at times. Particularily on a dreary day like today. Rain. Grey. *crawls back under bed*
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Monday 01.27.03
Back from Edmonton and only minimal frosbite to report! It actually wasn't that bad but 48 hours of winter was more than enough for me. I had a great time and enjoyed seeing everyone again; almost everyone was there so it was a bit a of a reunion for all of us.
Security still seems to be an issue for Canadian airports. In Vancouver I put my bag through the scanner and was told to produce all my electronics, which I did. No one asked me to turn them on but they were tested for explosives and I was on my way. The problem is that I had five devices on me but only produced three of them. I just forgot about the other two but I was one my way with no trouble. Even worse in Edmonton... I put my bag through the scanner and wasn't asked to produce anything.
Naturally, it was eventful starting with our landing, braking hard (really hard) and immediately pulling off the runway only to be swarmed by emergency vehicles. It turns out they thought there was a fire in the wheel well, but it was a bad sensor.
I also was amused to see a hypodermic needle disposal box on the bathroom wall at the Edmonton airport. Not only that, it was full! I always suspected that cowboys were trouble...
A good deal of the weekend was spent toying with my uncle Glen. The whole basis for the trip was to surprise him for his 60th birthday and we had him going right up until the end which was fun. Of course we hit West Edmonton Mall, which is like every other mall on the planet, except much larger. The bonus was being able to rest in a designated smoking area. We didn't figure it out until we'd been outside in -20c a few times but once we did we took advantage of it. It was weird to smoke indoors.
Anyway, I could fill pages describing my trip but I'm not going to. Suffice to say that I had a great time. Thanks to everyone up there and particularly Lisa, Byron and the girls for putting us up for the weekend!
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Thursday 01.23.03
Wow, what an amazing day today! Totally sunny, warm and very spring like. I ran up to the old stomping grounds to have lunch with Carmen and grab the tickets for the hockey game on Tuesday. She was in fine form as usual and even picked up lunch. We usually alternate picking up the bill but have long since lost track of whose turn it is.
I also finally got my film developed from the festive season and will be posting some of the more interesting ones up soon. I really did lose track of the camera at Shnewt's New Years party; I mean I know that I was drunk but I don't recall taking half of those pictures. Some are disturbing...
I got a call from Carrie but didn't have time to meet up with her today which was a shame. We let too much time pass between our visits. I did get together with Neal though and that was nice.
I'll be offline until Sunday as I'm going to be taking some time to focus on writing some erotic novels. Actually, I'll be here.
Hopefully, I'll return with all my appendages.
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Wednesday 01.22.03
Many thanks to Karan for his help in getting my mail server set up! Now you can look forward to mail coming from the vast Sevenapril domain. I'll wait here while you rush to see if you were selected for this prestigious gift.
Karan and I have been friends since we were Infoslaves, but he doesn't fully grasp that I am indeed an idiot.
He'd mentioned about doing this before so last night I installed IIS and all the related patches. Once that was done, I carefully followed his instructions to set up SMTP. "Hmmm... it doesn't work, how strange".
I kept trying until my eyes had dried up, fallen out of my head and rolled under my desk. Still nothing so I said screw it and went to bed.
This morning Karan and I are chatting and I mention in passing that I was having trouble getting this set up. Being a true geek, he seizes upon this and we spend a long time trying to get this to work. He has me telnet into the corporate servers, trying to get the damn message to go out and it just won't go. *Check the router, check the proxy, restart the service* Nothing.
After almost an hour of doing this, I realize that my software firewall is still on! Oh no. Sheepishly, I tell him that I've found the problem and that it was between the keyboard and chair.
Anyway, it's up and going and I'm happy with that and thankful for patient friends.
In other news, I found $5 in a parking lot today and was excited to know that my living expenses were now covered for the next 19 seconds.
Gotta be thankful for the small things.
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Tuesday 01.21.03
[UPDATE] As if I'm not pissed off enough over the piss-poor officiating of the 'Nucks game tonight, or the 'Nucks deciding that they only need to play with ten minutes left in the third, now this!
cNet is pulling the plug on their radio station. Dammit! What's next, TechTV? I've been living on cNet for almost three years now. What the hell am I expected to listen to? *silently fumes* [/UPDATE]
I went out and had a coffee with Marwan today. It's been a while since we had gotten together for coffee and up until now it had always been because we had run into each other at Starbucks.
It was good to see him again and he's doing pretty well after setting up his new company. He just finished his first project and now the hard work begins as he has to find more work to do. I picked his brain a little as I have some ideas floating around but so far, I haven't followed through on them. The longer I go, the more my idea eats at me...
I'm also searching for a job with renewed vigor now that the new year is here and the 'other guys' didn't hire me. I tell you, there isn't much out there these days. Where I get hung up is what to do after you've applied everywhere that you know? I guess you just have to dig a little deeper and find someplace that you haven't heard of before. It sucks...
I also noted with some interest that Shnewt is trying to charge for access to his blog and is throwing in nekid pics of himself to 'sweeten' the deal.
I emailed him and said that I would pay 10 bucks to keep those pics off the internet. I think you should too.
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Sunday 01.19.03
Good news from Neal and Ardie this weekend (you guys are great, love ya! More on that next week.). They've finally found a new apartment and one that will accept Katrina. It's down on Beach Ave, 12th floor and facing the water. Very nice, I guess we know where I'll be for the fireworks this summer!
Karan sent this along to me yesterday. I think I'll start to accept donations so that we can buy one for Calvin! While we're on the subject, this is another use for a spare 5.25" bay if you have some cash burning a hole in your pocket.
Crazy fog yesterday; it was completely socked in until the sun went down. I guess that's the price you pay for living so close to the water, but I'll pay it anyday.
That's it for now. I'm meeting up with Shnewt for a coffee this afternoon but not before he goes to a cake tasting.
Yes, that's right; a cake tasting.
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Thursday 01.16.03
[Update] I finally heard back from OmniRim and I didn't get the job.
That's fine, but I had to email them to get an answer which is total bullshit. I was in for two interviews and they can't be bothered to let me know that they went with someone else?
I wouldn't want to work there if that's how they treat people.
Enough ranting. I actually feel better just knowing their answer. It truly wasn't my first choice but it did fit my criteria of a pay cheque and being located downtown so I most likely would have accepted their offer if it was forthcoming. Hopefully jaalaM will come through and in the mean time, the search continues. [/Update]
It would appear that I was in some sort of cosmic time warp until about 11 PM yesterday. By that I mean I was convinced that yesterday was Tuesday. Odd. Does that mean that Wednesday didn't happen?
No word yet from OmniRim. That didn't bother me much as I was thinking it was Tuesday. When I came around and realized that it was in fact Wednesday, I came to the conclusion that I probably didn't get the position.
That doesn't bother me too much; they picked the person that they thought was right for the job and that's fair but if I don't get a #@*%$& call back telling me they choose the other guy, I'll be pissed.
I'm going to assume that I can be pissed anytime now.
In happier news, I got an email from Pav yesterday. I met Pav when I was in school but we sorta lost touch after that. What was crazy was that I had been reading some old emails from her yesterday and then out of the blue, she emails me. It was just an "is this your email addy?" email so I shot her a message back. I know that she isn't online too much, but hopefully I'll hear from her soon.
I don't think that I have ever met a girl that I can talk to like I could with Pav. We'd sit together at school and just ramble like crazy for the whole class. We'd try to shut up long enough to study and it never worked; we'd be laughing about something thirty seconds after we agreed not to talk for twenty minutes! The only reason that I finished school was that she left for a month to go back to India.
The reason I was reading old emails was that since I got that new hard drive, I have been creating a master archive from all my backup CD's. Sorting through over 20GB's of files; what a joy that is... What makes it more difficult is that most of it is duplicates as I tend to do full backups every couple of months. I am starting to truly understand the meaning of the word packrat. At least once this is done, I'll have a better handle on it.
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Monday 01.13.03
I had round two at OmniRim today and once again, it went fine. I met with the QA manager this time and she seems very nice; I think I could work pretty well with her if I'm picked for the job.
Of the seven people interviewed, they called two back for a second round, so I guess I was one of the lucky ones. They talked to the other person this afternoon and I should here something within a day or two. I have to thank Shnewt and Spanky for the lies they told... thanks guys!
I also found out why they needed the transcripts and citizenship paperwork. They take their security very seriously and have all employees go through a background check, including fingerprinting. It's a web based product and therefore I would have access to all the documentation that a client produces and they can't risk questionable pasts.
Good thing I was smart enough to never get caught...
My weekend was busy and really flew past. Saturday I upgraded Neal and Ardie's computer and then had dinner with them and watched 'the game'. Shnewt was over on Sunday to scan some pictures that he had taken and then we went up to his place for a bit.
Last night I did some upgrading of my own, installing RAM and a hard drive and then re-installing Red Hat on my third box which has been sitting there doing nothing for a while. I'm not as obsessed with Linux as I have been but I'm happy to have it there so I can play when the mood strikes.
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Friday 01.10.03
[UPDATE] Corrected the link to Karan's site... Where the hell did "Marvi' come from? [/UPDATE]
[RANT] You know what pisses me off? Three men die in an industrial accident in New West. today and three more are in the hospital and CTV leads the evening news with the story that Gordon Campbell was arrested for a DUI.
While Campbell's arrest is certainly newsworthy, it's not top story material on a such a tragic day. Campbell's arrest was due to a choice that he made. Unfortunate and embarrassing for him but hardly tragic. [/RANT]
Apart from getting pissed off at the news, I had a good and eventful day. I chatted with
Andrea (who is taking a break) for a good part of the day and then met up with Neal for a coffee in the afternoon.
Too damn cold to sit at Starbucks so we went to the beach where it was also cold and finished up with with a walk around the seawall at which point I was losing feeling in my limbs. I also realize that this might be a sign that I have lived down here too long, but I ain't leavin'.
After getting home and starting the thawing process, I got a call from OmniRim asking me to come in for a second interview on Monday. They also asked me to bring my transcripts from school and proof of my citizenship. How odd.
I suspect that they might want me to help get that whole Korean nuclear crisis thing fixed up. In any event, I'll comply as I don't have much else to do that day and eventually I'm gonna have to get me one of those 'job' things.
The balance of my day was spent looking for bugs on Karan's site and submitting Shnewt's email address to herbal viagra providers.
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Thursday 01.09.03
I still have no job. I'm assuming that is no revelation to any of you. I didn't get a call from OmniRim yet though I still think that I will.
Shnewt called me and said that they called him. I used him as a reference 'cause I know he can lie like the devil.
We sync'd our stories first and then he called them back. I know he talked to them but I don't know what was said because I am still dealing with Messenger hell.
He has a fashion design class tonite, which means I still haven't talked to him but I know he's reading this. He was complaining last night that his text has a lot of big words and not many pictures so he'll be bored. (I'm gonna hear about this!)
I am rebuilding my secondary box as I type this and plan to rebuild this one too. It's been acting a bit odd and most likely needs to be re-imaged. No image for the other box, so it was right from scratch.
I guess you'll know where I'll be tonite. Of course, I would have been here anyway.
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Wednesday 01.08.03
[UPDATE 2] Third entry today and I ain't on any substance!
jaalaM finally got back to me and the reason that I hadn't heard from them is that the QA manager is still on vacation and therefore HR didn't really have much to tell me at this point. She did say that it looks like it would be next month before they had anything for me which is a bit disappointing but at least I know where I am with them. *sigh*
That's still within the timeline that we had originally talked about, so I'm not too put off by it but if I get an offer before then I think I would have to take it. jaalaM is far and away my first choice, but let's take a reality break here; I've been slackin' for almost seven months and that can't go on forever.
I guess it's a no lose situation because if I get an offer from OmniRim, I have a job and if I don't get the offer I still have jaalaM to look forward to. I just don't want this to drag out in to the spring. [/UPDATE 2]
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[UPDATE] The interview went very well today and while I don't know if I'll be back for another, it was nice to go in and talk to them. I think that I've got a good chance of being called back; no concrete reason, just a gut feeling.
They are talking to seven people and will bring back an unknown number for a second interview. I should know tomorrow if I'm to return and if I do it will be with someone that I think interviewed me at QA Labs. Seeing that I didn't get that job that may or may not be a good thing!
They have a nice company and with the whole Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing et al scandals, they were saying that companies are facing legislation that forces them to have a document tracking solution. That would suggest, on the surface anyway, that their future is pretty bright.
They're still private and plan to stay that way and it looks like it might be a good opportunity for me if I get the chance. I will need to bone up on my database skills though. [/UPDATE]
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I have the big interview today so wish me luck. Hopefully it will be of the good luck variety. I've done a lot of research on OmniRim and they do seem that they might be a good company to work for. Plus, they are downtown which is half the battle.
You may have noticed that the site was down yesterday. Maybe the Shaw gerbil farm needed the rest. I also lost my TV for a while which pissed me off as I missed the Paris-Dakar update.
I'm also happy to report that I have successfully prompted Karan into putting up a page! *Feeling very happy with myself* Not only that, it would seem that if he did hack me, it was only to copy all my pr0n. "What's with all the traffic?"
He's using Moveable Type and it's looking tres cool, so stop by and tell him.
Must go but I'll be updating after the interview.
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Monday 01.06.03
Powl Shnewtoodle you funny man. Thanks for the hits, but I will have my revenge in the days to come. I'm still considering my theme options... goats, flightless water fowl, cheese. It's just too soon to tell. I do appreciate the cleavage though...
In a stunning, though predictable turn of events, I googled the word 'cleavage' in order to check my spelling ('cause shift+F7 is too much work...) and ended up 'researching' for ten minutes. Thank you for your patience, now back to the blog.
If you don't read Andrea's blog, you really should. She is so honest and upfront when she is blogging! Always a good read and she updates like, three times a day. Maybe it's the substance.
I also finally found the site of the woman that created the image on my front page. I really like her work and have had a number of people mention that they like the picture so here the link to Vickimess just don't tell her that I stole her picture.
I hope you are enjoying the cam shot. I spent my Sunday afternoon rigging a dealy to hang the cam from my drapery track in order to get a better angle for the shot. It's a bit grainy at night and the sun is a problem during the day but it is useless technology and that makes me happy.
Before I go, I should mention that Angelo has the Zack cam up and running so now you can watch Zack urinate on the floor at your leisure.
Well, that's it for now. I'm too distracted by the whole google incident...
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Saturday 01.04.03
I finally have the cam working. No it's not live now. I'm not sure how I feel about being photographed all the time and given the size of my plush, well-lit apartment there is very little room to avoid it. Maybe I'll just aim it at my feet...
It was with bated breath that I awaited the update to Shnewt's page as he sent me an email and said the new year's eve pics would be up soon.
I finally went and had a look and they're great but they're so huge that Shnewt was running into storage issues and was only able to upload thumbnails (I notice he took some liberals shots at me with the captions. That will be avenged...). Unfortunately, some confusion regarding file management ensued which lead to a chat on how he could clean off the server in a jiffy.
I feel somewhat responsible for that as I kinda forced Dreamweaver on him, basically telling him that only schoolgirls used Frontpage (and ugly ones at that...). Now he is considering blowing his head off or buying a Mac. Seems like an odd set of options, but whatever. All I asked was that whatever he did, he should leave a note saying that I get his box.
He didn't seem to find that funny...
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Thursday 01.02.03
I think Carmen's Feng Shui crystal is already working. I got a call from a company that I applied to in November and they want me to come in for an interview on Wednesday. It was a place that Angelo told me about so I guess if I get it I'll have to take him out for a drink. Of course with a new puppy in the house, maybe he would prefer some urine-proof matting. I'll leave it up to him...
Luckily I track all the places that I apply to or I might have been screwed. I didn't recognize the name when she called but when someone calls you and asks you to come for an interview, it's generally a good idea to act excited and agree.
Luckily they are downtown and I wasn't agreeing to the bus trip from hell but I do need to figure out what it is that they actually do. I know that they're interviewing a lot of people so it might be a long shot but if nothing else, it might light a fire under jalaaM and give me some ammunition when I call them.
Today also marked the start of the Paris to Dakar Rally which I always try to follow. It's an insane race across the desert by all types of vehicles. I don't know if the guys on the bikes are the most insane of if it's the guys in the big trucks but it is always good fun to watch. Oh yeah, it lasts for 20 days. Brutal...
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New Years Day
Well, so much for trying to show some restraint last night... I had a blast and don't regret a minute of it.
Lots of great friends combined with a cozy apartment and Rachel's insane party planning skills made for a memorable evening which blissfully ended about 3AM.
I took a bunch of pictures which I hope to have up resonably soon. I really wish I had a digital cam as they would be up by now but we're just gonna wait a little. They should be interesting as I noted that people were randomly using my camera throughout the evening.
I felt ok this morning but I knew that I had been up to something last night. I did mange to meet up with Neal and Ardie and we hit the polar bear swim. This year we actually got there in time for a good viewing spot, which was nice for a change. We usually get there too late and can only hear screaming.
What sucked was the tide, which was coming in as we were waiting. No problem, we'll just build a dyke. That was working for a bit but was breeched just as the nut cases hit the water. Of course I was looking through my camera at the time and was only alerted to the breech as my shoes filled with water and sunk into the sand. On the positive side, there was a naked girl in the water and I think I may have 'captured the moment'.
So, hopefully you have noticed that v2.2 is now up! I had a 'brainstorm' last night that resulted in many changes at the last minute. Now having waited until I am hungover to upload everything, there may indeeed be some issues. You can email someone who cares (don't bother me with your problems) and I will get on fixing everything up tomorrow.
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