I've changed the mail link for those of you who are interested in emailing me. (Damn, I've created a lot of pages in the past year...) Let's not kid ourselves, this is for you Mom... When you click on the 'abuse me' link you'll see "adminDELETETHIS819@Sevenapril.com" in the To: field of your email. You need to delete the "DELETETHIS819" before you send the mail or the mail will bounce. That's the idea; the spiders will grab an address that's invalid.
I've started to see a little more spam to my account and there are more spiders everyday, it would seem so I needed to do something before it got out of hand. Just another example of some bastard ruining an otherwise fine piece of technology.
I can't believe that it's the last weekend of September. It's been almost 30c all weekend and no signs of it letting up. Naturally the Shnewt's picked this weekend to move as they feel that I don't get enough exercise. Nothing like working up a good sweat for a good cause.
The new place is great but it will require some work. The former owners have questionable taste and no home improvement skills. Still the potential is there and I'm looking forward to the housewarming. Now there will be room to move.
I realiaed why mswan.com wasn't up; I had failed to see the email from CIRA ane the domain hadn't been activated yet. It's up now but there's nothing to see. I was happy to note that Domain People have dropped their cheesy banner.
Almost midnight and time for bed. I have Lotus to look forward this week, so that should be interesting. Or not...
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of this site. One year on and the site looks better and I've learned a lot in the process. I wonder what it'll look like on this date, 2004. Hopefully I'll have my streaming pr0n feed going by then...
Inexplicably, I registered mswan.com last night. I have nothing to say here, so I have no idea of what I'll do with the new domain. Those of you who clicked on the link might have been disappointed as the DNS entry hasn't propagated yet.
I just figured I might want to own my name. At one point several years ago I had markswan.com but it was one of those 'free' deals and I didn't realize at the time that I didn't actually own the domain, so I lost it. Now some doofus in St Louis, MO has it. I kinda like the CA domain anyway and they're cheaper to buy.
I also decided to buy shnewt.ca where I intend to pontificate on the unspoken pleasures of going commando at work.
I read that Paul was going commando at work today. "That's nice." How odd that after work I read about it on his blog when he's been sitting in the cube next to me all day. Shifting around, enoying the sensation of the rough denim and occasional breeze from his ratty old jeans. *ACK*
With that mental image planted firmly on your head, I'll say good day.
Quite the productive day today. I did some shopping and cleaned up some stuff on the patio. Hot out when you were in the sun so I took some time to relax and enjoy summer's last blast.
I'm happy to say that until this evening, I stayed off the computer for most of the day. Of course come tonight I was starting to shake, so I put the Pictures page up. Blah...
September 18, 2000. Day one at StockHouse and the beginning of a wild ride. After over ten years at one job, I'm now on my sixth job in three years. Of course two of them don't really count and they weren't in tech, so let's say fourth job. Still...
I've updated the tools page as I see that Microshaft has taken down their link to BootVis. I guess that would explain the huge surge in traffic I've been seeing from people coming here trying to find it. I thought that I still had a copy but I can't seem to find it anywhere. They do have some sort of fast boot utility for XP but I have no idea what it does.
In news of the ridiculous, I'm watching Survivor and enjoying it. Already I dislike the Morgan clan and their dumbass lawyer, 'leader'... After a summer of Big Brother, my brain is shot and I am unable to resist.
Andrea is making progress with her 'backlog' and Paul is grumpy. Paul and I were discussing Infowave and why it's such a great place to work. It boils down to going to a place you like, doing stuff you like with people you like and eventually wandering home when you're done. Come when you're ready, do what you like doing all day, peppered with some breaks and eventually leave. I mean, I don't even stop for lunch but the day goes along and I don't feel ruined at the end. What a refreshing change...
I was watching news of Dick Grasso's resignation this evening and kind of feeling bad for him. He's the (former) Chair of the NYSE and was forced to resign over his pay package. I always felt he was a good guy and after 36 years at the exchange and he's out the door. When you consider what's going on in the world economically, it's a good thing but it's not as if he raped a bunch of people for their retirement savings.
A second story caught my attention too. A textile company, Malden Mills, burned to the ground a few years ago. The company keeps 1200 people on the payroll for over two years while they rebuild the factory, resulting in them going into bankruptcy. Now the creditors, lead by GE Capital, want to fire 900 people and send the jobs to China. The poor CEO, one of the few who placed his workers first, is now faced with losing control of his company and seeing 75% of his people lose their jobs to save the company. They need $120 million in a year to save the jobs which is almost exactly how much Mr. Grasso made last year...
Actually, he could pay the bill and have $20 million left over to slum around with. After working for one year... Think about that as you schlep off to work tomorrow.
So Paul has been complaining that my font is too small... I don't know exactly what he has his resolution set at but at that setting, everything is small.
In any event, I figured he might not be the only viewer who is half blind so I added font-resizing to the page. Conveniently, '+ Font' increases the font size while '- Font' decreases the font size. F5 returns the font to it's normal, 10 point setting. Ain't I smurt? Actually, no. I downloaded a script and it took all of ten minutes to implement. *sigh*
Am I the only person who is pissed that it's pitch black at 8 PM? The summer went by so fast which means I had fun, which I did, but it's all over now. It's cool and starting to rain and I'm pretty sure I saw Christmas shit for sale on the weekend. This sucks.
Of course things can always be worse...
Andrea has finally returned from her sabbatical to once again grace us with her potty mouth. I've been complaining about her prolonged absence when we'd chat but it didn't seem to have any effect. Then today, she asks me if I can see her site because she isn't able to. New layout is looking good too.
Work was good. Our new QA co-op started today and they annouced that they're looking for a senior QA guy to replace Spanky. That was taken as good news as they could have choosen to sit on that for a while.
Hmmm... I just looked at Andrea's site and it seems to be MIA again. "Dammit, what the hell is going on?" Whatever, I'll keep an eye on it. I could see it while at Infowave but she couldn't see it while she was at work. Ah, new IP address! She's moved it again. I'm sure it'll be up soon. Brace yourself.
Another weekend has come and gone. I scanned some pictures today and might finally get the picture page going. Don't hold your breath for that though.
I chatted with Ayako today and she's sick. She's not sure what it is but it sounds like the flu from what she described. It's too bad as she needs to work but really isn't able to at this point.
In other news from Asia, I talked to MiHwa and the typhoon missed her area of Korea so that was good news. I was a bit worried when I saw the damage on TV but all is well. She's visiting her family for Thanksgiving and I wasn't sure of where they were but it turns out that they were out of the main path.
Rachel organized the usual suspects for DimSum this afternoon. Nice to see everyone and we enjoyed some good food. Nice location in the Marine Building thought the service was a little spotty. For some reason they just stopped bringing us food. And then they started bringing it again. How odd.
My elbows are dry.
An embarassing and lame attempt at a new banner. I posted it only to encourage me to keep working on it. Hopefully I can come up with something a little more inspired for the next one.
Angelo stopped in at work today for a quick visit and of course a few games of foos. Good to see him again as we don't see him much anymore. Too bad he never updates his blog... (Yes, I know you just updated your page.) I will give him points for publicly admitting that he uses Frontpage. As you may know, Frontpage is the the web design 'tool' of school girls everywhere. In truth, only the ugly ones use it...
In other news, I'm still wondering if driving to work is the best idea. It's great to have my wheels on the road again but it isn't that much faster than transit. On a good day it might shave ten minutes off the trip. Yesterday was not a good day. The rain was coming down hard and traffic sucked. It didn't help that I decided to go in later. It seems all the slackers from West Van are all on Georgia at 9 AM. It remains to be seen but I think I'll drive for the rainy season if nothing else. By then transit will be a distant memory.
You may have noticed that the Desktop cam is active now. I'm capturing my desktop at work these days at least until Nagy notices the traffic and comes over to smack me. Now that I'm on Gary's mailing list, you have a good chance of seeing me look at pr0n while I work.
Lacking anymore meaningful to say, I figured that I'd have a look at this weeks Friday 5 and see if it was worth doing. It wasn't. I figure that blogging about it's unworthiness would suffice. Aren't you glad that you came?
Lots of news coming out of work thses days. The saddest being that Spanky has given his notice and is leaving the mighty Infowave ship. Shocking news to be sure but I think that he's making the move for all the right reasons. It's not going to be the same without him there but we'll be ok. He hired me twice and I'll always be grateful for that.
We were called to an impromptu all-hands meeting this afternoon which sent the rumours flying. It always makes you nervous in that place when the CFO want s to see everyone right away. Ah, it's good to be back...
It turned out to be an annoucemnet that will be released to the public in a couple of days. No biggie for us.
I've been merrily driving back and forth from work and have some observations. There are a lot of assholes on the road and was nearly involved in three accidents on the way home yesterday. I'm still trying out new routes but it's about 30 minutes each way. Lastly, I'm not entirely convinced that its' the best thing to do. With transit I just stand there, but have to wait in the rain while now I'm dry but need to be awake and paying attention. If it were just the train, I'd take it but when you put a bus into the mix the whole trip goes to shit.
For seemingly no reason at all, I decided to rework the page a little, hence version 4.5. It's more or less them same as before but a bit cleaner and more functional than version 4. Not quite enough to make version 5 but what the hell. Check out the Google search at the bottom where you can now search within the site. How cool is that? I wasn't even planning to put it up right away but it was working so well that I figured I might as well. It even works properly in Firebird. Still no banner...
Weekend Update *ominous music plays* Thanks to Marwan and Dalell for hosting a Mexican dinner party on Friday night. Good food, good friends and I even met a nice couple that have just moved here from Toronto *good move* Thanks also to Roxana who gave me a ride home after and saved me from another $20 cab ride!
And now, I rant. ICBC can kiss my ass! I insured my car on Saturday and what should have taken a half hour at most turned into a four hour insurance marathon. I had to buy a permit ($25) in order to get my car through Aircare ($24) before I could buy insurance. My car has been in storage for ten months and my hopes of it passing were not high.
In typical Honda fashion, it started right up like I'd been driving it the whole time and I was off. I drove to Coquitlam in third gear to try and blow it out and it seems to have worked. Which brings me to the rant part. A car that has been sitting for ten months came through with only slightly higher than average readings that are no where near the maximum allowable. So are the standards too lax or is Aircare a money grab? My car is thirteen years old and never comes anywhere near to failing so why do I need to go every year? Money, that's why...
So there'll by one more car on the road Monday. I figured that I might as well given that my insurance is only $20 more than a monthly transit pass and my commute time should be cut in half and I won't ever stand in the rain waiting for a bus that shows up late with another one right behind it. *shakes fist and curses*
On a sillier note, this catfight video never fails to make me laugh, no matter how many times I watch it.
So Biff is still fighting with his BBQ and apparently, losing. After last night I guess that would make the score BBQ 2 and Paul 0. That's a shame...
In news of the ridiculous, my foos game seems to be much better though after yesterday I was wondering. Spanky and Marc were playing Paul and myself. Paul and I were up
9 - 0 and ended up losing! 9 goals in a row and they get 10 in a row... That was painful to be a part of.
Speaking of painful, Tong has endured my shitty pool game twice now and he's beat me four games to one so I think it'll be a while before I add my name to the pool ladder. We really do work around there... Honestly.
I was chatting with Herm this morning and he was telling me about the hours they were pulling at ResponseTek. Herm is the Flash guy and says they've been working 12 hours a day and worked the long weekend to boot. There are parts of RT that I miss, the people mostly but I'm much happier now. Not just because the hours are reasonable because I'll do long hours at Infowave too but for reasons that aren't tangible. I can't put my finger on it but I'm just happy there. I've never enjoyed a job as much as I do at Infowave, so I'll just enjoy it while I can.
I've been thinking about a new layout these days. Of cousre I was thinking about getting the pictures up as well and didn't get much further than blogging about it. In my own defense, I was waiting for some pictures but I've had them for a while now and they haven't even been scanned.
I had a good long weekend that had me out celebrating Paul's birthday and also saying goodbye to MiHwa. Rachel invited a ton of people to surprise Paul for his birthday dinner at the Yaletown Brewing Co. on Sunday evening. Good to see everyone again and the half price pizza was kick ass. Paul was suitably embarrassed, so it was a job well done.
On a sadder note, MiHwa left for Seoul on Monday. It was hard to say goodbye to her because we'd become really good friends since we met at RT. I met a few of her friends and shared a lot of good times while she was here so. I know that we'll stay in touch so I guess it's not all bad but I know I'm going to miss her.
Work has been going well and it all feels very natural. After fourteen months away from Infowave I almost feel like I was never gone. I'm also happy to report that I thrashed Paul 10 - 9 at foos this afternoon, so that should be a lesson to him. Even the commute doesn't seem to bad. If I take the bus instead of walking to the train, it should work out about even. I still might drive but so far so good. I'm kinda thinking that I don't need the stress or expense of driving but ask me in January and I'll bet you that I'm driving.
So I was chatting with Angelo this afternoon and giving him shit for never updating his blog. He then pointed out that he had updated. I know he does that just to piss me off...
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