Category: my ramblings

I guess I’ve had no time to write. All of my previous entries scrolled off the front page!

• Our house is firmed up! Yay! We’re moving in in under two months!
• In advance of moving, we’re working on packing and getting rid of stuff we never unpacked from our last move, as well as trying to make and save as much money as we can before we move, so we can comfortably put up the closing costs as well as get a few little things for the new place.
• Crazy busy! No new commitments for me for a long time…

Maybe later I’ll be able to put my thoughts down in a more coherent form…

First the Sheppard line wasn’t running. I think. There was a complete lack of information and just a lot of people standing around. The collector didn’t even know jack. Instead of putting my fare in at Don Mills I went outside and got on the 85 Sheppard bus. The bus behind us seemed to be a shuttle bus, so I guess there was a problem on the line.

Then I got to Sheppard-Yonge and southbound trains were totally bloody slow becuase of “signal problems”. When I lived in Toronto prior to 1998 I had never been in a delay due to signal problems. Now there’s “signal problems” at least once a month. Sounds bad to me…

Man. weekends.

We had a bunch of stuff to do on Saturday. First thing was to go to see my sister’s jewelery teacher Shao to have our ring sizes taken for our wedding rings. Sylvia (my sister, currently living in Taiwan) is designing them for us and then Shao is doing the casting and carving here in Canada. Shao is really cool and has a cool studio/work/living space at the Distillery. He had some wicked cool stuff there and also on his website.

Sandy cleaned out her closet again so we had a bunch of clothes to drop off at the Goodwill at Jarvis & Adelaide, since we were already in the area. Also some old blankets and leftover bag of kitten food went to the Toronto Humane Society.

Finally, I was supposed to install a server in the machine room at torque.net but I was a bonehead and forgot my building access card! Long story short, I had to drive down again on Sunday morning to take care of that.

Sandy’s valentine’s day present was that I’d buy her an outfit for when we go and see The Hollow Crown for her birthday. This means fashion show for me! We spent a lot of time at the Eaton’s Center and had a blast.

Sunday was a stay at home day. We started packing for our move in April. Yes it seems a bit early, but it was good to go through some stuff and get rid of the crap, and find the crap that’s worth money so we can sell it. In the evening we had dinner with Mike (Sandy’s brother) and Nikki (his girlfriend).

All in all it was a good weekend, except for my forgetfulness and drivers, drivers, drivers! Toronto drivers have gotten so bad in the last five years.

• Mortgage approval? Check..
• Home Inspection? Check.
• Moved my desk at work? Check.
• Setup my new workstation at work? Check.. And Mandrake Linux 9.2 is damn slick.
• New UNNA server? Not quite, but damn I spent a lot of time on it…
• Spending time with Sandy? Lacking a bit, but valentine’s and her birthday is just around the corner…
• Lawyer for buying house? Check.
• Clean teeth? Check.
• FIxed cat? Check. (Poor little guy.)

Man it’s been a freakin’ busy week!

I feel like I should add another category: life-changing events.

We’ve bought a house! At the end of April we’ll be moving from our current apartment in Don Mills to a two-year-old townhouse in Whitby. It’s gonna be awesome. I can’t wait. Time to start packing and saving!

On Saturday night we went to Linkin Park… along with Sandy’s brother and five of his “country folk” friends. I say that in the nicest way possible, because we had quite a time corraling them all on the subway from our apartment to the ACC. And when I say “quite a time” I mean “I’m surprised we didn’t get arrested.”

The concert was amazingly good. I’d never been to the ACC before but it makes for a fairly decent concert. The sound quality was alright, certainly not as good as other smaller or open-air venues but not as bad as the horrible, horrible echo machine known as SkyDome. The band played everything and sounded great. They even pulled some random guy from the audience to play guitar for a song! I had tons of fun and Sandy really, really enjoyed it as well.

Today was just one of those days where the more you think about a problem, the more you realize how much of a bitch it is going to be to solve.

In this instance, it could easily be eliminated by just getting rid of one redundant component. But when doing that isn’t an option because of one person’s will, then despair starts to set in. Right now my despair has been sitting in my gut since this afternoon. I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel better though.

Sorry this has to be so ambiguous, but it’s work-related and I usually try to keep that stuff off of here.

I know what will make me feel better: listening to music. And drawing diagrams on my Newton on how to sort out this mess.

Seems like Nokia still has the most phones that have an actual infrared port. Given the cheapness of the hardware I don’t understand why all phones don’t have one. Anyways. I’m seriously leaning towards getting either a 7210, 7190, or 8390. The 7210 and 8390 are still current models, while the 7190 is older and kind of the granddaddy of the former two. Also the 7190 is the phone they used in The Matrix. The Sony Ericsson T310 is looking pretty darn spiffy too, but sold by Fido (although given my current situation, I’d be buying an unlocked phone anyways.)

This is IBM’s view of the future or mail clients. It kicks ass! I want it now! Of course, only IBM is stupid enough to publish their research like this instead of putting a bullet in the head of Lotus Notes and releasing this instead.

Okay. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve chosen some poor phones in my life. Like our Uniden cordless phone which I just bought another rechargable battery for – the third one it’s had in over two years. At this point I’m thinking of building one myself. Or the Motorola V101 – when Sandy and I signed up for the Rogers Family Plan some 16 months ago now, we both got one of these. I thought it would be really useful to be able to easily write SMSes on the keyboard and use ICQ Mobile – and I was right, and I used ICQ Mobile a lot. But I soon learned that the 101 is horrible, absolutely horrible as a voice phone. Also, the interface is just crap. I don’t think Motorola learned how to make a decent cell phone menu until very recently. Sandy ditched hers in favour of a Motorola C332, but found it to be very quiet, and the battery seemingly held very little charge (might be defective). You might remember that I had to unlock that phone. She just switched again and bought a Sony Ericsson T226, which she loves. I think this one is a keeper for her.

Anyways, this story is about me, and I still have the V101. I barely use the SMS anymore because I’m no longer behind the evil firewall of doom at work, so I can use ICQ and MSN from my PC. The usefulness of having a QWERTY keyboard is almost gone. It’s pretty big for a phone, and the phone volume is bad, but better with the handsfree. I’m thinking of replacing the V101 with something else, but I’m not sure what. Spending money on a new one (which I would have to buy outright) wouldn’t seem to be worth it for the amount of time I use my phone. I could switch over to Sandy’s old C332 but there’s the lingering battery issue.

Ideally I’d like to have a phone that has IrDA or serial data cable capability – so it can communicate with either my PC or my Newton. The C332 only has a USB data cable, so that wouldn’t be useful for my USB-less Newton. Bluetooth would be future-proofing but those phones are still expensive. Right now I’m jonesing for the old days of my Nokia 5160 and data cable. Can anyone suggest to me a decent GSM phone with IrDA? It doesn’t have to be available new. IrOBEX and IrCOMM would be required though. Also, price is an issue.

I wish there was a huge matrix/table somewhere comparing all phones and their features…