Category: my ramblings

  • why does the cool stuff always die out…

    … and why do I end up buying it? Picked up a Siemens Pocket Reader the other day for cheap. Neat little thing, works pretty well. What am I going to do with it? I have no idea, but I’m sure it’ll come in handy as long as I keep it with me.

    Been updating the photos section lately. Go check it out.

    I hate it when I spell things wrong.

    Still lots Of WYD pilgrims in town. They don’t blend too well I’m afraid: those matching bags and site passes are kinda a giveaway.

    Lack of writings here lately is due to some stupid PHP exploit, and the fact that my admin has disabled it until he installs the new version, which I guess hasn’t happened yet.

  • no talking

    There should be no talking in the men’s room. Period. Unless it’s to say “You have toilet paper stuck to your shoe.” I can’t stand people who conduct impromptu business meetings in there. Some of us are trying to concentrate, you know.

  • light-rail coyote

    The new Sleater-Kinney is good. I must say one thing though: it is loud. There aren’t any pansy-ass tracks on this album; not that I didn’t enjoy You’re no Rock and Roll Fun from All Hands on the Bad One. That’s my favourite song from that album. But One Beat is heavy: either grinding guitars, or slow songs bordering on morose. It’s good that way. I’m going to be giving HMV my $25 just so I can give the band $1. Sigh. Damn recording industry. That’ll be the first CD I’ve bought from a store in a long time (probably since Bran Van 3000’s Discosis). Man, if they ever come even close to Toronto, I’m so there. They’ll be in New York on Saturday, actually, but I’ve already got plans.

    This week was kinda depressing, but yesterday and today I pulled myself up by the bootstraps (with some help). There was Saturday, with “Dear Bank: why did you debit my account for a negative payroll?”, “The Spence Diamonds Experience™”, “Toronto Drivers are Jerks who Park Badly at Ikea”, and as a result of this “Me acting badly to the person I love the most”. With that out of the way, Sunday was my birthday. I only found out a few years ago that July 14 is Bastille Day in France: the anniversary of the start of the French Revolution in 1789. Now my birthday always feels like an entire nation is partying for me. In typical birthday style, I did nothing all day, which felt great. Sandy and I went for dinner with the folks, at Kaliedoscope in Guelph. Never been there before: it’s without a doubt the nicest restaurant in Guelph, and we had a nice time. The food was really good. Having read Kitchen Confidental though, I imagined that every time our server went back into the kitchen there were people screaming and throwing knives around. Sandy almost couldn’t come because she usually has her lifesaving class on Sunday, but she skipped it to be with me. We made it up last night: she was in the pool and I sat outside the pool, on a bench, alternately watching and studying Calculus. Ah, calculus. When I am done with you we are going out to the middle of nowhere and having a nice, smoky bonfire with all your papers. No one has yet made me see what use you are.

  • one beat

    New Sleater-Kinney CD is out on August 20. That, along with Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube on August 26, is what I will be blowing my money on that month…

    In other news, today’s my birthday. In other other news, people in Toronto are really rude. And they park badly. But their garbage is being picked up again.

  • Guide: How to spot American tourists in Toronto

    Even with the current state of garbage collection in Toronto, tourists are still here in droves. Since I work very close to the SkyDome and CN Tower, I see lots of tourists at street level. Here’s a quick guide on how to spot an American tourist in a crowd. (Not that I have anything against most Americans. This is just for fun, really.)

    • Men: often wearing t-shirts or hats related to 9/11, FDNY, or US Armed Forces. Baseball caps with the above subjects are a dead giveaway. Also, large Ray-Ban sunglasses.
    • Women: big hair, especially big frizzy hair. Skin-tight or spandex pants. Cigarettes.
  • frontier psychiatry

    So I’m back, in the country and on my website. While I was gone, Stan moved, and where Stan goes, the server goes, and where the server was going, a new DSL hookup had to be done, and anyone who’s been there know how bad that can go. So we’re back. And PHP got upgraded, but for some reason the smart people at PHP changed the default way of accessing variables from web form POST data. So I fixed that last night. And now I’m back, as I said.

    It’s nice to be back, thanks. Sometimes the best thing about your trip is coming home and seeing everything you’ve been missing. Like the people you love, the English language, high-speed internet access at home, and slightly more sane drivers. But I wish I could find Schweppes Bitter Lemon (they say it’s bottled in Canada – but NO STORE CARRIES IT), old world charm, and dense tree-lined streets.

    So, it’s back to commuting, and now looking for a job, since this little stint is done at the end of August. Anyone looking to hire a gung-ho UNIX sysadmin who hand-codes tools in Perl, PHP, MySQL, and bash?

  • PHP 4.2…

    nothing like upgrades breaking my scripts! Bad, bad php.

  • Let’s see if this works…

    Last two entries messed up. Let’s try again.

    I’m coming home early, on Sunday. Don’t bug me about Newtontalk outages, but they’re being looked into. That is all.

  • I’m here

    in Yugoslavia. It is hot. I am taking a lot of photos. I miss Sandy a lot.
    But I am having a good time. Not going to spend too much time writing here, rather I think I’ll write a whole page and post all the photos when I get back.

    PS: it’s 4:50pm here.