Category: my ramblings

So many thing have happened to me in the past week.

Tomorrow I’m moving into my sister’s apartement for six weeks to take care of hers two cats. (They have no names – they’re usually refered to as “little guy” and “big guy”). I’ve done this before, so I’m cool with it, and it’s way closer to work for me (20min streetcar ride instead of hour-plus bus-ride-along-Sheppard-and-subway). But in this case I wish I was going with her, as she’s visiting my grandparents back in Yugoslavia. I haven’t been there since I was 16, and it’s really a beautiful place (although I’m sure it’s slightly less beautiful now since the United States decided to bomb the hell out of it last year). I should post the photos I took. Anyways. It’s also a lot of moving – a month after I move back home I’m moving back to Guelph for the fall semester. Not that I mind, but my computer is a rather large beast.

I get sick of living in the suburbs real fast. It makes no real sense to me, as everything I do is in downtown Toronto: work, friends, events, down to shops, bars, and pubs. There is nothing in Scarborough (except for Johnny’s Hamburgers, and Han River Sushi. Oh – and who can forget Mr. Wong’s Super Buffet!)

Last weekend was the play-testing of the Degrassi drinking game at my house. In Scarborough. This was very strange for me. None of my friends live nearby, so I can count the number of friends that have visited my house on both my hands (and yes, I have more friends than that).

My girlfriend Meredith has just gone away for the rest of the summer. We basicially had to break up on Wednesday. I really wish there was more time for us to be together, but there isn’t: by the time she gets back, I’m going to be leaving for Guelph, and she’s leaving for Nepal at the end of October. In a nutshell, this really fucking sucks. The first relationship I’ve ever had that I felt was really meaningful and, well,, just right, and something stupid like geography or school has to fuck up the whole works.

I will not cry at work.

I’m finally getting my UNNA idea off the ground. A Unified Network of Newton Archives has been one of my dreams for a while now, and I think it’s finally going to happen this time. A dedicated server has been secured thanks to the generosity of the community, and I’ve registered the domain name (unna.org). I’ve been collecting the current potpourri of archives and they’re all sitting on my hard drive, waiting to be unleashed. I’ve got 1.8GB of compressed archives lying around. Most of these are probably duplicates, but that’s a LOT of data.

I’ve got to pick out a new set of glasses soon.

Funny how people always bitch in their diaries. There was a note about that in the afterword of Kafka’s Diaries, but I don’t have it here right now so I can’t quote it.

On the list of “things I understand, but don’t understand”: people who shuffle seats in the bus. You know what I mean – if someone next to them gets up, and if they can put more space between themselves and the person next to them, they they’ll move over.

I understand the concept of keeping your own personal space around you, but I just think that it’s rude.

Gotta go. Maybe I’ll bitch more about this later.

Yes, well, it seems that it’s time for my semi-regular list of project I’m working on so hard that I don’t have time to talk to any of my friends!

• Still working hard every day at work (maptuit.com)
• Doing work on my Newton Resources site – currently I’m working on a page that will let people report and comment on bugs in NewtonOS
• Decided what I’m going to do with NewtDump – I’m going to scrap the VB I have now and do a total rewrite in Tcl/Tk (for portability mostly, also because I hate the “modularity” that VB uses, stupid VB errors, etc.)
• Speaking of Newtons, my Newton has been a little sick recently – I spent all night last night working on it to no avail.
• I should be working on things for various college governments back at the university, but I can’t find the time at all.
• This friday I’m moving into my sister’s apartment for six weeks to take care of her cats while she’s away on vacation.

This weekend some friends and I ahem playtested the Degrassi drinking game. IMHO, it passed with flying colours. (Jordan, send me the revisions again – I don’t know where I put them.)

Busy busy busy. Also, busy.

My stupid CD-ROM drive at work now refuses to detect any audio CD I put in it, so no more ripping MP3s for me. Crap. I’ve gotta figure it out.

Had to call the university to get them to send me my marks today. Dumbasses.

Problems with my POP3 server.

Man sitting next to me on the subway reading a book on marijuana cultivation.

This morning my bus only had 10 people on it. This was extremely bizzare since usually buses on the Sheppard East bus in the morning are packed. But this morning was awesome, I relaxed on the bus, listened to my house tape and read Kafka.

For about the past month I’ve been reading Kafka’s Diaries. I’m about 2/3 of the way through it right now. I’ve read most of his other works, but this is something totally different. It’s almost like spying on someone else’s life. It’s also very interesting to read because his own thoughts, reflections, and experiences are mixed in with fragments of prose and other things. Of course, unless you’re interested in Kafka you’re not going to want to read this. But whatever. Here’s a quote:

The trees have been growing here for twenty years, how small should a person become under them. And all these nights, you know, in all the houses. Now you lie against this, now against that wall, so that the window keeps moving around you. And these mornings, you look out of the window, move the chair away from the bed and sit down to coffee. And these evenings, you prop up your arm and hold your ear in your hand. Yes, if only that weren’t all!

I am listening to Esthero – That Girl on repeat for about the past two hours.

Somehow I’m not tired. I’m actually getting good work done today, which should not be possible on my current level of sleep.

For those of you who weren’t aware, last night I went to the UTS Formal. It was fun. I must kick myself into going to formals at university next year. I actually enjoy doing that every now and then.

All morning I’ve been beating my head over this one stupid perl script. It is now so messed up that I can’t look at it anymore. My brain feels like mush. Why am I drinking water and not coffee? Why does this script return the correct results on the command line but not when I run it as a CGI? Am I going to make it to work tomorrow morning?

Questions abound.

I started taking my CDs to work and encoding them to MP3 so I don’t have to carry my CDs around anymore.

Song: Esthero – That Girl
And I’ll try to catch my own vibe
Leave behind the countryside
Who I’ll be?
What I’ll be, ’cause it’s my right to love design…

I finally remembered why I like working at a small company: no office politics.

As if I needed another reason to fly off to Japan, there’s this wacky page with just pictures of Japanese vending machines. I always knew that you could get weird stuff out of vending machines in Japan (like beer) but I had no clue that there’s one vending machine for every six people in Japan (or so this page claims).