Category: my ramblings

guelph.unna.org/misato.chuma.org are still down though. The line card hasn’t been installed on my line yet, and actually the phone jack in the computer room isn’t even wired. Bleh. Gotta call torfree and buy a long phone extension.

How can so much stuff be packed and yet so much stuff is still around? Will moving be awful, hellish hell or will our volunteer packers come through and not die of exhaustion? Tune in on Thursday…

The Home Show sucks ass. Oh, and here is the BIG SECRET: all of the prices on the price sheets are X’d out. The actual price is listed below, next to the item’s entry in the list, but the numerals are printed backwards. So, and item might look like:

BLUE COMFY CHAIR      [product ID]      87126     $699.99

The actual, “member” price is $621.78, represented by the number 87126. Stupid. I have the feelign they are getting around some kind of pricing laws by doing this… also you need a $29 membership to buy almost anything there. And it’s still expensive. Blah. What a bust.

In other news, I bought a really nice new learning remote at Best Buy. It looks like this and was only $30, which is awesome for a six-function learning remote. I entered the TV and VCR via the numeric codes no problem, and “learned” the usual functions of the DVD remote in about 5 minutes. Sweet. And only $30! I don’t remember learning remotes being so cheap. Dad: go to Best Buy and buy this remote, IT WILL WORK WITH THE STARCHOICE RECEIVER.

Saw a little movie called Spider on Thursday, directed by David Cronenberg. Since Sandy had to watch a few of his films for her Canadian Cinema class last semester, we delved into a few of his classics a few months ago – namely The Fly and Dead Ringers. Spider was a really great film, not a gore-fest by any means, but I actually found it very suspenseful. If you don’t mind watching the first 30 minutes of a film trying desperately to figure out what the hell is going on, then you will enjoy this. I don’t know where you’ll be able to see it other than at an indie cinema, but try to find it.

As usual with Cronenberg’s films on IMDB, the comments on Spider are completely bipolar: people always seem to love or hate his films. Sometimes I wish I had an IMDBPro account just so I could write comments on films.

So I lost my security pass for work two days ago. I went to the building management office yesterday to order a new one, it costs $25. In the meantime I’ve been signing myself in at the front desk.

So I go this morning to pick up my replacement pass, $25 in hand. But wait! They’re not allowed to take cash. I don’t have anything else. And here is where being friends with the building management & security people is key: since the person knew me, she gave me my replacement gratis and said “Oh, this replacement pass stuff is silly anyways.” Cool.

The other day Oliver (the cat) killed our multi-remote. (It’s probably just a loose or broken battery connection, but I haven’t snapped the thing apart to look at it yet). This morning I discovered that he has broken the front output tray on my Personal LaserWriter NTR. DAMMIT! I use the front output because I usually put stuff on top of my printer, blocking the top output. When we move I’ll have to put my things such that the top output isn’t blocked… as you can see from the link Sun Remarketing doesn’t even have that part, which means it’s never getting fixed…

can’t wait. can’t wait. so much stuff in boxes… so much stuff that still has to be put into boxes…

Sandy has been bouncing around the idea of getting a laptop again. Previously, she used an old Toshiba Satellite Pro brick before giving it back to her dad. Now she’s thinking about something that will be nice and small for taking to Seneca every day. I instantly thought about a nice, slim Sony Vaio 505 series. One inch thick, under five pounds, yum. Or a 12″ Apple iBook, although I’m not sure how she’d take to Mac OS X. Her brother wanted to sell her some P4 laptop clone… thing… that was frankly rather big. For 99% of sane people, who are going to get a lot of use out of their laptops, the most important factors are:

• Size and weight
• Battery life
• Reliability and track record

The third point there being the most important. When I was a desktop tech at a big company you have no idea how many dying Dell CP/CPi laptops I saw. I’ve seen first-hand how damn great IBM ThinkPads are, and I’ve heard only good things about Sony. The Sony even comes with its own docking station, for chrissakes.

Hey! My cell phone came back from repairs today – and they replaced it with a new one! Sweet.

Today’s BTAF is hilarious.

• Car fixed? Check. (not until this morning though…)
• New DSL line ordered? Check.
• Cancel cable internet for end of month and sign up for full cable, and change my billing address? … no, wait, that’s done now too. Excellent.

So apparently now my photo (as captured by the NYT) is gracing the desktop of Grant’s computer and my mom’s cube wall. I thought it would be a little self-centred of me to frame an article about myself, but I think I’m at least going to seal that newspaper in a plastic bag. I wish I had asked the photographer to send me a copy of the original image (he was shooting with some Canon EOS digital). He probably wouldn’t have, but if he had it would have been nice.

The Move: we’ll be moving around April 29th or 30th. I’ll be calling soon to see exactly when is the earliest we can do it. Both Sandy and I can’t wait to move. We’re also going to be getting a whole bunch of new furniture as well! No more crappy mis-matched stuff. Our new couch is sweeeeeet.

I think I’ve found our new Internet provider as well, in the most unusual place: the Toronto FreeNet. Seems that they now offer DSL in the Toronto area, and at fairly competitive prices as well – especially that 3Meg service! w00t! I’m sold. 3 meg DSL… [Homer drool sounds] I used to have an account at the FreeNet back in 1994… when you used your modem to dial into their proprietary system, from where you could use Lynx to browse web and gopher sites (gopher! how I miss thee!). I remember using ARCHIE and VERONICA to search FTP and gopher sites for cool images – this is when I began my love for M.C. Escher as well, I found tons of his images online. Anyways, once I get the DSL question figured out, then I can call Rogers about cancelling my cable internet… and then signing up for Cable TV. Oh, joy.

Oh, and the car’s supposed to be done today, FINALLY. There was a chance it was going to be done yesterday but it wasn’t. They said yesterday that all the body work and painting was done, all that was left was to get the new lock mechanism (I guess that means they hadn’t gotten the part yet?), re-code it, and put the door back together. I was given “around noon” as an estimate for when all this would be done. It’s now 2:35pm and no phone call… must have faith… must have faith…

The freaky April ice storm on Thursday evening created an unexpected three-day weekend for Sandy and I – there was no way I could have gotten to work on Friday, and the University was closed for the first time in twenty years. Besides watching a lot of Six Feet Under this weekend (almost caught up – four more episodes to go), we went to a really cool place in Guelph called You’re Fired (article) where you choose pre-made pottery, paint it however you want, and then pick it up in a week after it’s been fired. Sandy made a pair of wine glasses, while I bit off more than I could chew (as usual) and chose a BIG water dish for the cats, one that Oliver can’t knock over, darn it. In the end, I was not quite finished (still need to do a second coat over much of it) and Sandy had finished the two glasses and even did a mug for me to take to work. Hopefully on Thursday evening I’ll go in and finish it off.

We also went and saw Phone Booth – a pretty exciting little film, actually. Seeing matinees makes me feel less ripped off by movie theatres, which is good.

I also played quite a bit of Zelda – The Wind Waker this weekend, while Sandy did some cross-stitch crafts. Apparently I can get quite abrasive and angry while playing video games… I blame this on my Atari 2600, and specifically its horrible version of Donkey Kong – the hit detection is so bad/unforgiving, I can still remember getting so angry that I would tremble with rage and yell and scream at the screen. But anyways, The Wind Waker is like playing a movie. the simple design and animations can easily surprise me, especially when I’m beating up a bad guy with my sword and Link suddenly does this amazing flashy sword combo. I’ve just got to settle down and finish all of the games that I have before buying any new ones.

sooothing music…..yes, with three o’s……. is good for forgetting about stupid contractors who trash our things and don’t plug in the refrigerator so that ALL OUR FOOD GOES BAD AND I WANT TO BE ABLE TO HIT HIM IN THE FACE WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER AND THEN GIVE IT SO SANDY SO SHE CAN DO IT BECAUSE IT DOES MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER, annoying claim adjustors, frustrating drives from guelph -&rt; toronto -&rt; guelph, did I mention insurance claim adjustors? oh yeah. I did. uhh, broken cell phone getting fixed, being cellphoneless (two years ago that wouldn’t have pissed me off, but it does now, grr [throws sharp things at Motorola]), the body shop was at 354 Richmond, not 254, and oh yeah Richmond is a one-way street, so fuck I have to drive around the block, and it’s 9:30 and I should be at work, not that my boss really cares so long as the work gets done, but fuck it I care, and this is going to take 2-3 days to fix and you can’t take it in until Monday?

slip into some comfortable relaxing house music, like a soft fleece robe after you get out of a hot shower. close eyes and just make everything go limp for a minute. think about moving to new apartment, not having to drive to get to work, man the TTC is like a cocktail party compared to the mosh pit of the 401, getting new furniture because you can afford it now, dammit, and this place is not going to be mismatched, it will be lovely and so much more room, with an actual tub that won’t be like showering inside a torpedo tube, and new floors and so much more room and being next to everything in a nice building that isn’t like a housing project, and is close or closer to everything important.

then my list of work doesn’t look so bad, I mean, heck, it’s a cakewalk once I sit down and do it. I think I’ll do that now, before sushi lunch. yes, sushi goddammit. i want sushi.

Car got broken into on Thursday, stereo stolen. Why would fuckwits want a three year old nothing special Pioneer deck? Because it was easy to drill the lock, and because I didn’t take the faceplate off. Suddenly car insurance does something for you.

TheStar.com – Soundtrack for the city: 50 songs for Toronto. Man, there’s a lot of local music history footnotes in here that I don’t get. “Rick the Temp will never, ever know.”