Posted 9:07 AM by Tim
Ghar.

The storylines blog went down whent this one did. I just haven't had time to fix it until today. Blogspot seems slow though, so it make take a while to get there.

The house network has been experiencing some slowdowns lately. I'm not sure if it's the fact that we have a network, or it it's just the normal flux of the DSL lines. Most of the time the network will hum along nicely, but now and then it just hits a crawl. We've unhooked all of the slower systems (or at least shut them off), and this hasn't helped. I'm thinking it's probably just normal segment flux.

Does anyone know how we can connect to a remote game of Quake 2? Wayne and I tried to hook up a game with a few other people yesterday. No dice.

Posted 12:17 PM by Tim
Tent City.

I'm sure that I mentioned the shantytown here in Toronto? Well, it went by the attractive (and descriptive, yet inaccurate) name of Tent City. Yesterday it was cleared by the owners of the property. Apparently they hired about 50 rent-a-cops and got a few real cops in on it and removed people from the place very quickly. They're letting them back in to get some of their stuff, but it's all be really quick. They installed a fence within hours until they can build a 3 meter high, barbed-wire topped fence.

Apparently there was a plan to bulldoze the lot flat, pave it (to cover the toxic soil), and then construct cheap, affordable housing for the homeless. This idea was later scrapped due to lengthy legal rezoning hearings. Leave it to an expensive bit of zoning legislation to shut down an otherwise perfectly suitable plan.

Of course, there are now at least 150 more homeless people pushed into the housing system for Toronto. These people had "sort-of" homes before, but now they have nothing. I'd personally like to see the company go through with the new housing development (seeing that the company that owns the land is also a major hardware store chain), but I doubt that is going to happen.

Isn't business amazing?

Posted 11:16 AM by Tim
I'm not sure what it is. I accidentally left my resume open on Workopolis, and now I'm getting calls from recruiters. Only 4 weeks after restarting my employment. I apply places and hear nothing, but if I leave my resume lying about, I get calls. Two calls. In a day. From different companies, looking for me to maybe do work for them.

This is good, because it gives me a little bit of choice. Keep working here, or stop working here and work somewhere else. It's nice to have a choice. There are a few issues though. Neither of the jobs being offered are in a good location for me. One is on the other side of Toronto (meaning a 3 hour, one-way commute again), and the other is in Ottawa (meaning I live away from home all week and visit on the weekends). Neither option is good. I don't want to have to go with a long commute, and living away is just too hard on the family life.

Of course, each of the jobs is in the Actuate field, which is not where I want to go with my career, but seems to be the direction I'm being steered. I'm going to have to take control of this, or I'm going to end up working in projects I hate. Forever.

If we're willing to put a few other things on top of that, I should say that I'm working on a little side project as an overflow person. When they get swamped, they call me to do up a quick script for them. The pay is good - but infrequent. A friend of mine (who I'll leave nameless to protect the innocent) has also offered a sort-of position if he can get a few side contracts going for himself. I'll probably take him up on it, but I just know that money negotiations will be interesting (read: difficult). Eh, we'll work it out.

Anyhow, it's nice to be wanted.

Posted 10:30 AM by Tim
Well, due mostly to the flood on Friday night (see last post), I did not get to go take my Magic Judge's test on Saturday. I had to cancel, because I cannot see me being a competent judge for 9 or 10 hours after only 3 hours of sleep. Because I cancelled, it will be increasingly difficult to get anyone to agree to test me again. The person who was going to test me was probably expecting some help with the tournament he was running, and, I just didn't show up. I did send him a late night email, but that's probably too little, too late.

Coming up this week is the pre-release tournament. Brenda's parents are moving this weekend also, so I doubt that I'll be able to make it. That's alright really, since the pre-release isn't a critical tournament, and it's expensive. I played at bit this weekend, but my showing was terrible. I went 1-2-1, which garnered me a last place finish. As I said: terrible.

On the project side of my life, the sweater is coming along great. I've started on the sleeves now. It will be interesting to see it all come together, since I've made so many ad-hoc adjustments to the original design. I figure that a few more adjustments are probably going to be needed as the project progresses. After this, I think I'm going to focus on a large (and I mean large) blanket. Something that can cover the bed upstairs. That, and possibly a much smaller project involving my smallest hooks. We'll see how that works out.

Posted 12:40 AM by Tim
Flood!

Wayne called up the stairs tonight at just about midnight. He's flooded. The basement door apparently isn't sealed very well, and the stairwell drain is clogged. This means that there is a lot of water in the basement hallway. This of course is spilling out over the floor and all over the place. Wayne's TV cable was taped to the floor, and that actually managed to work as a bit of a breakwater. About half of his floor is wet, and puddled in some area. Every available towel and blanket is being put to work trying to hold back the waters. Luckily, our landlord is looking into the problem.

We've done everything that we can. The rain is an on and off rain, so at least we're not dealing with an all-out downpour. We've got the dehumidifier going at it's dryest setting, and we've even tried using kitty-litter sandbags. We'll see what works.

Posted 9:40 AM by Tim
Highrise bugs.

When I lived in Halifax, I lived on the 14th floor. Almost no bugs managed to make it that high. The cockroach colony inhabited only floors 9 and 10, and other bugs like ants and such only went as far as the 3rd floor. We would occasionally get a high flying fly, or bee, and the very rare spider. Sure, we had fruit flies now and then, but they were imported with the fruit, and not a real visitor.

We're ground level where we live now, and there's almost no bugs. The basement has it's collection of earwigs (only 1 so far), spiders (several), and flies (a houseguest we got rid of :)). We do have a resident spider in the tree on the lawn, but he's being good at catching things that might get into the house, so we're leaving him alone. He's getting big quick, too.

My work has me on the 11th floor. There's a new bug just outside my window every day. A spider has finally noticed the flies, bees, and butterflies (how do they manage to get that high up??) that frequent my window. He's set up a huge web just to catch them. So far there's no corpses in the webbing, but I figure it shouldn't be too long before he catches something.

Posted 5:42 AM by Tim
I've got to complain a bit about this song "Sk8er Boi." If you've listened to any Clearchannel media in the last month, you've probably heard it. I've got nothing wrong with the singer (is that Avril Lavergne??), or the sound of the music - it's the lyrics that bother me. I don't have a link to the lyrics, so I'll paraphrase (that way any mishearing of the lyrics is all me :)).

First up, the singer is telling us about a boy and a girl. The boy is a skater (or sk8er, if you want to follow the title). This more or less means that he has no job prospects, no life outside skating and probably little hope for getting out of that spot. The girl and he are dating, and things are fine, but the girls friends don't like the boy. So she dumps him. This is supposed to be because "he's not good enough for her." Now she's lonely. Here's my first beef: if she's so spineless that she has to do what her friends tell her - even if she ends up sad and lonely, isn't she the one with no real life?

Anyway, being the bored and lonely girl she is, she decides to watch some TV. She sees the boy "rocking on MTV." I'm not sure if they mention the boy being in a band or not, but I don't think they do. Thus, I'm thinking that he's not really playing music, he's just doing skate tricks (he is a sk8er boi, right?). This apparently makes him famous enough to do shows, because the girls calls up her friends to tell them about the boy being on TV. Well, "they already know, and they've all got tickets to his show." Once again we see how great the girl's friends are. Not only did they know that the boy was a star, but they went and bought tickets, and didn't tell the girl about it - she had to find out about it herself!

So, all the girls go to see the show. Now presumably, this is the part where the girl will try to get back together with the guy. Sure, it's partly that he's famous now (and thus, possibly wealthy and therefore "good enough"). Of course, by now, the boy is already dating someone else (a singer we presume, as the new "she" is supposed to be the narrator). The new girl and boy are having a great time and are in a good relationship. The end.

This last bit gives me a lot of thinking time. The song gives no details on the boy. What if he's a jerk? What if he really had no prospects for the future? Wouldn't it have been a good decision to drop someone with really wasn't good enough? Maybe getting dumped made the boy realize that he needed to do something with his life (again, we're not told the circumstances about his becoming a star). There's so many unknowns that I'm not really able to side with the good guys (the singer and the boy, of course) against the bad guys (the girl and her friends).

I mean, maybe they should make songs explain themselves better.

Posted 4:21 PM by Tim
Tomorrow will probably suck. I've got to work late, and that means longer hours of more or less boredom. I think I can figure out something to do, but I'm really not sure what.

While I'm babbling, I suppose I should mention that I'm in the middle of an experiment. I get a load of spam mail (like everyone else), but I'm taking the time to open each one, and click on the "remove me" links. For the most part, this process takes me only seconds. In theory, each mail that I process this way should eliminate not only further mail from that company, but mail from companies that buys the first company's email lists. I figure that there are two ways this experiment will go. Either I actually eliminate some amount of the spam mail, or I'm going to be deluged. I'm willing to risk a deluge of mail, simply because of the spam volume I currently recieve. 40 or so messages a day (counting my filter-box) isn't uncommon for me.

I started the experiment yesterday, working on only the mail that doesn't get filtered. 99% of these mails have a remove option, and the general trend is for them to be simple (enter your email address), or automatic. Only 1 of them didn't work (bad site address). The average time for removal (according to the results) is 48 hours. Some processes are as long as 10 business days (or more), and a few claim instant removal.

I'm not certain yet, but I may be receiving less spam volume in general. With any luck, I'll have an inbox that is virtually free of spam.

Posted 1:58 PM by Tim
Traffic into Toronto sucks.

Because of a death of someone-or-other, our usual carpool driver did not drive the carpool today. Rather, I took on that mighty responsibility. I must say that it sucks. I'm glad that the regular driver provides this service. Once he's finished with carpooling, if I have a choice in the matter, I'd much perfer to use public transit. Sure it's crowded and occasionally smelly, but I never have to worry about making those 4-lanes-to-the-left-before-the-turnoff lane changes.

Fortunately, I only have to do this just this one time. If I had to do this everyday, I'd go stark raving mad, I think.

Posted 9:17 AM by Tim
I've been working on a sweater for a friend's little girl. I haven't made one before, so I'm just trying to figure out how it all goes together. Of course, I assumed a bit about the instructions, and now, it's not quite right. However, this isn't a completely bad thing. If I had made it the way I was supposed to, it would be rather short. Now, it should be long enough. Sometimes, an accident is just what you need to make something work out right.

Given the speed I've been working on it, I figure that I should be able to finish it this week. That's a really good turnaround time for a project. Blankets take me three weeks (at about an hour per go, 4 times a week ~12 hours), and small sweaters look like they'll take about 6 hours to do. That's really not that bad for a project. We're looking at selling some of our stuff for Christmas this year again. Last year's sales weren't great, but we did manage to sell a few things.

We're going to make a few crafts and try to sell them. I guess I'll have to make a few blankets (full size! gah 20+ hours!!), and probably some smaller things like scarves, hats and such. It ought to be interesting anyway.

Posted 1:33 PM by Tim
Blogger ate my templates.

Posted 9:57 AM by Tim
So, the weekend projects got started. The house network has been rerouted, and there was no disruption of service. I also started on a new crochet project. I'm making a sweater. I'm getting better at these things. The commute gives me about an hour to work on it each day, and with the speed that I've been working on this project, I have a feeling that I can finish it within the week. That's good. If I can get enough work done on something like this, I might be able to leverage my spare time by making clothes (and blankets and such).

There's still a lot of the rewiring project that needs doing. I may need to pick up another spool of cable just to get it all hooked in. We'll see though.

Posted 10:26 AM by Tim
Today, we're working on one of my weekend projects. We're re-rerouting the house network. See, originally, we were going to have the router upstairs, and run cables up and down through the house. What we didn't think about was the location of the DSL modem. In order to run everything, we'd have to hook cables over the ceiling or along the floor to get everything hooked up. Not pretty. Our next thought was to put the router and modem downstairs with Wayne's stuff, so he could troubleshoot anything as it happened. Anyhow, we put the cabling temproarily on the kitchen table (yes, it made a lovely centerpiece). Nobody liked the idea of this being permanent, so today, we're recabling. I expected all kinds of trouble with it, and of course, the system gave me no problems once I got the cable connections sorted out.

Phase 1 of the move is complete. Both VELMA (the system here), and Wayne's system (unnamed), are hooked into STEVE (the modem) and BLUE (the router). Am I the only one who names all the network components? I don't think I am. Phase 2 involves hooking up ROSA, Wayne's laptop (unnamed - and as a fileserver), and the girls computer (which has 2 names: PLAYMATE and HELGA).

Maybe I haven't gone over my network naming scheme. It's pretty simple. All of the systems get a female name. Especially names that appeal to me.

ROSA has been a fave name of mine (and has moved between systems a few times). I saw an anime where the protagonist had a talking computer system called ROSA. The acronmy stood for something I don't remember now, but I liked the name. All of my primary systems have been named ROSA since then.

VELMA, my laptop, was picked simply because when I first had it would run on 0% power for hours. The battery was not reporting correctly, but I was happier to attribute it to "ghost power." Of course, this was a ghost with a discernable cause, and who better to find that source than VELMA, the smart-one of the bunch from Scooby-doo. I don't intend to have more systems named after Scooby-doo characters, but I do like the name DAPHNE. And I did want to call the router FRED.

HELGA is a name I've always liked. Most people don't like the old-fashioned names for girls (Hilda, Olga and Helga I think are all very nice names - despite the popular imagery associated with them). The computer with that name has had it for a while, and is used most often by the girls. This lead to the second name, PLAYMATE.

I'm not sure when (or if) we're going to get another system, but I'm sure it'll get a nice name. Like DAPHNE.

Posted 10:40 AM by Tim
Ahh Friday. Another day to end another week. I've just been told that the cat got out. We're going to have to figure out how to keep the cat in the house, or we're just going to have to keep the cat out of the house. I'm not sure what we're going to do yet.

I've been feelinga little frantic lately. I'm not sure why. I just feel like I'm not getting enough of something. Maybe there's all those projects that I want to do. Maybe it's all the places I want to go. I'm not sure. I just feel like I'm not doing something I'm supposed to be doing. And, unfortunately, it's really starting to grind.

I know I've gone on before about how many plans and things I've had. I know I've got lots of them. There's some crafts I want to do, and some drawing, and cleaning and exercise. All good projects, but I'm also trying to be home enough, and learn a new programming language (not to mention eventually working on one of my programming projects and also getting my MCP). Of course, it's one of those times where I have too many plans and not enough energy (or time) to get things done. I should check the archives and see how long it's been since the last time I had one of these.

I think that what I need is organization. I just need to take the time to get things together, and work out how to get these things accomplished. I mean, I just finished off the blanket for my oldest daughter, and that was a good feeling. I should be able to get another project started and get it finished in the same way (a little work each day on the commute). Shouldn't be too hard, right? I just need more organization.

I'm thinking about whether I'm going to drop by the fencing club tonight. I didn't get the info on the equipment rental that I wanted, so I don't know if it'll be way to expensive for me to get back into it.

Posted 11:31 AM by Tim
So I decided to come into work early so that I wouldn't miss too many hours from leaving early. No luck at all. It's like I shouldn't even have bothered. While I did get up at 4AM, I didn't get moving until 5AM, at which point I hurt myself, found the mess the cat left (the cactus thing), and so forth. I got out of the city at about 6AM (my normal leave time), but had to drive myself in to work. I arrive in Toronto, have to pull off somewhere to take a pee, look around a little more, and get lost. I'm usually pretty good about dead reckoning in an urban environment, but I got turned around a few times.

After about 30 mins of random road hopping, I got onto the road I needed to be on. Of course, I headed in the wrong direction for a while. I finally realized where I had gone wrong, and turned around. I finally got to work at about 8AM, or about 30 mintues later than if I hadn't tried to leave early. What a waste.

Posted 8:29 AM by Tim
Ok. The cat knocked down the cactus plants in the house. We had them on a shelf, and he knocked over the shelf. Wayne isn't happy (I'm told), so we may have to get rid of the cat anyway. Owning a pet isn't more trouble than I thought - so far, it's been less.

Posted 8:22 PM by Tim
Well, the cat came back. We're trying to decide to keep it or not.

Posted 10:13 AM by Tim
So. Yesterday, there was a cat that wandered into the house. More or less wandered anyhow. We more or less decided to keep it. This morning, we let the cat out again. It hasn't come back yet. We're not too concerned about it, but the girls miss it. I suppose we're going to have to find a new pet now. I just don't know what. Maybe we'll buy a monkey.

Posted 9:03 AM by Tim
Ahh, Tuesday.

This month is chock full of gaming possibilities. First, there's the weekly game, and then the big games every Saturday or Sunday. If I wanted to, I could just go with a few dozen games a month. That might actually make me a better player - but I don't have the time or money. I figure that I can probably arrange 1 game night a week. More than that and the whole thing becomes very difficult. I suppose I should focus on finding a game night that gives me the best chance to improve my game skills. Because of the different formats to play, I should just pick one that needs work and make sure I hit a nighttime tournament for that.

Tomorrow is the first year anniversary of the World Trade Tower collapse. The bank that I'm at is going to have two moments of silence. I figured it would be one at each tower fall time, but that's not the case. They're going to do one at the time of the first hit, and one at the time the second tower collapsed. We're supposed to go and hang out together, maybe even share stories and stuff. I'm not sure I want to do that. Last September, at the time of the attacks, I was in my cubicle at KeyBank in Cleveland. I was annoyed that the network was running so slowly, and went to see if anyone else had the same problem. One of my co-workers was reading CNN. It had a flash about the plane hitting the first tower. I laughed. It had to be a stupid accident. I figured the air triffic controller on duty was going to be in a huge load of trouble. Of course, it got worse. My wife called at one point, she wanted me to come home. I was going to stay and work. Everything was in NY, and it wasn't affecting me directly (still doesn't). Then we got a city evacuation order, and I went home with a co-worker. It took us a long time to get out to where I lived (only a 20 minute drive really). I stayed home that day, and debated staying home the next. I figure that if I want to commemorate (that's not the word I wanna use, but I'm not sure what word means the same as "remember respectfully, without intending to bring any honour, sentiment or strong emotion") the occasion, I feel I should do it like I did then. At my desk, on the phone, trying to get to CNN online.

Of course, I'm worried about seeming like I'm anti-social, or like this event didn't affect me. Maybe that's the right thought.

I'll probably mention something about the anniversary tomorrow, but that's pretty much it.

Posted 12:24 PM by Tim
Woo. That was a long weekend. The trip to Cleveland was uneventful, and overall everything was fabulous. Stayed in the hotel with the Cleveland crew, hung out, played 11 straight hours of magic, and picked up a totally new format. I didn't get near where I wanted in the standings (#256 of 600+), but I did well enough for myself, and played some solid games.

I'm glad to be home again, though. I've missed my girls.

Posted 8:14 AM by Tim
Going to Cleveland today. Anyone out there wanna give me a few bucks for my trip? Sure, it'll be hard on the cash flow for a little bit, but that's just the way these things go. By the time I get paid for work, it'll all even out. The next paycheck should even put us ahead just a little bit. Once we can get into saving some cash, we'll be fine.

The birthday dinner was nice. Brenda enjoyed it. We don't get a lot of chance to just talk. I got her a gift (a sweater), but she hasn't opened it yet. She'll get to it later.

Posted 9:31 AM by Tim
Happy Birthday Brenda!

Today is, of course, the birthday of my wife. I wish I was home with her instead of here at work - but you have to do what you have to do.

The plans are pretty simple today. Dinner, maybe a movie (thought I don't know what). Maybe we'll come home and watch something nice on video (like Bicentennial Man, or something else we own). Basically just a nice evening together. We get so few of them.

This weekend's plans are huge with the roadtrip to Cleveland. I found my passport, and I'm all set to get on my way. A little more playtesting might be nice, but I don't have a lot of time for that. We'll see what happens.

Posted 8:53 AM by Tim
Only 1 day until my wife's birthday. I've still got to find something nice we can do together. I've thought about going to a movie, but there's nothing interesting playing (nothing that doesn't involve huge explosions, murders or other grisly tales). The only thing that might be the least bit interesting is S1M0NE.

Umm... duh. I just figured out that the name says "Sim One." Yeah. A little slow here.

Anyhow, S1M0NE would be an interesting movie, but I think it'll detract from a possible career choice. See, everything that I'm interested in as a career has a creepy movie made about a psychotic person doing the same thing. I wish I had a better knowledge of movie names - but I just don't. There was genetics, and then they made that movie about the guy doing experiments on homeless people. Then, I was in programming (still am), and they made that movie about a world-controlling software corporation. Of course, the new movie with Robin Williams in it will eliminate any chance of me working for WalMart, right?

Last up, Wayne and I are getting the plans for the road trip to Cleveland together. I'm a little concerned about where the cash is coming from, but I am looking forward to it. It's a short trip, and it'll be rushed almost the entire time, but it should be a lot of fun. If any of the Cleveland crew reads this: Be ready for some fun!

Posted 1:32 PM by Tim
Ok. I've overlooked a little bit of the interesting stuff coming up this week. This week plays host to the first day of school. A very big thing for my oldest. Brenda has her birthday this week, also. Lastly, I'm headed off to Cleveland this week for a big game. I'm gonna get to hang out with the guys in a hotel and just generally cause a nuisance - or maybe we'll just play games all day long.

There is the issue of cash floating about lately. For some reason (probably the move and rampant spending following), I don't seem to have enough money to just do whatever I fancy. I've got to "pay bills" and "be responsible." Like I want that. I am working though, so a paycheck is headed our way - just not for a few weeks yet. Of course, it should be pretty sizeable when it does arrive, which makes it nice to receive. Until then, I guess I'm just going to have to watch where my money goes.

Posted 8:22 AM by Tim
Good things happened this weekend. First, the house network is finally nearly sort-of working. We've got to recable the house to make it completely workable, but other than that, we're fine. Highspeed net is the best. And, I get to play Quake 3 with Wayne. I figure that as long as I keep it fun, I won't get bothered by being fragged so much.

Now that the network is finally up, I can get on with downloading a few of those extra-large files I need for my development projects (like the 131Mb file I need for redistribution, etc).

Today is the first day of school. My oldest is heading off to school today, and I don't get to be there to send her off. :( But, I will get to hear all about her day when I get home. That's good.

Goodness my blog is boring. I wish I could say more about what's going on in my life, but the little details just seem so... tedious, right? There's the apple jelly we're making, I guess that's interesting in it's own way. But, it looks like it didn't turn out quite like we hoped. We're going to have to wait a while before it sets. Then there's the extra work project I've picked up. It took me a few days to get sorted out, but I got it all done. Things are getting better with the way I'm working on it too.

There's the carpool, but for me, that's either sleep (on the way in), and crochet (on the way out). Nothing spectacular there.

Maybe I can go on about sex? There's not a whole lot to the sex life - aside from getting caught by the youngest the other day. That's bound to happen from time to time. FYI, we did have a talk with her about it. She's fine.

Well, that's all for now. I try to do something exciting for tomorrow.