Posted 1:00 PM by Tim
Just a little news first. Magic Online is available for download. It is massive (309Mb) though, so you'd better be able to burn that sucker to a disk real quick-like.

Alright, now for the real stuff. Apparently, I'm being phased out. People don't seem to believe me, but that's the case. Consider this. My "job" consists basically of user support, maintenance of the system and some development (trust me, it's not my dream job). Now, consider the following changes. We hire a new person for maintenance. And I get pulled from further development. What does that leave me with? User support. Ok. Fine. Now lets assume that the users never need support. Never. And, by the time they will need help, the help desk will be outfitted with all the information they'll need to fill that role. Where's my job then, eh? I surely don't know.

Of course, I do have only 4 weeks left to the current contract. They might be viewing this as a phasing out process. I know I am. I'm gonna start the documentation effort, and see if I can't supply all the documentation I have to whoever needs it. Whee, fun.

Posted 1:39 PM by Tim
Tired. So much going on lately that my sleep has been sorely lacking. Basically, if I get to bed by 10PM, I'm going to be tired in the morning - only 6 hours sleep if it's not interrupted. I've been lucky to be home by 10 lately, much less sleeping by then.

Of course, to go along with everything else, I've been having a few issues with my eyes. First, they're dry. It could be the fact that its summer, or it might be something else. Either way, when they're dry, I get really blurry vision. Second, I have this eye twitch thing that only happens when I'm really stressed, or in the summer. It's probably related to the humidity or heat or something. Driving home can suck a lot, because I'm tired, my vision is all blurred and my eye is twitching. Yeah, getting home safe can be difficult.

And now for something completely different.

I've been thinking about the upcoming move. There's a lot to plan and do before the move takes place. I want to transfer my cell phone to the new location, the furniture has to be painted/varnished, clothes has to be packed and arranged, things need to be moved around, the new place will have to be cleaned, the girls have to be signed into school (already done), and more. Bren likes to think that I don't think of these things, but that's not true. I just think of them slower than she does. She's got a lot planned already. I wouldn't be surprised if she had most of the furniture already laid out.

There's still things that need working out though. Like how we're going to arrange laundry, morning routines and so forth. I'm sure we can figure all that out though. At some point, Wayne and I are going to have to run a lot of network cable through the place and try to get a few network games of Q3 on. I'm sure that can wait though.

Posted 6:01 PM by Tim
Ok... and now for a short diversion. I'm gonna talk about exercise and my weight. After a few weeks of exercising and trying to lose a little weight, I'm down to 205. According to my desired weight, that leaves me with 25 pounds to go. I'm not sure I'm going to reach that. The main setback has been a lack of cardio exercise, which burns fat like mad. I've been doing a lot of strength training, muscle toning, and a little stretching. This does not burn fat, and, at least for me, slowly builds muscle. A minor weight gain overall.

As I eat better and better (or less and less, whichever), I'm going to reach a point where I'm not going to be able to lose more weight. A weight plateau, if you will. Unless I start with a different exercise (like biking, running (ugh!), or swimming, etc) I'm not likely to lose much beyond what I've lost already. I'd do that, but those activities require space (or machienes) to be effective. I'd much rather rollerblade or ride a real bike (or even run!) than use the stationary bike or treadmill - even though we have both. The trouble comes in getting to an area that I feel comfortable running/biking/whatever in.

My free time is in the morning or late evening, so I have to be able to get there quickly. I can't use the area around the house because we live on a highway in a valley, and I don't think I'd survive the hills and traffic. If I got into town, I have to get to a subdivision, and then I have to be in a place where my car won't get vandalized, and where I'm not likely to be beaten up. There are a few places that fit that bill, but they're not too quick to get to (see point #1). I'd rather bike than rollerblade (it's easier), and rather rollerblade than run (because running sucks). Overall, it's just not easy to get out to do the cardio stuff I wanna do.

I see this getting a little easier later on, because, after the move, I'll be living in an area where it's safe to run/ride/skate, and I'll be able to just jump on the feet/bike/blades and go. So, um, woo. And we'll be near a pool, which means I can probably start swimming. Yay!

Posted 2:35 PM by Tim
I keep thinking about this one thing that I want to blog about, but then I forget it. It could be something about the end of school, and how my oldest daughter is nearly 7 (when did that happen?), but I don't think so. It could be about the upcoming move, but I've done that one. Maybe the future job prospects? Not likely, I don't like to think about things that are so uncertain and unclear. Perhaps its about the state of the world? Maybe - after all, things are not well in many places. I have my doubts that's it though. I just can't recall. So, until I remember, you're going to have to put up with my thoughts on the state of the world.

Ok. Maybe it's the fact that I only occasionally read the news, almost never watch TV news, and get everything from the internet, but the world seems messed up. I mean, the USA is closer to a police state than it's been in a long time. What with the extra powers granted by the "Patriot Bill," to the FBI, George W. making "proclamations" about people being "enemy combatants" without any sort of due process and everything else going on. Isarel and Palestine both showing a little nuclear muscle and doing strange things to each other (like building a huge concrete wall - much like Berlin did some time back...). Not to mention the latest statements by George W. about Palesting getting a boatload of help from the US, if they'll just depose their current president and pick someone new... maybe George has a suggestion?

My biggest problem is that people forget that George W. isn't the brightest candle in the chandelier. He "won" the election for the presidency under suspicious circumstances, and seems to be a puppet to me. Throw on the oil conspiracy that's been proposed, and a few other shady events, and you've got something interesting happening with our southern cousins.

I am glad that I don't live in the US any longer. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice place for a while, but after the WTC collapse, it just got weird.

I'd go into more detail, but this is making me fatalistic and depressed. Maybe later.

Posted 11:01 AM by Tim
This has been a interesting weekend. Work blows up - not literally of course, just the app I was working on. So, I go in on the weekend to fix it. It is not fixed by me, a co-worker manages to get it running again.

Lemme relate the story of Monday, though, as it's much more interesting.

I take Monday to do a little bit of this and that, namely, get the girls signed into school. Apparently, it's the last day to do it. Gah. I leave early so that I'll have time to do everything. I stop just a short distance from home to help a turtle get across the road. Breeding season comes about this time, and they're driven to return to where they were born, year after year. But, there's always less of them each time. They get hit by cars, eaten and so forth. I take the time to help the old ones cross the roads, and later to help the little ones back across - if I see them, that is.

I get to Wayne's place later than I expected. Not because of turtles, but tiredness. I stop a few times along the way. It threatens rain all day. It spits now and then, so I roll the windows up. Our car leaks engine heat (and fumes) into the driver's side, and I'm used to sleeping at this time, so I'm drowsy. I take breaks and get things with caffeine in them.

Wayne drives me out to where the school is located. I can't remember the way there, and I didn't get all of it this time either. While we're there, the ladies in the office treat us nicely, explaining things to Wayne, and basically treating him as "Dad #2." This I find funny, and Wayne keeps insisting that "I'm only driving him." Which I find even more funny. The whole thing was a strange experience, though. Being back in a school, seeing the crowds of kids, and, of course, it was the last day of school, so there was a lot going on.

The girls are signed up for school next year. Woo.

Wayne and I then went over to MKS, a company I'm trying to get to hire me. We do lunch, get a prinout of my resume, and I drop it off at the office. Given the way I was dressed (baggy blue jeans, green T), I imagine it went straight to the circular file. I asked about speaking to someone, but that was no luck.

Driving home again was equally unpleasant as driving down. Traffic, sleepiness and generally just wanting to get home. I also had trouble keeping from speeding on the way home, which I think is just an unconscious drive to get home.

Brenda purchased a new dresser for me. I haven't had one since I moved away from Nova Scotia (that's about, umm.. 2.5 years now?) Since then, I have been living out of a suitcase, laundry basket, or cargo tub. Seriously. So, bren decided that it was high time I got a dresser, with actual drawers and things. We've got 2 now. One for me, and one for her. She's been living much the same way, so she was ready for a change. What we've been looking for in a dresser is simple. Something made with real wood, but either painted so horribly that it's cheap, or in need of a little work, so that it's cheap. We're willing to strip, paint and varnish to make it look nice again. We're not bothered by a little work. So, we've got one very nice dresser, and one slightly-less-nice dresser. I get the slightly-less-nice one.

Pretty much, its going to turn out to be more things that need to be moved into the new place. Gah. Moving day will suck.

Posted 9:45 AM by Tim
I don't think I've mentioned it, but I've got some good news. Seems that the apartment that Bren, myself and Wayne were trying to get approved us. I'm not entirely sure why though. Bren put it pretty succintly. There'll be three adults, two children, and by the time we move in, only one of us will be employed. Aside from that, our finances will be stressed, and we're not sure how long it'll be before things are different.

But, we have an apartment. It's been so long I almost forget what that will mean. Wayne, for reasons obscure and arcane (well, it's more dramatic to think of them this way) will not be joining us immediately. It will take him the better part of a month to be fully moved in. So, we'll have August to ourselves (the hottest month in a place without air conditioning... at least we can romp about naked). We're looking to stay at the new place for about a year, so it'll be next summer before we start looking for a place to live again.

One nice thing about Wayne not moving in right away is that we've all got lots of time to make the move. We can transition. A lot of people like to move immediately from one place to another, but not me. I perfer the idea of a transition. It gives me time to place, review and organize all of my stuff into the new place, while still managing to live in the old place. The pace of moving is slower, and more flexible (in case there's bad weather or whatnot). Of course, nobody else likes this idea, so we'll just pick up everything and move all at once.

There's so much to plan and organize.

Posted 10:55 AM by Tim
Apparently, the "smog" from yesterday can be explained by an unrelated scrapyard fire down on the waterfront. That would explain the "burning rubber" smell at least. So, I can't say for sure if I've experience smog, or was just really downwind of a fire. Today is supposed to have a smog alert though, so maybe I'll head outside again and see if I notice anything.

Posted 11:05 AM by Tim
Smog. Today is really the first day in the city for it. I'm told that the smog level rises with the temperature in the city, and that it'll basically only get worse.

I've heard of smog before, in big cities and all that, but I've never really experienced it. Now I have, and it's not pleasant. The air has a totally different quality to it than it should. First, you can see it, it's like a really thin fog or mist, I'd have to say that I can't tell what colour it is though, but you can tell it's there. Second, you can smell it. It's a smell like burned plastic, and it's everywhere. I'm pretty sure you can taste it too, though I decided to keep my mouth shut while outside. I could be grasping at straws here, but my throat is a little irritated right now, and I was only outside for a very short period of time. I went outside just to see if there was smog, and, of course, to experience it. It's not pleasant. I hope we don't have much of it this summer.

Posted 2:41 PM by Tim
GO Crashes Again!

Gah. My train was delayed again by a crash on the line. This time it was further up the line, and delayed all trains headed down to where I meet it. Hopefully nobody was badly hurt this time.

I'm told that we should/could hear something about the apartment today. I hope we do. Then I'll know whether it's time to start with the packing, or if we're just going to have to start looking elsewhere. Anyhow, I'm sure that we'll find out news about it this week. I'll post the news here of course.

Posted 10:16 AM by Tim
Gah! Workload has been pretty heavy lately. I had to come in on the weekend, and it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon. Of course, this is good for business overall, as I will make a little more cash with the overtime.

I've got a couple of things I wanna cover today, so I'll give you a list that you can browse to see if you're interested. First, I wanna talk about fasting, then probably the magic tourney this weekend, and lastly, the Scooby Doo movie. I'll warn you before the movie bit in case you wanted to see it because I'm gonna spoil the ending, K?

Alright, fasting. Lately (and I'm not sure why), I've been in the mood to try something different with my life. Change my hair (dye it blue, or jet black), change the style of clothes and so forth, try out the goth scene (dark clothes, black lipstick, eyeliner, white face, etc - even though I'd get looks at work), or try fasting. I've fasted before. I've done the 30-hour famine (which isn't that hard past hour 12 or so), and I once gave up supper for lent.

The lent thing is interesting. I decided to take the opportunity to see how less-fortunate peoples lived by giving up anything but plain rice (that's boiled and served, no sauces, nothing) and water for dinner. I intended to do this for 30 days. It was not easy, because it was so unimaginably bland. I gave up after 12 days or so. Of course, I did realize that most cultures will add anything to rice to make it taste different. I probably should have gone with that.

Anyhow, I am considering another fast. I want to avoid all food for a period of about 3 days, and limit myself to juices, milk and water for fluids. No pop, no diet drinks, etc. My main concern is how this might affect my work performance (being hungry is distracting), and I'm not sure that it would go over well at home (the in-laws like people to eat lots). I can't see 3 days being terribly hurtful to me, so I don't see any problem with doing it. I have considered the idea of eating only a single meal a day, and probably doing that for longer (5 days), but I'm not sure about what or when I would eat. I'll give it more thought.

And now, on to Magic. I played a Type 1 game this weekend, which is always fun (if frustrating), and went 2-4. Not terrible, and I know I can do better.

If you wanna go see the Scooby Doo movie, and don't wanna know the end, I suggest you stop reading right here. Otherwise, please continue.

I went to see this movie with the girls this weekend as part of father's day. I had thought about just waiting to rent it, but we all wanted to go watch something, so we gave the girls the option of Spirit, or Scooby Doo. They voted for Scooby, so we went. The movie isn't that bad. It's on par with the newer videos that have been made as far as storyline and spookiness go. They are not scary for a jaded adult like myself (who cannot stand scary movies), but are fairly scary for younger people, like my girls.

For the Scooby purists, I don't think that they did that great a job of casting Fred. He doesn't look like himself. Shag and Velma, however are on the mark, especially the voice for Velma. Daphne is close, but not quite there. Of course, the clevege displayed by the actress makes you overlook that. There are some bits which are very reminiscent of the old school Scooby Doo (like the opening where Shag is running on oil), and there are some bits where are very different. Some of the funnier moments for me were things like seeing the Mystery Machine on a beach with smoke pouring out the top and Shag saying, "That's some good stuff, isn't it Scoob?" Of course, they're grilling something (eggplant?) on the hibachi, so it's all innocent really.

One thing that I did like was the consistency of the characters costumes. Shaggy and Velma stay in they're well-known clothes throught the entire film. With Shag, it's like he never bothered to change them, with Velma, it's a choice. Daphne does stay in the purple top and skirt for nearly the entire film, eventually changing into a jumper when she's needed to do a few high kicks, jumps and acrobatics later. Fred has one costume change, which basically makes him lose his ascot - I think it's great.

The biggest disappointment for me was the choice of villan. While I can certainly justify my dislike for the villian, I am not impressed with that being the choice. I suppose it's safe to say that the villian is, in fact, Scrappy Doo. I couldn't stand that loud-mouthed little dog in the cartoons, and he's no better here. He's shown in the movie as a throwaway gag (supposedly), but comes back to wreak vengance against the Mystery crew. I do like when he's throw in jail though, as he utters the line, "I wouldn't got away with it too if it weren't for those meddling Sons a ..." The line is intentionally cut short of course - this is a children's movie.

Another bit I liked was the Fred in Daphne's body bit (where he takes a peek down "her" shirt). Overall, it would make a good rental movie, but maybe not worth the cost of the matinee. Still it was enjoyable.

Posted 10:55 AM by Tim
One of the things that bothers me is when things start/stop working for no discernible reason. Take yesterday, for example. I had a business problem, where one of our reports was taking over an hour to generate. This had spontaneously developed, since it was running less than a minute originally. Of course, I get started looking at the problem, and suddenly, it's resolved. No more issues. Just like that. I'm appreciative that it is solved, but I'm a little bothered by the apparent randomness of it. The real issue, I suppose, is that I'm expected to be able to explain just what happened. Nobody likes the answer, "I have no idea," so I then have to investigate. More time spent looking like I'm not working.

I am happy that things are working now though.

Posted 4:18 PM by Tim
We've got a pretty good carrier system working right now. Even though I live about 2 hours away from everyone, I still manage to trade things back and forth between Wayne, the other people in Kitchener and myself pretty readily. The system works like this. I wanna get something to Wayne. I pass it to V, P's s.o., who passes it to P, who gets it to Wayne personally (less a 20% trafficing fee, of course).

It works in reverse too.

Today, the exchange was supposed to be this: I give 2 items to V (one for P and one for Wayne), V passes me an item from M (through P) and an item from P. I didn't have my end of the bargain, so I only got one item (the item from P was payment for the item meant for him). Carrier transfer at it's finest.

A good offshoot of this is that I get to have lunch with V, which is a huge departure from having lunch by myself reading the net.

And now, the apartment hunting news. Most of the paperwork has been done on the place we're interested in, so it should only be a little while before things are known for sure. Either we'll get the place, or we'll be told to look somewhere else. No issue either way.

On the job front, I've been told that there isn't any news and that nobody's looking to do anything until the middle of next month. Of course, I don't hold a lot of confidence in the market now, and won't have any for the market then. All of the colleges and universities will be letting out, and that means a lot of new applications to a lot of businesses. We'll see how this goes.

Posted 4:43 PM by Tim
Just remembered a little anecdote from yesterday. Bren wanted to have a few resumes on hand to give to the people at the hatcheries. So we had to go to a Kinko's to print them. They, of course, decided to charge the low, low rate of $0.25 per minute of computer usage, coupled with a $0.49 per page printed charge. So, I logged in, opened Windows Explorer, hit print, set it for three copies, waited for the print icon to drop off Word, shutdown my app, pulled the disk and logged out. I walked over, picked up my print jobs, and my receipt and went to the cash. Total charge listed: $0.59. Apparently, I broke their system. I had logged in and printed as a single job, and logged out again before a minute had passed. The system wasn't designed to handle a 0 minute charge. Also, the three printouts done as a single job were treated as a single printout with multiple pages or something, giving only the $0.49 charge. Taxes in, it was just $0.59. They sorted it out though and it came to $1.98 total. Not terrible really. I had fun making life just a little different for the Kinko's people.

Posted 10:28 AM by Tim
There was a lot of driving yesterday. Bren and I decided to visit a few of the local fish farms in the area. Of course, they're all about 2 hours away from each other or so, and that means that we need to drive a lot to get there. About 6 hours in the car yesterday. I'm done with driving for a little bit.

To make matters worse, the only place that we did manage to get to didn't have a lot of help for us, other than to point out who else we should talk to. We're following up on that.

Let's see what we have for other news. The apartment hunting seemed to go alright. We saw two places this weekend. Both had good and bad points, but one place was much better suited to our specific needs.

The day off of work didn't seem to hurt anyone, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's nice to be able to take a day off now and then, but it would be nice for there to have been some problem that only I could figure out. Of course, on the third hand its just as nice to know that the system works well enough for there to not be any problems.

And now, for the "wacky news." This is stuff that isn't likely to happen. Wayne, myself and one of Wayne's friends, P (I've gotta use something shorter than Wayne's friend), are all programmers. We all would love to work on something big. Something that would take too long as individuals. So, I'm thinking about putting the three of us together and working on some project. Of couse, I've got a hankering to work on Project Dingo (my pet project of late), but I'd be equally happy to work on something slightly different. There are a few minor logistical things to work out - like, basically everything. The hardest problem would center around the programming language to use. I'm big on the idea of using the language best suited to building the app (whatever that may be), P is a C++ guy, and Wayne is VB or C++. The most likely candidate is VB, simply because it's easy enough for P to learn quickly (if he doesn't know it already), and it's a visual devlopment language, which gives us a chance to build something everyone can use.

I'm gonna have to shoot an email out their way soon and find out if they've got time in their week to work on these things.

Posted 12:42 PM by Tim
Woo. Looking for apartments today. Missing a day of work to give me time to handle all the running around that this entails.

We looked at a few places today. One of which will suit our needs for the short term, and the other will suit us better in the long term. This means that we're likely to take time in the long term into consideration and go with that place.

There's other things in the works, but I'm keeping them under my hat right now.

Posted 10:19 AM by Tim
Read this: GO Crashes.

This is the commuter train line that I take. Fortunately, I take a later train, so I was merely delayed in getting to work, rather than being potentially injured.

Strange start to today.

Posted 10:42 AM by Tim
Interesting morning. I've been getting to bed a little earlier than usual, so I'm waking up a little better in the morning. Of course, I'm still driving myself to work, so being awake enough to arrive at the bus stop alive is a good thing.

Of course, being more awake means that I have time to read things. Like the paper. I stopped reading the paper because I didn't like the way it covered the whole terrorism thing. I still don't. But now, things are seemingly worse than ever. We're back to a potential nuclear strike with India and Pakistan, and they don't look like they're likely to back down anytime soon. Of course, the USA is now jumping all over that with what seems like a "bad dog" mentality. I don't like where this is all going.

Hmm. Can I think of anything lighter to comment about? Not right now I can't.

Posted 1:45 PM by Tim
I've had an itch to do some RPGs again. I usually like to run games with long and involved storylines, so I tend to like a commitment from my players. The trouble has been that we're thinking of moving (been thinking of it for months now, really), so I can't provide that kind of commitment to my players. I'm not nearly as good at short games (1 to 2 session games or shorter) because I don't feel that I can show the full range of the world to people. Of course, when I build a game world, I really go all out. I design lands, governments, populations, intrigue, conspiracies, threats, armies, factions, religion, money, languages, diplomacy - in short, everything.

Not everyone likes to do this as a GM. That's understandable. Really. It's a lot of work, and, for the most part, people haven't really been able to put things together to see all the details. Most of my players have been involved in a number of hack and slash style games (esp in D&D) and they're very likely to just assume that everyone is A) enemy, and B) killable. B is certainly true, but I disagree with A a lot. The ability of someone to talk their way out of situations is sorely lacking. That, and powermongering. Allow me to digress a moment.

I don't know how many people have played the new third edition D&D game, but there's some slightly abusable PCs out there. Take Monks, as a for instance. As they go up in levels they gain a lot of feats. A lot of really rediculous feats that look like they were designed by watching too many Kung Fu movies late at night. Like the ability to resist poisons, unnaturally quick reactions, the abilty to slow their fall by just touching some surface, slowed (and stopped) aging, invincibility. That sort of nonsense. Of course, you can say the same about most Fighters if they specalize in a favourite weapon. I mean, is it really necessary to let a fighter go into a horde of Goblins, swing his big nasty sword at like +15, use Great Cleave and Cleave and so forth and let him decimate the entire room in a single attack? That's where we're getting with this sort of thing. I won't get into the whole Mage vs. Sorceror thing (though I will say that I perfer Mages and play them as elitists).

Ok, back with the real discussion. As it stands, I've wanted to run a game. But not D&D this time. I want guns. I want computers. I want explosions that don't involve the little mages going, "Ooops, too much power in that one." One thing I'd like to run (or play in for that matter) is a "now" campaign. Drop your characters in a slightly alternate earth, and go from there. Need proof? Check the archives in Storylines and look for the continuity stuff.

I've asked the boyz (my brother-in-law and his friends) if they'd be interested in such things, and they said yes. I've got a partial storyline, and I can get them playing Cyberpunk, Armageddon, Rifts, or GURPS. Personally, I like the GURPS system because it's so flexible, but each of the game systems lend a little towards what I'd like to see. I've got a hankering for the pre- and post-apocalypse era, as I'm sure the above list shows.

What I'm looking for is this: take the players and have them make a version of themselves as characters. Add in powers like Psionics or Magic or weird knowledges that they really don't have. Put them into the very-near alternate future and reverse their ages a bit. We're talking the 2005 - 2010 area, with the characters having an age of about 15 -17. All minors. And, the best bit, have the adventures take place in their home town. They know the area as well as they know it now. Have things happen that have lasting effects. If they pollute the lake, it's polluted and that's the way it is. Start games in the area we actually start out. A whole "interactive" kind of feel to the game. I just don't know if we could pull something like that off.

Again, there's the commitment issue. Most of these people really are 15-17 and so they're fickle. Dances, school, boy/girlfriends and parents all factor into their free time and it's use. Trying to get everyone together for a game every week or two weeks isn't easy (and in fact, hasn't been possible). Then there's me. There's no point in starting a grand adventure like this if we can't see it through. Of course, that means that I have to build something with a definable beginning, middle and end. That's not easy for me. I like a good ramble.

Maybe I will start this, and maybe I'll just refocus the energy onto the website, Magic, or drawing.

Posted 12:57 PM by Tim
Sometimes I wonder if I come across as a pretentious bugger. Like today, someone said "Rumor is that you live [far away]." I said, "That's not a rumour, that's confirmable fact." Does that sound pretentious to you? Maybe I'm just paranoid. Anyhow, its just another example of people not understanding why someone would do the commute I do. Honestly, sometimes I don't understand it either.

We're still looking for a new apartment. No luck finding something suitable. We've been looking for something that will accomodate Wayne as well as ourselves. This may seem like an odd living choice - Wayne has a place, and he can afford to stay there, so there's no pressure for him to move - but we think of it as a cost saving measure. If we can find a place big enough for all of us, and then find a nice way to split the bills, we'll all save a little bit of money on the living costs (and have guaranteed people to hang out with).

Of course, everyone has the usual concerns. Roomates can be difficult, personal space can be a huge issue, and different living styles can cause conflict over the most insignificant things. Hopefully we can nip all that before things get out of hand. Privacy and personal space are big issues, so we'd want something where the bedrooms are very seperate (upstairs and basement if at all possible - seperate entrances are even better). We still have to work out issues with food, meals, and seperation of bills, etc. I think we could work something out though.

Bren and I are going apartment hunting this weekend, wish us luck.

Posted 9:30 AM by Tim
This morning, I found the cat stalking appliances. The dishwasher specifically. Something under there had him all intrigued. I figured that it was either a mouse (we get those occasionally) or a bug of some kind. Samo (the cat's name, of course) particularily enjoys eating bugs (and grass for that matter). I didn't see or hear anything for some time, so I figured that maybe he was chasing dust of shadows. Of course, that's when I heard the sound of plastic bags rustling under the sink. I knew it had to be a mouse.

To help Samo out, I opened the cupboard, and there the mouse was, on top of the garbage can on the inside of the door. Samo didn't notice. Some people are deathly afraid of mice and rats and so forth, but I am not one of those people. I had an instinct to grab it, but remembered that it would probably bite me, and I did not need a rabies shot today. The mouse scrambled down to the floor, where Samo finally noticed it.

I have never seen Samo go mousing before (he does not get outside), so I figured he'd be like my other cats - good. He's not. Apparently he had some trouble even batting a paw at the mouse (which is fast but confused). The mouse got away under the stove. There it stayed until I had finished my breakfast and Bren came downstairs and suggested that we move the stove (by moving it). Samo did not manage to catch the mouse, and I could do nothing but herd the animal until I found something to catch it in. However, it managed to escape and get into a large pile of stuff in a closet, where it got away. Samo kept hunting for it, but I had to go for work.

That's the excitement for today. FYI, Bren has a tolerable fear of mice and rats, much like her dad.

Posted 1:27 PM by Tim
Ghar. I believe that I have caught the same illness that has taken the rest of the family. Blah.

Posted 11:42 AM by Tim
My daughter has her first loose tooth. Pakistan and India are on the verge of nuclear war (with a projected death count of 17 million). Life goes on doesn't it?

The thing that gets me lately is how many small things are going on all at once. It's not like it hasn't always been this way, I'm just noticing it more. My wife picked up a dresser at a garage sale. It wasn't bad looking, just a little scratched and dinged here and there. She got some varnish stripper and took the old varnish off. It needs a little sanding and then a new coat of varnish and it'll be as good as new. The dresser cost $10, and the stripper, varnish and so forth isn't that expensive. The only expensive bit will be the time to make it look nice.

Brenda and I are looking into apartments. I believe I've mentioned this before. We've been staying with her parents until we get a "secure" job again, which isn't looking to likely. We still have our debts, we still have things going on here and there's still nothing close to stability coming down the pipe. I think it's time that we just break out on our own again, and see what happens. Her parents are a little hesitant of this, because if we flop, it'll just be more hassles to work out later (which they certainly can't afford). I'm not sure. I know I'm ready to move on, I just have to get started.

In other news, the tax man has relented on the $13,000 I "owed" him. We managed to figure out a legal reason why that couldn't possibly be our taxes, and I am much relieved.