Posted 4:48 PM by Tim
Finally got the call about the job. I didn't get it.

I did, however, manage to impress both companies. According to the recruiter, the company said that I was top of the list and that they were impressed with the skills I had. That's cool. The recruiter is impressed because they hadn't had a chance to meet me or even talk to me longer than 5 minutes before sending me out there to interview. I did well, so they're happy that they took a chance on me.

In other news, our finances are toasted. I'll leave it at that.

Posted 10:22 AM by Tim
Not to jinx anything... but I got a call from another recruiter last night. I like the way this is starting to look.

Posted 8:20 AM by Tim
I missed my Monday post because of the Saturday post. I did get a call from the recruiter. And I had an interveiw yesterday. They're supposed to have a decision today. So, now I'm anxiously waiting for a call.

Posted 1:53 PM by Tim
I'm anxious today. I got a phone call from a recruiter yesterday and I'm hoping to get a call before too long. I could really use a job.

Posted 4:29 PM by Tim
Toady's been a little better than yesterday. The girls went to school, so that was nice. Of course, with the Monday being a holiday for the school, I'm still thinking that today is Wednesday, but it feels like Friday. I'm a whole day in the wrong direction no matter how I try to think about it.

The ant guy just came in and sprayed. I think that the problem will be under control now.

Posted 11:45 AM by Tim
Gah!!!! I'm so frustrated with everything!

I think that the months of unemployment are getting to me. I've got things that I should be doing, and I'm just not getting any of them done! I've got two classes to read for, and I'm supposed to be spending my day programming. I'm not though.

The girls are home from school for a second day. They're still sick. I've holed myself up in the bedroom to keep from killing them. They're still managing to drive me crazy. I can't imagine what the 10-day quarantine for the SARS thing must be like. I think that the disease probably doesn't spread in that case because all the carriers kill each other.

I've got a lot of ideas and commitments buzzing around my head. Dunno where to start first.

It seems that some combination of ant poison and cleaning has nearly driven the ants away. At least, they're not all over the place where I can see them. I'm hoping they're gone anyway.

Posted 3:40 PM by Tim
Classes tonight. I've been unmotivated about reading the required chapters. I've got so much else going on that I'm just not getting started. I'm still looking forward to classes, which is good. I think I'm finally valueing my education. Only took me 20 years.

The house is still not clean enough to deter the ants. We've used a little more of the ant poison to try to kill the little buggers. No signs of it working yet. There've been fewer ants today, but the weather has been a little chilly. Maybe they're all staying warm somewhere.

Posted 11:31 AM by Tim
The war against the ants.

Its not going well. We left for the weekend just after the declaration of war. Bren is considering sanctions against them (caulking off anywhere that seems remotely like it might let an ant in). Despite my initial reservations, I'm warming to the idea. Last weekend we would have seen maybe a dozen in a day. Now we're seeing that many just in the morning.

I'm going to try to deter the ants through cleaning. Maybe if I make everything clean and get rid of all the little places that they can hide we'll have less of a problem. Trouble is, this place has a lot of stuff in it. Cleaning it completely isn't going to be an easy job.

Posted 9:49 AM by Tim
Time for the weekend recap. Not a lot happened this weekend. I played Kingdom Hearts for about 11 hours straight. I need some sort of walkthrough book for this game. There's so much going on just in Wonderland that I don't know what I'm doing.

I meant to get a lot of reading done this weekend, but it just didn't happen. Kingdom Hearts is pretty addictive.

May 3 is going to be busy. It's Free Comics Day, and also the Vampire Qualifiers. I've got to put a deck together for that.

Posted 4:43 PM by Tim
My courses have settled down now, and I'm starting to get back into the school groove.

Maybe I should explain what "settled down" means. It seems that everything in my life has to start the same way. I plan to do something, then stop (or can't do it or what-have-you). Then I start again. Then stop again. Then, if I start it again, it finally gets going. These classes have been like this. I wanted to go, but then thought that I wouldn't have the money, then committed to going no matter what, now I've dropped one class to take another.

So, for now, it's settled. I've got my classes started, and they're looking good so far. I didnt' think I'd be able to leverage as much knowledge as I seem to be able. That's a good thing though, it means that there's less for me to unlearn.

Posted 12:47 PM by Tim
Ants!

Two days ago I saw an ant in the kitchen. I squished him. Told Bren, and she says she saw one the day before. This looked like the start of a pattern. Yesterday I saw another ant in the kitchen. That's fine, I thought. One a day isn't too much to worry about. Then the oldest found a few in her room. Like 20. I mashed them too. But there were more. Today, the kitchen and living room ant count is at least 10. The dead ones draw live ones to cart them away. I'm taking this as a sign of war.

Posted 11:10 AM by Tim
Oh, yeah, that blogging thing.

So, I haven't managed to get anything up here lately. Ok. No worries. I've been focused. Busy, so to speak. I had my VB3 class on Saturday, and I really wanted to try to get the first project done that day. I was up until a little past 12, but it still counts. I'm hoping to surprise the teacher :) We'll see how that goes.

After that, I wanted to get the Chapter 3 stuff done up by Wednesday of this week too. That meant reading, a few examples and then 2 exercises from the book and the Chapter 3 assignment. I'm still working on the assignment, but I've sent off the exercises.

I've signed up for a class that's on Tuesdays. I missed the first one, but I'll get this one no problem. I'll probably have an assignment due for the next week with that one also. I know I get an assignment for the Wednesday class, so I'll be working on that too. Woo. so much work to do! Toss onto that the drawing (I've missed a few days), and the housework that needs doing daily, and I'm busy.

Of course, that's not busy enough for someone like me. I've got to throw on a little more work. Exercise (at least a walk or something), and a job (if I can find one) will round out the last few minutes of my time.

Now that I've bored you all with my pitiable life, let's talk about the past a bit.

This weekend I headed out to Toronto with Rob. We got wind of a Vampire tourney out there, and we wanted to get some playing in. So, Sunday morning I drive over to Rob's place and the car refuses to start up when we go to leave. It does that lately. There's something wrong in the electrical system. What we need to do is wait a little bit and then try it again. For some reason, that seems to fix the issue. It starts after the short break, and we're off to the city. I haven't gone to the city in a while, so my memory of how to get there is really shoddy. I know I'm looking for highway 420-something. Of course, I miss it and shoot on by everything before I realize I've gone too far.

I've done this before, so I have a general idea of how to sort this out. We get onto Islington, and head North. Not the way towards the city of course, but I've got a general idea that this will sort us out eventually. I stop for directions, but the lady can't help us. Pretty though. We find Finch and head south a bit. I stop for directions (again) and find a guy heading our way. He says to just follow him and we'll be fine. We do, and we are. We arrive just in time for the thing to start. I said it a few times on the ride. "You have to know your weaknesses and plan for them." Mine happens to be getting lost on the way to somewhere. I can eventually find where I'm going, it just takes longer than it should.

I won't go into detail about the games, but I will say that they were good. Three newish people were there, which is always nice to see. I managed 2 table sweeps (all other players ousted), and a single oust in the thrid game. That got me 9 points total, and 2 game wins. Rob did well also. I'm not sure if he swept a table (I think he did), but he got about 6 points. That put us squarely in first and second place. We took home some prizes and had fun afterwards getting a quick meal with most of the crew.

Now, on today. The weather has finally manged to start looking better (though I've heard a call for ice rain this week) and I've been meaning to get either the rollerblades or bicycle out and zoom around a bit. The bike needed some assembly, and the girls bikes needed some work too. I put a little time into the bike today (it needs air now), and hopefully I'll be able to ride it a little this week. I'm much better on the bike than I am at rollerblading.

Ahhh spring. A new chance to get outside and do something.

Posted 11:34 AM by Tim
I get a real impression of the differences between VELMA running 800x600 and ROSA running 1024x768 when I do the same work on both of them. ROSA has the clear advantage when it comes to visbility. There's so much more room, and I don't have to scroll nearly as much. What am I babbling about? Programming. I've been dutifully hacking away at a little side project that I cooked up for myself, so I've been working downstairs on it, and working upstairs on it too. I love having a network, by the way.

I've been rehooked (though I'm not sure I've ever been unhooked) by the programming bug. I'm going about this project all wrong of course. No planning, no forethought, just throw in the stuff that looks cool and try to use classes and database stuff and all that. Woo! Just drop in all the things that should go into an application, and see if something comes out.

So far, its going pretty well. There have been some in-progress class redesigns, but beyond that, it's been good.

Posted 10:10 PM by Tim
I'm entering an odd phase here. I'm feeling burnt - about gaming. This hasn't really happened before. I've felt burnt about Magic before. That's simple enough to explain, there's the expense, trouble with losing at tournaments, and the time that the game takes up otherwise. I took a three year break the last time that happened. I'm not sure what it is about the games now, it's affecting a lot of them. Magic, Vampire, computer games, everything. I'm just not feeling motivated. I don't know if its the season, the lack of work, or what. I'm unsettled.

Oh yeah, on an unrelated note, my 7 year anniversary is coming up this month.

Posted 12:53 PM by Tim
Ok. I missed blogging yesterday. I meant to though. That's got to count for something.

Anyway, I had my first class last night. It was good. A little bit boring though. I spent part of the class just playing with the MDE in Visual Studio. I made this little junk program that didn't do anyting specific, just noodling. Wayne takes the class with me, so I have someone to hang out with.

Apparently, the .NET lab is the only one in any of the college campuses. So, I can see that it'll probably start to get busy as the course progresses (they have .NET #2 and #3 also). Project time will start to bulk up the lab for sure. I'm thinking about trying to take the #2 course consecutive with the #1 course. I need the #1 course only for the .NET framework stuff that I haven't been exposed to before.

I've got a VB6 course on the weekend, which should be interesting.

Time to get some development work done.

Posted 9:12 AM by Tim
When I was in Detroit at the start of the month, I was presented with 2 of the demo decks for War Cry. They know I like games and mechanics. If I haven't mentioned it before, now you know. I like games, and especially the mechanics of games. I've been known to buy games simply to see how they played. Most of the time its card games that I buy. There are a lot of ways to do things, and its nice to see what people are trying as innovations.

War Cry is interesting. Its based on another game, Warhammer (which I play and like). One of the game's main innovations is its fixed length. What I mean is, the game only lasts three turns, not that the game has a time limit. Three turns isn't a lot if you're used to playing things like Vampire, Magic and so forth. Of course, it's not really three turns. Its three battles, with each battle having lots of little turns in it.

I tried the game with Wayne and got a few of the rules confused. It wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped then, but I figured that I was doing something wrong. I took a look at the rules and tried it again. It was pretty fun actually. I'd like to see what the real decks are like.

Posted 10:35 AM by Tim
The weekend was pretty good. I got to play in a big tourney, but I didn't do as well as I'd hoped. The weather has stuck itself in winter mode and is starting to get pretty annoying. All this ice and snow really just bothers me. We need a few good days of sun.

I've already mentioned to my friends that it seems like all of the KW region is controlled by a handfull of weather witches who just decide what the weather should be like locally. It's not that big a stretch really. There are a lot of pagans and wiccans about. :)

The writing project isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I'm just not finding the motivation that I need to get started. Maybe I need the community and competative aspects that NaNoWriMo provided.

In other news, one of my classes begins on Wednesday night. I'm really looking forward to it. I've got to get the books that I need for the other classes soon though. If I don't I won't have any idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Wayne is taking the Wednesday class with me, which will be nice. We only have one system capable of handling VB.NET though, so I think we'll be sharing some computer time. I've got the daytime hours available to me, and he'll have weekends and evenings. I don't know if that'll be enough.

Another friend of mine is going to be taking a few courses too. He's been in the process of rebuilding his life after something that happened a while back. Wayne and I have suggested classes to him before and he's finally taking the advice. I think that's a good thing.

Posted 9:44 AM by Tim
Did you ever want to just do something crazy? Yeah, I suppose most people have. I'm considering the most crazy, extreme idea there is. This is more extreme than bungee jumping. From a plane. At near sonic velocities. Over a no-fly zone. Naked. More extreme than that. I'm thinking of starting my own business.

How is it more extreme? Well, if you try the stunt above, the worst that will happen is that you'll die. Yep. That's all. If you start a business and fail, well, you lose all your stuff, all your money, become bankrupt and have to face down the failure for the rest of your life. Yeah, I do think that sometimes living is much worse than death.

Of course, in both cases, there is the chance for success. In either case, a success is a huge rush, and you have something to talk about to everyone at parties. Sure, it'll sound less exciting to say, "We made a profit in the thrid quarter this year" than "I survived bungee jumping out of a plane at subsonic speeds in a no-fly zone naked! Woo!" But I think that once that little rush is over, the bungee guy is going to have to look for another rush, while I'll still be working at my business.

Posted 10:58 AM by Tim
I watched Minority Report last night. It was a pretty interesting movie. Very centered on the "seeing," "sight," and "vision" thing. Bren and I skipped a few bits, most notably the eye surgery and the "stolen boy" flashback. Neither of us is too good when it comes to eyeballs and we're not great about the idea of having children stolen. No need for nightmares, right?

There were some things that I really liked about the movie. Not just the technical bits either. The way that the lady from the future handles herself is good. I like the general integration of technology. Voice activation and all that. The huge screen that the main character uses (I can't recall little details like names) seems impractical. I mean, it's a nice idea, but the gloves are bound to cause fits with anyone learning the system. Of course, they show the impracticality of it by having the guy sweep all his work off the screen when he goes to shake hands. They did at least try to show how the interface would work, very arcane and stylized movements with a conductor kind of feel. Trouble is, I could see some of the actions getting repetative in a day job and you'd just get a new form of carpal tunnel... well, in the shoulders or elbows or something.

The cars and roadways are a nice idea, but a little impractical. In case you didn't notice, the cars drive forwards, sideways and vertically. Yeah, the seats rotate when you get a switch between vertical and horizontal, but it'd still be really disorienting. Especially at speed.

There were several really massive glitches in the storyline that bothered me. After our main character has his eyes out, he keeps them so he can still get into all of the restricted places he could get into before. Wouldn't you think that an officer who had a warrant on him would have all of his access shut down? He really shouldn't have been able to get back into the building later. Same thing when his wife uses his eyes to bust him out of jail.

Overall, I liked the movie, but it was about as much fluff as I expected. I was looking for a little more story and didn't find it. There's some thinking going on though.

Posted 2:47 PM by Tim
More from the "why did I become a parent?" files.

My daughter's are learning to ride their bikes. This is a pretty harrowing experience in itself. There's a lot of chance for injury. Of course, you do what you can to minimize it. Training wheels, helmets, jackets, pads and all the kit. My youngest has just gorwn out of her helmet. But, she's not quite big enough to fit into her sister's helmets or my helmet (yes, I wear a helmet. I like my brain inside my skull). So, she has no helmet. I've told her that she's not to ride her bike without a helmet. She doesn't see the point because the bigger kids ride without helmets (parents, listen to me. Make your kid wear their damn helmet so that my child can't complain about them, ok?).

I tell her that it doesn't matter if other kids aren't wearing helmets, she has to wear hers to ride. Somehow, she figures that she can ride it anyway, helmet or no. So, today I find her without her helmet on, and with her bike. She's not riding it, but she was earlier. I've got to make some sort of impression on them, so I'm grounding her from her bike for three days. Yeah its a lot, but maybe we'll have time to get her a new helmet by then.

Posted 12:13 PM by Tim
Nothing like a quick bout of depression to get you off to a good start. :(

That's pretty much the news today. I'm depressed. So much to do and I'm just not getting any of it done. I'm behind on the writing by 3300 words right now, and its only day 2!!! Gah. Not to mention the lack of editing... I suppose I have to suck it up and just do it. That'll get me going again. I just need to push it a little.

Of course, this is why I've got so many hobbies. I can switch between them when one starts to wane. I've tried building decks for Magic today, but it's not working out. I just can't seem to build something to beat Wayne's deck. I should realize that's not going to be easy though. I mean, I played the deck to something like 20-1 against everything he could throw down. The deck can just keep digging itself out of trouble.

So... I just need to stop feeling sorry for myself, throw on some music and get into the groove again.

Posted 2:41 PM by Tim
Today is the first day of the personal challenge to myself. I'm supposed to be writing or editing. I haven't started yet. So many other things going on. First, there's this little issue that I had with the taxes for my business. I'm in the middle of resolving it. It should work it's way out in a few days.

Second, the car is giving me little fits. We'll have that sorted out soon enough too.

Oh yeah, I seem to have forgotten all the other little things that I have this month that can interfere with the writing and editing. There's my drawing (which I'm really starting to enjoy and want to do every day), and the classes that I'm taking start next week. 1 class a week, plus a self-regulated class during the rest of the time. My system still won't handle the application that I'll be using to program, so I'll have to work something out with Wayne, or make another upgrade. Anyway, there's several tournaments on that I'd like to have a shot at going to, and lastly, there's Anime North in May.

Anime North is an anime convention in Toronto. I'd really like to go becuase it will be a great opportunity to find out what's new and hot and upcoming in the anime world. And it should be a good chance at getting some cheap moveis or music. It's the 16-18, so there's no real rush about it, but I'd like to be able to put away a little bit of cash before then. We'll see how that turns out.

Anyway, enough babbling for now, I've got to try to get at least a little writing on.