Posted 10:43 AM by Tim
Its tax time. We've got our taxes back and it looks like we owe about $5000. That sucks. We've got about $3000 set aside for it. We would have had more, but we've been living off of stored cash. So.... we're going to have some problems getting the cash together for everything. Yep. I've got to do something. I just don't know what.

The thought has been coming up a lot lately. I could sell all my magic cards. All of 'em. Just sell them off. Build one really nice deck and leave it at that. Yeah. I suppose I could do that. I'd miss having the cards. I've got to do something. I've got to get me a job. I'll do anything. Rake leaves. Mow lawns.

A friend of mine suggested the prostitution route. I've been thinking about it... nah. Who'd buy?

On a less depressing note, school is going pretty good. My one class is going very well. The other class isn't getting along so great because I'm just not focused. That's all I need. Refocusing. Seems like my whole life is a series of refocuses and then periods of productivity.

Oh, just in case anyone is interested, I've probably got clinical depression. The big book of psychological disorders says that you only have to feel bad every day (or nearly every day) for about 2 weeks to be clinically depressed. I've been feeling depressed since March. You do the numbers. Not sure what I can do about that though. Maybe exercise? Sex? Drugs? Umm.. I mean the medical kind.

This being a pretty random post, I'll have to bring up the deal with me and drinking. I don't drink. Never have. Ever. So, why am I bringing it up? Well, my friend Robert keeps trying to get me to drink - in jest of course. So, you may be wondering: Why don't I drink? Well, I'm not allergic (though I wouldn't know for sure). I sometimes say I am just to get people to stop bothering me about it. There was a religious reason for not drinking at one time (and a little of that is still in there). But now, it's partly out of habit and partly out of common sense. The common sense bit is this: I know that I don't need chemicals to change my mood for the most part. Also, I've got a pretty addictive personality, and I'd probably be a wasted drunk all the time (especially being home alone most of the day). Lastly, I drink a lot of liquids in a day; pop, milk, juice. Can you imagine the amount of beer or wine I'd go through in a day? Especially since they make you thirstier? Gah, I'd be the biggest drunk this side of the trailer park.

So. That's why I don't drink. No thanks!

Posted 1:26 PM by Tim
We had a router issue. It's resolved now. Well, at least temporarily resolved.

In the news today, children who just learn to use the phone will probably use it. They call China, or 911. Like ours. We've had a lovely call from 911 for each of them. Yep. At least we're in different areas each time it's happened.

Posted 9:16 AM by Tim
I've got to wonder if I'm the only person with Actuate in all of the GTA who is not working. Why else would I get 4 calls and emails within a week of each other all for the same job? And for every job that comes up?

Posted 12:55 PM by Tim
Well. I guess I've neglected to inform people of all the movies I've seen recently. After all I did see Matrix: reloaded and didn't say much about it. I also just saw Treasure Planet. Yeah, that one's a little old. I'll review 'em both in some detail now. I'm gonna start with Treasure Planet so if you feel like reading about that you can stick around a little bit longer.

For those who don't know (and apparently this would be many people - the movie didn't do so well in theatres), Treasure Planet is a sci-fi adaptation of the novel Treasure Island. It's by Disney, and its full of cute, loveable aliens, monsters and stuff. Disney continues to pander to its younger audience by putting in scenes of X-Treme sports, like skysurfing, skateboarding and riding rocket powered wind-surfers. The lines from the trailer are in the movie. Of course, they're the most out-of-character, out-of-place things I can think of in the movies. Consider the line: "Go Delbert, go Delbert" accompanied by assinine dancing. It happens pretty much out of sync with everything else he's been saying, making it a non-sequitor, which supposedly makes it funny. I found it irritating.

Anyway, on to the plot of the movie. If you've read the book, the plot runs the same (more or less). Our hero and his mother live alone on some planet. A ship crashes on the docks and a man with a chest comes out. He warns about the cyborg (in the book, its the peg-legged man). A group of pirates come and destroy everything, but the boy and his mom manage to escape. Before their inn burns, the boy is given a map from the dead man. The map shows them the way to Treasure Planet - home of the treasure of a thousand worlds. So, Delbert (a dog-man) comissions a ship and he and the boy are to sail away. Of course, the cyborg is onbaord, and all the crew (aside from the captain (a cat-woman) and a rock like guy are there. Delbert is the financier, but nobody listen to him anyway.

They get on their journey and then meet a storm. Well, a supernova. Not that they couldn't have predicted a nova dozens of years beforehand... and Delbert happens to be an astonomer (but, anyway). Anyhow, the thing goes into black hole state (really, really quickly I might add) and they're all fine because of some last minute planning. Of course, we know they're going to be, given that the movie isn't titled "Guys get sucked into a black hole and die."

Anyhow, just after this scene there's a little bit about how the cyborg is almost replacing the father figure, and then without further tribulation, they arrive at Treasure Planet. That's when the mutiny starts. Of course, the captian and the hero and Delbert all escape the ship. They crash, but other than that, they're fine. Well, the captain is injured, but she'll walk it off eventually.

That's when we meet BEN. A crazy robot. Who represents the marooned pirate in the book. Anyway, his main memory core is missing so he rambles and babbles and is generally nuts. And not in an amusing way. Then the pirates come. There's a standoff and then blah. There's a secret escape hatch. I'm gonna skip ahead at bit. Here's where I'm gonna spoil the movie. Treasure Planet is a huge machine. A warping gate of some sort that can take you anywhere. Hidden in the center of the planet is all the loot, but it's booby trapped. They find the loot, it all gets blown to bit and everyone escapes happily. Of course, all but a few coins of the treasure is lost forever (cause the planet blows up - though its actually just melted into huge globs of precious metals and jewels. Anyone with a big net and some time would be rich).

The main pirate guy gets away in the end. Woo. Happy endings all around.

There were some things in this movie that I did like. Like the moon on the planet that the inn is on. Its actually artificial. A spaceport, shaped like a crescent moon. Very creative, and I liked it. The cyborg's arm is a nice idea also, but a little too complex for real use. That's really about it. The ship designs aren't great (but meld well). There's no explanation given about how the air sticks around the ships, but I assume it has something to do with the artificial gravity device. I don't have a lot of specific complaints with the movie (ok, the nova thing, but I went over that). In general its dumbed down and pandering. I don't like that in a movie. Especially a kid's movie.

Now, on to Matrix: Reloaded. As I said in an earlier post, I'm happy with the movie in general. I went to see it as a good fight fest, with no plot. It delivered on both counts. Having given the movie some thought, it seems to be pounding home a single message. Is there choice or not? Neo doesn't know his purpose, so he just does what people tell him to do. He's being controlled, and isn't exercising choice. He's been forced into things. Agent Smith lost his purpose and now he's seeking revenge. He's taking control by choosing what to do (eliminate Neo). All the programs in the Matrix are following their purpose. They're ignoring choice as an option because they're not able to make choices. All the good programs, anyway. The bad ones (the minor ones) are trying to make choices, and not really succeeding. The French guy goes on this long rant about cause and effect. Reasoning why it can seem like you have choice but things are ultimately inevitable. The prophet tells Neo that he's already made choices for the future, and its his job to understand them.

In the end, we meet The Architect. He gives a very confusing bit of exposition about how there isn't any choice. Everything is based on cause and effect. In fact, even given a system loaded with divergences, there's only a single outcome. He's so sure of it becuse this is Neo the 6th. His explanation reveals that this isn't the first Matrix. This is the 8th (he doesn't tell you which number it is, but he does go over the other versions - heaven, hell, and then there's the previous 5 "chosen ones"). He tells Neo that its up to him to choose to restart the Matrix (thus, the reloaded bit in the title), or to let the whole thing go. All the humans would die. Each other Neo has chosen to restart the Matrix, but our Neo chooses to let it all go to hell.

In the last bit of the movie, Neo and his friend are stranded. Also he's gained the ability to affect the machines directly. I think its because he went to the source and had a bit of it downloaded into his brain. We won't know till Matrix 3.

I've got some serious complaints about the movie. At the end of the Matrix, Neo has several rather cool abilities. He can fly, he can stop bullets by thinking about it. He can see the code that makes up the matrix. He can move so quickly that he can block the agents without even trying. Of course, by the start of the second movie he's no faster than the agents (in fact, he seems to be slightly slower). He flies around, and he can still stop bullets and see the matrix as code, but he just seems much less powerful. Of course at the end of the movie he's still very stupid. After all he says "I leave it up to you." So, he's letting the machines figure out what to do? Well, they figure it out. They kill all the people. Woo.

The worst bit about the movie has to be the sex scene. Its in the middle of the movie, and really doesn't serve any purpose. The big speech given by Morpheus needs to be given. I can even see a segement of the dancing serving the purpose. Hell, even having Trinity and Neo go off alone makes sense. They can cut from about there until we get back to the morning. That would make some sense. Having the nude bodies and the writhing and such just seems gratuitous. Of course, we don't really get to see Trinity's tits either, so instead we have a number of random extras all "sweaty" enough to have their tits on full display for a minute. Bounce and bob and weave and rub up against the men erotically. Yep. A perfect bit of pandering to the adolescent males who lost interest during the diplomatic bits of the movie. It'll hold them until the exposition from the council elder and the council meeting is over, right?

There are some things that I really liked. The fact that they used doors to get anywhere. No matter where in the matrix that might be. This is very good. No reason that programs shouldn't be able to travel anywhere in the matrix quickly. The effects on the ghost twins is nicely done. They don't go into enough detail on them really, and they don't make them as effective as they could be. I like that there's still a fair amount of silent communication in the movie between different programs. Looks, touches and other methods all facilitate communication between the programs so that they don't have to use words. This idea really works for me.

Maybe the second movie will make more sense after the third movie is released. Maybe not. Maybe there really isn't a point to it at all.

Posted 8:41 AM by Tim
So busy this weekend that I didn't get time to blog. Let's recap, shall we?

Friday night I went with Wayne and several of his friends to see Matrix: Reloaded. Which, as I've said already I wasn't expecting much more than cool effects and fight scenes. That's what I got. I have to say that there was some plot, but it was all focused on telling the viewiers one point. And part of that point was: It'll all make sense in the next movie. I enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

I got home pretty late after the movie, but stayed up to play a little Deathmatch Halo with Wayne. Fun. I lost 15 to 12. Slept in late the next morning trying to counteract the extra level of sleepiness I had. Around 3 the next day I headed out with Rob and his wife to LARP. Got to play as a crazy man for about 6 or 7 hours straight (amazing that that much time passses, really). Great fun though. I have to wait a month for the next game. Of course, I got home about 4AM that day.

I get to sleep till about 10AM because I've got a Vampire pre-release game on. We get there, I choose the weakest starter and build a not-terrible-but-certainly-not-strong-enough deck and proceed to be ousted first in each game. Still enjoyable. I nab a box of boosters (which I'm starting to think of as "too many cards") and I think I've got some of everything.

Monday we take it easy. Just relaxing at home and then out to wander about an historical re-enactment site that's local. Interesting stuff. I've always liked re-enactments.

This week looks a little slower all around. There's another Vampire tourney this weekend. It was supposed to be for t-shirts, but its been upgraded (well, side-graded) to a sweatshirt tourney. I do not know what to put together. I'm going to figure out something though.

In other news, school is getting close to being finished. I've got to get back to work on it.

Posted 1:05 PM by Tim
This is shaping up to be an interesting weekend. Will go see the Matrix: Reloaded, then there's the LARP game tomorrow, and then then Vampire pre-release. Busy. Bren and the girls are running off to see the grandparents, so that leaves me more or less at home alone for this weekend. Well, "at home" is pretty much when I'm sleeping, given the amount of cool stuff going on tomorrow.

Anime North is on this weekend, which I would have loved to have attended, but everything else got in the way. It seems that one of the children's TV stations is going to be doing a big broadcast from there, so I might get to see about a minute or two of the whole show if I'm lucky. Especially the cosplay. Maybe I'll figure out something to go as for a con at some point in the future. We'll have to see.

Now, about Matrix tonight. I'm expecting the effects to be nothing short of spectacular. Fight scenes all over the place and cool stuff everywhere. We get to see what Zion looks like, so that should be cool. The plot itself I expect to be pretty weak. After all, we're dealing with a system where Neo can change things pretty much as he wills. Of course, I can see spots where the plot could continue directly from where it left off. This is what I'm going to be watching the most for. If it manages a better plot than I figure they'll go with, I'll be happy. Of course, everyone knows that there will be a third movie (because they already shot it), so the second movie has to go pretty far with the plot.

Speaking on the third movie, I really only see a few possible ends. First, the humans manage to win. They take back the earth and get on with the healing. Second, the machines win. We get a terminator-esque ending to the earth. Third, neither side "wins" but they work out a deal that lets everyone live happily. I really don't see this one happening - especially if you've seen the animated shorts on the Matrix site. Fourth, Everyone destroys everyone else. No more machines or humans to worry about. Lastly, and probably the worst idea is for the humans to find out that the whole "Matrix" was really just a big scam of some sort. Either the humans involved are actually inside of a sub-matrix of some kind, or it was all some crazy experiment. As plot-twisty as this might be, I don't think it would leave people really happy about the whole thing. I guess we'll see what's what around Hallowe'en, eh?

Posted 1:54 PM by Tim
We recently bought a second-hand TV. Bigger than our current set. It had a small problem though. It wasn't displaying the picture right. I got a call from the repair guy saying that the repair would take longer than expected, because the set had been repaired before, and he wasn't sure that it was done right. He'd have to order in the schematics and then check it out. Apparently the set has had some interesting modifications made to it.

The reason that I'm writing about this incident at all is because of the speech pattern of the person I was talking with. He had a habit of ending all thoughts with "you know what I'm saying, right? You understand?" To which I had no reasonable response. After all, I did understand to some degree, but not enough to put anything meaningful forward in the conversation. Also, he reiterated the point that he was trying to make at least six times. It was as if he felt that I had no idea, and really, really wanted to know that I understood. Of course, saying "Oh." and "Ok." and "Oh. Ok." didn't do much to convince him that I was really following.

Anyway, it'll be at least another week till the new TV is fixed. I can wait.

Posted 12:56 PM by Tim
So I missed a couple days of posting. Whoops. I even had some ideas of things that I wanted to write about. Of course I've forgotten all about what I was going to say. So, I suppose I could just say what's going on now. First up, I'm just about to write an exam. Yeah, it's supposed to be online or something, so I don't quite know what to expect. I'll probably post again when I'm all done.

Alos on the blocks is this weekend - specifically tomorrow. I'll be heading off to the Vampire league, and trying to steal a few more points from people. Woo! There are a few decks that give me a good scare, so I've gone with the idea of making a few changes to a deck idea that I had. We'll see how that goes.

Posted 1:05 PM by Tim
Did you ever start something with high hopes and energy and then start to get really tired of it. Even though you still want to do it? I do that all the time. A lot of my projects start that way. I have a ton of energy and then I get distracted by something or the reality of the level of work sets in and I don't get it finished. I have to stop doing things like that.

It's a cycle that needs breaking. I get an idea and then get excited about the possibilities. I do some planning, and some thinking and then I start to think about how long this will actually take me. If it's a lot of time, then I usually drop the idea in the planning stage and leave it there. If it's not too long, I'll probably start on it. If I do manage to get it started, then I'll work on it for about a week, or until something pressing happens. It'll consume most of my thinking and free time. And, more often than I'd like to admit, I'll stop working on it before it gets finished.

I read somewhere that people with my personality (I think it was a personality test I'd taken) tend to be worried about failure and at the same time overestimate our abilities. We take on something that we can probably do, or we take on something simple. We finish the simple things and leave the other things not quite finished. By leaving the jobs unfinished, we never have to admit a failure. "We'll get back to it and finish it up." In a sense, it's not a failure, because we didn't actually fail. Of course, it's also not a success either, but we're not supposed to be as concerned about successes.

I can see some truth in that. There's so many projects that I've got running that I often feel overwhelmed by them. And I've written about them here on many occasions. I've still got things that I started working on over Christmas still sitting about the house. That's pretty bad if you think about it.

Posted 11:23 AM by Tim
They say that "it never rains, but it pours." This is how I'm feeling now. But its not really pouring, it's more like a teasing dunk in the toilet of life. Lemme 'splain.

Last week I went to an interview for a job in Toronto. I got the call on the weekend, and these people were looking for someone to start right away. They've got almost no time to do their Phase 1 thing. I went in, interviewed and was told I did well, but that they were "still looking for someone." No issue there, it happens. Besides, they might not find that someone else and give me another call.

The day of my interview I got a call from some other company which was looking for something that I didn't quite do. Pretty big boost to my esteem that I got 2 calls in the space of 3 days. Yesterday, I got an email from a company I've done some work with before. They've got a job from a company that is suspiciously like the job I've already interviewed for (they're recruiters, so it's possibly the same job). Today I got a call from a recruiter, with precisely the same job I've already interviewed for. They were smart enough to ask me if I've already been applied to this job, and I, of course, had to tell them that I had been.

So, in the last two weeks I've had 4 recruiting companies call me up. Three of them wanting me to apply for the same job (more or less). I'm starting to think that I'm the only person around here that really does the kind of work they're looking for. Good for me, bad for employers.

Posted 8:16 AM by Tim
Missed a couple of days of blogging, so you get to play catch-up with me. Let's see. First, Wayne's car has stranded him in Nova Scotia temporarily. He'll get it fixed up and be back here in no time.

I've had a lovely chat with a few people about possibly getting some work on. I'm still waiting for some more information on it.

Bren and I managed to get out to see X2: X-Men United this weekend thanks to the generous help of Robert. I've got a short review of the movie here, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to know about don't read anymore of today.


Ok. The movie starts out with a great scene of combat against Nightcrawler. It's all spin-kicks and teleports. Very cool though. After that main scene it slows down a little bit and starts to lay out the plot of the movie. The plot isn't too bad, but its a very action oriented movie (which you'd have to expect, really). There are a few bits that really stand out. Mystique getting into anything she wants because of her ability to think quickly and react even quicker. Magneto escapes from his prison because the main guard has too much iron in his blood. Enough for three little metal balls. Perfect.

Then there's the appearance of all the side-characters. Like Colossus. I wish I knew more of them. Pyro, and Iceman were cool, though they didn't really get to do that much. Rogue, of course, went around abusing her powers like mad, which is always nice to see. Based on the movie she's absorbed Iceman, Pyro, Magneto and Wolverine (twice) - not to mention her random boyfriend in the first movie.

I did think that it might be the next movie before we saw Phoenix, but I suppose they're using her as a hook for the next one.

All told, its a good movie. It met my expectations and was an enjoyable watch.

Posted 11:47 AM by Tim
I must have mentioned the Vampire tournament, right? Well, here's a brief run-down (I had wrote fun-down there, but that wasn't right) of the happenings.

Me, Stewart, his wife, Robert and Cliff all headed down in Stewart's borrowed van. We were bringing the Malks to Toronto. All of us. Except Cliff, who was bringing Settites. That's a lot of Malks. Of course, each Malkie deck had a slighly different flavour. I was groups 1 & 2, Robert was 2 & 3 focusing on Dementation, Stewart's wife, Joeanne had group 2 & 3 weenies focusing on Dominate, and Stewart had Malk Antitribu. All just a little different. I think I should have taken a page from the setup of Robert's deck though, as he had the better deck.

We arrived in Toronto a little early, which is always good. But it meant that we had to wander around for a while before things got started. No problem, yesterday was Free Comic Book day, and we just stopped in at Hairy Tarantulas. Err.. no wait. That was closed too. So we went to the Eaton's center for a few minutes of lollygagging.

After that we managed to get to Hairy Tarantulas. They were open and I got my free comic. I also snagged an anime, Lost Universe #7 which was the one I'd had been missing from that collection. 66% off too.

The tourney venue opened and we got underway. I'll brief the details here 'cause I'm not sure I recall enough details.

First round, I'm at the 5 person table. My prey and grand-prey are newbies. Less than a month of playing combined. I, my predator and grand-predator are all people who have a fair bit of experience with the game. I manage to chew through the first guy pretty easily. He puts up token resistance only. Of course, the table turns against me, and I just let it happen. I'd built my deck to allow for this scenario. I'm trying to chew up the other newbie, but it's not going well. My predator and grand-predator have an agreement out about how they're going to divide up the table. I die after getting beaten about a bit. Secure Haven was nice, but not nice enough.

Second round, I'm at a table of 4. My prey is down to 2 pool at the end of my turn, and I know I can take him next turn. He suddenly gains 9 pool. Then he wipes out Cliff, who was his prey. This nets him 6 more pool, and annoys Cliff to no end. A few more tricks over the next 2 turns sees him manage to gain 6 more pool fromm an oust, and at least 5 or 6 more from other sources. I can't keep up and I'm ousted very quickly afterward. This game lasted a total of about 6 turns. I have a chance to get some food from the pizza joint next door.

Third round, my prey makes a daring attempt, and fails. He leaves himself open to some serious bleeding action, which I take full advantage of. My new prey finishes his prey off quickly afterward, and he's got a combat deck so I'm worried about getting through. My stealh abandoned me here. I finally manage to make a bid against him and it's just a little to little. He's got 2 pool left over, and I don't have enough to survive his onslaught. If I had an extra minion, or had cycled a card a little earlier, I would have been able to win this one.

As it was, I managed 2 VPs the whole day. This put me in 9th spot. Robert got 4.5 VPs, and was close to being able to get the extra few points he needed to make the top 5 (the 5th place guy had 5VPs). Stewart got 1 VP for himself as well, and tied at 11th. Cliff had a very bad day playing, getting ousted quickly in every game. Harsh. Joeanne didn't get any VPs either, but she stuck out 3 rounds and played well.

For our troubles, Robert and I got a t-shirt and qualified for the 2003 Championships at GenCon this year. Robert can't go unless he gets his visa thing sorted out. I'm not likely to make it unless I manage to get some serious cash flow happening.

I've got to work on something for the next tourney that isn't sneak and bleed. I don't want people thinking I'm a one-shot kinda guy. Well... at least not sneak and bleed with Malks. :)

Posted 5:04 PM by Tim
I've got a couple of pet projects running around in my head lately. Just things that I'd like to get done, given time and so on. Trouble is, there's too many other things already running around outside of my head. So much to do and so little time to get it all done. I've been trying to refocus my energies onto a single project, but I just don't find it working like it should. I'm still lost on what to get done first.

I've tried to prioritize on a number of factors: Time, Money (in and out), %complete and all that. It hasn't worked.

I know (quantitatively) that I should do the job that takes the least amount of time, earns me the most amount of money and is closest to being done. But I don't know which one that is. The hardest quantity to figure is the money. There's a lot of things that I can do that might earn me money... eventually. That's the biggest trouble. How long can I spend hoping to earn money eventually before I really need to earn some cash right now?

Posted 8:17 AM by Tim
There's a big Vampire game on this weekend. I'm trying to get a deck ready for it. So, last night, I was in a bar, playing cards. Yep. Crazy. Still it was fun. I kinda like the idea of having a waitress (a cute one too) ask me if I need anything while I play.

The tourney should be a load of fun. A fair crew of people from the KW area are going to be headed out that way. Unfortunately, we're all invading the place with Malk decks! 4 Malks and a Settite - we're all about the stealth apparently. Robert has said that he'd play something else, and knowing that we're all going with Malks makes me want to swap decks too. I think I'll stick with what I have though. It's been tested and I know it works well.