Posted 4:24 PM by Tim
I promised more, and so there is.

Over the holiday, I organized a little tourney. 8 people from the Midland area showed up including Wayne and me. We had removed ourselves from eligibility for the prizes, but played anyway. It wouldn't have been sanctionable, since I played as well as judged. In the end, Wayne came in first, undefeated through the day, and I came in second, losing only to Wayne. A great showing for our decks, other than the fact that our opponents were seriously outmatched.

The local store (there's only one out there) managed to pony some small prizes, and we all dropped by the place after the tourney. The store is small. Really small. Fitting Wayne, my brother-in-law, the store owners, their son, and me into the place was pretty tight. Add in the other 5 tourney players and it's really crowded. I played a game against the store kid and beat him handily, and picked up a few cards. Most of the stuff there is a good prize. Some of it is way overboard, and some is far below what I'd expect. It's the only place I know that has 50+ Rancor though.

I tried to get a game fo D&D going over the weekend too. I had meant for the game to run over two days or so, but that never materialized. We managed to play about 2 hours or so before calling the game to go to the movies. We saw The Two Towers, which was really good. I loved the huge battle scene animations, and I have to wonder how many times they needed to run the shots before they found one that they liked. It'd be cool to learn a little more about the program that they used to come up with the huge battles.

Posted 11:26 PM by Tim
I've made several attempts at posting lately. All eaten by Blogger.

To sum up: Went to the in-laws for Christmas (well, Boxing Day). Organized and played in a tourney, and basically got along alright. Tried to get a D&D game off the ground and managed to get in about 2 hours of play before calling it to go see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

More tomorrow.

Posted 9:09 AM by Tim
I just got an email from a friend of mine. While I love getting emails, it's the kind of email that annoys me. It was a wonderful dire warning about Hotmail shutting down. Of course, it was a massive chain letter, and not a real warning. Allow me to present a bit of a public service announcement on my own behalf:

Chain letters are not legitimate forms of communication. Especially for warnings, etc.

Most of the chain mail that I get is of the "warning" variety. The rest tends to be of the "promotion" variety. The warning kind usually says something like, "Hotmail is shutting down!" The message usually includes some official-like blurb about the many new sign-ups, and a lack of resources. I'll cut and paste for emphasis (edited to make it more readable):

----

{snipped around three pages of forward lists}

READ THE PARAGRAPH IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR HOTMAIL ACCOUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Hotmail User,

Because of the sudden rush of people signing up to Hotmail,it has come to our attention that we are vastly running out of resources. So, within a month's time, anyone who does not receive this email with the exact subject heading, will be deleted off our server.Please forward this email so that we know you are still using this account.

WARNING WARNING

We want to find out which users are actually using their Hotmail accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass this e-mail to every Hotmail user that you can and if you do not pass this letter to anyone we will delete your account.

From Mr. Jon Henerd

Hotmail Admin. Dept.


Our hotmail system is getting to crowded!! We need you to forward this to at least 20 people. I know this seems like a large number, but we need to find out who is really using their account. If you do not send this to at least 10 Hotmail members, we will delete your account. Sorry for this inconvenience.

Sincerely, Director of Hotmail Services

Aaron Lopez

Please do this! Some of my friends have already gotten deleted and you aren't allowed to send it back to the person who sent this email to you!!!

----

There's a couple of things that should tip you off that this isn't a legitimate email, and that's without even reading the email. The subject line of the email had smilies in it. They were frowny faces, but I don't think that a lot of business mail uses them - even in email. The mail came to be via a forward (lots of them), and not directly from Hotmail. Which seems like a pretty odd way of trying to do business with your customers.

Reading the email you'll note that there are several really bad vocabulary uses. Like, "we are vastly running out of resources," which is almost funny. "Quickly running out" is a much better wording, and correct. The notion that Hotmail is running low on resources is also pretty absurd. Hotmail is owned, funded and fronted by Microsoft. It's the public's major stopping point for them. If it turfed, there would be a lot of upset people. The idea that Hotmail can't tell who's using it's services is pretty silly too, and shows a lack of understanding about how this "intarnet-thingy" really works. There are a lot of systems that are out in the real world that can't tell you who (or how much) a service is being used, but Hotmail (and most of the internet, really) isn't one of them.

The message of the letter is pretty off too. They're crowded, so they want to keep only the people actually using the service. They want you to send the message out for them though. I guess they're too busy trying to find more resources? You have to send it to 20 people, none of which can be the person who sent you this email. Well, 10, if you haven't got 20 friends. And if you don't receive this email (or was that, send this email?), you're going to have your account deleted. After all, they're tracking this email around, even though they don't know who's using Hotmail.

These things just bother me.

Posted 12:59 PM by Tim
Wayne went to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last night. He's itching to go see it again. I must admit that I rarely watch a movie in a theatre, much less, twice. There have been a few notable exceptions. The first Lord of the Rings was one of them. I think I'm going to try to finagel a viewing with Brenda at the end of this week.

Posted 8:26 AM by Tim
Gahr. I'm still slightly sick. It's working it's way out of my system.

I suppose it's time that I mentioned Christmas. It's only 8 days away!! I haven't done any shopping yet. Poor me. No car means that getting to the mall isn't easy. I intended to do some shopping last weekend, but the illness got me, and I didn't do much of anything. I'd go shopping this week, but getting the car can be difficult. I'm going to try to get it tomorrow if I can. As I said, I have everyone to buy for still. The malls are going to be the death of me.

Posted 8:46 AM by Tim
I'm sick.

I hate being sick. Most of the time, I can shrug off an illness. I can just keep working through it, but now and then I catch a real cold of flu or something. That's when I have problems. I've got some kind of nasty flu right now, with all the amenities. I'm not liking this at all, of course. There's nothing that can be done for it, other than rest and fluids. That's pretty much the deal with any illness.

I'm having trouble with both of those though. The rest bit is bad because I'm just not able to get any sleep. I have to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes or so. That doesn't leave a lot of time for sleeping. Fluids are nice, but every bit of food irritates my stomach, and that's just not good. So everything is being taken slowly today. I'm moving slow, and trying to drink slow, and just doing everything slowly.

I think I'm going to take a three hour long shower now.

Posted 9:47 AM by Tim
I just took a look at the archives for the blog. The first post was November 1, 2001. That means that I had my one year anniversary over a month ago! (45 days past, really). Happy late anniversary to me.

I started the blog simply because I could. And that's led me to do several other things just because I could. Like the NaNoWriMo thing, or several other things that I can't quite recall now. Trust me, they're there, in the past somewhere. Well, despite being late, here's to another year of senseless rambling.

Posted 2:56 PM by Tim
Some days I like being houseDad. Other days I really, really don't. Today is one of the "not liking it" days. I overslept today, which automatically makes the day run late. I had to yell at the girls (rather loudly too) to get them to do the simplest things. We've been in a rush everywhere. I forgot what time they needed to go back to school this afternoon (I figured it out), and as a bit of a topper, I'm swamped in housework and my daughter is playing "guilt the busy daddy."

For those who don't know, the guit game goes like this. Find some activity that requires 2 people. Insist on playing it. Play a nice game of it. Daddy goes to do some housework. Play a halfhearted game by yourself until you get bored (about 1.2 seconds). Whine about lack of daddy. Say fun phrases like "nobody wants to play with me," "nobody loves me," and the classic, "too bad you're not playing because the game is over." Do this until daddy freaks out and yells at you.

I'm not sure why my youngest daughter doesn't play well on her own. Maybe it's because she's always had the older sister to play with? Anyhow, there's very few activities that she's able to do happily on her own. Which really sucks for me, because I already find my day far too short to get anything meaningful accomplished.

Posted 3:18 PM by Tim
I've been trying to get this place clean today. It's not going very well. First, we've got a lot of junk, and second, it's everywhere. Organizing even one room leads me into a number of other rooms, carrying things that should have been in there already, and taking things out of there that should have been in the other room.

Whenever Brenda cleans a room, you can see that it's cleaner. Whenever I do it, the room never looks any better, and all the rooms around it look worse.

Posted 11:28 AM by Tim
How to make money from home.

1. I have no idea.

Thanks for coming!

No seriously. It's been the main idle thought lately (next to the editing), and I really have no idea. I've broken it down into a few categories though.

1. Make something and sell it.
2. Get contract work that can be done from home.
3. Prostitution/Porn. (This is really a subset of #1)
4. Get a job.
5. Sell drugs (another subset of #1)
6. Magic.

I really like #6. Not just because it could stand for practicing enough to win money on the pro tour, but also that it means sitting at home while checks come from the ether somewhere while I sit on the couch and watch anime. You know, MLM, or running some kind of mail scam. But that means moving a lot.

#4 isn't really practical, because it means that I'm not at home most of the time.

Both #3 and #5 are subsets of #1. Make something and sell it. While making drugs and/or porn isn't that hard, I don't think I want to go that way. Neither make me a great role model for others, eh? So, I'm left with the things that I can do at the house. Right now, that's going to be writing, programming, crochet, sewing or such. Not a lot that really sells.

Writing and programming are both also in #2. Home contracts. I'd love to get one, but they're not easy. The problem is that I'm an unknown variable right now. Nobody knows what I can do, and I don't have a lot of references. Getting a few references isn't too hard - if you're willing to work for free, or are very connected. I'm not that connected out here, and I don't know any place looking to give me work for free. I've got a reasonable idea what to do for programming, but not for writing. I suppose that I'm supposed to write something and submit it, but I don't know how to do that. I'm not even sure where to get started. I did read about a novel prize thingy, and I think I'll probably look for more of those to try to submit the novel once it's finished with editing.

I really wish I knew what I was doing.

Posted 11:24 AM by Tim
Well, the weekend was nice. We went to see the in-laws and I 'discovered' a new card shop. A little mom-and-pop organization near the in-laws. Nice people, but the store is really small. That's not terrible, but it does mean that they aren't going to be having any tournaments in the near future. They barely had space for a little card table in there, but it was in use the whole time I was there.

The son of the mom who was running the joint was there. I hadn't brought a deck, so he loaned me one of his. A big fatty vampire deck with an average casting cost of about 5, I think. Pitted it against his burn deck, which neatly included Furnace of Wrath. Lotta big burn real quick. Surprisingly, it went 2-1 against the burn. I swapped over to another deck he had and wished I had kept the vamps.

I figure that if I were in the location, that store (it being the only one around), would be like a second home to me. Dunno what else I'd do with myself on the weekends.

Sunday saw me back in KW for the VTES games. Met several nice people and managed to have one game. Unfortunately, I managed to take the table, ousting 3 other players myself. The last guy and I split the last point, meaning the table went 3.5 and 0.5 points. That's not a bad showing really. I thought about the game afterward and noticed that I probably wasn't being aggressive enough at the end, focusing too much on ousting the others and not on getting a few solid hits in against my predator. No issues. Just something to think about for the next game.

I've been doing some editing on the novel still. I'm finding that the average rate of editing is about 1 page per day. There are 100+ pages, so I'm looking at about 3 months of slow editing. If I pick up the pace a little, I can probably have the thing edited by mid January. Gah. It's only the first edit too. After the edit, I'll need people to read it critically and point out anything that's confusing, strangely worded or that doesn't read well. Maybe I'll submit it to a publisher or something.

Posted 11:10 AM by Tim
Tonight is the TGIO meeting for NaNoWriMo for the KW writers. I'm really looking forward to it.

Tonight, tomorrow and all this weekend is going to be pretty rushed. Parent-teacher meetings, the TGIO meeting, a visit with the in-laws, a VTES game and more. Should be pretty crazy overall. But, it should be nice. I think I'll take the novel along with me to get in a little editing during the quiet parts of the evenings. If we have any quiet parts.

Posted 8:02 PM by Tim
So. There is a lot of lost time in my life now.

Little bits of time fall by the wayside far too often lately. When I went to work, I had to maximize the time I was at home in order to get anything accomplished. I didn't have a lot of open leisure time, but I did have a little bit of time here and there. Now that I'm not working, I have a lot of time that seems to go towards leisure. I'm just not allocating it very efficiently.

I've tried to find a way to make better use of the time that I have, but so far it hasn't been working out very well.

Posted 10:08 AM by Tim
I sometimes wonder what the world of my daughter's is like.

Here's the deal. My oldest daughter is a lot like me. Lately, we've been thinking that I've got Asperger's Syndrome. Which is basically an autism variant. There's a lot of the symptomology that matches up with me. Talking early, difficulty in social situations, poor eye contact (too much or too little), good math and science, etc, etc.

We haven't had me tested (too expensive if you ask me for very little gain), but we're getting her assessed. The earlier you start with helping, the more effective it'll be in the end. So, we can't say for sure if I am or if I'm not. In a way, I like that. What I do know, is that I'm different.

I don't mean "I'm different just like everyone else." I mean, I'm not the same as most people. There are 'normal' limits of behaviours that you see in people. Everyone has some fear of meeting people. You put yourself out there risking rejection - a little fear is normal. Normal people don't have to think about how long they're supposed to look at someone before it's polite to, say, blink. Yeah, not all of my blinking is natural. Some of it I do out of courtesy - you're welcome :)

Anyway, I know that she sees the world differently than her sister. I see it differently too, so I'm supposed to be the expert on just what her world is like. The trouble is, her world isn't necessarily mine. There's gonna be some overlap, but there's going to be differences. I hope thtat I'm able to help her understand that other people are different than she is (which, if you ask me is a funny reversal), but I know that I'm not going to be able to understand everything.

Posted 1:11 PM by Tim
I'm finding that doing one load of laundry and dishes (we got a dishwasher, very nice!) is able to maintain a slight deline in both the laundry and dirty dish states. That is, we're slowly building up a backlog of both. The dishes is truly minor. It'll be a frying pan, or a few glasses or such that just didn't make it in, or couldn't fit. The laundry is a bigger issue. We go through a lot of clothes for the girls every day. More if there's any accidents or messes. A load of laundry seems to handle most of our stuff, but there's always a few towels, or pants, or bedsheets that haven't quite made it into the wash yet.

Even if they do all make it in, there's inevitably the issue of putting the clothes away again. Nobody in the house likes doing that - especially when you couple it with the folding. I'd have to say that laundry is our biggest issue with keeping the house clean. If I can get through the laundry, I can get started on everything else.

Posted 9:29 AM by Tim
Ahh. Housedad. That's my word for me. Its like housemom, but, I'm not a mom, now am I? I have to say that it's fulfilling. But not rewarding. I don't know how Brenda managed to do it all this time. Maybe you get into a routine?

Posted 2:04 PM by Tim
I'm both liking and hating the unemployment thing. I like the fact that I have time to contribute to the house. I hate the fact that there just isn't enough time for me to do everything. I've got some time to myself, and I'm finding the house a little lonely. Not that I don't appreciate the time alone. I've got a lot of things to do, and it's a lot easier to get some of them done when there's nobody else around.

The home life isn't all that easy. I get the girls to school, and then pick them up for lunch, and again at the end of the day. Seems simple enough, but it really doesn't give you a lot of time between the pickups. Four times up the stairs a day is a lot. Not that they're bothering me that much. I find that I can take the first 6 flights alright, the 7th is the one that causes my muscles to start to lock up. I'm glad I didn't try taking on the CN Tower. It's good to know your limits.

In other news, I've got 2,000 or more words to do today, and I'm not sure when I'm going to get to them. I hate to use one of my "emergency" days, so I'll try to get them in today.

Posted 5:42 PM by Tim
Well, there hasnt' been a lot to write about lately. Not in my personal life, and not elsewhere. I played in a tournament this weekend, and made third place. Usually, this would make me happy. For some reason, it hasn't. I've been hoping for a little more. A little better placing and better overall gaming. I'm just not feeling fulfilled by Magic right now. Either I have to change decks or I have to spend a little bit of time coming up with something that works for me.

I've been working pretty heavily on the crafts. That's taken up a bit of my time. The lack of work really has just left me doing crafts all day. It's not exactly what I want to do with my time, but it's not terrible. Maybe I'll finally get some of that sewing done.

Posted 4:07 PM by Tim
I've been reading about Lojban. A structured language with absolutely regular syntax and no ambiguity. Great stuff. I'm a language nut really. I just wish that I had someone about willing to learn a language with me.

This is a frustrating habit of mine for Brenda. A friend of mine and I would commonly break into coded speech while goofing off, and she would have no idea what we were talking about. It wasn't too difficult to work out if you knew the trick, could spell and managed to keep everything in your head all at once. My friend and I had this worked out pretty well, but we still misunderstood now and then. :)

I've been a language nut for a long time. That's part of the explanation of my vocabulary (and it's usage). I've always been concerned with the precise usage of words and their meanings. I'll often use a word that someone around me doesn't know, just because it's the correct one for the concept I'm trying to express. Lojban seems perfect for me, since it allows a very precise usage of language.

Of course, I've also been interested in learning things like Klingon, Esperanto, Sign, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Japanese, and of course Spanish, French, German, Italian, Hindi and Dutch. Basically any language that I can get my ears on. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe I just like to understand everything I hear.

Always, the trouble is that I don't have anyone to learn the language with me. Conversation (especially correct usage of words) is important. If you can find someone to talk with, you're going to be motivated to increase the vocabulary. Without that, you're learning just the semantics and syntax. A dry study in any language. It's the expression that makes a language come alive.

So.... anyone interested in learning something with me?

Posted 2:24 PM by Tim
My newest net game is "What's on OpalCam?" For some reason I just keep checking her page to see the new look of frustration on her face. I never catch her "live" so I suppose it's alright.

And now... Monkeys! Ok. Not really. They're expensive, and they make a big mess. We offer you a convenient replacement act. Silence: The Motion Picture.

Posted 8:13 AM by Tim
First thing to happen in a while worth blogging about and I don't even get to it on the day it happened. Ok, here's the situation. I was brining the girls back from a doctor's appointment. On the ride home, both of the fell asleep. I pulled into the parking lot of a pizza joint so that I could call Bren and find out what time she was coming home. I figured that with my day I might as well order a pizza and delay delilvery so that it would arrive just after we did. Well, with the girls asleep, I didn't want to bother getting out of the car, waking them up, carrying them in and ordering. So I"m thinking about how to solve this.

I could leave them in the car, and just go order it, but that's not a good idea at all. Then I notice that they have a number on the marquee. I call them up and order the pizza from the cell phone. I'm like 10 steps from the door and I'm calling them on the phone. Crazy. I drive home and wake the girls to get them into the house. The pizza arrives when it's supposed to. Happy, happy.

Posted 1:15 PM by Tim
This isn't my primary blog right now. It's Storylines right now. It's just what's focusing me right now. Just about every moment of my free time has been taken up by this novel. And now, I have to split my attentions between writing and crochet. There's a craft show coming up, and it'd be nice to have something to add to the display. Yeah. I've got a lot of freaking time. Sleep in? What's that? Wake at 5 AM?? Yeah, I can do that.

So, my hobbies are starting to stress. Fortunatly, I've got a built in release. It's called unemployment. You know, theres a patch for stress now? Yeah, it's called a 45 slug. You apply it to the base of the skull.

You gotta forgive me. I'm in an interesting place right now.

I got a friend who's all down over his girl and her "extra curricular" activities. Yeah, it's not a good idea to mention them here, but I'm not going to go into specifics, so nobody gets offended, eh? Anyway, that's got him all in a tizz. Which sucks.

Me, I'm fine, but I'm in transition to house dad mode. I'm really looking forward to a break from this day to day. Gah. A little bit of time every morning just for me? Great! Woo. Maybe I"ll finally be able to exercise again. Or clean the house, or write, or paint, or draw, or just get a few minutes of "me time," if you catch my meaning. Etc, etc, etc.

Gah. I don't think I realilzed where my head was today. Time to stop the dumping, eh?

Posted 12:21 PM by Tim
Whenever I meet people in real life from the internet, I always worry about writing about the experience on my blog. I want to write about it, of course, but the trouble comes in writing frankly about impressions. I don't want to offend anyone, and I don't want to freak anyone out. I'm talking about the meeting with the NaNoWriMo people today (see Storylines). Apparently they had read the bit of my story blog where I was writing from the viewpoint of a first person psychotic. What a great impression!

I've been reading their blogs as well (well, those for whom I've found the blogs). I expect them to read my blog for today, and I wanna be frank about the meeting, but I'm concerned about being seen as, well, a freak. I mean, that's probably the truth. But I don't wanna scare people too soon. :)

Posted 1:32 PM by Tim
The relocation has been done. I'm back in a cube again. I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not. It's pretty small in here. There's no pop machine on this floor, and, well, I don't know anyone here. No matter, I didn't really know anyone on the old floor either.

Posted 2:58 PM by Tim
I've got one week of work left and I'm being relocated to another office. Woo. I'll have to reroute my phone to another persons phone because it'll take 2 weeks to set up a phone at a new location. Obstensibly, this move is so that I can train the other people more effectively. I'm cool with that.

Posted 9:16 AM by Tim
Hmm. There hasn't been much to post since I started on NaNoWriMo. I suppose that's because I've been doing very little other than work, sleep and write. Even gaming has gone to the wayside for now.

I'll leave the novel rambling in Storylines, and try to focus on something to say here.

Brenda is starting work next week, so that's a pretty exciting development. I'm going to be unemployed, so I get to be house-dad until I can find a new job. I hope it doesn't take me too long.

Posted 11:13 AM by Tim
I did alright at the tournament this weekend. I've been working dutifully on my novel too. It's going well.

Brenda had an interview this weekend. She was offered a job (at the same time I was offered one this weekend). We've decided to have her work for a little while, and I will stay home and take care of the children and home. At least for now.

Posted 8:53 AM by Tim
NaNoWriMo starts today. Check the progress of my novel. Hey, it's the first day, do be so critical!

Hallowe'en was last night (yes, it has an apostrophe in it!). I went to see the girls school party. More spidermen, princesses and animals than you usually find in a school. Overall fun, but also highly frustrating on a low level. Why, oh why does every girl have to be a princess?

We did the trick-or-treating thing too. We didn't get to very many houses because it was cold and raining. That's fine. The girls liked it, and they got enough candy to keep them happy for a day or two.

I'm off my diet now, so I can eat anything again. I'm starting slow with the food though, because I want to try to keep off the weight I've lost already.

Provincials this weekend. I might not go.

Posted 10:08 AM by Tim
Gah. Sick yesterday. Not feeling well today. What am I supposed to do?

I've got 2 major tournaments coming up this weekend. I may end up going to only one. I've got a largely untested deck ready, and a completely untested deck sitting on the sidelines waiting. I'm really not wanting to play the same deck as everyone else, so I'm looking at building a deck that will stand up against the main crowd and give me a little bit of a chance. I've just got to get some testing in.

Posted 10:22 AM by Tim
Woo. Weekend over.

Played in the big tourney this weekend. I made it to the third round of eliminations, which is 2 rounds further than ever before. That's always encouraging. Even though I didn't win, I still managed to improve on past performance.

The weekend was filled with interesting things. I helped some friends get their new house ready (more on this in a minute), I played in the tourney, and we had a bit of a dinner party. Not a bad weekend really.

Ok. The house thing. I've always wanted a house. I just have unrealistic expectations for what I'd want in a house. I'd want something rediculously massive, and that's really impractical. I'm going to have to live with the idea of a house that's just ordinary. To me, a house is like a really big project. You keep working on improving it constantly, but slowly. We helped out with getting the house ready for our friends. A little cleaning, some painting, etc. I didn't get to do very much because there was much corraling of 4 children into useful activities.

The problem with helping others move into a house is that it really cements the idea that I won't be moving into a house for some time. Sure, it'd be nice to be able to buy something, but for that you really need stability. That means that I'd need a solid job. Something that isn't going away after 3 months. I'd need something full time. A real job. I just don't see that coming yet. So, no house for a while. I can live with that.

Posted 8:25 AM by Tim
I broke the diet yesterday. I went to a Chinese restaurant and had some things with flour and such in them. That wasn't too much of a problem. I also had chocolate mousse pie too. Yummy. I'm not supposed to have caffeine though. I think the caffeine (in conjunction with some serious stress) is giving me an issue today though. I'm back on the diet today though, so it should be better soon.

Posted 1:31 PM by Tim
On the subject of me.

I'm on this diet, as I've already said. But now, it's got an extra layer with it. No caffeine. I figured that giving up caffeine was going to be exceptionally difficult. I had actually said that I was glad that the diet allowed caffeine, because I would go on some killing rampage without it. This was the day before caffeine was pulled from the diet, of course. So, no gluten, no milk, no caffeine. I find myself down to chicken and water. It's different. Of course, I'm also on medications now. Supplements to make sure I'm not missing any essentials, etc.

I imagine I'm losing weight with this diet. I can't confirm it, of course, because I'm not bothering to weigh myself. It just seems like I might be somewhat lighter overall. If I managed to get back to working out, I'm sure I'd lose weight faster. Working out hasn't been given any priority lately, though, so I just haven't bothered with it. I'll have to work my way back to where I was a little while ago. I'm definately thinking of starting if I can arrange a good time in an evening.

In other news, I've been thinking about my friends back home. I haven't been home in over (or is it nearly?) 2 years. I feel the call of the homeland. I must go. But, I haven't got the time for it right now. Maybe in a few months when I'm unemployed.

Unemployment has been a conversation topic with Brenda lately. She figures she'll go and get some trash job while I stay home. I'm not sure about that as an option though. I mean, I don't mind her being employed (it's nice to have the extra income), but I would much rather her work in her field than as some store jockey. Of course, I was looking at that as an option for myself also, so I suppose I can't really comment.

I've though about freelancing, but I don't see how I can do that. First, I'm not as aware of the business in the area as I should be for a freelancer (I suppose I could find out). I'm sure that if I had a client, I could support the family on comissions. The trouble is, I'd need a number of contracts to keep the money flowing properly. Finding the contracts has always been difficult for me, and there's a little history that sets me back on my esteem in this area. I'm sure I could find something, if I just had time to properly canvass the city and ask the right questions.

Posted 1:16 PM by Tim
Oh, FYI, the NaNoWriMo stuff is over here.

Posted 12:46 PM by Tim
This weekend I decided to dye my hair blue again. I've got this temporary dye, so it's all out by the time I shower. Whenever I dye my hair, the girls want theirs done. And Brenda had thought about dying her hair blue also, so we ended up all having a bit of blue (well, not the oldest, she didn't bother with it this time). Of course, we all went out to have some fun and do some shopping. We got some looks. Now, in Toronto, I wouldn't expect to get any looks (except from the people in the bank where I work). In KW, I figure that I shouldn't get any looks downtown either, but we weren't downtown, we were uptown. Not a lot of blue hair out there.

I've been trying my hand at sculpting lately. This leads me to think of myself as very Renaissance (I paint, draw, sculpt, play music and debate - woo!). Anyhow, I've been working with Sculpey (a polymer clay). I only bothered to do it because a friend of ours had given us some clay to work with, and I felt like sculpting an idea that I had for a diorama.

I've finished the first bit, and now I've just got to do up the rest of it. I have no idea if I have enough clay to do all of it though. I may just have to go buy some.

Posted 1:17 PM by Tim
Hair is today's subject. Mine, specifically.

I've been growing out my hair for a while now (since I landed this originally, so about 9 months). It's getting long now (it was pretty short before), and I'm starting to wonder about cutting it. Two months ago, cutting it was out of the question, now, I'm mulling the idea. It's not the longest it's ever been, but it is getting close. I had once grown it to the length that I was sleeping on it (and thus, pulling my hair with I rolled over). See my wedding photos for a reference (which, I'm not in the mood to post, so imagine something mullet length all around).

That reminds me. Mullets. Terrible haircut. I'm worried of people thinking that I've got a mullet-do going on. Anyhow, it is getting to be a fair length, and it might just be time to consier a cut. Shorter hair seems easier to colour too. And I'm looking for a good opportunity to go blue again.

Posted 4:24 PM by Tim
It's been a long time since I even bothered to really look at them, much less play with them. I'm talking about my miniatures. I've got 400+ minis on the shelves in my room. I used to play Warhammer and 40K. I don't play so much now. One thing that I always did wrong with the minis was buy too many. I'd buy a squad, and intend to paint them completely before I bought another. But, I'd get about half way into priming them, and have bought more. So, eventually, my army grew, and the percentage of unprimed and unpainted minis grew with it.

I have three principal armies. Sisters of Battle, about 20 figures, Dark Eldar, about 150 minis, and Dark Elves, about 250 minis. The Only army completely primed is the Sisters. They're all just white, except for the Leader, who's got a tiny bit of colour on her (so she stands out). They were only about half done until a few months ago, when I figured that I might as well, finish getting them primed while I had a little free time.

The Dark Eldar were almost totally unprimed. About 120 of the 150 figs had no primer on them what-so-ever. That meant that about 15% of them were primed, and only about 2% of the army had managed to see any sort of colour (of course, they were very nicely done figures). The Dark Elves faired a little better, with about 120 of them not being painted. That amounts to only about 45% of the total army size, and many of the primed minis were actually painted.

Today, well, yesterday really, I figured that since I still had a can of spray primer, and a little bit of free time in the evenings, it would be easy to just take them downstairs, and do 10 or 20 an evening. I didn't get around to that for lack of a box. Today, however, I noticed that there was an empty box from the packs of Magic we've bought recently. So, I was all set. Just after lunch I started with the priming. Nearly all of the Dark Eldar are now primed. Only 11 minis are unprimed. This is mainly because spray primer would make too much of a mess with them, or they still need fixing in some way (one needs a head). That's pretty good. Less than 10% is now in an "unplayable" situation. I don't know if I'll get around to painting them, but I figure that a simple paint scheme should let me do a small group of them in an evening. If I get enough of them painted, maybe I'll start playing again.

Posted 10:35 AM by Tim
Working the numbers for NaNoWriMo. I'm a numbers kinda guy. Gotta figure out my numbers. 50,000 words in 30 days is 1,667 words a day. Given my commute time (total of about 3 hours), I've got to be writing about 555 words a day to meet the deadline (assuming I can get 3 hours a day on the weekends too). That means that I need to write about 10 words a minute during my work times. Simple, eh? I mean, I can type at about 40 wpm. That's 4 times as much as I need to do in order to keep on schedule. :)

This is going to be interesting, yes.

Posted 9:58 AM by Tim
Hmmm. I've been looking at this NaNoWriMo site. I've seen it on other blogs that I read. The idea is intriguing, to write a novel in the month of November. Start on November 1, and finish by November 30. 30 solid days of writing. Hmm. I wonder if I can do that. It sounds like a challenge, and I like challenges. I've got a little bit of time every morning (which I tend to spend browsing). There's no reason for me to not try it. The only hurdle - 50,000 words.

One one hand, 50,000 words seems like so much. On the other, it doesn't seem like that much. Anyhow, I've just signed up. Great adventure probably awaits! Woo. See, I'll be a fantastic writer. Besides, Storylines is full of starter information, right? Sure it is. I've just got to get writing. No, wait. I have to wait until the beginning of November. Ok. I can do that.

Posted 2:19 PM by Tim
I didn't post yesterday, so you get two posts today. This one has to do with tournament Magic, so those of you not interested in that sort of thing should probably ignore this post.

I've been thinking about the tournament scene out here in KW. It's pretty good right now. I could get a tournament in every day - if I were willing to quit my job and do nothing but Magic all the time. Anyhow, finding a weekend game seems pretty simple right now. Same goes for throw-down games, if only because Wayne lives in the same house. There's three tournaments coming up in about 2 weeks, and I'm trying to get ready for all of them. If they were all the same format that would be one thing. But they're not. They're all different. So, I'm trying to come up with three different decks, and just get everything ready. It's not easy. I think I'll drop the "creative" routine and just build what works.

Part of the problem for me is that I have a lot of ideas and I can get halfway with anything I want to build, but I'm always shy a few cards here and there to make it perfect. Wayne is always saying, "but I have 4 of those, you could use them!" but I don't want to borrow everything for a deck. That just doesn't sit well with me. I've got to go with what I have. I'm strange that way. I'll loan out all kinds of stuff, but I hate to borrow. Just me, I guess.

Posted 10:11 AM by Tim
I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but I keep getting sidetracked. I'm starting to realize that I'm not 18 anymore. I mean, I'm not old, but I'm certainly not as young as I was. I need more sleep (maybe that's the kids?), I just can't do an all-nighter anymore. With this realization comes a lot of thinking. I need to start thinking about where I want to be in the future. I'm still mostly floating along, going with the flow.

I keep thinking that I need to be planning for the future, putting all my ducks in a row, thinking about tomorrow. It makes me worried. I don't like worrying, but sometimes, you just can't avoid it. I've been mulling the facts of the future. My job only lasts another 6 weeks. After that, nothing is certain. I know that it shouldn't be too hard to find something that I can do. But I also feel like I'd like a few weeks of not working. That's not really an option though, because there just isn't any way for me to take time off and still pay bills. I suppose I could go back to school - but that won't pay the bill either.

And this is where I'm stuck. I want to do something for myself, but I can't because I've got to work to support the family and house and lifestyle we've got now. So I work, but get so little time to work on the other things. I guess I have to do it in small pieces still. Keep working in the background, and late at night. I'll figure something out.

Posted 3:21 PM by Tim
I'm glad it's Friday. That means that I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I like that feeling. I'll even get to sleep in. I've been tired all this week. And I've been off at least a day in my head. Maybe the weekend will help me sort it all out.

Posted 9:49 AM by Tim
Work has decided to change their deal with me a little. I have to give detailed time sheets now. Really, that's not that big an issue. It just means that I need to account for all of my time in the office every day. That way they can bill my cost to the departments better. I wish they had started off that way though, it wouldn't have been an issue now. I just hope they don't want me to back-date all the time sheets, because, frankly, I can't remember the number of hours I did X or Y or Z.

Posted 10:01 AM by Tim
It's Wednesday already. I'm a day off on my brain clock. I keep thinking it's Thursday.

Posted 4:31 PM by Tim
The thing about trying to write more meaningful posts is that you actually have to have something to say. I haven't found that to be the case today. I've been focusing on the job I have to do here at work, and that leaves me with very little time to appreciate the intricacies of one thing or another. All I've got is little snippets of thought in the moments between work thoughts.

I suppose those are better than nothing. First up. The sniper guy down in the Washington area. I only heard about this guy today, but it seems like he's a busy guy. 8 people in 6 days. That's a lot of shooting. 2 have lived, so he's got about a 75% kill rate. I can see him being really happy with those numbers. You can expect a lot more hits if this guy isn't caught soon. Now, for those on the victim side - there really isn't anything you could do to prevent this from happening. Even wearing a bullet-proof vest isn't enough insurance.

The sweater project is going very well. Both sleeves are done, which means that there's basically joining and finishing to do. I've got to look up (or figure out) the button sizes for the sweater, so that we can have the buttons made. After this, I've got a couple of small projects that I really want to get done up.

There's 2 new comics in my daily reading list. The first is For Better or For Worse, which is a syndicated comic that is also repeated on the internet. Of the syndicated comics out there, I find that this is probably the only one worth reading. I found out that the comic is set in Southern Ontario, and that the artist lives in Northern Ontario, which, for me, just makes the comic that much better. Next is Life of Riley (click on the Life of Riley item on the left). Life of Riley is just too cool for me. Go check it out.

Posted 10:35 AM by Tim
I've been reading over a few of the posts, and I've noticed how bland and predictible the endings of my posts are. I'm always ending with "we'll see what happens" or just sort of cutting it off. I think this is because I'm not thinking of something before I start posting most of the time. This really isn't acceptable blogging behaviour, and I'm going to work on changing it so that I'm making more sense. Or, at least being more entertaining.

Posted 10:33 AM by Tim
I'm three days into the new diet. The first day was pretty difficult. No bread and no cheese and no milk are pretty hard for someone like me (who likes all those things way too much). It's getting better, and there are a few perks to the whole thing. First, I'm eating only healthy foods now (aside from potato chips - plain, of course), and second, I'm eating less overall. This means that I'm absolutely bound to lose some weight.

We picked up the Harry Potter DVD yesterday. I was expecting a little more from it than I got. I was hoping for deleted scenes and so forth, but I didn't find any of that on the DVD. There are some very nice things on the DVD for information about how they put the whole thing together, but not a lot of info on deleted scenes, or such. Maybe I'm expecting too much from a DVD?

In other news, I'm still prepping for the big tournaments coming up this month. There are three, and all of them have a different format. That's not that big a hurdle, but it means that I'll have a little bit of trouble getting everything to work out. More testing is necessary, but I think I'll have something together soon.

Posted 2:10 PM by Tim
I've just realized that I'm 6 weeks into my current contract. That leaves me with about 6 weeks left. I should be worried. I haven't got that long before the spectre of unemployment comes up again. But, for some reason, I'm not. Unemployment doesn't seem to scare me too much.

I've got a couple of side projects that I've been too pressed for time to get started. I'm thinking a bit of unemployment might let me get them started. I mean, look at the sweater project. I had to set it aside just to get an extra hour's sleep each day. That's pressured for time, eh?

There are so many things I wish I had time to do, and so little time to get any of them done. I'm not only unsure of what to get started with, but I'm unsure of where I'd manage to find the time for it once I got started.

Posted 10:22 AM by Tim
We're looking at a milk-protein free, gluten free, casein free diet. This is supposed to help out with some of the symptoms of autism. Brenda and I are thinking that maybe my oldest and I may have some autism. As far as the symptom list goes (it's extensive), and I've got a fair number of them, at varying degrees. The oldest seems to have something similar. She's a lot like me.

Anyhow, this book suggests that some of it may be diet related (at least for mild autism). So we're going to try it out. Milk seems to be the culprit, so we've got to eliminate as much of the milk protein as possible. That includes casein and gluten - which are both milk proteins. Just to give you an idea of the foods that we aren't supposed to eat now:

Milk (pretty obvious)
Cheese, yoghurt, sour cream
Pasta (double bad on Mac and Cheese)
Breads (almost all kinds)
Cookies, Cake (really these are breads)
Ice Cream
some kinds of Potato Chips (depending on flavour)
some snack foods

There's still good things that can be eaten though. Fruit, vegetables, rice, potatoes and soy are especially prevalent in the menu. Of course, we're not giving up eggs or meat, so we're not really going vegan. I've just got to start reading labels and figuring out how I'm going to eat lunches here at work. Sure I can bring a lunch, but that's not going to be easy to do in this fast food haven.

I figure that eating this healthy will help me to lose weight (did I mention that I'm fat? I've regained about 15 pounds). A little exercise wouldn't hurt me either.

Posted 10:49 AM by Tim
Spiders.

They're one of my irrational fears. I've got it down to the point that they don't completely freak me out, and I can see them for the interesting and complex creatures they are. The tree outside our house has a resident spider. I think its doing a great job there, eating bugs and the like. There's one on the window here at work. Which is pretty impressive, considering that we're 11 stories up. We get a lot of little bugs up here. Even a butterfly or two (I'm surprised at how well they can ride the thermals).

I found a spider in the shower the other day. He was at the far end, so it didn't bother me. I moved a little further away than really necessary (they still bother me, eh), and that's when I noticed the other one on the other side of the shower. I didn't like that idea, so I had to get out of the shower and hose them both. After they were gone, I was still leary of the drain for a while. Go figure.

Posted 8:38 AM by Tim
Well, sometimes life is a little more exciting than it needs to be.

Yesterday, my daughter pulled the fire alarm at her school. There was no fire. She made a few quick, but non-intuitive logical leaps which lead to her decision to pull the alarm. Of course, the school called Brenda and myself in to talk with us about her. They're concerned that something is wrong. Of course, that makes us concerned that maybe something is wrong. We really haven't seen any other instances of this kind of thinking though.

They're suggesting we go see a pediatrician. We probably will, just to ease our minds a bit.

Yesterday was also part of this somewhat frantic information search at work here. I left work early, which pushes all of that searching to today. Woo.

While you're at it, toss on an interview thing that I had on Friday. I went to the interview, and they liked me - a lot, apparently. I'd have taken the job (there were several nice perks), but the commute would have been 2.5+ hours one way again. I didn't want to get into that, and I don't like the idea of living away (or moving the family again!). I had a nice chat with the recruiting company, and tried (for hours) to think of a set of options that would help make this job workable. Shorter hours, telecommuting, and so forth. I couldn't find anything that would be anywhere near reasonable. I had to turn the job down, which I don't like doing - but must do on occasion.

In other news, there's not that much going on. The new set for Magic is out, and I'm looking forward to owning a few dollars of cards soon. The main events coming up are things like Provincials (historically, I've gone 50-50 in the field), Bignemans and a Listowel tourney. Those are the ones I'm looking to focus on. Everything else remains to be seen.

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.

Posted 10:02 AM by Tim
So. The first real week of work is coming to a close. I must say that it has been pretty much what I expected. This is both good and bad. Very few surprises is good, but the sheer predictabilty of my workday is a little bad.

I'm headed north today, away from all the hustle and bustle (yeah right) of busy Kitchener. Woo. Yeah. I'm not sure just what will be left with the moving party, but I think I heard something about painting? All told, yeah, sounds good.

The carpool thing is a little more difficult than I imagined. If I'm a little behind, I'm delaying at least 3 others on their route to work. I've been late the last 2 days, largely due to just not getting there on time (heehee - that's a joke people!). Anyhow, I'm going to have to figure out a way to leave earlier so that I get there on time with no hassles. I'm sure I can work out something.

Posted 1:02 PM by Tim
My robot minions!

Ok. What's that all about? Well, basically, I went looking at this surplus electronics store. They have a ton of stuff there. Keyboards, hard drives, circuitboards, components, switches, resistors, capacators (huge ones too - capable of holding, like 350 V!!!), etc. All for cheap. Really cheap. If I had an electronics project in mind, this is the sort of place I'd want to know about.

Actually, I have a few projects I'd love to work on (most of which range from mildly annoying to potentially lethal). I'll probably stick with anything non-lethal that I can think up. I haven't got a workshop though, and my knowledge of electronics verges on non-existant. I've got a beginner book somewhere in the books I own, and there was at least one project that I was hoping to try out.

Anyway, maybe I can finally get my robot minions started?

Posted 10:11 AM by Tim
No Vampire last night. Its been moved to tonight instead. That's no problem, as long as I get a chance to get everyone to try it out at least. Maybe someone will like it enough to give it a few more tries later too.

I'd say that the house is different without the girls in it, but frankly, I haven't been there enough to notice. Wayne was still moving a bit of his stuff out of the old apartment yesterday (and he'll continue to do so until about Saturday). That took up a fair part of the evening, and then we watched Banzai, so there was very little time to notice these things.

In other areas of life, I'm pretty much back into the working grind. I get up at 4:30AM, and I'm home from work at 6:30PM. That's a lot better than it was, but it's still pretty draining. I've just got to get back into my exercise routine and maybe a little extra sleep would help.

Posted 2:26 PM by Tim
A couple of things to get out of the way. First, the birthday for the elder child went alright. Many new and exciting friends (they must be exciting, everyone seems to be excited) came and ate cake. Woo. Second, the home network (still unnamed), is starting to work. Once the DSL modem was configured properly, the router started to run, and the systems took notice of their new IP addresses. We're still working out the cabling.

Next up, Brenda is (has) taken the girls to help move her sister (their aunt) to their new house. I'll be joining in about 3 days. I"m hoping the move will be a formality by then.

Lastly, we're supposed to play some Vampire: The Eternal Struggle tonight. I've got at least 3 other people willing to learn (possibly more if things go right). The game, for Magic players like us, I don't see learning the rules to be that difficult overall. The main stumbling blocks will be the mechanics of the rules where they differ from Magic.

One of the things I want to do is describe the clans of the different starter sets that I have. These are, namely, Brujha antitribu, Lasombra, Tzimise, Giovanni, Assamite and Malkavian. The basic descriptions are pretty simple for all but the Malkavians. Because I have the time, I'll lay them out for you.

Brujha antitribu: Imagine every bouncer, bully and thug you've ever known, but make them faster, more violent and angry.

Lasombra: Think politicians with a lot of leeway to eliminate rivals.

Tzimise: They make evil scientists afraid.

Giovanni: An Italian Mob family - back from the dead.

Assasmite: Assassins.

Malkavians. See, these are the difficult ones to describe. The closest I can get is this: Imagine an insane assylum where the inmates have a political agenda. Most groups have an agenda like, "if we don't take over the world, someone else will. We have to stop them." But twist this with insane logic and semantic replacements into, "chickens take over the world. Eat someone else, Will. Most of us have chins." This would be their political agena, and most likely describe a hefty amount of the plans to implement it.

I love Malkavians. I'd role play them if I knew a group that would tolerate a player playing one. See, most people play a Malk by simply acting as outrageously as possible and getting in the way of everyone and everything. That's not a good way to play (though it can be thoroughly enjoyable). The best way to play is to pick a few real psychological issues and apply Malk logic to anything requiring thought. Malk logic is lose and easy, but difficult to employ without thought (without being insane or having a lot of practice). Some ideas would be things like taking a phrase more literally (or less literally) than intended. You could try inverting the clauses - add in a few nots here and there. There's lots of fun to be had with Malk logic.

Anyhow, I hope the gaming goes well tonight.

Posted 10:51 AM by Tim
Ok. We're going to get the hardware tonight. I am so hoping that this suddenly solves the network problems. If it doesn't, we're going to have to consider returning the router for a less complicated model (a hub probably).

The oldest is having her birthday today. We're probably going to keep it low-kety today, and focus on the real festivities later this week. She's 6. I can't believe it's been 6 years already. Where does all the time go?

Posted 11:02 AM by Tim
Ok, I'm officially at work all by myself now. Not that I needed that much additional training, but hey, it was nice to have the company. Anyhow, I arrived at about 7:30AM, and was the only person in the office. Not too bad really. I wandered into the washroom and the motion sensors turned on all the lights in there. Of course, they're all energy blubs, so there was a very paparazzi-like feel to entering the bathroom. I did kinda feel like I just woke up all these sleeping lights, too. Ah well, enough delusional thought for today.

We're working on getting a house network going. A little bit of trouble getting anything to recognize the router we bought. I think that we need to get the DSL modem hooked into the thing first. Maybe that will solve all the troubles.

My sister-in-law is moving this week. Brenda is going away to help her with the move, leaving me and Wayne to our own devices. I hope we can keep the house clean (and maybe get that network finished so we can deathmatch in Q3A). I'll be heading out that way this weekend to help finalize the move, so Wayne'll be left to the house on his own. That'll be nice.

In other news, the work front seems to be pretty solid. I've got a bit of a side-job offer, which should help out with the money situation, while simultaneously ruining the tax situation. Gah, I'm gonna hate taxes this year. We need to put away a lot more money for the tax man to take.

Posted 9:52 AM by Tim
Last night's apple cooking turned out to be disasteriffic We didn't manage to get very much juice from the apples, and made a large mess. We're going to look into a press or something similar to speed up the process.

I bought myself a lava lamp - well, a motion lamp, since it is not lava brand. I've always wanted one, and the price went down enough to make it worth buying. It takes a long time to get started, but it is pretty nice.

This weekend is going to be interesting. There's a game on, some friends are going to visit for a little bit and Bren will get out of the house for a while to do a bit of shopping. I think it'll all be good.

Posted 1:36 PM by Tim
Woo! Work. Yeah. It's just as if I'd never left. Well, maybe it would be just like it if I had been doing something slightly different than what I had been doing... anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I'm working again.

Of course, as soon as I'm at work, I get a ton of ideas for things to blog about, and projects that I can really only work on when I'm at home. Gah. Isn't that just the way?

I took the carpool into work today, which is about 1 hour shorter than my previous carpool (that's got me down to about 1.5 hours one way now). Not terrible at all. I can still sleep in the car on the way there and back, which is very nice.

The apartment is coming along nicely. Bren and I have bought a few carloads of additional furniture for the new place (shelving mostly), which requires just a tiny bit of assembly in some cases. This increases our total dead weight to about a full 26 foot truck (we more or less filled the one we moved with this time - and I knew we would end up getting more stuff here).

We're still in unpacking mode. This is largely due to the amazing volume of books that I own. I've got a lot, and most of them are random things that I've picked up here and there. The girls shouldn't run out of reading material.

Oh, yes, I want to mention that I'm finally done with the blanket that I was making. Technically, I've been making it for 4 years now (since my youngest was born), but actually it's only been a few months. It's taken me so long to get it done because I've moved a few times, and have pretty much ignored the project as I went along. Now that I've got that done, it's time for a new project.

On the drawing front, I've been pretty lax. I haven't drawn anything worthwile (or really, at all) in about three weeks. I will have to start doing that again. I did go out and buy a new sketchpad (as my original sketchpad was converted into the main drawing pad). Once I get something going, I will let everyone know what's going on.

Posted 11:52 PM by Tim
A quick note. First, Morpheus is a terrible program. I won't give a link, but I will say that it is a pain to uninstall. You have to run 2 separate uninstall programs (it shadow-loads a few apps for you - arg). Then unload a separate app from the registry, and finally, clean out the registry keys, folders and such left behind.

Second, Banzai is the funniest gameshow I've ever seen. And, as a bonus, you get to see a nice pair of tits at some point during the program. Really though, it is a very funny show. The commentary is what really makes the show shine.

I work tomorrow. I'll probably blog there.

Posted 7:33 PM by Tim
Finally, a post. It's been a little while since I've had a few moments to actually post anything, and a lot of things have happened. Let me relate them to you.

First, the furniture piece did not get finished like I wanted. It's going to have to be re-stripped and refinished.

Second, I have a job again. Back at the last place I worked, but in a different area (though still related to the same thing I was doing there before).

Lastly, we're entirely moved into the house. We will be working for what seems like a possible eternity to get everything sorted out in the apartment, but it will eventually become a livable space. Wayne is here with us, and he'll probably be completely moved in within a week or so.

So, overall life is good. Things (especially the money thing) are starting to look reasonable, and we're getting along well with all the things that need doing. I haven't had much time for drawing lately, but I'll fix that up soon.

Posted 6:45 PM by Tim
Arrghh... that one piece of furniture is bothering me. I need to stain it so that it looks nice, but it's not working out. It looks like I'm going to have to strip it, and restain. But that will take a lot longer than I have tomorrow for working on the piece. I'll see what I have time for tomorrow.

Posted 9:47 AM by Tim
Only enough time for a quick catchup note really. The move is now only 2 days away. We pack everything into the truck tomorrow and move out in the morning the next day. Then, of course, we unload. Woo.

I've been working a little bit on one last piece of furniture. We picked up an end table for $20. It had a fairly large damaged area, likely where someone left a glass or something. The finish was stripped down to the bare wood. That, or someone tried to strip it before and just gave up. Anyhow, we're stripping it ourselves. Then we're going to sand it smooth (the stripping harshes the wood), and then we'll re-stain and refinish it. I'm hoping that it'll match the coffee table that we bought last week (at a garage sale of course). I'd strip the coffee table too, but it's not real wood, so I can't.

That's the life at the moment. Oh, yeah, before I forget, there's some interesting things happening in the work world. We'll see how that goes.

Posted 11:10 AM by Tim
Morning!

Wow, consecutive posts on consecutive days. This is starting to feel like a daily blog again.

Anyhow, just thought that I'd drop a few words about the world of me. I've been mulling over the house network that's going to be setup at the new place. Wayne and I have a little bit of experience with it, so we're going to wire the whole house for high-speed internet. Collectively, we've got 4 computers to wire up. ROSA (my main system), VELMA (my laptop), HELGA (the old system, now used by the girls), and Wayne's own system (which lacks a name). I'm big on the idea of naming all the main component's of the network with some logical scheme. But, it'd have to be something everyone agrees on. My personal preference at the moment is using women's names for all the systems, and men's names for all the hardware (as evidenced by the system names listed above).

I'm thinking that we'll simply hook the high speed modem into a hub, and plug all the rest of the systems into that also. We can get away with NetBEUI for the main protocol that way (with IPX/SPX and/or TCP/IP supporting it), since we won't have any seperate segments. But, I digress.

I'm less worried about the implementation right now than a solid naming scheme. I've looked at the standard namgin schemes, and I don't like them. I've thought about using things like the planets (the hub then becomes Sol, and the systems get planet names, but I'm not sure what the modem gets named -- and Wayne's said that he's not going anywhere near Uranus).

I've thoght of greek gods (making the hub something like Zeus or Hera, and the modem being that god-messenger). There's lots of other schemes too. But I haven't found any that's really at least as appealing as using peoples names. After all, it becomes a lot more fun to say that Steve (the hub) won't interface with Rosa for some reason, and that Fred (the modem) keeps going down on Velma. At least, that's what I think.

Posted 5:52 PM by Tim
Ok. I've got a moment, so I'm going to do a quick post. The moving details have got me a little bogged down. Brenda finished off the dresser that I had started earlier, and put on a set of wooden knobs instead of the metal handles that were on there before. I think it looks very nice.

So much moving stuff left to do. So little time. Wayne says that he's moved a little of his stuff into the new place, so I suppose it's getting closer to being a real home. Soon it might even feel like it.

Posted 9:44 AM by Tim
Bwah. It's been a few days and I haven't posted. The main culprits are months with a distinct lack of sleep, and Warcraft 3. Wayne has a copy of the game, and I've been playing the undead for a few days. Last mission. Gahr. Not an easy one either.

Anyhow, the apartment is starting to take some shape. There were a number of issues with it when I first arrived, but I think that I've got almost all of them fixed. And by "I", I mean, the landlord. She must hate me, because every day that I'm there I come by her apartment and tell her that something else is broken.

Wayne has been trying to get his new video card into his computer for a while now. It hasn't worked. We're starting to think that he's got a bad card. I think he'll be returning it today for a new one. I've got to get really hacking on the job search. I've got a few things that need checking out, and I've got to get some copies printed. That's just the start though. Lots of plans.

Hmm... not too much else to report today. We'll see what happens today - maybe there'll be something to post tomorrow.

Posted 11:43 PM by Tim
Went home for the weekend. Picked up a few things while I was there. Worked on finishing off that furniture piece I started just before I left last time. It looks good, but there are a few areas I wish I had sanded a little better.

The drive back here was interesting. Traffic was heavy on the main highways, so we detoured along the back roads for a while. The journey would have been really bad if it hadn't been for the generous use of short-range radios. This allowed Wayne and I to talk to each other during the ride, rather than try to decipher hand signals. A task made more difficult by the lack of light.

Wayne reminded me that there was one funny incident involving him spilling a large pop over the counter at a Tim Hortons, but really, it could have happened to anyone.

The radios we use are interesting. They're short range, which means that they have a range of maybe 1 km. That's not really that far, but it's more than sufficient inside a mall, or on the highway. They work best over flat, open terrain (like a highway), and aren't that bad. Of course, they are public band (FRS), so occasionally you get in range of another set of them (or more rarely, a group). Sometimes (Wayne and I have done this sort of trip before), we'll get someone we can talk to, but most often, the group we get in range of is going the other way. We did hit a few groups tonight also, but we didn't really manage any conversations.

So, I'm back, and tomorrow, I check out the new house again to see if there's anything that hasn't been done yet.