Thoughts from Tim

Posted 12:17 AM by Tim
HO HO HO! Merry Christmas and all that.

The holiday - at least, Christmas - is over. We were out to see the in-laws, and share a little Christmassy spirit. I didn't really find any this year though. Like I'd said, I'm expecting it to turn up around January or so.... 2005. Anyway, it's not important. I did, however, have a rousing conversation with a co-worked about the differences between her Christmasses and mine.

FYI, Christmas for me has always meant shouting and angry people. Not all the time, mind you, but enough that you notice. Her's, apparently, was always about love and joy and the sharing of the season with your loved one. Talk about your storybook lives. Anyhow, she apparently couldn't see eye-to-eye with me on how I could see Christmas as being over-commercialized, over-blown, and exaggerated beyond all semblance of what it's supposed to represent.

I'm not sure why people don't understand my policy on gift giving. Here's how it is. If I feel like getting you a present, I'll get you one. I won't necessarily wait for some arbitrary holiday to do it either - though it's nice if there's one handy. If you get me a gift, you'd better not expect me to get you one too. I don't work that way. I feel no obligations to giving. If I do give you one, it's going be because I was going to get you one anyway. The fact that you gave me one means diddly to me. I love getting stuff, but you're not going to guilt me into getting you something.

This year, I did no Christmas shopping. None. AT all. For anyone. Not even the wife and kids. Now, there's several reasons at work here. First, I've got no money. It's not like I get to spend the money I make at work. And it's not like I get an allowance or anything. So, I've no cash to buy things. Second, I rarely get out of the house, so I don't get to do much shopping anyway. Third, I didn't get all Christmassy this year, and couldn't be bothered enough to go do some shopping. Now, there's some things I wanted to get people, but I just never got to it. I'll get something for them eventually. And that'll be Christmas for me. My co-worker and I had a nice long chat about this too.... something about how I never seem to put any work into anything for others. She's probably right. I've had that problem a long time.

Anyway, next up is New Year's. I've no problems with that... just don't expect me to make any resolutions.

Posted 12:58 PM by Tim
Well, Thursday to Sunday isn't that many days. At least I'm starting to make more than one post a week.

So. We've been with the new roomie for about a week now. It's been alright so far. A few bumps here and there, but overall, it's been working out alright.

Christmas is coming up on me rapidly. Still no sign of Christmas spirit though. It's been very lacking these last few years. About 3 years ago, I managed to find Christmas spirit just in time for the holiday. The next year, I think it didn't hit me until New Year's. Last year, I don't recall finding it at all... maybe it waited around until April or so? I'm not holding up much hope for it this year. If it keeps up like this, then sometime in the next few years I'll find it at Christmas, but it'll be the spirit from the year before.

Novelling has been slow. No. That's a bold lie. I haven't written a thing. I'd like to blame the whole thing on my missing dictaphone, but I know that's just not the case. I could (read: should) be editing. But I just haven't been. More procrastination from me.

Also in the procrastination box is my exercises. I've done them here and there, but it's been very inconsistent. Very, very inconsistent. When I'm doing them, it's good. I'm happy, and it's not like a chore or anything. Just that after I'm done, I sort of forget to get the weights out the next day, so I'm not really improving. Just got to get on with it, right?

Other news... I'm expecting a case of Mirrodin to arrive today. I've been looking forward to it all this week. Gonna open at least a box worth, and start the sorting process. I've been thinking about organizing the business into something that looks like a real business. That means getting the finances in order, tracking the cards that I have, and putting together a few more tourneys. It'd be nice if I had a chance to get my organizer's info so that I could start sanctioning events. That would be very cool, in my opinion.

I've been mulling the idea of putting together a database for "the store." It'd have to be capable of carrying a diverse set of information. It'd need - at the minimum - to have info for the cards in stock (inventory), events (scheduled and past, etc), and info on the current finances (cashflow). I wouldn't mind if it had a little bit of space to record player information as well... I figure that it'd take about 3 or 4 hours to design and check. Maybe another 1 or 2 to work up in Access, and a lot of time to fill in with data, and make look pretty. A nice little front in VB might be a good idea too.... once I've got the time.

Hmm.. I like this idea. I think I'll take it on. Gotta go! Lots to do today!

Posted 1:06 AM by Tim
Lately, when I'm blogging and someone asks me what I'm doing, I don't say "I'm blogging." Instead, I say, "I'm complaining to the internet." First, it seems that people understand the latter statement more than the whole idea of "blogging." Second, it's a lot more accurate.

Anyone who's looked at my blog for more than a few entries has easily seen that most of what I do here is complain. Complain about my weight, my lack of time management skills, and the little frustrations of my day. Sure, there's the occasional bit of happiness in there. All too brief interludes of real thinking, or short tirades on how I think things should be. Most often, however, this is little more than a place that I can just gripe about the problems of life.

In a way, it's what I've been looking for in people. I've always wanted to have a friend who knows me intimately, is willing to listen to me complain, yet is also not going to try to give me advice, or tell me what I'm doing wrong. I don't think I've ever found anyone able to do that. The internet, or at least blogging, has been that for me. As much as I've allowed it, anyway. Stuff that I throw out here on the blog stays out here. And it rarely - if ever - talks back. That's nice, you know?

Of course, some of you out there are probably thinking that I should be discussing my problems with real people, not just tossing them out on the internet. After all, what can possibly get resolved without feedback, right? I'm not sure. I know that I'm the kind of person who'll talk to themselves to work out a problem. If I've got a money issue, I run the math by myself and see how it looks. Time problem? I think up a few schedules and work that out too. Of course, this kind of thinking can lead to problems.

The main problem comes when there are other people involved. Trying to work things out all by myself isn't going to work because I don't really get to involve them in the thinking and decision-making process. That leaves them feeling left out, which usually causes more problems than it solves.

But, I'm digressing. My point is, that my blog is really just my way of complaining to anyone who'll listen - without feeling like I'm burdening anyone with my ramblings. It's nice, and I can't see that changing any time soon.

Posted 1:20 AM by Tim
Let me set up a quick little timeline for you here.

2 Weeks ago, the new roommate was living in Little Hickville, Northern Canada, with the last few days of a dead-end job, no girlfriend, a little bit of cash, and some hope for the future.

4 Days ago, the new roomie moves into the house, sets up his room and gets settled.

3 Days ago, he's taking a break and hanging out with all of us in the house, trying to get settled into the new digs.

2 Days ago, we take him grocery shopping at the new store in the area, where he drops off his resume and has an on-the-spot interview with the store manager. He learns that the manger person doesn't like the current evening shift.

Yesterday, we take him around to a local recruiter to get him started on some serious job searching. That afternoon, he gets a call from the grocery store, wanting him to come in and sign some papers so that he can start working that night!

Today, I'm just a little bit jealous. But, I'm also happy for him. This is what he needed. Some prospects, a little more hope for the future, and a source of income. This should get him some friends, some cash, and some local work experience. If this all works out, things will be looking really good for him.

On a more personal note, the company that I have been working for these last three mohths has finally opted to hire me full time. I get a slight raise, access to shift bonuses, benefits, overtime pay, vacation pay, holiday pay and better stability. Still, it feels like the top rung of a short ladder.

I'll be off work between the 24th and the 4th January, which gives me a bucket of time to myself. I'm thinking that it'd be the perfect time to get some writing and editing done. We'll see if that actually works out.

Posted 4:23 PM by Tim
My internet went down for almost an entire week. So, no chance to post, missed webcomics, and a fully jammed inbox. Blah. We've switched from DSL over to Cable-net. I've yet to see a real difference between the two of them for speed. Maybe that's just because of the speed of my laptop.

We've got the new roomie here, and so far it's been unsettled. Everything's just a little bit different, so everyone's adjusting to everyone else. That's expected though. I figure it'll take a week or so before everyone's into some sort of routine again.

Posted 7:48 PM by Tim
Aarrgghh! Why does everything have to piss me off so much? I'm trying to be a nice guy, but it's not working. See, the email list that I chat on now and then for Magic has had a member that has been slowly growing more and more irritating. Well, to be honest, he's been irritating a lot, but I've been trying to defend him. I know where he's coming from a lot of times.

The main crux of the problem comes from discussion about religion. Some of our members are religious. Christians mostly. Some of them are non-religious, or religion indifferent. The trouble is coming from when discussions come up about religious things. The Non-religious members feel that they're being preached to, and the religious people feel that they're not getting their point across.

It might not be so bad if the discussions started on something related and them moved towards something religious. But they don't. One member seems to just flip over into evangelical mode without any sort of connection. A total mash of topics. We've talked to him about it, but it hasn't done any good.

I'm personally against the idea of bannings without valid reasons, and talking about religious stuff isn't a banable offense to me. I've sent him a message to discuss this matter privately, and I figure that it'll probably cause a lot of bad blood between us, but hopefully it'll help in the long run. Maybe.

Posted 8:57 AM by Tim
Ok. More than a half month has passed since I've posted. Time to get back into the habit.

NaNoWriMo is over again for another year. It was getting close for me there, but I finally made it. I got the 50,000 words in. I'm pleased and slightly surprised.

The local newspaper is running a story on NaNo, and I've been interviewed for it. I'm eagerly looking forward to it. Gonna have to get me a few copies for the family members that don't live in our area.

With November being so busy, I put off any thought of doing any sort of exercise program. Now it's time to get serious, though. Gotta start up a nice regimen with the free weights. I've been looking at getting me a 10lb so that I have something to work up to.

We'll be having a new roommate soon enough. I'm looking forward to it, as it means that there'll be someone around to hang out with. That should be good.

November looks like it could be pretty busy. I'm figuring that there's bound to be far too much going on to run any tourney's too. So I'm taking the month of December off, only to pick it all up again in January. I've already got three weekends pre-booked. Ought to be a good month for tournaments then.

That's all for now! I've got to go forge some documents for the LARP game. Got to get some stuff in before the end of the week.

Posted 5:43 PM by Tim
Right. Got to review the wedding video today. It's not terrible. Covers the main points. The wedding, the recieving line, the reception toasts, and parts of the party. The good stuff. Take a full day and condense it down into 80 minutes of poorly shot, shaky, amateur video. That's how you mint a memory.

Anyway, it was a good evening. Very nice time had by all. I am sort of wishing that I had asked one of the two (or both) lovely ladies at my table to dance with me, but I'm shy like that. We did have a nice conversation though.

I mentioned in the previous post about essays. Here's what I'm thinking about. All kinds of famous writers have been known to write essays. Look at Sartre, Kant, Orwell, and a whole host of others. Now, I'm not talking about the essays that people write for school. I'm talking about short diatribes about whatever caught the fancy of these people in their regular lives. They didn't do this because it was required, they did it becuase they felt that their viewpoint needed to be expressed. I've felt that way now and then, and I've always let it slide. Just never got around to doing it in writing. I ususally bother Wayne or someone about it in conversation, and drive them crazy with my insane ramblings.

However, lately, I've been feeling like it might be a good idea to actually get some of them on paper (or the electronic equivalent) for posterity. Of course, I've thought of lots of things like this before. There's a lot that I'd love to do "for posterity" but I rarely get to do them. Mostly becuase I'm too busy doing something else. So, I wouldn't expect there to be any great relevations in essay form coming from me anytime soon. Besides, I'm working on my novel still.

Posted 12:20 AM by Tim
I've just gotten back from the wedding. It was very nice. I videotaped as much of it as I could, so I'll have to send them a copy after it's all said and done. I felt a little like the official videographer. After all, if I wasn't videoing, I was shooting pics with the digital that Wayne loaned me. NiMH batteries last way longer than Alkalines.

I've already mentioned that I've been in a little bit of a depressed funk lately. Situations have just been building on each other. Today was pretty good, but I started to get a little introspective on myself towards the end of the party. A friend of mine and her female companion showed up at the reception and we had a nice chat. I'm not the best with social situations, and I don't know if I was interesting enough for them. Hope so.

I did finally get dragged out onto the dance floor, but only for one dance. New shoes aren't the best for dancing in - especially not if you've been standing all day.

I may head out again tomorrow (if I can get the car - not likely), and see the gift opening. I'm figuring that's not going to be much of a possibility though, given that tomorrow is Sunday. That's church for mom and dad. They'll need the car, of course.

I'm 11,000 words behind now. I don't like having that number over the 10K mark, so I'm going to have to snip it down tomorrow if I can. I'd love to be able to put up about 5 to 7 thousand words if I can... bring the backlog down to only 6 to 8K. We'll see though. Getting the story out of this novel has been much harder than the last one.

I've been mulling a few random ideas in my head. Talking to everyone who's just finishing school, or starting school again, or heading into a graduate program has me wondering about what I should be doing with my life and my education. I've been running the idea of graduate school in my mind for about a month or two now, and I'm no closer to figuring out what I'd be studying. I've got a definate lean towards machine intelligence though. Maybe I'll take a deeper look at that.

In other news, I'm really kinda tired. I'm gonna go sleep now. Maybe talk about the whole "write essays" thing tomorrow. Or Monday, or sometime later. Night!

Posted 3:18 PM by Tim
I'm in Nova Scotia! I arrived fine, so that's always good. Had a bit of an interesting run in with the friendly people at the Airport Security desk. Apparently, my laptop has traces of NitroGlycerin. So I had to answer a few questions before being allowed to proceed.

While at the airport, I borrowed some of the airport power to do a little bit of novelling. I didn't manage to do any on the plane though. First, there's not enough space, and second, I was pretty tired.

I did get 3,000 words in, leaving me with only 9,000 in the deficit. I should be able to make some of those up tonight, if I don't galavant my whole evening away. I don't really expect that to happen, but it might.

A thought for today, things that should have annoyed me but didn't: Christmas Music... sorry Muzak. In the mall. In every store. It's still November. I suppose it's time for it.

Also, Bren said "Take the snow with you." I did.

Posted 8:43 AM by Tim
First real snowfall today. Not that there's a huge amount of it, but it's sticking around for now. I figure it'll mess up traffic and probably power distribution too. Makes me wish we had a few more candles about the house.

Correction and Update: It's a lot snowier than I thought out there. Bleh.

Posted 3:07 PM by Tim
Feeling a little better today. Of course, clinincal depression only calls for an extended period (2 weeks) of feeling bad. You can have perfectly happy days in between the bad ones.

Posted 9:03 AM by Tim
I've been depressed lately. Wasn't really expecting it though, so it's thrown me off a little. Haven't been up to my normal self.

What depressed me was my age, of all things. I'm almost never bothered by my age. Not even birthdays manage to cause me much concern. The trouble is, I'm nearing a significant number. 28. What? I hear you ask. Why is 28 worrysome, while 30 isn't a hassle? Well, I won't know if 30 bothers me for sure, but it likely won't. 28, however, means that 10 years have passed since I was 18. You know, that whole, "legal adult" thing. 10 years since I left home to make my own way in the world. 10 years since High School, that institution of learning and embarassment. And that's the significant bit. It's been 10 years.

I've always liked nice round numbers, like 2, 10, and 5. At least for marking anniversaries of stuff. They carry some significance for me. Like, 2 years after leaving home, I got married. 5 years after, I finished University. What have I done at 10 years after? Nothing. I wrote a novel last year, but I'm jammed on the one for this year. I spent all this last year unemployed (more or less). And I'm well behind the curve of most of my friends.

I don't own a home. I'm not a doctor or lawyer or anything. I'm not even really working in my profession (much less in my field of study). I'm constantly broke, I've got a job that sucks, and I never see my wife or family. It's like I'm living on my own here, but I don't have any of the benefits.

All of this (plus a little more I won't gripe about here) has got me down. I've been looking for a way up, but I think I've just found a way sideways. What's sideways from depression? Cynicism. I've been cynical before, and there's no reason not to be cynical again. Especially in a job that can effectively limit my interaction with people to a few "hi's" called out now and then.

I suppose that part of all this has been the overcommitment I've put myself in this month. I've got to keep on the housework (and step it up a notch to get the house clean!). I've got my novelling. I've got something going on each weekend. I could really use some overtime at work, but they're in a slowdown period right now. Christmas is coming, and I'm sure that nobody's mentioned in around here on purpose. Then there's the family stress. That's a lot of pressure for me.

I keep feeling like I should say, "I'm sure it'll sort itself out." And in a way, I am sure that it will. Everything does, given enough time. I would like to put a little bit of rush on some of the sorting though. We'll have to see what I can do.

Posted 12:54 PM by Tim
Bah. It's been a few days since anything's gone up here. Looks like I'm down to one post a week - if I remember. No worries, I'll just have to pack everything into this post, right?

There's about 8 days until my friend's wedding. No, not the one in Mass. I attended that one already. And not the one in Nova Scotia. That was September. This is a totally different wedding in Nova Scotia. Someone I've been friends with for a long, long time. I can remember him in grade school, so it's been a while. He always said that he wouldn't get married. I guess he just hadn't met the right person yet.

In a way, I'm looking forward to attending his wedding, and I'm also dreading it. I'm looking forward to it, because I'll get to see him and his lovely bride on their happy day. I'll get to chat with his parents, and probably other friends I haven't seen in a while. I'm kind of dreading it because of the remaining time on the trip. I've got nothing else planned for the 4 days I'll be away. Almost all of my friends have moved away from town (good for them!) or are people I don't know. I've told people here that, 'I'll just sit in the shop my mom works and write.' That's probably a fair assessment, but I'll probably be home instead of at my mom's work. I do expect to get a lot of writing done that weekend.

There's not much else in the news department. Lately, I've been thinking about how nice it would be to have a complete Daria collection. It's not available anywhere (legally, anyway). Wishes and pennies, I suppose.

I swear that if you combined the speed and climbing power of a chipmunk (all vertical acceleration, baby!), with the cunning and dexterity of a squirrel, you'd end up with something like a raccoon - but lots smaller. I figure that if you want to do a really good combat movie, imagine what squirrels and chipmunks would do if you could attach little guns to their hands. Yeah.

Posted 1:55 PM by Tim
News on the NaNoWriMo front. A local reporter is thinking of running a story on writers participating in the event. I'm volunteering. Why? I have no idea. In some sense, I suppose that it'd be good publicity for me personally. Maybe some huge publisher will read the little local paper and suddenly I'll be catapulted to stardom. Hmmm... I thought I was supposed to hold back on the fiction until Saturday. :)

Anyway, getting my name in the paper now and then can't be a bad thing (no, wait, it could be a bad thing... but I doubt this will be one of those times). Of course, assuming the editors think that this story is really worth their time, I could be in for a few Q&A sessions about writing and noveling in general. I really don't know what I'd say about that. I suppose I can look at it as another "special cirumstance" for next month. What's the special circumstances? Well, I've got a lot going on in November. Three tournaments (two I'm running), one wedding, at least one LARP game and a shift change from afternoons to evenings towards the end (when ususally I'd be putting on the push to get the novel done). That's just on the weekends though, so I'm hoping to get some serious writing done during the weekdays.

In other writing news, a little bit of the ending is starting to form in my mind. Always a good thing. At least I have a direction to start pushing the characters in now. We'll see how that pans out.

UPDATE: I've got an interview with the reporter on Friday. This is going to be an interesting month.

Posted 10:23 AM by Tim
Only 3 days left to NaNoWriMo! I'm really starting to get excited about it.

Posted 1:26 PM by Tim
NaNoWriMo starts on Saturday. Only 4 days until I officially start writing again. I've been giving a little thought to the whole thing, and I've got some ideas. Getting started could be a bit of a stretch, but I think that I can find a reasonable way to get the story going.

This weekend is looking to be exceptionally busy for me. I've got to get a LARP game on, and also, hopefully, attend a major tourney as well. I'm not sure what state I'll be in come tourney time, so I may not end up attending. Besides, I still have to build a deck for the tourney.

Posted 12:50 PM by Tim
I got back from Nathan's wedding late last night. I'm still a little sleepy, but that'll pass. The trip meant driving from Kitchener to Danvers, Mass. A 10+ hour drive. I was looking forward to it, because that meant that I would get to see part of New York state and also the Masspike. I wanted to see the Masspike becuase I'd heard it mentioned in a song that I really like. Of course, the Masspike is just a huge road that runs through Mass (I'm not using the full word for the state bacause I don't know the correct spelling, and am too lazy to look it up.)

Let me start by saying that the wedding was beautiful, and there were no serious issues or problems for the bride and groom. Bren and I, however, ended up arriving late. Still it was very nice.

Good things about the trip included us sticking around long enough to give a few stranded friends a ride from the wedding to the reception. Wayne's digital camera worked as advertised. And, we got the hotel room we stayed at for a steal.

Bad things about the trip: Mass has this odd idea that highways do not need on- or off-ramps. A simple right turn onto the next highway should suffice. Occasionally, that means a full stop too. The hotel we stayed at turned out to be in serious renovations. So, we had inconsistently hot water, a toilet that didn't work very well, and the smell of paint in the hallways. We also didn't find out that we were across the highway from the groom and his family until after the reception. It would have been nice to know that so we could have hung out a little more.

The ugly things about the trip: Mass off-ramps. Why do you need to go from 65mph to 25mph, while on an off-ramp, to a dead stop just before entering the next highway, then boost up to 65 again just to outpace the oncoming traffic? Ramps are your friends!

Now for something somewhat different.

While in Mass, I went looking for cheap magic cards. The stores in Danvers and Salem are not cheap. Boxes of cards ranged from $95 (~133 CAN after taxes) to $120 (~170 CAN after taxes). Single cards were priced very high, up to $1 each for commons! There was no good stuff to be found. Apparently, Yu-Gi-Oh is very popular down there right now, so that's where all the focus is. Anime, however, is amazingly available. Every store we went into easily carried 100 titles of anime DVD and Video, and more titles of manga. If I had more money, I would have picked up some stuff.

On the writing front, there are only 5 days left before the official start. I'm getting ready.

Posted 2:44 PM by Tim
The hardest part about putting something in the blog lately is just sitting down and starting to type. I'm not sure why that is. It's not like there's so much else going on that I really can't manage to type up a few thoughts, or is it?

Much of my life has been devoted to work and also to making and saving money lately. In order to save money, I'm taking a shift from 4PM till 12AM. This means that I'd get home about 1AM, if I didn't waste much time on the way. But, I know that I've got to make up a few spare hours so that I can go attend the weddings coming up. So, I've been working until 1AM, putting me at home at about 2AM. Then I can sleep. The late start of the shift means that I don't have to send my daughters to daycare before school starts. It also means that I can take my youngest to school personally (she starts at noon). This saves us about 8 hours a day of daycare - or about $40 a day.

In exchange for that $40, I give up seeing much of my children, have a strange sleeping habit, see my wife only on the weekends, and basically give up all social contacts outside of work. I'm beginning to wonder if $40 a day isn't worth all that. Of course, the job that I have right now doesn't really pay enough to do more than cover the bills - mostly. Gas for the car out there (not to mention the cost of paying back the family loan for the car), food, cola (a bill onto itself), and daycare all add up. So, if we're to get ahead of the game, I have to work more hours. It's not feasable for me to stay later at work, and it's not so easy for me to arrive early. Work has a limited number of terminals, and they're totally filled during the day shift.

What I'm left with, is working on the weekend. Remember how I said that I didn't see my wife unless it was on the weekend? Well, if you've got a 6 day work week, the weekend is pretty short. Most of that time I'm trying to fit in all the things that I don't get a chance to do during the week. Like play a few games, see some people and get away from the house. Overall, it's not working out. But - I can't quit. I've had 9 months of unemployment already, and I must say that I'm really tired of it.

If I could find something that I could do from home that made the cash that I'm making now, we could cover the bills and be alright. I could even drop almost all the daycare expense becuase I'd be home (I'd still like to take a day off now and then of course). Problem is, though, that I can't find anything to do that will make me that much money while I'm at home. At least, nothing I'm qualified to do right now.

Enough with the complaining, right? Yeah, let's move on.

First topic: ASL - American Sign Language. I've had a soft spot for languages for forever. ASL is pretty unique to me because it involves the body. Also, I've got this thing for disease and body disfunction (like deafness and blindness and such). Anyway, when I was younger, I had an opportunity to learn enough ASL to be conversationally compentent. That's a roundabout way of saying, "I can talk with people and not seriously embarass myself doing it." There's some history about why I needed to learn this, but the short story is that I was instructing the deaf (more or less) and they knew ASL, so it was pretty simple. There's a fun story about teaching a French boy to speak in English ASL so that he could hit on one of the deaf girls, but that's for another time.

Anyway, one of the ladies at work has a nephew who is deaf. Apparently, only the mom has bothered to learn ASL with the boy, so he's pretty ostracized at home and so on. She's interested in learning it so that she can talk to him too. I think that's great. Of course, my well stocked library just happens to have a book on ASL in it, so I've loaned it to her. This has brought out my interest in the subject again, and I'm all fired up about learning it again. But I've got nobody to really practice with. That's the main reason that I'm not fluent in languages that I've had an opportunity to learn. I always end up moving away from the people that speak that language and I forget it all from disuse. I know that given a few weeks in an immersive environment, I'd be speaking a language pretty damn well. But there just isn't that opportunity. And I'm pretty shy about just walking up to people and saying, "that's a neat sounding language there. Can you teach it to me?" You'd not be surprised by the strange looks such a statement gets you.

I've been toying with the idea of taking a course in ASL, just to get the whole thing out of my system. But that's an expense and we just don't have the funds to take something like that on a whim. Maybe another time.

Next topic! NaNoWriMo. There's only 15 days until the official start of NaNoWriMo. So many ideas are floating in my head right now that I'm certain to forget some of them. Too bad they're all for different stories. :( I'm sure that I've got some things that will stick for me once I get started. I've been looking at what's happening in Novemeber to see what kind of difficulties I'll have in getting everything written. The main issue that I can see is that of motivation. I'm likely to get some support from my friends and family (since I've done this once already and they know that I can do it). Still, my motivation is likely to wane about the 15 or 20th or so. I'll have to do something to get myself back on track around then.

It won't help that I've got at least the trip to Nova Scotia on the 15th. The ride in the plane will be conducive for the writing (if I can get the laptop set up on the flight), but the whole trip thing will probably be a little distracting to the whole project. I've been giving a little bit of backhanded thought to doing the challenge put forth on another blog. Write not one, but two 50,000 word novels in the month of November. While enduring a hardship. Like being constantly poked by someone, or such other nonsense. The idea of writing 2 novels isn't too bad. That means that I'll only have to write about 4,000 words a day. Given the previous experience, I know that that translates into about 2 hours on a good day, 4 hours on a slow day. Can I squeeze 4 hours of writing into my day? Probably, but it'll mean that I'll be putting a lot of pressure on the rest of the day. Sleep, work and family schedules will all feel the pinch. Given the situtation I'm already in (see above), I doubt that the family can handle me writing for 4 hours a day.

As an alternative, I've been thinking about using the time to force myself to edit last year's novel. It needs doing. I've edited up to somewhere in Chapter 3, and that's been over the last 10 months. Really, I'm just not making progress here. I've tried the editing thing, and I'm just not abole to keep myself motivated. Forcing myself might be the best way. After all, the best way to finish something is just to do it.

A couple of quick topics now. First, I'm not exercising or doing anything severe with my diet. As expected, nothing has happened with my weight. Still weighing in at 210. Next, the tournament scene in Midland is probably dead. I made a stretch with the tourney budget (borrowing about $70 from myself) and it doesn't look like things are going to pan out. Bren's made a proclamation that I must show a profit of $50 by the end of November to be able to continue with running tourneys in Midland. Given the current $70 deficit, there really isn't any way that the tourney can possibly make that much cash back. I'd have to have a take of $125 just to cover the previous balance, and then make $50? Maybe that's not what she meant. Maybe she meant gross $50. That's pretty likely to happen. Netting that much will be difficult - especially counting expenses.

As a last little note, my sister is pregnant. More grandchildren for my mom.

Posted 6:28 PM by Tim
Once again, a week between posts. Seems like I should really start calling this "weekly ideas." Anyway, everything is creeping up on me. Only 2 weeks until my friend's wedding. November is coming up like mad, and it's thanksgiving already (for those of you in the USA, your's is coming, you haven't missed it.) There's a tournament on the horizon, and things just keep getting stranger about that. (More in a second on that). So, busy, busy, busy. Of course, I haven't even bothered with figuring out what to do for my whole "exercise thing."

Now for the details. First up, the coming wedding. We're going to the Boston area, and there's a few places that I've always wanted to see there. First, Boston. Then Salem and Cambridge - well, Harvard campus anyway. I've got a list of places that I'd like to visit one day. I've already managed a couple of them - Novelty,Ohio, Vancouver, BC, Toronto, ON, Quebec City, QC, Montreal, QC and Cleveland, Ohio. Still more places that I'd like to see. Dinosaur, Utah, and Nowhere, Louisiana are on there. New York City, NY is one of them too.

Now for the tournament details. The tourneys that I hold up in Midland are about to get very strange. See, the local store was robbed. Lost about $16,000 in the theft. Apparently (from my semi-reliable sources), the crooks have been found. Several of the players from the tourney are responsible, at least in part. Here's where the trouble for me starts. Will I ban them from tournament play? I can't see a reason why I should. Logically, I can only ban people for things done in and around the tournament. Even though they stole from other people, it didn't happen at the tourney, nor just before or after. Nothing related to my tourneys. Of course, if I don't ban them, I'm bound to get complaints. Someone is bound to be upset. Nothing that I can do though. Like I've said, there's no reason for me to ban them from playing.

That's all for now. I'm sure that there'll be more later.

Posted 12:01 AM by Tim
Right, I promised more, so more it is.

I've been starting to think about my weight again. Well, to be most accurate - my shape. I'm more or less balooning outwards in ways I really don't want to go. Right now, I'm holding steady at 210 pounds. This has been my weight for a while now. Given my activity level and eating habits, I'm surprised that I can maintain this weight. I feel that right now, I'm about 30 pounds overweight. I'd like to lose that much.

I know that a healthy amount of weight to expect to lose in a week is about 2 pounds. That's gonna mean 15 weeks, at least, of eating better and exercise. I'd love to get that down to about 12 or so, but I just don't see it happening that quickly. The plan (like all the exercise plans), will be based on the "stop eating so damn much" diet, and the "get off your butt" exercise plan. I'll also be trying to drink more water. I'll keep you all posted on the progress.

Posted 12:15 PM by Tim
I've been more or less avoiding blogger lately. Not that I don't want to blog, just that the last few times that I've tried it, I've lost the entry. I've got to say, it really sucks to type up a few pages of blog, and then just lose it all. Maybe I should be working on some way to keep things from disappearing like that? Maybe I should be typing up everything in word first, then pasting it into blogger?

There's about 20 days until the first of two weddings happens. I'm really looking forward to it. A few days with just Bren and me. I've been thinking about places I'd like to see while we're away. We've come up with Boston, Cambridge and Salem. Salem looks like it's a little bit of a stretch, but we're probably going to try to get there. Me, I'm hoping to at least drive through the Harvard campus in Cambridge, just to see what I might have missed out on. :)

More in mind for now, but I'll post it later - if this little bit goes through.

Posted 12:29 PM by Tim
Been a while since I've blogged again. Not that I don't have things to say anymore. It's just that I don't have the same amount of time to say them all.

I've picked up a new short-term project. A friend of mine has asked me to paint one of his miniatures for him. I love the idea, so I'm going to do it for him. Cheaply too. About $10 to get it done up. If it works out like I hope it will, I'll post the work up somewhere, and point ppl to it.

Posted 11:20 AM by Tim
It's been a bit since I've had a chance to get at the blog, so I'm updating now. Work has been pretty good lately. I've been listening to the Harry Potter books while I work. I wasn't sure that I could work while listening to a book being read, but it actually seems to help me focus. Or not focus. Anyway, my work schedule is from 4 until 12, but I'm booking in an extra hour after shift, which means that I get home about 2 am. Given that I still need to get up at about 8AM, I'm not getting a lot of sleep. So little, in fact, that I don't know what today is. I've got this notion that it's Thursday, but something in the back of my mind is telling me that it's actually Wednesday. I'll have to check.... yep, Thursday. Ok, I'm not too far off track then.

In other news, there isn't any real news. Nothing happens at 2AM, other than some interesting TV, and trying to sleep during the day is more difficult than it seems.

Speaking of interesting TV, other other day I was watching Baby Blues, a cartoon on the cartoon network, based off of the comic strip of the same name. On it, the lead female character was listening to a CD, and singing the lyrics: Buried in the basement, starting to smell/buried in the basement, please don't tell/Or you'll be buried in the basement. Personally, I think this would make a great song. So much so that I wanted to find out if the song was real. Nope, according to Google, which sees all and knows all, the song isn't real. Too bad. Then again, I could write a song with those lyrics in it and nobody can sue me for it. Now all I need is a guitar.

Posted 7:25 PM by Tim
A bit of news before the main post. NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month website is gearing up for the 2003 writing month. Looks like November will be the month, and I'm getting my story ideas in place. Sign up starts October 1! If you think you've got the stamina to write 50,000 words in a month, you should definately sign up!

And now, a thought from work. A reading of the novel, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, recorded on mp3 has a runtime of about 488 minutes. That's just over 8 hours. Today, I worked 8.5 hours while listening to the book. I've got only 8 minutes left in it. I figure that those minutes are related to the time spent getting up and walking about today. I'll finish that book off tomorrow, and start right in on book 2.

In other news, I've got weddings on October 25, and november 15 to attend. Not sure yet where I'm going to be staying, nor how I'll be paying for where I'm staying, but I'm sure that I'll figure out something.

There's so many things that I want to do in my time off, but I'm finding it very hard to get anything started. For some reason, I can't get past the desire stage and into the motivation stage. I have been doing a little bit of writing, but it's been very sporadic, just here and there, and only for about 10 minutes at a time. What I need to do is finish off a few of the dangling projects that are around the house so that I get that feeling of accomplishment. Maybe that will motivate me to do something more.

Just FYI, if you're the least bit interested, some of the things that I've been meaning to do lately: write, draw, paint, edit, crochet and sew. All of my creative outlets at once. Of course, the knowledge that there is a craft show coming up in about a month or so has lead me to some strange ideas. One of those strage ideas combines drawing, sewing and possibly crochet. That is, fashion design. Yeah, it's a little known secret of mine that I like fashion design. I do take some note of what people are wearing and fashions, they just don't affect me directly. I've wanted to do some fashion work for a long time now, but I never get around to it because of the all of the skills that I am lacking. For example, I'm not very good at drawing people, and much less so with clothing. So, creating designs isn't easy for me. I've had ideas before, but they've never gotten anywhere. Also, I'm not a very good seamster (that's "person who sews." Sower isn't right, and sewer just doesn't read correctly). I suppose that I could simply practice and get better, but I don't have a lot of time for it, even if I had enough motivation to actually get started. Besides, I've already got enough projects started.

I don't think that I could keep up with the demands of the fashion industry anyway. The major labels come out with a new line of fashions every season. That's a new collectoin of clothes every 3 months. A very fast pace. Even if I tried to make just a few items, it would probably take me forever. I suppose that I should at least be thinking about Hallowe'en costumes now, and get them started. That'd give me enough time and practice to do something, eh?

Posted 1:13 AM by Tim
I'm learning to drive a standard. Well, trying to learn anyway. We had to get another car so that Bren and I could both get to work. We've got a little red Firefly. Sometime small, for commuting. I don't get any chance to drive it myself unless I take it out late at night. Everyone else is asleep, so nobody is using the little car.

It's not a bad time to try learning either. There's very few drivers on the road, so there's little chance of collisions if I don't get the braking right, and I'm not likely to bump anyone if I have any rollback on hills or whatnot.

My main problem is with getting started from a stop. I can't seem to get the car to get moving right. Either I stall the car (yes, bad for it), or it jerks me around like I'm some kind of pinball (yep, also bad for it). I know that my problem has to do with the timing between my feet. I need to let out the clutch enough that it starts to catch, and then give it gas so that the engine doesn't stall. But, too much gas makes it lurch around. I had about 1 good start tonight out of about 8 tries. I eventually get the car to get where I want to go, but I figure the other people on the road are just pitying me and my car. What else can you do though? Where else (other than a professional track) are you going to get better experience with the whole clutch thing?

I'm sure that a few more nights of driving will help me to figure it all out.

Posted 12:59 AM by Tim
Ok, not that having a really convoluted thought on the blog has ever bothered me before, but I wanted to leave a small break between this and the previous thoughts. Several of my friends from high school and unversity are getting married this year. In the next few months actually. They've been on my mind lately. See, I don't have the cash to attend all of their weddings. They're all east of me a ways, so the travel costs just aren't in the budget. I've already told one friend that I wouldn't be able to make it out that way, and it's rather upset me that I can't go. I was really hoping that I'd be in a much better financial place by now than I am.

What burns me even more is that I don't even have the cash to get any sort of present for the wedding or anything. The best I can do is wish them happiness and luck in their life, and well, hope to see them when I can. I suppose I can pretend that I'm there when the ceremony is on, and attend in spirit. That's probably the most that I can do.

For the others, well, I'm putting funds away now so that I can hopefully afford to live like a street person while I'm attending the wedding. I'll be the one stuffing food into my jacket for the walk home later. :)

Posted 12:52 AM by Tim
I've never claimed to be the easiest person to understand, but I did think that I was at least a little bit understandable. This week, I've been confused for an Australian, and an American. Ok. The American thing was just a misunderstanding, I was talking about my work in the USA, and they assumed that I was born there. As for the Australian bit, apparently I have a bit of an accent, and they couldn't place it. Now, in a new place I tend to speak very properly, so that I'm clearly understood. After all, I'm just getting used to their accents, and they're getting used to mine. Apparently, that makes me sound somewhat British, but more Australian. Ok then.

Now, on to other things. Is it bad, when in one of the few conversations all week, you use the words: "spongiform encephalopathy," "prion," and "neurotubules?" I thought so. Anyway, FYI, spongiform encepalopathy is the human equivalent of mad cow disease, prions, are the cause of that disease, and neurotubules is probably a made up word, but it sounds good, doesn't it?

Posted 1:23 AM by Tim
At work, I've got about 8 hours of time to think to myself. My job is starting to reach the point where I'm able to do it without too much conscious thought now. That's a good thing for me. It means that I get time to work out the plot of the stories that I've got in my head. Of course, it also leads to a lot of random thinking.

Tonight, I wondered, again, about the nature of the universe and God and all of those things. I've been meaning to have a chat with a couple of my friends about the whole subject, just to see what their viewpoints are. In a related vein, I wondered how difficult it would be to become a reverend. I've heard of people doing that before. For me, it wouldn't be a faith thing, I just think it would be cool to be Reverend Tim. That'd be kinda neat. The power to actually perform weddings and last rites and all that would be kinda cool too. I can't see any practical purpose for it though.

It's sort of like every time I consider becoming a bartender (usually in the periods where I've got no work). I don't drink, so I imagine that I'd need to have some sort of "designated drinker" with me, to help me pass the course. The way I see it, I can't be descriminated against based on religion. Well, in my religion (the Salvation Army), we have very strict no drinking rules. It would probably look a little odd that I'd be taking a course about drinking while refusing to drink on the grounds of religion, but that's not my problem. That's the way anti-descrimination laws work. You can't be excluded from doing something, even if it doesn't make any sense to do it. Or something like that. The main trouble with being a bartender is that I wouldn't know whether I was doing a good job or not. Other people would have to tell me. That, and the huge discussion it would bring up with my parents.

Anyway, like I said, a lot of time to think of crazy things. No time to write about them though. At least, not until I get home.

Posted 11:51 AM by Tim
This has been a quiet week. Literally. I'm at home alone during the day, and at work I'm really not talking very much. I could probably have gotten away with a vow of silence this week and not even have had to really test it. I've never had a problem with being silent. In a lot of cases, I'm happier to listen than to talk. It does make the week very lonely though.

This isn't the first time that I've been loney from sheer silence. I'm sure everyone has experienced it at some point in their lives. Me, I've had long stretches of very little talking before. Usually from when I go off somewhere to work. When I was in Cleveland, there were days that I really didn't speak to anyone. Especially weekends. Before I found a few friends in the area, I could go from Friday afternoon to Monday morning without uttering a single word to anyone. In a way, I liked that. It was interesting to sometimes see how much I could accomplish without words. Made me wonder what it would be like if I were mute.

Even in the Toronto job, there would be days were I didn't need to speak to anyone. I could go about my day and barely speak a word. Again, sometimes this was just to see how little I could say and still be functional. You should try it sometime. It's a different way of looking at the world. But remember to talk to someone sometime. Life is much easier that way.

Posted 1:40 PM by Tim
Well, I meant to post this last night, but just didn't get around to it before going to bed. So, here's some thinking from yesterday.

The girls and Bren are on vacation this week. I would have went, but I've got my job now, and I really can't ask for time off already. So, I'm home, and they're not.

Wayne is working the morning shift at his work, and I've got the afternoon shift. He's gone by 7, and back at 3:30 or something, and I'm not awake till after he's left. I leave before he gets back, and I'm home after he's asleep. So, we're both here, but never at the same time. It's like I'm living in a house of ghosts. Stuff moves around while I'm away (or asleep).

I bought myself a set of anime this weekend from a little second hand store downtown. They have decent prices on movies usually, and their selection tends to be pretty good. A little odd, but good. Anyway, I bought vids 1-3 of BattleSkipper. The cover suggests a fun little cheesecake mecha/schoolgirl anime, and the three vids were only $21. A good deal really. They're released in English via Manga, which usually means a quality anime.

I watched the first one last night, and I'll probably limit myself to one at a time. It wasn't bad, but I've got a few complaints. First, it was only 30 minutes. That's a lot of wasted tape putting out the other 2 vids. Second, I don't like the Mecha design. They're really blocky. Not very active looking. Of course, they had to be made into toys, after all, the anime is sponsored by Tomy. There's even a pair of advertisements for the toy versions just before the main anime gets started.

Working the afternoon shift is a little different than working the day shift. Not just because I get out of work in the dead of night, but because of the way people work. There's more conversation, and it seems a little more relaxed. I'll have to give all of the shifts a try, see what I like.

Posted 6:04 PM by Tim
So, I'm a part of the regular working world again. It's going pretty well so far. I have noticed a few differences between working where I am now, and what I've been doing the rest of the time.

First: The Internet. Every other job before (aside from those where I worked outside), has had the internet available to anyone as needed. So, it was pretty common for me to search out things I needed, to browse my comics, and still manage to blog and get email done in the day. Now, there's nothing but a very bland corporate intranet, which leaves very little browsing for me. I don't even get a good cell phone signal, so there's not really any way to get real news either.

Past that, there's the difference in pay. I expected a difference, and knew full well that I was going into a job with a massive cutback in my take home pay. For a good example of the difference, I will be making as much in 2 weeks of work as I had been making in 2 days. Yep, that's a big pay cut. Today, I was talking with one of my co-workers about lunches. I'm bringing them, but I was used to just going out to a fast food joint for lunches. She wondered how someone could afford such luxury. I had to somewhat sheepishly tell her that it was possible if you were paid enough.

Lastly, working conditions. Don't get me wrong, the place that I work in is great. Very nice place, and very new. Everywhere else, there was some feeling of a drive for community. People felt that they had to try to interact with each other as much as possible during the day. And they could. The work was such that you really needed to get together to coordinate. At the new job, there isn't as much of a forced feeling to the community. There's more of a natural community setting. There's still some pressures to get together and be friendly, but it's a lot less than I felt at other places of work.

There's enough difference to be noticable, but it's still work.

Posted 7:05 PM by Tim
Second day of work is the first full day. Still doing training on the system. Seems pretty straightforward. I just have to get accurate with it. That's the big thing. Accuracy.

I think it might take me another day or two to get to the point where I know what I'm doing for sure. The application itself isn't the problem, it's the many points where a decision has to be made about whether or not something counts or not. I'd explain more, but I don't think I'm allowed.

In other news, it looks like we'll be getting another car to give me a way to get out to work on a consistent basis. Something so that I can just drive there without worrying about how Brenda is going to get around. We've got a good possible car, but it's a standard. That's not really great because I don't drive a stick very well. Neither does Brenda. We'll have to learn though.

A bit of good news, I've got some ideas about stuff to write about. I'd let you all know about it, but there's not a lot to tell yet.

Posted 1:56 PM by Tim
Started the job today. Training day. Seems pretty straightforward. I'm going to have to update my CD collection.

I'm borrowing my brother-in-law's truck for the week so that I can get to and from work. I've affectionately named it "the Tank." It handles like a rocket-powered brick in all respects. Starting and stopping are more like take-off and landing. Braking hauls the truck to one side or the other, depending on which way the wheels are pointed. It seems pretty good for gas so far, so that's alright. If I can keep from killing myself in the truck, I should be alright for getting to work this week.

Posted 2:03 PM by Tim
Well, the job front has changed a little. I've got a job. I'm not sure what their policy on web stuff is, so I'll leve their name off for now. Suffice it to say that I'll be working. That's a good thing. With any luck I'll be able to finally make up the difference between what we need to make and what we've been making. If I can keep up with the after-hours stuff (tournaments and so on), then I should be able to really start to cover the difference.

Posted 2:35 PM by Tim
Ok. Here's the scoop. I've got a short term job. All this week. Starting at 6PM, and running till the wee hours. It's not a bad job. I could think of much, much worse. But it's also not an exciting job. I'm a document scanner. I feed documents into an industrial scanner, and name them with a three letter code and numerical sequence. Straightforward, easy work. Surprisingly, there really is a full time position for this job. It's one of those tasks that just has to be done, and there isn't a good way to automate it.

This morning I slept in till about 10ish. Don't remember exactly. All I know is that I'm still sleepy. I might get a nap after I get something together for dinner.

In other news, this throws off my writing time, and my exercise time. I just don't have the energy to do anything creative. I've still got the drive for both though, so I'm sure I'll get back into it soon.

Posted 12:58 PM by Tim
Job News: I'm employed for the next week. Not the Atlanta thing, but a local job. Just something temporary while the regular person is on vacation.

Posted 9:26 PM by Tim
Right. Tomorrow is looking like it will be busy. I've got to do some testing for a staffing agency, and I've got an interview with some people from Atlanta. Not sure what I'd do if I got the job down there. First, I'd have to get across the border, then it's on to the jobsite I suppose.

I know that doesn't seem like a lot, but I've also got quite a bit of writing and cleaning to do. Hopefully there will be good news on the job front soon.

Posted 11:05 AM by Tim
Well. I'm still looking for a job. Even after several reasonably good interviews. So, what's this mean to me? Well, I've got to do something. And soon.

My wife is becoming more and more willing to let me go just about anywhere as long as it involves getting paid. She sent me this link: Nova Groups. Nova Groups is one of those places that sends people into Japan to teach English as a second language. Of course, I've always loved the idea of just going to Japan. The thoght of being able to work there is practically orgasmic. Trouble is, there's a few things that she probably didn't realize when she sent this to me.

First, the minimum contract time is 1 year. Yep, 12 whole months away. And in that time (according to their site's info), you get 10 holiday days, plus 8 days at the start of new year. Those holiday days don't start until you're in your 6th month. I can't see me taking all my holiday days at once, but if I did, that'd be about 8 days home for the year. If I were a bachelor, that'd be fine. But married, and with children, it's just not good.

Second, the rate of pay is 304,000 JPY a month. Or, according to the cash conversion site I found, about $3500 a month. That's with a 35 hour work week. That works out to $25 per hour, which is a great rate. Of course, things are supposed to be more expensive in Japan, so that's a strike against it. You do have to pay rent (but you share with at least 1 other person). At least you don't have to go house hunting.

Trying to save some cash could be difficult though. I'm under the impression that live in Japan is more expensive than life in Canada. Of course, I don't smoke or drink, and probably wouldn't have a car, so I'm not going to be charged more for my beer, cigarettes or gas than in Canada.

If I were a bachelor, I'd take this opportunity without much question. I've got no job here and the prospects are looking bad. Best plan is just to pack and try somewhere else. Why not, eh? I've got a friend who did that. Went to Ecuador becuse the job market where he was living was terrible. Spent a while down there (6 months? or a year? I can never remember). Came back to Canada after it was all done with some cash and went right back into the job search. He felt good about the whole thing. Hmm. Maybe Bren and the girls could all come with me? That'd be an experience, eh? Dunno how Bren would handle it. She kinda likes being close to home. And I don't know if she'd want to teach English.

Posted 12:21 AM by Tim
Sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Other times, it's just the catalyst for desperation. And desperation is a great motivator. The finanacial situation here has moved from bad to worse. I'm trying to think of anything to make some cash. I'm looking at turning the tournament organizer thing into a full time job. If I can make a few bucks a week, we'd be all set. I think I've said before that I only really need to make about $500 a month to manage to cover expenses. I don't know if I'll manage to get there or not, but I'm going to give it a try.

On a happier note, I've started to exercise again. I always liked it when I was doing the weights before, so I've started on them again. Going slow at first. A low number of reps, and a smallish set of exercises. Just trying to build up the arms and shoulders. I'm doing a few leg lifts and crunches too so that I can shrink this gut a little. I'll probably need more for the gut, but it's my worst spot. I can barely do 10 crunches without siezing up and dying. That'll get better as it goes though. Past experience tells me that it'll take a week or two before 10 feels like nothing, and I can start adding more reps.

Honestly, I haven't been as good at getting the exercise in as I thought I'd be. This is a little late, but it's better to start late than not at all.

Posted 12:16 AM by Tim
I'm a sucker for the kitschy, 70's style Batman. I love the way that they did the whole thing. Very cool. Teletoon has been playing some of the old Spiderman cartoons. Same era, same kind of kitsch. All the great old lingo, "Groovy!" and such. Besides, at midnight, it's kinda fun to watch the psychadelic backgrounds.

I have to admit that I like the way that the spiderman cartoons were put together. All of the scenes were put at odd angles. Tilted 45 degrees, then straight, then tilted the other way. Or having things not line up very well. Feet in the wrong spot, mouths that move when they shouldn't, or be closed when they should be open. You can really see the junior art in there too. And the reused backgrounds. A classic.

One of the things that the Spiderman cartoons were lacking was continuity. (As a bit of a disclaimer, I think I've got the numbers right, but I could be wrong). The episode I watched tonight (which involved Peter Parker wanting to be a Football star, and the villian "Skymaster," and an invisibility formula) had a "big game" scene. The scoreboard was very interesting to watch. The first time it's shown, it shows 4th quarter, with 54 seconds to go. The Vistors have just scored a touchdown, making the score 0-6. The next time it shows up, the board shows that there's only 21 seconds to go, but the score is 6-6 for a second before the Visitors side flips over to 13. Interesting. I don't know much about football, but this suggests that in 33 seconds, the home team has been passed the ball,scored a touchdown, missed the extra point, passed the ball back, and the visitors have scored and gotten the point. Wow. That is some seriously exciting football.

Of course, at this time, Spiderman shows up on the scene with the star Quaterback (didn't I mention that Skymaster had kidnapped him so that his father would reveal the invisibility formula? No matter). We show the scoreboard again. Only 14 seconds now, but the score is 12-14. Again, the home team has scored, and again, the visitors have managed a point. In only 7 seconds this time. Spiderman helps the quarterback cheat, and the home team wins it 18-12. Yeah. The visitors apparently lost points there somewhere, and they don't mind that the home team cheated to get the win. That's some seriously strange football. Now, I didn't check to see how many seconds were left on the clock, but if there were any, they should definately have played it out. You never know what might happen, right?

Posted 10:32 AM by Tim
Been a while since I managed to get a post out. What can I say? I haven't had anything to say.

Yesterday, the girls manged to make $0.50 by selling rocks to the other kids. Not bad really. Bren rewarded them with another $1 for their chores and such. They took that cash and gave it away to the other kids. We have got to start teaching them about money.

In gaming related news, I've got a tourney coming up this weekend. Seems like next to nobody will be coming out to play it though. The few people that have previously confirmed coming have all recently flipped that position and said that they were not coming. I have little hope for this tourney now, but there's no way to pre-emptively cancel it. I suppose that it is all part of the learning process. Oh well, if we don't get 16 people to show, then I'll just have to change the prize structure to 50-50 cash split. I lose money on the deal, but at least I get something.

Posted 10:24 AM by Tim
So I'm reading some random blogs and stumbling through the links when I get to this: http://objective.jesussave.us/creationsciencefair.html.

Despite the crazyness of the whole idea, this was the most jarring:

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"
Jonathan Goode (grade 7) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

This has to be one of the most backward statements I've read in a long time. Too bad that it had to come from a 7th grader.

The rest of the site is pretty hit and miss. There's some good science in there, and some really bad science in there ("Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False"). The experiment about the bacteria cultures is something that I find interesting. I'd have liked to see more about their methology (whether the experiment was repeated, or used multiple samples to avoid statistical variations and probability).

I'd have to say that I take some offense to this stuff, but I really can't hold someone's belief against them. I just hope that they have another one in Toronto sometime so that I can get out there and see it in person.

Posted 12:56 PM by Tim
Wow. I have been really bad at getting an update out here. Let's recap the most recent weeks and figure out what I've been doing.

Last weekend, I went to Detroit to talk with a recruiter guy down there about doing something about getting me a job. It seems to have gone pretty well. Now if the market could just convince itself that it was all better, we'd be fine. Last week I also talked to a local short-term staffing company about getting me into a few areas to do some quick work. I had to take about 3 tests that day, and then a test on the next day, and a questionnaire, then yesterday, 2 more tests. I've scored pretty high, so I'm overqualified. That's recruiter speak for, "we're not going to hire you." It sucks to be too qualified for a job. The employer knows that you're going to get bored quickly, and they don't want that. Boredom means that you get distracted and that means that you end up doing a bad job in the end... even though you could do very well.

I've got a tourney to run this weekend. Strangely, I've got a bit of the jitters about running it. They're cashflow concerns mostly. I've got to get 7 people to show to break even, and if that many don't turn out, then we're pretty much stuck. Maybe I've got to do some better promotion on it. That's probably the trouble.

Speaking of tournaments and games and weekends, my weekends are pretty booked. 19 - tourney, 26 - LARP, 2 - tourney, 9 - LARP, and I'll probably host another tourney the weekend following the 9 if the one coming up does alright. That is: If I break even, I'll hold more tourneys.

I'm finding that my motivation has been very low, but my desire has been high. This is leading to a lot of frustration on my part. I really want to do things, but I can't seem to summon the energy to do them. Look at how long the blog has sat. That's a good enough example of what's going on down here in my head.

Posted 2:33 PM by Tim
Well, it's been a dearth of posts lately, hasn't it?

Ok. What's been happening here. Well, the employment situation is unchanged. I still have no job. The money situation has gone a little off though. I'm doing what I can to make it work out.

I've been thinking lately that it would be good if I could just run about and od all the little small jobs that I always figured I'd do if I were ever in this situation. I suppose that part of the trouble is that I've got the girls, and that I know almost nobody. Really. I can count the number of people around here that I really know on one hand. Sure I've met people, but I've never really managed to get to know people really well. It doesn't help that most of the people that I know don't have jobs either.

I've been trying to get some editing done. It hasn't been going well. If I lucky I can manage about one page a day. That doesn't include retyping. Which I've yet to really get to. :(

I've been running about today applying for jobs. It's been alright. I've managed to talk to some people, and I'm waiting on a call right now. Waiting sucks.

Posted 4:40 PM by Tim
No updates for nearly a week. Well, I think I said that I was going to be busy. At least I hope I've said something to that effect. If I didn't, well, I was busy this week.

I've been taking 2 different programming courses. I let one of them get behind. The one that I take at my own pace, of course. I let myself get stuck behind chapters 4, 5 and 6, and a final project. I thought I'd take the week to put all of the things together for it. About 10 applications all told. Some of them were pretty small upgrades of existing work, but some of them were serious stuff. New things that I hadn't already learned. I got through it though. That left me with just the project for the other class. I should be able to get that done pretty quick, if I can just sit at a system long enough to actually do it.

I've been giving the novel a little more thinking again. I got an email from a friend of my mother's who is also a writer (hmm, did I just call myself a writer?). She's had a copy of my manuscript since February. Its only taken her 5 months to read it. Hmm. I didn't think I wrote that much. Anyhow, she likes it. Thinks I should be trying to get it published. Of course, I think that the novel is "good, but not great." I don't think it'll publish as it stands now. I'll need to edit it to make it great.

So. I've had the novel done since December. Have I got it edited? Nope. Maybe I really did write more than I thought? No, that's not it. I'm just lazy. Editing the novel runs at about the rate of 1 page per day. That's spending at least an hour or so on just that page. And that doesn't include the retype. I'm just ssssllllooooowwwww. If I could pick up the pace, then I might just be able to get the novel finished.

Oh yeah, my mom's friend is the first person (other than me) to actually finish the novel. Nobody else has managed to get through it. Not really encouraging. I have been looking at the options though. Not sure if the publishing idea is serious yet.

Posted 12:30 PM by Tim
I've been missing music lately. That is, I've been missing the feeling you get when you make music. Like when you play an instrument. I used to play music just about every day. Back in high school, I played an instrument every weekday - and then promptly forgot to practice on the weekends.

At one point, I had thought about a career in music. Pick an instrument or five and learn them well. Practice all the time. Join a band, or symphony, or quartet or something. But I didn't follow that path. Science interested me more than music. In high school, I took advantage of band. I learned Tenor Saxophone. A good instrument, even if the Alto gets much more show in jazz bands. Of course, once you learn one saxophone, you've got them all, because the fingerings are all the same. I picked up clarinet, and then Bassoon. A little guitar, 'cause my dad had one at home. Some string Bass. And a little electric bass. I even tried flute, which I didn't totally suck at.

After high school, I knew most of the woodwind instruments to some degree. I then joined a brass band and picked up things like E-flat Horn, and Tuba. I tried trumpet and coronet, which I've always liked the sound of, but never been very good at managing to play consistently. I've shied away from Trombone, becuase it seemed like such a difficult instrument to master. Always loved the sound though.

On the side of everything, I've picked up a little bit of recorder (everyone does, don't they?), tin whistle, and percussion. I've always liked drums, but I have to get into a totally different mindset to play them. All mechanical motions and no thinking. As soon as I start to think, I lose the rhythm. I could get by with a single drum (maybe even 2), but the drum set always stumped me in its complexity. I used to do a little singing. I was told that I had a good singing voice. My singing range has considerably reduced since then. I used to float somewhere between a tenor and alto, and I think I've dropped mostly into the tenor range.... though I have no high notes at all without falsetto.

Anyhow, I've been missing music. The only instruments still around the house are my recorders (I have enough for me and both daughters to play), my tin whistle, and most of a flute (one of the parts was stolen - probably to replace a missing part in a school instrument). If I had my wished fulfilled, I would probably like to have a lot of musical instruments. A Saxophone, a Guitar and a Bassoon. The last one is a bit of a wish though. A good Bassoon would cost about $1000 USD. That's for a reasonable student instrument. Sure, there's plenty of music stores about. They have lots of instruments. But I have no money. Even if I did have some cash, I can't see me buying an instrument. Playing music is fine, but it gets a bit boring if you don't have anyone to play with. And I don't know anyone who plays.

Now, I must say that I've thought about trying to join a band here in the area. There's lots of them. And a lot of them need someone. Trouble is, I'm so out of practice that I'd never be accepted into one. Besides, what would I do in a band? I'm just not that connected to the music scene. It's all just pointless wishes and nostalgia.

Still. I miss making music.

Posted 10:31 AM by Tim
Woo! Blogger is starting to look all snazzy. I like the new look.

Anyway, been too long since I put anything up here. Time to write something.

Last weekend I saw Finding Nemo. Not a bad movie overall. The characters were good, and the animation was good. Of course, it's a PIXAR movie, so you've got to expect that they're going to do things well. I have very few complaints about the movie. In fact, nothing comes to mind right away. On the same theme, I can't think of anything that was done terribly great either. Nothing really spectacular about it. I did notice that a lot of the textures were very nicely done, but that's not something that's going to stand out to a casual observer.

I'm gonna discuss the plot of the movie now, so if you're interested in seeing it and not wanting to know what happens, you can skip the rest of today.

The movie's plot is pretty straightforward. Husband and wife fish have a lot of little fish eggs. The wife fish and eggs get eaten. All but one egg, which turns out to be Nemo. Nemo's dad is overprotective of him and this leads to Nemo eventually smimming out to a boat on the ocean. Of course, Nemo's got a bad fin, so he's not a very good smimmer. I'm not sure what the whole "bad fin" thing is supposed to be exactly, but its used in the story a few times. Anyway, Nemo gets taken by some divers and put in a fish tank with some other fish. They hatch a plot to escape the tank, which involves Nemo, because he's small enough to get to the tank filter. In the meantime, Nemo's dad meets up with another fish, Dory, who happens to have short term memory loss.

The short term memory loss thing is cute for a while, but does start to get annoying over time. Anyway, Dory and the dad fish spend most of the movie trying to get to Sydney, Australia. You'd think that it really wouldn't be that far, given that the divers were on a fairly small boat, but that'd make the movie too short.

I'm tired of going over the rest of the plot of the movie. To sum up, the dad fish finally realizes that he's way too overprotective. The little boy fish doesn't learn anything (other than that his dad loves him, which he knows already) and Dory forgets everything that happened. They end up back at the place they started from and everything is just great.

Anyway, like I said, it was a good movie. Just not a spectacular movie.

Posted 8:04 AM by Tim
Alright. This week is almost over. We're heading up to the inlaws this weekend. I'll be taking the laptop with me, because I really need to get some programming done.

Life has been a lot of the same old, same old. I get up, get the girls to school, do some work, get the girls for lunch, do some work, get the girls at the end of the day. Figure out what to make for supper. Make it. Eat. Play Halo against Wayne and Bren on the X-Box. Bed. Not a whole lot of changes there. Very routine.

Of course, in some ways routine is good for me. I don't have to keep thinking about what I need to do. I don't have to come up with new things all the time. I just do what comes next.

I've got a bit more to post today, but its more of a storylines thing, so I'll post it there.

Posted 4:10 PM by Tim
I'm not sure that anyone who doesn't use blogger would care, but they're making some serious changes to the interface. It looks good, and it at least seems to work like it's supposed to.

Posted 2:25 PM by Tim
Exercise. That's the word for today. I've been thinking about it - and my shape recently. I'm a firm believer in the adage "I don't need to get into shape, I have one already. Pear." Yeah. That's me. A little rounder about the middle than I'd really like.

I've thought of ways to combat this before. I've been logical about it too. I've got a lot of courses in biology, and I know that I'm not going to get into shape with magic machines or chemicals (BTW, yes, both of these are options, and, under the right conditions (starvation, pre-disposition, disease), you will lose weight).

The last time that I checked, I weighed just a little over 200 pounds (10 pounds is "a little" isn't it? It's 5% - that's not that much really). My ideal weight (not scientifically determined) is 180. I would love to be 180 again. Of course, I'd be happy weighing 220 if I knew that the extra weight was muscle. So, I've been trying to think. How can I lose 30 pounds?

Let's look at it rationally. 30 pounds is only about 15% of my body mass. Depending on you weight, 15% might be dangerous. I have my doubts for someone my weight. I've got obvious extra weight. Of course, losing it all at once is going to be impossible (and if it were possible, it'd be dangerous). So, there's no reason that I can't lose the weight over time.

Dieting is one idea. I've never been much of a fan of diet fads. I don't think that I want to take a pill, or eat only starches, or wrap myself in cellophane at night (yep, this is actually a dieting method). Anything that radically changes my diet plan (or is silly) isn't going to fit into my lifestyle. I've mentioned the "stop eating so damn much" diet. Which is probably the best plan for me again. See, I've been home all day, so I get to snacking. Of course, I'm basically skipping meals until supper, so it sort of balances out. Empty calories in, and lowered protein. It'd be good for me to swap that over to reasonable meals, no snacks and a nice balanced diet. Get some vegetables back into me again.

Then there's water. If you weren't aware, most of the diets that give you super quick weight loss are just dehydration diets. You drink nothing and try to get yourself to sweat a lot. You'll lose weight quick. Sometimes as much as 5 or 6 pounds in a day (or less time). Don't do it. Bad for the system, and as soon as you drink something you'll swell up and look all bloated. Anyhow, there's something to be said for drinking more water in a day. We're supposed to get 8 glasses of water a day. That's 2 liters. It's better to drink more than that on a hot day. Of course, overdoing anything is a bad deal. I've got to try to drink a little more water and less juices and things. Milk too. In the mornings.

So, I'm eating better (not necessarily less) and drinking more water. Good things. What else.

Exercise. Back to where we started. I've had the craziest notion about running. Like I should be doing it. Bad idea. See, I hate to run. It makes my chest pound, my head spin and my shins hurt for a whole day after. Running just isn't a possibility. There's swimming, but it looks like the pool won't be set up around here for a while. That's not going to cut it. There's biking, which I can do. I've got to get my bike fixed up and I'm all set. That's the trouble there, I'm still too lazy. So, I've been thinking about trying to get a little more exercise into my daily life again. A daily walk (I can walk anywhere - but I can't run there.) is a good start. I've been thinking about taking a walk down to the grocery store. Trouble is, I always want to buy something when I get there. Maybe I'll have to try walking the other way.

We've got stairs in the house (and on the route to school), so I should be taking those more often - and probably faster.

There's always home exercises. Free weights, stretching, yoga, tai-chi and all that. I find I never stretch enough, never warm up enough and always end up hurting myself with weights (or get frustrated trying to follow an exercise video). Maybe I'm taking it too seriously?

Maybe I should be looking at sports that involve some amount of activity. For me, I find that the best sports are the ones that allow me to hit something. Helps with the aggression. Fencing, Karate and such I've tried. I'd be happy to do them again, but we're low on cash.

Baseball is an idea, but it involves throwing and catching. Two things that I am absolutely terrible at. I can improve over time, but I'd rather do that as a park activity than a sport. There's soccer, which I've always liked - but there's probably too much running. Badminton, volleyball and tennis I've liked too. See, I get to hit things in each of those sports. You really need a second person for them though, and that's not always possible. If I get a second person, I'll see if I can get them to join me in a game or two :)

So, if I'm going to exercise, it looks like walking (maybe some running over time), biking and free weights are going to be it. I think that's probably a pretty good balance, but I'm missing an aerobic activity (unless I'm going to race around on the bike). The walking and biking can both be more endurance activities, while the weights can be part of strength training (a few push-ups, sit-ups and chin-ups will help here). Toss on some stretching and I've got myself a workout that I can handle. I just have to phase in a little each day.

So, I've got a goal (several goals really), and I think that I can reach it. Sounds like a plan to me.

Posted 8:25 AM by Tim
Well, long time no post. There just hasn't been much to say. My youngest had her birthday this week. She's 5 now.

Our cash situation is still unstable. We're losing money faster than we can make it. I've complained enough about that.

Wayne's been letting me borrow the X-Box while he's at work. I've been playing some Morrowwind on it. It's not bad once you get used to the controls. I look at it as a very free form role-playing game. Basically, you figure out something to do for yourself, and work out how to solve things. A little exploration, a little mystery solving, and doing the odd job here and there. As for me, I'm a thief and a spy and I'm trying to become an assassin. Maybe if I kill enough people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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