It's Christmas eve folks! The wait is finally over. In a few short hours we'll all be awake, and opening the presents we've dreamed about for weeks. I know I'm looking forward to it and I'm sure you are too!

But more importantly, for me, I get to take a well needed break. I will be away from my desk in the office, and away from having to think about all the difficulties that have been plaguing me. The rest already feels good. About 2 hours ago I finally felt the tension begin to seep out of my body. It felt good.

I don't know how many entries I'll make during my vacation. I'll try to jot down anything worthwhile, like interesting dreams and such. Have a good Christmas vacation.

Toodles!

It seems everyone went to the Fox & Hounds for wings tonight. Everyone that is but me. I don't know how to feel about that. I suppose I made my choice when I agreed to work out here in Watson. Its nights like this though that I really question the decision. Yes, I can go back to Saskatoon on the weekend and hang out with my family, and friends, but I'm missing out on the little things. I can't go for wings on a Monday night. I miss cheap night at the movies. I'm not there for weekday gigs at Sask. Place. I suppose maybe I should try to not dwell on the negative so much. For some reason my mind always seems to want to go down that darker road.

On the up side I sold a digital camera this morning. It was pretty easy, my boss just came into my office and said, I want to buy a digital camera. Its hard to mess up a sale like that. :-)

Toodles!

I must not be sleeping well. I had another vivid dream last night that I could still remember when I woke up. That says to me that I'm sleeping fairly close to consciousness. I went to bed at a reasonable hour, 11:15, and stayed there until 7:52. I'm having a lot of trouble getting up in the morning. Even more than usual. I can't decide if its just because of the time of year, and no hint of sunlight when I need to get up, or if its something more sinister I'm hoping its just seasonal.

I was going to tell you all about my dream. It was a fairly vivid dream, with a good, cohesive story to it. It was like a movie. I wish there was a way to capture dreams and replay them for others as movies. If someone could invent that they would make a fortune. Maybe I should bend all of my considerable talents towards developing this invention. Or maybe I should just play more video games.

I was going to describe the dream for you. Of course that was 2-1/2 hours ago when it was still real fresh in my mind. I've forgotten all of the really important stuff that pinned the dream together and is necessary for it to make sense to all of you. The random images that I can pull from mind, still make sense to me, but I don't have enough of my dream in my head anymore to describe it to you. If I did, I'd be making up new stuff to fill in the gaps and that doesn't really suit the purpose I intended.

I'm disappointed I can't describe it for you. It was a really good movie. It was entertaining. It started out much different from how it ended. It began as a bank heist. I, as a character not as me, was helping this guy that looked like Drew Carey, rob a bank that somehow was situated in Central Butte school. The grade nine room specifically. That melted into a dream where me, and now a character played by Jason Lee, were evading the police who didn't really know we'd been responsible for the bank heist, but there was one detective that had strong suspicions and was on us like flies on honey. That went on for awhile and then the dream morphed again and there was another new character, a girl this time. She was kinda of like Tyra Banks, or Beyonce Knowles but not completely. I suppose it was a composite of attractive, exotic women. The detectives that were chasing us weren't regular cops but a group of people huntiing supernaturally talented people, like me, Jason Lee, and the exotic girl (I forget her name). To evade them we went back in time. My character kind of lost his sanity, and started doing all kinds of impossible things (which were possible given his mental abilities) and the girl character was hunting me down to send me back. She turned from an ally to a friend character trying to save the people of this time frame. This part of the dream was really good but I can't nail down any details for you. It was a chase type dream, with all these people out to capture me, and return me to my own time, with me evading them while simultaneously losing more and more of my sanity. In the end I got away.

I apologize for having lost the details. I should have written this dream down earlier. But I got to work and my keyboard wasn't working, so I fussed with that. Then I wanted to finish a set of drawings so that we can go into production on the unit over Christmas and maybe ship the unit out early in the new year. Then I got back to chasing phone calls on the big project I'm doing. All of this combined to put me behind schedule on documenting my dream. Thus I forgot the details. :-( Again, my apologies.

I hope everyone is having a super fantastic day. Toodles!

So I listened to the new Sum 41 album today. All in all I didn't mind it. The music is the type that I like. If I had a complaint after a single listen, I'd say that all the songs sound the same. Which is to be expected, I suppose. I guess songs by the same artist would be the same. That's not really what I noticed though. I had the album playing in the background while I worked. It got to the end and I didn't even realize that the first song had ended. It was like one, great, big long song. I suppose that could be attributed to my focusing on my work but I have trouble with that theory. There is way too much on my mind right now for me to concentrate on anything. Turmoil surrounds me. Which kind of sucks because I don't thrive in turmoil. I actually tend to sink in it, like a stone sinking in quicksand. The Christmas break can not get here too soon for me. I won't go into the whole sordid story in this very public forum because frankly, its not the right venue for that. But I will be so glad when I can get back to Saskatoon, sleep in my familiar room, and forget about everything

Toodles!

Sorry about yesterday. I just didn't get around to typing anything in here. I didn't really have anything to say either, which is part of why there was no entry. Another day of pounding at the project. Then I went home, late, and had to fix a computer. I was only online for a couple of hours and totally forgot about my plan to add a blurb to this blog. You didn't miss anything. I was zoned out yesterday.

Does anyone remember the old cartoons they used to show on CBC and CTV on Saturday mornings? For some reason I have those shows in my head this morning. The theme song from that cheesy 'Wizard of Oz' cartoon is repeating in my head. I could sing the whole thing for you right now.

The World of Oz is a very funny place,
Where everyone makes a funny, funny face.
All the streets are paved with gold,
And no one ever grows old,
In that funny place of the Wizard of Oz!

This is why I can't get ahead in life. I always have stupid, useless stuff rattling around in my head. Its a serious problem. I think I need professional help.

I also think about the Smurfs. Tara and I talk about the Smurfs occasionally. She actually still gets the show on some channel, on her TV. I miss the Smurfs. Now there was a quality program. The early ones. When they started doing time machines and stuff it got stupid and I quit watching. The classic battles between the Smurfs and Gargamel were very entertaining though. I should try and find my stuffed Smurf doll and put him on my desk with my other toys. My desktop is a real toy box. :-)

How about that Frankenstein show that would come on really early? The exact name of that one escapes me right now. It was a live action show, and not a cartoon. It was cheesy as hell but I still got up at 6:00 in the morning to watch it. Am I alone in this?

You know what? When I was about 6, I wrote a letter to CKCK TV in Regina, asking them about their cartoon line-up. I'd go to Osler to visit my cousins and they had Bugs Bunny, and back home in Coronach all we got was stupid, crappy cartoons that I didn't enjoy half as much. So I wrote them a letter asking them what was up and why couldn't they get the cool cartoons like they had in Saskatoon. I actually got a reply, which I had for the longest of time. They had a plan for a new cartoon lineup which would be announced soon. Not long after we started getting the Smurfs, and other shows. We never did get Bugs Bunny but at least the cartoons did improve.

Toodles!

There will be no entry today full of frivolity and merriment. I am in the office, in the evening, again. We got our shop drawings back this afternoon, and after a frustrating several hours of reviewing them, I'm back at the process of trying to fix what is wrong. Some points were good, and we were in error. Those have been fixed, for the most part. Some on the other hand were farcical. How do you install a screwplug heater? Hhhhmmmm, I don't know, perhaps you SCREW IT IN!!?!!?!! Its that kind of insanity that is giving me a permanent, stress induced, migraine. It would not hurt my feelings at all if something large and heavy fell on certain people. In fact, I'm saying a silent prayer for it. I am so looking forward to the next GameFest. I will definitely be playing on whatever team lets me kill Russians.

From my office, I remain. Toodles.

Further to yesterday's post, it was Sean that suggested I post the joke. There you go buddy! :-)

I want to write this down before my memory of it degrades any further. I've already lost much of the substance of the dream I had last night so I'll commit what I do remember to the cyber world for posterity.

I went to Toronto for some reason. It had to do with business because I had on business clothes, and I took a laptop. I arrived by plane but the plane ride was not part of the dream. The first thing I remember was being in Toronto, in this very fancy terminal building. It looked more like an expensive bank lobby than an airport terminal. It was a long hallway, with a massive glass panelled canopy overhead. It was cloudy and dull out though, so it wasn't bright inside the building. The floor and walls were all of gleaming marble. Everything shone, and the marble was a kind of creamy/gold color.

The first order of business was securing a ride to wherever I was going. That was the thing though, I didn't know where I was going. I had a bunch of meetings and stuff that I had to attend, but that was for later in the week. I had today free, so I was going to do some of my own stuff. So, I wanted to go watch the Toronto Maple Leafs play. I hailed a cab and said, 'take me to the stadium' because I couldn't remember the name of the hockey arena in Toronto. (I remember now that its the Air Canada Center) So this taxi driver takes me all over the place, down streets, through markets, then stops in front of a building. I get out and wander through this building. Its not the arena I want, because the Toronto Blue Jays are practising behind some mesh in one part, the Toronto Argonauts are practising on the field in the Skydome and the hockey arena is just part of this massive complex. You can wander all the way through this building, but a series of glass panels take you in a corridor to the small amount of seating around the hockey ice. It turns out this is a minor hockey game, which is not what I want. But the exits from the hockey arena part are not to the street but a train platform for a train that never will arrive for me.

Cut to me in a hall of some kind. There are row upon row of tables set out, and hundreds of people are seated at these tables. I don't really take the time to study the crowd at first, but later on I realize that most of the people are middle aged to senior citizens. Why am I here? Kevin is doing the sound for the performances that take place awhile after I arrive at this place. Some guy, who actually sings pretty well, even if its not my type of music, is belting out a song as I flag Kevin down. I chat with him and see if he's free to tour Toronto with me. He can't go, because he has to do the sound for this event, and he's also responsible for the sound at other events in this festival thing that is going on in Toronto. But he can get me a ride to Toronto to see the sights I want to see. It turns out I'm not in Toronto at the moment but I'm actually in Markham, Ontario.

So I get in this taxi cab with a girl. It takes me a couple of minutes to realize its Amanda Marshall. She was performing in the show we just left but had been on before I arrived. She was going back to Toronto anyway so I'm tagging along. I mostly just sit there and listen to her because she talks, a lot. One of the nuggets of information I get out of this conversation is that, she has to drive this taxi cab to make enough money to pay her bills. Apparently being a Canadian artist does not pay as well as it should. Eventually we get back to Toronto and she takes me into this less densely packed area of the city, with lots of hills. We pull up to a hotel, and I get out. I think she came too, but I didn't see her anymore in the dream.

I'm back in that marble lobby again, only know its the shopping plaza lobby of the hotel. I meet my parents there, who I didn't expect to be in Toronto at this time. I also run into my aunt and uncle, who I again didn't expect to see in Toronto. My cousins are also there. We all have rooms in this hotel, and our rooms are on the 17th floor. The elevator system is kind of funny. You can only go up to the 15th floor on the first elevator, then you have to get out and switch elevators or take the stairs. I ride the elevator to the 15th floor, then walk up the stairs. But I don't get out on the 17th floor. I end up on the roof, along with all the family I just mentioned.

Somehow being on the roof only puts me three floors above the ground. I really don't understand this. There's a mugging, or some kind of rugby scrum going on, on the roof, and I stand for awhile watching this. Then I jump down from the roof, to ground level again, and drive away in a taxi. I circle the area trying to solve this conundrum of how I could go up 18 floors and be only 3 floors off the ground. The dream ends somewhere around this point, as I never satisfactorily figured out the mystery of the hotel.

My brain can concoct some weird stuff at times. And I didn't even eat anything weird last night! Toodles!

I apologize for no entry yesterday. Same goes for today. The SAME damn project is giving me hives. I'm less than thrilled. I'm too angry to come up with a witty entry. So, at someone's behest, I will post the raunchy joke I read this morning.

A waitress walks up to one of her tables in a New York City restaurant and notices that the three Japanese businessmen seated there are furiously masturbating.
She yells, "What the hell do you guys think you are doing?!"
One of the Japanese men explains, "Can't you see? We are all berry hungry!!!"
"So, how is wacking off in the middle of the restaurant going to help that situation?" asks the waitress.
One of the other Japanese men replies, "The menu say, FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED!!!"

Sorry for no entry yesterday. It was another crazy day. Today hasn't sized up as being a whole lot better. More chasing down answers to questions, getting new product information and specs, getting new pricing, and answering calls. I don't know if I've ever used the phone as much as I have in the past week and a half or so. It seems like every hour I'm either phoning someone, or being phoned by someone. Which is a source of frustration for me because I'm really not fond of using the phone. I've often tried to puzzle out where my dislike for the telephone comes from but I've never developed a satisfactory answer to the question. I usually just end up with a conclusion, 'I don't like phones' and I end up leaving it.

I had a joke for you, finally, from yesterday's batch of email. But then I never got around to doing an entry, and so I've lost the joke. :-( I really have to do a better job of staying on top of things. Disorganization is a major enemy for me right now. My usual method of planning, which is to throw stuff against the wall and go with whatever sticks for the longest, is not really saving the day. I'm losing ground on a lot of stuff I don't want to lose ground on. However, I'm among the world's worst at time management. I fart around way too much and usually end up having to make a herculean effort to right the ship. (See last week's endeavours.) I don't know, maybe now is the point where I make the leap to proper time management. I've considered using Microsoft Outlook as my e-mail program and consequently using the other features of the program. But I'm on so many different computers that this solution is problematic. What I really need is to get a PDA but, being the geek that I am, I want one that is WAY out of my price range. ...sigh... I'll probably just muddle through in my usual way.

As a final parting thought I will suggest to you all that you check out www.bored.com. I thought the virtual fireworks, and the story about the guy cashing one of those junk mail cheques, to be very entertaining.

Toodles!

It's done. I almost can't believe that its really finished. All the drawings have been printed, copied, bound and shipped. There is nothing left for me to do. Hooray!

Its really hitting me now. Like a train with the throttle stuck wide open, fatigue is crashing into me. I'm sitting here at my desk and its all I can do to keep my head up. This is not a good situation. I stayed up until 3:30 last night finishing the shop drawings. Staying up that late isn't the end of the world but I was working that hold time. From 8:00 AM unti 3:00 AM the next day. All work, at a flat out pace. I'm spent. Tomorrow is a day off for this dude. At the rate I'm going even the rest of today might be taken with nap time. :-D

Still no jokes to include here. This is bugging me a little. Oh, the jokes I'm reading are funny enough. They make me smile. But there hasn't been a good one that made me burst out laughing. I'm disappointed in the internet's jokester's. They need to get more on the ball.

Toodles!

Today I feel I must rant. And for a change its not about work. I have a new beef and this is something that irritates the HELL out of me! So I'm downloading music. As I'm like to do, I'm trying to get a whole album. Its one of those things where its not an artist that I would in any way ever entertain the notion of buying. The person in question today is Jennifer Love Hewitt. Her music is that bubble gum music that I can listen to, and actually crave from time to time, but wouldn't consider buying. I'll buy a Pearl Jam, Tragically Hip or Metallica CD, but music that I listen to only as a diversion I'm not plunking my $15 down for.

But I digress. Somewhat surprisingly the full roster of songs were hard to find. Granted, Ms. Hewitt is a more popular actress than she is songstress but she's mainstream familiar enough that I thought the songs would be easy to track down. Some yes, but the majority no. The title track, Barenaked, was simple to find and I had lots of choices in bit rate, and available copies. The rest I was usually in the range of 3 to 4 download options and one or maybe two bit rates. And some I had one available copy, with multiple people in the queue already. This is the subject of my ire. Okay, fine, I can deal with being in a queue. If its an obscure song, or something hard to find, I don't mind getting in line and waiting for it. But this is the thing that galls me to the core. You finally get your turn to download and the person has a slow transfer rate. Not a huge deal but you can just guess that this person has a slow rate because they're a bandwidth hog. Fine, so you wait your half an hour or longer to download the song. Then you get to 98 or 99% and the little bastard cuts you off! So you have almost the whole thing but if you want to finish it, you have to get back in the queue and wait again, for maybe hours. That is so irritating! And you can tell they did it on purpose because you do a new search and the only available copy is from the same person. What possesses a person to act like that? That's beyond rude to a place I don't even have a word. It's moments like these when you feel a really strong, powerful urge to choke the life out of another human being. Not because its such a terrible thing to have happen to you, but the act was done with some obvious malice. Some people have no class.

Toodles!

I gotta hurry if I want to get this blog entry in, in time to be considered a Tuesday entry. I'm slowly winning the battle against this project I'm on. We had a casualty in the war today. I'm not going on the road to oversee the pilot test. There's too much for me to do in the office yet for that to happen. It's 11:15 and I'm still in the office trying to straighten out the various threads of this effort. Every step forward I take results in a step backward too. For every problem I solve, I create another new one. I end up not moving forward but sliding sideways endlessly. I can't even begin to guess how many times I've revised this schematic diagram, or how many editions of the spec sheet I've editted. I'd pull out my hair if I had any!

One thing I've noticed that has been lacking in my blog entries is jokes. I guess I'm just not finding a whole lot funny from my repository of daily jokes. I get 200 pieces of spam a day, including joke messages and nothing is blowing my skirt up. What does that say about the staleness of the world joke collection? I will continue my search though. I still love my Jesus/chicken joke. Nail him to a chicken. LMAO!!!

Toodles!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Most of you probably know the reason already. I'm being snowed under by my assignments at work. Its been flat out on projects every day for a week now. I don't even have time to breathe. All areas of my life are suffering. I HOPE with every ounce of my fiber that I'm getting close to the end of this flurry of activity. If things go well tonight maybe I'll be able to take a breath or two over the rest of the week.

While I'm thinking of it, I've got a new pet peeve. What is the deal with convenience stores and their coolers? I've been on the road a lot lately, and I've been stopping in at this little shoppes to get myself a refreshment. A lot of the time its been a search for a caffeine fix to keep my eyes open. But I digress. I'll go into one of these stores, pick my beverage of choice and grab a swish from the bottle. I don't know, maybe I'm alone in this. I like my drinks cold. Perhaps its just me and I'm quirky in this respect. Somehow though I don't think I am. Why the hell is it that you can't get a COLD drink from a convenience store? The damn bottle is always just shy of warm. Its never warm when you buy it but about 5 minutes later it is. That annoys me. Would it be so bloody hard to turn the refrigerator's down a couple of degrees and keep the cold beverages actually cold?

Just something I thought of this week. Toodles!

Hello world. How's it goin'? I've come to watch your flowers growin'.

I just read a story about genetic engineers trying to create a blue rose. Apparently this is a very hard thing to accomplish. It makes me think about stuff. Which is never a good idea because thinking about things only gets me in trouble. But I've been doing a lot of thinking, about a lot of things, today. My mind is very active today. I have no particular answer as to why.

Anyway, back to the rose. These scientists are trying to create a blue rose. This is difficult because the rose has no gene to allow blue pigment, which should thus make it an impossible attempt. But in strides genetic engineering! As the story went, some geneticists have found a human enzyme that turns stuff blue. They tried it on some bacteria and made it go blue so they figure they might be able to make the rose grow blue too. They have had limited success so far, having only accomplished making some blue spots appear on the stems. But what I can't understand is, why is anyone wasting valuable time on this? And why is it okay to waste time, money and effort on something frivolous like the color of the rose, and yet such an enormous hue and cry is raised when genetic engineering is used to try and improve our food sources. This makes no sense to me. Personally I would rather see genetic engineering create a bigger, juicy apple then make a blue rose. Not that a blue rose wouldn't be pretty. I just question whether there should be people dedicating their careers to this pursuit.

Toodles!

I hate engineers. I hate engineering. This whole god damn profession is populated by nit-picky little assholes who have nothing better to do than call down your very best effort. I think the concept of the professional engineer should be abolished. Rather that appreciate it as a duty to protect the public, the sanctimonious twits use it as a cudgel with which to beat you into submission. I think engineers should be in the business of getting things done. Their daily efforts should be expended towards improving the lives of people. They should be helpful and courteous, not aggressive and confrontational. Unless someone can give me a good reason why I shouldn't just pack it in, go back to Saskatoon, and pump gas or something, I really think I might. I don't need this aggravation. It makes me sick to my stomach, and I feel like vomiting. I give my best effort, I try to act with dilligence and consideration, and I get told (in implied words because an engineer would never come right out and say what he thinks) that I'm a slacker who isn't trying. I stayed up all night Tuesday night creating a drawing for him because I knew he wanted it right away. Do I get a thanks for promptly filling his request? No, I get told I'm not meeting my obligations. I'm well behind schedule on producing the shop drawings. How is that my fault? You pick apart everything I give you. At the rate with which this is being handled, I could have submitted a drawing package the day of the site meeting, and I still wouldn't have made all the changes he wanted by the target date.

This is so damn frustrating! If I'm wrong, or I've made a mistake, I'll fix it, no questions asked. But when I'm trying real hard and someone finds fault with everything I do, that is hard to stomach. It makes me want to quit. I'm serious, I really want to quit. I don't need the ulcer this is giving me. Anyone know of a good job with low stress? Gas jockey, video store clerk, anything?

Toodles. :-(

I'm done. I'm finished. I'm kaput. I'm every metaphor you can think of for a person who is too tired to stay awake anymore. You name a way to be tired, I'm that. I don't really even have the ambition to write this entry but I know that if I leave it for later, it won't get done. I anticipate accomplishing little more than sitting erect and breathing this afternoon.

This relates back to my previous entry about the engineer asking for a simpler drawing. I started it Monday afternoon and after a lot of puzzlement I realized that it wasn't going to be as easy to do as anyone guessed. In fact it was going to be damn hard! And it was hard but even I couldn't predict how tough it truly was. Long story short, I stayed up all night (save a one hour nap around 4:00) finishing this low tech, 2D drawing. All told I probably put 12-14 hours into creating it. I thought it was going well enough yesterday afternoon that I could finish it by the end of the day. How wrong I was! Naively I answered, this afternoon, when the engineer called me to inquire about it. He was way more polite to me than he ever has been in the past but it was pretty evident that he wanted this drawing right away. I like to think I'm a man of my word so when I said I'd have it finished that afternoon, I felt obligated to work on it at home, and get it finished for the morning. I finally got it send off about 10:30. We had to have a staff meeting, and a company picture in between. It was mostly done when I came to the office this morning. I just touched up a few final things, and dimensioned and labelled it. I REALLY hope he appreciates that drawing.

Sorry folks but I'm going to have to wrap it up here. My brain has already shut down and thinking is not a process that I'm having any success with. With some luck I'll feel better tomorrow and can write a better entry.

Toodles!

My day has been made. Hell, my whole week has been made, and its only Monday! Christ, this may be the highlight of my career so far. It was one of those moments that just resonate with you, and make you feel good throughout. It reaffirms your believe in yourself and your abilities.

This engineer I've been working with phoned me this afternoon. He'd handed me hat a while back about the lax quality of the shop drawings I'd presented him. I won't go into the details but he poked many, large holes in my submission and to make a long story short, said do it over. Anyway, he phoned me this afternoon and I could hear it in his voice from the first thing he said. He was apologizing to me from the start. I'll paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact text of the conversation. He goes into it and he tells me, I'm sorry but I can't use the drawings you sent me. There's nothing wrong with them. They are very good. They are too good. I don't know how to use them. Can you please redo them in a simpler format?

This just makes me howl. After all the grief I'm going through over my work experience, here I get an engineer coming to me and saying, your work is too good. Can you make it simpler so I can copy and paste it into my drawing? I'm so unfit to be a professional engineer, but the quality of my work surpasses that of one of the people judging me. The irony of that is just too rich.

Suffice it to say, this has made me feel real good. I must have some talent in this engineering field that I've chosen, if the work I'm producing can be deemed 'too good' and requires simplification. A person goes to work every day, and does what they're asked. Its not often that you get praise for your efforts. I'm probably luckier than most because I have a very communicative boss, and he does give me praise often. That is a tremedous help to a guy that's had some trouble with his career. But to have it come from an outside source, and be in the form of 'hat in hand' request, just makes me beam from ear to ear. If anyone needs me, I'll be on cloud nine until further notice.

Toodles!

Today's blog entry has to begin on a sad note. The inspiration for my creating my own blog, has decided to close her blog. As many of you may remember, I mentioned in my first blog entry how I got the idea to have my own, from reading the blog of someone called Azzaelea. It was with much regret that I checked her site this morning to discover her GONE! message. I didn't really know her or anything, or have that much to do with her. It was just a web site that I checked frequently. Still, I'm going to miss her. Good bye and good luck Azzaelea!

I met someone new last night, on the internet. I think when historians look back on the impact of the internet on society, that is going to be the one thing that stands out most. The internet has really changed the way we communicate with each other. They say that pr0n is the number one income producing content on the internet, and I can believe that. I'd bet though that the number one use of the internet is inter-personal communication. It would probably boggle the mind to try and comprehend the amount of email that is sent in a day. My favorite though is instant messaging. There's probably a few hundred million instant messages sent a day too.

Back to my point though, that I met a new girl last night. It was from one of those dating sites. I subscribed to a bunch of them, on a lark, back in July. Tara and I had just broken up and I was hearing that Cupid.com commercial incessantly on the radio. I had to know what all the fuss was about, and from there I just signed up for any that I came across in my 150+ spam emails a day. The one I met this girl on was actually one I'd kind of dismissed as rinky-dink. Turns out though it was where I was getting most of my responses. Maybe I just wrote the best profile on there? Anyway, I got a couple messages from her, and wrote her a response last night. She instant messaged me awhile later and we had a conversation that stretched into the night. It was fun. It was nice to talk to someone new. I hope I get the chance to talk to her again.

Things have been on a general improvement trend over the past couple of weeks for me. Computer sales have finally picked up again, after a long doldrum. I sold some peripherals to people here in Watson. What all have I sold lately? A scanner, and wireless access port, a Flash RAM card for a digital camera, an inkjet printer anda 16 port network switch. Its not a satisfying as a system sale, but Sean might have a line on one of those for me too. Perhaps its too early to get excited but I can't help myself. Everything's coming up Milhouse! :-)

Time to go people. Thanks for listening. Toodles!

Today's joke:

Q: How can you tell a cow from a bull?
A: When you stick your head up it's ass, if there's room for you to stick out your tongue, then its a cow.


This is not today's joke because I think its funny. This is today's joke because, I have to confess, I don't get it. Even if a joke's not funny I can usually figure out why it was supposed to be funny, and thus 'get' the joke, even though it wasn't funny enough to get. But this one eludes me. I understand well enough that the sticking your head up a bovine's ass is the crux of the joke but how the tongue sticking out part works baffles me. An ass is an ass is an ass, I would think. And why would you want to stick your tongue out, should you chose to jam your head up an animal's ass? I would think that to be a fairly unsavory place. Maybe I'm wrong. All you head-up-the-ass-of-a-cow people out there mail me, and explain this if you would please. I am ever so curious.

I really like this wireless ethernet idea. As a concept it is very good. Unfortunately as a practical application it has thus far not served me as well. If it weren't so bloody expensive I would definitely implement this at my house, so I could be in the living room without running cords. At $250 for the access port and another $100+ for the NIC cards, its not a crucial household application. At those prices I'll continue to snake cable. I have little bath rugs over all the high traffic areas anyway so I shouldn't kill myself. :-) I'm having trouble getting this wireless thing to talk to my wired network here at work. I'm wondering if it doesn't have to do with the confusing array of equipment that makes up the network backbone. The cords in the wall plug into a unit in the furnace room which in turn splits cables out to a pair of hubs, that are not of the same type or by the same manufacturer. This might have something to do with it. If I make no further progress this afternoon I'll load up the whole mess and take it to my house where the network is much simpler. Maybe that will help. Owning a computer company, and having access to all that kind of equipment is fun. :-)

That's all for now. Toodles!

My attempt at running a poll has been woefully unsuccessful. Or at least that's the assumption I am making since I have gotten no responses to the question. I look at it this way, one of two things are happening. Either people didn't read yesterday's question and haven't seen the question, or they've read it and don't care. Either way I'm sensing a lot of ambivalence towards the blog. Thus I will make my own decision. :-)

It would appear everyone is suffering from the same malady this week. The disorder in question being, forgetting what day it is. I've got three people, and myself, all thinking it was a day earlier than it is. Actually, I think I've been better than most in that respect and I have an explanation for it. I'm always very in tune with how soon it is before I can go back to Saskatoon. Therefore I'm much more likely to remember that its Wednesday today, and that I can go home in two days. :-)

We got our staff Christmas party invitation today. Its on December 13th. I wonder if I should go? Part of me says yes, and another part of me is leaning towards. So it would be safe to say I'm conflicted. :-S I haven't had the best success with Christmas parties so I'm leery about going to another one. This is a different crew than I've been associated with before so maybe this one would be good. Maybe I'll go and see how things are. If it sucks I'll just leave. Then again maybe I'll just blow the whole thing off. I've got a month to decide.

I just realized Tiffany Mynx is a MILF. I was sitting here and that thought came into my head. Maybe doing all this thinking is why I have so much trouble keeping a job. Another thought to ponder. Just what I need. As Charlie Brown would say, Good Grief!!!

I replied to a personal ad today. Some girl that called herself sugarberry. She seemed very interesting. Honest too, which is something I can definitely respect. Not enough girls just lay it on the line for you. I figured it was worth the effort of writing an email. Maybe I'll get blown off again. I can't really gripe about a lack of success if I'm not trying something. So I tried something. Time will tell how it goes.

My sister was down to visit me. She left today after lunch. I thought that was a nice gesture. Not that many people visit me. I can't blame them, I don't go out of my way to invite anyone. I live in Watson as an means to an end; having a job and earning money. I've been here 7 months and I still don't really consider it my 'home'. But she did come to visit and that was very nice. We didn't really do anything. We watched some TV last night, played with her cat that also made the trip, and mostly sat around. I'm not a good host. :-( I never know what to do, say, or offer to someone else. I'm mediocre at best. Candace didn't seem to mind too much. And the cat seemed happy to have a new place to explore. :-)

Toodles!

Today's blog entry is going to be short. I have just one thing to say today, and we'll move from there. Should my blog entries be shorter? You know the drill, email me with your responses.

Toodles!

I had another peculiar dream last night. I could probably guess at where the genesis of it came from but, why it went were it did, and the reasons for it escape me.

I either quit or was fired from my current job. I think I quit, because there was no angst in the dream, so I presume my departure from this job was not acrimonious. Anyway, I was looking for a new job. My boss from Wheatheart called me up, and asked if I wanted my old job back. This was kind of a peculiar revelation to have occur, since in dream time, I'd only been out of work for a couple of days. I've had a lot of job related issues come to the forefront lately, so this makes sense. I'm pretty sure that this beginning to the dream comes for the travails of Mandy, of MandyCam. I've been keeping loose tabs on her lately, and she lost her job unfortunately. Then she got another offer only a few days later. I should check her site today and see if she decided to take the new job. Point for later.

Anyway, back to the dream. I go back to Wheatheart but the place is nothing like how it really is. The production building is HUGE! W're talking airport hangar huge. And its not finished. The back corner of it is missing, as if the building was not finished. And the office area is nothing like it used to be either. There are all these hallways, and dingy passageways. The guy who was my boss, and who hired me again in this dream, is the president of the company. But for some reason his office is down in a basement that the building never had, and its back in a winding series of hallways, in the black-brown, ugly colored room, where he has a half a cubicle. My office is where it used to be, in more or less the same place, plus a bunch of halls that don't exist, and rooms that were never there. And its filled to the brim with junk! Mostly computer stuff, floppy disks, manuals, stuff like that. The desk is the clunky old wood one I had when I first started there. I remember the computer being a piece of junk in the dream, but it had a 15" LCD monitor. I couldn't figure that out at all, in the dream or now in consciousness.

Back to the substance of the dream, on my first day there, the place was over-run with auditors and accountant types. For some reason they assets of the company were being appraised. As the dream progressed I discovered that the company was actually in bad shape, which makes sense since the farm sector is depressed right now. So then why did I get hired, if overall they're in trouble? I was completely bewildered at this place, and wandered around all day with a stupid look on my face. Towards the end of the dream the president called together all the workers and explained that production was cut down to three days a week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And oh yeah, Grant is back. No one seemed to care about me but the three days a week was hotly discussed. After that meeting my boss led me through this labyrinth of hallways and we discussed the particulars of my new employment. This stuck in my brain, besides the dinginess and the fact that the president was in a half cubicle in the basement. He offered me twice the salary that I used to get there.

So I'm hired but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I try to clean up my office and the computer I got. The person before me had filled the hard drive with peer-to-peer downloading programs, like Kazaa, and Bearshare, so the Start tray was full of spyware. I spent a bunch of time trying to remove all of it. Then I went out to examine the building, and found the gaping hole in the rear wall. I watched some airplanes take off through it. Then I took my lunch and set it down on a pallet of 7-Up cans that were in the middle of the floor. I don't understand why that was a good place for my lunch, but I left it there.

I don't really remember the order of what happened when in the dream so I can't really say what, if anything happened next. I can't even really say that the order of things I've mentioned is how stuff appeared in the dream. I just remember clips from it, as if I were remembering scenes from a movie. Nonetheless, it was a weird and wacky dream.

Toodles!

I just lost my desk ornament. :-( I had a 20" Big Blue filter housing sitting on my desk beside my monitor. It did a nice job of 'framing' my monitor because on the other side I had my one computer speaker (I only have one that works) and my lava lamp. Without the filter housing I've moved the lava lamp to the right of the monitor, leaving the speaker on the left. It just doesn't look right. I think its because the filter housing casted a shadow across my monitor and now I don't have that. I'm really not sure what is making this look wrong but I don't like it. My desk needs more ornaments. In case you can't tell, this is a hint for Christmas. :-)

I don't really have anything to rant about today. The day has been kind of low key. I finished up the redo's on the shop drawing package I was working on from Monday. Now I have another package to review and revise. This one isn't as voluminous as the last one I was doing. Truthfully the only point of contention is the necessity for mag meters to monitor flow in the system. Magnetic meters are kind of overkill on a system as small as this one. The typical paddle wheel meters we use are more than adequate. On all the systems I've done so far, we have just gone with these paddle wheel devices, and there has been no complaints. My understanding of things was, a mag meter only becomes necessary in high flow situations. Relatively speaking, this is not a high flow situation. It's only 60 usgpm. In the water treatment area, that's not a real high flow situation.

I've been listening to new albums lately. I have to give a thumbs up to the new Christina Aguilera album, and probably an open palm to the soundtrack from 8 Mile. The Christina Aguilera album is good. I'm not really picking up any really flashy singles from it. I'm sure there will be some. Overall though its a very artistic album. Its got a very soulful vibe to it. More than a few of the songs are giving me a Mariah Carey feel. It's pretty good. I'd recommend listening to the whole thing from start to finish. Its good. The 8 Mile soundtrack was a bit of a disappointment. I had high expectations, and its not bad. That's why I can't say its a thumbs down. The songs done by, or in collaboration with, Eminem are all good. They have his usual pop and zing, and they grab you right away. But the material he's not in, seems kind of flat, or displaced in the collection. Maybe the fault is mine. Maybe I was looking for an Eminem album, and this is not. Perhaps I'll listen to it again and maybe I'll revise my opinion.

Toodles!

Today has been one of those throw away days. Its been a day where I worked dutifully the whole time but, at the end of the day, there wasn't a whole lot to show for it. I was busy, my mind was active, but I didn't really accomplish much. If you asked me what I did today, I would be really hard pressed to give you an answer.

Of note, I returned to my book. I wrote about a page and a half at lunch, in about 1/2 hour. I have trouble getting started, and then I have trouble quitting. I hate having a day that is so segmented. I work for 4 hours, eat lunch and write for an hour, come home and exercise, eat, and then the evening is free. The routine is good for me in a way, but I also become a slave to it. If I don't follow the same pattern, things feel 'off' and uncomfortable. The book is coming along really well, and I'd like to dedicate some more time to it. But I'm only really effective in writing, if I do it during the day. At night there are too many distractions from the TV, from the internet, from video games, for me to concentrate. I could turn all those things off but as I was sitting there struggling for the next sentence, my mind would be on whether there was something more fun out there to spend my time on.

Now for today's joke:

A wealthy playboy met a beautiful young girl in an exclusive lounge. He took her to his lavish apartment where he soon discovered she was not a tramp, but was well groomed and apparently very intelligent... someone with lots of class.
Hoping to impress her, he began showing her his collection of expensive paintings, first editions by famous authors and offered her a glass of wine. He asked whether she preferred Port or Sherry.
She said, "Oh, Sherry by all means. To me, it's the nectar of the gods. Just looking at it in a crystal-clear decanter fills me with a glorious sense of anticipation. When the stopper is removed and the gorgeous liquid is poured into my glass, I inhale the enchanting aroma and I'm lifted on the wings of ecstasy. It seems as though I'm about to drink a magic potion and my whole being begins to glow. The sound of a thousand violins being softly played fills my ears and I'm transported into another world."
"Oh my," said the playboy, obviously impressed at his conquest's errudition and poise.
"Yes... Port, on the other hand," she continued, "makes me fart."


Toodles!

Today's post to the blog is late. This is not due to any fault of mine, or because I have nothing to say. No, there is a reason why I'm not getting to this until now. It has to do with my newest pet peeve; consulting engineers. The more I have to deal with the engineering profession, the less I am liking it. It seems like every time I turn to the profession, they are letting me down. I can't recall the last instance I had with someone acting as a professional engineer, that was a positive one. I am increasingly forming the opinion that engineers are an egotistical, self indulgent, petty little group of people that do not work for their supposed purpose, which is to protect the public, but rather act in a manner that serves only to foster their own self interest.

I don't pretend to be perfect. I gave that pretense up awhile ago. I do, however, try to be as good as I can. I give my best effort, as often as I can. In whatever I do, I try to provide the best service that I can. I'm working at being a good person, who does good things. I slip up, I fail, I make mistakes, but its always in an attempt to do better. I am fighting against my self indulgent, nihilistic impulses. That's why a day like today is particularly grating.

I'm not going to go into the details, lest I give away the identity of today's particular enmity. As I've come to learn lately, you have to play your cards close to the chest at all times. I'm trying, real hard, to believe that good is in everyone. I'm trying to believe that given the choice between doing the right thing and being vindictive, that everyone will do the right thing. It's getting really hard. So many people act out of spite, and malice these days, that its hard to believe. I'm trying, but nevertheless I don't think it would further my interests to splash sulfurous vitritude on someone, over the internet. So I will leave it at, I have been on the business end of an upbraiding by an engineer. And after some careful consideration of the specific substance of the complaint, I have found that the majority of it lacked any substance at all. There were a couple of points that rang very true, but their exclusion was not my fault, through negligence or mistake. There were a couple of changes that were necessary, and I would gladly have made them, if approached in a friendly manner. But the majority of this complaint was just hyperbole. Had the careful review of the material been made, as it was suggested it was, then it would have been obvious that the material requested, had been provided. So I had to eat my hat, not because I was wrong, but because the engineer had to justify his involvement.

I will never be a consulting engineer. I have been in those organizations a few times in my colorful, and storied career, and I realize that background is not for me. I can't be that exactingly precise about things. I can't make an issue of an overlooked detail, that when considered by an average individual, would be perfect common sense. I can't insist on exact, precise clarity in every point, when careful reading of the whole document will reveal the same truth. Maybe there is too much of the writer in me. I expect someone to read the whole document that I produce, and not just one line here, and one line there. I find repeating myself endlessly, boring and unnecessary. But that kind of relentless repetition seems to be the hallmark of a professional engineer. Maybe I can't be a professional engineer. Maybe that slavish adherence to precision will be my undoing. I can not force myself to insist on removing thought from the process. My brain won't work that way. I always fill in any gaps in something I encounter, with my own good sense and judgement. But apparently that's not an option. Everything must be spelled out, to the very last point. So maybe that means I can't be a professional engineer. But I think there must be a place in the world for a gifted individual who, against conventional wisdom, will think and use his brain.

I must go now. I still have many pages of material to review, to satisfy my accuser. I probably typed longer than I should have anyway. I won't get finished this afternoon anyway so I figured I might as well do a blog entry.

Toodles!

I think I am ready for Spooky GameFest. With one notable exception which I will fix at coffee break time. I forgot to pack my damn pills again! It seems like every week I forget something when I pack at lunch, to leave right after work. And about 60-75% of the time, the thing I forget is my stupid pills. Pill taking is the bane of my existence!!! Actually its not. I really don't care that much, one way or the other, about pill taking. Its just, something I do. Now if I could only come up with a fool-proof system for remembering to pack them on weekends. . .

My system is packed, my games are in the bag, I don't think I've missed any cords, cables, controllers or other paraphenalia. All that is left is the gaming. Woo Hoo!!! I'm actually excited about a GameFest again. This is a nice occurence because the last few I was kind of in a, oh whatever, kind of mood. This time I'm really jazzed about gaming. A fair majority of that is probably the desire for a stress relief after doing nothing fun last weekend. This is going to be good. We had a poll, administered by Greg, earlier in the month on what games we wanted to play. I think we got a decent enough consensus that perhaps this time we can do more gaming, and spend less time staring at each other going, what do you want to play, I dunno, what do you want to play? WarCraft III, Dungeon Siege and Age of Empires II were the clear winners so hopefully we'll just bunker down with those and game until things start to bleed.

The only sad note is, Dean won't be there to play. That is a disconsolate realization. The group is going to short a member. Maybe we'll put up a little shrine next to an empty computer, in his honor. :-) Hopefully it will not bring the event down. Maybe we'll even be able to incorporate him, across the internet, on Friday or Saturday night. All of that will be dependent on his schedule. I just want to say at this point, that I think school sucks!

So I'm at home at lunch, trying to get ready to leave. I do up the dishes so I can take all the empty plastic containers home to my mom. They are hers, and I wouldn't use them anyway, so I might as well take them home. There is the added bonus that she'll probably fill them again, and send them back with me, thus saving me the inconvenience of cooking whole meals for myself. Just pop some leftovers in the microwave, yum, yum! The big poppy seed container was empty, which is really what spurred me to do the dishes. I sort of see that as a hallmark that I should be washing my dishes. So I do that, then I have something to eat, tear down the computer and try to pack it up. I need to throw clothes in a bag, and make sure I pack my eye glasses and drugs (which I ended up forgetting). I'm in a flurry, trying to get all of this done during my 1 hour lunch break when the doorbell rings. Well what the hell could this be? I thought, trick or treaters. No, can't be, its 1:00 in the afternoon. Who else would be at my door? I'm tossing back and forth in my head whether to answer it or keep working. Back and forth, back and forth I go. Finally I decide, at this time of day its gotta be someone who actually wants to talk to me. So I go open it. UNICEF kids! Good grief I don't need this right now! So I scrounge around in my coat and find a buck to give them. This mollifies them and they're on their way. Isn't it just the way it goes though? When you least have the time is when you end up with unnecessary distractions.

I admit, I kind of caused my own situation with running out of time at lunch. I turned the TV on, and Little Nicky was playing on Movie Central. That was a movie I wanted to go see, but never got around to watching. So I probably stood and watched about 10 minutes of it, without accomplishing anything. Thus putting me behind schedule, and causing the situation that erupted with the UNICEF girls. I wandered into the living room and noticed Reese Witherspoon in the movie, as an angel. I thought to myself, how the hell did Adam Sandler talk Reese Witherspoon into being in his stupid movie!?! So I watched for 10 minutes because I think Reese Witherspoon is cute. Sue me, I'm male. :-) I actually considered skipping work this afternoon. On a Thursday afternoon there was a good string of movie on TV. Little Nicky (not a great movie but at least a feature; better than the dreck that they usually play on a weekday afternoon) followed by Planet of the Apes and The Mummr Returns. I just looked up the schedule on the internet and Bedazzled is after that. So an afternoon of first run offerings on a Thursday. That is uncharacteristic. Usually they play crap I've never heard of before. Daytime TV is usually pretty sad. Most days I end up watching PB&J out of sheer futility. I got lucky once and a good movie was on at lunch so now I check every day. I don't think I've found something on there worth watching between that first time and today. I wonder if I should write a letter to someone about that?

I'm too excited about going home to Saskatoon for gaming to write anymore. Have a great day world! Toodles!

I know this joke is blasphemous. Nevertheless, I couldn't help myself when I laughed at it, upon first reading.


Q: How do you get Jesus to cross the road?
A: Nail Him to a chicken.

You know what? Today has kind of sucked. Not in that monumental way, like if your dog got run over. Now, it has sucked in all the little ways. Those niggly little things that come up during the course of a day. They stuff that bugs you a little bit on its own, but a whole lot when looked at in the cumulative.

First piss off, Dean can't come to Spooky GameFest. This almost qualifies as a big piss off. If I were Dean, it would be a big piss off. But I'm not Dean, I'm only Grant, so it has to fit into the more minor piss off category. Whatever its global rating, it is annoying. I was looking forward to the gang all being together again, for an epic battle of good against evil. Now we will we short one player. This is sad. I'm sure Dean wishes it could be different. I know I wish it could be different. I guess this is why they invented the saying, life sucks, wear a helmet.

Second piss off, we're not going to an Edmonton Oilers hockey game at the end of November. This has to go in the minor piss off category because we hadn't really planned for it or anything. The feeler just went out last week to see if anyone was interested in going. I guess, since not enough people could/would go at that time, it got shelved. I suppose I can understand that but its another thing to make me sad. One of my goals for the future is to have more adventures. On that list was going to an NHL game. Also on the list is going to a Montreal Expos game. I hope against hope that the team can stay in Montreal for one more year so I can go. I wanted to go last year but too many things came up, on my way from idea, to realization. The whole new job, moving, living on a budget, thing interrupted my plans.

There was third piss off to go here, but it was so minor that I'm not going to go into it. Long story short, I didn't enjoy the soup I had for lunch. I am now pulling for supper to rescue the meal situation from the doldrums.

That's all for today. Any further thinking about what has happened today will only depress me. I choose to live for the moment.

Toodles!

It has not been a stellar morning so far. First of all, I was late getting to work. I didn't get up until 8:02 this morning. My alarm didn't go off. I was screwing with the plug-ins in my bedroom yesterday. Six and a half months after I move in, I'm finally getting around to decorating. I put up my blue lights in my bedroom. I did a very nice job of the whole ling. I ran the extension cord along the base board and then along the door frame, so the switch for the lights was right by the switch for the overhead light. I meticulously stapled the lights to the wall, along the roof line, and the whole project looks good. I got severely choked because I was about five staples away from being done, and I ran out of staples. Then I couldn't figure out how to load the staple gun. That's not entirely an accurate statement. I figured out how to load the staple gun fairly easily but I had the wrong size staples and it wasn't working. I fussed with that for maybe half an hour before trying the other box of staples and getting it to work instantly. Needless to say, I threw out the staples that didn't fit.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, why was I late for work this morning. I put a box on the plug in near the door, to convert it from two plugs to six. To do that I had to unplug the lamp and my alarm clock. This, of course, reset my clock to a blinking 12:00. I set the time but it completely eluded me that I would need to reset the alarm on the clock. So, when I turned the alarm on last night, it was a wasted gesture, since the time wasn't set for it to go off. And thus, it didn't go off this morning, and I was late getting up. In my haste to get going I couldn't find my watch either. I've been having trouble keeping track of stuff. I looked around for the dongle for my laptop network card for 10 minutes or more last night, only to find it right beside the chair, on the opposite side. I'm sure the watch is in a similarly easy to find location. I just haven't found where that is it.

All of that is superfluous though. The real topic I want to discuss is, the internet. Am I the only one noticing that it is sucking hard lately? I can barely do anything on it anymore. Web pages don't load reliably, my news server is continually timing out. The only thing that seems to work reliably is chat programs. But don't get me started on that because that is another thing that is severely pissing me off. Stupid MSN!!! I'll be using the program and suddenly, for no explicable reason, it will log me off. I'll be typing a message and suddenly, 'you are not signed in'. WTF!!!! That's not the worst though. What really drives me up the wall is, I'll be in a conversation with someone, and they'll have to go for some reason. Bathroom trip or whatever. That will be my only active conversation, and so I'll be sitting there, waiting for the person to come back. But they never come back. I'll start wondering what's going on and what has happened is, MSN has logged me off, but has not bothered to alert me to this fact! Now THAT is something that really yanks my chain. The absolute worst is when it will still let me type messages to the person, but it simply flips them into neverland. Most of the time it will tell me message is not deliverable at which point I'll know to restart MSN. But when it just tosses my messages completely I get annoyed. I can't even tell the damn thing isn't working! I'll think I'm just being ignored. I was in a conversation with Greg a week ago or so, and this happened. We didn't even pause in the conversation. I typed a message and was waiting for a reply. And I waited and I waited and I waited and nothing came back. Finally I restarted MSN out of frustration. Turns out it Messenger had booted me right after I sent my last message. Thanks for telling me you stupid piece of crap!!!

So that's my rant for the day. MSN sucks, bites, blows and a lot of other icky things I could say, but none of which would matter. Have a nice day everyone.

Toodles!

First off, an apology. I screwed something up on Wednesday, and the post that I wrote, didn't get uploaded to the web site. I'm not sure exactly why this happened. I may have hit the 'Post' button and not the 'Post & Publish' button. Thus I did save the submission, but did not put it on the web site. As you can now see, I did write something for Wednesday, as I've fixed the problem and got Wednesday's blatherings up for the world to see.

Continuing with the apology theme, I'm sorry I didn't write anything since Wednesday. I have a reason, if not an excuse. I was working for Kevin at the rodeo. I probably could have found plenty of material to write about, from the experience. Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights I did not get home until very late, so even though I had ideas for things I could write, I didn't have the energy. My standard mode of operation was to come home, do a couple of things, then pass out in my bed. I slept like the dead every night. It doesn't sound that tiring, when you talk about being a bartender at Sask. Place. Pour some beer, make some mixed drinks, stock a fridge, etc. But when you do that for hours at a time, at a full sprint, it wears you down. Monday morning has arrived and I am still tired. I think today is going to be a slow day, go home and rest, rather than ride the bike, and get my strength back. I'll try and make myself bushy tailed for tomorrow. :-)

One thing I do remember wanting to discuss was the topic of these cabarets. I have tried to understand why this is fun but an explanation of it has always eluded me. If anyone out there can tell me why being crammed into a room with several thousand other people, until it looks like a high density feed lot, is a good time, I would love to hear it. Thankfully I was spared much of the cabaret experience. I was on ticket counting duty for both nights. That was a good job because otherwise I was pretty tired. My legs were cramping from being on my feet so long, and bouncing back and forth between the fridge and the table, from in front of the bar to the back, fetching more cases of beer. My hand is all chewed up today too, from opening beer bottles. Its better now but it was red, raw and ugly yesterday afternoon when we started the final showing of rodeo.

Which brings to mind something else about the weekend. Why the hell were people drinking so much yesterday!?! Sunday at the rodeo, in my memory, has always been a slow day. As I recall it, by Sunday afternoon everyone was tired from rodeo-ing or partying at the cabarets afterwards. By Sunday afternoon they were down to a single beer, with Clamato, to settle the stomach. Yesterday they drank like fish! We went through over 30 cases of beer yesterday afternoon. It was ridiculous. It was as busy as Friday night, and we had less staff. Everyone was running their ass off, trying to keep up at intermission. We just barely stayed ahead of the game. That was bizarre. It was the same basic crew at the highball bar where I was, all weekend, and I don't think I would be talking out of turn if I said, none of us were really up to the challenge of a busy Sunday. I think everyone was ready to just coast through the final show and go home. When they started doing awards before starting the second half of the show, a collective groan seemed to go spring out from everyone.

That was my weekend, in a nut shell. Had I had the ambition to write when I came home, I'd have plenty more, and better, stories to tell about the rodeo. But I was, and am, tired so this meagre contribution will have to do. Have a great day people!

Toodles!

Good day world! Today is a much better day. Good stuff has been happening to me today, and as of 1:22 PM on this Wednesday, I feel pretty good. :-)

First of all, I must apologize but there will be no jokes today. I went through my email this morning, and there wasn't a decent joke in the whole group. I was disappointed about that. The jokes today were all stale. I'd either read them before, or they just weren't funny. Am I the only one that has noticed that there is a collection of jokes that just circulate the internet endlessly? Every so often you'll open your mail, and there will be one of those classics that you've read in emails about three times before. Right now I should punctuate my comment with an example, but I can not. I wonder if my brain is defective. I start a topic that just begs for an example, the topic is front and center in my mind, but the proof of my statement eludes me. I hate when my brain betrays me.

First good thing to happen today. My mom phoned me about 8:30 this morning. They were coming for lunch. That pleased me a lot, since they'd had to cancel trips out here to Watson in the preceding two weeks. The first time they cancelled it was because Mom had a sewing order to finish. Then last week they had to cancel because it snowed. That was a doubly depressing day. First snow, and then the cancellation of the trip. But today everything was a go. The weather was nice and they showed up at the office about 11:15. I gave Mom the keys and they went to my house ahead of me, to cook the pizza. I made it home at my usual 12:00 and we had a nice lunch. After lunch my Mom cleaned. I'm kind of conflicted about that. On one hand she doesn't have to do that. Its my house and I'll clean it when the spirit moves me. On the other hand I appreciate her efforts. I ended up in a situation of inertia. Thinking I should do it instead of her, but ending up not doing anything. I wonder if I'm a bad son?

The other good thing to happen today was, my parents brought the power supply for my laptop out with them. That was exciting. I've had this old, grey Pentium 133 laptop that Sean gave me a long time ago. It was just collecting dust because it didn't work. I was surfing the internet the other day and found a good deal on a power supply for it. So I ordered one and it came yesterday. My parents brought it out today, and after we were done eating I plugged it in, and got the computer working for the first time in over a year. That was cool! So now I have a laptop computer again. I had one before, but it was a 486 and the power was no good on that one either. This one works good. I haven't made up my mind yet exactly what I'm going to use it for. I will be hooking it up next to my main system, to monitor MSN while I play games. My preference would always be to chat with my friends over playing a video game. But a lot of the time there is no one online to chat with, so I might as well spend the time doing something else I enjoy, video gaming, rather that sitting there bored, waiting for someone.

So its been a good day today. I have the afternoon ahead of me, but I see only good things coming out of that too. I finished one project this morning. The shop drawings for the Town of Balmoral are finished. Hooray!!! That was about a two day job. They're all wrapped up and ready to ship out. Now if I could just get the Souris package done. :-( Damn these recalcitrant suppliers!!! I think I'm going to work on my White Bear model this afternoon. I've picking away at that since August, I think. I started the drawing when Murray was on vacation. I remember that because I was out of other things to do, because I needed his input on about three things.

Anyone have any really good song ideas? I'm kind of hooked on downloading music again. I'll think of a song or two, and I'll go straight to WinMX. That's a good program but the downloads can be really slow. My trouble right now is, I'm out of song ideas. I downloaded three songs from the Last Action Hero soundtrack, because I watched the end of the movie the other night. That lead me into downloading derivatives of songs, but I'm fresh out of ideas. I'll have to remember to ask Tara for some songs the next time I talk to her. Having a friend in a major US market has greatly improved my musical selection. No offense to Saskatchewan, I love this place dearly, but the radio situation SUCKS!!! There are no good stations anywhere. Just different levels of awful or mundane. Maybe I should go back to watching MuchMusic, or the MTV channel I was so desperate to get. That reminds me, I finally got around to phoning Expressvu this morning. I've had these interactive features on my satellite since I got it. I think I took them because they were free to try for three months. Well the only one I care about is the Weather and that's $0.50 a month. The games and the trivia are $5.00 or something like that, and I've looked at them twice. I have a huge computer so I don't need games on my TV. So I cancelled them finally. In their place I substituted an eastern feed of network stations (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox) for $1.00. So it'll balance out with getting more stuff I might actually watch, for less money. That's a good deal for me.

That's all for today. Have a good afternoon and evening everyone. Toodles!

I am pissed off. I also think I am perfectly justified in being pissed off because I just got bum rushed. I'm considerably unhappy. However, rather than sit here and fume about it, which is what I would normally do. That or smash something into a million pieces. Rather than do that I'm going to use this forum for what I originally intended it for. I'm going to rant. Someone is gonna get a chunk tore off of them.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan, or APEGS for short, is a pathetic, hollow, insignificant organization that needs to be tossed ass over tea kettle and have its collective house put into a new order. I just got the shaft. I have been employed in various jobs for a total of 52 months since I graduated. The legal stipulation is that you are supposed to have 48 months of work experience before you can apply for Professional Engineer status in Saskatchewan. I had that 48 months, plus another four months to boot. I should have been golden to apply for my P. Eng status. So I did.

A very nice girl phoned me this afternoon. She wanted to know if I was resubmitting the reports for the months that I had not been given credit for. Excuse me? Not given credit for? What the hell is that all about? Well, the last 16 months I'd submitted for, when I worked at Suncorp, had not been accepted by the APEGS committee that reviews engineer in training reports. Well, I kind of knew that, since I'd gotten a letter saying that my reports were deficient and a member of the review committee would like to meet to discuss them with me. I was NOT aware that they'd been rejected out of hand and I currently was getting NO credit for them. I expressed my flabbergasted condition, and that I'd met with a member of the committee, Ray Gerbrandt to be precise, and after that meeting he said I would get credit for some of it. But now my submission is in, and I currently have none.

Well this nice girl said she'd check into it, and after a few minutes called me back and said I got half, or 8.5 months worth of experience. I was prepared for that because I'd called Ray once to ask about the progress that was being made on my situation, and he'd said I could expect about half credit. I was supposed to get a letter and I never did so I wanted to force the issue. So I forced it and ended up getting royally screwed.

Turns out I only got about 75% credit for the 14 months I spent at Wheatheart. All I can say to that is WTF!?!?!?!?!?! The way this system is supposed to work, as I read it in the literature was, if you got no correspondence from APEGS then you were to assume that your experience had been approved. I got no correspondence regarding my Wheatheart experience. In fact, the only correspondence I've ever gotten from them was notices of my dues, literature on the annual general meeting and this one letter about Suncorp. Nothing about Wheatheart. So they screwed me out of 5 or 6 months, a full reporting period, and never said boo to me.

The nice girl at APEGS said I can contest the decision and I fully intend to. This is an outright crock because the work I did at Wheatheart was at least as valid as any other that I've done, and maybe more. I was designing, drawing, and aiding in manufacturing. What the hell could be more engineering experience related than that!?! I'm severely pissed about this. And the main target of my ire is this crap policy of sending no documentation. I'm getting seriously shafted in this situation because of the policy of sending no reply to an EIT about their experience. First of all, if they send me something saying, this or that is the reason we are rejecting part of your experience at Wheatheart, I could write a refutation then and there, when the experience is still fresh in my mind, and I'm still in contact with the people I knew there. Now its almost three years later. I've long since lost the report I wrote, and the notes I wrote it from. The engineer I was affliated with, in Swift Current, is no longer there and I don't know how to contact him. I'm sure I could get him to write me a letter backing me up fully on my experience. No, they send me nothing and I gotta scramble around years later to try and make a case.

I'm screwed from two angles on this. First of all, they rejected part of my experience at Wheatheart, and didn't tell me anything, so now I'm in a terrible situation to make a case saying that all the experience was worthwhile. I don't have my notes, I don't have my contacts, nothing is fresh. They've stacked the deck against me. And in the second case, they didn't tell me until now, so I've been making decisions, and planning my career on the assumption that I did have those 5 months. Which is an honest assumption to make because according to what they say, no news is good news. I got no news, there is no correspondence in my file with APEGS so apparently my experience was not good enough, but I was not important enough to be contacted about this deficiency. Ho hum, we'll just stick it to this guy, and when he gets to what he thinks is 48 months, we'lll laugh in his face and say, try again in 6 months.

The more I think about this, the more pissed off I'm getting. They really did stick it to me, and it seems like spite. Why the hell would you reject part of someone's report, and not tell them? If your policy is to not contact a member unless there is a problem, then don't contact them when there is a problem, what does that seem to say? Oh sorry, you're not important enough to talk to about the serious details of your career. We're just going to shaft you and not say anything.

Right now I am beginning a quest. My quest is to have this policy changed. They can't keep doing this. The cloak and dagger secrecy that permeates much of the APEGS heirachy has to disappear. And it has to go away now. I just got screwed big time. This is a momumental setback for my career because I essentially pitched myself in April as being on the cusp of being a P. Eng. Now they tell me I'm miles away. Something like this can not be allowed to continue. What the hell is the reason for not sending an engineer notice about their experience report? I think they reason that is given is, to keep adminitration costs down. Administration costs of $1.00 a year for stamps? Okay, $2.00 a year if you count the envelope, the paper the letter is written on and the ink necessary to print the letter and envelope. For $2.00 an engineer, a year, we can't send a letter? Add it to my god damn exorbitant fees and let's do this right! I'm tired of this! I think the real reason is, the people doing the reviewing don't want to get called on the carpet for their decisions regarding people's experience. They'd rather the situation exist where no one is in a position to complain until they've forgotten the job that is in question. That can't happen. I won't let this happen to another person. I will see this changed, if its not already in the works. I won't rest until they have to send out a letter stipulating whether your experience is approved, rejected, or for what reason its rejected.

I got screwed again by these sons of bitches in that they didn't bother to call into question my time at Suncorp until I'd submitted 16 months worth of reports. That's 2 full ones and 2/3 of a third one. 16 months was sitting on the committee table, undecided. That's almost a year and a half of my career that they hadn't deemed important enough to review, and get back to me on. For Christ sake, if this experience wasn't acceptable after 6 months, they had an obligation, as dutiful engineers, to tell me this! Then I can re-evaluate my career and either accept my situation, or move on to a new position. I lose 8 months of experience at Suncorp, because they weren't duly dilligent in informing me about the state of my career. I wonder if I can sue them for negligence?

I lose over a year worth of experience, as it sits now because of the APEGS review committee. 5 months from Wheatheart because they rejected experience and didn't tell me. 8 months from Suncorp because they waited a year before contacting me about the applicability of the experience. In either situation, had they informed me about what they were doing, I might have done something different. I might have wrote a new, better report, got a corroborating report from a fellow engineer, or changed jobs to something that was more applicable. Now I sit here at this point, with nearly all of my options gone. I can't even direct my irritation at anyone, because they sit behind their veil of secrecy, and never send you anything that would identify them.

I'm going to change this. I swear I am going to change this. First I'm going to get back at least the experience from Wheatheart. That was perfectly valid experience and they're not cheating me out of it. I will try to track down Bret Watson, the engineer in Swift Current that I worked with during that time. He wasn't a mentor, as I wasn't in APEGS yet, but had I continued in that job he would have been one. If I can find him, I'm sure he'll back me up on the experience. He told me once of his own battles with APEGS so I'm sure he'll be on my side. I may even take a run at getting another 4 months out of them for my Suncorp experience. I never recieved any documentation from them about the applicability of my experience. I submitted two full reports and was told nothing. Surely they can't be allowed to sit on a person's reports that long, and not do anything? There needs to be some accountability on their part. I'll give up the last four months, and write those off. But considering they accepted two reports and never contacted me, maybe I can squeeze them.

Second, I'm going to change the process. As soon as I can figure how how, I'm going to petition for changes to the EIT program inside APEGS. EIT's have to be given progress reports. A new engineer has to know how he is doing, from the standpoint of the association. They need to be kept aware of their progress, and be told if their experience is being rejected. They deserve the right to dispute the committee's findings. This would also serve the important purpose of keeping the committee focused and dedicated. A situation would not be allowed to develop where reports went unreviewed for a year or more. It would also make the committee accountable. If they were forced to make their decisions in the open, and not behind a veil of secrecy, maybe they wouldn't be so prone to sluggishness. I vow to make sure these things are changed.

I am now exhausted. Thanks for listening.

Here are a couple of jokes that I read today, and thought were funny.

Q: What's black and blue and brown and lies at the bottom of a ditch?
A: A brunette who's told too many blonde jokes.

One day three very attractive women, a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, are running away from a farmer.
The women ran and ran until they came upon his barn. They each ran into the barn and hurried up the stairs where they found three sacks. The farmer came upstairs to look for the women. He saw the bags and went to investigate.
He walked up to the first bag and kicked it. The brunette hiding inside said, "Quack, quack."
The farmer said, "Oh, there must be ducks in that bag."
He goes to the next bag and kicks it. The redhead hiding inside said, "Bwaak, bwaak."
The farmer said "Oh, there must be chickens in that bag."
He walks over to the last bag and kicks it, and the blonde hiding inside said, "Potatoes..."
BUT, the farmer was blonde too, so he said, "Oh, there must be potatoes in that bag."

I had a peculiar dream last night/this morning. It didn't really frighten me, or concern me in any way. It was just a weird collection of things that all came together into a cohesive narrative.

The dream began with me getting a job at Cameco, where my sister works. She's in human relations so I can understand how I would dream this up. I bug her to give me a job all the time. :-) So I get the job, and I'm going to work on my first day. Weird instance number one. The office that I was supposed to be working in was, a small version of the classroom I was in for Grade 11 and 12 in Weekes. There were able six people working in the room, all in cubicle type areas. Everyone had a couple of short wall partitions and one of the old wood and metal desk with chair combinations we had in that class. My desk was the second in a row of three, and about in the middle of the room. I was a little choked at how small my work area was. My front and back walls were so close together that I couldn't even pull my chair out! It didn't matter though. All the people working in this particular office were all very friendly. My wall partitions were quickly pushed away, and my desk turned nearly all the way around to face in the opposite direction, towards the back of the room. I was back to back with a pretty, short haired girl who was very friendly and appeared to be working on an AutoCAD drawing.

The dream kind of shifted at that point into a character exposition. Weird instance number two. Among the people in my office environment were, Tom Green as this dopey, vacant eyed guy who didn't say much. That actually pisses me off because I think Tom Green is an unfunny ass, and I wouldn't want him in my dreams. Jason Lee, who I do think is funny, but his role in this dream was of a serious worrier. And Chris Rock, who sat in the corner and shouted excerpts from various movies.

Next up, I had to take a shower. Amazingly a nice bathroom appeared for me to use. The color scheme in it was a rosy pink and light oak color. I don't know why I remember that. The room itself reminded me of my aunt and uncle's bathroom, in their house north of Osler. Escept for the color scheme part. I had to take a shower because, we were going on a mine tour and everyone had to be clean. Everything had to be clean. There was even a reference to them washing the blackness of the coal. Why that came up, when Cameco is a uranium mining company and not a coal one, I don't know.

So we got on the tour. There is a short bus ride to the site, and we get off. Weird instance number three. Everyone is acting like a zombie. Tom Green, who was already acting like a zombie, and Jason Lee start acting like a zombie. Chris Rock is still spouting catch phrases. We are ushered into the mine, in a tunnel that reminded me of a level from the original Carmageddon game. We get to this room and a couple of big, muscular people, one man and one woman, are throwing people through a doorway. These people are screaming and crying as they are tossed in but to no avail The scene cuts to inside the room and this weird spider creatures are attaching themselves to the back of the victims, thus turning them into zombies.

Cut to the surface again. All the people in my office are now zombies. Their mannerisms are similar to what they were before, but everything seems forced. Jason Lee is trying to be jovial but it doesn't sound natural. Chris Rock is still spouting off but his voice sounds mechanical. Tom Green was always an idiot so we'll ignore him. For some reason there's a TV on now, and we're watching an interview with this really obvious transsexual. The person is a woman now, but its obvious they were a man before. Really obvious to me because this person used to work in this office/classroom in a previous scene. The story is this person was rescued when they were supposed to be dead. Then the female interviewer squeezed the breast of the transsexual and blood pours from the nipple.

Now I'm in the house where the interview is going on. So are the people from my office, Tom Green, Jason Lee, the still ranting Chris Rock. Chris is shouting movie quotes, many of them profane, and some old people sitting at a dining table give him dirty looks. The big woman who had been throwing people to the spiders comes up to me and squuezes my wrist. I feel something and pull my hand away. There's a crescent shaped, wriggly looking thing on my hand. This is the spider creature's attempt to gain control of me. But I am aware of the attempt, and by being aware, I can reject the domination. I flee the house, after shouting some gibberish about not giving in.

Now I'm out on the street, in a nice suburb. Its dark, but not quite night. It occurs to me that everyone has been abducted by these spider creatures, and I'm alone here. And they're after me, because the spider creature's leader needs a pure spirit to complete their plan. That mystified me in my dream too because by no means do I have a pure spirit. The whole pure spirit thing though is obviously from watching the Scooby Doo movie. So I'm being chased up the street by zombie people. The people from the house are coming up behind me. Its reminiscent of a hundred movies where people roll in from the sides of the street, to form a mob coming up from behind. I look forward and some spooky looking punks are coming up in front of me. They are leaping up over fences, and dropping down in front of me from trees. I get wild eyed as I'm surrounded. Then in a rush they all attack me, I'm swarmed, and overwhelmed.

Thats the last thing I remember about the dream. The next thing I remember is the radio coming on. I don't think the radio woke me up from this dream. I think it just ended at that point. In any event, it was an odd scenario. I tend to have a lot of these, but I don't remember them all. If anyone reading this thinks I have cause to be concerned by these images, let me know. Until then I'm chalking it up to my overly vivid imagination.

Toodles!

Hello world!

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I know I said I was going to post daily, and here it is Sunday afternoon and I haven't written anything. My bad. :-( The truth is, I haven't done anything this weekend to merit an entry. As I've been telling anyone who has asked me this weekend, what I am doing, I'm growing moss. I pulled this gold easy chair we have in the family room, over to the closet where my computer is, and escept for breaks to eat and take care of nature's business, I really haven't moved much. Well, that's a lie too. I went on a small road trip yesterday afternoon. I had to take my paycheque to the bank, go shopping for some items I wanted, and make a couple of other incidental stops.

That reminds me of something. I think I want a digital camera. I've been thinking about this for awhile and I think it would be neat to have one. The problem? I don't know what one to get. I am a lousy photographer. Many of you have seen the infamous photographs I took while being a condo appraiser. I had my thumb in the shot about 25% of the time. Luckily I usually took more than one shot or angle so it usually wasn't a big deal. My current thought is, to get an HP Photosmart 120. It has all the features I'm looking for, $150 price tag, it accepts Flash RAM, has some zoom, and takes decent if unspectacular resolution pictures. So what's the downside? Everyone I talk about with says this is a bad idea. The two people I know with digital camera's both tell me, essentially, to go big or go home. I have a problem with that. Buying a digital camera is still kind of an experiment, and I don't feel like rolling the dice with $500. If I buy a camera for $150, its not the end of the world if it ends up sitting in a corner, collection dust. Food for my thought I guess. Anyone want to venture an opinion. You know where to reach me. telk2@hotmail.com

I was at the Indian pow wow this morning. I don't get that. I suppose its a cultural thing, and I'm really not supposed to get it. Whatever the reason, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess it doesn't have to either. I wasn't there as a participant or a spectator. I was there to do a job. Which I did, and frankly I didn't mind the task too much. I was running stock this morning. Load a cart with the requisitioned items, and deliver them to the appropriate both. That's a job I can do quite well. Take orders, and carry them out. I think Kevin should assign me duties like that more often. (hint, hint) :-D

Its been a quiet weekend. The excitement level was low, and I didn't mind it. Lots of excitement is coming up in the next couple weekends, so having some peacefulness this weekend was welcome. That's all from me today. Have a great day world.

Toodles!

See, I'm already posting a joke. :-)

Q: Why do ducks have webbed feet
A: For stamping out fires
Q: Why do elephants have big flat feet
A: To stamp out burning ducks

Wow! My own blog. Now I just need to figure out what I want to say! :-Þ

It's funny how you can always say to yourself, "I wish I had a forum for all these great thoughts I have' and then when you find your soapbox, how all those great thoughts escape you. I suppose that's Murphy's Law kicking in again.

First of all I think I should say an anonymous thank you to Elissa H. of Azzaelea's Blog. I was surfing for interesting sites to occupy some spare time that I had and I came across her little corner of the internet. I don't know her, but here's a thank you to her, for introducing this medium. Check out her site if you too are looking for something interesting to read in a spare moment. http://azzaelea.blogspot.com/

I suppose the reason that I found Azzaelea's site, and why I'm writing this one is, I am on a new quest. A very wonderful part of my life ended recently. The cruel winds of fate have made it impossible for me to ever meet the one girl in this world that is most important to me. That was a very sad moment in my life. But from moments of great pain can come larger truths. That is what I am hoping will come from this. The girl in question, and she knows who she is (hi Tara) still cares, and will always be one of my best friends. However, internet buddies is as far as our friendship will ever go. ...sigh... However, with her support, and the support of the rest of my friends (and you guys know who you all are (-: ) perhaps I can find new love. So, to any of you out there on the internet, if you know a great girl, or even better if you are a great girl, send me an email. telk2@hotmail.com I would love to meet you. Today begins my quest for new friendships. (Okay, it actually started a couple days ago but today is the first day of this blog so spare me the conceit of this indulgence. (-: )

In case you can't tell already, I'm a pretty longwinded person when given a medium to type. I find the printed word to be a very comfortable medium. And thus, I hope, I will find the voice that kind of escapes me right now, and I'll have plenty to post here. At worst, check back occasionally, and see if I've thought of some new things to say. At best, check back alot, and read my crooked ramblings. :-Þ

What is on my mind today? Not a whole lot, to be honest. But then again, its on 10:30 and I just woke up! :-Þ Is it cheating my employer if I come to work at 8:00 but don't really awaken until 10:00? :-) I'm at work, so I guess I'm cheating my employer again. :-( I should really do something about this situation. Meh.

On my plate today is two projects. I am trying, with limited success, to complete the drawings and specifications for the Town of Souris project. Its done, save submissions from two suppliers. They are being recalcitrant, much to my aggravation. Supposedly, they are going to get me the information I require today but, that's been said before so I'm not engaging in any breath holding on that. As well I'm doing up plans for the White Bear First Nation treatment unit. That particular project is going well. After some monkeying around yesterday, I think I will be able to match the vexing height requirement that was given to me. It's going to look like a squished marshmallow, but I think it will work. :-)

Two things to know about me, I like using smiley faces in my messages, and I have a penchant for big words. :-)

Its Friday so I get to go home today. Home being Saskatoon, while work is in Watson. There is nothing wrong with Watson, in fact its a nice little town. But after a week here I get lonesome for Saskatoon again. I have no plans, thus far, for the weekend, but that may well change. I'm always open to suggestion, so send me one if you have one. :-)

For someone who had nothing to say, I've kind of rattled off a fairly long message here. Maybe someone will care, maybe they won't. I guess I'll find out in time. Until my next post, later dude!