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!