Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - January 2006 Archives

The beginning of another year. 2006 came in with a whimper and ended with a bang. Or did it? The weather was fairly mild and it was a great alternative to the usual frosty cold air. Another election came and went and Canada has a new minority government with a Prime Minister. Time will tell whether or not the Conservatives can deliver on their promises. Other than a few minor events, it was a quiet month. Well for me anyway.

Tuesday, January 31st 2006

Has anyone noticed that there have been a lot of changes in the world lately? Canada has a conservative government, Iran is getting closer to becoming the next nuclear power, Hamas wins the majority in the Palestine government, Brad and Angelina are having a baby, it's 8 degress celsius in Waterloo in January, Bush is having "unscripted" press conferences, Spider-man dies, is reborn and gets a new costume, Kiera Knightly is nominated for an Oscar, the list just continues. It's only the end of January and we have enough action for the rest of the year already. I'm definitely looking forward to this year and how it turns out.

Another day of work. Today was pretty much the same as yesterday. Not too many calls but still kept busy throughout the day. I ended missing my last break due to a phone call but that's okay. So the Leafs lost in overtime. 9 losses in 10 games. Wow. Not the greatest confidence builder but I still support them. When they started the season, the Leafs had a lacklustre team that had lots of potential, provided everybody stayed healthy. Well, that didn't happen and the Leafs are doing a pretty decent job with what they have. I don't think Pat Quinn should get fired for team's dismal performace. It's not time for new blood, better to stick with the old throughout this season as there isn't really much to work with. I'll be surprised if the Leafs do not make the playoffs, and even more surprised if they make it past two rouns. Leafs Rule! 'nuff said.

DRAGONCRYPT 01/31/2006 11:45:08 PM

Monday, January 30th 2006

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the Year of the Dog but the Snake is supposed to do well this year. Woohoo! I learned a few Chinese superstitions this weekend. One is that you don't wash your hair on New Year's Day or you will wash away all your fortune. After all these years, we Chinese still have tons of superstitions. Look at the way we chose numbers. Lots of 8's in the license plate? Good chance they're Chinese. LOL. I think it's a great part of our culture. Superstitions are great as long as they're not taken too seriously.

I had a great weekend. Spent almost the entire weekend with Jenn, her family and my family. We had the big family dinner on Saturday and one at Jenn's on Sunday. I learned how to make dumplings. Well, I learned how to wrap the dumplings. I'm sure the preparation of the filling isn't too difficult. I was really great to be back after being away for three weeks. The only complaint is that I had to get used to my regular sleep schedule and that made me tired during the day.

If you're in to comic books, go read Infinite Crisis! This is how a crossover should be. Every page has action and great plot twists. And the events affect the entire DC universe and will continue to affect them for years to come. Much better than House of M and probably better than Marvel's upcoming Civil War.

Another day and another dollar. I wish the best to all in the new Chinese New Year!

DRAGONCRYPT 01/30/2006 11:20:08 PM

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

Congratulations to Mr. Harper and the Conservative Party

Well, Canada has a new Prime Minister and a new minority government. Voter turnout was 64.9%, up 4% from the 2004 election. I'm not happy with the Conservatives winning, but I'm willing to give them a chance to run the country. I'm glad to see that it's minority government and that the opposition parties will keep Mr. Harper in check. I'm excited that the NDP have increased their seats in Parliment. Also happy to see that the Bloc seats in Quebec. That's very significant. The Conservaties were shut out of Canada's three largest cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. So Harper has got to do something to address the voters in those regions. One final note is that whne you look at the vote percentages, the number of seats isn't proportional. I'm sure this will be address in the new reforms the Conversatives want.

After three days on the midnight shift, things have not been too bad. I've been keeping myself busy with work-related work. I've also managed to read up and some interesting technologies and also lots and lots of news. I really have missed the days of keeping up with the world. I've found myself more reclusive lately. As one of the last "YB" to travel the world, I must say I am at a disadvantage in experience the rich cultures around the world. It would be an invaluable experience and a considerable asset. But for now, I am happy to have a roof over my head, a loving girlfriend, a good job and some great friends.

Work on my Hobbies section of the site is slowly progressing. I have recently watched "Underworld Evolution" and "The Matador" and I would like to put up some reviews for both movies. I had a hard time dividing up some of the content for my hobbies. I originally had Computers listed as a hobby but since I don't really have anything to post regarding computers, I decided to remove it from the list. With me going back to Toronto this weekend, I'm not sure how much of it will go up but I'm looking to at least get the layouts done for all of them. Oh yeah, if anybody wants to write some reviews, let me know.

DRAGONCRYPT 1/25/2006 10:20:01 PM

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

There is no question about it, I'm officially an idiot. I found out early last week that I could not vote on Election Day. The reason? Well, I'm currently living and working in Waterloo but my official primary address is still in Toronto. I could vote if I changed my address, but wasn't going to do that. The real kicker? I called 6 minutes too late to vote in the advanced voting. This SUCKS big time...

In the last election I chose not to vote for any party. I drew a line down all the candidates names. This doesn't spoil the vote and it allows the vote to count as a vote. I wasn't sure if I was going to do that again this year and I tried to make an effort to find out about where the three major parties stand. I've learned some things about each party's stance in many areas. However, I found that this election was more about corruption than anything else.

Is corruption rampant? I'm not sure. I'm more of a pessimist and I think that every government is corrupt on some level. The Liberals were dumb enough to get caught. For the Conservatives to campaign against corruption disgusted me. Choose the Conservatives because we need change? Not because the Conservatives are better? That was the message I got. The Liberals campaign of smearing Harper was just as bad. The NDP are just a few steps behind but they seem to have some good ideas and are campaigning more from the standpoint of being the real power behind a minority government. So who would I vote for in the end? I don't really know. I do know that I would not have voted for the Conservatives. Their promises to spend more and cut taxes are just another way to buy votes. I used to take transit and I'm all behind public transit but I do not want a "subsidy" for transportation. Take that money and support the INFRASTRUCTURE! People are not taking transit because it sucks. The Conservatives are most likely going to win and they're not gonna win because Canadians believe what they stand for, but they are going to win because they essentially bought all the swing votes with promises of tax cuts and subsidies. People don't look long term and wonder where the money will come from. Now if the Conservatives do win a majority government, are all those promises going to be kept? Probably not as the other parties won't allow it. Nice convenient out isn't it? I think it would have been much more interesting to see the NDP in power. Now that's real change and that would have shaken things up a little. It could have been good or bad. Interesting times ahead.

So I'm working the 12:00 am to 8:30 am shift this week. It's fun so far. Sometimes it's nice to get away from the hustle of the corporate work day. I don't mind having a little quiet time to troubleshoot and to read up on things. Technology is so crazy. It moves at such a lightning pace that it's hard to keep up at times. It is always funny to see some sectors purposely go slow while other sectors go really fast. Phones are purposely going slow to milk the cash from people, while you look at the computer industry and my 5-year-old computer is doing it's job just fine while people with computers ten times as fast as mine are using theirs for less work. I remember spending the thousands to keep up with technology and as each of my computers slowly dies I've realized that it's not really worth it anymore. I'm totally satisfied that my compuer has been worth it's money. Instead of buying that cheap temporary part, I've bought high quality parts that I don't have to worry about for awhile. Ultimately, that saves on money and on waste. My overzealousness during my past has proven to have some advantages I guess. So what am I talking about? Hmmm...don't know. Well I guess with technology moving so fast it's hard for people to realize the next great thing isn't so great. I know I've been caught in that trap before. So let the buyer beware I guess.

DRAGONCRYPT 1/23/2006 5:23:24 PM

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

Almost two weeks since the last update. I'm spending the next few weeks in Waterloo so I took a few extra days off to go to Toronto. I figured I worked during the holidays so I might as well take a short vacation now. Didn't do too much but I did watch The Brothers Grimm with Jenn. That was alright though the sound was crappy which made the film a bit difficult to follow.

After the initial test design of my site, I realized that it wasn't completely dynamic. One area that bothered me was the dynamic height adjustment needed when my Journal entries would go above the allotted space hard-coded in the HTML. So I decided to rework all the CSS and HTML to make the site more fluid. This would also make it easier for me to update. One of the big lessons I've learned is that Internet Explorer must be the devil to all web designers. I hate IE. So many bugs and the way it interprets CSS sucks ass. So the last couple of weeks have been frustrating to say the least. I must have spent over 8 hours trying to figure out how to dynamically expand text boxes. I'm glad I went through it as I've got a much better understanding of how CSS works and some of the limitations it has. So site updates seem to be back on track and I hope to continue to port over some of the old information. Unfortunately, old journal posts will no longer be available.

Well that's it for this post. Just wanted to give everyone an update of what's been going on. I've got some awkward shift hours for the next couple of weeks so I'm not sure how much I'll be posting. At this moment, filling out the other pages is my primary concern. Till next time.

DRAGONCRYPT 1/15/2006 10:34:22 PM

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2006

A very Happy New Year to everybody! Another year has quickly gone by! Can you imagine that I've been working for Research In Motion for six months now?! It still hasn't fully hit me that I'm on my own in Waterloo now. Maybe after the winter, I'll come to grips with the change of scenery.

For the last week and a bit, I've been having a blast of a time. I went home for the Christmas weekend and I had sooooo much food! It was awesome! My mom outdid herself again this year. We had 19 people over for dinner including 6 kids, so really it was 13 people. Anyways, there was turkey, ham, stuffing, curry, sushi, spring rolls, fish, sea cucumber with mushrooms. Then there was dessert! Mango pudding, chocolate cake, some weird Italian bread. I'm definitely proud of myself because I didn't eat as much as I normally would. Jenn was worried I would, but I listened to her and instead of being uncomfortably full and suffering food coma, I was awake and chilling with my family.

On Monday, I drove up to Waterloo with Jenn and we spent the night at the hospital ER. It was nothing major but since no clinics were open, it was our best option. Jenn was okay and got some drugs to help. I had to work the whole week at various times so I left Jenn lots of movies to watch. She had a lot of catching up to do with all her school work last term. Still don't know how she manages to do all that work. Jenn also did the cooking for the week. It was awesome to come home to delicious home-cooked meals. And I didn't have to do any work. Now, granted, if Jenn stayed longer, I'd probably be the one cooking every week. Hee Hee. Anyways, Jenn and I went to see King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia. Both movies were good and were definitely better than my expectations. It was amazing to watch Narnia and having all the childhood memories of reading that series come flashing back. It almost makes me want to go and re-read the series. But first I must read Knife of Dreams...sigh.

After the time in Waterloo, I drove Jenn back to Toronto on Saturday and picked up my comic books and some groceries. I wanted to cook Jenn's parents dinner and we ended up deciding to make fajitas. I must say, George Foreman grills are awesome. You get those grill lines and the meat cooks so fast and even. I gotta get me one of those! After dinner, I had a wicked headache and had to take a nap. I woke up in time for the New Year. I don't know about you, but the New Year's celebrations have really gotten lame for me. It's just another day in the end. Maybe I need to be drinking hard to understand. Oh well. On New Year's Day, Jenn came over and helped with inventorying my comic books. With her help I managed to get through about 7 long boxes in two hours. It was time well spent. Thanks Jenn!

It was a real treat to be able to spend so much time with Jenn. Even when I was in Toronto I don't think I've been able to spend as much time as I have with her in the past week. I didn't get really irritated by her living with me and I don't think she did with either. That's a good sign right? With us being apart all the time, it does make these moments extra special. Things keep on getting better between us so it's good. Though she doesn't know about my DARK SECRETS---MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...just joking. No dark secrets here....

So now I'm back in Waterloo and the next 4-5 weeks I have a crazy work schedule that will do wonders for my sleeping schedule. So I'll most likely be staying up in Waterloo for a little while. I just put in a vacation request for two days next week to hopefully make a four-day weekend. That would give me enough time to run some errands in Toronto. After working through the holidays I think it's time for me to take my holidays. So nice relaxing and recreation would be nice. Ok, bed time! Nite y'all!

DRAGONCRYPT 1/2/2006 11:57:09 PM