Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - Month Archives

Thursday, August 30th 2007

Wow I'm dead tired. I couldn't sleep yesterday night due to the humidity. Then it got cold so I wasn't under a blanket and then woke up freezing in the middle of the night. What I wouldn't give for some climate control!

I've been playing around at work with Microsoft Word created web pages for a customer. Oh my GOD these pseudo-web page design programs suck. They don't even produce compliant web pages. I couldn't validate any of the web pages that were generated and there are a ton of the customer Microsoft headers within the document. It was great to see the almost 200 lines of script to generate "hello world". I'm sure it makes things easier to those end-users but man it's tiring trying troubleshoot issues caused by these pages.

This is most likely going to be my last post for August. Gonna go to TO tomorrow for the weekend. No long weekend for me as I wanted to work on Monday for the extra holiday pay. I hope that everybody is going to enjoy the long weekend! There's lots to do and almost no time to do it. Summer is almost over and the cold is coming again! At the there's time for the turkey season woohoo! October is gonna be a fun month, turkey and a huge LEGO surprise!!!!

DRAGONCRYPT 8/30/2007 9:48:24 PM

Tuesday, August 28th 2007

I was working out today and I saw a few movies that were coming out soon that looked really interesting. The first was 3:10 to Yuma with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Great combination! The second movie is with Kevin Bacon, Death Sentence, looks really dark. Good Luck Chuck looks hilarious and it doesn't hurt to have Jessica Alba in a lot of underwear hehehe. Shoot'em Up with Paul Giamatti as a hitman opposite of Clive Owen looks pretty good too! I can't believe I've missed so many trailers over the last few months. Wow. I still have to see Knocked Up and Superbad too. Just too many movies to watch.

DRAGONCRYPT 8/29/2007 12:56:01 AM

Sunday, August 26th 2007

Took a day off an Friday and went Toronto on Thursday night. I decided to surprise Jenn for lunch at her office. That was fun! After lunch I went on a comic shop walk around the downtown area. Went to a few of the shops below looking for some trading cards with a budget of 10-20 dollars to spend at each store (possibly):

401 Convenience

No trading cards and mostly gaming cards and sports cards. It was a little busy and nobody asked if I needed any help. There wasn't anything of interest so I decided not to purchase anything.

Hairy Tarantula

This place is always interesting. The staff outnumbered the customers and it always feels like it's a place for friends (the staff) to hang out. It's definitely got that comic book feel to it. It's your typical messy comic book store with very narrow walkways. Again no trading cards, but the staff was nice and I decided to buy a box of Star Wars Minatures Starship Battles. Didn't pull anything exciting though.

Silver Snail

Clean and usually overpriced. This is the Comic Book icon store in Toronto. I like going there to pick up on sale items. The staff members aren't that friendly and the place is always busy. Surprisingly busy since the Fan Expo was happening later that day. The new comics section looked pillaged and I would never buy anything from it unless I carefully examined the copy. There was this ultra-fan-elitist jackass who was shoving the books back into the rows and ruining the spines. He would do this while commenting on how lame the comic book was. He was so bad, his friends were annoyed at him.

There were a few trading cards for sale (Quotable DS9, Spider-man 3) but nothing of interest so I left without buying anything. I was actually looking for any of those cheap discount backs chock-filled with cards. None were available.

3rd Quadrant Comics

Located near the Silver Snail, it's a basement store that is unorganized and messy. However, once I came in, the owner immediately greeted me and was really friendly. The books were US cover for new ones and Canadian cover for some of the older ones. I picked up some interesting books, Zerokiller from Dark Horse and Dust from Image. Both were really good and I'll probably pick up the rest of the mini-series.

Saw that the store was actually going to move to a new location next year (location not yet known). Hopefully it will be a good location for them since it's one of the more friendly stores I've been to in a while.

On a sadder note, two hobby stores in Markham have disappeared. I'm not sure if they moved or closed down. I've forgotten the names of both but they were on Highway 7 between Warden and McCowan. I also so in the paper that Fastball Sportscards in downton Toronto is also closing. Wow, there are even less and less stores now. Is it a dying breed? I hope not and cuz my dream of owning a hobby store would be slim-to-none then. Well, it's niche market and you need to generate the sales.

Spent Saturday hanging out with Jenn and shopping at Markville. Went to one of Jenn's friends place and had a "dumpling" making party. It was fun! We made chive, mushroom and shrimp dumplings. I'm glad Jenn's mom taught me how to fold dumplings before so I "looked" like an expert! Woohoo! Sunday was spent chilling at home and grocery shopping. It's pepper season so there are a lot of crazy deals right now. I couldn't believe some of the prices for the peppers. Maybe I should go to the Farmer's Market to grab some cheap peppers and bring them home for my parents and Jenn's parents.

Aight. Back to a full week of work. I should be good to get back into the groove. I need to pick up more cases and learn more. The last few weeks have been great but I feel like I have not been pulling my weight. More work!

DRAGONCRYPT 8/27/2007 12:22:27 AM

Thursday, August 23rd 2007

First full day of work during the day in almost three weeks. Bleh. It was really tough getting back into the groove. I took a few escalations today. It's amazing how sometimes things can get so screwed up in environments. I'm glad I fixed one person's computer.

I was thinking back to the training regarding Exchange 2007 and it made me think about technology and our dependency on it. People are so dependent on instant messenging, instant email, instant food, etc. I admit, I'm sometimes the first one to jump on the bandwagon, but it's just not healthy for us. I find that I try to spend so much time working for people that really don't care. Everyone is getting paid or earning money and their goal would be to make more money. I remember the mission critical nature of many calls. It's true, companies can lose a lot of money. Wow. Sometimes, I feel like saying "it's just money" but I know it's not appropriate.

The Internet and media have really made people very impatient. People have no patience anymore. I see it in malls, I see it at work and I see it on TV. Sigh. It's depressing sometimes. Maybe I'm just slow or not built for this century. I wonder what it would have been like to live in an earlier time. Sure I'd be three quarters through my life (short life spans) but would I have done more or enjoyed it more? Dunno. A lot of people go thirty is a really long time. Well, I'm as old as the Eaton Centre, as old as Star Wars A New Hope, older than most of the "new" batch of young celebrities, and much older than nieces and nephew. I've already doubled the age of my nephew. LOL. Awesome. Many may think I should be worried. I am, sort of. I wish I had done more looking back, but going ahead, I've still got a lifetime. Sure my future kids may have an "older" father but hey...they'll have to deal with it. LOL. They won't know the difference until their teens anyways LOL.

Dunno what I'm trying to say here, just got that rushed feeling. I'm gonna try harder to enjoy the present. I live in Canada with free health care, wide expanses of space, lots of materialism and plenty of opportunities. Not much to complain about I think (Though I WILL still complain...LOTS). Excelsior!

DRAGONCRYPT 8/23/2007 10:14:11 PM

Wednesday, August 22nd 2007

Three days of training went by pretty quickly. Too quickly. I have to go back to work tomorrow. I must say it feels like I haven't worked in ages with the wedding, the late shifts and then training. I need to get back into the groove of things so I can start taking cases again.

Canadian Tire had a special online sale where you print off an online coupon and spend 40 dollars in-store and get an additional 10 dollars off! Woot! Woot! I decided that this would be a good time to buy one of those resin shelves. It was already on sale (20% off) I also picked up another three-drawer plastic bin thingy to put some of my food away in the kitchen.

This weekend will be the huge Fan Expo. Lots of people are going to be in town for it and there are probably a lot of vendors there with good deals. Again, this year I won't be attending due to my boycott. Maybe one day it will end and I'll feel like supporting the show. Well, after my expenditures on Star Wars 30th Anniversary cards, I think I should curb the spending a little.

DRAGONCRYPT 8/22/2007 8:14:15 PM

Monday, August 20 2007

Didn't have a lot of time to post anything yesterday. I was working all of yesterday on the website and got stuck on some Javascript for the Rescue Me webpage. Spent a good two hours trying to troubleshoot the issue and I didn't get it resolved. I decided to go ahead and complete other parts of the site first before I got too frustrated with things. I also realized I'm doing too many parallel things at the same time and I kept losing track of where I was. Hopefully I'll try to concentrate more a few things so I can get the published. So back to working on the website. Enjoy some of the updates...however small...hehehe.

DRAGONCRYPT 8/20/2007 8:10:30 PM

Saturday, August 18th 2007

I cannot remember the last time I stayed up in Waterloo by myself. My roommates are away so it is just me and I am loving it! It has been really nice to relax, turn on the loud music, walk around buck naked. It's freaking awesome! I was even able to update some stuff on the website. I added all the new Star Wars LEGO sets for 2007. Man are there a lot of sets coming out. I guess it's because of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. I don't mind, the new batch of sets are from the prequels so I'm not interested in them. I do want that TIE Crawler, Hoth Rebel Base and possibly the Republic Cruiser.

Our house is getting filled with stuff. I have 8 comic book long boxes here. I really should move a few back to my parent's place. The 30th Star Wars cards filled 3 1600 count boxes so I'm running low on space for the trading cards as well. Sigh. There's just no room for a lot of stuff anymore. I guess I have to sell sell sell! If anyone is willing to buy stuff.

I'm hoping to have a few more sections up by the end of next week. I just need to write up some content. I really should learn PHP to create an automatic gallery generator. That would make things a lot easier for the gallery section.

DRAGONCRYPT 8/18/2007 10:17:09 PM

Friday, August 17th 2007

R.I.P. Mike Wieringo

Wow. This is truly a shocker. I only found out last night. Mike Wieringo, a comic book artist, passed away earlier this week. Mike has been the artist for the Flash, Tellos, Spider-man, Superman, Fantastic Four and many more books. I've always liked his work and he will be sorely missed. I've never met the man, but from what I've read, he was more than just a great guy. A comic fan first, then the artist. Rest In Peace Mike.

For the tributes regarding Mike's passing, visit Newsarama and for more information, visit www.mikewieringo.com.

DRAGONCRYPT 8/17/2007 12:27:57 PM

Thursday, August 16th 2007

The wedding is done! Woohoo! Congratulations to Mark and Milana! Have lots of fun together for the rest of your lives hehehe.

Jenn and I headed back to Toronto on Tuesday and chilled at my parents place that night. We decided to go to the ROM on Wednesday to check out the newly built wing. It was too bad that a lot of the galleries have yet to be opened. Regardless, Jenn and I walked around the ROM to the places we had yet to see. I love the reptiles gallery along with the Ontario Wildlife section. We skipped the Asian wing since we spent a lot of time there the last time. Most of the galleries will be opening by the end of this year so I guess it will be another trip to see the dinosaurs and mammals!

I spent Thursday and Friday doing occasional errands for Mark and trying on the tuxedoes. The guy helping us out was crazy. He acted like he was drunk all the time. Kinda reminded me of James Wood on certain angles. Spent the night over at Mark's on Friday just in case he decided to bolt. I was appointed guardian by Mark's dad. Kinda funny. The wedding itself was good. The venue was great and everything was set up nicely. It was really sunny and I felt like I was melting when we were outside. Mark's got a shaved head and it was fun to watch the beads of sweat form.

I was really nervous about my speech, which I guess is natural. I wrote something out that turned out to be way too long so I decided to semi-wing it. It was going good until for some reason, I felt that welled up feeling and had the uncontrollable urge to cry. Sigh. Yup...I cried during my speech. Gah. I didn't even get to finish my speech. I had this entire "History of Pants" thing going for Mark. Oh well. At least me crying made other people cry. LOL. Mark has it on video so I'm sure he'll show it around.

Many people asked when I'm going to get married. I'm pretty sure it's a few years away. Jenn and I are looking to live together first to make sure we can live together. Worst thing to have is a relationship, get married and drive each other crazy once you move in together. Are we gonna have a wedding? Nope. No expensive and elaborate celebration. I found that while some people enjoy the entire wedding concept, Jenn and I do not (Woohoo!). So yup, one day you might see me post that we're married and that's that. Nice and simple I guess.

I got my 2 cases of the Star Wars 30th Anniversary trading cards. I didn't get anything spectacular but I got some Katie Cook sketches and an autograph/sketch card in every one of my boxes. I've read on the forums of a lot of disappointed case/box breaks. That would have been the most disappointing thing. To expect something and not have it appear. From the box breakdowns too, I've read some crazy breaks on cases. Some cases would have a lot of the really rare cards. That's gonna be a distribution issue I would say. It's clear that Topps hasn't really sorted out their distribution on this product. I don't understand how since they make baseball cards as well. Oh well. There were clearly a lot of pissed off customers and that's never a good sign when you release a product. Box breakdowns will come later.

Anyways, off to work. Have a great day everybody!

DRAGONCRYPT 8/16/2007 1:41:01 PM

Monday, August 6th 2007

Wow. I had a full weekend of just relaxing and chilling in Waterloo. It was awesome! With the travelling to Toronto and Waterloo every weekend and all the trips all over the place, it was really nice to sit around and relax. I even got to finish the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It's an excellent book. There are many valid points that Dawkins makes. Many people think he's very antagonist towards religion and I would say that he isn't. He's very passionate about what he thinks is harmful to our society and I believe he's right. It's funny, when people speak out against religion, it's a big no-no. However, when religious leaders speak out, people tend to listen. I used to believe that religion was a great moral base for society. Not so anymore. Morals are very interesting indeed. They change with the times and having rules set hundreds of years ago is a little ridiculous at times. I also find it offensive that many people think if you're not religious, you're not as moral. Well...I know a lot of scrupulous religious people who bend the rules when it suits their own needs. Just another excuse to justify one's own actions.

I find myself over-worked slightly in my new position. There's a lot of room to work by yourself and take escalations. It was slow for the first weeks but things started to pick up afterwards. It's hard to keep track of all the cases and I've suddenly inherited a ton of new cases to work on. Add in the regular assistance of the IRT Server reps and you've got yourself a fairly busy day. It's weird. People are so impatient nowadays. They want answers and they always want answers right away. I don't understand how people think software can be fixed in a blink of the eye or that there's somebody that can really hit that "easy" button to solve all the problems. Of course, people will tend to kick and scream like two-year-olds until they get what they want. It's funny. It seems like the entire world is really based on productivity and profitability. When does anyone really enjoy it?

Watched Clerks 2 with Jenn over the weekend, along with Vacancy and Starsky and Hutch. They were all fairly entertaining. I really enjoyed Clerks 2 and I was really touched about the ending. It was a simple decision and it kinda struck home with me. I don't want that 9-5 life for the rest of my life. I don't want to get married because I'm getting old. I don't want to have a family so I can take that "next step". Although I don't want to not have those things just to be a rebel. I want to be able to decide when and where I want to lead my life and it is difficult to do when you have that cushy job and pressures from family and friends encouraging you to take that next step in life. Who's life is it anyways right? Bah, just thinking aloud. I don't really get too much pressure but it does happen and it's always interesting to hear the reasoning behind "getting married" or "buying a house" or "starting a family".

Anyhoo, heading to TO tomorrow so I might not post for a bit. I'll try in Toronto but it depends on the time I have. I'm gonna try to take a ton of pictures at the wedding but being the best man, I'm not sure if I can. We'll see. Oh yeah, wish me luck on the speech; I'm a horrible public speaker so it will be fun I guess right?

DRAGONCRYPT 8/6/2007 11:26:38 PM

Thursday, August 2nd 2007

I'm leaving July's posts here for a few days as I didn't get a chance to post them due to the few things that have been happening lately. The water heater has been fixed. We didn't have hot water yesterday but I went to the gym and took a shower there. It was kinda gross taking a shower in the public showers. Why does it smell so bad? I don't get it?! Oh well. The hot water is back today so I can come home and take a nice relaxing shower here.

After a really huge week in comics, it has died down a little with this week's releases. Posting the list a little late but better late than never. I hope that everyone will be doing fun things over this Canadian long weekend. I'm gonna be working but I don't mind when I make the big bucks hehehe. Can't wait to catch up on the movies this weekend. I'm so itching to watch Clerks 2 and a few other movies.

Did everyone see the collapsed bridge over the Mississippi? That was crazy. I couldn't believe the carnage and it happened during rush hour. Wow. The scene was pretty spectacular. For such carnage, it's amazing that the death toll was so low. There are a lot of lucky people out there. I wonder what they're going to do about the collapse. Somebody has to get charged for this. Bridges just don't collapse.

In world news, I watched on the news that the United Nations Security Council has finally voted to send a peacekeeping force to the Darfur region in Sudan. The force will integrate with the existing African Nations force that is already there making it a twenty six thousand strong force. The UN is hoping to recruit troops from African countries before asking for troops for the rest of the world (a good move). The mandate of the mission is to protect the civilians and the NGOs that are providing aid to the nearly 2 million homeless civilians. It's a tragic situation but it's only one of many around the world. Let's hope this peacekeeping force has the mandate to use force when necessary to deal with all the armed factions in the area.

Ok, I'll see if I can post one more time before over the weekend. Not sure if I can, but I'll try. Cheers and happy Simcoe day everyone!!!!

DRAGONCRYPT 8/2/2007 9:55:18 PM