Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - Month Archives

September saw me officially hitting the 30-year milestone. I don't feel any different but I know that I wanted to be a little better off than I am now. With that said, things are looking very bright over the horizon and I'm continuing to re-affirm what my final destination will be. Woot! Woot!

Thursday, September 27th 2007

Phew...it's been a tiring week. After having Monday off, I had to go into work for a day. Tried to tidy up all my cases before I headed to training for three days. Didn't get to updating a case here or there but we're still waiting for the customer to respond. So it should be okay.

The training has been really interesting. I can't really talk about the content but I absolutely love this opportunity to be part of the certification process. It's definitely a nice change from working in the office. My co-worker has emailed me telling me it's been fairly hectic at work lately. I can't wait to go back on Tuesday...yeah right.

After my training tomorrow, I'm head out to Toronto. I'm really hoping the Millennium Falcon LEGO gets to me by tomorrow. It would suck to wait over the weekend. Jenn and I will be visiting my friend Mike and his wife in Burlington. That should be pretty fun! I was supposed to take Friday off so I had taken next Monday off to make a four-day long weekend but with the training, it changed around. However, I still have Monday off so I'm going to be back Monday night. Sunday looks to be a chill day and I'm going to see if I can get all the documentation I need for my passport by Monday so I might need to make my appointment with my dentist/doctor etc.

I finally posted the box breakdowns for the Spider-Man 3 and Transformers boxes I got earlier this year. I still have the Battlestar Galactica Season 2 to post and there may be more in the future with Heroes, DC Legacy and Marvel Masterpieces all coming out soon. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

DRAGONCRYPT 9/27/2007 9:28:32 PM

Monday, September 24th 2007

30 years

So I've finally hit the 30-year-old mark. It was funny when a few of the guys at work were surprised I was turning 30. It was pleasantly surprising that some thought I was in my early twenties. Sweet!

Since I worked the weekend, I was supposed to get this coming Friday off. However, I was invited to a training session which I really wanted to attend so I switched shifts and took today off. It turns out okay as it's also my birthday. I got to sleep in a little and then drove my roommates to Costco to get some stuff. I bought only 1 litre of cream. I was fairly happy about that. I must say I was really tempted to buy the salmon fillets or the pork tenderloin. I saw this recipe for stuffed pork tenderloin and I soooo want to try it out.

After Costco, I decided to just chill a little at home. Surfed the web and chatted with Jenn online. I was getting a little restless so I thought I'd try my luck with a walk in downtown Kitchener to visit a few of the hobby shops. No such luck. One was closed and the other one had nothing. Half the shops in downtown Kitchener were empty and it wasn't very busy at all. They really need to fix the downtown or something.

Had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. I had been there before and the food was decent. This time around, not so great. I decided to have a durian shake which was pretty yummy. Afterwards, I headed to the movie theatre to watch Resident Evil Extinction. It turns out that all the movie theatres in Waterloo/Kitchener open at around 6 now. There are no afternoon showings with the exception of weekends. What a bummer. Then again, the theatre had maybe 30 people in it? The good news is that the ticket price was lowered for Monday-Thursday. The movie only cost 7.50. Not bad.

After the movie, headed home and talked some more with Jenn. Still felt kind of restless so I went to the gym. And that was my b-day. Nothing special (as it should be). Oh right, my friend Brian sent me the link to watch the Family Guy Star Wars episode. It was pretty funny. It's on YouTube for all those that are interested. One of the best parts was when Chris (played by Seth Green) starts arguing with Peter about the Robot Chicken Star Wars special. Seth Green is the creator of Robot Chicken. Funny Stuff.

Well, one day of work tomorrow and then three days of training. I'm going to try to get all my cases touched tomorrow. Thanks to everybody who wished me a Happy Birthday through email, MSN, Facebook and in person. Excelsior!

DRAGONCRYPT 9/25/2007 12:13:51 AM

Saturday, September 22nd 2007

Tried to sleep in today and I couldn't. I woke up at around 8:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Today might be a little killer with the 5 or 6 hours of sleep added to the late night tonight (cuz of work). I'm really hoping nothing goes wrong tonight and it will be a quiet weekend.

Finally submitted my corporate taxes to an accountant. The accountant has a fairly modest rate so I'm happy about that. However, I did claim some expenses incorrectly so I may need to pay some taxes...yuck. We'll see how it goes.

Has anyone gotten a rush on a passport before? I might have the opportunity to go to the States for a conference but I need to rush to get my passport. Man, I better talk to my parents about where my Certificate of Citizenship is. If I am able to go, it will be cool. I still haven't decided fully if I want to go but it may be an opportunity that few and between.

DRAGONCRYPT 9/22/2007 12:55:04 PM

Friday, September 21st 2007

Went to work today for a meeting even though it was my day off. I couldn't reschedule the meeting and it was a project that I've been asked to participate in. It's really interesting and I definitely want to be part of the process. There are going to be some possible changes at work and with change comes hardship. I remember watching or learning that there are stages to change within a corporate environment. I think we're at the emotional stage right now. Work is becoming more and more interesting each week. With that in mind, I also have to work this weekend though I can log in from home using VPN. That should be pretty kewl.

Resident Evil: Extinction comes out today. It looks decent except for the absolutely horrible poster with Milla Jovavich. There's a good picture of her with the silhouette in front of a devastated Las Vegas. However, there are some other posters of her were she's in her gear and looks like a tomboy/butch lesbian on a warpath. Yuck. Anyways, I still want to go watch this. I've been given the okay to go watch it by myself, possibly on Monday. Woohoo!

DRAGONCRYPT 9/21/2007 9:28:45 PM

Monday, September 17th 2007

Topps is going crazy releasing a ton of movie card sets this year. Added with the rest of the companies relasing their card sets, it is going to be a very busy end of the year. Below is a quick summary of some of the upcoming releases:

Topps

Halo (September)
Heroes Season 1 (October)
Pirates of the Carribean Trilogy (November)
Lord of the Rings Masterpieces II (January 2008)

Upper Deck

Marvel Masterpieces (November)

Inkworks

Supernatural Season Two (October)
The Seeker: Dark Is Rising (October)
Lost Season Three (November)
The Golden Compass (November)
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (December)

Rittenhouse Archives

DC Legacy (September)
The Complete Star Trek Movies (November)

Bench Warmer

Bench Warmer 2007 Signature Series

Phew. That is a TON of card releases in the next 3-4 months. I'm looking into getting some boxes of Marvel Masterpieces, Heroes, Pirates, Lord of the Rings and Bench Warmers. I guess I need to sell some of those sketches I got with my Star Wars 30th. Time to take out all those old CCG cards. I've got some useless World of Warcraft singles I could probably unload. Good thing the Canadian dollar is so strong and buying from the States is so much cheaper than picking anything up at retail here. Can you believe comic books still cost 15 percent higher than Canadian prices? Sigh....

DRAGONCRYPT 9/17/2007 9:49:33 PM

Wednesday, September 12th 2007

I picked up a 4 GB Sandisk USB drive today from Best Buy. It was on a crazy sale and although there were none in stock online, I choose the pick-up option and was able to get the online price anyways! Woohoo! When I had my Mastercard, I enrolled in this program called LifeStyle Rewards. It's a club where you can purchase discounted gift cards. Well, there are apparantly a whole bunch of them and they are quite exclusive and difficult to get into.

I decided to read up on them at the Red Flag Deals forums. Man...some people just suck. People were getting mad at the fact that they went out and abused a flaw in the sign-up process and then got caught. The company screwed up and ended up included non-eligible people for their membership drive. So people signed up right away and ordered hundreds of dollars of gift certificates right away (in some cases thousands). The company caught on and cancelled the memberships but not before their system sent out some of the orders and charge the credit cards. Oops. Reading the forums and how vicious some of these guys are. They were going on about how crappy this company is, etc. Ummm... You signed up the first chance you could get and then preceded to order as many cards as possible. Nobody does it this quickly unless they are trying to get away with something. Sure the company had a flaw in their sign-up process, but you went and tried to exploit it and got burned. To me, you deserve any grief this may have caused. It figures that the bargain dealers are also the cheap-ass, whiny posters in the forums. Not saying they all are, but they try to get the best deals by trying to BEAT the system. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. It's amazing what people do to save a few bucks or cheat the system. When things don't go their way, they go on whiny tirades about how these companies suck. Absolutely pathetic.

Work has been super stressful these last few days. I've been working on one case and it's just a lot of log review. My eyes are getting blurry and bloodshot. What ticks me off sometimes is it's obvious that I'm busy YET people still come barging in and asking for help without really caring if I'm busy. I have no problems helping people, it's my job. But if it looks like I'm really really busy, don't barge in with the attitude that I can drop everything to help you. You wouldn't like it if I did it to you (especially during my LUNCH time). Bleh...people are getting more and more oblivious all the time.

DRAGONCRYPT 9/13/2007 12:14:41 AM

Tuesday, September 11th 2007

Man, when people make statements asking others to lay off the Americans to respect the events of 9/11, I try not to get all pissy and shit. Do you think Americans lay off on the "terrorists" when they commemorate their dead? I don't think so. The events of 9/11 were tragic. But not any more tragic than the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, the countless wars in Africa. The only difference was it happened on American soil to American citizens. In fact, there are far greater tragedies that we should pay our respects to. So anyways, back to those "considerate" people who ask to be considerate. Fuck Off. America is proud of their "free speech" so we can say whatever the fuck we want, whenever we want, that's prolly what the Americans would like us to do anyways.

9/11 aside, it was interesting to see some of the statistics that have been posted about the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan. Could you just imagine what Afghanistan would be like if there were 130, 000 troops there helping with the reconstruction? The dynamics would definitely be different there and the West would have actually done something that was beneficial to a third-world country. Bleh. Anyways, enough talk about this stuff...I'm just repeating myself I.

DRAGONCRYPT 9/11/2007 11:30:45 PM

Monday, September 10th 2007

Yaaaawn....Monday has come and gone already and we're ten days into September. The weekend was really nice and relaxing. No trips anywhere special. We did watch Knocked Up. It was a pretty good movie. I can't wait to watch Superbad as well. It's a shame that not accidents could be such a fairy tale. All the characters were interesting enough considering most are second-stringers. The movie did want me to go buy and watch the 40-year-old Virgin again. Weird.

DRAGONCRYPT 9/10/2007 11:08:59 PM

Tuesday, September 4th 2007

I got my fixed laptop back today and spent some time trying to restore my data back to it. I was lucky enough to get all the information back. Now I can get to some of those cases that I wanted to work on yesterday but couldn't. I'm working an earlier shift so I'm really tired right now. It's amazing how one hour can really shift your sleeping schedule (especially when I'm a late sleeper).

The frosh are in town and the city is abuzz with activity. Kids and parents driving recklessly and some pretty nasty grocery shopping at time. I haven't had to wait in lines for quite some time now. Sobey's did a great job of keeping everything in stock while the students are here. It was fun watching the parents shop with the Frosh for all their food. What? I live in Waterloo...I get my entertainment whenever I can!

DRAGONCRYPT 9/4/2007 8:46:52 PM

Monday, September 3rd 2007

I hope everyone is having a great long weekend! I'm at work earning some extra cash for the Stat Holiday. Nothing beats getting paid that little extra for doing the same amount of work. It was a little different today though as I went into the office and turned on my laptop and the laptop was slower than my old 386. I could hear the hard drive straining. I ended up taking the laptop to IT to get re-imaged. So I had no real computer for the entire day. I ended up trying to configure a bunch of my test machines for more VMWare imags. At least I got some work done.

I love staying in Toronto during the long weekends. With a large number of people away from the city to enjoy the last long weekend of the summer, it makes everything that much nicer in such a busy city. The weather was awesome and I helped my mom barbeque some satay chicken and some salmon. Pretty good stuff! I didn't get to go to bubbles (felt tired) so I'll hit the boys up next weekend to see if they're free. It's been awhile and I need to get that dose of expensive bubble tea ^__^.

I didn't realize that I have over 100 friends on Facebook. Wow. I don't think it's a lot but the number crept up on me. It's pretty cool to find some long lost friends. If you want to see pictures of me making dumplings with this highly concentrated face, check it out on Facebook. I look like I'm gonna kill those dumplings if they don't turn out right (they did, woohoo!). For those who have not made their own dumplings, try it! It's pretty fun (for a while). The only thing I suggest is that you buy some thick skins. Jenn's parents actually make their own dumpling skins. That's so kewl and they taste way better than the store-bought skins. However it's uber time consuming.

DRAGONCRYPT 9/3/2007 8:23:05 PM