Highlights

Cytoplasmic Writings - Month Year Archives

I was able to post a little more in June which is a good thing I guess. Watched a Jays game and found that it wasn't as bad as I remembered. June's come and gone and the kids are out of school...boohoo...

Monday, June 29th 2009

Congratulations Matt & Gizelle!

My friend Matt got married over the weekend and it was a great time. Saw a lot of people I haven't seen in a while. It was a great day for a wedding too. Lots of sunshine and it was cool most of the day. The music kinda sucked though as the DJ kept playing a mix and changing tracks every 30 seconds so you couldn't really dance to anything. Of course, I didn't know most of the songs since I'm stuck in the eighties and nineties.

By the way, the Blue Jays game was awesome! We had great seats, right under the Jumbotron. It was a great view of the field and there weren't people around us so that made it even better. The only thing was the guy besides Jenn decided to take his shoes off and put his feet up with his smelly socks. That was pretty gross and inconsiderate of the guy. Sigh. At least it wasn't smelly sandal feet...I HATE smelly sandal feet, the smell gives me an instant headache.

We also saw Transformers 2. Not that bad. It felt like a direct continuation of the first movie. I didn't think the first movie was spectacular so this was more of the same. I had already convinced myself that this was not the Transformers I grew up with so that made things better. Good to see Soundwave in the movie though, even if it was just by name. There have been a lot of people who loved or hated the movie but the numbers don't lie. Over five days of release, the movie took in almost $400 million. That's a guarantee for a Transformers 3 and more Megan Fox goodness I guess.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/29/2009 10:41:59 PM

Monday, June 22nd 2009

The wife and I are heading out tomorrow to watch the Blue Jays take on the Cincinnati Reds. Man, I had to look up how to spell "Cincinnati"... sigh. So this is the first baseball game for Jenn and I haven't been to one in about 4 years. Should be a fun game hopefully with Tallet pitching. I also get to teach Jenn about baseball. We're in the cheap 200 seats as we got the $5.00 value seats for their cheap seat promotion. I'd rather pay $5 to see the Jays to see if it's any more exciting than the last time I watched (fell asleep in the third inning).

Totally off topic, I need to find some of the new music my favorite artists have released recently. I'm still listening to stuff from a few years back right now. The only radio I listen to now is 680 News so I hardly hear any music anymore. Man, Perez Hilton was on the news again. That guy is the most annoying dumbass in the world. Gossip people are annoying but a flamboyant pink gossip twitterer is even worse. Gah, I think he's one of those guys that I want to punch in the face if I look at him. Weird.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/22/2009 10:04:44 PM

Sunday, June 21st 2009

Sham-ocracy

The Toronto Star is running a six-part series on the decline of democracy in Canada. The first article was published on Saturday and their will be one each day until Thursday. The articles have been good so far. Each article concentrates on specific aspect of our government. It's great as it shows that these minor changes over the last 20 years have really contributed to the decline of democracy. There's less power to the everyday citizen and our politicians have become less accountable and more power-hungry than ever before. It's evident in all the parties and the articles point this out. If you were concerned about last year's political crisis or just wondering how Canada's democracy is doing, I'd recommend reading this.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/21/2009 2:01:34 PM

Wednesday, June 17th 2009

So no summer federal election. Stephen Harper gets to be Prime Minister for a little while longer. I think Michael Ignatieff isn't calling an outright election because it would be a disaster. There's no guarantee the polls will hold true when the time comes to vote. You bet the Conservatives will jump at the chance to say how the Liberals have made this all about politics. Most likely true but all the parties I think are playing politics still. The Conservatives personal attacks against Ignatieff are despicable and show no class and I'm glad the Liberals haven't stooped to their level. I'd rather politicians fight each other with the issues at hand instead of slinging mud at each other.

I really wish there was a website to show where all this stimulus money is going. It would be great to see, especially since we, the taxpayers are footing the bill. I don't believe any of the propaganda that Canada isn't doing that badly (it's like comparing a two car crash with a pile-up...it's still a crash man) or that Canada is going to come out strong from this. Whether it be Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Green or Bloq, it's time the government was more transparent in its spending. The lessons learned from the Liberal scandals should be that our governments shouldn't be hiding behind closed doors doling out money and then making generalized statements about how the money is well spent. Umm...I haven't seen any improvements. I don't even know where to look for these infrastructure improvements. For the Conservative critics out there, I would be saying the same thing if this was a Liberal, NDP, coalition, Green, whatever government.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/17/2009 8:18:27 PM

Sunday, June 14th 2009

The Pittsburgh Penguins have won the Stanley Cup and for some reason I wasn't too thrilled with it. I don't know why but throughout the playoffs I was always rooting for the Penguins to lose. I just didn't want to see them win. Especially against Washington, I was really hoping Ovechkin would destroy the Penguins. Having the Penguins win is great for hockey in the States. Detroit has been a dominant force and it's almost always a given that they perform well. Then Penguins are young and energetic and they are the future superstars of the NHL. Maybe it's Sidney Crosby, I just don't really like the guy, but hey, he's been the new face of hockey for the past few years now. Anyways, congratulations are still in order for the winners of the Stanley Cup. It was a great series and thank you for giving us a great classic series, whatever the final outcome was.

Had some pretty awesome food at this place call Chili Secret up near Hwy 7 and Leslie. It's north of Hwy 7 and if you're into spicy food then you should try it out. It's got some great cold starters and has lots of different varities of food. I was presently surprised by the selection of food and also the quality of the food. Go try it!

DRAGONCRYPT 6/14/2009 11:04:34 PM

Wednesday, June 10th 2009

Had a pretty busy beginning to the weekend. On Friday, I went downtown to the Bedford Academy to have drinks (Coke for me) with my buddy Geoff to celebrate his birthday. Apparantly it was also his friend Jeff's b-day as well. Lots of people went and I got caught up with a few people I haven't seen in awhile. Got home pretty late and headed straight to bed as I had to take my last road trip with my Mazda Protege to Waterloo :(

Went to Waterloo early to check out some of the local hobby and department stores for some cheap LEGO sets. Couldn't find anything so I met up with Brian and Jee-Young for lunch. We had food at this place called Marbles. It's funny, I lived there for three years and always wanted to try it but I never did. Now I go eat there as a "tourist". The food was pretty good but Jee-Young's Ahi Tuna was overcooked. Well, we're not sure since it was supposed to be blackened. Anyways after lunch we ended up back at my old place. I had to take apart my old bbq to bring back to Toronto. After a good 30 minutes, we managed to take everything apart and pack it in the car. Got back to Toronto and Jenn's parents took the bbq in their car to their place. I'll probably set it up next week. Awesome! Now there's a real bbq at Jenn's parents' place.

The rest of the weekend was pretty dead. We just relaxed and slowly got excited about picking up the new car. After work on Monday, I headed home since I forgot the spare car key. Got to the dealer and picked up the car! The manual shifting is very different from the Protege and it will take some time to get used to. The brakes are ultra sensitive and you don't have to press to far down on the clutch to shift gears. However, you do have to press down a little on the gas pedal to get that going. So it's like a reverse of the old car. I don't mind cuz I'm loving the new car. It's roomy, quiet and looks nice! Jenn's also driving the car now too and we're both getting used to it. I hope I'll be used to the car when we head back to the parents this weekend.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/10/2009 11:00:36 PM

Thursday, June 4th 2009

I've been training all week at work learning NetApp technology. NetApp specializes in making network storage and it's been great learning about the technology and how to configure their filers. It's knowledge that will definitely help me in IT later on. The only thing that sucks is that the training takes time away for the work I have to do so I've been playing catchup during breaks and staying a little later. It's funny, it's just mundane computer IT stuff but there's so much work that it seems like it's never-ending. I absolutely love doing IT again though. I look back at the days of the call centre and I'm really happy I'm out of that. Been there, done that.

Heading downtown tomorrow night to celebrate Geoff's b-day. Should be fun since I haven't seen the guys in quite some time. Has it been since my wedding? Damn...being in Etobicoke is almost like being in Waterloo at times. Speaking of Waterloo, I've got one last road trip in my Mazda Protege before I trade it in for the Hyundai Elantra we got. Yup! We bought a new car! We figured with the cheap rates and the prices it was time to get a new car. It's better than pumping more money into the Protege. So I'm heading to Waterloo this Saturday to meet up with Brian and JY for lunch and to see if I can transport my old bbq back to TO. Yeah, one last final journey for my first car.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/4/2009 10:58:00 PM

Monday, June 1st 2009

Terminator Salvation was a good and entertaining movie. There was lots of action and a decent plot line. Sure, it wasn't nearly as good as the first two movies but this movie was better than Terminator 3 (Although I liked T3 as well). It was great when Jenn pointed out that the actor who played Kyle Reese is the same actor who played Chekov in the Star Trek movies. This guy must have been ecstatic to be in two major movies with a decent role all in one summer. If you like a good action flick with some Terminator goodness, go watch the movie.

June has actually started this time around as opposed to me thinking it had. I have NetApp training all this week. It's good to get back into the learning atmosphere. NetApp is completely new to me so it's awesome to learn about data storage in an enterprise environment. I've always wondered about that stuff and know I'm being taught it. Awesome! So it's free lunches this week and no work. Well, actually I'm going to come in early and do some work at home each day. Our department doesn't have enough manpower to lose the guys who are on training for a whole week. Just too much work nowadays. No complaints as being busy at work during this Global Recession is a good thing.

After updating the LEGO section I've realized how many new sets are out this coming year! Argh! And they're awesome sets. Who wouldn't want Battle of Endor or Home One (Admiral Ackbar!!!!!). Time to sell some of my older sets to save up money for this. The new Clone Wars sets are nice but not so enticing for me. Thank goodness I don't like the crappy trilogy stuff. However, I have noticed that the demand is pretty high for these sets and they've got decent resale value so it may be good to pick a few up at discounted prices. It's so crappy that LEGO still has this huge gap in pricing between Canadian and American pricing. Bleh.

DRAGONCRYPT 6/1/2009 7:55:22 PM