Christmas, Concepts and Crazy

The word of the week is tenuous.

Dec 20 – Wearing Presents

Only a few more days until Christmas and the feeding frenzy at retailers across the country is in full swing. I bowed out this year( and last year, and the year before )for as I mentioned I don’t shop in December. That still doesn’t stop me from surfing online for cool gift ideas, or just ideas for things to get for myself should the need( and cash )arise in sync. One area I’m keeping my eye on is wearable tech: Tom’s Hardware has a great list of Wearable Tech of the Future with some really cool things. I thought the eJOUX concept wristlet and the wearable suitcase were really cutting-edge, though again I would be hard-pressed to find a practical use for them when it comes time to pony up the asking price.

Dec 21 – Not Quite NWN

There’s a sale on this week on Xbox live, for a fair number of games. I already have quite a number of unfinished games( ie. most of my collection )so I’m more curious to see the discounts than the actual games themselves. Several of my friends have recommended Sacred 2 to me, as being very similar to NWN  - though this review states it’s more of a Diablo clone. I’m not one to spend hours a week running around trying to l00t and farm gold; I’d rather spend the time playing with my friends online and interacting with them than trying to get a Sword of Uber-Headsmacking. I think I’ll check out the trial later this week and see how it fares...

Dec 22 – Driving me Crazy( -er )

The Hard Drive Saga continues... but it’s getting better. I must have swapped out the drive at least a dozen times this past week, at one point sticking in the old drive from my parent’s laptop and installing Ubuntu 10.10 on it, just to see if there was a hardware issue with the laptop – nope. What I’ve discovered is that while the new drive goes into Sleep Mode and wakes up from such perfectly, it does NOT play well when it goes into Hibernation. So, I’ve set the laptop to ONLY go to Sleep and not Hibernate( save and shutdown, essentially )and that seems to have done the trick – for now. Some time with Seagate Tech Support next week might turn up a permanent solution, but for now I’m no longer faced with returning the drive under a warranty replacement. Unless it does turn out to be a defect...

Dec 23 – It’s an iPhone!

Telus and I kissed and made up today... or at least agreed not to sue each other. After a fair bit of wrangling on the phone, I activated a used iPhone 3G I purchased inexpensively from a co-worker. It’s under the 2-year contract that still remains in effect, with a decent data plan and features... plus a $100 credit towards a new phone up until the end of 2011. So in essence, I can use my ‘new’ iPhone for a year while I decide if I want to go Android or Apple, as well as what model of phone I eventually want... for less. Overall, I’m not really upset, except for the contractual hassles and hoops I went through to get to this point. I do not believe I will ever sign another contract again, with any cell company, for any reason – they make my head hurt. Better to go to another model of cell plan, like the Koodoo Tab( which is a Telus subsidiary, btw )and avoid contracts altogether.

Dec 24 – Merry Xmas Eve and All That

Not so busy a Christmas Eve today; I was out the door and home by 2pm, which I wasn’t expecting. It was the final of 11 days in a row of working, albeit with some of those days shorter than others. I spent a good part of the evening playing COD: Black Ops, which I admit isn’t the most peaceful way to spend the night before Christmas... but it WAS a fair bit of fun.  I also spent way too much time surfing the Apple AppStore, looking for cheap / free apps that would be useful to me while avoiding the thousands of CrapApps that clog the place. One I immediately installed is DropBox, which is a file-sharing app that lets me drop whatever files( docs / pics / etc )into a folder on my laptop and have it be sharable between all my tech gadgets, be they computer, iPhone or what-have-you. Much easier than trying to pick and choose things to carry with you; wireless connectivity at its finest. Not to be confused with FileFactory.com, which lets you host up to 500gigs of files to share with friends / family – free!

Dec 25 – Christmas, of course!

A very relaxing Christmas, spent at home with my family... well, unfortunately not my sister who is waaaay out in AB, but we talked for a while today – that was nice. We had a great turkey dinner early at 1pm( leftovers! )and ended up watching the first two Shrek movies – great family time today. While we didn’t do much at all in the way of presents, the highlight of the day was the Zhu Zhu Hamster pet that we picked up for the cat. Whoever thought up these kids toys should expand into the pet market; these electronic scamperers are the perfect distraction for cats. They make cute random noises, zoom around in random paths and have a faux-fur finish that just asks for a cat to bat at playfully. Very amusing.

Dec 26 – Boxed In

Boxing Day turned out to be a bust at work, which was fine: it was steady but not insanely busy as I had suspected it might have turned out to be. The day passed quickly enough but at no point was I overwhelmed with customers, despite news that it was fairly busy at retailers here in Victoria. I didn’t bother this year, as there’s nothing I really need / really want to spend the cash for... and certainly nothing I was going to line up overnight for, even if there’s no snow out this way. I spent the evening typing up my blog, losing it, then trying to recover it from drafts / saved caches – no luck there. I packed it in after midnight and slept, dreaming oddly of see-through high-end toilets with colourful logos... which probably meant I shouldn’t have gone to bed angry. Or ate all those cookies left out for Santa.

Yes, I’m annoyed at Windows LiveWriter, as it happily overwrote the blog entry for Dec. 13 for NO discernable reason – no setting or preference can explain why it picked the second-most-recent post to blast into nothingness. So I’m back to editing in Word until I figure out how to safeguard my blog’s contents from random deletion – another black mark for Windows and its ilk.

Due to Windows LiveWriter being helpful enough to delete my blog draft and replace it with a 'live' copy, my blog is being rewritten from scratch Monday morning.

That sucks. 

People, Pictures and... -reposted-

PLEASE NOTE: This blog post was originally published  Dec 13 2010. Thanks to the wonders of random date postings via Windows LiveWriter, it was automagically deleted and reposted the week of Dec. 26th 2010.


Moral of the story? Don't expect Windows to know what the hell it's doing. And keep a backup copy!

The word of the week is melancholy. Because a good friend noticed.
  
Dec 6 – Questions and Sunsets

Ask yourself Two Questions, in order to gain focus in your life? Sure, why not. Getting some direction in your life is always a good thing, especially if you’re not sure that what you’re doing is what you’re meant to be doing – if you’re one of those people who believe in Fate( I’m not ). Then again, there’s the argument that there’s no such thing as coincidence, that everything happens for a reason… some things in this life can’t be easily explained, and others we just shrug off because we’re uneasy examining them too closely. Have a look at the Two Questions and see if you might make a difference in your own life by the addition of simplification.
A view of the sky from atop Bear Mountain, just one of the many spectacular views from way up here in the forested heights. Don’t wander too far into the woods though; there’s more than bears in these parts…

Dec 7 – Routing Mountains

Ah, irony. I spent a few hours this morning tweaking, pleading and generally getting annoyed with my parent's router. I had it working the way I wanted it to by noon... which was when the replacement NEW router arrived with the mail. Perfect timing. The new NetGear WNDR3700 was a little slow to set up, but I was impressed not only with its speed, but the fact that I didn't have to dig around to get my Vonage IP phone OR my Xbox connected to the 'net. They worked immediately after being plugged in – something my old D-Link DIR-655 couldn't manage without internal surgery. Some hours of gaming and surfing later let me to conclude that my only bottleneck now is the speed of our internet connection, which admittedly is just fine for general surfing, VOIP and gaming, perhaps not all at the same time. I'm cheap, but when you buy quality, it shows sometimes.
The Olympic Mountains, south of Victoria across the Salish Sea( cool names, eh? ). Inspiring in their imposing might, they create a cooling effect when the wind blows over their frozen peaks. Amazing to look at from Dallas Road any time of year.

Dec 8 – Lakes and Linux

Whoops – I managed to brick two of my computers before lunch today; not a thing to be proud of. I skilfully resurrected the older laptop with a re-install of Fedora13 Linux, so it was up and running by late evening, after which I added some more programs and functionality to it. I took a break around lunch to play some COD: Black Ops with friends, having a few really great games. Sometimes I get in the groove, sometimes it gets me – there were some truly awful games today for me. All in all, it was a good second of two days off, which only a few phone calls from work. I also spent a few hours reviewing Telus' Terms Of Service, looking for things that will allow me to tweak their nose about my 2-year contract with no phone that I'm stuck in; really, really not impressed with that, as a long-term customer of theirs.
This is a lake I lived on for a year. The beauty is breathtaking; the peaceful illusion is just that, due to construction, a public park and neighbours with motorcycles. We couldn’t leave soon enough. The lesson? Check out the neughbourhood thoroughly before you sign a lease… or worse, a mortgage.

Dec 9 – Long Days and Large Hotels

Due to staffing constraints, I worked a split shift today, opening the store and taking a couple of hours off in the afternoon before heading back in to close the store again. I headed over to McDonald's again on Island Highway, where I spent a few hours surfing and typing. Their seats are definitely designed to encourage people to leave after their meal, NOT for long-term comfort. Sadly, their fireplace is never on, as it smells of gas… but you think they’d get it fixed, especially in the winter!
An evening view of the Empress Hotel, a mighty lady who has sat regally by the harbourside here for over a century. One of these days I’ll find a few folks to attend High Tea with me there, just to be able to say I’ve done it – it’s too pretentious to make it a regular thing, and too expensive. Notice the hybrid taxis...

Dec 10 – Rainbows and Stuff

Every two weeks today: payday. For some, it’s no biggie, but for others, it’s a relief to have some money in the account again. I’ve been in both places and I have to say that planning ahead( ‘budgeting’ )is the way to go. Not so much living in denial of your debts but planning ahead for your future freedom… as well as making sure you don’t blow things by way of a flashing new car / TV / home addition. Too many people live paycheque to paycheque in Canada; I wonder how much happier we’d all be if we didn’t worry even half as much about needing a day job to pay for all our Stuff? Stuff can’t make you happy, talk to you when you’re sad, or come with you easily on a trip around the world( Expedia.ca’s gnomes notwithstanding ). It’s all about the people, people: friends, family and yes, even some co-workers( who can become like family, of course ). Don’t feed the Stuff Syndrome; be a people person instead.
Both bleak and beautiful, this is a pic of rainbow that appeared within the first few weeks of my arriving in Victoria. I’d never seen such a clear one before in my life, and I can’t say I’ve seen a larger one since – plus, it’s a double rainbow, so that’s twice as special. I took it as a sign I was supposed to be here, and I still think it means something, though I’ve yet to figure out what.

Dec 11 – Fearing Change

A whole lotta heavy this week, weighing on my mind. I know the holidays are times where people tend to become down, and I fight against that – but I can feel it happening all the same. I’ve a lot to be thankful for, as I could be in a lot worse places in life – yet it’s human nature to ignore their blessings and list all the things They Could Have or Could Have Been. Kind of Scrooge-like, in a way, where he is visited by ghosts of his past, present and future to show him he has to change. In my case, I like who I am… but it’s not doing anything for me, or getting me anywhere, so what’s the point, really? Does it matter? These and other existential questions have kept my mind ticking over into the wee hours this week, with no answers forthcoming that I can see.
This is an image I really, really like, both for the humour and for the message. Don’t be afraid to do what you want… but be prepared for the consequences. Penguins, you may note, have tiny little flipper legs and so can’t run fast at all. I hope this one has a bolt-hole in the ice ready off-camera…

Dec 12 – Life’s a Beach

A good chunk of today was used up playing COD: Black Ops, which had its moments but overall really annoyed me – seriously. I don’t know what it is, but my trigger levels seem to be lowered when I play the game and I end up feeling angry / frustrated for most of the day. Must be symptoms of SAD or emotional instability( unlike me, that )which are manifest through my getting my ass handed to me online. Which I suppose would frustrate anyone; going up against the world and finding you suck more than you win each time can be grinding to the ego. I try to learn from my games, but most times I just can’t get my game on. Suck It Up, Princess.
Yes, that’s me( before I lost about 30 lbs )leanin’ on a log on a beach on the western shores of the island, which are all full of washed-up wood. It’s great stuff: good for seats, artistic carvings and furniture, though you’re not supposed to take much of it and definitely NOT to use it for firewood. The myriad shapes lend themselves to hours of wandering and discovery, usually best with a friend or family.

Blog’s shorter this week because I didn’t feel like noting much there, other than a few of my less grim thoughts, and because Samuel asked for pictures. Obliged.