Charity, China and Change

The word of the week is polysemous; a lovely-sounding word.

May 9 – Leave a job? Find more? Maybe.

 

Funny how both change and misery love company, as I commented last week when misery won out a few days in a row. Now the pendulum swings the other way, where I'm more and more looking forward to quitting my job; we had a new policy come into play today that makes leaving less of a cutting of ties and more of a hiatus, preserving wages / benefits / position in case of a total new-job flop. Also, I've been enjoying the company of a certain someone more regularly lately, which I think means the interest is mutual. However, I believe that for now it would be smarter for me to find a new job / new place before throwing that little bombshell on the emotional burner to simmer. Straining my focus with too many things may make the most precious of them fail. But enough about what may or may not be; instead, I present: Cats In Tanks! ( warning: NSFW / exploding people )

May 10 - Bye bye, clutter!

Finally, I had to do it – I had to de-clutter my tech hoard from years past, as I came to the realization this past weekend that it was going to be too much bother to try and part out these null-value bits to people around the world who may( or may not )find a thing or two useful. Old PS2 mice, MANY cables, video cards, two large UPS's and a host of other adapters and computer boards all went into three large bins. That and more went over to UVic today to be properly disposed of by a student charity drive, benefiting the TLC Fund for Kids. Ours was the first donation and the students were thrilled to see SO MUCH STUFF being brought in for proper disposal. Total cost to me was $30 and I feel great that I didn't end up landfiling any hazardous items. Plus I now have a lot more room in storage... very cathartic. Reduce, reuse and when in doubt, recycle.

May 11 - From China, Direct to You!

We all know many of our consumer products come from China, traveling through various middlemen to end up on store shelves with many extra costs added. Two sites I enjoy browsing regularly are Meritline.com and DealExtreme.com, which are direct-from-China resellers that have very low prices on many tech goods and other items that you might find useful. So far I've purchased cables, small tool sets and a few other things that I couldn't find locally for a decent price( or at all! )and that were rather more expensive even on eBay. It's worth checking them out as an option before you buy something, as you may be surprised by the cost savings they offer. Right now I'm waiting for a $4.00 case for my old Xbox hard drive to arrive; the next-best price I found for it was on eBay for twice that plus shipping. No-brainer there.

May 12 - Xoom vs. Transformer

Today I went into Future Shop and played around with a Motorola Xoom for a few minutes to get a feel for the machine. My overall impression? A little sluggish, heavy and Not Quite There Yet( the web browser glitched up more than a few sites ). For the price, I expected something faster and not quite as hefty. Which is why I'm leaning towards the Asus Transformer, which has a novel detachable full notebook-size keyboard that also doubles the battery life, among other things. The first generation is out now( and is $200 cheaper than the Xoom! )so if I hang in there, the 3G-enabled wireless-anywhere version should be out by the summer. Being able to tote a tablet around with the ability to attach a keyboard for longer type-heavy sessions really appeals to me, as I detest on-screen keyboards a lot.

May 13 – Annoying Things Explained

I'm a pretty laid back guy( probably too laid-back in some ways, depending on who you ask )so I guess it's no surprise that I don't find too many things in life annoying. Irritating, maybe... but I won't bore you with a short list of such. I'll point you instead towards the reasons we find things annoying; have you ever thought about them? Some people can sit next to a gaggle of chatterbox noodleheads and not flick an eyelash, while others would run from the room screaming after only a minute – guess which I am? Still, this is the fabric of our world, where everyone's different and we should celebrate those differences... if sometimes from a safe distance. Like Victoria BC's new $60K open-air urinal downtown... where was I going with this again? I forget; how annoying!

May 14 - My Apartment is a Jenga Puzzle!

I know, I know... some weeks it seems that I have an obsession with small houses. Yet there's just me, so why pay more to live in a place with space I won't use? Yet another fine example of using limited space to the max( and beyond )is smartly show below - I just LOVE seeing creative projects like these!

May 15 - On blogging for 3.5 years now...

You may wonder what I do each week to write this blog; some weeks it's easy and some it's not, depending on my mood and what's going on at the time. Nothing unusual there. What IS interesting is that I've managed to create 183 blog posts, which each consist of 7 different days with an average of 1-2 'topics of interest' per day. Which means that without repeating myself, I've covered over 2,500 Unique Things That Interest Me - I find that astounding and thus worthy of a blog entry today. Seeing as I spent my weekend in the main relaxing, gaming and surfing the web for said topics, it's quite appropriate to toss it in here. I make an effort to gather things that I find intriguing and pass them on akin to social-led instant news sites like Reddit.com and Fark.com and even the venerable CoolSiteOfTheDay.com - there's a lot out there to be interested in!

It's going to rain all week here, but there's no smog and a distinct lack of smothering humidity. Let's hope that it's the start of a fair-weather trend, with Added Sunshine soon! Plus we're now up to 5 Google Followers on this blog; hiya Cheri and Kara!