October 31: Jams Won't Give the Ball

Damnit!James won't give me back the big stability ball I was sitting on. And as a result, I'm calling him Jams from now until the end of time. And incidentally, stop reading over my shoulder.

And bouncing the ball off of my head. I hope everyone had a productive Halloween adventure — we hung out at Janet/Katie/John/Pug's house for the evening, which was especially sketchy due to Eric's He-man costume. Shudder — there are just some things that you can't un-see. Along those lines was the moment when David decided to put on Katie's costume. She went as a faerie.

Anyway, nothing too exciting has been going on of late. Last night, Mom and I went to The Planets!, which was put on by Symphony Nova Scotia. It was a nice bonding experience, and the music was pretty decent. A good time was had by all. (Man, it's hot in here.) Spent the afternoon enjoying the time-shifty goodness (and, as a result, never being quite sure what time it was).

There's still no word on my laptop fiasco — HP spent Thursday debating whether I was in fact the legal owner of it, because it had been financed through FutureShop. However, that's pretty ridiculous and the debate was soon over. So, now I'm just dealing with all of the stupid hurdles they're thrusting in my way. It seems like they're just stalling at every step to piss me off — I can't wait until it's all over.

Anyway, it's almost my turn in the Crash Party we're having (via Burnout 3). I'll see all y'all later.

October 26: Here -- Have a Giantic Stick

So, the week rumbles onwards. Inexorably. Towards...Wednesday. I have a midterm in my algorithms class tomorrow, which isn't something I'm exactly looking forward to. “Dreading” would probably be a much better word — yes, definitely. Dreading. I really hate algorithms, although this semester I quite like the professor. The problem is that it's just too math-y for me, and I am not a fan of math. My brain just doesn't work like that — I'd rather kludge my way through a programming problem than spend a week and a half analyzing the relative merits of various pre-made algorithms, which nonetheless would have to be jury-rigged to do what I really want them to. It's a bit too abstract to ever be useful.

Speaking of kludgy code, I made a few changes to Linkpool yesterday after it was bombarded by 168 junk links (twelve links in fourteen of the categories — why they left two of the categories untouched is unknown to me). I don't really understand the mindset of spammers: do they really think that some random visitor will go to a site and, seeing dozens of links to the same site think “Wow, this site must be really good if it has so many links to it”? It's inane. Either way, as a result of that, the banning system got mildly revamped, duplicate links can't be posted in rapid succession, and the same person can't make too many posts in a certain time period. I long for Linkpool 3, but I'm honestly just considering scrapping the whole adventure. It's pretty much been a complete failure.

Mr. Ryan, the attorney who's helping me with the laptop issue, sent a letter to Horrible-Products today. Hopefully, I will get a positive response from that. If not, it's off to small claims court. Honestly, I can't imagine why they would let it go that far, because it would be more expensive for them to fly a lawyer out here and pay them to do this case than it would be to just give me 100% of my money back. $546 isn't a lot of money to a huge company, but it's a big deal for me. I just hope they don't decide to waste it on an unnecessary court case.

Anyway, that's all for me. Cheers.

October 24: (Nickel) Come Back to Texas

Howdy, y'all. I've got “Come Back to Texas” by Bowling For Soup stuck in my head. Damn catchy song. And I'm in the CS building, on a computer named Nickel. You know, there's a guy nearby that was here when I came over for my first break at one. He's just sitting there, cruising the web aimlessly. Not that I'm one to talk, but sheesh, get a life. It's 4:05 on a Sunday morning and this guy is sitting at a university doing nothing. I'd understand if he appeared to be doing something interesting, important, or school related, but he's not. Wacky.

I'm such a consumer whore. I'm oogling things I'd like to buy that would go well with, say, a new Toshiba laptop. First off, there's a nice 512 MB memory upgrade, which is $220 (before tax). It'd be nice to have a gig of RAM — that's never happened to me before. It'd be awesome to have 1.5, but the 1 GB stick I'd need costs (for some reason) 3.5 times as much for twice the capacity. That makes no sense to me — you'd think it'd be cheaper (ie, less than twice as much — not actually less expensive than the 512 MB stick).

I'd also really like to get a removal hard drive enclosure, and (obviously) a hard drive to stick in it. Cellar has one for $49 that looks pretty nice. 80 GB drives are $86, so for $155 I could have a nice backup system in place (although I'd probably save a bit longer and go for the 120 GB model). What a great way to dream-spend $400 — I don't even have the computer yet.

It's late, and I'm thinking of useless things. Man, I'm bored. Three more hours and I can be speeding my way along the highway towards a warm bed. Today probably won't be particularly restful, however, because a new door is getting put in place at our house around nine AM. And Nick's involved. So, yeah. Maybe I'll sleep really deeply — I sure hope so.

Still no word from Mr. Ryan (and no, I don't mean Keddy).

October 23: Express!

Sigh. I wonder how long I'm going to have to live with “King of Spain” stuck in my head. It's not there all the time, but the line “Royalty, man it looked good on me...” pops into my head at least once a week. I blame Jenny for starting the whole mess when she linked to it sometime last year. This, my friends, is the downside of blogs.

Spent the evening snoozing and watching Quantum Leap at Janet's place. I hate that show, but it's growing on me. Why does that happen? If I watch enough of anything, I get into it, even if it's against my will. Once again, sigh.

Anyhoo, no word yet from Mr. Ryan, who will be playing the role of Attorney on the next few episodes of ShinyPlasticBag.com. I want this mess cleared up soon, because I am going nuts without a computer. It's not as bad this time as it was in the past, though. I think it's sort of like breaking up with a girlfriend who keeps cheating on you: once you break up for good, it still sucks, but there's a certain sense of relief. It's very hard, however, to resist the urge to smash Megapixel into a trillion tiny pieces. She's all packed up now just so I don't have to see her cheating face. Er, screen. Yeah.

Still debating names for my next computer. Possible candidates: M' (ie, M-prime, which would be short for Megapixel Prime — dorky, I know), Papaya (I love that word), or something astronomical. I don't know, comment with your best suggestions. Your best serious suggestions.

October 20: I Don't Need Pants, I've Got a Lawsuit

Alright, well, I might need pants. But at any rate, I do have a lawsuit on my hands. HP called me back and told me that if I wanted a refund, they would give me back 75% of what I paid. Which, roughly translated, means “We're going to take a shit on your face. Say 'aah'!” I'm highly displeased. When Mark, the supervisor guy, told me that, I asked what would be required to push that number up towards, oh, I don't know...100%. He told me that I'd have to get an attorney and get in touch with their legal department.

And thanks to Mary Ann, I've done just that: her boss has kindly offered to write an initial letter for me, free of charge. We'll see how that goes. Once I get my money back, however much it may be, I'll use that and the $900 I got from the sale of Pixel to Katie (biggest mistake ever, though I'm glad that she's happy) to pay off my debt to FutureShop. And then, I'll go straight to Staples. And buy this.
Toshiba Satellite A70

It's a computer that actually would have been worthy of the name Megapixel. I don't know what I'll name it yet — that will have to wait until I have it (which, obviously, may take a while). Staples has a 6 month no-interest-no-payment plan, which is only half as good as FutureShop's twelve, but hey. The laptop is a beautiful beast, and since it's a Toshiba, I know I can trust it. The stats are pretty much the same as the piece of garbage sitting on the coffee table, with a few exceptions: hard drive is only 40 GB instead of 60 (big deal), and the video card only has 64 MB of RAM. Since it's shared memory, if I upgrade to 1 GB of RAM, I can boost that to 128 MB. The awesome part is the processor: where (expletive deleted) had a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Celeron, this one has a full-fledged Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading. Hyperthreading! Sweet! God, I'm excited. Even this whole affair of a lawsuit isn't so bad. Light at the end of the tunnel, etc.

As usual, shizzle.

October 16: Patrick Stewart Likes Good Year

So, today is the big day: not only do we all get to vote on our new mayor and Sunday shopping, but I find out if about the Summer of Express contest. I'm very nervous about that last one. Regarding the vote, though, I've had my mind made up from day one: I'm voting for Peter Kelly, who is our existing mayor, because he's done a pretty good job so far. And Sunday shopping is a no brainer — I don't see any reason why the government should be regulating when stores are allowed to be open. Apparently, the unofficial polls say that 70% of people want Sunday shopping. I'm guessing the other 30% work in retail (cough, Keddy, cough). Go Sunday shopping, woo! (Right now, Sunday shopping only happens for a few weeks before Christmas.)

One second, coffee is done brewing. Our coffee pot has been mysteriously out of service for a few days, and now is just-as-mysteriously functional again. ... oh, yeah. I feel like I haven't had coffee is years. Now, I just need to find something to amuse me for the next few hours. Mom is our with Joey buying a new door, since our side door (which is our main one) is uber-ghetto and quite broken. Time for a new one. I'll kind of miss the big, ugly, green thing, but what can you do?

Speaking of worst movies ever*
(Master of segways! Yeah!)
, Jumanji is on. God, what a sleeper that was. Who actually thought it was a good idea? Wow, a magic board game! This will totally revitalize the board game industry!

Sigh. I'm off to tag some tunes. Ciao.

October 13: Sing a Song About Myself

Things that make my day a little bit better: seeing the words “You are now entering a Dalhousie Wireless Internet zone” on the wall. Things that don't: being sick. Yes, that's right, I'm sick: the most wonderful time of the year, and all that jazz. It's been a little while, so I guess I was due. But, ugh, I feel really crappy. I couldn't skip school, though.

Last night, Janet and went out for an early anniversary (which is technically not until November 2nd). We ate at The Fireside (which was very cozy) and then saw Fahrenheit 451, turned into a play by the Exodus theatre group and put on at Neptune. It was really great — Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favourite books of all time, and I think they did it justice. According to IMDB, it's getting made into a movie, but there are no details whatsoever. I'd sort of like to get ahold of the 1966 version (Aflame with the excitement and emotions of tomorrow!).

Sigh. I'm bored and sick and sitting in a class where the professor always arrives at the very last moment. And talks well past the end of class. Today, I think, will not be pretty.

October 09: Once I Was the King of Spain

Okay, first of all, wrestling — the WWE — is the stupidest thing in the history of the planet. I'm at Russell's right now, and they have that on, even though there are a half-dozen fine channels of hardcore pornography available. It's like a soap-opera for male idiots. There's a guy pretending to be a retarded wrestler: weak, lame, not cool.

My beautiful baby is finally back and almost back to her old state. I've got most of my stuff installed, the only notable exception being ACDSee. I don't have a copy of that with me. I've got the dock all up and purdy (see?). It always takes a while to get all the icons for that working right.

I'm just glad that my computer is finally back. I've got a massive assignment to write for my compiler construction course, but after that's done, it's time to finish Linkpool 3.new. I'm so freakin' excited. And in exactly one week, I find out that I lost the Channel 9 programming competition that SpindeXML is enrolled in. Actually, I think I might stand a decent chance — only time will tell.

Anyway, I'm off to watch the Simpson's with Russell and Castro. And occasionally Ryan, who is wandering hither and tither. Shizzle.

October 06: Neon

Ah, the march of the elements. It's easy to guess where I'm posting from whenever there's an element for a blog title, isn't it? I love the CS building. So comfortingly geeky.

I'm at school, on break, because I'm at work. I picked up an extra shift because, really, what else am I going to do on a Wednesday night? Plus, it's good money. I'm investigating ways to spend it, as Janet's birthday is looming close. If anyone else buys her an MP3 player, I will be displeased.

Anyway, I'm bored, and hungry, and I want to try Picasa. If only I had a computer with which to do so. It looks like a very cool program, and although I've downloaded it before, I've never actually bothered to install it. How sad is that? We now live in a world where there's so much data at our fingertips, we just take it — whether we want it or not. At any rate, I want it now.

I'm in the mood to...listen to loud eighties music while playing NES classics like Mega Man 5. Or maybe some New Kids on the Block along with Sonic the Hedgehog. Who knows? I'm nostalgic. Stupidly charming, isn't it?

October 03: Indium

Woo. It's that perfect time of day again — that's right, it's learly. Actually, I'm sort of feeling the burn tonight. I'm really hungry, and I would be infinitely happier than I am right now if I could just crawl into my nice, warm bed and sleep until the day is almost over. That's not going to happen for another four hours, though.

I spent a bit of idle time making up a list of movies that I want to obtain. I hereby offer my choices up to the criticism of the world, not that it matters. The list is still at work, but here are the ones I remember. And note that, yay, though some of these movies suck, I haven't seen most of them in ages and I remember them fondly:
  • The Addams Family
  • Back to the Future
  • Deep Impact
  • Disturbing Behaviour
  • The Wedding Singer
I'm actually in quite the list creating mood. I've been composing a list of things I want to do whenever I get my laptop back:
  • Finish Linkpool 3.0, because I'm sick of linkspam
  • Write my IMDB cross-referencer (I have an alpha version somewhere — enter in two actors and it tells you what they've been in together, or enter in two movies and it will tell you who was in both of them)
  • Organize all of my documents, ever, into a nice chronological hierarchy
  • Get the movies listed above
  • Mess around with SpindeXML a bit more (I want to write an actual “view results” dialog instead of using the system web browser, although I'll keep that as an option. Then, I'll add a “search within results” function.)
  • Use my amazing telepathic powers to make all HP employees cry non-stop whenever they are at work.
So, yeah. Aren't I chipper tonight? Considering it's four am and all. My final question, posed to anyone who knows me in real life: did you go see Lost and Found with me in theatres five years ago? I'm wracking my brain trying to remember who I saw that with.