ShinyPlasticBag

Ye gods, am I excited: this morning, Kath & Kim, season two, arrived. Direct from the CD burner of Simon in yonder Australia, I now have access to what may be the funniest show on the planet right about now. Thank you, Simon. I've got to get my head back into being able to understand Australenglish. It's not easy.

For those who don't know, Kath & Kim are a mother/daughter combo that live an incredibly trite life in the suburbs of Melbourne. They have some great catch phrases. There's a special word for them, but I can't remember it. If you're reading this, Simon, please feel free to fill in the blank. Anyway, “series one” is on Showcase every now and then. I just can't wait to watch it.

Anyway, something sketchy happened in Halifax last night. I'm not sure what, exactly, but it definitely wasn't good. On my way to work, I passed a cop car, two paddy wagons, and a van labelled “Forensic Investigations Unit” at the corner of Cunard and Robie, right by Wilkie's comic book shop. I thought it was a little weird, but pretty much dismissed it. However, on my way home this morning, there was still a cop car parked in front of the apartment building there. I just tried checking Global to see if there was any news, but there site is broken. Right now, it just says “The system cannot find the file specified.”, which gives three very strong hints that their server is Windows-based.

Anyway, let me know if you hear anything. I'm nosy.

• Written on 29 January 2005 & posted at 06:04 PM.
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Ever wonder what the root cause of an airplane crash is? Well, no, I haven't either. I have, however, examined the cause of one in some depth thanks to my usability class. That's right, I'm finally back into the swing of things with school (although I still haven't signed up for a correspondence course yet). Unfortunately, I've been hearing rumours that we're supposed to get another 15 to 25 cm of snow sometime this week. Boston and Ontario both have storms going on right now, and both are heading our way. The odds of at least one of them hitting us are pretty high. I'm getting so sick of snow! Since the beginning of January, we've already had 93 cm of snow. As happy as I am for all of the skiers out there, can it please let up now? Pretty please?

I'm currently sitting in the basement of J/J/K/P's house with John, who is talking to someone on the Internet. Janet and Katie, apparently, are at Fong's. I'm having a lot of trouble concentrating on writing this, because my eyes keep wandering to the Trainspotting poster that's on the wall down here. You know the one — “Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose...” — you know, Trainspotting. What a bad movie that was.

In world news, there seems to be a Bluetooth-spread virus infecting onboard computers in certain Lexus models. How creepy is that? I think computers that are embedded in anything that is in control of your life should be secure, firewalled, isolated, and pretty much immune to this sort of thing. Although I'm one of the biggest geeks you'll likely to meet, even I don't think cars should be connected to the Internet. At least not until car-makers can figure out a way to make them secure (hint: embed some sort of derivative of BSD and you're on the right track).

Anyway, next time you're driving along and see a Lexus careening your way, thank Bluetooth.

• Written on 26 January 2005 & posted at 07:22 PM.
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Well, I've got to admit — winter is starting to get me down. I feel really, really out of touch with reality: out of the past four school days, I've actually only been to class once. Yesterday and the Monday before it were cancelled due to snow, and on Friday I couldn't get to school because the buses were messed up. I feel like I'm on holiday break again, except anxious. I really can't wait until things go back to normal.

The snow situation has gotten absolutely insane. The backyard is a wasteland of snow that reaches up past chest-level on me. We spent quite some time digging out this morning, including a little path out behind the house to get to the oil tank thingie, in case Ultramar shows up to give us more oil. (I'm not sure what happens to furnaces when they run out of fuel, but I've been told it's not good.) Most of the streets around the city are clear now, but the sidewalks are still blocked for the most part, and the gigantic snowbanks everywhere make driving a bit dangerous (due to the fact that one cannot tell if there is any traffic coming around corners). I can't wait for spring — nay, summer — to arrive. Keddy says that we're a third of the way through winter so far. Yahoo for that much, I guess.

In other news, after six months with my old layout, I've finally retired it. Introducing feb2005, my newest and probably most complicated layout ever. I've finally made a linkblog for myself, which is something I've wanted pretty much forever. In the spirit of Little. Yellow. Different., you guys are free to comment on the links. There aren't a lot of links in there yet, but that should change pretty quickly. I'm hoping to phase out Linkpool; I think it was a good idea, but it just didn't pan out. A year and a half long run is pretty good, I guess. Moving back on topic, I still have a few bugs to iron out at the moment — my page doesn't seem to be sharing the fact that it has RSS feeds with anyone, for example. I'm not really sure why, the code is there. I have no idea what's wrong with it right now. I'm really happy with how it looks, though. It's not particularly colorful, but it's nice and clean.

Yeah. Anyway, it's almost 2:30, so I'm going to go to sleep. I will, however, see everyone in the near future. Except, unfortunately, Johnny Carson.

• Written on 25 January 2005 & posted at 02:26 AM.
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Hey-o, how's the world treating ya? Life is grand from good old Halifax, which is buried under an randomly growing layer of snow. That's right, we got more snow. Sigh. You know, I really do love snow, but when we get a storm and the snow from the last storm is still lying around, it's a real pain. There are few things are tiring as trying to shovel snow to the top of a four foot pile. And plows, ugh, don't even get me started.

Today was very fun, however. Due to the crazy snows, a lot of people ended up coming home from work early, or not going at all. This is how it came to pass that my Mom, Mary Ann, Janet, Pugsley, Steve and I were sledding down the hill behind my house for two hours this afternoon. Sledding is definitely an underrated activity, and I feel bad for all of the poor dorks that don't get to do it. Plus, I'm sure it was fun for anyone who happened to be watching from the comfort of their home, because I'm sure seeing three people (myself, Janet, and Steve) piled on top of a fourth (Pugsley, who was delicately balanced on top of two “Flying Saucers”) sliding down a hill would be quite the site. Much fun was had by all involved parties.

After a brief thawing period, I went to see White Noise with Mom, who happens to be into all of that wacky paranormal stuff. I have to say that the movie was somewhat of a dud; it wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't great. Of course, I don't really put any faith in the whole Electronic Voice Phenomena thing. Call me a skeptic, I guess. It's one of those many things that I find interesting, but don't believe. Like alien abductions and such.

Anyway, I'm just preparing for sleep, since I have an adventurous day of school tomorrow. By “adventurous”, I mean “torterous”, since Fridays are always brutal. This is because I have to go to school in the day and then work all night, which makes finding time to sleep somewhat difficult. This semester isn't too bad, though, because my first class isn't until 12:30 and I can therefore sleep until 11. Things always balance though; I don't get home until six or so, which leaves less time to sleep. C'est la vie.

So, I'm going to go do that (sleep), and you probably should too (unless you are Kitta, in which case, get out of bed). Did you hear how Tony lost his glasses?

• Written on 21 January 2005 & posted at 01:20 AM.
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It is snowing once again. It seems to me that it wasn't all that long ago that we'd get a lot less snow — maybe one or two big snowstorms in a whole year. It's only January, however, and our second big storm is currently raging outside. It's only been going for about two hours so far, so who knows how bad it will be. We're supposed to get somewhere in the neige-bourhood of 30 cm, which would make tomorrow a messy and generally unpleasant day. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.


My weekend was fairly uneventful. On Saturday, I went out with Janet, Amanda, and Castro for some free pool (courtesy of Castro). I've totally lost my touch — a few years ago, I loved pool and played it as much as possible. I therefore gained a certain amount of skill. However, it's all gone, and I can't shoot for crap. It was fun anyway, though. The good times, however, didn't last long, since I had to work last night, as usual. To detract from the monotony a bit, I was working on the women's side of the hospital. I'm very glad I wasn't in the emergency room, since it was crazy busy. You know how I hate crazy busy-ness.

Anyway, I've got classes tomorrow (unless this storm really picks up), so I've got to get some sleep. Until next time...

• Written on 17 January 2005 & posted at 01:34 AM.
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You know, I may strongly dislike a lot of stuff, but there aren't too many things that I honestly and truly hate. I honestly and truly hate racists, however, and so I was pretty shocked when I found out about this: some DJs on a Philadelphia radio station thought it would be funny to call a product hotline that happened to have been outsourced to India and make a little prank phone call. Alright, prank phone calls are fine, but...well, here are some choice excerpts:

• Well, ma'am, what the eff would you know about an American white girl's — uh, uh — hair?
• Don't you get slick with me, bitch!
• You're a filthy rat eater.
• How dare you outsource my call? Get off the line, bitch!

Um, yeah. That's just hilarious. You can listen to these morons in a full clip of their prank phone call. Turbanhead seems to be the central place on seeing something done about the guys who made the call; they've got a transcript of the clip and contact information for the radio station.

I seriously hope that the DJs that made the call get canned. This is really the sort of place where one would hope some sort of FCC regulation would come into play — you know, something to stop spreading random hatred. I guess they're more concerned with keeping nipples off of television and Howard Stern off the airwaves.

• Written on 13 January 2005 & posted at 02:44 PM.
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Hey-ho, folks. Mark is once again stressed, because the semester that seemed to be perfect is messed up. Just like all of the others. You see, I was fairly confident in my ability to graduate this fall, with four courses this semester and five in the next. Today, however, I found out that one of my courses is a first year course, not a second year course, and therefore would not count towards my degree. I am temporarily screwed, until I can find something else to take. I have a meeting with my student advisor tomorrow to solve my predicament. I'm going to try to do a directed study, and failing that, I'm probably going to do a correspondence course from the University of Athabasca, something which is fairly common amonst CS majors at Dalhousie. Regardless, I'm stressed out.

I'm currently sitting on my bed and listening to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, by the Flaming Lips. It's a pretty good album — kind of spacey, but pretty good nonetheless. I'm wishing that I had my portable hard drive up here, though, because I have The Killers stuck in my head (as usual). Besides that, I'm messing around in C# a bit (I wish that I had a decent IDE; SharpDevelop is promising but too buggy to use, and Microsoft's Visual Studio Express is also quite buggy) and drinking fizzy water. I really like fizzy water.

News from the real life department includes the addition of a new pet to our repetoire; “Sam” the Siamese cat is pretty much the cuddliest animal ever. I'm not a big pet fan, but I do like this little guy. He's so much friendlier than our old cat was, and even though he makes me sneeze, it's hard not to pet him. Achoo.

Anyway, I'm off to continue my IDE search. Such a dork I is, I know. Humour me, will ya?

• Written on 12 January 2005 & posted at 08:43 PM.
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I have no idea how to start this blog entry. I'm not sure why it is, exactly, that I have no idea, but I'm very stumped for some reason. It might have something to do with the fact that it's 4:15 am on a Sunday morning, but who can really say for sure? Regardless, it's a lovely night. Earlier, it was snowing in that sort of nice in-between way, not a lot but not just a little. More than flurries but not exactly snow. I really like that, because that's how winter is inside of my head. It's not metre-high snowdrifts or cars encrusted in layers of freezing rain. Yeah.

I'm somewhat desperate to get home and go to sleep. Tonight has been pretty slow at work, which is definitely a good thing, but not so good when it comes to staying awake. I really need some sort of book to read, but I'm notoriously picky when it comes to that. If I had my way, the universe would consist of at least five more books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a few more books like The DaVinci Code, and three dozen more Harry Potter books. Alas, the universe is far from ideal.

I've got “Mr. Brightside” (by the Killers) stuck in my head. It's been there for days, and I don't actually mind that. I really, really love the song, and I'm starting to like the Killers more and more. At first, I figured they were just a one-hit wonder, and none of the other songs on their album (Hot Fuss) really did anything for me. I guess I just wasn't paying enough attention, because I love it now. I think the last song on the album, “Everything Will Be Alright”, is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard.

Is anyone up for a ski trip at some point this winter? I'd like to point out ahead of time that I can't ski at all, and may in fact be the world's worst skiier. Regardless, I quite enjoy the activity and would like to do it again (it's been two years since I've gone, and before that it was four years). Provided that you are also a sucky skiier, I hereby invite anyone to come with. It'll be great.

Anyway, I'm finishing this up before I become any less coherent. Good night. Er, morning.

• Written on 09 January 2005 & posted at 04:15 AM.
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Ack. It would appear that the holiday break is now over — that was frighteningly fast. Fortunately for me, I've got one day off more than the average Joe, because all of my classes are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Yahoo. I still can't believe that the holidays are through, but I guess time flies when you've got nothing to keep you on a real schedule. I'm frantically trying to readjust to a normal schedule, but I'm having some difficulties.

I spent yesterday hanging out with Keddy. We went over to James & Leslies house, played some PS2, lit a few fireworks, and got some video games (Warcraft III is really absorbing). Around 1 am, Keddy and I rolled back into Cole Harbour and got into a bout of hardcore reminiscing while going through the old files that I've been moving onto my removable hard drive. When I left to take him home around 3:30, we found that a bunch of snow had fallen. Sadly, it was all gone by the time I woke up the next morning.

I am, however, lucky to have had the experience of waking up at all. I just couldn't get to sleep when I got home — it was one of those annoying clock-watching events. The last time I remember seeing was 5:30, at which point I started freaking out. I hate it when I can't get to sleep. With the intention of forcibly resetting my internal clock, I forced myself out of bed at 10:30 this morning. As you can see, however, it hasn't really worked. I'm still wide awake. Fortunately, however, my new class schedule is much kinder than my previous one: first class is at 11:30, giving my lots of time to sleep in. I'm actually taking some interesting courses: network computing and network security are my “practical” courses, and user interface design and web-centric computing are my “fun” courses. The UI design course is what I'm really excited about, since I've always had an interest in the subject. I can totally picture myself being a UI consultant some day.

Anyway, it's 2:22. I'm going to make a wish and head off to bed. Later.

• Written on 04 January 2005 & posted at 02:23 AM.
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