ShinyPlasticBag

...That Are Fun:

• Watching “Perfect Strangers” and pretending it's still 1987.
• Super Mario All Stars.
• Free fonts!
• Watching Microsoft get in trouble for patent violations.
• Finding legitimately free music on the Internet.
• Running around, robbing banks, all whacked out on Scooby snacks.
• Distracting yourself from classes by creating useless lists.

...That Are Not Fun:

• Coming back to school after reading week, having accomplished almost nothing.
• Having a graduate student come into all three of your courses and give the exact same speech asking for help on a research project, apologizing to those who have heard her before every time
  (To her benefit, I'm sure it's an interesting study, and I understand the need to get people to participate, but my man, I'm tired of hearing her speech!)
  .
• .htaccess files and discussions thereof.
• Having the flu all weekend, only to find that it has mutated into a cold, anxious to plague me for several more days.
• Killing projects that you really loved.

In other news, I killed Linkpool this afternoon. I thought I would miss it, but for some reason, I feel a bit better. Also, Taylor posted a very humorous video of a former professor hitting a girl in the face with a basketball. How embarassing.

• Written on 28 February 2005 & posted at 04:18 PM.
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I'm not sure why, but whenever there's a break from school, I always seem to get sick. Never at the beginning, of course: it's always right at the end, so that when I go back to school, I feel unhappy and drug out. Bah. I've spent the last day on the couch, with Janet taking care of me and Pugsley providing terrible movies for us to watch (I called in sick at work due to the sickness). In that vein, I have to say that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was extremely disappointing. I don't understand how such a visually appealing movie could be so utterly dreadful. We spent the time trying to figure out if the movie was bad because the story was horrible, or just because they did a bad job on it. It's pretty bad when your favourite character is the guy who played Phoebe's brother on Friends.

At the moment, I'm just lounging around the house today, playing with this new thing called Vimeo, which is a service for sharing and organizing video clips. It's sort of like del.icio.us for video. The coolest thing is that it can assemble automatic movies based on tags — for example, an automatic movie about concerts. Why don't I think of any of this stuff? I'm the worst geek ever. Unfortunately, it's a closed beta, so there's not a whole lot of chewy goodness on it yet. Once they add support for WMV files and open it up to the public, I can definitely imagine this kicking ass.

Anyway, I'm done blogging for now. But if you're bored, give me a call.

• Written on 26 February 2005 & posted at 02:46 PM.
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You know, I seem to remember February break as being nice, calm, and relaxing. Thus far, mine has really, really sucked. On Monday, I finally sat down to pay for my winter tuition at yonder university, about a month late. What can I say, I'm lazy and forgetful. Anyway, remember that philosophy course that I briefly took in January? I dropped that sucker like a hot potato as soon as I found out that it wouldn't count towards my degree. Or did I? It turns out that I never actually dropped it, even though I could have sworn that I did. Imagine my surprise when my tuition was 25% higher than it should be!

That's not all; with me still registered in that course, I was heading towards a solid F, what with my poor attendance and not passing in assignments or going to tests. I was definitely in a huge panic. Fortunately, this seems to be fairly common, because it didn't take too much work to fix everything. It's not actually 100% fixed, since I'm now showing a “W” in the course, but that's a lot better than an F. Once I submit a retroactive withdrawal form, there's a good chance that everything will be fixed.

So, now that it's all fairly settled, I can concentrate on the rest of the crap I have to do: network security assignment, and group assignment, and user interface design group assignment (the group stuff is happening tomorrow, the normal assignment is today). I'm really in the mood to just veg around the house and play video games, but I've got to actually work, and for once, I'm attempting to be somewhat responsible. Meh.

Anyway, it's Keddy's birthday, so you should call him and wish him a happy 22nd. If you don't have his phone number, just drive to the Shell gas station near Oxford — it's written on the toilet there. Happy birthday, Keddy.

• Written on 23 February 2005 & posted at 05:02 PM.
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As promised in the comments of an earlier entry, last night, we went to New Brunswick. Ah, what a stupid thing to do, you're saying, but regardless, at 11:30, I climbed into Tony's car, along with Pugsley and Nick, and we headed for the hills. Er, border. Whatever. And before I forget, I wanted to point out that I installed the PimpZilla theme for Firefox, and you should too. It's awesome.

I've noticed an obsession with stupid trips on this blog, although New Brunswick pops up more often than anywhere else. Unlike the aborted New Brunswick trip of last year, this one was successful. It was also a lot smaller; since it was so late, not many people were stupid enough to go. Keddy was supposed to, but bailed on him at the last minute. Because of this, Nick decided to get revenge.

Every time we stopped for a snack or bathroom break, Nick took the opportunity to write Keddy's phone number down somewhere — you know, “for a good time, call...”. Now that I think about it, that wasn't a very nice thing to do, but it's Nick. What do you expect? He did this, and took photos of it, in Enfield, Truro, a gigantic cross at the border, and an awesome Shell gas station/convenience store somewhere near Oxford (note: I just found a receipt. It was at Exit 7). The last one is my favourite.

Anyway, pettiness aside (bad Nick!), the rest of the trip was fun. Although Pugsley insisted on pronouncing Truro as Turo (“The 'r' silent.” — “No...no, it's not.”) and Tony was unusually gassy, good times were had by all. At one point, Nick decided we needed a souvenier and convinced Pugsley to grab a big chunk of exploded tire from the side of the road. Much to Tony's dismay, Pugs brought a huge piece of steel-belted radial into the front seat, promptly cutting himself. The tire didn't stay for long.

The final weird thing of the night was right at the border. It started out spooky with a giant sign that said “ABORTION kills Children: PRO CHOICE!”. This sign was disturbing on many levels: #1, the random capitalization (which I've accurately reproduced here). #2, the fact that the sign is pro-life but says it's pro-choice. #3, the fact that there's a giant sign about abortion on the side of the highway. Anyway, things got worse a few seconds later when, looming on the horizon, we saw a gigantic cross, glowing bright white (keep in mind that it was around 2:30 in the morning — the giant white cross was about the only thing we could see). After turning around (the cross just happened to be at the exact endpoint of our journey), we drove off in search of the cross and found it. Disturbingly, it seemed to be located on government property. It was actually an old telephone pole, painted white, with two gigantic lights pointed at it. I'm very glad this giant cross doesn't live near us, because that would be even worse than the constantly glowing Mormon temple in Cole Harbour. Why do people feel the need to build these things?

Continue reading “Welcome to Puawash”...

• Written on 21 February 2005 & posted at 03:31 PM.
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How many chunks of junk email do you get in your Hotmail account everyday? I get a revolting amount, and I havent actually used my account for real email for more than two years. It literally boggles the mind.


It's very spring-like outside. In fact, I think spring may almost be at hand — apparently, 2005 is due to be the hottest year on record. Ever. Thank you, global warming. We seem to have gotten our winter in huge chunks: three solid weeks of frostiness, three solid weeks of nothing but snow, three solid weeks of bitter cold. We seem to be in the middle of three solid weeks of melting. Anyway, this feels a bit like a winter from a few years back, which led to a very, very nice summer. I can't wait (assuming I'm right, of course).

I'm definitely in the mood to get out and do something interesting. Anyone who's idle now or in the near future, get in contact with me. I've only got another two hours of school left before February break — I need some amusing activities.

• Written on 18 February 2005 & posted at 02:43 PM.
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Hello, world. It's my birthday today (and Steve's, too). I am (or, “we are”) now 22. It's something that I don't generally get too excited about, but thanks to everyone who has said happy birthday thus far. The well-wishing began at eight o'clock this morning, from Janet. Therefore, she gets first wisher rights.

You know, 22 is one of the most boring ages I've yet experienced. There was a string of interesting ages before this one — 18 = voting, 19 = gambling, 20 = new decade, 21 = drinking in the US. That was four event-filled years in a row, and now I'm at 22, which has absolutely no perks or meaning. How dull. The only things I have left of interest are insurance reductions at 25 and retirement at 65. Eesh. I'm going to have to really enjoy my mid-life crisis to make up for all the boredom.

Almost as though it's a sign of things to come, I'm in school, and so bored. We're discussing cookies, HTTP redirects, and Javascript. I love all of these things, but they're definitely not exciting. Not one bit. I've been playing Red Beard, the game I added to ShinyLinks yesterday, almost non-stop since I found it. For some reason, I've been very susceptible to stupid little online games lately. Generally speaking, I've been immune to such wastes of time — maybe I'm getting senile in my old age. Regardless, I definitely need to keep myself awake for another half an hour, so if anyone out there knows of good little games (a la Red Beard, or Squares, or something like that), please let me know. Dual-presentation makes me sleepy.

Oh — on a completely dorky, unrelated, and unnecessary note, did you notice that if you have Firefox as your default browser in Windows XP, and on your Start Menu as “Internet”, that you can right-click it to access the Firefox Options window? Nifty-beans. I hadn't realized that XP offered such a high degree of integration for the default applications.

I really need to get out of here.

• Written on 16 February 2005 & posted at 04:02 PM.
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Oi-vey, I hurt. I had a good weekend, though. For the first time since, um, October or November, I had the weekend off from work. I thus decided that it would be in my best interests to actually do something and have a good time. With regards to that, I was pretty successful.

Friday was Alex's birthday party, which was a lot of fun. People I haven't seen in ages showed up, and good times were had by all. Just like the adults we are, we showed our age by playing indoor hide and go seek (it was a bit cold outside). For some reason, Jason proved to be the world's best hiding spot finder, which is very strange since he is ludicrously tall. At one point, he was cunningly hanging from the rafters in the furnace/comic room.

Saturday, I lounged around the house and watched Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, which was hilarious. Although I was supposed to go downtown with Keddy and a few other miscreants, I changed my mind at the last minute and decided that it would be more fun to go to the casino with Keddy, Nick, and Cheryl. Again, good times were had by all, except Nick, who lost $40. I lost $5 (I gambled with a total of $20), and Keddy came out $30 richer. Aren't we such high rollers? It's unbelievable.

Continue reading “A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action”...

• Written on 14 February 2005 & posted at 02:21 PM.
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Well, it goes without saying that it's Alex's first birthday. Someday in the distant future, he might read this entry. Hopefully, he won't read anything else, or he'll realize that most of the people who surrounded him as a kid were morons.

I'm in my ever-so-exciting network security class, waiting until I can go home. The professor just pointed out that this is the first week we've had all semester where all three classes actually happened. Holidays and snow days (which are a form of holiday in some respects) have messed us up so far. No wonder this semester feels so relaxed.

Tonight, I've got Alex's birthday bash to go to. I'm not sure why people throw parties for babies, but it'll be fun to be around everyone again, since it's been a while. Thankfully, I have the weekend off. Plans for Saturday include (maybe) going downtown, and Sunday is ski day. I haven't been skiing in ages (it was sometime in 2003, at a CBC family ski day — we somehow managed to attend without any CBC employees being present). Before that, it was 1999. I really don't go skiing often enough.

Anyway, I'm going to go learn about private key cryptosystems and figure out if I'm going to skip my last class to go home early.

• Written on 11 February 2005 & posted at 02:44 PM.
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Late night on MSN...

ShinyPlasticBag: dude
ShinyPlasticBag: i am about to show you the funniest picture in the world
ShinyPlasticBag: you will laugh out loud as soon as you see it

Daekatana: that, is a freaking huge burger
ShinyPlasticBag: but look how happy he is!

• Written on 08 February 2005 & posted at 02:27 AM.
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Ah, Mondays — the joy, the sorrow, the sleepiness. An interesting day of the week. Today, being February 7th, is a day I've been waiting for: the day of my first test of the semester (in Advanced Web Programming). I spent the entire day thinking “Wow, I'm not worried at all. What have I missed?” I got up and caught the bus as usual, arriving in time to grab a coffee & muffin before toddling off to my UI design course, which was that strange sort of interesting/boring where you find it interesting, but it's still not exciting. Afterwards, I had my hour break, which I spent working on my next assignment for Advanced Web Programming, followed by Network Security. And then, it was 4:30 — time for the test. I thought. But...damnit! The test was at 6:00. Crap.

So, I resigned myself to being at school three hours longer than usual, despite being very hungry and not in the mood to be there. Just before the test started, I ran into John, who was still at school for some unknown reason. The test came and went, and was a breeze (don't let the “Advanced” part fool you — it's all CSS and Javascript so far). At this point, I reunited with John and we killed time until the bus home, dutifully catching the 14 at 7:45. This is where the night became crappy: at Scotia Square, the bus stopped, the the God-I-hate-my-life bus driver informed us that the bus was now out of service and we'd have to transfer. I'm not sure at what point the 14 stops going all the way to Cole Harbour — or Dartmouth, for that matter — but we quickly found ourselves standing on the sidewalk. Without transfers, because we're stupid. So, we did what any reasonably intelligent person would do in this case: we walked over to the casino and gambled.

Continue reading “John and Mark's Big Day”...

• Written on 08 February 2005 & posted at 01:30 AM.
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Well, it's Munro Day, that strange non-holiday that Dalhousie students love, since we get the day off. As far as I can figure, someone named “Munro” gave the university a lot of money, so they made a university-wide holiday in his honour. I guess it doesn't really matter, since a day off for any reason is still a day off. I over-think.

Anyway, with Munro Day and me calling in sick on Monday, I've ended up with a one day week, and much lounging. It's been...boring. However, it does have the added bonus (today at least) that I could sleep in and not feel absolutely dead at work tonight. Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of Fridays. I think I can handle it tonight, though, as long as my evening is fairly dull.

I'm supposed to be going to visit Castro and Russell and Amanda and Baby. I'm not sure of the timing there, though. If I go in now (or soo n), I'll have to come back home after supper. If I just wait until after supper, I'll save gas and driving time. Which is probably what I'll do — I'm hungry, and the house needs cleaning. My life is so exciting.

So, yeah. Thus concludes another broadcast week here at ShinyPlasticBag. Have you played with typoGenerator

Has anyone else noticed a lot more spam getting into their Gmail inboxes lately?

• Written on 04 February 2005 & posted at 02:32 PM.
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Wow. I'm so excited, I can't even type. I'm just...wow. Tomorrow...is...GROUNDHOG DAY!!! It's the best damn day in the entire universe, and it's tomorrow. Wow. I'm so excited. This year, it's the 188th Groundhog Day, the tradition having started in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on February 2nd, 1887. Recently — and I found this out through an article, not from actually living here — Nova Scotia acquired Shubenacadie Sam. I'm not making this up! New York has Staten Island Chuck, thus taking the long-lived tradition of same-letter names and beating it with a stick. Way to ruin everything, New York. Anyway, the interesting thing is that this whole tradition started with the Romans as Hedgehog Day. The ritual is pretty much identical, but since there are not hedgehogs native to North America, we got a groundhog. It's alright, they're cute.

Whichever sort of hog we employ, I'm pretty sure we'll have six more weeks of winter, not that I put any stock into the predictions of woodland critters.

Now, the relevant question right now is...how am I going to keep myself amused? I'm so bored. I stayed home from school yesterday because I felt kinda crappy, and so as I stretch into my third day of sitting around and doing nothing, it's wearing thin. Arg. I'm downloading the Simpson's Groundhog Day episode, but that's not too exciting. I don't know what to do, so I'll probably go do that. Nothing, that is.

Oh, and I'm really happy that the Iraqi elections went so well. Groundhog Day.

Update! I just got the best bit of spam evah. Behold:

It goes on for quite a while after that. But what Adult content (why is Adult capitalized?) is there that would be interesting to a online sex toy store? The Internet is a messed up place.

• Written on 01 February 2005 & posted at 01:16 PM.
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