Horoscope from this past Saturday seems relevant.
Scorpio (Oct. 24 – Nov. 22)
Today is not just another day and your life is anything but ordinary. Your existence is something precious that needs to be treasured, so the best thing for you to do now is to reduce some of that self-deprecating attitude that is holding you back. Things will be okay.
People have written about this in a lot funnier manner than I’m about to write, but regardless, I feel like restating some basic principles about urinal use. I will be using the 3-urinal model.
1. If there’s no one else, take an end stall.
The idea is that if someone else arrives, they can at least take the opposite end in peace.
2. If some asshole decides to take the middle stall, wait your turn
Bastard.
3. If the two end stalls are being used, wait your turn
Regardless of whether you’re personally comfortable or not, the other two may not be so at ease.
4. Concentrate on yourself. No eye contact or chat.
I’m holding my penis in a normally private ritual. Last thing I need is a stranger talking to me about the weather.
5. Stand close to the stall
This ain’t a damn contest.
6. Wash your fucking hands
People are subconsciously paying attention.
Whoo! HR just emailed me saying that they found some leftover employee gifts from Christmas, and so she figured that us co-ops should benefit. It’s a nice tote bag (perfect for laptops…if only I had one) with the company logo on the front.
So, that means I’ve been able to benefit from the company’s holiday gift three years in a row now. In 2002, the gifts were a zip up vest and a baseball cap with the company logo. In 2003, the gift was a nice jacket with the company logo. I think this year, besides the carry bag, there was some sort of long sleeved tee. I’ve seen some employees wearing around the black thing with a big “GNSS” on the back. Personally, I think it’s kind of fugly, so I’m glad to have received just the bag. Mind you, if they had offered the shirt as well, I would have taken it.
I like free stuff.
Yesterday, I was in pursuit of sushi.
Sort of.
It’s Reading Week for the University of Waterloo meaning a week off for 4 of the 6 faculties. Math and Engineering get the short end of the stick only having Thursday and Friday with classes cancelled. I have a friend in the Math Faculty in his last term before graduating. Being that it’s his last term, he’s basically decided to just skip the classes on the other three days of the week. Hell, why not? It would be nice to actually experience a proper week off. If I were in school this term, I’d be tempted to do the same, however, knowing the powers that be, they’d probably schedule some sort of lab or quiz to really prevent people from leaving early. Also, missing three days of class means 9 lectures that you have to catch up on. By that time of the term, I’d probably be far enough behind from napping in class that irresponsibly missing nine more lectures would just be asking for trouble.
Anyway, I was happy that he asked whether I wanted to go eat lunch with him sometime during the week. Time is precious, and I’m appreciative that someone was willing to spend some time with me. After some discussion, we decided to eat at HoSu Bistro at Commerce Valley West and Highway 7. I suggested the place because it’s a short walk from work, and well, I was lazy. The suggested meeting time was 1, and true to Jason form, I was on time, if not 5 minutes early.
For a good half hour I was standing in front of the restaurant in the cold wind waiting for my friend to show up. I kept myself busy by looking at menus taped to the windows. Many young professionals and trendy looking people entered, while few left. The place was crowded. I suppose it was probably for the best that he didn’t show up on time. Actually, he really didn’t show up at all. By 12:30 I gave up and headed back to the office like a chump.
I was trying to wonder what the hell happened, and then it occured to me that he might have gone to the plaza at Commerce Valley East and Highway 7. There’s also a sushi place there, but its name was nothing like “HoSu”. So, as a last ditch effort, I headed to the parking lot, and took the car over to that plaza. I walked around outside for another 5 minutes before calling it quits and heading back to the office.
No fish in my belly.
When I got back to my desk, I found him trying to message me on MSN. As it turns out, he did indeed go to the east plaza instead of where I was. I must have missed him by a few minutes. We decided to give it another go because both of us were still hungry and craving sushi.
Honestly, when I was waiting in front of the restaurant, I was naturally starting to feel animosity for being made to wait out in the cold for so long. However, as I imagined him going to the wrong plaza, the anger died out. As we ate, the bitterness died out completely. It’s not so much that I was ready to make excuses for his mistake. In the end, I realized that it just didn’t matter. I didn’t care that I wasted a half hour of my time. I was just glad to see him.
By the time I got back to the office, it was probably already 3 pm. No one gave me hell about it–which is fine with me. I hope to meet with him again later on closer to the end of term, when we can share stories of graduation and making it through another gruelling work term.
As I was cleaning my room, I stumbled upon a box of 3.5″ disks from a couple of years back. Looking at the labels, I got a bit nostalgic thinking about the time I spent playing these games.
C’mon…Commander Keen
One Must Fall 2097
Wolfenstein 3D
(among others)
These were some great DOS games back then. Heh. So, for a laugh I tried running them off disk on my PC and was a bit dismayed to find that my computer just didn’t want to run any of these old things. I was disappointed for a while until it occured to me that there must be some sort of DOS emulator out there. At first, the idea seemed ridiculous to me. I mean, why would you need a DOS emulator for Windows? The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Windows handles memory and sound drivers differently from DOS, right?
Anyway, after a bit of searching, I came upon DOSBox. Well, that just solved all my problems. After installing it, I was able to play all those old games once more. I should put some screenshots up later when I’m back home. The Soundblaster 16 sound, the ancient graphics, having to pound on the keyboard…it’s all so very familiar.
Ah, memories, man.
Umm, no the entry isn’t going to be about an experience with cannibalism. Although now I’m sure I’ll end up getting some MSN search engine hits regarding eating human placenta. Whatever.
On Saturday I was in charge of making dinner, so I decided to make a pot roast. I started cooking while my parents were out. I popped in one of the Utena DVDs into the player so that I could watch something while cooking. I’m not sure whether that was such a good idea. It must have split my attention or something because I ended up doing something horribly stupid. In an effort to turn the roasting pan on the stove, I grabbed the pot handle with my right hand, and the other with my left. Perhaps I wasn’t paying full attention, but the handle on the left wasn’t really a handle, but more of a tab or lip that was fully part or, and the same material as the main part of the pot. Luckily, I only used my middle finger to grab the left part, but still, I was branded right across the pad of my left middle finger.
I yelped in pain and ran over to the sink to run cold water over my finger. The one thought running through my mind was that I wanted to just stop the cooking process. The cold water was painful as it run over the injury. It’s like the pain of freezing cold was battling it out with the pain of the heat receptors which were in a state of shock. The last time I burned myself, I didn’t cool the burn properly, and my skin ended up blistering a short while after the incident. This time I didn’t want to take any chances (because the blistering was nasty) so I bore the pain and kept my finger under the water. I stopped after two minutes. The pain wasn’t so bad, but I still wrapped a bandage around it for a while to prevent furhter injury.
After a while, I removed the bandage to find that the pad of my finger was just fine. There was no discoloration, no drastic separation of layers of skin. The part that made contact with the pan was just a tiny bit shinier and maybe a bit wrinkly, but overall you wouldn’t have been able to tell that it was burned.
A few weeks ago, one of the full timers came around with a printout of joke name plates for various cubicles. Many of them were intended for cubicles that didn’t have any occupants at the time. They included “I. Van Tennant” and “Rumfer Ent”. Heh. As co-ops, in general, we do not get their own name plates. If we do, it’s something non-descript like “Co-Op”. Way to make us feel welcome. Anyway, the full-timer showed them to me and asked if I wanted one. After some browsing, I decided to choose one that described my current situation.
“Ivan Tiemoff” –> “I Want Time Off”
It’s gotten a few chuckles from people passing by. It makes me wonder though, will some new person end up calling me “Ivan” at any point this term? If anyone does, I think I’ll just play along.
Just the other day, someone of high status in the company was walking around the floor talking to everyone. He met with the various departments asking for insight and getting progress reports, I guess. As he was walking around, he passed by my cubicle. After he passed, he took a few steps back to peer into my cubicle. At the time, I was surfing and had my MSN window open. Oops. I also had my headphones on listening to streaming music. Big oops. If I hadn’t turned around, he probably would have moved on to the next cubicle, but something possessed me to make eye contact.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t remember that I had met him before when I was still working for the other department. Mind you, that was Fall 2003. He was a lot friendlier back then, but…then again, he thought I was responsible back then, too. He chose not to introduce himself this time around. He decided to ask if I was co-op. I said, “yes.” He went on to ask me whether I was being kept busy, and whether I found my term challenging. I put on my best smile and lied through my teeth “yeah, it’s pretty good”. After that he stared at my fake name plate a few times, almost as if he was trying to keep notes. He then moved on.
Heh. I can imagine what happened after. He’d be talking about the co-op Ivan not doing enough work. Whatever.
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