Monthly Archive: November 2009

“No regrets, right?”

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Sun. November 22, 2009

A couple of days ago I got a notice in my inbox telling me about a Best Buy Reward Zone event taking place at a handful of stores. The email said that there would be a sale at these locations lasting for two hours. I wasn’t terribly interested up until they sent another email giving a preview of the various price cuts. See, the particular deal that got my attention was the part that said that all laptops priced between $1000 and $1500 would have be cut by $200. I figured that it would be the perfect time to get my hands on the new 13″ MacBook Pro.

My current Toshiba Satellite is about 4.5 years old; it’s showing signs of wear. The right side USB ports are a bit loose. If I plug my mouse in there it wouldn’t be uncommon for the power to be intermittent, making me bang the mouse a couple of times in an attempt to get it going again. The battery is pretty bad now. It can only hold a charge for about half an hour before giving up. The sensor in the taskbar tends to lie to me about how much power it has left when unplugged. When it says 45 minutes, I know that that’s a lie. As a result, this thing is always plugged in now. I can’t imagine taking this thing anywhere anymore without the plug. I didn’t think the unit as a whole was too heavy, especially in comparison to the bricks that my classmates had, but after lugging it around and dragging it through Japan every pound seems to make a difference. At about 6 lbs. this laptop is kind of heavy. Lastly, everything seems to take so long to run now. It should not take 2 minutes to start up Firefox or iTunes. Perhaps all the system needs is a good defragmentation. I don’t know. Ultimately, given the age of the system I figured that it was time to look for something new. This computer has served me really well over the years. It’s just time.

So, why in the world did I start considering getting a Mac? Well, I think it was spurred on via a lot of discussion from colleagues. A couple of them have been drooling over the new MacBook Pro redesign that happened this summer. My former team lead put together a Hackintosh and has been raving over Snow Leopard and how everything seems to be so much easier than it ever was with Windows XP. I mentioned Apple to my project manager and she basically told me how she was happy with her MacBook Pro. So yeah, many people have been nudging me in that direction. As well, I’ve got a couple of friends that are experienced Mac users, and without hesitation they always seem to talk about how great they are. As much as the difference is a few hundred dollars for a Mac, I’m willing to give it a shot. I want to judge for myself whether the difference is huge.

So, back to the Best Buy thing. I was over at my parents’ place setting up my old Desktop system for them to use. I told them about my planned purchase, and they urged me to head out early. They told me that there might be a line. I didn’t believe there would be one. I mean, how many people would pay attention to an email campaign? I figured that I could arrive there at the start of the sale, line up for a few minutes, get in, and get out with what I wanted. Besides, who wanted to wait out there for an hour, right? Well, I drove up to Markham, and as I got closer to the mall I saw a long line up of cars waiting to turn into the complex. That was my first hint that I might have been dead wrong. I parked a long distance away from the store and started walking to the entrance. As I did, I began to notice the length of the line up. I started heading to the back of the line, and it was only then that I saw just how far it went. The queue went around the corner with a couple more bends to accommodate everyone. I think there were a couple of hundred people there–probably closer to a thousand. I don’t know, I’m a bad judge of number at this type of thing.

Being so far back in the line, it was easy to joke about how there would be nothing left by the time we’d get in. Actually, a couple of people in front of me left the line after deeming the wait to not be worth it. A couple behind me were talking about how they didn’t want to leave and then wonder if they’d get a deal or not. I turned around and offered a summary: “No regrets, right?” They agreed. I really wasn’t sure if I’d get anything, but hey, I didn’t want to wonder. The line moved in chunks. The people at the door only let in small batches of people at a time. Around the corner, we could only see a handful of people walking out with things in hand. It kind of gave me hope that I might have a bit of luck. After about an hour, I finally rounded the last corner before the entrance. Form there, I saw many many more people walking out with prizes in hand. Some of them had wide smiles on their face. I suppose I don’t blame them. I know I counted 3 or 4 smiling people with small boxes of MacBook Pros in hand. With each one my hopes faded more and more. At the door a staff member was clapping and cheering at us for having made it in. I laughed at the cheesiness of it all. As soon as I got in, I rushed over to the back to where the Macs were displayed. The one that I wanted no longer had a price tag displayed beside it. I had a feeling I knew what it meant, but I asked a staff member anyway. He confirmed that they were sold out.

Fuck.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I wandered around the store for a few minutes, trying to see if there was anything that I wanted. I think I was just in no mood, so after having waited outside for an hour I just left the store empty handed, and probably looking defeated. I figured that this is kind of what it’s like to do the whole Boxing Day thing. It only strengthened my resolve to not give in to the madness on December 26. It’s silly! I gave my parents a call afterwards and told them that I’d been foiled. After a deserved “told you so,” mom asked how much the laptop would have been and what the discount was. After telling her, she giggled: “$200? Chicken feed!” That made me feel better. As I drove home I knew that I’d have something to write about.

So that’s what happened. Where do I go from here? Well, I still plan on getting the MBP at some point. It’s now just a matter when I want to go for it. This week, before the end of November, perhaps? Maybe I can consider this to be a late birthday gift. Soon enough, soon enough.

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Killing a computer

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Sat. November 21, 2009

Sometime earlier in the decade, while I was studying in Waterloo I had told my parents that they needed to get a computer for themselves. I mean, I figured that it would have given them an opportunity to burn CDs or do online banking without me having to get involved. I was fully prepared to actually help them out by assembling a system. I had some experience doing so from having put together my own computer. As long as you get the right parts that go together, the actual act of assembling the system is then a matter of plugging things into the right spots. Easy enough, right? Well, one day I got a call from my father telling me that they’d gone ahead and purchased a computer on their own.

For a brief moment I was kind of happy for them to have had the courage to go ahead and make the purchase. Then I remembered that they had no idea what they were purchasing. So, with dread I started asking them details. He honestly had no idea, other than the fact that they’d asked the sales guy whether it was the best that they could get. At that point I just knew that no good came of that. They’re not gamers…why the hell do they need the fastest computer? They don’t. For a few days after the call I couldn’t concentrate at school. All I could think about was their new computer. When I got home I immediately started checking things out. Well…it didn’t seem so bad at first. Although, it was clearly something that was slapped together. Then I heard how much they paid for the whole thing. I was dumbfounded. They paid maybe 2.5 times what it would have cost if I had done it. Looking back now, it makes me want to gag. I suggested that they return it, but my father was insistent that we keep it. His reasons varied from “well it’s already there” and “we were told it’s the best!” Riiiight.

Well, I suppose I could have let it all go if it worked perfectly. Thing is, the damn thing always had issues. Sometimes when mom would turn it on it would just get stuck on the BIOS screen. No amount of rebooting used to let it get past. Often I’d have to reach behind, unplug the whole thing for a minute, return the plug and only then would it go forward. Other times, network connectivity just wouldn’t come up leading to frantic calls of “Jay! The Internet isn’t working again!“ Mom would call me sometimes telling me that the thing is so slow. She’d try starting a browser but it would take minutes before it would come up. After some digging I found that the box only had 512MB of RAM. What in blazes?! Seriously. No wonder it took so long. It’s not that mom’s completely impatient; the system just really sucks.

Anyway, the other day I decided that I didn’t want to make them put up with such a system anymore, so I bought 2GB of RAM for their computer. I went over today to swap the DIMMs out. I made the switch and reconnected everything. When mom switched it on…nothing came up on the monitor. In fact, the motherboard started beeping like mad. After a good half hour of swapping the memory again and diagnosing anything obvious that I could think of, nothing was bringing it back to life. I just laughed and declared the computer dead: I think the motherboard is fried. I looked at my mom and we both laughed. Despite losing the box, I think we were both happy to see that piece of shit box kick the bucket. Actually, I’m sure there’s a fix for it, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Instead I offered to give them the desktop box that’s just sitting in my room unused. Heck, why not? My box had a slower processor than theirs, but at least the damn thing worked.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. I need to spend an hour or two “cleaning up” the system before I hand it over. I also need to set it up just enough to get my mom ready to do all the stuff she used to do with the other system. I’m willing to part ways with the box. Eventually, I’m pretty sure I’ll get it back; they might move on to something like a Mac. In any case, I’ll have a little piece of mind, for sure.

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Linear progress and the jaywalking bear

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Fri. November 20, 2009

It kind of bothers me how some people believe that the progress I make on my programming projects is linear. When I hear something to the effect that since I’ve spent X amount of hours working on a project I should be Y percent done, it makes me cringe. That’s really not how it works.

Toward the beginning, I tend to move slowly as I spend time thinking about implementation, and how things fit into the big picture of the system. From there, there are days when everything flows easily from my mind to my fingers. There are other days when I want to bang my head against a wall to try to remove any mental blocks. At some point, if I get lucky, I often reach a point where a get a good amount of momentum and I can compare progress to a boulder rolling down a hill and gaining speed. Today I was lucky enough to have one of those moments. Things were finally falling into place and I actually had some confidence that the project would work out. I was actually smiling at my desk when I witnessed my code working out nicely. Smiling? Unheard of! I made enough progress that I decided to take off a little early.

Walking through Chinatown, I stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn. At that one in particular, there’s an advanced green signal allowing cars to turn left before regular traffic goes through. That advanced light came on and I turned to see if any traffic was coming. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone running across the street trying to beat the turning traffic. I kind of rolled my eyes because running in front of traffic is never a good idea. In a split second, behind the guy was someone in this ridiculous bear costume. The bear decided to follow the guy and ran across the street trying to beat the turning traffic. Unfortunately for the bear, she tripped on a streetcar track and fell flat on her ass. The turning traffic screeched to a halt, because she was blocking the way. She just sat there moving slowly, perhaps embarrassed but probably also in a little pain. She finally picked herself up and completed the way across. I just laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. See, I never would have seen any of that if I hadn’t made great progress at work. If my progress was linear, I wouldn’t have had this productive burst, and I probably wouldn’t have left early.

[ See. I managed to tie it all together after all. I probably didn't do a terribly fantastic job, but it works. ]

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Cleanser snorting

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Thu. November 19, 2009

Earlier during the lunch hour I ventured north a couple of blocks to get a haircut and go shopping for fruit. I ran out of fruit a couple of days prior and have been sort of craving for some for a while now. There’s nothing like a cold, crisp, sweet, juicy apple, right? Like I stated about a month ago, Chinatown is a really good place to get produce. Although, things are a little bit more expensive this time of year in comparison to even a month ago. Back then I was able to get 5 Gala apples for $1. Today they were priced at 3 for $1. It’s still pretty decent, if you ask me. Today’s haul was 3 Gala apples, 3 Fuji apples, 6 fuyu persimmons (seem to be more common in colder months), and two small containers of blueberries. To balance out the healthiness of it all I also bought a small box of chocolate Pocky, which I went through with my colleagues faster than I had anticipated.

Anyway, while I was waiting to check out, into the store came this shabby looking woman. I didn’t want to stare, because that would have been rude, but my first judgment of her was that she was mildly unstable. I wouldn’t have paid her any more attention, but she started doing some eccentric things. She looked off to the side and went “AHA!” She reached for a canister of powdered cleanser as if that was what she was looking for all this time. She peeled the protective flap open, poured a tiny bit into her hand and proceeded to sniff it. I think for whatever reason she wasn’t too happy with the product because she put it back muttering something about it not being what she wanted. Right next to it was a canister of Old Dutch cleanser. She took that, popped it open, poured a little out and started snorting it. At this point, the cashier spotted her and start shouting with a bit of an accent: “Hey friend! What are you doing!” You could tell she was annoyed. Rightfully so, too. Who the hell sniffs cleanser? The shabby woman replied, “I’m buying! What does it look like I’m doing?” As she turned around, she revealed her face which was covered in powder like some sloppy junkie, or someone who greedily ate a powdered jelly donut. The cashier rolled her eyes and proceeded to talk to the other cashier in Mandarin (or was it Cantonese…I swear I still can’t tell), likely about this crazy ass woman. The woman queued behind me to buy her Old Dutch, muttering something about people taking away her welfare cheques. All I could do was smile at the cashier, acknowledging that yes, I witnessed the craziness as well.

Just another day in the big city, I guess. *shrug*

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Return to beef stew

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Wed. November 18, 2009

Lately, just due to my schedule and my change in eating habits I haven’t really had much of a chance to cook or bake some good comfort food. Often, by the time I get home I’m lacking the caloric buffer or just the time to put in the effort. Anyway, last time I went to the grocery store, I decided to buy some stewing beef. I was determined to make a stew of some sort sooner rather than later. I just needed the time. Well, after having the meat sitting in the fridge, mocking me for not getting around to using it, I finally decided to make today the day.

Just like I did in September I made a batch of caldereta from a sauce mix. I didn’t have any of the traditional veggies for it, so I just used what I had in my fridge and freezer. I even did the whole sauteed garlic and onion thing even though it wasn’t required. Anyway, after a great deal of tweaking this is what I ended up with.

kaldereta_20091118 kaldereta_rice_20091118

It looks great, doesn’t it? It tasted awesome. I added a good deal of pepper so it had a nice kick to it. Yes, even though the sauce was packet based, I adjusted it enough to make it my own. The plus side is that I now have a couple of meals on reserve for the next few days whenever I feel too lazy to cook. Awesome!

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Self witnessing

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Tue. November 17, 2009

Just another short one.

A friend was telling me about his lunch hour yoga session. He told me that toward the end of it, the meditation was on “self-observation without criticism.” He said that when the topic came up he thought about me. Knowing that really made me pause for a little bit. Am I so self-destructive in my words and thoughts? Am I really so willing to bring myself down? It really seems like I am to some extent. I’ve stated before that I seem to be my own worst critic. I can see the value of using that to make myself stronger. Still, there’s a real danger of falling into negative self-image and general dissatisfaction if left unchecked. What I find a bit telling is the fact that other people seem to be in tune with the fact that I’m way harder on myself than I should be. Isn’t that sort of messed up? Yes, yes it is. In the end it’s up to me to be a witness for myself and to keep myself in check. No one else can do it.

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Crumbling

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Mon. November 16, 2009

Even when everything else is crumbling around you, the people that you’re with can make the situation seem a little bit more tolerable. Of course, it’s not an excuse to become complacent. In fact, vigilance is almost a requirement. Still, when you know you’ve got a decent support system, you can afford to not be so tense.

What a mess.

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The ostrich

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Sun. November 15, 2009

I swear, everyone that knows about what’s going down in my work sphere has been telling me to get my documents in order. Everyone. Believe me, I’ve been meaning to. I actually started updating it way back in June. Thing is, I never actually finished. Right now it’s in a rough draft state. A lot of ideas are there, but it all needs to be whittled down and refined to a point where I don’t come off as sounding amateurish. I think I have a tendency to under-sell myself. This goes back to what I had stated a few days ago about self-promotion. Frankly, I still don’t think I’ve found my point of comfort where I can legitimately toot my own horn without over inflating my achievements to the point where it almost looks like I’m trying too hard.

Why the heck does editing a document have to be so difficult?! To some extent, you’d think it would be simple: provide some background. On the surface, sure, that’s true. On a deeper level though, I have to be conscious about what kind of professional image I’m projecting. There are many ways to be truthful. The question is then, what parts of my history do I want to feature?

If I think about some old cartoons, my current situation reminds me of that animated ostrich that liked to stick its head in the sand. It seemed to do so in order to make the world go away, or hide from any conflicts that were going on at the time. Now, I know that ostriches don’t actually do that in real life. Still, right now I’m kind of feeling like that cartoon ostrich. I realize though, not working on the document won’t make the problem go away. I have to get on it sooner rather than later. I actually made several promises to start working on the document this weekend. I had good intentions going in, but with so much stuff going on I just wasn’t able to fit it in. So, another fine opportunity has come and gone. On some level I feel like I’m failing my family, and failing others that have some interest in me. Most of all, I kind of feel like I’m failing myself. Anyway, I’ll get it all done at one point. Ill get my head out of the sand, I swear.

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