Continue reading »]]> Technology can be so damn fickle, right? I mean, how do we cope when it fails us? Yesterday, as I pulled out of my parking spot to leave for work I noticed a line up of cars heading toward a closed garage door. I rolled down my windows to listen to what discussions were going on. Seems like no one was able to get the door open. We deduced that we wouldn’t be able to leave the garage. I just turned the car around and headed back for my spot. I went back to my suite and emailed my manager explaining my situation. I was debating whether I should wait it out because surely someone would have left an angry call or two to the building’s manager to get the door open, or if I should take the bus to work. Taking the bus would be an hour long journey that I was not keen on making. The other option I considered was if I should take the day off. I mean it kind of felt like the universe was sending me a message, right? I visited the garage every half hour or so to see if the situation improved. Finally, sometime between 9:45 and 10:15 the door was opened manually. That’s when I headed in.

So, that sort of makes me pause for a bit of reflection. It’s not like I was trapped. I mean, I could have easily gotten around by transit or other options. Still, the lack of convenience seemed to trump everything. I won’t say that I was content to stay put, but rather, the other options weren’t appealing enough. That’s ridiculous. Oh well, it doesn’t matter I guess. It all just shows me that I need to be thankful that we’ve got such a convenient life, know what I mean?

Continue reading »]]> Prior to heading to Niagara-on-the-Lake I checked the directions on Google Maps. It said the journey would take only 2 hours or so. Fine, right? I gave myself about half an hour of buffer time just in case. When I got to my car I plugged my destination into Google Navigation on my phone. Accounting for traffic it told me that it would take 2 and a half hours. Lucky thing that I gave myself that buffer time. Around the Burlington area traffic slowed down to a crawl. I noticed that the estimate on my phone started creeping up. Instead of an ETA of 2:51 p.m. it increased to 3:12. I did manage to catch up a little bit once things cleared up, but still. Goes to show that technology is great but you still need to have some good planning in place.

Will provide some thoughts on the wedding tomorrow.

Continue reading »]]> I remember back when I was a lot younger the idea of a self-cleaning oven seemed ridiculous. I didn’t see any mechanism in there that would scrub the sides of spray any cleaning foam on the walls. It didn’t make sense at all. Eventually I learned that there was no scrubbing involved, and that the oven just cranks the temperature all the way up to burn everything into oblivion. Here in my condo I was actually rather excited to use the cleaning feature on my oven for the first time. I was fascinated by all of the blackened bits catching fire then burning away. Anyway, just today I had to run the oven through a cleaning cycle. The bottom of the oven was covered in a lot of greasy crap resulting from my pie making adventures. Since then, every time I turned the oven on it would be filled with smoke. Not good. I didn’t want to wait for it to go through a thorough cleaning so I just used the fast cleaning cycle. Well, within the first half hour it was already doing its thing. The oven got all smoky, and eventually it started seeping out. I had to switch off the circuit breaker switch for my smoke alarm because my place was getting a little bit too filled. My eyes were watering from all the smoke. I switched on fans all over the place and opened the balcony door. After another hour or two the smoke died down. Everything in the oven was turning to ash and it was wonderful. Makes me think, too bad there aren’t switches like that for rooms in general. I mean, not including the burning everything to the ground part, but imagine hitting a button and coming back two hours later to see everything tidy. Yes well, technology isn’t heading in that direction, eh?

Continue reading »]]> I was visiting a friend this afternoon with the goal of talking about web development. We’ve been in the process of making a website and I figured that instead of doing a heck of a lot of back and forth over email it’d be easier to bounce ideas off each other in person. After a lot of work, we’re further along that we were prior to meeting. It made me think more about the separation of content and presentation. That’s what keeping CSS and HTML separate is all about. HTML should be all about the information, while CSS is all about how it’s presented. Remember back in the day when font tags were still acceptable? Yaaaaargh. Well, anyway, as much as they’re separate, they can’t be developed independently. Content helps dictate how it’s going to be presented. Web development is so all-encompassing, isn’t it?

Continue reading »]]> I often claim that I’m not the most tech-minded person. I don’t like reading about new emerging technologies in my spare time. When I used to commute by transit, unlike other colleague I wouldn’t spend it boning up on tech skills. No, I prefer to keep my focus narrow to the skills I need to get my work done. That said, I tend to become really good with the skills that I do use. From how I describe things it almost seems like I don’t really give a rat’s ass about what I do for a living. Of course, if you claim such things then you really don’t know me at all, right? No, I just prefer not to clutter my mind with skills that aren’t applicable to anything I’m expected to do. I mean, why? There’s no way I can gather in depth knowledge about anything and everything. Better to do what I do really well and learn new necessary things as I go along instead of having hazy knowledge on anything that might possibly come up.

Ultimately, if there’s nothing I don’t know how to do all I have to do is ask. That’s one thing I’ve learned: don’t be afraid to ask for help. So much time can be wasted just fiddling around with things that people may have already addressed in the past. I’m not saying that someone should rely on others to get work done all the time. There’s a balance to be had. For example, over the past day or two I’ve been having trouble getting some code to function properly. This past afternoon I had a bit of a eureka moment and fixed one of the issues I was having. I was psyched! See! If I didn’t care about my field would I be able to derive such joy from something like that?

Continue reading »]]> I have a lot of dormant skills and interests. Really, I think that’s true of everyone. It’s just a matter of whether we acknowledge them or not. Back in the day I was sort of interested in web design. In the old job though it became a source of aggravation. I guess somewhere along the way I fell out of love. So why is my interest being awoken? I’m sure part of it is the new job and the fact that it uses some of these skills but in a less pressured way (thus far). Also, there are some improv-related ventures that I’m pursuing. As a stakeholder of one of the ventures I’ve taken it upon myself to play around with building a website. I’m making it sound important, but really it’s just an excuse to play around with my skills. I mean, I’m amazed at how much you can build with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JQuery. I’m not claiming that I’m one of those web-wizards that can code one of those tight pages that just flows. I’m not there yet, but I’m learning. I need to ride this wave of interest while it lasts.

Continue reading »]]> You know, at work I can get by with basic hardware. At my old job, I didn’t really need a fast computer. I still got my work done. Other people with similar set ups constantly complained about how X or Y is so slow. I never really understood why. Also, I lot of people raved about having two monitors and constantly pointedly asked me why I didn’t try to get a second monitor. To me, there really was no need. Sure, I may have had a lot of windows open but it was all organized in my head. I knew where everything was if I ever needed it, know what I mean? And now all of this brings me to today. Earlier my manager swung by and asked me what I wanted for a computer. I didn’t know. I was about to open my mouth and say that I’d be fine with a minimal set up but figured that would just be dumb. I told him: I’ll have whatever everyone else has. Good answer! No need to deprive myself of stuff just because I think I’m good without. Pfff. I’ve worked hard to get to this point. Might as well get what I can.

Continue reading »]]> Earlier today, after work I decided to walk up to the subway station instead of taking the streetcar. It was raining at the time, but since I had an umbrella I really didn’t mind getting out there. Sounds like me, right? It’s a relatively short walk, but about midway I think the weather in combination with the warm air and the dimming sunlight was just making me feel a little bit sick. The discomfort increased to the point where I figured that hopping on a streetcar would be the best option. I still had about 8 minutes left in my walk if I wanted to finish my trek. I didn’t think it was worth it to finish the walk, just because the discomfort was mounting.

As I waited at the stop I checked my phone for the next arrival times. A while back I bookmarked the NextBus website which lists predicted arrival times for the many streetcar lines in the city. My phone said that the next vehicles would arrive in 1 minute and 3 minutes. I figured I could manage that. The first vehicle came around and only dropped off a few passengers. It was so packed that it couldn’t take anyone waiting. I waited for the second one and saw that it was just as packed. It was so full that the driver actually just drove right passed us. I checked my phone and saw that the next ones would come in 6 minutes and 8 minutes. Again, I waited there patiently.

While waiting I recalled the fact that this stop was pretty bad in terms of catching a ride. Usually I’m inside the streetcar though so it never really affected me before. Anyway, the next streetcar came and again it was packed such that the driver didn’t bother stopping. This time I growled out loud. Knowing that one was coming in 1-2 minutes, I told myself that if I couldn’t get on this one I’d just walk. I checked my phone and it said that the next one after the one coming was 9 minutes away. The the streetcar came, it was once again packed. The driver held the door open though. I was going to avoid getting in, but then I remembered what my phone was predicting. I wasn’t willing to hang around for another 9 minutes or so, so at the last moment I got on. Pfft. Sure, it was snug in there, and I really had to jockey for position. All the same, there would have been no point in just hanging around for a fifth streetcar to pass by. It probably would be filled anyway. All of this proved to me just how useful smartphones can be. I mean, the crowd at the stop didn’t do much to find a way on, but as a result they ended up waiting there for another good chunk of time in unpleasant weather. Yay technology!

Continue reading »]]> Long ago, the first video game system that was ever given to me was the Nintendo Game Boy. It was a Christmas gift and was totally unexpected. I actually cried for joy when I got it. Now, the game that shipped with the Game Boy was Tetris. I spent many hours on that game and became pretty good at it. It served me well whenever I played head to head battles with other people at school–including my computer science teacher. During lulls, sometimes I’d challenge him to a versus game on the school computers. I always ended up on top; I had a knack for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. I remember some friends being amazed at how I often managed to survive even with my blocks stacked high. At night, I remember finding an Internet Tetris client: TetriNET. Among my friends and I someone would set up a server and we’d all connect to play a multi-player battle Tetris game. Sometimes these sessions would last until the wee hours of the morning. Crazy stuff. I had a decent track record with that.

I stopped playing Tetris actively after high school. I had a version of the game on my computer, but I didn’t really touch it that often. Over time my skills rusted. I never thought I’d get back into it. The other day though, while I was poking around the Wii stuff at BestBuy, I spotted Tetris Party Deluxe. It wasn’t crazy expensive or anything so I just picked up a copy. I figured that it might come in handy as a party game at some point in the future. I broke it out this evening just to see if I was as good as I was maybe a decade ago. Umm…nope, can’t say I am. I can hold my own, I guess, but…yeah, my old-self would have cleaned the floor with me. No matter. The game is still fun after all these years. It’s so simple, and that’s perhaps one of the key factors as to why this game can withstand the test of time, right?

To close this off, here’s a guy playing Korobeiniki on an electric guitar.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j9W5PBsa30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j9W5PBsa30

Continue reading »]]> Honestly, when I was first searching for a proper post-grad job back in 2006, I was making a slight effort to get out of my comfort zone and find a job using a language that I had only used in class but not really in the workplace. Java seemed to be the language that would give me the most opportunities, so that’s where I cast my net. In the end, that didn’t pan out. This job found me due to my Perl skills listed on my resume. The language that I had used for years but decidedly set aside has kept be going for almost 4 years now. If I think about it, that’s rather fortunate, isn’t it? It allowed me to get my feet wet in the real world, though, honestly my feet were already figuratively soaked at that point, but that’s besides the point.

Perl, Perl, Perl.

I had to be the jack of all trades. I was an application developer, interface developer, consultant, quality assurance checker, business liaison, all wrapped in one. Those were crazy times. Well, as you know, times change. I’ve mentioned this before, but yeah, my job was phased out. That’s never a great feeling, eh? In the end though, the company decided to hold onto me. And now here I am trying to get up to speed in Java. I was actually a little concerned about having to make this change since it’s been many years since I last touched the language. I think it must have been my artificial intelligence class in 2005. Seriously. Over the past week I’ve been feeling better and better. If there’s anything I should be more concerned about, it’s learning the project I’m on. Besides the fact that the technology behind the project is in a different language altogether, it’s actually the evolved version of the project I was on before. The concepts are familiar but different. It’s blowing my mind. Also, my job focus has narrowed significantly. I said that the previous project had me wearing different hats, right? This new position has one hat, and one hat only. That aspect kind of makes me sad, but I guess it’s necessary due to the amount of focus needed.

Anyway, I suppose I’m writing about this because it amazes me how I’m managing this transition. I expected it to be rocky, and it is, but…I expected worse–not only from the job, but from myself. Am I selling myself short? Yeah, I am. However, in this case I was taking one of those “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” stances. Going from language to language is a scary prospect. I kind of feel like I was thrown into the deep end. I guess I knew how to swim all along=–I just forgot that I had the skill.