HAIR

My hair ain’t looking so good right. I tried to book an appointment with my hair cutter lady for Friday. She was all booked up. I had to settle for Monday. That is all.

TAXES FILED

I sent in my tax return online tonight. This is the earliest I have ever filed my return. It seems that for the better part of my tax filing life, I’m too busy until the end of April (the end of the school year) to worry about taxes.

This is, however, year one of my post-grad school life so my previous worries are gone. I suppose if I had to pay taxes this year, I’d delay filing until the end of April. Fortunately, I have a pretty hefty refund coming to me. Unfortunately, all that money will go towards a student load. Yeah, it’s not the most fun way to blow a few grand but people keep telling me it’s the responsible thing to do.

Ok, man what a boring post. I hope the one below thing makes up for it.

MORE DOMAINS!

It would be interesting if I reported that another person I know registered their own domain but that didn’t happen today. What did happen today was that it was a beautiful day and we went out for lunch down at Granville Island. We wound up at Sammy J. Peppers. I had a steak sandwich, medium rare. It was tasty.

Back at office, there was a tiny bit of drama. A hot water heater broke above one of the bathrooms causing water to cascade down from the ceiling. It flooded a large area of the office. Some people had to move their computers and stuff. The firemen had to come shut the water off for us but that took nearly an hour from the time the leak was discovered.

Shortly before 6pm, some water restoration and damage guys showed up to pump out all the water and generally clean up the place. I stayed a bit later today so I could hear them working. One guy called his girlfriend or something while he was working.

“You’ll never guess where I am right now. I’m at this graphic design place and their all have Nintendo DSes on their desks. It’s pretty cool!”

I silently sighed. No, we’re not exactly a graphic design place. We make video games. I didn’t feel like correcting him.

In other news, I’ve lost about ten pounds of weight in about three weeks! You can too! Ask me how!

DOMAINS ABOUND

In my last post, I mentioned how Tyson now has his own web domain. Over the weekend, I helped him set up a simple blog. Though I am glad he’s entered the world of blogging, we all know his focus should be on writing his thesis. Nonetheless, head on over to tysonbrust.com to give him some support.

Never wanting to be out done, joelmacmull.com went live on Saturday night. For a very reasonable fee, I helped Joel register his domain, buy hosting, and set up his e-mail. You can probably guess Joel’s new e-mail address. With his hosting account, J-Rod gets 501 e-mail accounts. He even gave me one. Guess who has erwin at joelmacmull dot com as an e-mail address now? Though there’s no home page yet, Joel’s hosting package has a plethora of fancy applications he can install onto his web server. For example, there’s magnetic poetry. Unfortunately, it only works in Internet Explorer. I’ve been told a blog will be forthcoming soon, so we’ll all have to stay tuned for that.

Who else will register their own domain now? It could be you next!

BARN DOOR

A few months ago at work, I was at a meeting when Dan, a co-worker of mine, sat down in front of me at the table. I noticed his fly was down. Before more people showed up, I leaned over the whispered to him that his barn door was open. He looked down and quickly zipped up. Dan thanked me for that.

Fast forward to tonight. I had just finished eating dinner and returned to my desk. Dan came over to discuss a few things. He had his head peeking over one of my cubicle walls. We were chatting when, I leaned back in my chair.

“Erwin, your fly is down.”

I looked down. So it was. There I was, airing out my crotchetal region. I zipped up and thanked Dan for noticing. We’re now even.

And in completely other news, I know he’ll love getting his name attached to a post associated with male crotches but congrats to my good buddy Tyson Brust. Tyson is now the owner of tysonbrust.com. He joins the large group of individuals who have registered domains under the template of firstnamelastname.com. His e-mail account is already running. To prevent spam, I won’t list his address here but I’m pretty sure you can guess it. If you know Tyson, send him a quick hello!

THE GREATEST GENERATION

A little over a year ago, my sister moved back in with my parents. About five months ago I did the same. At the time, I thought we were probably in the minority. According to an article published today in the Vancouver Sun, it turns out I might be wrong.

The article is based on a study by Stats Canada. Here’s an excerpt from the piece:

“In fact, nearly half of Vancouver-area parents with children in their 20s and 30s — 46 per cent — have at least one kid still living under their roof.

That’s well above the national average of 32 per cent and just behind Toronto at 54 per cent.”

In both Vancouver and Toronto, half the parents in those cities still have an adult child living at home. That stat is amazing because I just don’t know that many people who are in the same situation as I am. Granted, I know a lot of grad students, so by definition, they’ve travelled to Vancouver for school. I can only think of one other person who lives at home still. Where are all these people? And is there a support group for us?

The article also tries to explain why kids are staying at home. One reason is the high cost of housing in Vancouver. As many of you know, it costs an arm and a leg to even buy the crappiest of houses in East Van. The second reason given is cultural:

“Indeed, Turcotte’s study found parents born in Asia were three times more likely to have adult children living at home than parents born in Canada were.

Of those parents who immigrated from Asia since 1981, 82 per cent had at least one adult child living at home.”

One stat that speaks to my sister and I specifically is that 25 percent of parents have “boomerang” kids. These are children who have left, only to return after whatever reason, eg. failed marriage, bankruptcy, WoW addiction, etc. I did not realize a quarter of all parents now have at least one these kids. That again, is amazing.

Here’s one last quote from the article and this is perhaps the most eye-opening one:

“The Statistics Canada study found income and education levels appear to have no impact on the likelihood of an adult child sticking around.”

Really? You’re telling me that if a child makes $35K a year or $70K a year, that won’t factor into the person’s decision to stay at home. Hmmm… I dunno… that’s the only reason I’m sticking around. Well, if I were making $70K a year, I might stick around for a few months to save up but nothing long term.

Alright, the stats don’t lie. I know you people are out there. Don’t lie to me! Who else still lives with their parents? And don’t give some crap about not cooking with cheese.

DENTED

Not ten minutes ago, I was in the kitchen to get a drink after eating some chicken and sausage gumbo. It was tasty but I needed something to wash it down. I would have preferred a small quantity of non-caffeinated Coke but we were out. I had to settle for a glass bottle of Sun-Rype orange juice.

The OJ usually has sediment that settles on the bottom so I was twisting the bottle in my hand, much like those painter mixers do at the paint store. I’m not sure how it happened but the bottle flew out of my hand. I didn’t just drop it, the bottle was flung out of hand. As my brain tried to process what had happened, two things were clear: I wasn’t going to be able to catch the bottle and it was going to shatter into a million pieces on the linoleum.

One outta two ain’t bad. The bottle landed on the linoleum with a loud and solid thud that usually is reserved for things made out of metal. It was intact. I quickly bent down to grab the bottle. I inspected for damage. It took some effort but I saw a tiny hairline crack near the bottom of bottle. Otherwise, it was fine. I was amazed.

Not wanting to take any chances, I poured all the juice into a glass. The amazing little bottle then went into the recyling bin. I then remembered to look at the linoleum tile on the floor. There was a one inch long dent in the tile. It looked like the linoleum had liquified for a split second and parted where the bottle edge had made contact. And the tile wasn’t exactly soft either. Crazy. I wonder if anyone will notice?

And that’s my post about dropping a bottle of orange juice on the floor.

RENEWED

The TV execs have spoken and I’ve been renewed for a sixth season! I’ll be going long on the cheezy sit-com gimmicks this year. Look for me to adopt an adorable child from Ethiopia to drive up the ratings.

But seriously folks, my registar answered my request for support. Apparently, they “pushed” my domain renewal through and all is good for another year. The question remains whether or not they charged my credit card. Renewals don’t cost that much, so it’s not a big deal either way.

Speaking of renewals and domains, I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to a friend’s site. Good old Garrett Knights and I have been friends since my tester days at EA. Garrett’s had a site for many years now but he previously only used it to showcase his talents as an artist. Recently, GK has revamped his site into an easily digestible blog form. I invite you to visit garrettknights.com and tell him I sent ya!