Month: November 2010

I’m pushing my bed time later and later with each passing night. It’s getting to the point where it’s probably easier for me to meet some of you for breakfast than lunch. Then again, I don’t know a single person who has enough time in the morning to have breakfast with a friend before going to work. I will draw the line at 6am. If I’m not in bed by then, I will force myself to crawl into my awesome race car bed. I had a co-worker that exhibited the same sleeping patterns as I do. He’d go to bed an hour later each night. I think it got weird when he started to go to sleep after noon but he just pushed through that zone. Once he got to an 11pm bed time, it was better.

I can keep myself pretty entertained during this wee hours of the morning but I wish there were more places that I could go to at this hour and hang out. I don’t really consider 7-11 and Denny’s as viable options. Where do shift workers go when they’re done work? Do they just go home?

Anyways, with this extra free time on my hands I decided to work on my blog a bit more. Some of you more Elvish-eyed readers might have noticed that clicking on the comment counter to the right of the post title now takes you to the comments. It was odd that this wasn’t the case to begin with but at least I’ve fixed it now. I’ve also changed the date format for posts. There was a mysterious tag that was appended to all the dates; I deleted that. I’m not a big fan of pure numerical dates so the date format is written out in words in full, just the way Doc Brown did it in 1885.

There are a few more changes to come. Stay tuned!

It’s no ocean view but the view from my apartment windows is decent. I have a great view of the city and I don’t stare directly into another apartment building. About a block away if I look down slightly, I can see into several apartments. There’s quite a few windows to choose from and when I first moved in, I thought there would be plenty of opportunity to see interesting stuff. After all, there was that time in Hawaii. Sadly, I discovered I have quite boring neighbours as I haven’t seen anything interesting happen through their windows.

There is, however, one very interesting thing I’ve noticed. Across the way, there is a window that always has its blinds open. The window is for the living room for that apartment. For as long as I can remember there is always one and only one light turned on in the living room. The light is also unique. It is a very white and pure light. It’s either a fluorescent light or one of those lights that recreates the full spectrum of visible light. I had one of those natural lights as a desk lamp at work. The light is on all the time, 24 hours a day. The brightness of the light is subdued. It’s bright enough to illuminate the apartment but it’s still somewhat dark in there.

I’ve only seen movement through the windows just a handful of times. It appears to be a dude in the apartment. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything weird in there (at least from what I see). I’m not sure if the apartment is occupied at all times. It’s a bit of mystery to me. Why is that light on all the time? Why isn’t the light brighter? What’s with the special, pure white light? Who lives there? What are they doing in there?

There’s definitely something different going on in there. I am reminded of all those movies and TV shows where someone sees something mysterious through a window. It never really ends that well.

On midnight, a lump sum payment was electronically deposited to my bank account, representing the severance package that EA gave me. Until I get another job, this will likely be last significant amount of money that will be deposited into that account. That thought is a bit sobering at the moment. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly spare change they gave me.

I should probably move some of that money into one of my savings accounts right away. Now the delicate balancing game begins. How much of a miser do I become? How much should I enjoy myself with this money? Do I start eating mac and cheese on one day and then lobster the next? Is it too early to start looking for empties? Only time will tell what those answers will be.

I quite enjoy seeing what kind of things professional hockey players do while they’re on the road. From what they do on the plane, the food they eat, and what kind of coffee they get to go, it’s all very fascinating to me. The Vancouver Canucks are currently on a lengthy road trip and once again a photographer is chronicling their swing out east. Click here for today’s gallery where Canucks players, coaches, and staff attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa.

All my blog posts dating back from 2002 have now been imported into this current version of my blog. You can now read more than eight years of mainly light fluff under one roof! Enjoy!

It’s 4am in the morning right now and I need to be in downtown Vancouver before 12pm to meet a friend for lunch. Being unemployed can be fun but I also need my sleep.

In my previous post, I mentioned how I’m working on unifying all my blog posts from the beginning in one single WordPress blog. I haven’t finished the work yet but it’s nearly there. If you want a preview, click here, which is a temporary blog for all my old posts. Once I do the huge merge, I’ll delete the temporary blog. If you do some digging around, you’ll notice some of the links are screwed up and some embedded videos don’t work. This is to be expected I suppose.

Last week was my first full week of unemployment and I quite enjoyed it. Of course, part of the reason I can enjoy this time is because I got a decent severance and I have no one that really depends on me. Actually, I know two guys who also got laid off and they have families but their severance packages were huge, so they’re pretty content with life as well.

I went from working OT almost every night to not working at all and I have to admit, that’s been the best part so far. I feel slightly bad for a few of the dudes I left behind. They’re still crunching away. I checked up on two of my former co-workers on the Saturday and they were both at the studio. Do I wish I was with still with them? They’re great guys and all but the answer is a definitive no.

If you’ve known me for any length of time, it’ll come as no surprise that I’ve easily transitioned into a night owl schedule. I go to sleep between 3am and 4:30am every day now and get up around noon or later. I certainly do enjoy getting more sleep now but I sometimes feel bad that by the time I wake up and have breakfast, most of the day is already gone. On days where I have errands to run, I try to wake up earlier so that I don’t have to cram everything I have to do into the last business hour of the day.

On the job front, I will admit that I haven’t been standing still. I won’t get into the specifics of exactly what I’ve been doing or who I have been talking to. I will say that right after I announced I was laid off, there were a few interesting pieces of info that presented themselves to me and I’ve just been monitoring that. I’ve been counseled by several people over the last few days that I should really not think about getting a job anytime soon. They believe a nice, relaxing break is what I need. I agree with them completely and I will endeavour to ensure I get a suitable amount of time off.

I’m using my free time to do several things. I’ve been hitting the video games pretty hard. I have a large backlog of games to get through and this is the perfect time to get started on them. I finished Medal of Honor on PC. It wasn’t a bad game but I think it could have been better. The game at the end teased a sequel would be forthcoming. I hope that is true because I believe there’s a lot of room for the franchise to grow. Currently, I’m playing Dead Rising 2 on Xbox 360. I just started the game but I’m already less frustrated with it than I was with the original Dead Rising. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m now experienced in the Dead Rising universe or if the Blue Castle did such a good job ironing out the stupid parts of the first game.

I also have a list of various things I want to take care of while I have all this free time. I want to get started on painting the exposed drywall parts of my apartment. I’m going to take a look at where I have all my money tied up in my various bank accounts, RRSPs, mutual funds, and tax-free savings accounts. I’m sure the end analysis will be that I have no money but I want to make sure that’s true. I also want to learn how to cook up a decent piece of salmon. I certainly know how to eat it raw but it’s a shame I don’t know how a good salmon recipe.

Last but certainly not least, I want to fix up this blog a bit. Now for those of you who are perceptive, you might have already noticed a change already. The font for the majority of this blog is now in Georgia. Georgia was the font that I used in the previous incarnation of this blog and I like it quite a bit better than the font that came with this theme. There are more changes ahead. The next thing is to import all my previous posts from the Blogger version of this blog into the current WordPress version. It’s taking quite a bit of time to do this as the Google API doesn’t really play well with WordPress right now. I’m currently investigating a work-around but it might be several days before you’ll see anything.

Alright, it’s 2am in the morning and I have stuff to do!

One of my favourite social media web sites used to be Digg. The site provided people a place where they could find countless interesting links to explore. If you signed up for an account on Digg, you could also comment on those links and have discussions with other Diggers. I really enjoyed visiting Digg several times a day.

Then a few months back, the people behind Digg rolled out what was dubbed Digg V4. The new version of Digg was immediately panned by just about everyone. There was a lot to complain about. First, the site became broken and unavailable for many users. Some features that had been core to the Digg experience were just removed without explanation. Digg user accounts were also butchered. Usernames were changed without warning and people’s commenting history (which for some spanned years) was deleted overnight. It was a complete mess that Digg is still trying to fix to this day.

For many people, the alternative to Digg became Reddit. Though Reddit is another similar social media site, I resisted at first because Reddit’s user interface looks horrendous. There was no other real alternative though. At first, I just visited Reddit without signing up. Then, with the urging of a friend, I actually made a Reddit account. Over the course of several weeks, I learned to overlook the barebones UI and discovered Reddit was actually quite entertaining.

One of the best sections of Reddit is one called “I Am A <insert whatever you are> Ask Me Anything“. It’s essentially a section where Redditors reveal whatever they are, whatever job they might have, whatever life situation they might be going through, etc. and then call upon other Redditors to ask them questions. In my opinion, it’s the most fascinating part of the web site. There are IAmAs for strippers, a guy who’s dated a stripper, a US Special Forces soldier, a pizza delivery driver, a guy who lost his wife to a car accident, Joe Rogan, a former AHL player, woman who just had an abortion, porn store employee, and many, many more.

As you can see, some of these can be quite entertaining, while others are quite serious. It’s the serious ones that remind me that while life is full of great experiences, there is a lot of adversity and hardship that people go through on a daily basis. Consider browsing through some of these people’s lives. I am sure you’ll find some fascinating ones.

Today was a very busy and long day. I am very tired. I will take advantage of being unemployed and will endeavour to sleep in until noon tomorrow.