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I have returned home from the company party tonight. I was quite impressed with the venue and the selection of finger foods available. There were deep-fried risotto balls, crab cakes, an excellent cheese plate, a good selection of fruit, and other delights.

It being a Friday tomorrow though, people started to leave the party around 10pm. By the time I left around 10:30pm, there were very few people left. I even heard that there were some meetings scheduled for 9:30am the next morning, so I’m guessing people had to go home early because of that.

As I was walking out though, I did see a line of shots on the bar, so that gave me hope that a small but diehard group was determined to have fun well into the night.

The studio’s annual holiday party is tomorrow. The venue is a nice restaurant by the water downtown. As I’m still fairly new to the company, it will be one of these situations where I won’t be completely comfortable at the shindig. I’m old enough to know that with alcohol involved, it’s probably smart to remember I still have to work with these people the next day. It’s a bit weird the party is on a Thursday and that there’s a full expectation that employees are to be at work bright and early the next day but I won’t complain about that. The company is spending money to give the employees a fun evening, so I’m just thankful for that. You might recall, up until last year, it’d be a while since I’ve gone to one of these things.

Though it’s not official just yet, my technical director told me today that I’ve passed my probationary period with the studio and I’ll be made a full-time employee with all the benefits that go along with that. Though I’ve been around the block a few times now, I always have this ever so small doubt in the back of my mind if I’ll pass probation at every job I’m at. The doubt is always unnecessary since I wind up being fine in all cases but I try to never take anything for granted.

I haven’t had medical and dental benefits since the beginning of August so it’s nice to have those things again. Time to get a gold grill!

Almost every school night I say to myself I’m gonna go to bed early but that never happens. There are so many fun things to do while awake. Morning me always pays the price for late night me. Well gosh darn it, I’m gonna get to bed early tonight, if it’s by only ten minutes. Wish me luck!

Last week I didn’t use my desktop at all since I couldn’t access the Internet with it. I previously wrote how something was busted on my motherboard. A modern computer is really quite useless without a network connection. I had to buy a network adapter card to stick into my computer. This necessitated going to Best Buy to get one. Because it was raining when I went, I chose to cut through Metrotown to get to BB. It was super crowded in the mall. I dislike the subhumans that seem to hang out at Metrotown at the best of times but with the holiday shopping in full swing, it irked me even more.

Once I got to BB, it was fine as that store wasn’t that crowded at all. I was able to pick up the card and get out of there in less than 15 minutes. These cards are getting rarer by the day, since almost all network functionality is now built into the motherboard. Since that part of my computer is now busted, it more resembles a computer from 2001. I’m hoping I won’t need to install a 200 Mb hard drive next.

The Internet returned for me just in time to see that Ron Burgundy indeed did make it to Winnipeg.

So this week I went into a burger joint to get some lunch and ran into a dude who I knew from my undergrad days. Let’s call him Stephen because that’s his name. In the very early days of this website, he was my system administrator. He operated the actual server that my web site was hosted on. This beat up old Linux box contained all my web pages and my e-mail. This thing went down more often than Superman at a men’s truck stop bathroom. I don’t know what that means. Anyways, my web site and e-mail were frequently unavailable. I`d have to call Stephen to get the server rebooted. It was frustrating because it would take sometimes days for it to be fixed. One day, I realized that no amount of free web hosting was worth this, so I started paying for web hosting at another company. Since then, this site has had an uptime of about 99.9%.

I haven’t seen Stephen in a while but we joked about the good old days. He’s still working for an IT company and he even offered to host my site again, at $200 a month. I pay about $70 for hosting so I had to turn him down. I don`t need a dedicated server like he was offering.

Those were the good old days of free and unreliable hosting.

In the past few years, the retail phenomenon known as “Black Friday” in the US has started to influence retailers here in Canada. Traditionally, our day of deeply discounted shopping happens on Boxing Day because of our Commonwealth heritage. This year, some local malls have decided to get in on the Black Friday madness by opening at 7am on Friday.

I don’t think it’s a good sign that these Canadian retailers are following what’s happening in the US. First, it’s a holiday down south, so it’s easier to get shoppers out to the stores since it’s more likely Americans will have the day off. In Canada, this Friday is also known as Friday, a day where people go to work. How many Canadians are going to have time to go hit the malls when they need to be at work? Second, in recent years, the reports of injuries and even deaths from Black Friday crowds in the US have garnered much attention in the news. These examples in the US shows that Black Friday brings out the worst in people by fanning the flames of consumerism and capitalism. I don’t see how it’s worth it to trample over an old man just to get a discounted piece of electronics. We don’t need that in Canada and I like to think we have better sense than that. We already have Boxing Day, let’s not over do it.

What I don’t mind at all at the online Black Friday sales. Online retailers can discount their wares all they want. Shopping from home is easy, convenient, and it makes sense for both shoppers and retailers. That’s the way to go. This Friday, I hope Canadians stay home and keep some perspective on the whole day.

I’m currently typing this post out using my TV as the display. For the last two days, my desktop computer has been having trouble connecting to my home network. Using the same network port, I’ve successfully connected another computer, a laptop, to the network using two different cables. If my logic is correct, that means it’s neither the port, the existing cables, nor my router at the other end.

So it must something in my desktop. I’ve run some diagnostics on the network card on my motherboard. It says it’s running fine but that can’t be true. If the on-board card is fried, I have a few options. I go all old school and install an actual network card in one of my PCI slots. I haven’t seen anything like this since the late 1990s or early 2000s. I could get a USB network adapter that is either wired or wireless. Wireless is slower but a bit more convenient. The old school solution is probably the most stable and will get me the fastest speeds.

Alternatively, if I were super rich, I’d just get a new computer altogether. For now, my desktop is like a computer from the 1980s, it doesn’t get any new data on it unless you physically plug in a disk or a drive.

Last week I wrote a post about a charity event being held at many Boston Pizza locations on Monday night. The pizza chain was going to donate $5 from every medium or large pizza sold that night to relief efforts in the Philippines. I was ready to eat pizza for a good cause but found out that the money raised was possibly going to World Vision, an organization with religious ties. I contacted the Boston Pizza Foundation for clarification on the matter. They kindly responded today with the following:

Hello Erwin,

 After careful consideration and collaboration with some of our global partners on the ground, we decided to direct donations to World Vision for two reasons:  

 1) we have been informed that they are having the most impact on the ground in the hardest hit regions. 

 2) donations to Red Cross cannot be specifically directed to a specific cause or project.  Monies donated get divided by Red Cross at their discretion.

 We take these decisions very seriously and always look to where we’ll have the biggest impact.  Thank you for your question and we look forward to seeing you at your local BP.

The reply mentions the Red Cross since I used them as an example alternate charity which was secular but still involved with the relief efforts. I respect their decision. I don’t have all the information they might have so if they decided this was the best possible use of the money raised, that’s their right. I, however, also have the right to choose where my money goes as well, so I made the decision not to join in on this event.

I instead chose to donate money to Direct Relief, one of the highest rated charity organizations in North America. With Direct Relief, you can choose where your money goes to and they have very specific outlines of where the typhoon relief money goes to.

Make no mistake, I applaud Boston Pizza for their generosity in organizing the event in the first place. As a corporate entity, they were not obligated to do anything like that. I hope they will continue their generosity in the future.

I ask you to donate money to the charity of your choice as well.

So obviously this is a promotional stunt for Anchorman 2 but Ron Burgundy, aka Will Ferrell, is coming to Winnipeg next weekend. He’ll be joining the TSN broadcast staff at the Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings which I believe is some sort of onion ring convention.

I’m surprised they’re going to these lengths to promote a movie, especially when it’s in a market outside of the US. I can’t wait to see what happens next weekend.