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Toyota is opening up a new manufacturing plant in Ontario. Along with Ontario, many southern U.S. states were attempting to woo Toyota in choosing their respective territories for the site.

According to this CBC report, despite higher subsidies offered by the U.S., Ontario won out because Canadian workers are easier to train with a higher level of literacy and education. Let me supply you with a quote from the story:

“Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained – and often illiterate – workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use ‘pictorials’ to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.”

Now keep in mind what I just quoted you came from the mind of president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, an organization which has the goal of promoting Canadian interests in the auto industry. This actually maybe true but Toyota sure as hell won’t say it.

Also keep in mind that along with Nissan and Honda, even Mercedes-Benz has manufacturing facilities in the southern U.S. states. Though this might be the first signs of a new trend towards more educated auto plant workers. Who knows really?

To be honest, this doesn’t make southerners look very good at all.

I really have nothing to write about tonight. Let’s see… um, we’re on a new e-mail system now at work. We switched over to Microsoft Exchange today. Yep, we did… yep… My name is in the company address book now. I right-clicked on my name and looked at the properties. Under the title field, it said, “Engineer”. It’s still very hard to believe that I’m now a software engineer. Remember that old monster.com commercial where they deliver the new software engineer his first stack of business cards? He gingerly takes one out, runs his fingers over the raised type, and then violently sniffs the card before putting it away. Well, I didn’t do that, but I can relate.

In other work related news, I’ve had lunch at Connie’s Cook House two days in a row now. I had the lemon chicken today. I doubt we’ll go again tomorrow, but you never know.

And that brings us to the end of tonight’s abbreviated post.

When you run a web site, you’re privy to info like how people are getting your site. I search the logs for specific terms like “Google”. As you might imagine, I get to see what search terms people are using to find my site.

Once in a while, I’ll see spikes in specific search terms that all happen in a particular short period of time. For example, several weeks ago, I noticed I had many hits from people using the term “Angie Harmon” who happens to be an actress who on Law and Order. It was unusual to have so many hits on that term, so I myself used Google News on her. It turned out she had her second child the day before.

And just today, I got two really specific searches from Google from distinct IPs. The terms were as follows: thong, underwear, City TV, news, Vancouver. Hmmm… I’m not a genius but I’m thinking there must have been a City TV Vancouver news story on thong underwear which probably ran on Monday night. I have no idea what that story was since I didn’t write about that specific story, but it’s interesting to know it’s out there.

And in other news, I had beef chow fun for lunch today.

Stand-up comedians are an interesting lot. It’s a fascinating occupation with a long history. They have their own lingo, ways of doing things, and superstitions. Some stuff they keep within their own circles, rarely letting the public in on the secret. One such example is “The Aristocrats”.

What exactly is the “The Aristocrats”? I actually didn’t know until about two months ago. “The Aristocrats” lies somewhere between an inside “joke” and a competition for comedians. The basic premise begins like this: a comedian must start off the joke with a family visiting a talent agent to show off their act. After this, the comedian is free to improvise whatever he or she dream up. The goal is produce the most rude, disgusting, politically incorrect description of the family act. The end is constrained with the family calling the act, “The Aristocrats”. It is the common beginning and end that binds every comedian’s version together with everyone else’s.

Apparently, this little inside joke has been around for decades, passing from one comedian to the next. “The Aristocrats” however, will not be a secret for much longer. Comedians Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette have made an entire movie based on this premise. In his film, they’ve asked about 100 comedians to give their take on “The Aristocrats”. Participants include Drew Carey, Jason Alexander, Lewis Black, Tim Conway, Andy Dick, Carrie Fisher, and many more.

The trailer for “The Aristocrats” can be seen here. Worry not, the trailer contains not even single objectionable syllable, so feel free to view it at work.

What is not safe to view at work is the leaked version of the joke from the South Park guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Not surprisingly, they framed the joke around their most famous creations, the boys from the South Park cartoons. Before I give out the link, I cannot stress how utterly inappropriate this clip is for work environments. There’s no nudity, but the words coming out of Cartman’s mouth is worse than anything you’ve probably heard anyone say. I’m serious, if you’re a sensitive type of person, it’s best you sit this one out. Let me say this again, unless you’ve got the most liberal work environment in the world, don’t view the clip at work. Ok, so here we go…

The South Park take on “The Aristocrats”

As bad as the South Park version is, I’ve read that among the other versions in the movie, it doesn’t even crack the top five in terms of shock. Wow. The Aristocrats opens on August 12, 2005.

So apparently these long weekends are supposed to mean more when you’re a working stiff. I guess I can see that now. Then again, I’m guy that a had long weekend every single weekend last academic term.

While others had grand plans of partying, boozing, and/or camping for the weekend, my biggest goal was to sleep in. I still think I’m feeling the effects of OT week, or as I call it, “my second week on the job”. As the weekend draws to a close, I believe I got some rest, but certainly not as much as I could have.

The weekend started early for me, as in Thursday night, where I said goodbye to my friend Nenagh. She’ll be the best damn prof in Australia before you can even say “top chick”. We’ll all miss her. Thanks to Bryan and Sarah for hosting the event. You know, they never tell you at the beginning of grad school that you’ll have to say goodbye to all your friends eventually.

I tried my best to sleep in on Friday. I lounged around before playing some tennis in the afternoon. It was supposed to be a guys night out that evening, but Tyson and I wound up going on a “man-date” for dinner. It didn’t help that Tyson ordered hot tea for his drink. The waitress was kinda surprised. After our romantic dinner, we tried to see War of the Worlds, but the tickets were almost sold out and Bone had an early morning the next day. We left it for another day. I went home and watched TV shows I had downloaded earlier.

On Saturday, I slept in enough that I was late for brunch with friends at the Rugby Beach Club Grille. Their brunch is surprisingly good and no one wanted to kick us out of the restaurant after we were done eating. After dining, I headed downtown for some shopping. I was on the hunt for casual and tennis shoes. I am now convinced 98% of the athletic shoe market consists of basketball shoes. It was very difficult to find any tennis shoes. I am now leaning towards buying a pair of New Balance cross-trainers.

That evening I made the trek to Riverport with Tyson and Tom to finally see Mr. Katie Holmes and his movie. It was a really well made movie. It was technically flawless. The special effects were top-notch. The way they composited live action with CG elements was amazing. It was hard to tell where real life buildings and streets ended and the striders began.. whoops, I mean the tripods. Anyways, despite the excellent execution of the film making, the movie suffered from the same weakness as the original movie from the 50s… the ending. Now, for people who knew nothing of the original movie or the novel, I can easily see how the ending would have left them absolutely disappointed. Mr. Spielbergo has an easy way out of the jam now, because he can just say he was being faithful to the source material. Bit of trivia for you, the actor that played Cruise’s son was born in Nanaimo and once attended UBC as a commerce student.

I’m too tired to write about Sunday, but the highlight of the day by far was having dinner with Woba, Chiming, and Eddy. Those guys are a laugh a sec, thereby making the laugh frequency a stunning 1 Hz.

Tomorrow’s work day comes too soon. Until then my friends.

On Saturday, I spotted Greg Williams at approximately 12:35pm. He was walking out the front doors of the Regal Beagle located near W. Broadway and Vine. He stopped briefly at the doors to look at a dog and then proceeded towards the patio area. His Dodge Charger was no where to be seen.

Just read the article… not much more to say than that.

As you may have noticed, I did not blog during my lunch hour. In fact, it would have been incorrect to call it a “lunch” hour today. I had booked my haircut for 12:15pm today. When I arrived at 12:15pm on the dot, I was told my stylist was running behind schedule. It’s a good thing that the haircut place is only two blocks from my work.

Anyways, I didn’t get into the chair until 12:45pm. I was out the door by 1:15pm which essentially ate up my entire “lunch” hour. Having no time to get food, I had no choice but to return to work, albeit with less hair on my head. I think if I had more seniority, I could have buggered off a little longer, but I’m still the new guy around here.

When I got back, I don’t think anyone even realized that I was gone for more than an hour. If anyone did, they didn’t tell me. I guess it’s all good.

So something got me thinking today. You see, I paid off my entire Visa bill just a few days ago. I put a little too much money towards the balance, so I actually have a credit on my balance. Does this mean CIBC Visa will now pay me 19.5% interest on my credit? Man, that would be sweet. I can’t be the first one to think of this. You more experienced financial types out there, please enlighten me if you can. We could make millions together!

I left work today at the normal time of 6pm. It felt great. Today was the first day that I didn’t feel like I absolutely had to get something done and out the door before the day was going to end. That’s not to say we don’t have a lot of work ahead of us because we sure do. There’s going to be some tough weeks ahead but at least for today, things were ok.

I made it back to SJC for dinner by 6:30pm which was excellent in terms of time. It was nice having dinner among friends instead of eating out of take-out containers at the office. When I returned to my apartment it felt so early in the evening. It seemed like I had so much time to spend. I’m still really tired though. I’m really looking forward to the weekend. I need to learn to sleep in again.

Here’s some company news, the higher-ups are moving our offices. Where exactly is still in question. The building we’re in now has always been a temp location and is being treated as such. I’ve been told there are two locations we might be moving to: same general area of the temp building or downtown (possibly Yaletown). We won’t know until September or October apparently. This is unfortunate since I have to move at end of August. It would have been ideal to know our new office location before doing the move, but that’s not going to happen.

I’ve been told that the odds are leaning towards staying in the general area, but no one knows for sure. I’ve been thinking that I should hedge my bets and get a place near W. Broadway and Granville. That way, it’ll be an equal commute to either the current location or downtown.

Finding a new place to live is such a pain and I’ll get to do that while working overtime for the project too. Not fun.

Anyways, time for me to go bed. I’m going to try to blog during my lunch hour tomorrow.

I arrived at work today with supreme confidence that I wouldn’t have to work OT in the evening. I was wrong of course, but hey, at least I got to eat Stephos for dinner, and I didn’t even have to lineup!

Yep, my first milestone day as a real video game developer. Save for a couple of scary moments before 6pm, I actually got my stuff ready to go and checked in at relatively decent time. It’s just that when everyone is checking their code in all at once, things tend to break. I actually didn’t do a lot of work past 6pm, I was just waiting around to see if anyone needed my help. No one did and so finally I got the ok to head on home around 8:45pm.

I arrived home just in time to see a beautiful sunset on campus. It was gorgeous as any sunset on Cloud City. The way the sky was tinged with red and pink, it was enough to convince me and Ponyboy both to stay gold.

I know this is my 5 millionth proclaimation, but I swear I’m not going to work a single day of OT for the rest of the week. There’s no need for it with the next milestone date being more than three weeks away.

And for the people who I played croquet with yesterday, yes, that was the largest crystal meth lab in the history of this city that we walked by yesterday.

Well, I’m tired, time to wash off all the OT and get to bed.