I miss Firefox

Begin Metablogging

 

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged, but you were warned if I remember correctly.  Oddly enough, if I actually manage to write the blog that seems to be oozing out of me I will not only fail to give valid reason for not blogging this extended weekend. The basic explanation is that I blog when I'm bored at work, when I'm bored at home I just find something to do or take a nap. If I could successfully nap at work I would likely never blog at all.

 

Long Weekended

 

So, after having a decent three day (sat-mon) weekend I came into work at the new building Tuesday morning ready to take on the world.  After getting myself a "coffee" I sat down at my desk and got everything all moved where I need it to be on my desktop, briefly whined about the lack of FireFox and got logged into the phone.

 

Fortunately before taking a call I opened up my schedule. Oddly enough it seemed I had the day off. I double checked my schedule for the week and noticed that, in fact, I had the next three days off. I carried my awful "instant coffee without sugar" back onto the bus and back home, where I put milk and sugar into it making it into "passable caffeine source coffee" and set about distracting myself for an additional three days.

 

Day one didn't work out very well because it was Trish's day off and she had intended to spend it alone, meanwhile my latest temporary obsession emerged which got her even more cranky.

 

The rest of day one and the rest of the surprise three days off are a little foggy.  I know I spent a good number of hours in the Kingdom of Loathing (playing, chatting, listening to the shoutcast Radio-KOL station), had 2 pots of espresso (let's say, 10 shots worth) in a 40 minute period, played a level of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, slept an awful lot, stayed up way too late a lot, took a lot of naps on the couch, read very little, somewhere, I think Tuesday i may have gone to my brother in law's birthday party at Dick's Drive in and Dairy Dip. I also ate an entire box of Cheerios... uhm... it was nice... like I was back in college again... except without hanging out in person.

 

Last night I couldn't sleep so I stayed up till like 1:30 am playing YuGiOh! with people online.

 

The New Place

 

So the new building (they moved all of the Ottawa call centers to a new mall call center) is pretty cool.  The monitors were much nicer when I came in on my day off because they were running at native resolution, which is greatly desirable with LCDs.

 

Also, the systems have the "run" command disabled, which is a minor inconvenience. The phones don't have a "mod" button to call an advanced tech which is a bit annoying. The BIG problem is that the computers don't have FireFox, or at least mine doesn't.  I guess it's not all bad, just annoying.

 

Other annoyances are that there is no more free sugar or coffee whitener in the break room, and instant coffee tastes awful black.  I think I'd be better off eating the crystals.

 

I'm focusing on the negative because I just can't see any advantage to me, the agent, at the new building. The computers are faster but I have a hard time focusing on the LCD aliased everything and there's no FireFox to enjoy the extra speed.

 

They've locked these things down real good so I can't fix it myself, I even tried execute the right .cpl file and it's blocked.

 

Finally

 

Well, I'm gonna post this now... when I manage to choke down this caffeinated sludge and it starts to make me less foggy I might make another post... I think I'll actually spell check this one.

 

Benjie

 

CURRENTLY READING: The Eye of the World

CURRENTLY OBSESSED WITH: Between obsessions right now I think.

Last Day at Lancaster

No Caffeine Yet Today

As it turns out, yes, my brain doesn't like writing blog entries quite as much without caffeine in me, I'll need to get another one of those canisters or instant coffee again... or wake up early enough to make myself a thermos of espesso before work... or start spending money on coffee... the new building is right across from a Timmy's and is in the same mall as a Treats... or I could buy a 2Litre of Caffeinated Pop every day.  I'll need to come up with something, maybe I can bum some instant coffee off the guy who just came in... I'll make coffee as bad as ciggarets yet eh?

I could deal with endless call after call a lot better if I was sufficiently caffeinated.

Wikis Abound

So, I like wikis. I would call myself a "wiki enthusiast", if you will.

The first wiki I ran into was Wikipedia, I really liked the idea of an ecyclopedia that was a common work of humanity.  It was really cool and I acctually added a short phrase to one of the pages and was all excited to be part of it. A lot of people have been questioning the validity of wikipedia, for me it's got enough general information to get me started on a subject, I might not trust my life to it but I'll let it define meme for me.

I then ran into www.seedwiki.com, a place that let me make my own wiki, it was hard to use, ugly, and I decided to go back to HTML for my own  web publicationing.

Next one I ran into was the Sping Wiki, the wiki for the fully 3D Multiplayer Adaptation of a Total Annihilation style RTS. That was really cool, I started quite a few pages there and helped a lot with organizing and moving stuff around... also made it my business to yell at people posting information in the forums without diplicating it in the wiki and answering peoples forum questions with links to the wiki.  The best thing about wikis like this is you can leave gaps, or get bored halway through documenting something, and quite often someone will finish it off for you.

Then, the coolest wiki of all time was created, ELOTH:TES, redifining what wiki's were for and really what kind of thing the internet can produce.

I started my own wiki last night, to help me organize the developement of the card game I invented.  It's not very far allong, but you can find it here. I keep trying to make this thing work and maybe if I have a place that let's me work on it effectively from anywere it might acctually go somewhere.

More Meta-Blogging

I now have coffee, someone was nice enough to give me a spoonful of instant maxwell house (it's still cooling down).  My blog probably seems odd and disjointed because I've been writing it at work on breaks and between calls.  I have the next three days off so I might not get the chance to blog again before tuesday when I start at the new building.

Tommorow I have to go shopping for Trish.

Benjie

Today is not Yesterday

My Day

I was going to write last night, but instead I watched Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory... I thought it was pretty cool.  I don't really know what to write about here today, yesterday had a bunch of stuff in it that I really enjoyed but seeing as I'm inexplicably cranky today it's almost like I don't want to remember having a good day yesterday.

Anyways, work was fine, a good balance for calls and green time.  People sitting nearby to talk to is always nice too, acctually remembered to bring a lunch too, which is a nice thing.

After work wife, sister, brother in law and I went out to "Joeys Only" sea food. I had a "shrimp trio" and it was good, but not as good as the leftover snow crab leg bits I stole from jeremy.  I also figured out how to use one of the crab-meat-extraction tools that no one else could figure out.

After that we went to Price Club and bought a bunch stuff we probably don't need very much but will likely taste very good (I recall something about fruit and lunch meat and taco seasoning, and the C&TCF DVD). Saw the "Series of Unfortunate Events" boxed sets and was a little annoyed to see them a lot cheaper then I payed for the individual ones. I kinda wonder why they are having 4 boxed sets of 3 books and where the 13th book is supposed to fit.  Also had some free sushi, which was nice.

After that we went back (all 4) to our (wife and I's) place and played first a game of "1000 Blank White Cards", which turned out well (people don't like a lot of my cards but I don't see how that's supposed to make the game any LESS fun for me... I like being annoying) I think.  After we played a game Jule Ann Calls "Hat" which is basically a combination of Cherades and Taboo.

Then the movie and the sleeping and the not writing mentioned earlier.

Retail Therapy<Tetris

Apparently they have figured out that shopping increases Dopamine levels in peoples brains, that's why they get addicted to it, it acctually makes them phisiologically "happy".  I read a study a while ago about a similar effect from certain types of video games, particularly in women playing Tetris.

Basically the explaination is that women (and probably men for that matter, these old studies made assumtions I don't think we NEED to bother with, but seeing how this is related to Shopping and Tetris I think we all will asume it's mostly women who are most affected anyways) who play Tetris register heightend Dopamine (or other Endorphins os something, stress relieving happy drugs, you know, like the ones you get from chocolate... women again?) levels.  The reason sited was that Tetris is a chaos resolution situation.

Apparently people get really stressed playing a level, or when they get close to top and the blocks start coming faster, and the music get's more and more stressful and the brain copes with this by increasing the flow of stress relieving goo into the system.  When you beat a level, or even when you lose, the stress is immediately resolved leaving you with more stress relieving brain goo then you really need for your current situation.  Then you repeat this process over and over again for a while and kind of solidify that happy feeling.

The idea behind this study about shopping making people feel runs along similar finds, you put yourself in an artificially stressful situation, and then feed youself with a minor success like finding a nice pair of shoes. Buying new shoes might not seem all that feel goody, but all that extra brain goo left over from trying to deal with the stresses of shopping make it seem like you've won the nobel prize or something because your brain is in "dealing with stress" mode while you're acctual situation is positive.

Something like that... Anyways, Tetris and Chocolate is a lot cheaper then shopping so I think it's better...

Work Sucks Quite a Bit

Everyone calling me continues to be stupid, annoying, too nice, too rude, too smart, too fast, too slow or otherwise imperfect causing me increased stress... and the chocolate bar and coke I had for lunch are loseing their positive effects.

Making origami inflatable frogs sometimes helps.

Christmas Is Coming, and so is Winter-een-mas

So I havn't done any christmas shopping yet,  Trish has so that means I'm "covered" for everything but her.  I'm not sure what to get but she's given me a good list for me to completely ignore.

Don't forget Winter-een-mas the last week of January, a time to celebrate Video Games and all the other things that keep us safe and warm inside while the world is covered in horrible horrible coldness.

Benjie

Write a Lot, Read a Lot/Just Keep Writing

Text Editting Software

So I Downloaded something called Metapad and this thingy called Aspell... I found them doing google searches... I'm sure they would love me to link to them, but I have this odd feeling that it wouldn't matter anyways.

My wife wines that I always open notepad instead of resonable things like Microsoft Word.  I never bother trying to explain why anymore, but the main reason is simplicity, it takes a lot less time to open notepad then to open MSWord, I don't have a lot of extra toolbars and features and stuff that I don't need when I'm just "writing stuff down".

Anyways, I tried writing again yesterday, it's just not working out for me.  I am working, however, under the assumption that at some point, if I just keep writing a bunch, I will come up with something worth reading.  I don't know if this is true.

I have gotten pretty good at writing the first couple hundred words of something. I have a few starts that are in the thousands of words too, so I know I'm capable of that.  I keep getting stuck on trivialities and my cyber-punk-hackers and super-computers spend an awful lot of time hanging out together in breakfast diners and a lot of my narration goes to describing what they are having for breakfast and who the diner is named after.  I've been reading Robert Jordan's "The Eye of the World" and I think I might just have to keep at writing about people hanging around and walking between places because eventually SOMETHING is bound to happen.

According to Steven King ("On Writing"), the secret to writing is to just keep reading and writing (I think I may have summarized), and according to Piers Anthony the secret to avoiding "Writer's Block" is to keep writing down ideas even if they don't have anything to do with what you have on the go (gleaned from various authors notes)... the other thing they mentioned that I have a hard time doing is figuring out who you are writing for.

I Hate Stupid People/Caffeine Induced Insanity

I don't really hate them I suppose.  I do however hate talking to them, hate the fact that they exist, hate the social structures responsable for their creation, and hate many individual stupid people. I also hate when smarter people pretend to be stupid or don't bother thinking because it's easier. I'm pretty sure this means I hate myself most of the time, but I probably already knew that.

I do however have a very loose definition of stupid, probably the reason I think I hate stupid people is that I assume if someone is pissing me off they are probably stupid. Added to this, I don't like many smart people sometimes, pretty much anyone I concider to try too hard, or those for whome things come easily.

It doesn't help that caffeine sometimes makes me cranky and reduces the amount of patience I have for people who arn't me. I mean, I'm not even making sense here because I'm full of caffeine. I'm pretty sure it jump starts my creativity and helps me focus better on what I'm doing. It also makes me talkative and interesting... hence why I used to drink three cups of it before doing my radio show.  Crashing sucks though, I really need to just drink and drink until I can't stay awake anymore... or just go to sleep whenever the caffeine runs out I suppose... I don't know where I was going with this.

Boardom

So yesterday I was cranky because I was full of caffeine and then I was home alone and hungry and had gotten bored of everything and then I took a bath and it didn't make me feel any better.  Trish got home and we had a nice dinner of soft tacos and we were talking and stuff, and then I wanted to play a board game, but neither of us wanted to play any of the ones we had, so we went to bed, and then got back up and listened to music while I poked around on the Internet while she red and the couch, and I did the writing stuff I mentioned before... I think I need to come up with a good solid game that we can both enjoy together.

Benjie
(gmail ALSO makes a pretty good text editor)

Spelling Corrected: Origami

As it turns out, I can do many things.  I can prepare food that is fit for human consumption for example, the mashed potatoes were a little runny but otherwise good.  I can fold origami frogs from tin-foil as well. I also managed to make a mess of my desk at work folding origami from newspapers and beat Pikmin2 (well, the credits rolled but I still have a lot more treasure to go back and collect)... I can read, I can fix peoples Internet connections...

I couldn't sleep last night, I think I drank too much coke... so I watched the latest Homestar Runner... oh and I beat that 96KB FPS game everyone keeps mentioning all over the place... you can just google it, I don't need to link to it.

Anyways, life is still stupid and I hate working... but we get to move to a new building next week so that's nice... and I might get moved to Commercial in January which is even nicer.

Meanwhile I continue to talk to complete buffoons who babble incoherently about trivial things that I'm payed to pretend I care about enough to make go away... the joy of living... I want my Arcade...

Origami

As it turns out, I can do many things.  I can prepare food that is fit for human consumption for example, the mashed potatoes were a little runny but otherwise good.  I can fold origami frogs from tin-foil aswell. I also managed to make a mess of my desk at work folding origami from newspapers and beat Pikmin2 (well, the credits rolled but I still have a lot more treasure to go back and collect)... I can read, I can fix peoples internet connections...

I couldn't sleep last night, I think I drank too much coke... so I watched the latest homestar runner... oh and I beat that 96KB FPS game everyone keeps mentioning all over the place... you can just google it, I don't need to link to it.

Anyways, life is still stupid and I hate working... but we get to move to a new building next week so thats nice... and I might get moved to Comercial in January which is even nicer.

Meanwhile I continue to talk to complete buffoons who babble incoherantly about trivial things that I'm payed to pretend I care about enough to make go away... the joy of living... I want my Arcade...

Blog Post

My life is Feeling Stupid Again

I blame seasonal affective disorder, in combination with caffeine abuse and eating too much poutine last night.  I did watch the last 2 part episode of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", which is acctually a really cool show last night, and I've been playing a lot of Pikmin2 recently... but things arn't working out as well as I'd like... or something.

Anyways, I can't control the elements or fly still, which is a big dissapointment, I mean, I'm 24... I should have gotten my mutant powers LONG ago.  I'm thinking maybe I'll sprout wings at some point... but I'm losing hope for that too... maybe I'll get bitten by a radioactive bat... I'd probably just get rabies anyways.

I decided last night that I needed a symbol for myself, I tried a seven pointed star and it didn't work out.  I'm thinking a stylized sea turtle might do the trick, I like sea turtles, they are a lot cooler then those landlocked Totoises.  You see, people say that turtles are slow, but that's just on land... and aside from that, most things that do well in the oceans wouldn't even have a chance climbing up a beach... anyways... I think they are cool or whatver.

I still havn't really gotten back into writing (like I was ever really into it eh?), I did write a couple hundred words at the beginning of November but the story isn't really going where I want it to.  Some days I just can't write, some days I just don't want to write, and some days I write for an hour or more and it feels like I'm going nowhere.

Oddly enough, I'm looking forward more to Winter-een-mas than to acctual Christmas, probably because I'm not really going to be around any of my family for it, we're going to celebrate on the 17th, and it turns out I work till 3:30 that day... 3 day weekend this weekend though so that's kinda nice.

Anyways... yeah... whatever...

Benjie

Currently Reading: Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time Book.

My Life is Too Boring to Post about... I SWEAR!

So today I woked up, watched the Black Cauldron, ate french fries and poutine, poked around the Interweb a bit, ripped bunch of christmas CDS (864MDs of Christmas Cheer, and counting), and went to church... Trish was a jerk for only about 20% of the day, and I'm pretty sure it was my fault for having too much caffeine. I don't blog much because when I'm surfing the web 8 hours a day at work I don't have access to this site... great excuse eh?

Most Recently Finished: The Wastelands: The Dark Tower III
Currently Reading: The first wheel of time book.
Currently Playing: Pikmin2(GC), TA-Spring
Currently Downloading: Avatar, The Last Airbender (19-20, final episode of the season, 2 parts)