Okay, the getting to bed early is falling apart. But I’ve been hanging out with friends for most of the day. In the morning I did the water-skiing lessons with some of them. It was a blast and I hope to do it again soon. Hopefully tomorrow, weather permitting.

I’m going to bed early again. (For a given value of early.) It’s nice to get up when it is still cool in the morning and go do stuff. Weather permitting. Hopefully water-skiing tomorrow.
I should sign up for scuba diving, but I’m still not sure of my health. You should not go diving if you have a stuffy nose. This morning I wasn’t sure, but at the end of the day I feel fine. I’m hoping it gets better, but I might have missed my chance if my nose gets worse.
And it has been a good day. After I wrote my last entry I went to the main bar and met a very nice girl. And I would like to think she is open to helping me not-doing-it-wrong. She was appreciative of a foot massage, although we found out she was a squealer. We would have probably stayed together except we both had things to do.
My excuse? Helping the beautiful girls change for the fashion show. Beautiful girls who have a good body image and don’t mind changing in front of stage hands.
I like this resort.
Oddly, I still don’t have a roommate. I’m not complaining, but it is weird. For once I don’t have to worry about having a snorer in my room.

An interesting experiment is taking place. I’m finding going to bed at a decent hour and then getting up early is a lot more productive than staying up late and sleeping in. I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn, but I am getting things done. Mostly spending time with friends though. I hope to do a water-skiing lesson tomorrow.
I spent some time in the afternoon helping with a fashion show. I’m not going to be in it, but I will help the beautiful girls backstage.

I caught an achingly beautiful girl checking me out this evening. I started spending time with her. She’s a porn star, but she was previously a computer programmer.
So, I got up the nerve and asked her out. I got shot down very politely. She has a boyfriend and wants to stay faithful. But if she didn’t, she would.
Still, I’m getting out there. And she is still very hot.
I think we’re going to try going parasailing at some point.

I’ve been at the resort for awhile. There are a lot of my old friends here and we are already making plans for the rest of the week. It’s good to see them.
I’ve been working on the goal of not-doing-my-vacation-wrong, and it is progressing. I’ve been drinking and talking to women. Some of them are single, some are not. My friends here have been encouraging, giving me pointers. I had one say that I should be working harder on a particular girl, even though she has a boyfriend. Here. I find that idea uncomfortable. However, the girl in question actually said out loud she couldn’t ever consider being a swinger.
As far as I’m concerned I should just be treating her as a friend and move along to the next one.

I’m in Jamaica. I arrived with all my luggage. Now I’m on the bus to the resort. But we appear to have taken a rest stop where the locals can ply their wares. I’ve been here enough that I am comfortable ignoring them. I’ve seen this stop before. They have nothing I want that I don’t already have. Why would I need another conch shell.
The weather is rainy. They say it is a warm rain, and I can trust them on that. I’m just not testing the theory out yet.
But the sea air is hopefully improving my health. I can’t feel my throat tickle as much anymore.

I’m worried about my health. I’ve got a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat. I think the lack of sleep has weakened my immune system. I need to sleep more.
So I should stop watching movies on my airplane monitor and just get to sleep. I’m not even watching good movies. On purpose though. I want to watch good movies on big screens, not little tiny ones. So I have to save those ones for a better venue.
I did sleep a bit on the flight to Toronto. But the football player behind me kept punching buttons on his seat monitor. I’m glad I wasn’t sitting beside one. They are huge. Much worse than a fat person.
They have fancy diamond encrusted watches.
I have remembered something I forgot. For the Death Race I got little vials of liquid that give you an energy boost for 3-6 hours. I have no other reason to use them because it isn’t often that I need to stay up late. This is probably the one time where I could have used them.

I’m off to Jamaica now. I don’t believe I’ve forgotten anything yet. That puts me ahead of last year. I’m really tired though. I was up late last night packing and nervous excitement got me up too early. And I know I’m not going to have much time to sleep in Jamaica. It isn’t nice to be starting at a sleep deficit. Maybe I’ll sleep on the plane.
My only regret is that I am missing halloween this year. I do enjoy dressing up and going to the bars. The one time I’m socially acceptable. I saw a few costumes on Whyte Avenue today, but I’ll miss the important day tomorrow.
I’ve been hearing a lot about socialization and alcohol’s influence on it. So I’m going to try to use alcohol to self-medicate myself into social skills. I can think of some people who will take great offense at this. But the majority of people have claimed I’ve been doing my vacations wrong. I would like to do them right so something has to change.
The Edmonton airport doesn’t seem to have free wireless internet anymore so I can’t post this entry right now. I’ll put it up when I have access. So I can’t tell anyone I’m on a plane full of football players. I’m glad I got through check-in before them. There are a lot of them and they are very large. Montréal Alouettes. They might be cranky because I hear that Edmonton beat them tonight.

I used to think that Java programmers were coddled. I entered computers before that language. So I have learned to deal with memory management, pointer arithmetic, and rewriting the program for different platforms. That’s what real programmers do.
Now that I have been moving into Java programming I am beginning to change my mind. I think I am the one that was coddled. My tools for programming are all robust and mature. My debuggers let me dance around the program counter with impunity. My IDE connects automatically with version control and will help me maintain the code. It will automatically show me the variables that are currently interesting instead of making me hunt them down.
Java does not do any of this. I feel like I’m programming with fifteen year old tools.
In Java’s defense, a large part of this might have to do with the tools they are making me use at work. There are probably better ones out there, and I’m just feeling bitter.

Hmmm. I don’t like the sound of that. I can hear by alarm clock going off in the other room.

My alarm clock is over ten years old. It does not work properly anymore. It still tells the time, but the actual alarm part of it has descended into annoying. I find I sleep better if I don’t have an alarm to wake me; I still wake up at approximately the correct time. But, in its age, my clock has decided to ring the alarm even if I have set it off.
This hasn’t bothered me too much. Since I don’t trust it, I’ve never set it, which leaves it at the default alarm time of midnight. Apparently I can turn it off in my sleep because I can’t recall it waking me. (Ironically, if it is set for seven in the morning, that will cause me to wake at five in the morning, but that is my brain’s fault.) But last night I came in after midnight to find my alarm ringing and decided enough was enough. Out came the screwdrivers and soon my clock was in pieces.
I found out some interesting things. (Nothing entertaining, like don’t poke electronic bits that are plugged into wall sockets.) The crux of the problem is that the on/off switch no longer has a metal part to allow it to complete a circuit. But why would that set off the alarm?
Apparently, the default state of the clock is to ring the alarm. When it is set to the off position, a theoretically working switch completes the circuit to not ring. When it is set to the on position, all the circuit does is turn on the light to indicate that the alarm is set. i.e. The on light is totally separate from the act of ringing.
The handyman’s secret weapon was tinfoil. Ram it in the on/off switch so it can start doing its job again. Another option would be to cut the speaker cord, or permenately complete the “off” circuit. But I still have the idea that there might be times that I want to have a working alarm again.

I have a weird situation at work. I do not feel challenged there. I haven’t been happy lately and I’ll admit I haven’t been doing my best job. This could possibly be described as slacking off. This is not a good thing to be doing in this wintery economic climate. Especially since money is tight for me right now. Actually, it isn’t really that tight, I’ve just artificially made it that way because I am investing too much through automatic withdrawals and I’m too lazy to change that.
Still, I borrowed a large amount of money in April to go investing with and now I have to pay the interest on that regularly. I know, terrible time to invest. You can’t make me feel stupider than I already do.
Anyway! I got a surprise announcement from my manager today. I’ve been promoted, given a raise, and I’m going to be transferred to a project that actually has life and people caring about it.
I do not usually expect life to be that nice to me.

I had decided to once again go into a low spending situation for last month. You know, the challenge to spend less than $300 on my credit card for one billing period. It didn’t go that well. I kept the spending down, but I failed right out of the gate.
To prepare for it, I did a bunch of shopping the day before the billing period started. I filled up on gas. I did some grocery shopping. I signed up for Match.com. The problem was that all of these purchases took place on a Saturday. Apparently, that means they don’t go through until the weekend is over.
Then my first cell phone bill arrived. This was different from my previous landline bill; I had the option of doing direct deposit from my bank, or putting it on my credit card. One lets me delay paying for a month. I did the ethical thing and put it on my credit card, further making my goal unreachable.
I, of course, am still injured from the Death Race, and it is time I saw a physical therapist for it. I could try and hold off, but this is a medical expense and I can’t stall any longer. That went on the credit card as well.
But just because I am guaranteed to not succeed is no reason to stop trying. I still lived frugally for that month.
My physical therapist highly recommended I see a masseuse. Apparently most of the muscles in my body are way too tight. There was a masseuse that was supposedly the best in Edmonton. They specialized in runners. They wouldn’t be able to take me for three weeks though. Luckily, they phoned yesterday. There was a cancellation and I was able to get a therapeutic massage today.
It does not feel nice like the usual massages you can get. This one hurt. And it hurt a lot. And I am most likely going to be very sore tomorrow. And the next day.
I’m going to really try to keep the long distance running down.

In the movie Groundhog Day there is a moment early on where Phil Connors is accosted by Ned Ryerson. Ned, despite it being years since they last saw each other, recognizes Phil immediately and Remembers His Name!
Today, I went to a play and saw someone I recognized. I haven’t seen her in years and I thought she had gone off to Scotland. It took me an hour to try and remember her name. After which I felt I could engage her in pleasant conversation.
Is this common, or is it just me? Can other people remember names instantly? Ned seemed to have no trouble.
The play was very good. “Thrubwell Pies”. I would highly recommend it to a friend. And I good lesson in British accents. It dealt a lot with pies.
In the middle of the first act, my cell phone went off. I am new to having a cell phone, but I’m surprised with how fast it took for me to have one go off in a theatre. In my defense, it was set to vibrate and, if that didn’t work, the ringer was set to as low as possible. I don’t think anyone noticed.
At the intermission I found it was a friend telling me to not bring a pie to the game tomorrow.
Coincidence?

It is a matter of public record that I have no fashion sense. I try my best, but if left to my own devices, I would try and wear essentially the same thing every day. I do not know how to accessorize either.
I had a friend say she would come over and help me organize my closet. Well, essentially to purge anything I shouldn’t be wearing. Goodwill will probably like this plan. So I’ve removed all my clothes and put them onto the floor so I can see what I have.
In the process I found that when I went shopping at Costco on Saturday, I bought a pair of pants that are identical to ones I already have.
Like I said, I need help.

I’m not proud of myself today. I had a date at 6:00, so I left work promptly at 5:00. Of course, this is the day that traffic backs up. And I get into one of those modes where I don’t want to wait in a jam, so I’ll make every turn possible to avoid them. This inevitably lends itself to more and interesting traffic jams. Eventually it ends up frustrating me completely.
The lack of pride comes from a desperate gamble to make it through a yellow light. I’m pretty sure it turned to red before I entered the intersection. And the wheels did feel rather wobbly on the sharp turn I had to do.
The annoying part is that I would have easily made the light, safely and legally, if a bicyclist hadn’t chosen an inopportune time to use a pedestrian crosswalk. This delayed me by precious seconds that I really needed to make the light.
If you’ve ever been stuck in far too much traffic, you will understand the frustration at waiting for another long red light. Particularly when you have an important appointment to get to.
In my heart I’m sure that light had a red-light camera attached to it. So if that bicyclist had been a few seconds later, I wouldn’t have a ticket coming to me.
Or if I had just slipped through the crosswalk before he had entered my lane.

Not proud!

Which is what happens when a friend needs to borrow the shower after she’s been exercising. 🙂

What? Did you honestly think I would be blogging about this if the situation was what you were thinking?

A week after I ran the Death Race I went on a 19 km run. It wasn’t too bad, but I got cocky; I charged up a hill faster than I should have. Ever since then I’ve had a muscle in my buttock that has not felt good. Well, something back there hasn’t been good. Pulled muscle? Torn ligament? I don’t know.
I’ve still been running, but I’ve been taking it easier on hills. And I don’t try to race faster. Still, the injury remains after a month.
Today I went to my physical therapist. It’s weird. I haven’t been there for over a year, and I feel like I should be going there more often. Is my natural state to be injured?
Anyway, I’ve got some stretches I’m supposed to do every day. Unfortunately I’m not supposed to run more than 10km. This is going to kill my Sunday mornings. But, they never said anything about not running more often, just not as far.
And I’m supposed to warm up before stretching…

I’m a wild one today. I decided to do maintenance on my life instead of anything else that you might do on a weekend. And there is something that has been bugging me. I did a lot of journal entries when I was in Europe last year, but I was always in a rush to get them into a computer, because internet cafés are not cheap. It has bugged me that there were spelling errors and no informative hotlinks.
So I spent all afternoon correcting that.
And reminiscing about Europe. That was a good time.
One of the last entries I did was a plan to go to The Keg to get my fill of Alberta beef. I still have not gone.
I remember a similar plan to go to the Sawmill after the Death Race and have a caloric intensive meal. I haven’t done that either.
Although I did have a prime rib at the casino on Thursday.

It was not my most productive day at work today. Not enough sleep will do that. With the lateness that I was up, I was hoping that as soon as my head hit the pillow I would be asleep. That didn’t happen.
It felt like I was awake all night. I know that wasn’t true, but it was not a restful sleep. Muscle pain that I can easily ignore, felt like my leg was on fire. And I think I was dreaming that I was having a dream. Look, it was weird. All in all, not a restive night.
I find that when I’ve not had enough sleep, although caffeine will help keep me awake, it feels like I’ve been crying. (Wait a minute. I’m a guy! I don’t cry, so how would I know what that feels like?)
I’ve also been discovering things about my body, as I get older, that I would never have guessed would happen. For instance, caffeine is actually starting to act weird on me. Last year, a coke would have given me a nice energy jump and I could still go to bed. I remember a time I would drink a Coke right before going to sleep because when the body was shutdown it wouldn’t process the caffeine until I woke up the next day.
Now it seems that when I have a caffeinated drink in the evening I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep. Surprise surprise. Even though I am sleepy. Isn’t the point of caffeine to prevent you from getting sleepy.
Then again, chocolate puts me to sleep if I’m not doing something particularly interesting.
Last night I had two cans of caffeinated soft drink and a candy bar. It might explain a bit.

Last night I was up very late volunteering for a casino. I was a cashier, handing people large amounts of cash for “worthless” plastic discs. So I didn’t get to bed until about 2:30 this morning. I’m off to work now.
It wouldn’t be so bad, but I have to be alert today because I’m hosting a potluck party. I’m doing a dessert that I was dared to do several months ago, molten lava cake. (Do I need ice cream for that? I don’t have any.)
The bad part about that is that at the casino I had a chocolate fudge cake for dessert that looked suspiciously like a molten lava cake. (Didn’t mind that there was no ice cream for that. Although there was whipped cream…)

I went to Fort Edmonton today. My company was having a barbecue there so we all got free admission. It was my first time in the park, but I didn’t have time to really wander around and get an in-depth view of it. More of a high-level view where I get to see a few things quickly.
The whole thing looked very… educational.
The fort itself was interesting and it was surprising to see what looked like a mansion within the wooden walls.
The horses in the park all looked bored. They would just stand there and stare forward. Very little energy. I talked to a driver and found that they were all old. They aren’t worked very hard. They have a good life.
It is awkward to talk to the workers there if they are in character. We both know it is pretend, so who are we trying to fool? Sometimes I have a question and I don’t want the runaround of how you have to travel two days to the homestead. How much bread do you make in a day?! Really?
Ironic, because I usually like to encourage roleplaying.

I had signed up for a course on GIS this weekend. I like maps. I use computers. It seemed like a natural fit. And more importantly, I want to start improving myself.
So it was really disappointing that I got a phone call telling me the class was cancelled. I feel sorry for the girl who had to phone up the students. I don’t know how the others reacted because I was the first contact.
Maybe this is a good thing. I now have time on the weekend to get my life organized again. The vacation to Montréal took a big chunk out of my life and now I need to get back on track.
Nah. It’s a bad thing.

I was driving home today when my cell phone rang. It was in the middle of playing music through an iPod device that isn’t completely compatible with the iPhone. I tried to answer, but I’m not sure if the device disrupted the connection or the other person just hung up.
The important thing is that it scared me how much I was distracted during this event. I could tell I wasn’t concentrating very well on the road. It was a good lesson on driving and cell phone use. Don’t do it!
On the plus side it was very handy during grocery shopping today. I was trying to buy some bittersweet chocolate for a recipe, but I could only find dark chocolate. Is it the same? Then I got the bright idea to use the web browser to look up the information. This was after I used it to convert ounces into grams. I couldn’t find any explicit definition. So I phoned my mother and asked her.
It seems they are equivalent.
The checkout line was painfully slow. I waited over half an hour. To pass the time, I amused myself by browsing on the web. Couldn’t do that before.
I’m beginning to really like having an iPhone.