Today we had the Corporate Challenge Power Pull competition. Basically from Noon until 4:00 PM I went through a total of five tug-o-war events. We easily left our poll, beating everyone in the three pulls. The next pull we lost, but to the eventual gold medal finalist. We then won the bronze in our last round. Looking at the gold medal competition, I think we could have taken the winners of the silver medal.
After the Power Pull, there was the scavenger hunt tally. We had almost all of the items that were needed. But, there was a variable point prize: See how many people you can get into a human pyramid and get that many points. But their definition of a pyramid was really lousy: At least three rows high, with one less person on each row. So you could have twenty people on the bottom, nineteen in the middle, and eighteen on top, and you would qualify as a pyramid (not a trapezoid?) worth 57 points. No one was that bad, but a company that beat us had twenty one people in their pyramid. My company could only scrounge up 12 people. Still, we got bronze.
When I got home, I gave cute girl a call. She was busy with groceries, but she proposed taking my number and calling back later. So now the ball is in her court. If she is interested in me, she can call and we can do something. Otherwise, it wasn’t meant to be. The only problem is that a man answered the phone first. That can’t be good.
Wait and see.

This morning I took my Mac into Westworld computers to see if they can figure out why it is so slow. It was under AppleCare so I didn’t expect it to cost anything. But apparently that only applies if they find something wrong with it. If everything works, it does cost money.
The only thing wrong is that it doesn’t have enough memory to handle the latest OS. One memory upgrade later and it’s moving along quite well. There were two problems with this whole operation though.

1. I thought Apple had moved past this, but to upgrade memory on an iBook requires taking out one of the 128mb memory cards and replacing it with a bigger one. Now I have a spare 128mb memory card that isn’t doing anyone any good. In other words, to upgrade memory requires tossing old memory.
2. I looked through the recently opened files on my Mac. The last few files opened were thumbnails of pictures I’ve taken. Including those from my recent vacation to Jamaica. My VERY GOOD vacation. So I feel like my privacy was invaded. I complained, but there isn’t much that can be done. I don’t want someone losing their job over this, and I’m not that offended, but I don’t want it to happen again.

So I phoned cute girl again. I had said I would do it this week, and I am a man of my word. I didn’t get to talk to her long because I caught her walking out the door to go to NextFest. I consider this a good thing, because that means she likes theatre. I did a brief mention about theatre to indicate that I enjoy it too.
As I said, she was busy at present, but is willing to have me call her back tomorrow afternoon.
Further updates as they warrant.

So I’ve been thinking.
When I called the girl yesterday, at no point did she suggest I call back later. That was me. I’m worried now that this was just a brush-off. She doesn’t really want me to call.
Let’s face it, when it comes to women, I’m hopelessly confused. I can’t pick up signals to save my life. For all I know, she only wanted to get together for a one night stand on Saturday, and I didn’t figure it out.
I’ve noticed that I have an easier time speaking with married women. At least with them I know that nothing is going to happen, so I can relax. I’d like to relax around all women, but really, it’s not going to happen.
The music I’m listening to seems oddly appropriate.
I would love, once in my life, to be able to pick up a girl successfully. Just so I can know how to do it properly. The Continuing Education courses never seem to teach anything useful. “Picking up loose women for beginners”, “Level of attention to give a girl, the safe zone between creepy stalker and just not interested”, and “Reading women for geeks”.
To top it all off, the newspaper had an article about how there are a large number of single people in Canada, and a lot of them have accepted that they will never marry. That was not the pick me up I was looking for.

Today, while I was driving to work, I saw my pet peeve happen before my eyes. The person in front of me threw a cigarette butt out their car window. I hate that!
The thing that made this different was that the car in question was plastered with an advertisement for Morgex. “Phone Cheryl” at this convenient phone number. Easy enough to remember that for the rest of the drive. When I passed her, I saw that the driver had already lit another cigarette and was puffing away.
At work, I dialed the number.
“Hello, this is Cheryl.” Score!
“Hello, I was driving behind you this morning and I was very offended when I saw you toss a cigarette butt out the window.”
Dead silence.
I continue: “Could you please not do that in the future.” I’m trying to be polite here, although my first instinct was to be snarky.
Then the raspiest voice I’ve ever heard “Thank you for your advice.” This person has obviously been chain smoking for a long time.
I had a good feeling for the rest of the morning.

At work today, I asked some coworkers for some advice. The gaggle of documenters are usually good for this, and they don’t take anything too seriously. I asked about the best way to call a girl after she has given you a phone number. I got some suggestions, which I planned to use for ammunition when I phoned the cute girl from Saturday. First I’ll get a good conversation going, and then see if she wants to go to a movie together. Of course, asking these people for advice was like announcing it on the PA system, and I had Kevan pumping me for details soon after.
Interesting side note: He overheard a conversation between two beauty estheticians while coming up the stairs this morning. The energetic one was heard to claim that she had seen every Star Trek episode. He instantly thought that this would be a good girl for me. Apparently I’m supposed to go down to the beauty esthetician academy and ask for a haircut by someone who likes Star Trek.
But I digress!
So, this evening I spent about half an hour pumping myself up to phone her. When I did, there was an answer on the first ring, and it wasn’t a pizza parlor. It was her actual number. That’s one fear gone, now I have to deal with the talking-to-her one.
Unfortunately, she was not that thrilled to hear from me. Her friend was in the hospital. I didn’t get the details, but apparently some people are crazy. She was busy calling the people she knew. So my telephone call wasn’t that welcome. I said I’ll try later in the week.
Better luck next time.

I’m at odds with myself.
I am a Mac user. I admit to thinking that Apple could do no wrong.
I still feel uncomfortable around Microsoft, but I’ve grown away for the general hate. I use the OS at work and it hasn’t killed me yet. Plus, I had to use their browser on my machine for the longest time.
But Intel. There I have been able to keep a nice steady loathing. The entire basis of this loathing has been that their x86 series uses Little-Endian architecture. I’m just offended by that. It stores the numbers the opposite way that everyone is taught in school. The Apple has always uses the great Big-Endian system. If they ever converted to the proper endian, I would be happy.
Now, during the Stevenote, the exact opposite has happened.
What am I supposed to do now?

Suck it up, princess.

I’m operating on very little sleep right now. I tried to take a relaxing nap on the balcony this afternoon. Surprisingly, I couldn’t sleep. But I did get a nice sun burn.
As it stands, in the last 36 hours, I’ve had three hours of sleep. I’m still alert, but my motivation to do anything isn’t that high. I’ll turn in soon.

I wonder how long I can keep this up. I got the two hours of sleep last night, but getting up was really hard. The force of gravity was particularly strong this morning. I am very glad I accidently took an hour long nap yesterday afternoon.
Anyway, the morning run gave me a nice hit of endorphins so I am fully cognizant. I’m going to see how long I can keep this up for. That will require me to constantly be doing something. If I stop and do something relaxing, I’m going to be out.
Let the challenge begin.

There was a fun event at New City. I’d like to say it went pretty well considering the time I’ve gotten home. I have to get up in two hours, and I know if I go to sleep, it’s going to be hell to wake back up.
Still I’m going to try.
Details to follow.

On the way to work this morning I was listening to the noble CBC AM radio. They announced that on Canada Day, the Barenaked Ladies would be performing at Commonwealth Stadium.

Free!

Go to www.ticketmaster.ca and get your free ticket. No service charges or anything. Maximum of four tickets per person. On sale at 10:00 am.
Being an organized person, I set my alarm for 9:59 AM and was on the website trying to get tickets at the anointed time. I selected four seats and was told that I could get them seats, but they wouldn’t be all together. But it would be in row 5.
But I got confused by the interface with the split seating. So I tried again, but for only two tickets. I got those, but now I’m in row 35. Those tickets are going fast. I let the co-workers know, and they found that they could get eight tickets per person. I’ll take the moral high ground and say that I’m not greedy.
So I’m seeing the Barenaked ladies on July 1st (Woot!), but I spent the rest of the morning feeling stupid about not getting row 5.

While having my hair done the other day, I had an opportunity to read an Esquire magazine. There was an article about Johnny Carson. He performed during a time when there was less choice on late night television. Everyone knew him, across all races and genders. You could talk to ANYONE and they would be aware of who he was. No one has that these days because there is too much “choice” available that there is no common denominator anymore. A musician who is popular among a lot of people will still not be known by everyone. Johnny Carson is probably the last great performer to have that privilege.
The problem with all this choice is that our entertainment and interests are individualized for each and every one of us. There is no common denominator anymore. I can listen to just the music I want, watch the TV I choose from one of the 200 channels available, and entertain myself without regards to anyone. The same as everyone else. So people have no common ground anymore.
An example was given of how when a man wants to approach a women in a bar, his chances of making a connection with her are greatly improved if they have a common interest. With so many choices in interests available to us now, there is no common one anymore.
So I thought about this, and the consequences of this theory. I think the principal corollary of this is that individuality is wrong. The more individual you are, the less you have in common with other people. If you want to connect with people (and since we’re social creatures that is the point of our existence) you have to come from a similar enough background. That culture is being diluted with all the choices given us.
I have been told that I am very much an individual. I do what I want, and very rarely let other people dictate things to me. I have interests and pursuits that are not in line with the people around me. I don’t root for the home team in sports. I don’t drink copious amounts of alcohol, or use narcotics to make myself feel special. In general, I don’t have anything in common with other people.
I will need to stop this.

Well this was another weekend that didn’t end with me feeling relaxed. I seem to be busier Sundays than Saturdays. I did the running thing this morning. Then it was off to a disappointing brunch.
It was followed by the play “Humble Boy”. The play was okay, but it was a struggle to stay awake for the first half hour. After that it got more interesting and I was alert. But still, I think it was an overpriced entertainment. But that is what you get when you see a play at the Citadel theatre, downtown.
Grocery shopping, with a quick meal for dinner, and then I had Michael over to see “Team America: World Police”. Funny, but friends had overhyped it for me. I kept hearing how it was so side-splittingly funny, it was impossible not to be let down.

There was supposed to be a scooter ride tonight. I just tried to go. The scooter was working fine, but the ride was cancelled. The cops are patrolling Whyte Avenue, enforcing that everyone on a scooter have a class 6 license. I was told that you only need a class 6 license if your two wheeled vehicle is 50cc or more. Which would clear most scooters, including mine. I don’t know what laws changed.
I’m going to have to look into this, because my scooter may have just become a lot more expensive. Taking a motorcycle safety course is not cheap.

For the past few days I have had a sore on my chin. I assumed it was a pimple that I had scratched to much. It was really bothering me because I had an appointment with a new hairstylist this morning and I wanted to make a good impression. But the darn thing wouldn’t heal.
A few minutes ago I examined it in detail under the bright light of a mirror. I saw a big beard whisker trying to grow in it. Maybe that is what is causing the problem? I’m willing to try anything to get rid of this thing. I grab some tweezers and try and yank it out. It comes out surprisingly easy. I look at it. It’s thicker and longer than I would expect. And no pain either. Wait a minute… This isn’t a whisker. It’s a splinter!
For the past three days I’ve had a splinter lodged in my chin!
My theory is that while riding my scooter, some debris thrown up by a car got blown into my face. The wooden splinter hit me perfectly to embed itself there, where it has been annoying me ever since.

I’ve learned that writing a column can be like working at a sausage factory–use filler if you have to, just for God’s sake keep cranking the grinder. The upside is that sometimes the sausage comes tasting pretty good, even if you’ve run out of pork and had to use horse lips.

–Paul Mather, 100 Years of Subatomic Humor

That’s how I feel about writing in LiveJournal. I might not have anything to say, but I need to keep writing. Nothing bad will happen if I stop, but it becomes that much harder to start again.
There is another side to that thought process.

If your blogging software doesn’t have a built-in Whining checker, you should install it as a plug-in. It’s worth whatever you have to spend for the thing. Whenever I’ve written a new entry that pushes the self-pity button rather hard (why o why is everyone picking on me, why don’t things ever go my way, I’m so totally right and that person is totally wrong and you people can see that, can’t you?…that sort of thing) a little alert pops up with a “Stop” icon, accompanied by the text “Nobody gives a **** about this. They’re your readers, not your therapist, and they’re certainly not your ****ing Mommy. Got it?”
We have a modern digital analogue to getting drunk and phoning old girlfriends…and its name is LiveJournal. Fellow bloggers: I urge extreme caution.

–Andy Ihnatko, May 5th, 2005

I guess there is the light side and dark side of LiveJournal. Clearly my last entry was missed by the Whining checker. But sometimes all you have is horse lips.

I’ve got to work on my self confidence. Or at least my speed.
I had an appointment with the physical therapist today. For the past few weeks she has had an intern. When I first came in and met the intern, it looked to me like she was checking me out. So I decided today I would ask her out. I wouldn’t get another chance because this is her last week.
Never had a chance. I never really saw her beyond passing her in the hall. I was expecting to have a more “private” moment when she was using the ultrasound on me, but the mentor did that instead. Apparently the intern left early.

So, the Queen of England is in Edmonton right now. I haven’t gone to any of the celebrations to see her. I didn’t get a ticket in time to see the big shindig, and I’m not enough of a Monarchist to go out into this rainy weather to catch a glimpse of her.
She only seems to be doing senior citizen activities. Going to museums. Seeing Sir Winston Churchill Square. Visiting legislature. Stuff I figure old people do. i.e. Rather dull. She needs some excitement. I would suggest going to West Edmonton Mall, by then they would be able to call it The Royal West Edmonton Mall, and that just sounds tacky.

Well, Harry was not good during the night. He was nervous so he kept making sure I was aware he was there. All. Night. Long. So I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep. And he had a problem figuring out whose bed was whose.
Revenge this morning was to take him on my morning run of sixteen kilometers. He was fine for the first six, but then he started falling behind. Eventually, at around eight kilometers, I had to abandon the group and make my own way back. I took as many shortcuts as possible and got back to the start about ten minutes after them.
So you would think he would be tuckered out for the rest of the day. But no. A few hours later and he has all the energy back and is begging for attention. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with an astonishing lack of sleep.

My parents are within half an hour of arriving at my condo. Thankfully, after working all morning, I have gotten the place cleaned up enough to pass an initial inspection.
They are bringing the dog, Harry, too. I’m looking forward to that. I’m planning on dragging him out for my Sunday run and seeing how he does. Running with a dog has always looked far more interesting than just running with humans.

As soon as I’m done my journal entry, I go read a webcomic that makes the exact same point I did.
There are no original ideas anymore.

Yesterday I saw Episode III. Now that I have had time to digest, here are my thoughts.
My biggest complaint is that there were no plot twists. From the start, you know everything that is going to happen. At no time do you stop and think, “Wow! Didn’t see that coming.” The original trilogy had great plot twists, (“Luke, I am your father.”) but this trilogy only seems to invalidate those great moments. If you watch the movies from Episode I to Episode VI, there will be no surprises. (“Well duh! We saw Vader knock up his mother three movies ago.”) This latest trilogy just seems to be milking all the work that was done with the original.
If I think about that statement for a moment though, it is clearly wrong. If you watch one to six, then one wouldn’t know that Anakin falls to evil. So I guess there were plot twists.
I’ve had people say that it was obvious there would be no surprises because “we know what will happen.” Which sounds silly to me. The twists that we know and love concerned unknowns being revealed. There were still unknowns that could be shown. For instance, somebody should explain who is Anakin’s father. Or just give me some reason to watch this movie if I’ve already seen the next three movies.
Now, with all that said, it was a good movie. On the Star Wars scale, I would rate it higher than “Return of the Jedi”, but lower than “A New Hope”. If “Jedi” lost the ewoks, it would probably beat “Sith”. I feel that George Lucas has been away from directing for so long that he needed the last two movies to warm up and figure out how to make a good movie again. (“Ohhh. You DON’T have annoying characters. My bad.”) But he doesn’t have the mythic scale anymore.

One of the nicest advantages of working for a computer company is the leftovers. Mac OS X Tiger just came out, and being part of a developer connection, we get two copies at work. But they came on DVDs. And the Mac they keep wanting us to work with were first purchased during the short period where Macs came with CD-RW instead of DVD readers. So the disks couldn’t be used for work, so I snatched a copy and upgraded my Mac.
Sweet!
I can’t comment on the OS yet. I haven’t had enough time to use it, and it still needs to get used to its new home. For instance, my morning script (for grabbing all the websites I read and having them ready for perusing before breakfast) didn’t run because the iCal application had updated and needed to be started up again.

In other news, I skipped the evening run tonight. That’s because I just donated blood and it is considered bad form to blatantly ignore instructions on how to behave after being drained.

I just got back from my final Improv class. It went way into overtime because we had class evaluations where everyone gave feedback to everyone else. So it went on forever. Somewhat annoying because there is a task I’ve been trying to get around to that I had planned to do afterwards, that I don’t have time for now.
But, the evaluations were very good for me. The instructor commented that I wasn’t retaining information and I wasn’t listening anymore. If I had to reason it, I would say that I’ve gotten cocky. I was let into the level 3 class, and now I feel like I’m slumming in the level 2. I need to ditch that attitude.
Tara, a very nice women in the class, pointed out that I have a loss of innocence and that I’m now arrogant and angry. That is probably also due to the “slumming” reason. I might also blame the pain in my shoulder that plagued my earlier class which is making me cranky, but that is just finding a weak excuse.
The number one thing I have to start doing is have my characters care.
Now that I’ve gotten all these great notes, I want to implement them. But there are no more classes. And I don’t know when they will be back. Probably by the time they are back I’ll have forgotten everything that I learned.

I’ve been falling behind in my TV watching. I guess I have better things to do. Anyway, I was in a couch potato mood yesterday, so I went through what I had taped and watched some shows.
I have a love/hate relationship with Enterprise. I like the primitive starfleet, but I hate the frequent time travel. It feels like some executive got his hands into it and wants the show to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator, instead of Star Trek fans. Understandable, but also stupid.
But it seems that since they know that this is their last season, all the stupid executives have bailed and gone to ruin other shows. Since the producers have nothing to lose, they are doing VERY Star Trek shows. I just watched a two part episode set completely in the mirror universe. Where everyone is mean and nasty (and Spock has a beard), and it parallels the original universe. And they did it right from the start, even the opening credits were military in nature. (I hate that DS9 ruined the mirror universe by getting rid of the empire and making humanity a bunch of scrungy refugees.)
And they did the episode with references to classic trek shows. Stuff that would be completely lost on a casual viewer, but mean everything to someone who knows Star Trek. In classic trek there was the episode “The Tholian Web” (Yes I am enough of a geek to still remember the names) where a starship, the Defiant, was dragged into another dimension, and Captain Kirk nearly went with it. Well, apparently that ship travelled to the mirror universe and into the past, so that the mean and nasty Enterprise counterparts got their mitts on it.
So here we have the classic trek starship in a new episode. The mirror universe people flew it around, even started wearing the classic trek uniforms. It brought back so many memories. All the usual sounds were there, right down to the twitter when someone on the bridge intercoms the captain. They were in the classic Jefferies tube, but this time, they went to the top. So many memories. But while the sounds were the same, the effects were modern. When the phaser was set on kill, the person disintegrated in such an eye-pleasing manner. They even threw in a Gorn for good measure. Complete CGI, but still… Gorn!
I miss classic trek.

It’s been awhile, but here is the quick update.
I have still finished Jade Empire, but am contemplating starting over and acting like a jerk throughout the adventure. See what is different.
I just finished Ultima 3 within 260180 moves. I had previously seen the game beat long ago, but that was only through the use of many cheat programs. This one was completely on the up and up (if you don’t count map books I’ve had since the dawn of time.) I even did all the work to get the clues as to what needs to be done to win the game, instead of looking at the clue books I have around here.
Torn rotator cuff doesn’t hurt anymore, but the shoulder blade winging problem is causing runs to be painful.
My parents are visiting in two weeks. I’ve got to get this place cleaned up.
I’m a player in an RPG again. It’s not D&D but Star Wars. (Really raring to see Episode III now that I’m playing it.) I’m getting a sadistic joy in watching the DM complain that it is taking a lot of time to prepare for a game. I feel free.
That’s about it. Good times.

There was an article in the paper yesterday about a website where you could rate your university professors. Since my father is one, I thought I would check it out today.
That was probably not the best idea. He didn’t rate very well. Embarrassingly, I was talking to him on the phone, while I was bringing up his rating. I didn’t mention what I was doing, but it was hard to keep talking normally as I’m seeing several students say “Most awful prof I have ever had.” At least others were nice enough to say “course requires a lot of work. Prof is sometimes confusing but is always willing to help.”
The newspaper article at least came to the defense of some of the poorer rated profs. “the samples are only representative of students with an axe to grind. ‘Intro chemistry is a difficult class to teach because there are lots of people who really don’t want to be there'”.
Still, it’s a bit of a let down to see that so many people hate your father.

Two weeks ago I picked up the new BioWare game, “Jade Empire”. It was my first BioWare game, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about them. I haven’t gotten a game for quite awhile, so it was about time.
My friend, Cameron, has no self-control. He does not save things for later. And he likes role-playing video games. He picked it up three days after me. And I made a pledge to myself to stay ahead of him in the game.
This would be difficult. He has been known to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to exercise his lack of self-control. And I had stuff I needed to do, like prepare D&D games.
My one advantage was that when he was playing he has two games going because he wants to experience the game from two different perspectives. So I could, theoretically, double his pace.
However, on the lack of self-control subject, I would like to introduce Mr. Pot and Mr. Kettle.
Black!
I really got into this game, and I’ve started staying up later than I should and putting far too many hours into it.
It’s been nice though. I haven’t played a modern role-playing game in over a year. And because I was playing it continually, I had less need to take notes because everything was still fresh in my mind. And it had a simple combat interface. Button mashing!
Oh, yeah. I just finished the game an hour ago.