Well, if you're into Ministry of Sound, this is pretty cool: John 00 Fleming biography.

In other things, it's been a long week at work. There's essentially just two of us to do the work of 4 people. We got 3 more people to help out, but they require some training on the processes. So guess who has to train them. ME! This means not getting some work done. Oh well. As soon as they are up to speed it should be better.

The weekend is here finally! Don't really have a whole lot planned for this weekend. Maybe head over to this place called Atmosphere to see what sort of travel-weight pants they have.

I've decided to really work on a regimen to get back into shape and lose a little weight in the progress. I'm going to try to keep track of what I eat and how much. Also, if I can't cycle to work, then I'm going to use the exercise bike at home. We'll see how long I can keep this up! ;-)

Went up to the cottage last night, mainly to water some plants, but we figured that since we were up there we might as well spend the night up there. Brought the iBook up along with the Japan books in an attempt to tighten up our itinerary. I think we did alright.

Installed Blosxon and Movabletype on this machine as well. I figure I'd play around with them and see how they work out for blogging. It's not that difficult to install, but will take a little time to figure out how to customize. :-)

Ahhhhh! The weekend at last! I thought it would never come! It's just been yet another wild and crazy week at work. Sometimes I don't feel like I get much of a break in between days.

I hope to relax a bit this weekend. We'll prob go up to the cottage Saturday night. Need to water the plants, but figure it would be nice to take advantage of Dave's parents not being there. Got some ground meat out of the freezer the other day. Should be good to go for tomorrow :)

Had a discussion at lunch about just getting up and moving to another country. Abe can easily get used to the idea. He's already been in other places for extended periods for work, so it would not be a big deal for him to get up and go. For others of us, it is a bit more difficult. There's this one girl at work who took a sabbatical and went to Africa where her sister was at the time. I don't think we can take sabbaticals nowadays. You just can't guarantee that you'll come back to a job. Oh well.. maybe one day when things get better.

8-)

Well, I think I am really starting to feel old. Went to the Dave Mathews Band concert last night (free tix!). Maybe it's me, or maybe it's where we were sitting, but I found the music a bit too loud. It seems like the pumped up the volume to the point where the singer's voice was becoming distorted. I just could not make out what he was singing. Of course, not being a big DMB fan, I am at a disadvantage with regards to what the lyrics could have been!

So, today, my ears are not ringing too much, but for one reason or another, I have this stiff neck. This is too bad, because I was hoping to play softball tonight. The team won yesterday! But I don't want to aggravate this stiff neck. :-p Sux to be old.

Anyway, still counting down the days to Japan! Come the end of the week, we will have approximately 3 weeks to go!! :-D

Payday tomorrow! WOO HOO!!

Had gone over to Jardin Jasmin yesterday and came away with just dirt! Actually, that's probably a good thing. I've got to look into taking better care of the orchids I have before I think about getting any more plants! Anyway, we picked up a big bag of this stuff called hydroton. they're like these little marble-sized balls made of baked clay. In any case, we saw them used at the nursery for some plants that like a very moist environment. I figure they would be great for the orchids to sit on top of! It looks like they can stay moist for a while. Also picked up a bag of soil for cactus and a bag of soil for african violets. We need to repot one of Dave's plants and one of two plants I got from work needs more media.

I am really starting to like this little iBook. I think that with each day I use it, the more accustomed I become with it. There are prob still some things about the OS X environment I haven't discovered yet, but soon enough I will be an old hand at it. I really like doing stuff wirelessly. I don't know how I managed to compute from the PC desktop.

I don't think I will be giving up my desktop any time soon, yet, most of this weekend, I had been using the iBook. I've also set it up so that I can receive my email on this machine. Hope my PC doesn't get too lonely...

Anyways, it's exactly one month before the big trip!!! :) 1 day down, 29 more to go!!!!

Darn! Have to go back to work tomorrow. Even these long weekends just don't seem very long any more. I'm supposed to play softball tomorrow, but we got tickets (from John) for the Dave Matthews Band concert at the Bell Centre. Hrm... Oh well. I'm sure the team can handle things just fine without me! :D Well, hey! What would you choose? ;-)

Had a taste of moon cake today. I had bought a tin of them on Saturday. They're from HK. They're rather tasty but rather rich. No wonder no one ever eats a whole one in one sitting! These things can be deadly when eaten in large quantities! We stopped by John and Jessica's to pick up the concert tickets and I brought them a small care basket of some braised beef I made last night and a mooncake. I think Jessica will appreciate the moon cake. :D

Anyway, we tossed around the idea of going up to the cottage next weekend. Maybe see if john and Jessica would like to come along and spend the day there. It should be nice. I just hope the weather cooperates.

:-)

Well, I just got my new toy yesterday: an iBook. It's the Spring 2002 model (so, yeah, it's second-hand). It's got the 700Mhz G3 processor, 384MB RAM, combo drive, and airport card. The package came with the airport hub and Jaguar as well! Overall, it's a pretty good deal.

We played with it a bit yesterday. Had to flash the airport hub with the new network configuration. Decided to do a clean install and away we go! :)

OK, so I'm still blogging from the PC, but soon enough I will be doing it from the iBook. It's kinda neat to be able to surf wirelessly! :D

A nice sunny Sunday morning here. Will probably go over to Jasmin Nursery with Dave's mom. See what there is on sale at this time of year. :-)

Ciao for now!

A bit has happened since last entry.

Sunday, we had to send Tama off to a happier place. She was just going down hill. Last week, her appetite for the smelly mixture of canned cat food, cat milk and baby food was waning. She was also drinking a lot and peeing a lot. Saturday, we had only managed to get her to eat once. Sunday, she just flat out refused. So we called the vet. We were lucky they were able to see her.

We brought her to the vet. The vet checked her out. She had lost at least a pound since her visit in March. He checked out her teeth and found that she had a few sores. If it was painful for her to eat, this was the reason. Dental surgery would be one possibility. However, before we even consider that route, the vet suggested a blood test to see if there wasn't anything else wrong. We said OK. We left Tama there and they would call us within an hour.

The call came and they wanted us to come in. We got there and the prognosis was not good. The blood test results indicate kidney failure. :-( This would explain her lack of appetite and drinking habits. There were options, but were they viable options? Would it have been fair to us or Tama if we tried to prolong her life? She's managed to live this long with her chronic upper respiratory problem. We both think it's time to say good bye and let her go to a happier place where she won't have to worry about getting pilled, where she can get all the attention she wanted.

It was difficult, but we saw her once last time before the vet did the deed. It was certainly a rough Sunday afternoon.

After this, I do hope it will be some time to come before one of the other guys take a turn. Finster is now 12 years old an diabetic. Jum is next at about 8. BS is about 5-6. They all seem to be in good health. We'll probably have to have BS's teeth looked at after the vet told us about how Siamese tend to be predisposed to bad teeth. BS enjoys his food. Let's hope he can enjoy it for some time to come!

Anyway... enough of the depressing diatribe.

It's 4:30AM. Is your cat being fed?

We must have one of the most fussiest cats in the world. Her name is Tama. She's a lilac-point Siamese. She's got a chronic upper respiratory infection. And her food has to be just right. :-p

Her current formula is a mixture of regular canned catfood (no beef or seafood) mixed with Whiskas catmilk and baby food (meat puree). Blend that together with a hand blender and Voila! You've got yourself instant kitty slop. Oh! It must also be at room temperature.

I would like to go back to bed now. Thank you.

We are going to Japan!

After perusing the net for cheap airefares, we finally found one where there were actual seats still available at that low, low price! When we realized that yes, indeed, we can proceed to the next step in booking the tickets, we had to discuss whether we really want to do this or not. Needless to say, it did take us all of 5 minutes to decide to go ahead and book!

And where did we find these cheap tickets? AirTicketsDirect.com It seems that they deal with consolidators for some flights. In any case, we're just glad we got these tix!

Now that we've got the tickets, we put our itinerary together. As we will be going in October, the weather should not be too hot nor too cold. It's still the tail-end of typhoon season, so there is still that chance of foul weather.

We scoured the guidebooks we had on Japan and game up with the following itinerary:

Tokyo - Hakone - Kyoto - Hiroshima - Miyajima - Tokyo

Essentially, we will arrive in Tokyo, spend the first night there, then head straight to Hakone. We will finish up the trip in Tokyo so that we won't have to worry about racing back to Tokyo from our last stop in order to catch our flight.

Hotels were a bit of a challenge. After spending an entire weekend deciding on our itinerary, we spent about as much time researching hotels. We knew that Japan was not going to be cheap. We figure that if averaged about 15,000 yen/night for the two of us, then we would be OK. In the end, we managed to find rooms that cost less than that. This brought average cost per night down to 9525 yen! That's not bad considering that we are going to "splurge" for a hotel close to Tokyo Station the first night. But the bargain rates we got for Kyoto and the main Tokyo stay more than made up for that!

Anyway, we're both quite excited about the trip. I bought a travel pack from MEC this past weekend. It's about 58 liters and comes with a removable daypack. It's not a terribly large daypack, but I think it will have it's uses. We still need to find some travel towels as the Tour Club does not provide towels (they will rent them to you). I think Black's has them. We might swing by there this weekend to have a look.

Also on our shopping list is shoes. We figure that if we will be entering a lot of places where we would be required to remove our shoes, then something that's easy to slip on/off as well as be able to handle a lot of walking will be the thing to wear! We might poke around a couple of stores this weekend as well to see what's available and affordable.

Clothes. I need lightweight (not summer-weight) pants. I don't want to buy them now as I am hoping to lose a little weight and get into reasonable shape before the trip. If we're going to be doing a lot of walking, I want to be able to handle all of that without losing my breath! I might consider getting a skirt if the occasion arises and we go somewhere "nice". I saw one at MEC that might fit the bill.

The trip there will be long. We will be flying out of Chicago on JAL. From Montreal to Chicago, it will be Air Canada (code-share United flight, phew!). It will be early in the morning (6AM out of YUL). And it will be 13 hours from ORD to NRT. I hope we will have enough to keep ourselves occupied if we can't sleep during the flight!

Seating. I called JAL to reserve our seats. Unfortunately, bulkhead and emergency aisle seats are airport controlled (prob as a result of 9/11). The JAL rep on the phone put us in row 47, but also made note that we requested bulkhead/emergency aisle seating. We'll find out when we get to the airport, I guess, if we can get those seats. I wonder if we can get upgraded if we pose as blissful newlyweds! ;-) We'll see!

Less than a month and a half to go!! Woo hoo!!!

Oooooh!!!! I forgot to mention that a got myself a Sony Net MD :) It's a neat little thing! Even though it's an entry model, it still does quite a bit for what it is. :) Got a back of 15 mini-discs to start off with. Now I can record a whack load of stuff from CD to MD. I like the fact that it's small, lightweight and quite compact. I think these guys are better than MP3 players! :D

Just thought I'd share this. :-))

It's finally summer here in Montreal. After a rather cold, wet spring, things have started to heat up around here. Lately, the temps have been in the high 20's, sometimes getting above 30. Of course this means that it's hot, hazy and humid. Quite to contrast to the winter temps we got this past season.

Anyway, made a trip down to Boston a couple weekends ago. It wasn't too painful. The weather could have been better, but what can you do. While it was around 30 up here, it was around 20 and pissing rain the Sunday we were down there. Didn't do too much other than some shopping and stuff.

Of course, being away meant that the cats had a break in their usual routine. Finster went to the vet for boarding while the others got checked in on by a friend. When we came back, Finster was none the worse for wear but Tama seems to be slightly off her food since we weren't around to give her her daily dose of canned food. As a result, she's lost a little wait. For a Siamese, that means she's skinnier than usual. We will have to try to entice her back to the canned food as she just doesn't eat enough of the dry kibble.

I am trying to make an effort to cycle to work. I first cycled to work last Monday when a lot of people had taken that day off (Tuesday was a holiday). It wasn't too bad. Still got to get over my fear of crossing the larger intersections. I should consider leaving my laptop at home. It was a killer ride home with that load on my back! I will see about riding in tomorrow morning. I will try to do the Mon-Wed-Fri ride in. At least that would be a start!

Started a small garden on the deck this year. It's mainly various types of plants in planters. Got some impatiens going in planters on the rails. I've got a mix of verbena, viola, geranium, oxalis, fuschia, snapdragons and coleus in some planters on the floor. Nice colorful assortment. Next season I hope to do better as far as how to plant the different plants in a btter manner.

I've also got two cherry tomato plants that Dave's mom gave me. They seem to be doing well and are starting to bear fruit! I also have a cucumber plant that's flowering now. I wonder if those will bear fruit! The cucumber I had attempted to start from seed. First attempt and they're flowering! Not a bad start. :)

Anyway, let's see how I keep up with my blog. ;-)

OK, so I have not been able to update my blog as of late. It's just been so crazy and busy at work that who has time to much else? Anyway, this morning, I decided to take a few minutes to work on this. It's not going to be very long.

Rant 1
Just WHY is the US in Iraq again?

Rant 2
*sing* I want sunshine... on a cloudy day....
OK, honestly? Can't really complain considering that the temps ARE finally above the freezing mark!

Anyway... back to the grind.

Hasta!

Managers
I am not a manager myself, but I have gone through a number of them in my time. This is not as a result of my changing jobs. This is as a result of numerous re-orgs, re-structuring and managers moving into other areas. I've had different types of managers, some were great, some ineffective, and some who love meetings.

Today, I found that a colleague's manager is just NOT a very good people person. And on top of that, this manager does not seem to act very professionally. He basically tells this colleague that he was lying about the hours he was reporting on an activity based on heresay from another party. Now, what gets me is that this manager just inherited some people into his group about 2 weeks ago. Did he have any idea what these people were working on? Did he make any effort to at least talk to each of the "new" people to see what they were working on and what they're responsibilties are. During the bit of turmoil we had at my home office, my then manager at some point acquired one whole group. This brought his section to over 50 people. But he managed to make time to at least meet with each and every individual to see what they were working on and what concerns they might have with all that was going on. This other manager, on the other hand, not only tells my colleague that he was lying about his hours but he was also telling him that he was losing his job in April. Like DUH, I think just about everyone at this location knows that. So why bother to state the obvious? Was this a scare tactic? In any case, this was very unprofessional, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's my beef on that subject.

Texas Update
Well, it seems that the weather has decided to get wet today. Not a big deal. At least the temps are on the mild side. I think it's more or less been in the 50-60F range. Been working hard to cover as much stuff as possible at work. I am really hoping that I can sufficiently cover what I need to cover by the end of next week. The only glitch has to do with this other thing that just kind of came up during a meeting on Tuesday. I'm not exactly sure what they want me to do, but I'm hoping to read up on some stuff I printed. Maybe I can at least get some idea of the material. I would like to at least try to do some homework on a subject first if possible.

Anyway, I think that's enough babbling for today.

Well, I've managed to survive my first weekend here in Texas, more or less. Saturday, I went over to the Dallas Galleria. It's a pretty big mall with some swanky stores. As its main attraction, there is even an ice skating rink. Overall, I found the mall to be fairly average. I mean, you have your usual mall stores like the Gap, Victoria's Secret, The Body Shop, just to name a few. That's why I found it average.

At some point I stopped to grab a bite to eat at Subway. I took a seat at a table that overlooked the skating rink. I found it rather amusing to see so many Texans trying to skate. I could see that there are some kids who are taking lessons and are serious about figure skating. Then you have the bunch of kids who obviously have not skated much and are more or less shuffling their way around the rink. I have not skated in years, so I'm sure I'd take a few spills if I got out onto the ice again.

So, what did I do for a few hours at the mall? Let's see... I got myself a sweater that was on sale at the Gap. I found some Richard Feynman books at the one bookstore there. I picked up one CD. A set of small headphones. A small Dilbert Calendar. Sudafed. A present for my sweetie (which I will not describe here).

Today, I mainly vegged. Did a load of wash so I had some clean cloths. Read some. Napped. Watched some TV. Chatted with people online. Really not a heck of a whole lot. Did not bother to have the room picked up, which was OK by me. Not like I'm a big slob or anything. :-)

Anyway... I think that's all there is worth noting...

It's still rather cool today. Then it started to rain this afternoon. By the time I got out of work, it was raining rather steadily, not heavy, but it was raining.

It seems that the drop in the telecom market has hit this region fairly hard as well. Here in Telecom Corridor, many of your big name telecom companies have laid off hundred of people over the past year or so. It's rather depressing. At the height of the industry, it was quite busy here. The parking lots were full. The area restaurants were packed at lunch. We went out to lunch at a chinese restaurant not far from the office. Apparently, that place used to be packed all the time. Now it's not even half full. These are not high times anymore.

Anyway, enough with the depressing stuff. Hmmm... What else is happening? I dunno. There's still talk on the news about the space shuttle. More home videos of the shuttle starting to break up before it got over Texas. Which could very well likely mean that the break up started to occur soon after the last communications between the shuttle and mission control.

Well....

Howdy all loyal readers... That's right, all two of you. What? Membership has dropped? We're down to one and a half? Oh dear. Something must be done to rectify this.

So it's still relatively mild here in sunny Richardson, TX. today started a little on the chilly side with the temps hovering around 1C. Of course cold is all relative to where you're coming from! ;-) The temps did rise during the day to a high of about 54F or so. Everything is done BIG here. The cars are BIG. The coffees are BIG. The plates are BIG. The subs are BIG. BIG BIG BIG BIG! I guess that's because this is a big state so everything has to be BIG. ;-)

Hotel living... Gotta love a place that has high-speed connection for free. They prob got a good package deal with some ISP like AT&T Broadband or something. Nice to kick back with a bottle of beer (Sam Adams my choice) and catch up on some email or something. Chatting with some friends is always a nice thing to do too. This is especially so if you want to rub in the fact that it's warmer here than it is there! :D

Another thing of note around here (State-side) is that there is still a lot on the news about the Space Shuttle Columbia. It's almost non-stop news about this. Sometimes you just get a little tired of it, but at the same time you have no choice but to have some sort of feelings about the loss. But PLEASE, don't over do it. The chatter here at the bar is rather interesting on the subject. :)

Well....

Let's try another font. I like fonts.

Well, what seemed like a routine machine became tragedy. I was just zapping through the channels this afternoon when I came across a CNN newsfeed on WGN. I found that unusual so I watched it for a little while. At first, I wasn't sure what they were talking about exactly other than that it was related to the space shuttle. Then it dawned at me that something very terrible had happened. It seems that something had gone horribly wrong as the shuttle was making their way back to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The shuttle and its crew are lost.

It's rather difficult to believe that such a thing can still happen after the Challenger disaster, but one has to bear in mind that space travel and exploration is still in its infancy (relatively speaking). Anyone who wants to become an astronaut and be a part of space history should realize what the risks are. Haven't we all seen enough science fiction television and movies to realize that things do happen? I think that overall we have been relatively fortunate in the number of tragic accidents since the induction of the space program. I don't know if it has ever been publicized, but I would imagine that even the Soviet space program had its ups and downs as well, we just don't know about them.

In any case, I feel that after such an event, we should still move forward. The loss of such fine astronauts is terrible, but they knew the risks. And it's been mentioned that since shuttle missions have become routine that people don't even know or even pay attention to who the crew is. I think in some way this is a tragedy in itself.

Well, in other news... Finally, there is a break in the weather. The temperature here has finally risen to more bearable levels! It was warm enough that there was some melting snow happening! Also, tonight, we took a walk around the neighborhood after dinner. I missed doing that when the weather was just too cold.

Anyhooo.....

Yeah, it's been a while since I last wrote something of any significance here. Either I've been too lazy, too tired, or just haven't thought about it. Take your pick. Today, I figure I should write something. Yes, I do feel guilty for not making an entry here even though I suspect that very few people read this. :)

Anyway, it's been colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra around here as of late! BRRR!!! We had a "break" in the cold weather this past weekend when the temperature actually got about -10C!! Yes! I was starting to consider that virtually tropical after we went through -40C windchills last week!

Anyway, we didn't come out of that short deep-freeze unscathed! Some of our water pipes froze as a result. :-p Thank goodness nothing burst! That would have been messy and expensive! In any case, after a little over 24 hours after discovering that we were without hot water, we managed, with minimum of destruction, to regain the use of hot water!! Yipeee!!!

Latest news? I'll be off to Dallas for a month for work. Well, not so much work but for a transfer of knowledge. From the Customs/Immigration point of view, I'm there to learn. And this is true. I don't know how they do their stuff, so that's why I'm heading down there to learn all about it. A month living out of a hotel room. At least I won't be alone down there. Some colleagues are aleady down there learning other bits and pieces of stuff.

Anyway... must think about food!!! YUM!! :)

First day back to work after a 2 week holiday. It's pretty dead here. At least it's almost lunch time! :) I haven't received one new email since I got in this morning. I wonder if other people are still away for the holidays. In any case, things need to pick up soon in my area. We've got a tight deadline.

I need to re-new my passport. It expired back in September, but I hadn't had the chance to fill out the forms for it. Anyway, if I am expected to travel anytime soon then I had best get cracking!

The weather today is kinda grey but not too grey. It's probably what they would call mostly cloudy. They're forecasting some flurries for today and a high of about -2C.

Blah! I guess that's it for now.

Christmas is Over!!!!
Thank goodness! Not that I don't like Christmas, but who really needs all the stress that comes with this particular holiday? There's the shopping, the cooking, the baking, the planning. Then there's the travelling (when applicable). Whether it's by car, train or plain, no one really likes to travel during the holidays. This year was no exception.

On the Road again
This year, the Christmas destination was Ontario. It's about a 7 hour drive along the not-so-scenic Highway 401. Very long. Very boring. Check out the highway on Mapquest and you'll see just how straight and boring it is. Nothing but fields. The road is relatively straight, so it's easy to get bored and nod off (not a good thing). It's not bad as long as you have someone with you (to share the boring drive) and some music.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...
We lucked out this year in that the Niagara region was hit with a small snow storm early Christmas morning. We were fortunate that the drive in was clear and sunny. When we woke up Christmas morning, we saw nothing but white outside. It really makes it seem like that long 7 hour drive was worth it! It was still snowing a bit when we got up.

Land of Mau's
Ever seen an Egyptian Mau? Cute kitties. Really cute and cuddly if they have been properly socialized. They just want to cling to you!

New Year's Resolutions
None. Why make them if you can't keep them? ;-)

C'est tout pour maintenant!