Sunday, July 31, 2005

random internet tidbits

In my random stumbling around the internet, I've found to following interesting tidbits:

The Great Illusion
- I stumbled across this a few years back, maybe in highschool? It's interesting nonetheless.

A Brain Game
- This one actually requires some brainpower. I got 720 when I did this all the way throughI had to take a few calls while I was doing it, so forgot abou the time once or twice. Try it, let me know how you do.

Chord Circle
- any of you musical people, take a look at this and let me know what you think. Is it relevant? Could it be helpful?

Interesting...
The song that was #1 on the US charts on the day I was born was Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
and on my 18th birthday it was Doesn't Really Matter - Janet Jackson.
check out yours here... This Day in Music

And now I am going home. My final night shift is complete.

YAY!!!

Thursday, July 28, 2005

is my notifylist working

it has recently come to my attention that when i update it doesn't send out an e-mail to those people on my list. why not? is anybody that has signed up for it receiving any e-mails when i update? and those of you that haven't signed up, should. this way you will (theoretically) be notified everytime i post a new and witty entry.

a nice way to start the day

Other than being woken up and hour and a half before I wanted to, today is off to a good start.
Canon called and I had one of those phone pre-interviews with them for a service technician job I applied for. I got my flights booked and confirmed to go see Mama Bean for a week in september, for a piddly $521. How awesome is that? And I'll be starting afternoons again next week. It gets in the way of my bass lessons though, which really sucks, and I don't know if he is going to be free when I am, so we'll see how that turns out.
Oh, and I start playing bass with the worship team at church next month. Not this weekend, but the following I believe. I actually play twice in August, and then I start regularly in September. I'm not sure how many bass players we'll have, but I'll be on one or two teams, with each team playing once a month. I'm really nervous, but excited.

people never cease to amaze me-

Okay, so this guy calls in and can't get online. Big suprise. The hotel he is in uses wireless access points that are located in various rooms throughout the hotel. Each access point provides internet access for 10-15 rooms.
The thing about these access points is that anybody can unplug these access points as they see fit, and in some hotels the outlet they are plugged into are connected to a light switch. So when these access points don't have power, 10-15 rooms do not have internet access.
When I found out which access point was down I called the hotel to go to the suspect room and restart the access point. Upon arrival (i'm on the phone with the hotel staff as he's going to there in order to walk him through the process), we find that the access point has been unplugged. Why? So that the guest can charge his cell phone. The staff politly ask the guest if he could move his cell phone charger to another outlet so that the access point can be plugged back in, allowing other guests to access the internet. He refused. He didn't want to move his phone. The other people could wait until his phone finished charging before accessing the internet. He apparently was more important than everyone else.
At this point the hotel let me go and dealt with him themselves. I'm not sure how the situation was resolved in the end as I went home, but I really hope they didn't follow the bullshit that "The customer is always right."
Oh and I got my afternoon shifts back! Yay for me! So starting next week I am back on afternoons. Sun-Thurs. No more of this vampire bullshit hiding from the sun and waking up feeling hungover everyday of the week.
And now I get to go home for another day.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Joke of the Day

Capitalism and Cows

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM -- You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.

FRENCH CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon(tm) and market them world-wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

A BRITISH CORPORATION -- You have two cows. Both are mad.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION -- You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION -- You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

A HINDU CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You worship them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION -- You have two cows. That one on the left is kinda cute.

ENRON CORPORATION -- You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

ARTHUR ANDERSON, LLC -- You have 2 cows. You shred all documents that Enron has any cows, take 2 cows from Enron for payment for consulting the cows, and attest that Enron has 9 cows.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

5 am musings

i wonder what it would be like to shave my entire body. notsomuch the shaving, but the end result. a completely hairless body. ok, so it would have to be waxed to eliminate even the slighest bit of stubble.
imagine the imperfections you would see all over your body. all the stretch marks, and bumps, and discolorations. everything that was previously covered by any amount of hair would become glareing (i don't know how to spell this word) apparent. all the curves and contours of your body would become more prominent.
it would be so smooth.
it would probably be cold.
i think i'd miss it.
i don't even want to imagine how uncomfotable it would be when it grows back
taking a shower would feel so cool. the water would run over your body completely differently. same with sitting in a bath, or going swimming.

*sigh* the sun is coming up. it is time for me to hide. g'night.

my day off

ahhh...the joys of working nights. it is my day off and i'm still up until 5 am. just because i can't fall asleep any earlier.
i applied for 7 millwright, and 2, make that 3, computer-type jobs today. the other company called me back, but i was already at work (i put in another 5 hours OT yesterday). so i'll have to give them a call when i get up.
but now i think i'll go to bed. or at least read for a bit. i'm going to buy the new harry potter. apparently it is only 20 bucks at safeway. and i want to get it read before someone ruins it for me.
*so please don't ruin it for me*

Friday, July 22, 2005

my interview

Alright, so it is once again 3:40 on a Friday morning, except what differentiates this Friday from any other previous Friday is that I am at work. I have been sitting here for a good oh...let me check here...41 min. There are 10 of us here, 3 of whom are on lunch, and the rest of us are just sitting around. Coyote Ugly is playing on the TV's, some people are playing poker, and the phones are really quiet.

So I went to my interview today. It was pretty rough. Working nights takes enough out of a guy, but to go home after a shift, sleep for 2 hours, and get up and go to an interview is just plain torture. So I went home, and slept until 5. The interview went okay, I could feel myself zoneing out quite often, but otherwise it went well. It seems like a decent enough company, benefits, RRSP contributions etc... but it only pays 30k/yr and I'd have to do oncall work outside of my regular 40 hours per week, and since it is salaried, that sucks. And it's doing the same shitty work that I do here. I'm not sure how many more times I can ask "What can I help you with today?" only to hear "I can't get on the internet." I swear I'm going to lose it.

Yet I hang on. I know I will find something better. I have started applying for Millwright jobs again. I shouldn't have stopped that in the first place, but I'm also not giving up on my computer training. Topher just told me Symantec is hiring again, so I'm going to send my resume to Craig in the morning.

Re-reading this I have noticed it is a lot of rambling. Sorry. I'm tired. I hate working nights. It takes absolutly everything out of me, leaving nothing but a husk capable of naught but customer service.