Wheee! 24 days until my b-day.

Summer is almost over

Happy B-day Lisette! w00p 21!

Canadians tend to use the Labour Day long weekend (first monday in September) as the official unofficial last weekend/days of summer. Technically, the last day of summer is around September 23rd. I've already noticed the days getting shorter a few weeks ago.

I couldn't resist getting some more clothes today... $150 :/ Two tops and and yet another hoodie!

Desipte the clothes spending, I put $697.88 in savings, to make my ING Direct account an even $2 000 :)

If I was to pay off my laptop, I would need to dish out $3 800.

*sings* money, money, mooooooooney!

Had dinner with Sarah last night, in Little Italy. I really enjoyed my pasta, it was good! Service was kinda crap though. The hostess/waitress forgot about us, and someone else stole our table >:| . We eventually got seated, and ordered. I felt guilty not speaking Italian to our waitor. It was odd, he spoke mostly italian to us. One thing that did bother me, was he was always hitting on the girls at the table next to us... I think he was trying to get them drunk. hah!

Plans for tonight? Dinner and Movie with Lisette :D It's her birthday tomorrow, so I am taking her out. Then its off to the mall on Saturday to do some shopping.

My little company is expanding! I am going to buy this sweet aluminum 1U case for my second box, which I am going to host with at THT.net courtesy of Bryan :) Just waiting to hear back from guy, on shipping charges. Those things are heavy!

Bought a new jacket today... snowboarding only. I got it for $310 $155 at this place in Aurora. It's the Sims EXP 10i (Square Block Jacket). Fits me perfectly, and goes good with my ripzone pants. It's dark blue and white. go to www.simssnow.com: click on EXP, EXP10i, then the first jacket icon you see (fucking gay flash). Mark wanted to get the cargo pants (bottom left pant icon).

Also went shopping for Lisettes bday pressys.

I am really not in the mood to be at work right now, bleh. I dont need to be here *physically*. I am tempted to just forward my phone to my cell, and head over to marks work and finish up there. Watch something break between while I am zooming over there.

I have a headache

I feel really unhealthy today. Havn't been for a bike ride in a while, and have been eating nothing but shitty food :/ Not to metion spending money on crappy food, when I could make my own lunch/dinner and eat that.

Fuck! my nose just started bleeding :/

Blah.. no more writing

Yes, yes I am ashamed:


Room 1


Room 2

Liz and I saw XXX last night. Cheezy lines, cheezy acting, full of action. An ok movie!

The website for Operation: Ride West is coming along nicely....I might give suey a sneek peak (since she knows good web design :) ).

Heather and her friends are driving to Whistler, BC. So i fired up my mapping software to see what the quickest route was. I was surprised!

5 days, 4 horus of travel. Going through the USA, Wisconson, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, then north to Whistler. Thats the "quickest route". The shortest route (but may not be quickest, because of speed limits) goes up north to Sudbury, ON, then then through the states, Wisconson, Minnesota, North Dakota, then goes north to Moose Jaw, Calgary, then Whistler. (6days, 2 hours). Might be cheaper (but not quicker) to stick to this route, since half of it is in Canada.

Signed my work contract today. This guarantees me a job until April 1, yay! I was somewhat forced to sign contract, since union wouldn't allow boss to keep me on "casual" status anymore. What this means:

I'm on salary


I make less money (About $5k less a year)


I get benefits


I get paid vacation (forced to take 11.66 days off before contract ends)

Smaller union dues (something like only $6 a pay, as opposed to $30-$40)


5 Day work weeks (yay, no more work 7 days a week)


No cash over time pay (get time off with pay instead)

I honestly dont care about benefits, since I woudl never use them anyways. However since I am forced to have them - I am going to milk it as much as possible! I would also like to get the over time pay in cash, since I dont think I will ever take the time off.




I'm selling my phone! Silly fido didn't upgrade it (they want me to pay $100 and it will be relocked :(( ).

New website coming up, for operation: ride west. Have an idea in the head.. just need to turn it into bytes.

Need to go bday shopping for liz. Dont get paid until next week, guess I will put it on the credit card (which I jsut paid off). At least I have the money though :)

Need to put new hard drive in server...

Nothing else to report!

I am sooo not in the mood to do work today :/

It was randy! hahah so nice!

==========HIGHLY CLASSIFIED 57-B==========
============For Your Eyes Only============

Operation: Ride West

Excecution Date: December 2002

Involved Parties: Blake, Mark

Objective: 

You are to travel west on a Boeing 747, landing

at Vancouver Int'l Airport. From there a convoy

will pick you up and proceed to CFB Whistler.

Once at your destination, you will be given a 

report from the Meterological Service to advise

you on peak weather conditions.

You are to proceed to the top of the mountain 

as quickly and covertly as possible. There you

will deploy your two classified weapons

(codenamed Sims and Soloman).

==========HIGHLY CLASSIFIED 57-B==========

============For Your Eyes Only============

"Have a good weekend guys!"

*theme song to back to the future fades in*


In "Doc Brown" Voice:


"Weekends?..... Where we work, we dont have.... WEEKENDS!"

The humidity is gone! Yay! Such a nice day outside today. Going go go biking, and finish cleaning up my room.

Liz got a killer hair cut a few days ago. Gawk at her!.

Seasons passes at Blue Mountain went on sale on the 15th. Such a good deal. ~$160 for unlimited day and night skiing! (well, cant ski during the day on the weekends). I totally forgot about it! I also need to get boots, but I am going to the snowboard and ski show with gord to get those.

Nothing else new to report.


Over and out.

credit card.. staring at me..


"uuuuseee meeee" it screams


the card moves closer, inticing blake.. it pulls a picture of the ipod and waves in the air


"what the hell... no... Get.... AWAY! AWAY FROM ME! you vial peice of plastic"


the card laughs "muahahahah"


"You cannot resist my powers!"


"NEVER! I know your weekness!" *pulls out sisors*


"noooooo.." the card screams, cowering away behind the wallet.

This was caused by this Ebay Auction. Would be saving $100.




*drool*

phew! taking a small break from work. This night is going super slow! my shift is not even half over yet!

Went to Amys last night with Lisette. I met up with Liz after work, and we headed out to dinner. I was sooooo hungry, I was shaking! Ate at Al Friscos on John Street (just south of Queen). Our server sucked pretty hard :/ She mixed up our orders. I was so hungry, I didn't really care. I just mowed down on the food. It was tasty nontheless! After some Fuizzis (sp), we headed to Amys place.

Had a good time. Nice to see her again! Sat and chatted. Was fun. Had to leave at around 12 or so because both Liz and I were tired. On the way out we said hi to Nate.

Checking out Toms ibook got me lusting over some Mac Toys again :/ I really need to save this money instead! MMmmMmm Ti Powerbook.

I'm almost at the point where i'm not going to bother voicing my opinion anymore.

No matter what I say, it *seems* to be the wrong thing to say. I'm starting to think what Liz said about "your friends being hard on you" is true. I'm just the type of person who can be all "hard" and let it not bother me. I'm starting to lose the energy and patients to do it though...

A good example of explaining what I mean happened today. The Facts:




- I *need* a new snowboard, so I bought one. Got an excellent deal on it.. I'm happy.
- Gord wants to pick up snowboarding, so he wants to get a snowboard to come riding with us.
- Mark has a perfectly good (used) board. It's two years old (this will be its 3rd season).

A few days ago Gord told me that he wants to get a snowboard:

I was concerned that he wouldn't have enough time to go riding. Since his girlfriend of 3 years (whome the most time they have spent apart was 5 days, and that was only last week) is moving 300kms away.

I was just letting him know the "other side". Some of the reasons to not get a new board.

I want Gord to come! I would just feel guilty if he bought a new snowboard (for about $450 with board, boots, and bindings) and never used it because he wanted to spend time with bryna (either her coming home, or Gord visiting her).

Mark also wants to buy a new board. Both Gord and Mark beleive that they wont get a better deal then what they can if they buy it right now. In my opinion Marks board can last him at least another three years. Mark has the money now, and wants to spend it on a board because hes going to get a new one next year regardless. I disagreed with him because:

To me, it seems that the only reason why he is buying it is because of the sale/good deal he can get on it. I used the followign analogy: You hate asparagus, yet you have a coupon for 75% off some asparagus. Because its a good deal, you are going to buy it. The driving force for getting the item, is because of how cheap it is. I told mark to take that $250-$300 and save it! Buy a new baord next year.. you WILL find a good deal, they dont just come once every decade!

In anycase, *because* I disagreed with both of them, regarding both matters.. i'm "mr. negative".

I'ts kind of hard to explain the whole situation, without you actually observing it. Liz asked me "why are your friends so hard on you". Ever since then, its got me thinking. I tried to bring this up a month ago, when they thought it was a bad idea to bring Liz to the cottage. (yet another decision of mine wrong in their minds). It's seems that none of my friends can accept my opinion for what it is. They have to try to change it. The sucker I am, argue with them about it.

You asked for my opinion/say, take it the way it is - don't hate/bug me for how/what I think about the situation.

Blah, I needed to get that "out there". (I know I am going to hear about it in the next 12-24 hours)

blah! just had large discussion with dad about stuff.. meh! (sue knows!)

Mark just msged me that he decided not to get the new snow board.. that doesn't change any of the above.

Fuck such an emotional night!

Got my new phone today! Yipee! (it's a motorola P280). Noticed some things I don't like about it:

There is a ring&vibrate option. however it doesn't really do what I want it to do. What this option does is vibrate first THEN ring, as opposed to doing both at the same time.

iTap (the predictive input) doesn't use space as a delimiter for when I want to start a new word. Each time I finish typing a word, I have to select the "use this word" key. If I put in a space, it thinks thats part of the word.

SMS/Voice mail tones dont repeat. I just want a small "beep-boop" when a new sms arrives. It only does it once... thats it. It doesn't repeat. So I dont know I got an sms unless I look at the screen (if I missed the first and only tone).

No alarm clock

The send and end keys are reversed from Nokia phones (end on the left, send on the right).

The phone is too quiet. There is no beep when you are disconnected, or when any item on the screen changes. I liked my nokia phone how it beeped when I was d/c, that way I knew I wasn't talking to anyone. With the p280, I have to look on the screen to see if the call ended.

Some things I do like:

There is a "cleanup" mode. I can say: "Hey! delete all messages that are x days old" or, "yo! only keep the last x number of SMSs in my inbox/outbox". I can also lock messages, so that they dont get wiped. Also, if I a message was undeliverable (because of no network coverage) it will store it in the outbox and keep trying to send it.

You can store up to 32 custom ring tones (I want to compose a "you got new mail" eudora tone for my incoming SMSs).

56k data (through the usb cable, or the infrared port)

Tri-Mode (yaaay! i can use it anywhere)

Its unlocked, so I can use a sim card from any provider :) (w00t cheap pre-paid sim cards in europe). I might just keep my account active, so people can still get in touch with me by dialing my north america number.

I think I like Voice Dialing.... I can see that coming handy in the car "call mark" and whee! it starts dialing. Havn't really tried it yet.

Voice memos are cool. It can record a telephone conversation. "Hey amy? how do I get to your house again" *blake presses record button*

Since this is a voicestream phone (not a fido phone) the browser and gprs dont work. I need to get the fido version of the phones software installed. I will probably do that tomorrow. I'm hoping they wont bitch because I didn't buy the phone from them. I saved $200 by getting it on ebay.

Plans for tomorrow? Going to get my bike fixed, flat tire... been like that since I got it. Finish up my laundry. Thats about it. Nothing really exciting. Work, work, work and saving up my money. I'm almost 100% completely out of debt. Credit cards are paid off (have been for some time), its just my laptop that I want to pay off.

The weather has been freezing today! Supposed to be in the low 20s for the rest of the week. Hopefully it will warm up this weekend.

Mommy reminded me that my b-day is coming up (Sept. 24) by asking me what I want... not sure, going to make a list though!

Lisette and I are going to Amys party on Saturday. Will be nice to see her again :)

C'est tout!

Got some new clothes. Two pants, four shirts, and a hoodie. All from this new place in the mall called Boathouse. Quicksliver, riptide, and point zero are the bands this brand whore has embraced.

I also wanted to get some new shoes, but figured that $313 was enough to spend on one day.

Tomorrow I am going to spend $375 on my new board and bindings! Sims board and bindings. FSR400 159cm board with blue UpLink (telescopic straps, none of that 'qick-clip' binding crap). I still need to get boots though, will do that in a few months when I have a bigger selection.

Going to also clean my car, full of pine needles and other cottage debris. Shitload of laundry to do, bleh. If time permits, I might toss in a bike ride there or go into the city a little early and take some photos.

Liz and I had a good time last night. Saw "Signs". Pretty good movie, however, it left me feeling 'unsatisfying' at the end. Like there should be more. She slept over, and we had lunch and went shopping together.

But now, I must flee work and head home!

(where the hell is gord?!?!)

My 60 day vow has been broken - day three.

Trip to cottage was good. Learned a lot about Lisette :) Got some sun, sand, surf! No photos though :/

Today has been taking care of paperwork (yaaay GST) and going to the bank.

Short entry, but dont really feel like writing.