I'm getting my haircut tomorrow.

I'm also going to Niagara Falls tomorrow for New Years celebrations. *teehee* I might duck out of work early ;)

My new schedule starts this week. Thursday infact! I will be taking the train into the city when I am working 9-5 (tues,wed,thurs) and driving all the other times. This will save me both money and KMs on the car.. YAY!

I sent back the G4 CPUs to get a new one. Hopefully this was the problem of my mac locking up all the time. I should be getting the new one sometime in mid January!

I added some cool new toys to my blackberry. I added a browser, so I can "surf" the web. I wrote some custom, blackberry friendly, sites that I have bookmarked. So at a push of a button I can check my bank balance, movie times, and the weather. I also found a sweet IM<->Blackberry gateway. This way I can talk to people on ICQ or MSN (or Y! or AIM) anywhere! I set up a special icq and msn user, so that way I Can control who is able to msg me on my blackberry. I pretty much have free reign of this unit while I am at work (or unless someone else at work needs to use it). I did snag one on ebay for $40! w00t w00t! The fag wanted like $16 for shipping and handling. I told him to go fuck himself. He reduced that to $8 :) which is more resonable. Heck, the guy only lives 40 kms away! I will probably just keep it handy until the one here at work is no longer usable :)

Nothing really else new. What do you think of the new site? Sue likes it!

OH YEAH! I'm starting to archive the "Ongoing History of New Music" by Alan Cross. Torontonians can hear it on 102.1 The Edge. I always miss the show, so I got my radio hooked up to the 'puter and set it to record the shows. I will most likely mp3 them and put them online :)

I decided to work from home today. While taking care of some laundry. Arden and I might hit the slopes later today at 3 or so. We need to wait for Gord to get back from the mall, so we can get Arden's new board.

Laura and I made new years plans last night, w00t w00t. Well, the plan is that we spend it together. I have no idea (yet) what we are actually going to do. She's working on her new website (i'm helping her a bit with the SQL/PHP). My website should be done soon. It's nothing really special, more of a updated look to this one. Maybe I will finish today?

I hope I win this .

I was talking to Andrew about moving to Australia. He's all for it. However, cautioned me on being prepared for it not being the same since I left. He was wondering why I wanted to come back so soon, considering I have a sweet job at the CBC. I think 2 years is long enough :) I was just looking over the requirements last night, and thinking about moving. Come April, a lot of stuff is going to be changing in my family. I can't really say what (parents told me not to tell anyone) but it involves some.. uhmm.. displacement. So I figure if I dont have a job at CBC then (when my contract is up for renewal), I will just move to Australia.


Keep in mind, this is all preliminary planning :)

There is also the other option of applying for work at Google. Everyone is telling me its impossible to get a job in the states, unless you are American. It's worth a try! I really dont want to work in the states though.

I feel so bleh. I havn't worked out in almost a week (gym closed for holidays). I'm looking forward to hitting the weights tomorrow as well as renewing my pass for another three months!

New car mats rock. I cant wait to install the wind defelctors, but I have to wait for the warm weather before I can do that. As for the mud flaps, they *may* need to be professionally installed - we will see.

Heh, I will be working at CBC for a Year Come Feb 1st.

Whoo! Looks like we did get a white Christmas. Id say about 7cm fell overnight! I mostly got things for the car this year. New Car mats, wind defelctors (for the windows) and mud flaps. w00t! Also got some new PJs too!

Parents and bro are going to my Aunts place in Bomanville, 1.5 hours away. They are under the impression that I am going to go over there after work. I really dont feel like driving there (especially driving back). Although the tasty, tasty dinner would probably be worth it. Maybe I will order some swiss chalet ;) (if they are even open)

Driving into work today was fun. Saw two accidents! One as it happend (nothing big, d00d just spun out and hit guard rail) and the other one after it happened (two cars demolished). I still made it down in under an hour. Once you get south of York Mills the roads were clear. It's still snowing now actually!

I got to use the spare blackberry from work yeasterday, today, and tomorrow. Its fun to play with, and it would be cool if all my friends had one. Think of it like ICQ/MSN/AIM/Y! attached to your hip. You can send messages to another blackberry or an email address (and vise versa - you can email the blackberry too).

I think I will spend the rest of time at work working on my new website. heh.

Blah, i'm not in a good mood right now.

My laptop is acting weird (and annoying) the fans keep on going on and off and on and off and on and off. The CPU temp is going up and down wildly as well. I tried reseating the heatsink, but that didn't help. I have a feeling the temperature sensor in the CPU is broken.

Snowboarding this week was alright. Friday was good:

Major and I headed up to the Blue today. There is only one word to describe todays riding.



Great



We left Aurora at 9am on the dot(well, 8:58am). By the time we took care of Majors pass it was barely 11am by the time we headed down the first run. Conditions were harsher than expected.



Major had progressed nicely since the last time I rode with him two weeks ago. We can all thank Spicole for that one! *high 5* This morning introduced him to yet another one of the many flavours of riding conditions.



After our bodies were filled with chicken goodness it was back out to feast on what Blue had to offer. We headed to the south side and back, sampling the full breadth of this wonderful mountain. By this time it had already been snowing for an hour or so and there was a fresh 1cm dusting of powder for us to ride on.



Our last run of the day was a virgin hill. We were delighted to see that the grooming machines had just Christened the hill with it's wonders. The freshly falling snow and the smooth groomed terrain made this last run feel like you were floating on clouds.



However, as a sacrifice to the snowboarding gods on this glorious day, Major had to dispose of his Fox Racing stomp pad. The heavens did smile upon him though with a new pair of goggles!

Riding yesterday was better though, mainly because of the improoved conditions. After a small fiasco (those of you whome are my LJ friends know why :) ) Gord, Mark, Arden, and I were riding togther. Infact, Arden and Gord are out right now. Arden is using my board because his old one finally fell apart (plus he wanted to try it).

I got my Christmas shopping done today. Thats the last time I leave it so late and do it at retail stores! Last year I got all mine done online, it was great! Why did I leave it so late? Mainly because I was in Vancouver for 2 weeks at the start of the month. Also because i'm just a lazy fuck.

Still no New Years plans. Was thinking of just heading into the city by my self and hitting the bars. I had super fun doing that in Sydney in '01.

Blah

InfiniteLoop is taking up more of my time nowadays. Bryan and I are talking about moving the boxes to Q9. Better facilities, plus we can lower our costs by sharing the space (just as long as we can find another 8u worth of equipment to fill). I spent just over 2 hours today taking care of billing and accounts and stuff. Whipped up some small scripts too!

I set up a backup scheme for my laptop today. Well sorta. I got everything working nice, I just need a way to get XP to run a batch file every morning at 5am. I'm using cygwin and rsync to back stuff up to my desktop, which is running FreeBSD. Rsync is cool. Not only does it only back up files that have changed, it only copies the data that has changed in the file. Fast backups!

I still need to get my webcams up and running, along with new website design. It's coming. Also need to continue working on Project: URL Tree. Most of the design is done, on paper. I dont know how popular it's going to be, even with the burntring.com croud. We'll see. It will be a good project for me to "release".

Work out was pretty good today, I did 100% Cardio - w00t! Did a little of the lower body too, but not a lot. I will most likely not get to work out tomorrow because of my weekly chinook dinner with Gord.

Things to do on Thursday:


- Empty out aquarium


- Clean room / fold laundry


- Get webcams running + website (if not done already)


- Christmas Shopping


- Work on URL Tree


- Clean car

I wonder if Lisette is going to call me on Thursday.

New schedule at work coming up in Janurary. There are two shifts, 9-5 and 1-9 now. I will have to work only 1 weekend now, instead of both. So I was thinking of taking the 9-5 shift, and making me work Sunday- Thursday. That leaves me Friday and Saturday off. This way I can also take public transit during the week, and possibly carpool with Bryan. We'll see what happens after Christmas.

Apparantly I have good posture! whoo. All this time I thought I was the hunchback of Notre Dame, spending 8+ hours sitting at a computer every day.

Sorry Gord, you're wrong. I got these shoes (that need replacing BADLY) Sept 23rd, 2001. So yeah, over a year old! (here's the journal entry to prove it).

Only ten sleeps left until Christmas. I still need to do much needed Christmas shopping :/ I also need to get my xmas list up and running! Maybe I should just rehash my b-day list?

Blake's B-Day Christmas List:

1. Watches:

"The Coax" by Nixon

http://www.nixonnow.com/za/NNS?PAGE=WATCH_DETAILS&PRODUCT.ID=52&MENU_ID=18



"Falcon Combat" by Falcon Watch Co.

http://www.falconwatch.com/military.htm (first image on left)



"The Workhorse" by Yes Watch

http://www.yeswatch.com/share/cgi-bin/site.cgi?site_id=yeswatch&page_id=w011

and how it works:
http://www.yeswatch.com/share/cgi-bin/site.cgi?site_id=yeswatch&page_id=howitworks&qd.query



2. Car Stuff

(you cant order stuff from the VW links below, only USA people can order online)



Window Deflectors

http://drivergear.vw.com/store/accessory.asp?parent%5Fcategory%5Fid=12&category%5Fid=46&subcategory%5Fid=179&product%5Fid=2167



Floor Mats

http://drivergear.vw.com/store/accessory.asp?parent%5Fcategory%5Fid=12&category%5Fid=46&subcategory%5Fid=180&product%5Fid=2511



Splash Guards

http://drivergear.vw.com/store/accessory.asp?parent%5Fcategory%5Fid=12&category%5Fid=46&subcategory%5Fid=179&product%5Fid=2180



3. Books

Unix Backup and Recovery

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/item.asp?Catalog=Books&Section=Books&Cat=&Lang=en&Item=978156592642



The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/item.asp?Catalog=Books&Section=Books&Cat=&Lang=en&Item=978020144787



The Practical SQL Handbook: SQL Variants
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/item.asp?Catalog=books&Section=books&Cat=&Lang=en&Item=978020170309

4. DVDs

Pretty much anything with Bruce Willis in it, to continue my Bruce Willis collection.

Everything You've Always Wanted To Know About Sex

http://www.hmv.com/servlet/HMVApp/ProductDetails.ProductDetails/product?productSKU=332704



Office Space

http://www.hmv.com/servlet/HMVApp/ProductDetails.ProductDetails/product?productSKU=597570

I had a pretty good "weekend" (thursday and friday). Hung out with the old gang on Thursday and slept in. Laura never called me on Friday night (after Mark and I hit the slopes at blue) so we all decided to get plastered. To quote Gord: "It was GREAT!". Things really started to get interesting once we hit Charlies. Saw quite a few people from the good ole days. Courtney, Virginia, Lisa, Patterson, Todd. Gord seemed to be really interested in a rather hideous cougar. Her friend, however, was cute (she was 24). I can't remember her name though.. tiffany or trisha or something. All I know is that she has a part time job at the grocery store next to my house. She also recognised me as well (from when I shop there :) ). It was all good though.

I'm at work now. Infact, I have been here for the past 19 hours! Did my shift last night. I didn't really feel like driving home, so I made my self a little bed. I dont know what the policy of sleeping at work is. So in order to avoid security (instead of sleeping on a comfey couch here) I took some cushins from the couch and made my self a little bed in a meeting room. I tried to hide my self the best I could behind the desk and chairs. It worked pretty well! I was paronoid that I would get caught, so the littlest thing woke me up. At 6:37, the lights on my floor change into "day mode", which means they are on 100%. Last night the lights in the boardroom were off (there is no switch). As soon as they turned on at 6:37 I jumped up and tried to hide my bed, thinking someone was coming in. I found a little storage closet where I could turn the light off. I didn't stay there long, about 20 minutes. It was too heat, since It was in a higher traffic area.

I headed up to the 6th floor, and took a nice shower. By this time, it was about 7:30 or so. I hopped online, took care of some stuff, then went downstairs at 8am to get some brekky. Then it was off to work :) (so nice not having to travel).

After work, I'm heading home, going to change (maybe take another shower?) and head over to Bryans place for his housewarming. I was thinking of bringing a bottle of wine, but i'm not sure what time the liquor store closes. After that, its off to Chinook for their Christmas party.

Tomorrow it's back to the old schedule. Except since mark isn't working anymore, no car pooling :( I'm also going to try to get my webcams working again tomorrow, as well as launch a new website. I am also going to try to clean up my room, get rid of my fish tank (which has been empty for about 2 months).

I also started keeping a log of the days I go snowboarding. Recording the conditions, who I went with, time spent on the hill, and where I went. It was Marks' idea but I thought it would be great to do it. This way I can keep track of how many hours of snowboarding I have done :)

It seems that everyone is sick right now! The Norwalk Virus is spreading through this province like wildfire.

"The vomiting is often projectile — I guess the adjective is self-explanatory. The diarrhea can be quite explosive, so it's very unpleasant."

Not pretty. Whats even worse, is that the virus can survive up to 12 days in the open. Waiting for you to touch a door knob, utensil, a desk, or a cd. Stay away from public washrooms:

"Yes, Norwalk is one of those charming viruses that is spread by what the experts call "the fecal-oral route."



Infected people shed the virus through their stool. In the process of wiping themselves, they can easily contaminate their hands. If they don't wash them properly, they can deposit the virus on bathroom or other surfaces or can spread it to other people by hand-to-hand contact. The minute a newly infected hand goes into the mouth, the cycle begins again."

Yuck. Xenophobe mode on!

Mark and I are going snowboarding Tomorrow. Then I *think* (not sure yet) I am gonig to hang with Laura, Jon, and a few others in the city. On Saturday, I was planning on going to Bryans' Housewarming party, but I forgot I was working the afternoon shift then. So once again, I am going to have to miss one of their events :(

I'm really liking this cd - "Jurassic 5". Im not normally into this kinda music (urban?) but its catchy. I still need to compile a xmas list for family.. bleh. Not to mention start my xmas shopping.

Well, I'm not going to post any pics of the riding until I get back to Toronto.

I feel like a king staying at my uncles place. Excellent food, excellent entertainment (mMMMmM Large rear projection tv with surround sound), and excellent relaxation (hot tub AND Sauna). All and all, it was a good end to a riding vacation in Whistler.

Vancouver is an interesting town. Take a peek here for Mark's opinion. You can definitly see the slower pace of life here. People take their time crossing the road, driving their cars. A much smaller city as well. It was confusing for me to drive around. It's so disorientating when you dont know if you are traveling north or south. In my head (in Toronto at least) I always know which direction I am heading in. Not here. It was still fun though.

Did a little shopping, got "Sneakers" on DVD. It was pissing down rain, so not very fun to walk around. Went through UBC.. Nice campus :) Back home, tasty dinner, and relaxation in the hot tub/sauna!

Apologies for the lack of details. Cousin wants his computer/room back. He needs to go to school tomorrow, so early sleepy time for him (10pm :P)

Vacation on a scale of 1 to 10... 6.5.

Well its over. Our weekend of riding has come to an uneventful end. It was good. Nice to sleep in today too! Today is just a chill day. I scooted off to the village (and 'net cafe) for some time on my own. Tonight will involve packing and chilling before heading out to Vancouver tomorrow.

Things with infiniteloop have been quiet. That's good. Had a small fire to take care of, but nothing big :)

I hope everyone in Sydney is doing ok, with the bushfires and all.

Yeah, this is a short entry. I plan on posting some pictures tomorrow or Tuesday.

Stay Tuned

Wellp, Mark and I made it here in one piece! The flight it was alright. We both felt rush as we didn't have to wait much in between connecting flights. As well, we were able to scoot on an earlier shuttle into Whistler. Both knackered, we decided to take it easy and get a good nights sleep.

The conditions are shit. Only 5 or so runs open on each mountain. Snow conditions are icy and granular. Nontheless we are riding down them like pros. The views are amazing. It's so nice being able to see mountains in the background.

I would have to say that 80-90% of the people that I have talked to are Australian. It's amazing how many aussies there are here. On the lifts, in the gondola, in the stores, on the hills. Aussies and Asians make up a lot of the population here. I really, really want to get a job here next year.

My uncle will be out of town when Mark and I are leaving Whistler. That kinda sucks, so we will be chilling with my cousin and aunt only.

I forgot the battery charger for my laptop at home. So, Mark and I are at an internet cafe taking advantage of the computers. It aint cheap either, at least, not compaired to the rates in Sydney when I was there.

The weather has been alright. Sunny or overcast, pretty mild around -2C - 0C. Meh!

Not sure what else to write. I wont be able to post pictures and stuff until I get to my uncles place next week.

Yesterday was, uhmm, not as good as what I thought it would be.

Finished work, went to Computer Fest with Laura, Mary, Gord, and this dweeb Chris. Such an annoying kid, I have NO idea why Laura brought him along. In anycase, I picked up the sweetest keyboard for $15. It's an old school 84 key IBM "clicky" keyboard. So loud, so clicky. I've been looking for this keyboard for ages. It was brand new too, in original packaging.

So whats the plan today? I will most likely head to Q9 after work to meet with Jon for a nice tour. Head home and blitz on packing and getting ready for Whistler.

God i'm so tired :/