It's been a day of losses. Mark and I were playing a game of impromptu hack in front of Dairy Queen. I get the pass, and start losing control of the hack! Mark is screaming "Control! CONTROL!" wham! toe kick a little too hard (and too far); the hack is on the roof. I felt so bad. We were both pissed. Don't worry though. Come this weekend, we are going to perform "Operation: Hack Extract". Using our elite covert skills, extract the little guy and return him back to his rightful owner.

After that ordeal, I decided it was time to relax at home. I was playing my Massive Attack mp3s pretty loud. What I didn't realize, was that the next song in my play list (from the Vanilla Sky Soundtrack) had a recording level 1000s higher than the Massive Attack mp3s. As soon as the song came on, I knew it was over. The drivers in the satellites are fried. I love these speakers (Cambridge Soundworks), they even went to Australia with me! I'm probably going to buy new ones tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Sue!

This week has been a so-so weekend. It was my brothers birthday yesterday, so we went out for drinks. Katie, Kara, Courtney, Russ, Arden, Bryan, Lindsay, and myself headed to Tom & Jerrys in Newmarket. T'was a good time. Got home at 1:30am.. so I was a little tired today.

I have been working on this report (17 pages now) for the past week or so. Stupid boss' boss took a gander at it today and totally hacked it to pieces. I was pissed at him. I really want to start doing sysadmin type things again. It's sad when all you have open all day is Word and Excel.

I was watching this show on tv tonight called "Extreme Makeover". Typical american trash. Three people got the ultimate make over.... cosmetic surgery, high intensity workouts, eye surgery, etc.. I can't believe they made it such a big deal. I was amazed however.. how well they looked after everything was said and done. I'm a little shamed that I actually watched the whole show.

I've been super frisky lately. That needs to be taken care of :P

Plans for this weekend? Not sure yet.. Finding Nemo comes out on Friday.. I want to go see it! Saturday Mark and I (Maybe Kara) are going to hit the ROM. Haven't been there in years. It was that or the Science Centre... but we decided on the ROM.. the Science Centre can be a little cheezy sometimes. Sunday is who knows what..(of course Operation: Hack Extract)

It was a pretty good weekend so far... but Sundays suck as usual.

Friday I headed out to Chinook for dinner with the usual croud (and then some). Then headed out to see Bruce Almighty. The original plan was to hit Elgin Mills. The movie was sold out :/ So then we headed further south to Silvercity Richmond Hill. Success! We had to wait in line for about 20 minutes. Something I haven't done since Star Wars was re-released!

The movie was pretty good. 7/10. There were some parts that weren't funny at all, however the rest of the theater disagreed. We then headed back to Gords place (sans Mark) to chill for a while.

Saturday was fun. I headed to Chapters to get a Lonely Planet guide on San Francisco (more on that later). Then did a little window shopping at the Mall. Mark and Gord ended up buying some shirts and a cd. I was people watching while Gord was eating his tasty bagel when I saw someone with really really beautiful hair. She totally caught me staring at her, but she had wicked long brown hair that had depth and volume. It was straight until it starting curling at the ends.

The ride home was not fun at all. To make a long story short, Gord accidentally wailed my funny bone with a pop can (it was hard enough to break the skin). I hadn't felt this excruciating pain in a long time. My hand whole arm was numb for at least 20 min after the event. I felt nauseous after :(

We played a little hackey sack, then headed to the basketball court. I was surprised how shitty I was doing :/ I hadn't played Basketball in the longest time.

After a quick shower we all headed out to Sneakers for some food. Which turned out to be where we spent the majority of our time. I spent a little too much money (silly shots that didn't even get me drunk). Headed over to Gords place to chill again.

Nothing special on Sunday (today). I spent an hour or so working on my Itinerary for my California trip. It's pretty jammed packed with activities. Everything from surfing lessons, to clubbing, hiking, and shmoozing. I'm excited.

I really think i'm going to get cracking on getting into even better shape. I haven't been doing cardio in a while. I have slowly been increasing the amount of weight im moving around (Im up to 130lbs on the bench press). I just need to start going back to the gym 3-4 times a week. Slacking sucks :(

I really, really, really, really need to clean my room. Not to mention fold my laundry. Not sure what i'm doing tonight (for food). Might have dinner with Bryan when he gets back from London.

Quick entry.

Tough week. Been sick for a bit of it. It's amazing how a 4 day week can actually feel like 7 days.

Raining pretty hard out there tongiht - I like it.

"By doing so, the LPGA superstar will become the first female to compete in a PGA tournament since the late Babe Zaharias qualified for the Los Angeles Open in 1945."

Yeah.. I was too lazy to write a journal entry so I got Mark to do it for me. Pictures are available at http://www.blakecrosby.com/pics/

Bare feet, beers, tacos and juicy jumbo's.



May 2-4, a taste of summer finally came to us this year. After a pretty dull and cool spring that left the leaves of cottage country fairly barren and the bugs to a minimum, the sun and mild temperatures worked their magic this weekend.



We left for Haliburton Friday around 5:30 pm under a gray wet sky. We convoy styled it up the entire way, and arrived in good time, despite warnings of a closed highway and bad holiday traffic.



Once we arrived we went next door to Gord and Bryan's neighbors place where we were introduced to some pretty interesting people, who apparently represented the CRIPS��"Baby Blue Sound Crew"�w0rd. Although some minor conflict arose when one of the �crips� made a comment about Ard's RED shirt�..red being BLOODS�..how gay is that. Gangs shit in cottage country.



ANYWAY, we proceeded to drink the night away under an overcast sky.
The next morning the sky was still overcast, the sun was promised to shine later in the day and it didn�t take too long for that prediction to come true. We pretty much bummed around outside all day, enjoying a game of hack here and some target practice there to pass the time, but we mostly just relaxed and talked. Around 3-4pm we headed into town to dominate the famous "enforcer", a HUGE burger with three types of cheese, two types of bacon and two 1/2 pound patties.



Night fell the drinking began once again. Some booze, creative imagination and the forest surrounding eventually inspired a small game of �war� where Gord, Blake and I stalked and ambushed the rest of the gang delta styles. (A had to be there kind of event).



Sunday was an equally nice day; we went go carting and to the driving range to occupy us slightly as the water was FAR too cold to swim. Go carting was more like bumper cars (Bryan got the shit end of the deal with the slowest cart EVER) and the driving range allowed us to vent frustrated anger�like we had any.



Sunday night came around and we again drank. Blake and I felt the effects of the weekend come down on us around midnight and decided to call it a night, as did Bryan who's conscious made that decision for him�;).



The stars Sunday night were CRAZY!!!



I woke up around 4am to the rest of the gang coming back in. Had a few laughs, but in a matter of minutes everybody was in bed sleeeeeeping.



Monday was a typical end to a long weekend kind of day. Get up late, have a good breakfast, pack everything up, sit outside, shoot the shit dreading the drive back.



We all came out with some mad colour to our wintered skin. I think we were all equally exhausted, some of us were SMOKED out �ahem, Ard's finger. 23-25 degrees and sunny, bbq'd food, good company, lake setting, enforcers, forests at night, campfire's, beer, gin and tonic for those of you who like that sort of thing ;). Damn, saying this was a �wicked� weekend is a HUGE understatement.



I think this is going to be a good summer!

Some IRC Goodness for you:

Devastator joined #perl


::Devastatr:: can you have 2-d hashes?


03:02PM ::Fletch_:: perldoc perlreftut, perldoc perldsc


::Devastatr:: wow, even for yes/no answers you fags still tell users to refer to the man page


You were kicked from #perl!

and

01:32AM ::thommo:: where's blake? I need to abuse him for giving us Avril Lavigne..


01:37AM ::Anthony:: yeah *kicks Blake in the nuts* ;)  ... but hey we've got John Howard, so where does that leave us


01:41AM ::bonsai:: Avrils a skanky biatch


::Devastatr:: whee


::Devastatr> hahah


::Devastatr:: she finally made it down there eh?


01:43AM ::thommo:: the problem is not that she made it down here


01:43AM ::thommo:: the problem is that she won't leave


::Devastatr:: haha

Be back in a few days.

Had a great time last night. Had an impromptu outing with Mark, Bryan, Kate, and Kara. We headed up to Shoeless for some drinks. Work called be at around 10:30 because some shit was going down. I felt so bad for having to leave... but I was able to get back in time to still catch some of the conversations :P It was the first time I went out drinking on a Monday night.

I went to book my flight to San Francisco:

grrrrr...

Going out to dinner with Sarah tomorrow night! w00t. Also going to see the Matrix on Thursday. yay!

*yawn* work called me. 15 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Bleh. It's a good thing though, because I would have slept through my alarm anyways.

Wen't out last night, and had a great time. I'm starting to kick my self in the arse for not seeing what this girl was trying to do. The first time I hit the bar, there was this pretty hot chick standing next to me. She was all like touchy-feely and stuff (no, she wasn't drunk) and started talking to me. I pretty much just shrugged her off :/ Yeah, yeah i'm gay.

Anyways.. saw a friend of my brothers... it was her b-day. She was already drunk.. Didn't really see anyone else I knew. I was expecting to see a whole wack of people from school, since its the summer now (well almost) and everyone is back from Uni. Nonetheless, Brian (Gords Brother), was able to attract some mighy interesting characters of the female persuasion. Lisa was her name (and she was with her friend Chantel (?)). She was pretty crazy, letting us rub her arse (to prove that she wasn't wearing any undies). Just being all sexy-like. I was trying to get her to kiss her friend, but they didn't because Mark and the rest of the gang showed up.

We chatted for them a bit, then Mark (and the rest of the Posse) headed to another bar. Arden and I were content on staying put. Some more hotties (well, just one - Abra.. we sorta go back.. she was my ex girlfriends friend) came by [yay thanks Brian] and we chatted for a bit. It was one of those situations where I wanted to give her my number, but I couldn't do it in a suave way. Without asking around for pen and paper and stuff. We all said our goodbyes then headed back to my place.

There was only four of us left. We chilled in my basement for a few hours. Dave had brought his keyboard with him. We were getting him to play all these crazy songs, like Mario Brothers, The Entertainer, Jump (by van halen). The guy is good! So we started getting our own beats going. All four of us on the keyboard, each with a percussion. It was so much fucking fun... We were doing it for hours.

So whats happening tonight? I have no idea. Originally I thought we were going to a club downtown. Thats not the case anymore, but to a house party in Richmond Hill (ugh!). I really don't feel like doing that. We will see what happens. As for today? No idea, everyone is still sleeping.. I think I am going to finish cleaning my room, hop in the shower, get some food. I think a bike ride is in order today.

For the past 5 hours I have been reading up on Java... trying to cram in as much as I can, as quickly as I can. I breezed through a "Learn Java in a Weekend" book (about half of it) in just over an hour. I also bought "Learning Java" by O'Reilly... which is going to be large reading material on the train. My goal is to learn enough Java by July 1st to be able to take my J2EE. Feel free to critique my code.

I can't really say why i'm cramming Java in my brain.. or why I am going to be so busy this week/weekend. I'm working hard to get something and i'm going to be super pissed if I dont get it. The positive side is that I will now know Java and be certified!

I'm starting to get really annoyed at the people on the train. This one guy was really pissing me off. He wouldn't stop tapping his foot. To me it seemed random.. but I did notice a pattern. Just before he was going to say something (ie, he had to think about something first) his foot would go nuts. Plus the fact that he was talking SO LOUD just pissed me off. I have to remember to bring my headphones. iPod - headphones = useless.

Gord and I went for a bike ride yesterday at Lake Willcox. Had a good time... it's nice to get on the bike again.

Another thing that is starting to annoy me, is my parents borrowing my dvds :( I would come home from work and I would find my dvd on the coffee table. What pisses me off is the fact they came into my room. I don't care if they borrow my stuff, only if I give it to them. It also pisses me off when they close my window. I guess because my room is such a mess and i'm embarrassed that my parents have to trudge through it to get/do what they need. I need to clean this shit hole up... especially for when my Grandparents get here.

11:15.. should I sleep.. or watch one of the new dvds I bought... Vanilla Sky or Enemy at the Gates.. Fuck.. I know I should be sleeping, but Vanilla Sky is tempting me.

I should be sleeping now. Well, I'm half there.. Already in my bed, with my warm, glowing laptop balancing precariously on my lap. It's been a pretty interesting weekend. Thoughts are floating around in my little head...

I heard tales of three couples getting married. Some people I knew, some I did not. In all three cases they were around my age (give or take a few years). When I was younger I heard of a few school mates tying the knot. Back then I just shrugged it off as simply something that was done too early. Most of my peers agreed with me. After this weekend, these same people who would have agreed with me a year or two ago regarding marriage, are no themselves getting married.

I have mixed emotions about all this. Naturally, I'm a little jealous. It must be nice to have someone who loves you no matter what. Someone you can spend your life together. I'm also lucky that I’m still single. I don’t have to deal with some of the responsibilities of being married. My views on the whole tradition are starting to change. No longer is marriage just "an excuse to have a party" or "something to be done when all other activities have been exhausted". Maybe I’m starting to feel the peer pressure of everyone else getting married - so why not me?

I also felt awkward. I never knew I would be hearing my self ask my friends fiancée: "how did he propose to you?". What sort of questions do you ask when the topic of marriage is the current conversation? Is there an etiquette I should follow? As I'm writing this entry I am having visions of my self in a tux *participating* in Gord and Brynas wedding. An activity which I have never even thought about while growing up. I'm nervous just thinking about it.

Some people think that moving out, or graduating university, or turning 18, means that you have matured and are "well aged". I don't think so. I think marriage is the defining moment in your "growing up". It's the ultimate commitment.

I'm starting to think how I would propose to my girlfriend... how/when/where we would get married.... It's exciting.

Ahh the weekend... a beautiful one at that. Sun is shining. It's going to be a great drive down to the city. I'm checking out a house on Mt. Pleasant and Eglington... it's a little too pricey for me, but we will see what it looks like and if its worth the $1950 a month. There was also talk of me getting out a mortgage and buying a place.... something about slapping down $240,000 scares me.

I didn't get out of work until 7:30pm last night. I'm started to loath the assignments I have been getting. Right a report on this, do an analysis on that, crunch these numbers, explain me this! I'm a SysAdmin, not an accountant! Yesterday was pretty geeky. I spent the whole day fucking around with SNMP and getting nice things graphed in cricket. My only problem is that when graphing Disk Usage, the number of Bytes used that is returned is in 2K blocks. I can't seem to get it to change it to 1K blocks. (if X = Y/2048, how can I make X = Y/1024 ... apparantly you can't solve for two unknowns unless you are really smart).

We might be turning of Akamai. Bleh, that kinda sucks. Enjoy the free streaming while you can. But then... I got word on Friday that we might be keeping it! Silly management people.

Hmm... gave cheque to dell.. Still dont have money in my account. I think I will give them a call on Monday and see whats up.

Have to quickly wrap up this entry (bleh.. I wanted to write a nice jucy one).

I am probably going to bring my camera out tonight. Bryna is organising a little get together... nothing spectacular, most likely just hanging out at a bar someplace. Going to be fun!

Laundry and biking tomorrow! w00t w00t.