My World

When I ask you for a clubhouse sandwich, on white, with no tomato, spookily enough I expect to get a white clubhouse sandwich with no tomato.. not the barely toasted brown bread clubhouse sandwich with fat wedgy tomatoes you just gave me!

Is “chinese whispers” a racist term? Because back home (in the UK), it’s a generic term to describe the changing of a story as it’s passed on from one person to another then another, the end result being that the final person to hear the story hears something that’s way different from the original. But if my order was passed from one asian, to another, to another who actually made my sandwich wrong, is using that term deemed racist? or offensive? Meh - probably.. but I was offended at paying $6.37 for a sandwhich which was below par, so bite me.

So what’s new in the world of Paul? Meh.. not much..

Monday: Did the podcast, met up with Brian, hung out, went for gelato, went for a walk, went to the movies to see Nacho Libre. Not bad, easy entertainment but nothing special, probably a 6 out of 10, which coincidentally is what IMDB rates it right now. Hung out and shot the shit some more, sent him home, crashed out.

Tuesday: Dull day at work.. couldn’t get “in the zone”.. got stuff done but not as much as I wanted and I was a bit restless.. Great lunch at Taco Del Mar with Deejay though - who knew their chicken quesadillas were so good? (if a little pricey).. Came home and tackled the mirror issue (see a couple of blog entries back for the “bathroom mirror smashed to smithereens” story). Holy! As in fuck! What a HASSLE! Got there in the end and lugged this big heavy box full of glass shards down to the recycling room. Vegged out, did laundry, had a shower. Watched House. That was that.

Wednesday: Much better day at work, got stuff done, felt mostly productive. Came home, chilled for a bit, then went out with Kira to see The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Total cheesy porn, pretty much what was expected, yet strangely entertaining too. Maybe it’s just Lucas Black, I dunno (but PS that guy is HOT!). I’d give it 8 out of 10 for entertainment, for “that” kind of film.. Came home, crashed out, and watched Hells Kitchen - They finally sent Tom home and about time too.. fuck knows how he got on the show in the first place, useless lardy arsed twat. I’ll give him points for committment but in general, he sucked. Also watched the From The Ground Up finale show and was pleased to see Ryan A win the prize - I was rooting for him! Started sketching a few bits and pieces for my “project” but didn’t get too far.. Maybe I can get some shit done over the long weekend..

Right… bed, sleep, work tomorrow, out for drinks tomorrow night, then bring on the weekend! :-)

Ho hum.. home straight from work, do the podcast, then go out for food and a movie.. Bit shorter than usual this week and probably nothing really to write home about.. I saw stuff while I was out eating that I could have come back and talked about but oh well.. life goes on..

Link: podcast44.mp3 (22:31, 10.3Mb)

In this week’s show:

• Talk from Daniel’s BBQ including the classic phrase “blended family”
• Some blurb on being spontaneous (or not, as the case may be)
• Outrage at Wankergirl’s “sit on my face” song
• A discussion on inappropriate clothing
• ..plus the usual random tangents and stuff

Please, no feedback this week.. I mean it - no feedback! (yeah right!)

This weekend flew by almost as quickly as the whole of last week, but not quite..

Friday: Resisted peer pressure from colleagues and didn’t go to the pub after work. Came home, vegged and chilled, ate, hung out. John came over, we hung out, shot the shit, he said “falsey” t-shirts were tacky then realised I was wearing one (I laughed, he was horrified). Headed up Robson for gelato and came home to find the mirror fucked (see previous blog entry for photographic evidence). Hung out and shot the shit some more, and half watched half of The Object of My Affection on TV. Paul Rudd’s kind of handsome, no?

Saturday: Got up late, vegged and chilled and pretty much did fuck all for most of the day. Went over to Daniel’s in the evening for a BBQ which was a good laugh.. Good food, good conversations, especially towards the end (booze fuelled perhaps?) (dictionary.com says you can spell it fueled or fuelled - it just looks better with 2 L’s I think..) I’ll probably talk more about those conversations in my podcast tomorrow (now there’s an incentive to listen if ever you needed one!)

Sunday: Got up late, vegged and chilled for a bit.. spoke to my parents back home who’d been to Iceland for the weekend as part of a work jolly type thing - sounds like they had an amazing time, I’m looking forward to seeing the pictures! Walked down Hornby to the Aquabus and hit Granville Island for late lunch, then walked round False Creek to Science World. Met Brian at Stadium SkyTrain station, hit Pacific Centre for some quick shopping, then back to mine.. Brian showed me his Nintendo DS Lite and it’s pretty nifty.. not sure how much I rate that Trauma Centre game, but Meteos is pretty cool - done by the same guy that did Lumines on the PSP, kinda similar but mostly completely different (contradictory much?!). Walked down to the Yaletown Brewing Company but it was heaving so walked up to Dix. Food and a few beers, then back to mine so Brian could watch the last episode of Sopranos and I could play more Meteos. All in all a good day, and a really nice night - nice to hang out, catch up and shoot the shit after the recent hiatus.

Nuff said, I’m off to bed, back to the grind tomorrow innit..

Today started off really great.. I got up to blue skies and sunshine, the promise of a really nice day. Here’s how it looked:

I love days when the weather’s like that.. So off to work I go, earn a living, get those bills paid etc.. Come home, chill’n'veg for a bit.. John comes round, we go out, and when I get back I discover this catastrophic mess in my bathroom:

The mirror used to cover that whole wall - about 4.5 foot by 3.5 foot.. Not anymore! Apparently it thought that enough was enough and it fancied falling away from the wall while I was out.. uh, yeah - cheers for that then! I couldn’t be arsed cleaning it up tonight beyond moving a few bits off the carpet and hoovering it so I can get in and out of my room without cutting my feet to shreds.. I’ll tidy it up tomorrow.. then try and figure out what comes next in terms of getting it replaced..

Blah blah, time flies, where did the week go, who knew, etc etc - you know, the usual…

Monday to Thursday: Tiger Team - RAWR! I went in with mixed feelings but it was pretty much alright. What’s it all about, you ask? Take a bunch of people from different departments around the company, some technical, some not, and lock them in a room for a week to analyse a bunch of data to understand the problems our customers have in a certain area. Started out ok on Monday but got a bit less fun as the week progressed. They bought food in for us - curry on Monday, pizza on Tuesday, shite sandwiches on Wednesday, and on Thursday we got taken out for project wrap-up lunch at Browns. Went shopping with Alyson afterwards and bought a desperately needed new pair of jeans that I’m very happy with. Back to work, discussions about what I’d work on next, then home to crash and veg.. spent the night sorting out paperwork and filing, cleaning and tidying, oh yes - I know how to live!

Friday: Went to work and spent ages trying to sort out my expense claim for my cell phone + internet allowance.. for the past 6 months.. I’m sure the finance department are gonna be pissed with me for not having done it monthly for the last 6 months.. we’ll see how that goes.. hit Browns again for lunch today with Okhtay, shot the shit about buying places versus renting plus a bunch of other stuff.. good times - can’t beat lunch in the sun on a patio :-) Worked through the afternoon, came home, crashed out, John came round, we went out, came back, discovered a disaster had struck while I was out (details in my next blog post).. chilled and vegged, he went home, and here I am - frigging the posting date/time so it shows up in the right place..

Apologies for the wank title for this week’s exciting and fun-packed episode! It could have been “The Two Weeks Later One” but I didn’t feel like going there.. “The Bits And Pieces One” just seemed too generic.. so I went with the kinda boring clothing describing title.. Moving swiftly on then….

Link: podcast43.mp3 (27:40, 12.7Mb)

In this week’s show:

• The Sesame Street Counting Song
• Week in review + Tiger Team RAWR!
• An Inconvenient Truth
• The Pete Tong Tongcast
• Fake Name Generator
• Random stuff I’ve seen today
• ..and the regular request for feedback at the end of the show ;-)

Ok, hold up - where did the weekend go?! fucksake! Here I am, 11pm on a Sunday, trying to remember what I’ve done in the past few days..

Friday: Slow day at work, very “bitty” finishing off bits and pieces. Regular weekend meeting with the boss, then lunch, then another meeting, then off to the Wall Centre for a Quarterly Review Presentation - woot! We saw the new TV ads for LiveLinks and Tango Personals and I have to say - they’re pretty classy! Teligence recently won the BC TIA (Technology Industries Association) Company of the Year award so the presentation ended with a champagne toast. We also all got given T-shirts with “Dating is BETTER here!” on the front and the LiveLinks logo on the back. In pink. PINK! Not sure I’ll be wearing that out any time soon but I’ll wear it round the house, sure.

Home after the presentation, then out for a haircut, then back home to chill’n'veg - kinda tired after a long week and happy to just take it easy.

Saturday: Got up late and lazed around. The weather started off nice then turned mardy, real dark black clouds and a bit of rain. Did some work on my project, pissed around with this and that. Hit the movies to see An Inconvenient Truth. It’s good, interesting, yet worrying. It shows Al Gore giving his presentation on global warming interspersed with non-presentation segments where he’s telling his story direct to the audience. Good film, definitely worth seeing, I’d give it 8 out of 10 (with IMDB currently rating it 7.2 out of 10). At the same time it kind of makes me feel a bit helpless. It’s like - the world’s fucked, the climate’s fucked, the chances of us being able to recover and restore balance seems pretty unlikely (even with all the best intentions), so what happens in the future?

Sunday: That would be today then! Regular Sunday routine: got up, listened to Dance Anthems on Radio 1, phoned the parents. Much nicer day outside today, blue sky, sunshine, cool breeze - NICE! Did some more work on my project and cursed that the documentation for Ruby on Rails isn’t as good/easily accessible as it maybe could be. I think functionality wise, I have the pre-launch page pretty much sorted, minus minor tweaking - I just need to sort the CSS out and get RoR working on my server and we’ll be good to go. The excitement builds!

Spent the evening crashed out on the sofa catching up on some TV.. A bit of Shameless followed by From The Ground Up, nice :-)

Back to work tomorrow for my Tiger Team experience RAAAWWWRRR. Have to admit that I’m not totally looking forward to it, but I’ll go in with an open mind and see how it goes (prepare for a rant about it in tomorrow’s podcast? hehe). On that note, I’m off to bed.. early night for an early start tomorrow!

So here we are, midweek.. What’s shaking? Not much.. work a bit, veg/chill a bit, work on my project whilst watching TV a bit, and tonight was “sociable night”..

I had plans to go out with John straight from work, and 5:30 couldn’t come soon enough - the afternoon dragged! I was in work “early” this morning to do a code review (”early” meaning it was booked for 9am so I had to be in just before then, as opposed to my usual leisurely 9:15 or 9:30 start). We hit Moxies on Robson, good food, good chat, good times :-)

John went off to his next social engagement, I came home and realised I felt knackered.. but I’d said I’d grab a beer with Matt who’s in town for a week.. and being as he was staying in a hostel 2 blocks away and there’s a pub 1 block away coupled with the fact he was climbing the walls with boredom, it’d have been rude not to right? Sure.. twist my arm.. couple of pints at the Loose Moose it was then..

Home, news on TV, bed. Sorted! :-)

With a doff of my hat to Mr Douglas Adams for the “42″ refence, this week’s podcast is mostly random.. I give away a bit more information on the “upcoming project” I spoke about last week, and do my very own BLARM just for Wankergirl!

Link: podcast42.mp3 (33:29, 15.3Mb)

In this week’s show:

• The week in review
• The death of Quinn Keast
• The project: www.rel8.com
• Cool new site: www.impersonals.com
• Random TV site: USA Rock Paper Scissors League - www.usarps.com
• Criss Angel - Mindfreak!
• My very own BLARM!
• ..and the usual dose of random waffling!!

Apologies to: Alex Hopper for not only forgetting to play his audio feedback, but also not mentioning him, or the audio delights he linked me to but I didn’t fancy playing. Full shout + feedback next week mmkay?

I also forgot: Birthdays! SlePP yesterday, Kira today, and Brandon on Saturday - Happy birthday people! :-)