November, 2006

Can you believe that it’s already the end of November? December starts tomorrow and so does the countdown to Christmas. I have very little time to get anything done these days. There’s so much to do yet so little time. I don’t even have time for Tim Horton’s.

As the countdown to Christmas begins, I know I’ll be rushing around looking for gifts for the family. It’s hard to get all of that done when you basically get one day off of work. I am going to have to squeeze in some time before work to get things done. I just don’t want to be going to the mall everyday and coming out empty handed. That’s been happening a lot lately. Every time I got to the mall to find something, I either get a call from my brother or I can’t find what I’m looking for.

Usually around this time of year, the prices goes down in order to attract the shopper’s attention. The thing is, the place that I shop at rarely have sales. If they do have sales, it’s not on the items that I’m looking at. There are even places that have sales but raise their prices. One time, I wanted to buy something from Futureshop so I waited until Boxing Day. When that day came, I went to Futureshop only to find that the price has been raise. It was not more expensive than before. And before, it wasn’t even on sale.

On top of Christmas shopping, I have a layout that needs to be complete for a client. This layout was supposed to be done a long time ago but I’ve been procrastinating a lot. In the beginning I was very eager to get started on the project but then our creative control was taken away so I slowly lost interest. My and the guys made a few layouts for the client but they didn’t like any of them. Compared to the design that they have up now, our designs were a thousand times better. Most web designing firm would give their clients one design and then improve on that but we gave them around ten different designs.

They liked the layout that I came up with but decided that a few things needed to be changed. Those changes completely changed my whole layout. So they’re not giving us a lot of flexibility to do what we want. We have a meeting with them on Saturday to see the new layout. If they don’t like the new one, I think I’m just going to stop and ask them to find another company to make their site for them. I’ve been designing websites for over a year now and the reason why I made their site the way I did was because of the trend. The design for their site should be close to what the current trend is. Unless you’re providing a service that isn’t out there yet, you’re in no position to be setting any trends. I just want to do a good job on the site because the company needs to build our portfolio but with the way things are going, the final design might not be as good as it can be.

While I’m procrastinating on that work, I’ve been doing a little work on my site as well. I plan on releasing a new design tomorrow. A few people have seen it but not in its entirety. At the moment, I am struggling on figuring out where to place certain sections of the main page. A few minor tweaks needs to be done here and there to make sure everything shows up correctly. Firefox and Internet Explorer haven’t agreed 100% on the CSS standard yet so one thing may show up correctly for one browser while it messes up for the other. Here’s a sneak peek.

It’s going to be a new month and we’re slowly reaching 2007 so it’ll be nice to get a fresh new look to the site. I’m just hoping that the new layout will help me get into the mood to design more. Usually, when I’m in the right mood, I’ll constantly design a whole bunch of stuff. It’s my way of working productively. If I lose interest, the whole layout gets scrapped even if it’s 99.99% completed. Rather than going back and fixing up minor mistakes, I find it faster to start all over. It’s good practice too.

A friend recently sent me a link to a video that one of my college professors made. It was a video about critical thinking. He mentioned an experiment performed by Edward De Bono about a black cylinder where the cylinder would tip over without a cause. It would be sitting there on a desk and a few seconds or minutes later, it would tip over. Then a question was posed to the students regarding how the cylinder tipped over. After watching the video a few times, it got me thinking.

Dennis Angle is the professor in the video. He was probably one of my favourite teachers because he’s a funny guy. He looks almost like Mr. Clean because he’s bald. I had him for the Computer Environment course at Mohawk. It’s a course that I didn’t like too much but I made sure to go to his lectures. I guess for this video, he’s teaching a course on critical thinking. Or he made it for the Wednesday auditorium lectures where all the Comp Sci students gather for one big lecture.

Mr. Angle referenced Edward De Bono so I did a little reading about him. De Bono states that there are four ways to be right. One of those ways is the feeling of being right. No matter who you are or what you do, everything to you might be right if it feels right to you. Someone can come up to you and say you’re wrong but maybe they are the one that’s wrong. Going with your gut feeling only helps with the present and could prove to be wrong in the future.

Much like the Black Cube project, this experiment got my curiosity stirring. This cylinder is just standing there and moments later it decides to fall over without anyone or anything doing anything to it. There’s no fan to blow it over. There’s no magnet to pull it down. Nothing. It’s right there in the open and it just falls over.

I’ve never taken any critical thinking classes so I don’t really know what kind of answer he’s looking for. I can make a few guesses and back it up with my own logic but I won’t know if that’s the correct answer or not. The answer isn’t given in the video so I have no way of knowing if it’s correct. I am not there to examine the cylinder in person so that makes it even harder to come to a conclusion. I have to come up with ideas based on what I see and hear.

I think that there is something inside the can that is causing it to tip over. Since there are no outside factors to cause it to do so, I’ve come to the conclusion that an inside factor is the cause. If you watch the video closely, you’ll notice that the can tips over only in one direction. It may appear as if it’s falling over in multiple directions but that’s an illusion caused by the camera angle.

After it tips over it appears to roll a little bit. That motion leads me to believe that there’s some sort of weight inside the can. If the can was filled with liquid, it would tip over and roll in one direction. That is not the case here because you can see it roll back and forth rapidly. If there is liquid inside the can, the viscosity of the liquid is probably very thick. Inside that thick liquid is probably a weight that is heavy enough to tip the can over. The can isn’t tipping over on its own. There has to be something pushing it over. Basically, it’s some sort of trick.

It’s almost like this trick or illusion of Magnetic Hill located on Kings Road in Burlington. People that go ghost hunting believes that if you go to this hill and put your car in neutral, the car will start to roll uphill. The story suggests that the ghost of children that died in the area are pushing your car up the hill towards safety. Another story suggests that there’s some sort of black hole that is affecting the gravity in this one particular area. I’m scientific enough to know that both stories are made up because people couldn’t explain the phenomenon.

The cause of the anti gravity illusion is the fact that you’re actually at the top of the hill and not at the bottom. The landscape sceneries are playing a trick on your eyes and making you believe that you’re at the bottom when in actuality, the elevation of your location is slightly higher than the elevation that you’re seeing. Of course, the story of ghosts pushing your car is a lot scarier.

It’s the holiday seasons and much like the other in town, I’ve been running around, stressing out and draining all my energy. The night shift has done nothing but add insult to injury. Every morning when I get home, I have a problem with getting to sleep right away. And when I wake up a few hours later, I still feel tired. I think my lack of sleep is slowly starting to catch up to me.

I didn’t sleep when I arrived home on Friday morning. It was payday and I need to get some bills paid off. I don’t like to put unpaid bills aside for too long. My bills are usually paid upon receipt. My cell phone bill comes out to around $45 if I stay with in my allocated airtime. My internet bill is about the same amount. My credit card bill is probably the highest because it’s currently at a high balance. I can’t afford to pay for all of it at once so usually a little over half of my pay goes towards my credit card bill. Whatever is left over goes towards my savings.

With Christmas less than a month away, I fear that my credit card bill will be going up again. It usually does that around the holiday season. But maybe I won’t have to worry too much about that since I don’t have much time to do any shopping anyway. By the end of the week, all my energy has been drained. All I can do is sleep until I stop getting tired.

Last Friday, I was up the whole day finishing off some errands and helping out people with the computer problems. I got back home around 6:00pm and just passed out. The next thing I knew, it was 1:00pm Saturday afternoon. I woke up and got out of bed to finish off the rest of my errands. I got back home around 6:00pm and I passed out again. I didn’t wake up again until 9:00pm that night. From Friday evening to Saturday evening, I must have slept a total of 22hrs.

If anyone is offered to do the night shift, take my advice and pass on it. It has its advantages but I think that the disadvantages out weight the advantages. Yes, it is rather quiet here at night but that the part of the job that I dislike the most. I don’t mind working alone but I prefer to have some sort of interactivity with my coworkers. And the main disadvantage with the night shift is that you’re too tired to do anything when you wake up so you miss out on a lot of things. Even on a Friday. You’d think that I’d be rested enough after sleeping for 8hrs. I should have a lot of energy to go out Friday night but I don’t. All I want to do is sleep some more.

At the rate things are going, I am not sure if I’ll get my Christmas shopping done. Some people have learned from their mistakes and started their shopping early. There are words that some of them are already finished with their shopping. I haven’t even started and I don’t even know where to begin. My mom hinted on the fact that she wanted a treadmill or something to exercise inside the house so that’s pretty easy. My brother is suggesting that we get together and get a portrait of just the boys. If we do that, it has to be on a Friday since that’s the only day I’m available. Heck, I could probably take the picture myself but since it’s a gift, I think it’s best that we leave it to the professionals.

I don’t even know what to get my brothers and my dad yet. Usually I get the little guys toys and the rest a sweater of some sort but I think that’s getting old. One of the little guy is no longer little so I can’t get him toys either. I was thinking of getting them a gaming console but I don’t think they’ll do their homework if there’s an Xbox 360 in the house. The little one is constantly on the Xbox or the laptop playing some sort of game. He gets his homework done and all but it seems like it puts in more time with video games than doing homework.

I’m thinking of getting my dad a new cell phone. The one he has is out dated. He’s not much for the new stuff. If the current one he has is working, he’s fine with it. He’s not like me where I need to stay up-to-date with a phone that has a camera at least. He’s had that cell phone for a couple of years already. I don’t mind signing up for a new contract if it means he gets a new cell phone. The current one is already under my name. If I do get him a cell phone, I have to see if it’s possible to switch the phone number to the new phone and have it activated on Christmas Day. I don’t see any reason why it can’t be done. I’m just guessing that they’re lazy to implement it.

I’m not an all out die hard Christmas celebrator so not everyone gets something. Usually, it’s just close friends that gets a card and maybe a box of chocolate. They’ll be lucky to get that if I have any money left over. The first time I went all out for Christmas, I had a pretty high credit card bill to show for it. I wanted to make sure everyone on my list received something. I didn’t expect anything in return though. I never do. A simple Christmas card will do just fine. I know that money is tight around Christmas time so I don’t expect a lot. I’ll be more happy if you wish me seasons greet!

“I’m not drinking anymore!” Anyone who has ever had a little too much to drink has probably said or heard this before. But most of us know that it’s just words. Some people will drink and get wasted and say they won’t drink anymore but the fact of the matter is, they continue to drink for some unknown reason. On my 25th birthday, I drank and sort of got wasted too. I remember thinking to myself, “I’m not doing this every again!” And I haven’t.

Tonight, I went out for coffee with some friends. Around 3:00am, they dropped me off at my house. Outside my house were my brother and a couple of friends. They had just gotten back from partying at the bars down the street. They were outside just hanging out so I thought nothing of it. When I walked closer, things started to get a little loud.

At first, I thought they were just joking because I didn’t go out with them earlier. I’m not much for the bar scene. I don’t drink that often so there wasn’t much of a point for me to go along with them. I know I could have gone and just chilled but I don’t want to go to the bar and not drink.

Then my friend started saying that he hated some feeling. My brother told me that he had a little too much to drink. He had a couple of beers here and then had some more at the bar. After the bar, they went to the pool hall and he drank some more. So by the time they got back to my place, my friend had drunk over his limit. Now he’s trying to puke it all out in hopes of getting it out of his system.

I’m not much of a drinker but I don’t think puking it out helps the situation get a better. The alcohol that he consumed has already gone through his system and impaired him. Any attempts to get it out of the system are pointless.

Then he was hanging over the railing trying to throw up but nothing was coming out. So he went back to sit down on the bench and relax for a bit. That’s when it came out. And it came out in chunks, thick chunks.

I’m use to seeing puke so it didn’t disturb me much. My brother and my friend ran for cover. I stood there staring and analyzing the content of the substance was coming out. Judging by the consistency and the smell, I concluded that he had chicken noodle soup for lunch.

After puking for a good 20 minutes, I went inside and grabbed a plastic bag because I had to take my friend home. We left his car parked out on my street and I drove my car to his place. When we got there, he continued to vomit some more. I walked around for a bit and let some more time pass. The fresh air seemed to help a little but he was still puking out nothing.

His neighbourhood was a quiet one so the sounds that he was making seem to echo. As I was holding him up off the ground, I was thinking that his parents would be coming out anytime soon. Heck, I even thought the neighbours would start coming out to see what was going on. But no one did. I guess their insulation was good if it blocked out the sound of a guy puking in the middle of the night.

Finally, after a few minutes of hurling and heaving, he was able to get on his feet and walk to the side door. We got inside, walked into his room and he just passed out. I found him a bag in case he had to puke again.

When I got drunk and started puking, I knew that I would not be drinking as much again. I don’t like it when the room is spinning whether I’m drunk or not. I’ve learned my lesson and I won’t be doing that any more. I’ll drink a couple of beers every now and then but not more. I’ll admit that I probably had the best sleep every after drinking four beers and a couple shots but the dizziness that you get when you’ve drank that much isn’t worth it.

Back in my high school days, some of my friends were eager to get started on drinking but I never saw why. I still don’t. The effects of alcohol are only temporary and you end up feeling like shit the next day. If you’re willing to spend your money on something like that, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. It’s something that you need to think over and see if it’s worth it. I’ve made my decision the day I turned 25 and I don’t see myself changing my mind any time soon.

I went to Canada Computers the other day to pick up a laptop cooler for a friend. Her laptop was getting hot enough to the point where it would slightly burn her legs. If this friend was a guy, it would have reduced his sperm count a little. Laptops have been known to heat up quite a bit but it shouldn’t get hot enough to actually burn you. This is an old IBM laptop so it’s before the days of the exploding batteries.

When I got to Canada Computers, I walked straight to the area that had the cooling devices. I assumed that is where they would have laptop coolers on display. Basically, a laptop cooler are boards that have fans in them. The fans draw the heat that’s emitting from the bottom of the laptop and blows it away. Most laptop only has a couple of vents to circulate the air. It’s usually located by the CPU but neglects the other part of the laptop that may heat up. My friend’s laptop is pretty old so I think it’s starting to go. I didn’t want to get her something too expensive since the laptop isn’t worth that much.

While I was browsing around in the store, I happen to eavesdrop on a few other customers. Although I am somewhat of a nerd myself, I’d have to admit that these guys were uber nerds. They may not look like your stereotypical nerds but they sure talk the talk. When I talk to my friend about computer, I don’t think we sound they way they do. I couldn’t help it but laugh quietly to myself while these guys were talking.

Little nerd #1: You can upgrade to the x800 but it’s the same as the x300 that I sold you.
Big nerd #2: Well, the x800 is a higher performance card since it has 16 pipelines and a higher clock speed.
Little nerd #1: If you don’t want the x300 I gave you, you can give it back but the x300 will give you the performance at a cheaper price.
Big nerd #2: Maybe I can over clock it. Eh, you want to over clock your CPU?
Little nerd #1: Man, I’ve already over clocked my processor to run at 3.42Ghz. That’s 114% at the moment. I might over clock it a little more but I’m going to have to add a better cooling system.
Big nerd #2: Oh yeah. You’re going to have to add a heavy duty heat sink and also get a more powerful fan.

I don’t know why I found their conversation comical. Maybe it’s the fact that I had just woke up recently. The last time I spoke with my friends about computer related issues, we don’t get this technical. If someone was computer illiterate walked by, they wouldn’t have a hard time understanding our conversation. But to understand these guys’ conversation, you need to know computers.

I’m probably more of a computer nerd than those guys were but I don’t fit the profile. Computer nerds have been known to buy guys with thick glasses and spend day and night on their computer. They lack social skills to communicate with others so they stay online all day. That’s pretty much what I do all day. I spend most of my time in front of the computer but I don’t lack socials skills. I can start a conversation with a complete stranger on the street. But I probably spend more time on the computer than out socializing. That would make me a nerd.