It's only tuesday...

I guess the week has been going better than I thought it would. We are at half staff levels, but it has not been to busy in general so everything is handled in good time. Now if I can just managed to solve some of the problems I have picked up, it would be even better. I continue to stumble around with an R*C call and can only hope they don't escalate any time soon. Oh yeah, I had my goal setting session today, and it actually went pretty well, especially since the manager didn't really look at the stuff I wrote down! Hehe, I am starting to like the managing style already. ;-)

Had fun last night when I went to Yoshiko's place and had dinner. Just amazing how fast she can watch Alias though... I am still stuck on the last disc of season 1! I did get to watch an episode of Prison Break, and it looks pretty interesting even though I don't really know who any of the characters are. Maybe it will be on the to-watch list one of these days. :-)

What else can I complain about? Well, today was 1.10 day for WoW, and suprise surprise, servers are still down for emergency patching. Awesome patch for the win yet again... Blizzard seems to break even more things with each fix than I*M does! hahahaha! Oh yeah, I also need to figure out who the mystery person is that joined my baseball pool! ARGH! It's like an invasion!!! I'd hate to delete someone without knowing who it is, but maybe I won't have a choice by tomorrow. Oh well, hopefully I will get a response of some sort.

Weekend recap

Overall, I think this has been a fun weekend. I was able to work from home on friday and only had one customer call in after 5 (even though it dragged on for like an hour plus). I've been logging onto WoW with my main more lately in anticipation for 1.10 and was able to do so again. Still no luck with the last 2 pieces... argh!!!

Slept in on saturday as usual and then picked up GQ (hurray for Adriana!) before heading up to Toronto for the Sport Compact Nights show. One thing I wish they had was some electronic ticket vending machine since the lineup for tickets was a bit too long. Lots of fun at the show since I got to see some familiar faces along with people that I haven't seen for a few years, and I was able to meet some new people as well. All in all, an excellent time, although I am definitely getting older since I feel much more acutely the effects of shouldering my camera equipment all day.

Sunday was mostly spent on doing some editing work and sending some followup e-mails. I need to seriously consider getting a new computer before a new camera I think since editing time is taking longer and longer. Oh well, logic was never my strong suit...

The coming work week is going to be pretty busy since we are short-staffed. Not sure how it happened since summer is the time we are supposed to have like half the people off on vacation, not end of March. Oh well, what sucks will continue to do so I guess. Better get to bed earlier since they are scheduling me in earlier than usual this week.. ugh......

Trapped in confusion again...

Some days I have to wonder who comes up with these great ideas for products I work on. I am sure it all sounded great in theory to integrate different types of file system and support it on one system, but in reality it just doesn't quite work that well. The native methods to deal with availability just does not cover all these additions so well since from what I can tell, everything is extended instead of rebuilt... Oh well, integration and virtualization is all the rage these days. I don't even want to get started on the great "Infrastructure Simplication" initiative they have out there that have caused wonderful problems for us. Oh well, I figure I am going to be stuck in this situation for a few more weeks at the rate things are moving... the joys of work never ends.

On more interesting events, the WBC is over, and the suprise winner is Japan over Cuba!! Congratulations to Team Japan!! Now I just have to wait until 2009 until the next WBC. Here's to hoping they will fix the umpire issue (if the MLB umps don't want to come, get the professionals from other countries!), and also the tie-break system... When I heard during the Mexico-US game that Mexico will automatically lose if they scored before the 13th inning (on top of having to score 3 or more runs), I just kind of blanked out! I hope they come up with something a bit simpler next time! A few more teams would be nice too!

The past few days had me scrambling around for a copy of the collector's edition of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Seems like the thing is sold out everywhere, and places that show it in stock don't have it either! Ugh! I guess I'll have to try and order it from the distributor site... Not like my computer can run it anyways so I guess I shouldn't be in a hurry (unless it's a limited run). :-)

Anyhow, time to get ready for bed. Not feeling too well and definitely can't get sick before next week... >_<

Weekend ramblings

Well well well, the WBC is almost at an end and it will be Cuba versus Japan. Japan managed to salvage the most important game against Korea and took it 6-0 to advance onto the finals. It will be an interesting game for sure tomorrow night. Of other baseball news, I am sure the Jays were pretty scared when their prized (and very expensive) pitcher AJ Burnett left the spring game after the second inning... That would have been a pretty big bust, and still could be if it's any more serious than what they are reporting. Can't wait for the season to start in April. Hurray for baseball! :-)

On entertainment related notes, I went to watch V for Vendetta and I thought it was an entertaining movie that offers some points for one to ponder on. I think people (critics) take movies too seriously these days. Isn't the whole point for it to be a form of entertainment? Oh well, just my personal view that it's nice to escape into sometimes the idealistic and optimistic world/view that movies offer instead of trying to relate it back to real life. Oh yeah, I also heard the supposed leaked internet version of the Mission Impossible III song that Kanye West worked on... If you are interested, just search for Impossible on the net. Kind of has a bit of some 007 feel to parts of it, but the general sound is still a bit hard to tie it into the movie in my opinion.

Anyhow, time to get ready for another week of work and catching up on administrative matters. Oh the joy never ends...

WBC update

Oooh, US lost to Mexico and is now out of the tournament! I think most people will be happy about that since US had a few calls that went their way (including the botched call in this game that denied Mexico a homerun). Japan moves onto the next round and gets to face Korea for the third time. Heheheh, it would be pretty interesting (I guess embarrassing for the Japanese players) if they lost again. It's down to Cuba versus Dominican Republic and Japan versus Korea. And then the respective winners face each other. More entertaining baseball up ahead! :-D

Baseball excitement!

Wow, that was a great game between Japan and Korea in the second round of the WBC. It came down to the bottom of 9th at 2-1 for Korea with Japan having a runner on first and 1 out... and then 2 strikeouts!!! While baseball can be a boring sport at times, it's games like these that keep me interested. :-) I have to say USA is pretty luck since if Japan won, they would have been automatically out of the tournament. Now they have a chance to lose to Mexico. ;-) I can't wait to see the outcome of that game to see which other team moves on in pool 1. I hope the WBC tournament is enough of a success to ensure its continuation so I get to see matchups like this again in a few years.

In other interesting (to me) news, GQ has an interesting interview with Adriana Lima (who would be the subject of my dream photoshoot). Hehe, I can already see the disbelief from readers now. I guess in this day and age it's pretty hard to imagine sex is only for after marriage. But then again, divorce is so prevalent (especially among the more public figures) that religion and the sanctity of marriage may seem... well, outdated. Still, I find that I believe what people say unless it's proven otherwise (and proven != tabloid news... and that means Barry Bonds, I am starting to believe with all the evidence coming out that steroids use is part of your game... woot, what a segue back to baseball ;-)).

Anyhow, I think it's time for bed now... just two more days to go in this long long week... ugh, work is going pretty poorly (and no, I haven't started writing my stupid yearly development plan at work yet)...

Time is flying by...

My goodness, it's already about half way through March! I haven't really accomplished anything this year that I wanted to do. Well, at least finances are in slightly less of a death spiral but I need to be extra careful since I do have plans to travel and acquire a new camera (and kind of "need" a new computer too). On the work front, things are still kind of at a stalemate (as they have been for much of the past... 8 years almost). I have to do the yearly goal-setting session with the manager, and really have no idea what I want to achieve from the session, and what I am going to put down. I suppose I am not the only one out there that's working at a job that one doesn't particularly like, but the sense of loss and misgiving is sometimes overwhelming.

On a more cheerful note, I had lots of rest over the weekend and caught up slightly on some photo editing. Still lots of work to be done, but with my expertise in procrastination, I am happy at any sort of progress. The weather was really good, but I kind of missed the whole going outside bit. Hopefully this coming weekend will be nice. Oh yeah, I am looking forward to Friday since V for Vendetta is out and it looks like a fun movie. Hehe, starring Natalie Portman is a bonus too. :-)

Anyhow, hopefully the work week will not be too stressful. Got to get to work on writing my development plan as well as try and finish some problems that have been dragging on... Good luck to me...

Work frustrations...

Recently it seems like we are seeing an increasing number of customers who... well, just plainly "don't get it". After providing what is a reasonable explanation (and the same thing that 99% of the other customers don't complain about), we have people that just keep asking for more information... more clarification... or even placing more calls about the same issue (I suppose in the hope that one of us will say something different). I wouldn't mind it if I knew we are giving ambiguous information, but in these cases, it's about as clear as it's going to get.... or the customers better be going back to take some more computer science and whatever courses if they want to understand underlying implementations of things. Ugh... the longer I work, the less empathy I have it seems...

Anyhow, enough rant about work. I am pretty excited with the new X-Men trailer. Check it out at the Apple movie trailers page. Oh yeah, on the somewhat opposite spectrum, I saw Ultraviolet this past weekend. It felt like a long music video, in that they are trying to make it very stylized (maybe to match the source material... not that I have ever seen that), but ended up with something that is filled with fluff. Oh well, it was somewhat entertaining thanks to my very low expectations at the movies. :-)

Been getting on the bike again a bit more often lately to ramp up for the better weather. I still find riding on a trainer really boring, but it helps when I can watch a show where I have met some of the regular cast. I've been checking out Deal or No Deal these days and hurray for Lisa and Ursula! :-) Anyhow, back to the bike bit... It's hard to judge whether I have made any progress over the winter since I rode less often and the computer continues to be somewhat erratic. An hour here and there just doesn't feel like enough and I get lazier on the weekends when I actually have more time to ride... Stupid me.... Oh well, I am just going to keep on riding and dream of the day when I deserve a Madone and PowerTap. While I am dreaming, I wouldn't mind an H2 (Hasselblad, not Hummer), a good Profoto setup, and a lot of other things... hahaha, maybe I should go to bed now with these good thoughts and hope for a nice dream.

Update for last week

Last week kind of went by in a blur since I was sick for most of the week... I suppose I am better now since I am back at work. There was some good out of the week since I was able to get more rest than usual, and I also had a chance to meet up with Filipa on thursday. It was lots of fun to catch up on how everything is going and just good to enjoy her company. :-) Apart from that, I went up to Toronto on saturday and met up with Jim and Vicky for a pre-birthday gathering for Vicky. Hehe, when are they going to learn that I can't plan anything?!

As for this week, nothing too exciting so far and I still haven't seen our new manager yet (the change-over happened when I was off). I can only hide for so long... ;-)

Oh yeah, go Taiwan go (although they didn't make it past the first round) for kicking China's butt 12-3. Have a look at the official WBC site for further details. :-)