Even more certified (or is that certifiable???)

Oh what a fun day of work... Woke up and got ready to work from home at 8 and sat around doing not much until the meeting at 9. Yet another useless discussion about morale and issues that need to be addressed. There really is only two things at hand in my opinion (and seems that way based on our survey results), compensation and time (work-life balance). I mean it's bad enough that we are officially referred to as resources, but continually chipping away at benefits/compensation (where did my stock benefit go??? 15% to 5%? Bonus pay? Hello??? Stop changing the system every year so it minimizes payout, etc etc) while increasing workload is not exactly the best method to increase morale.

Anyhow, left work and headed to Kitchener to write my certification test. It was a bit harder than the assessment since the distribution of questions weighed more on the memorizing feature numbers (which any sane person would look up on the computer or in a book) and how to use those feature numbers. Oh well, in the end, I still owned the test, just not by as much as I expected. Oh joy, now I have even more useless IBM certifications!

Anyways, that was about all the excitement for the day... well, that plus I got to have pho during a weekday! Oh my goodness! I must stop messing up my meticulous weekly schedule!!! :-)

PS. The new album "The Black Parade" from My Chemical Romance is an enjoyable listen! Give it a try (^_^)

Weekend update

Well, this was a pretty uneventful weekend. I managed to get some photo editing done, and generally messed around with my new computer. It is satisfactory... well, considering the amount I paid for it... >_<

I finally went out to watch The Prestige which I had planned on seeing on friday night. Friday night turned to saturday afternoon, which turned to sunday afternoon, and finally sunday night's last show at 10pm... :-) It was an entertaining movie, although quite different from The Illusionist. The theme between the two movies were quite different even though both looked like they had very similar character archetypes. Both were definitely fun to watch and had their little twists, but
I think I enjoyed The Illusionist more since the theme appealed to me more. Now if I can swap Scarlett into The Illusionist, it would have been perfect. ;-)

I did watch some more movies at home on DVD. The Break-up was pretty entertaining despite poor reviews I had read. Hehe, I think I am biased since I find Vince Vaughn very entertaining!! Jen Aniston is always fun to watch too. :-) Hehe, so much more stuff to watch too.

Apart from that, the weekend was pretty much filled with sleeping in and just generally doing nothing. Oh well, another week is starting and sure to be filled with goodness and what not from work...... ugh.

Blazing along... kind of

I got my new computer this past wednesday!!! My new baby (do people name their computers?) is stirring up quite a bit of trouble though since XP doesn't like to play nice with my old Win2K machine. Network keeps on dropping between the two machine which caused me to have spent the past 2 nights (up til like 4) trying to synchronize files. Oh well, at least I am somewhat close to having all the important stuff transferred.

It is shaping up to be more than I expected in terms of photo-editing. I have gone through more than I would have edited in one week just tonight alone! At this rate, there could possibly be a day when I have no more backlog!!! Hahahaha, that will definitely be a day to celebrate!

As for game playing, well, there are still lots of games where slowdown will occur when I crank up the graphical settings. Oh well, at least pretty much everything is playable now. :-) WoW sure looks different!

Anyhow, this might be my last weekend of freedom as monday brings more details for that stupid project at work. Ugh... the amount of contempt I have for that group will grow with no limits! I better go get some stuff done before I no longer have control over my schedule... oh the joy of work never ceases to amaze me.......

Err... it's still Fall right???

Hmm, what's up with the early snow??? Today when I was at work my manager comes around telling us there's a blizzard in London, and then moments later it starts snowing in Markham. Checking online shows it's snowing Guelph too. The drive home was not too bad even though the closer I got home the weather got worse. Despite the drifting snow and reduced visibility, most people were keeping it above 70km/h!

Work sucked brilliantly as the PS people pulls a nice trick to try (and likely succeed) and dump an extra job on me when I asked for clarification about the project I was assigned to. Ugh... and my further request for clarification on that is met with silence. All I can say (well, think while I am at work) is WTF! Oh well, I'll deal with this crap next week since I took the day off tomorrow. Maybe if they pissed me off enough, I'll do something rash (like quitting this madness).

Anyhow, hopefully the weather improves for the weekend. Looking forward to my little long weekend break from things.

Movies I am looking forward to

Check out the trailer to 300 and The Invisible. 300 looks very cool style and graphics-wise, and The Invisible looks kind of like The Sixth Sense. Should be interesting and fun. After all, I am easily entertained by any movie. :-) Oh yeah, what's up with all these official movie pages on Myspace these days?! Oh well, I guess I am one of the masses they are targeting I guess. ^_^;

Caught between the bad and the somewhat good...

Yesterday was my first day back to work from my internship in the US, and already I am dreading my time at work... A nice bomb was dropped on me in that I am working on a project for a major bank that could last a year. No choice in accepting or rejecting this "opportunity" was given which never really sits well with me. I continue to be amazed with the way they can work with the resources (ie Me) available. I guess this might not sound too bad, but it's for the brilliant department that fired all their guys and realized they made a slight mistake and now comes to us with all of their work since they can't get anyone back. Oh yeah, the customer isn't exactly the easiest to work with either. And what should be work for multiple people they are likely going to try to cram into a job for one. I can't wait to use my (non-existent) project management experience (which is actually listed in the outline as needed) to get this going............ GRRRRRR! Apart from that, a difficult to work with customer caught me at the end of day and dragged out a conversation by repeated complaining about a product that he may not understand properly. The joy of work responsibilities never ends!

Apart from that, I guess I have some good+bad happenings in that I bought a few items I wanted for quite a while. I plan on eliminating my "everlost" talent (or at least seriously reducing the frequency) in North America again with my nuvi 660!! It actually works pretty well and I can't wait to test it out more this weekend. Also, I actually went ahead and placed an order for a long overdue PC. I am finally stepping somewhat into new technology (soon to be outdated with the quad core coming next month!!!) and can't wait to actually be able to edit a photo in less than a minute! :-) Anyhow, while shopping is nice, the bill paying to come next month is going to be painful. I sure hope I made the calculations correctly. Also, I have to totally look at the timeline for getting a new camera and some studio lighting gear again since I have more or less exhausted major funds until next year. :-(

As an interesting aside, I read this interview and based on my interpretation, E3 is doomed... >_< Now I need to figure out a replacement show. Maybe TGS? or the one in Taiwan, or maybe Germany? Oh well, something to keep in mind for next year I guess.

Coming home

I am still alive and finally it's my last day here in fun-filled Rochester! The past few days have been pretty slow but I guess overall I did learn some useful things for work which is definitely a plus during these lean times at Big Blue. I did make a visit to the Mall of America this past saturday and it was a bit disappointing since it really wasn't that big... :-( I didn't go ride on the jet simulator as I had planned, but did get some shopping done. Oh yeah, the Lego store is quite fun and they had the completed Deathstar II and Imperial Star Destroyer there!

There are definite positive and negative aspects with finishing here. The good is I get to go home and back to familiar surroundings. Plus I get to see my new nephew who was born just at the end of September. :-D The bad? Well, I am being pressed into an oncall since someone can't do their shift, and then it looks like I get stuck with a late start too since no one else is available. Argh........

I went to see The Illusionist earlier tonight. I found it very entertaining and Edward Norton put up an excellent performance in my opinion. The grand illusion that was weaved throughout most of the movie was very cool once we came to the end of the movie! Of course having Jessica Biel doesn't hurt at all! :-) Now I feel the need to go watch The Prestige which looks somewhat related with the theme of illusion/magic. I think for me having Scarlett Johansson in the movie (or any movie I guess...) will be enough for it to be an enjoyable experience. ;-)

Oh yeah, the count for Neverlost versus Everlost stands at 4 to 1... It could be 5 to 1 tomorrow if I can get back to the airport okay! I think I am pretty convinced I need navigation for my car :-) Now I just have to start packing so I can sleep and then drive to the airport in 6 hours... >_<