| Things I like: School supplies! |
[Jul. 17th, 2008|12:02 pm] |
My friend ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) soleta_nf put up a post a few minutes ago reminding me of something I absolutely love: School supplies. Or business supplies, really, I'm happy either way. Whatever you want to call them. Nothing seems to be quite so thrilling to me as being able to go to Staples and load myself down with pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, and whatever other random stuff I can find. It makes me positively giddy just to think about it.
Anyone else? |
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| Hellboy 2 |
[Jul. 15th, 2008|01:32 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | review | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cheerful | ] |
My bro and I got out to watch Hellboy 2 on Sunday night, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe it.
I think my best explanation of the movie is that it's like a bunch of pearls on a string -- lumps of beautiful, shiny, and fundamentally useless content all arranged in a line with virtually no contact between each individual section.
The story is almost painfully linear -- by the time the opening credits are actually rolling, you can probably guess 75% of what's going to happen in the movie. And beyond being linear and predictable, it's not even well told. The little narrative section at the start was clunky and awkward (although visually very pretty), the "love story" between Abe and [name redacted] felt forced, and a lot of plot points were sort of rammed in to other scenes in a very awkward way (the revelation about Liz, for example). The entire Angel of Death bit... That bit was so fundamentally unnecessary that it felt like the movie had suddenly grown a tumour.
The actors did a decent job, with the exception of Ron Perlman's inability to display any emotion in any circumstance. Hellboy himself is a pretty cool customer so it's not too surprising, and I'm sure the Hellboy makeup also didn't help, but still, you'd think he'd be able to show some emotion beyond mild annoyance.
One particular nuisance for me was the relationship between Hellboy and Nuada. I can't help but feel that there's a lot missing out of the movie that would help explain what the hell was going on there; as it was, the interactions between the two made very little sense.
One highlight of the story, at least for me: tooth fairies. Creepy as hell. Awesome. The rest of that section could have been handled differently, but the tooth fairies themselves... brilliant.
The visuals were fantastic. It was a very, very pretty movie. I can't think of a single scene in the movie that wouldn't count as eye candy, which is why I'm conflicted. The story is so weak that I can't say I actually like the movie, but it was so damn pretty that I really want to watch it again.
Overall... Being pretty can only make up for so much empty-headedness. I think I'd have to give it 2.5 stars out of 5, although I will say that despite my low rating, it's still worth watching once just for the visuals. |
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| My brain is melty |
[Jul. 14th, 2008|12:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
Nothing too exciting to write today. I was going to do a review of Hellboy 2, because I saw it last night, but I'm too sleepy to write anything coherent -- because I saw Hellboy 2 last night.
My home internet access has been flaky the past week or so... At one point yesterday evening it suddenly came back to life and has been functional ever since. Hopefully it doesn't die on me again any time soon. No home internet = pain. |
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| I should just stop posting |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|05:08 pm] |
After posting yesterday about the fact that my weight has bounced back up a few pounds, it turns out that the scale's bounced back down a few pounds today.* I once again weighed in at 237, down 7 pounds from my high of 244. And looking back through my log book, historically, I weigh slightly more after a weight-training workout than after a cardio workout, and today was a weight day. (I weigh myself after a workout on the way in to the shower.)
I guess the scale's just having fun playing games with my head.
Also: I will try to resist the urge to turn this into an exercise-only journal. :-) I've actually got a fun post to write up at some point soon regarding my old company and the accelerating exodus of top people...
* Don't worry, I don't take the day-to-day fluctuations too seriously. I basically just look at the trends over time. |
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| Two steps forward... |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|03:19 pm] |
I've stopped losing weight again. Two weeks ago, I hit 237 (down from my high of 244 a couple months ago) and since then I've been hovering pretty much right at 239. I'm a little frustrated, but I'd be even more frustrated if it weren't for the fact that I can see visible progress (albeit not much) towards my fat-loss goal.
My current theory is that I'm actually putting muscle back on at about the same rate that I'm losing fat, which is actually more plausible than it sounds. I'm losing weight slowly, and historically, when I'm regaining muscle I used to have, it tends to pack on relatively quickly. I've increased my weight workouts in the last few weeks, and increased the intensity of my cardio workouts too. Besides, I can see slight increases in muscle mass, and the muscles feel a lot more dense and firm than they used to. And, like I said, I can see (and feel) that I've continued to lose fat, despite a few big feasts lately.
So for now, I'm going to try not to let the scale bother me, and focus on the obvious (at least to me) progress that I'm making that's not reflected in my actual weight.
Oh, and another sign of progress: The bike had to bump up the intensity a fair bit today from what I was doing two weeks ago, and my legs found it less painful and my heartrate stayed a lot more under control. So... yay! Cardiovascular health is my primary goal at the moment, so I'm happy that I have progress I can point to in that realm. |
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| How to make a travesty of a company golf game |
[Jul. 3rd, 2008|04:24 pm] |
My company's having a golf game tomorrow to celebrate... uh... something. Basically, I think it's just an excuse to all leave the office. At any rate, I don't play golf, so I've got to find other ways to amuse myself. Which naturally led to me thinking, "Oh, I could wander around the golf course taking pictures!" Which led to another thought, "Wait, that's boring." So then I had to find a way to spice things up a bit, and I think I came up with something fun.*
It turns out that virtually no-one at this company can golf. So I've decided to take pictures that, shall we say, accentuate the company's lack of natural talent at the game. One guy's already agreed to let me take a picture of him giving up on golf and resorting to soccer. Another guy doesn't know it yet, but he's going to be sat down in a sand trap with a plastic bucket and shovel. I'm hoping I can get another guy to pretend that he's using his Hummer as a golf cart and is leaning out the door while driving (not in reality, but hopefully the picture will make it look that way) swinging at the ball.
Should be fun. For me, anyway. And that's the important thing.
* Get your minds out of the gutter. I work with computer nerds. That would not be a pretty sight.
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| i has a bbq |
[Jul. 2nd, 2008|03:25 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | chipper | ] |
We held a BBQ at our house yesterday (Canada Day), and were astounded to discover the sheer quantity of people that will fit in our back yard. And on our deck, actually, even with the BBQ on it. It was a little frightening, actually.
Overall, I think everything went well. The Experimental Chicken was received warmly, the Experimental Lamb seems to have been a big hit among the adventurous, and everyone else appears to have gone away satisfied and not at all food-poisoned. So that's good.
From my vantage point (which mostly consisted of listening to chattering while I stared intently at charring lumps of animal flesh), there also appeared to be plenty of good conversation, which was a bit of a worry. Combining friends and family at a single event can often be a little strained, but in this case it seems to have worked out fairly well. It helps that our friends and family members are all generally fairly easy to get along with.
So, we may have to try that again. If nothing else, I may have to have an Experimental BBQ on the Labour Day weekend when Andrea, Joel, and Tommy are out of town and safe from whatever bizarre food I dream up.
Anyone have any fun stories (or burning complaints) they want to share from the BBQ? |
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| Canada Day BBQ |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|08:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
Tomorrow's Canada Day (which I think anyone reading this blog already knows), and to celebrate, we're hosting a drop-in BBQ. If you're in the neighbourhood, drop in any time after 3 and join us for a while. We have plenty of beverage selection, plenty of food options, and we should have a lot of fun guests. (Mostly family, but they're fun.)
I'm also using this as an opportunity to try a few new things. Once I'm done writing this entry, I'm going to try out an apple/ginger marinade for my lamb loin chops I bought today, and then I'm going to prepare an orange/tequila marinade for some chicken breasts. So I'm really only being adventurous with a *little* bit of food, but that's OK. Most people probably don't want to be experimental subjects, so we've got to make sure we've got lots of completely-edible options for people to try. :-) If the dishes turn out, I'll point you to the recipes. |
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| Subtlety -- you're doing it wrong |
[Jun. 25th, 2008|09:47 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
One of my former coworkers left Sinking Ship a little while before the rest of us started to clue in, and ended up working for one of Sinking Ship's competitors. The competitor (let's call them Shrub) has no offices in Ottawa, so my friend worked out of her home. As time went on, more and more people have been leaving Sinking Ship, and a few more have ended up at Shrub.
So yesterday, one of my current coworkers brings in a copy of the day's Metro and points me to an ad on page six, where Shrub is looking for software engineers, customer support people, etc. In Ottawa. And since they don't have an office here, they have to conduct the interviews at a hotel... which just happens to be located a ten-minute walk from Sinking Ship's office.
I've been giggling about this since yesterday morning. |
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| Watch this |
[Jun. 20th, 2008|08:46 am] |
Watch this, then thank me.
(Stolen from John Rogers.) |
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| Woot! |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|03:25 pm] |
There are a ton of interesting things I could talk about (like linking to John Scalzi's excellent rant about California's gay marriage amendment thingie), but instead, I'm going to use a few minutes of everyone's time to be shallow.
I'm down five pounds! Woot!
I weighed in about a month and a half or so ago at 244lbs. Today, I weighed in at 239. That's five pounds. Five whole pounds! Yay! I realise I posted yesterday about being down four pounds, and that a single pound is certainly within the realm of daily weight fluctuation -- especially for someone who weighs 239lbs -- but still, five is such a nice round number, I had to post about it. Yay! Go team me! |
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| Greenbelt development? |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|11:36 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  confused | ] |
So the City of Ottawa released a report yesterday suggesting that a significant amount of development could take place in what is currently the Greenbelt, without ecological impact. I'm kind of conflicted on the report.
Gut reaction: "What? Develop the Greenbelt? Heresy!" I mean, it's the Greenbelt. Who in their right mind would want to shrink it? Even if you say "Oh, it's only some sections of it", the reality is that opens the door to developing more of it. So, no! No Greenbelt development!
Then I read a bit more of the article, and there's actually some reasonable arguments in there. For starters, the whole point of the Greenbelt is to contain urban sprawl, and the reality is that with our current urban development strategy, the Greenbelt's actually contributing to sprawl. So that sucks. And one of the proposals is to basically just open up some areas right beside the current transportation corridors, but open them up exclusively to transit- and pedestrian-intensive development. Which makes a ton of sense, because the infrastructure's already mostly there, it would take a TON of pressure off the city to allow further sprawl in the next few years, it's land that's mostly not particularly environmentally useful anyway (mostly farmer's fields, which are great, but not quite as valuable ecologically as wetlands or even just brushland), and it could set a precedent for the kind of development that Ottawa's trying to encourage in the first place.
So now I'm conflicted and don't know what to think. I must ponder.
In the meantime... Anyone else have any thoughts? |
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| So far so good |
[Jun. 17th, 2008|04:26 pm] |
I appear to be beating the curse, at least in the short term.
I skipped out on the gym last week, but I do have a good excuse -- I was sick.* Since I always get lazy or get ill immediately after posting about my progress at the gym, and I was silly enough to tempt fate a little while ago, I wasn't terribly surprised. The big surprise, at least for me, is that once I'd recovered enough to be able to go back to the gym, I did so. I had a 20-minute bike ride Friday, a 30-minute bike ride yesterday, and this afternoon I had my first serious weight workout of the year.**
So, I appear to have busted through the curse, at least so far. That's a good sign.
Oh! And another good sign: A couple months ago, the scale consistently weighed me at around 244. The last couple weeks, I've been around 240 to 241. If I can keep that progress going, my current goal of weighing 220 by my birthday (late Oct) is within reason. And if I reach that, my subsequent goal is to get back into 34-inch pants by next summer. I currently take a 40-inch waist, so that'd be quite a drop.
* Trust me, you don't want more details. Just believe me when I say that going to the gym was not a realistic option.
** Still a pretty wimpy workout. I've been really, really lazy for a very long time. |
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| There's a German bunker in my garden! |
[Jun. 13th, 2008|08:53 am] |
Well, not really. Not my garden. But someone's garden.
Here's the link: http://gardenbunker.blogspot.com/ |
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| New D&D is here! |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|11:23 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | happy | ] |
Andrea was kind enough to pick up the new edition of D&D for me on Friday. She's actually gotten further in the books than I have -- I was distracted by Shadow Unit -- but that's OK.
Impressions so far: Very nice. Should be a lot easier for new players to pick up in a hurry, but still plenty of subtleties and combinations to keep experienced players satisfied. The classes I've looked at so far look a lot more interesting than they did in previous versions -- the fighter actually has choices to make beyond "Who do I bash next?"!
One complaint... This edition seems to suffer from a lack of cohesion. The rules seem to be a lot more scattered around than in previous versions, especially 3 and 3.5. I imagine that if I were just getting into the game for the first time, or even just hadn't had a bit of experience with playtesting this new edition, I'd be getting confused a lot as things are mentioned without any explanation. For example, some feats allow you to take extra actions when you burn an action point. Problem is... What's an action point? How do you get them? Why would you use one? And other feats (in the fighter group, at least) include Hit entries like "1[W] + Strength modifier" What exactly does "1[W]" mean? I presume it's described somewhere in the combat section?
Anyway. Aside from the books being horribly disorganised, the actual mechanics seem great. I anticipate a lot of fun from this edition. |
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| Vaguely creepy |
[Jun. 7th, 2008|08:04 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | confused | ] |
Tommy was ill yesterday, and slept quite a bit during the day. We were worried that he would be up a lot during the night and wake up early, but he slept straight through the night and woke up at about his normal time. So that was good.
Except that Andrea just told me that he did cry at one point last night and I got up and settled him down and put a blanket on him or something. I have no memory of this.
Weird. |
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| Sometimes I am very stupid |
[Jun. 2nd, 2008|09:42 pm] |
I've been shaming myself into going to the gym fairly regularly for the past week and a half* and I've once again relearned a lesson that I thought I'd understood all along: going to the gym is good for me.
Now, two weeks ago, if someone had asked me about exercise, I would have said something along the lines of "I really should go more often." I might perhaps have continued with "I always feel so much better when I go." But if I'd really understood how much better I'd feel, there's no way in hell I'd have allowed myself to be such a lazy bastard.
Of course, one difference this time is that I'm forcing myself to do a lot more cardio than usual. In fact, I've done a lot more cardio than weightlifting lately. Cardio seems to do my blood sugar levels a lot more good than weights -- not that weightlifting isn't good for me, it's just that a decent half hour on the exercise bike is so much better. But I can't do cardio every day or I get bored, so I've been throwing in some weights too, which is revealing just how horribly out of shape I'd let myself get again. On the plus side, my chest seems to be back to the point where I can really blast it without being crippled for days, and a lot of my other muscle groups are nearing that point.
Anyway. It's hard to explain how I feel better... I don't particularly feel good right now, or super energetic, or hugely fit, or anything handy like that. I'm not experiencing any kind of euphoria, or filled with life, or any other such wonderful thing. In fact, I'd still say that I feel tired and lethargic -- which makes me wonder just how screwed up I was if being only a little tired and listless all the time is a drastic improvement...
As I know from past experience, if I get into reasonable shape again, I'll start feeling actually good most of the time, which will be nice. I'll need it to keep up with all the activities we're hoping to do with Tommy this summer!
Of course, I doubt anyone particularly cares, and of course by posting this I'm sure to inflict the usual curse upon myself, but still, I felt like posting. So there.
* The only day I missed was Friday so I could attend a farewell dinner for three former colleagues leaving the old company. Amusingly, while I was there, four other people asked if my new company's hiring. (We are.)
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| Random stuff |
[May. 27th, 2008|12:59 pm] |
A few weeks ago, I was a reference for a friend of mine who applied to my new company. He started yesterday. Hooray!
The Green Party in our area is looking like it might get more organised over the next little while. It'll be interesting to see if the recent increase in energy among party organisers will translate into increased activity among members and more public events. If so, it'll be very interesting to watch the political dynamics of the region change in the next couple years.
Tommy's teething, which leads to a couple fun things. He's not sleeping well, and also, he's biting. He took a good-sized chomp out of my shoulder yesterday. I am not amused. Andrea is also probably not amused, because she's home with him today since the babysitter's sick.
Umm... That's about it for now. |
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| Got a lawn? Get this |
[May. 22nd, 2008|12:32 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | review | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
On my dad's advice*, I went out last night and bought a Weed Hound. Later on in the evening, I pulled a good three dozen weeds out of the back yard with it... in the space of maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Without breaking a sweat. Or even bending over, for the most part.
It's pretty neat... You center the little spikes around the root of the plant, step down on the little step thingie, then pull out the weed. The spikes cut off most roots, and the ones that don't get cut off are easy to pull out because you've got a convenient handle to pull on. Once you get the hang of it, it takes maybe fifteen seconds to pull each weed, moving at a nice leisurely pace. And the nicest part was that a good half-dozen of the weeds I pulled were nice large prickly thistle-type-thingies, and I didn't even have to get near the damn things with my frail and easily-shredded skin.
Anyway, it made weed pulling so easy I felt I had to share... If you've got a lawn and you don't want to go the chemical route, this thing is absolutely worth the $25 or so.
* My dad's now working part-time in the seasonal section of Home Depot on Baseline. |
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| I made the right choice |
[May. 16th, 2008|10:45 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
I got to spend some time with a bunch of former coworkers on Wednesday night, and we spent some time catching up on the changes that have taken place since I left. I'm not going to repeat it all here, but... Suffice to say that another former coworker (who just happens to work for a competitor) was spoon-fed about fifteen different tidbits of information, any one of which could have major repercussions against my old company if they became public knowledge.
I originally estimated that Evil Parent Corporation A (the ones who bought us out last year) had five more years to go before they crashed spectacularly. I've revised that opinion. Some of the decisions they've made in the last few months make me think that the first cracks are likely to appear by the end of the year, and the spectacular crash could happen as early as next spring. At any rate, I don't imagine that any significant portion of the company will survive til 2011.
And while I have no actual evidence of wrong-doing -- believe me, if I did, I'd be contacting every authority I could think of to try to hand it over -- I wouldn't be surprised if a significant number of the current executive wind up in jail. It says something that the employees have started referring to the company as Enron Two... |
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