I'm not going to do a real update today because I don't have anything important to say. So instead, I'm just going to post a link to a picture (well it's actually 3 stichted together) I took in Niagara Falls last week. Yeah....that's about it. Told you it wasn't going to be a real update, but hey, at least it's a nice picture.

People always ask me why I don't eat breakfast too often. Well here's a couple of reasons:

1) I don't like eggs too much...unless it's an omlete covered with lots of cheddar and bacon when I can't really taste the eggs.
2) I like to claim I'm in a rush in the mornings (but if I'm at school, I always get a large double double and a everything bagel toasted with butter)
3) Nobody wants to make me pancakes or waffles...ever.
4) This morning, I was getting ready to eat mini wheats, let them soak for the normal 3 minutes I do, take my first spoonful, and the milk is sour. Now I have to wait an extra hour for lunch, although the omlete idea from above sounds good right now.

Honeymoon in Vegas is on TBS right now. It's not a great movie, but I always watch it whenever it's on the TV.

Coop is over. Just one thing the boss said to me during the performance review: I say too many wisecracks. For those readers of my site that actually have to listen to my voice...is it true?

One more hour of coop. Can I make it? Well I've had this expense report on my desk waiting for the managers approval for at least 4 hours. That is all I really did today. But hey, the other coop didn't even bother to show up to work today, so I guess I'm ahead of him in that regard. My new laptop seems to be working fine so far. Now I want a wireless router. Who is willing to by one for Stu (I tried expensing it and it didn't work).

Just got back from a drive around, when I stumble upon this article about obesity and urban sprawl. The sad part is, somebody paid for this when they could have easily read my blog from August 7 where I say the exact same thing. I can't believe somebody paid for this study. On a side note, does anybody know how to link my code so that I can scroll to a particular day's post, not just the archive for the month?

Nice to see London go without power for a bit. Why can't these things happen to the French. That way we can't hear them whine.

Tommrow I'm going back to the office one last time for my last day of coop. Normally this would be a cause for celebration, but honestly, I think I'm going to miss that place. Maybe it's the fact that I've actually expensed the company for more money than they paid me with. Maybe it's all the places I got to go and people I got to meet. Maybe it's the fact that I liked the job that I'll miss most. So unless my boss plans to ask me to work part time for christmas rush (I highly doubt it, because he would have made mention already) or they want to rehire me after I graduate in 4 months, I won't be visiting the office as an employee again.

So I think I could best tribute the coop term by some factoids:

Number of time zones visited: 3
Number of time zones I've talked on the phone with: 5
Number of stores visited: 25 -- I think (this is off the top of my head)
Most obscure factoid possible: I can claim to have gone to the bathroom in every Toys R Us store in B.C. and Alberta.
Favorite meal on company money: that's a tough one...the chicken sandwhich with JD's sauce from Cactus Club in Vancouver is up there with the strawberry waffles I had in Lethbridge.
Worst meal on company money: omelete I had from perkins in St. Catherines and the meals I had at the Vancouver Denny's.
Favorite Restaurant: Earls.
Least Favorite: Tie between Denny's and Perkins.
Favorite Hotel: Best Western in Kelowna (it's a shame to hear about the forest fires they are having now).
Least Favorite Hotel: That place I stayed in Kamloops. I forget the name, but it's right across the road from the white spot.
Funniest memory: The druken hotel fire alarm, by far.
Biggest dissapointment: Vancouver nightlife on Canada Day. City shut down at 11.
Best looking people: Victoria BC.
Ugliest people: Don Mills.
Craziest people (in the mental house way): Mississauga -- I had some asian lady scream as she counted to 20 (not ten) and some insane lady yell hi to me both on the same day.
Most Headaches in a store: Brampton (funny it's my hometown store too).
Least Headaches in a store: Downtown Toronto.
Most organized store: One of the Edmonton ones...south side of the city, I forget the location.
Least organized store: hmm, tough one, I don't know....Nanaimo is worth mention here maybe because they couldn't find a kit we sent them via courier.
Best office moment: Garage sale where I met Hank Scorpio.
Best office moment I wasn't there for: $100 PS2 sale. But hey, at least I got one for myself!
Worst office moment: Realizing I had to redo 50 keyboards because they weren't french.
If I had to take one memory it would be: Being in Whistler the day they found out they got the Olympics.
Best Beer: Albino Rhino.
Worst beer: You know what...I didn't have any bad beers this summer, but I guess finding out they didn't have schooners in Kelowna would be it.

So there is my coop term report. I wish I could submit it, but the office doesn't except blogs. Damm shame too, it's so much better than the crap I actually gave them.

Weird, I came home relatively early today. I guess working after working a 14 hour day, 10 feels short (8 is just a dream). But hey, at least I rememberd to blog, which is an improvement over previous days. Hamilton was ok today, Kitchener was good until I saw the traffic. Text messaging and driving is not recommended, but if you can type them without taking your eyes off the road, you got mad skillz. I fall into that category.

So I have been slacking off with the posts, but I haven't been home in a couple of days. Monday I managed to visit 4 stores AND go racing. Tuesday my plan was to do Oakville, then Hamilton (about a 20 minute drive) and finish it off with Kitchener (a 45 minute drive from the previous city). Well I get to Oakville start working on the PC's when the boss calls me and tells me it's more important that I go to Whitby (a full hour and 15 minutes across the city) then Don Mills. BAH! I logged in 250 km's of driving today and did 3 stores. Tommrow I do Hamilton and Kitchener (I don't know which one first...probably Kitchener) and Thorhill and Markham on Thursday. So don't expect blogs from me as I'll be away from the computer for a while. But hey, at least I'm working (14 hours today for those keeping score at home).

DAMM, I woke up this morning, made a pot of coffee, pour my milk in, when I see these floating things. DOH, bad milk! So I'm going to have to buy my coffee this morning (I went to sleep late last night). On the plus side I'm not going to the office, I'm going to stores so I get to expense my coffee, but I don't think I should charge it to the company as I could have had black coffee at home.

There ya go, I got in a post on the day I said I would. Yay for me, I did something right. Looks like I'll be out of office for the next 4 days (which is good) as I'll be working on upgrading PC's (which is also good). But I won't blog (which is bad) or be on MSN (which is also bad) but I'll be getting mileage paid for (which is good) and free meals (which is also good). Anyways that's the end of my post. All done for today. I'll be back tommrow.

I slipped up. That stupid blaster worm took up my work day (only put in an hour of overtime today...maybe more tommrow) and I killed my streak of consecutive weekday posts (I pride myself on updating my blog daily even if it's meaningless). So hopefully I'll have a real update tommrow...err later today. Well you get what I'm trying to say. I get to do Gran Turismo: GTA on Friday. Which essentially means I'll be hitting up a bunch of stores instead of being in the office (I like to drive around location to location and do work...maybe I should do that full time?) Haha, I just realized how many sony games I ripped the title off on my Gran Turismo: GTA thing. Ok, I should get some sleep now. I'm going to try to change my shout outs and tag board this weekend as both of them are down at the moment. I've had it with both pieces of software (espically the shout outs).

OMG, I almost missed my first weekday update in 2 months. I'm writing this one with 10 minutes to spare! I wouldn't want my loyal readers to think something happend to me. I worked 12 hours today fixing a problem that kinda wormed it's way on us. Yeah I know, it sucks, but I'm not complaining about the extra money. Looks like I'm staying with these guys for the balance of my term and not getting off a week early. Ahh well, for the better I guess, I'll take it easy when I get back to school (I always have a habit of doing that...although this semester is going to be different, I'm going to finish my homework on time....how many times have I said that?)

Alright I'm babbling. Just had a slice of pie from the big apple. Anybody who's made the Toronto-Montreal voyage knows what it looks like, now you gotta try the pie! Time for me to say goodnight for today, I'll be back tommrow though with a better update than today (or at least that's my goal).

Well work was fun today. For security reasons I'm not going to say that a worm hit us, but I spent all afternoon patching comptuers. Really fun isn't it? Hopefully only one week left of this stuff. Damm it's hard to blog when my mother is nagging me. I need to get around to installing office xp. Where did I put my cd?

Funny thing happend to me today. Went over to Garry's house to watch the Lions preseason game (repeat from yesterday....no no no, the score isn't important. You know what, let's forget I even mentioned it). Anyways, first I stopped over at my local beer store to pick up some Alexander Kieth's IPA for the game (at the request of the host). Well guess what, they don't have any six packs. WHAT KIND OF BEER STORE IS THIS? So I settle for Rickards Honey Brown (not a bad comprimise I guess). Get to Garry's house, watch the end of the first half and a bit of the second. 3pm rolls around and I go home get my team ready for my NFL Fantasy League. Guess what happens to me? I get locked out! Doh, that's the last time I leave without taking my keys. So anyways, I get to the draft, with only 3 hours of preperation underneath me, I think I managed to pull of a descent draft. My wide recievers aren't the best (just like last year) but I think I got some great depth at QB (always a plus) and RB (doesn't hurt either). So let's hope I do better than last years 4th place finish.

Man, I just found out one of the guys I went to high school with passed away. Man it sucks when somebody your age that you went to school with is no longer here. It kind of puts everything into persepctive. Suddenly that power outage that gave me Friday off work isn't so important anymore. Of course about that black out, I'd like to point a couple things to my American neighbours.

1) It was your fault.

2) It was not Ontario's fault.

3) It was your fault.

That is all. The mayor of New York City (who's name isn't really important because he doesn't have his facts straight, so I'll call him Jim) is an idiot. The Prime Minister of Canada is a bigger idiot (he can't even say something right, let alone be on TV). But the biggest idiot of the event award goes to all those idiots who tried to go to work on Friday. Why bother? Is work really that important to you. Granted if you are a police office, fireman (you guys never get enough respect) or hospital worker (one that actually does work, not one of those nurses that chat all day in the nurses office) then I got nothing against you. It's those other ones that don't want to take days off when it snows. The ones that believe we lose too much money by adding an extra holiday (yeah, because you know, if I need milk today and the store is closed, I'll never need it again). The boss that kept his workers outside the plant, not letting them leave after the power outage (there is a world outside work). I could keep going on with this rant, but the fact of the matter is, the Lions game is about to start.

Here's a story that'll probably be repeated forever: On the day of the big blackout, I cooked a pizza on the BBQ. The next morning I cooked an omelet on the BBQ. That takes skills people, skills! But I was afraid some people may not believe me about the pizza, so here's the visual evidence: (I forgot to take
pictures of my omelet).

Damm power outages. That's enough said. 20 hours without power allowed me to drink booze. Which isn't bad.

Madden has arrived, although I won't be home until 9 to play it. Looks like I won't be sleeping much tonight. Tommrow is the Toys R Us BBQ. Hmm, free lunch you say and employees from the second and third floors? I can definetly see the advantages. Good thing I'll have my trusty digi cam with me to umm...document my experience.

Yay, Madden should be at my house when I get home. UPS now has the tracking on it! It's in a delivery truck right now. Hopefully somebody will answer the door when they come knockin.

Good news: Futureshop shipped Madden 2004 UPS to me today.

Bad News: They gave me a incorrect tracking number.

Good news: it hasn't rained today.

Bad news: I'm still at work.

Good news: Only 1 1/2 hours of work left.

Bad news: Still 1 1/2 hours of work left.

Man, this week just won't move. You know you are in for a long week when you already are cursing Wednesdays. Hopefully I won't have more than 8 days left as a coop because I want out. Nothing against the company, it's just time for Stu to take a break.

I need a nap. Why don't companies allow nap time? They allow smoke breaks, why not sleep breaks. Employees would come back feeling refreshed. It's a great idea. If I ever start my own company, I'm going to allow sleep breaks.

Why is it that my ride to work takes no more than 20 minutes yet my ride home takes an hour? I take the EXACT same route. It's frustrating. And it just plainly sucks. I think the traffic gods decided that I should get to work as quick as possible, but it should take me as long as possible to leave the dammed place.

Something scary happend to me this morning. I was standing up, drinking my morning coffee (which is rare for me), making my lunch (less rare now that I found out how much money I save) and eating blueberries (hey they were there, you got a better idea for breakfast?) when I realized...I'm the typical office worker. AHHHHHH. That's why if you go back to paragraph #1, i can't wait to get out. See it all makes sense now.

So here's a short recap. I came, I saw, I conquered. Beat the pants off Boost Monkey and took home the Hank Scorpio memorial trophy. In doing so I set a new record for most consecutive wins (2) in the Hank Scorpio Era. Boost Monkey was beat so bad that he doesn't want to come out next week and as such, SRL will take a one week hiatus to allow the older generation to rest their old bones. Hehe, there was also some descent video of me tearing up the track sideways. If Robb ever decides to send me a copy, I'll post it for sure. I did some pretty good slides, not to mention the ladies love see a real racer like me in action.

Alright, enough with the ego trip, it's raining again out here, for the 10th straight day or something like that. Same shit every day, heavy downpours followed by humidity and sunshine. Man it sucks. I thought I'd be smart by pre-ordering Madden 2004 from Future Shop. They were supposed to ship it today, but now they give me this fucking bullshit out of stock, will ship when available message. What the hell is that? So if I have a reason to be bitter, this paragraph is it. Not to mention I went to both Best Buy and Toys R Us (don't ask me why I bothered going to the second one) and they both didn't have any (well not entirely true, Toys R Us is supposed to get a shipment today, even though I work in the warehouse I won't see a copy). So it looks like I'll have to play some more GT3 (thanks DP for letting me borrow it BTW). I'm begining to love racing on the Monaco track (I'm not going to repeat the name that appears in the game as if you couldn't figure out it was Monaco, you don't deserve to drive the track).

That's about enough ranting for one day, I've been doing a little bit more of that lately. You guys like that or do you want me to go back to the short updates?

Monday's mean only one thing in Stu's world: RACE DAY! It's time for SRL: FREEDOM. Why is it freedom? Well I heard that word being yelled on Saturday night, and I do get a free race tonight, so it fits the tone pretty damm good. It's going to be some fun racing as defending champion Stu looks to continue on his dominate performance from the previous week, and possibly move up into the grand finalie race. Boost Monkey on the other hand is looking to find his way back to the top of the podium (somewhere he's rarely been). DP is nowhere to be found as after the beating he took last week, he doesn't want to race again.

Sorry about not updating yesterday, it's the first time I missed a day in a few weeks, so I should be proud of that mini streak I put together. First off, may thanks go out to Boost Monkey for showing me how to change my spark plugs. Car runs much much better now!

Last night I went out with a few people to the phoenix. I didn't know how much I'd like a club that played alternative, but I must say, I had a really good time. The free smirnoff black ice's weren't bad either (for the price, the drink itself is horrible after you finish the first one, too much sugar in those things, I couldn't finish the second one, give me a beer any day of the week over that stuff). Thanks go out ot Mike Moss for being the designated driver (even if he couldn't stay awake on the ride home).

So today I'm going to see some family in a hour for Sunday lunch. Then I don't know what else is going to happen. The NASCAR race is in Watkins Glen which makes it one of the few races actually worth watching. CART is at Mid Ohio, a great track if you are playing video games.

Oh yeah, LIONS WIN, LIONS WIN. Hey I know it's only preseason, but a win is a win.

Yay, I got out of work early today. Normally that would put me in a good mood, but I'm still pissed about the whole Canadian Grand Prix thing espically since papers are still giving more attention to police bashers (just for the record, crime has gone down in light of all this racial profiling bullshit, let the guys do their job and shut up) and gay marriages than an issue that actually effects more than a few people. Of course now that the Canadian Grand Prix has been dropped, is my Molson Indy too far away? I'm not going to predict doom and gloom but when you lose the big race from your calender, what happens to the others below it? In fact why not just throw away that $80 million that the Montreal Grand Prix brings in. We don't need it, those fires in BC will put themselves out.

Alright, enough with the whining, I think I've made my point and everybody seems to agree with me. It's the begining of the weekend and I just handed in my coop report. I'm not going to let this blog turn into one of those whinefests where people try to top each other with who has a more miserable life. Let's DRINK!

File this one under things that really suck. Seems that since watching F1 racing for the last 10 years had caused me to smoke and therefore I shouldn't look at cars with tabacco sponsors. Furthermore, I shouldn't be going to F1 races in Montreal because it'll make me want to smoke and be a huge drain on our medical system. For those that haven't been able to put together 2 and 2, the F1 race in Montreal has been cancelled. Now I'll admit, I'll easily watch 2 hours a week of motorsports with heavy tobbaco sponsorship. I'll talk to my friends about the Players racing team, but yet, I have no intention of smoking, nor have I ever.

Why is it that governments have their heads so far up their asses when it comes to dealing with issues like this? I agree, tabacco is bad, but since when are governments allowed to tell us what not to do, yet reap HUGE tax dollars when we buy these products we shouldn't be buying. Why doesn't the Canadian government put their time to good use and stop over staffing their offices, or expensing huge ammounts of my money to their expense accounts instead of banning tabbaco advertising or leagalising gay marriages. Better yet, why don't they find a way to get rid of this bogus 7% GST tax that I pay on everything. Or how about that billion dollar gun registry that seems to be working so well (I highly doubt it's saved any lives). Seems these social issues are a much more important waste of our time than fiscal responsibility. Meh, that's my political rant for the month.

And then there is the obesity problem. Fat kids are suing McDonalds for getthing them fat, when in reality, suburbs are designed so that you have to drive EVERYWHERE. It's not practical for us to not drive anywhere around here because a) it's just too far b) wayy too many cars going too fast c) there's no incentive. Why not give people a reason to move around instead of calling them fat and suing somebody. I'm sure with all the tax money you are losing by not having 300,000 people in Montreal for their biggest event of the summer (try to find a hotel room in the city that weekend...you can't) you can figure out a way to spend it on something good.

Boy did I get a shock when I tried to get to my car this morning. Here I am leaving my house on time to make the daily commute to work when what do I find? BOXES! And lots of them.



Man, I know I have new neighbours and all, but this is rediculous. Do you see how many boxes there are? Man that's a lot. What the hell do people from Montreal pack with them anyway? So that's my update for today. Sure it's not as good as Rosa and her story about some kid getting his finger chopped off, but at least I'm trying.

I want to live in California. They got a cool race for governor. Much better than the crap we got going on here. The Terminator vs. Larry Flynt? That's a tough call. On one hand, you got Arnold, who'll kick your ass if you don't vote for him. On the other, you got porn. And honestly, who can vote against porn? I can't.

Wow, the week is already half over. It goes by pretty quick when you got Monday off. So what else is there to say? Nothing much, I guess except more SRL hype? Next Monday, August 11 is SRL: Big Dance. I decided to call it big dance because we may have a few newcomers ot the field. I dunno, I'm trying to make up something interesting here people. Help me out! It's a free race for me and Boost Monkey anyway, so I'm not going to complain. I look to maybe compete in the grand final this time out....although I'll need to win one of my first 2 races in order to get there, which could prove difficult, but with a good qualifying run, anything is possible. Towards the end of Monday night, Boost Monkey and myself were consistenly in the top 6 for lap times. Also, I have qualified 3rd overall before so as long as I get a descent kart, I may be able to get away with it. Yeah this blog sucked, but I tried.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, not the burbon!


Anybody know of a program that can resize a directory full of pictures all at once without having to go through the effort of opening each up manually? Damm...I gotta start taking lower resolution pics with my digital camera.

Also, who thinks these new Lions uniforms look really sharp? If they get off to a good start (3-1 will be considered good, or 4-2) then I'm definetly getting myself a Harrington jersey.

It's been a while since I won a race (ok, about 14 hours) but thrill of victory still hasn't worn off. Maybe it's because my blog update was short yesterday. Maybe it's because DP and Boost Monkey have not yet commented on the agony of defeat (hmm, odd, they always mention their wins, but when they lose....nothing).

As for me, I'm at work right now, waiting for my day to end so I can go home and play some GT3 (it's a good race theory practice).

I came, I saw, I won. Simple as that. 2 Second place finishes and a victory were enough to secure Hank Scorpio for another week. Boost Monkey tried in vain to catch me, but he just didn't have the consistency that I possess. Sure, he did clock an SRL record 16.11 lap (ok, we started taking records today) and for future info, the track was humid as hell. But in the end, he recieved an ass kicking from champion Stu.


No, that's just condensation on my car, it doesn't look that bad.

Oh yeah, here's the panoramic shot of pro kart that I took Boost Monkey (he thought my camera was soo cool when he saw me taking it).


Here's the trophy presentation.


And here I am with the trophy.


Those are enough photos for one night. Boost Monkey, the pics of you I took while driving didn't turn out too good.

Monday means only one thing: RACE DAY! It's time for SRL: SMASHIN SIMCOE! Yup, that's right, in honour of the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe we will be having a race. Ok, we've had races for less, but at least this one has historical significance. Anyways so far it's only Me and DP coming out to race, but I suspect Boost Monkey shouldn't be too far away.

Came home at 4am last night, faced the usual what time did you come home quiz from my mother this morning. See whenever I go out at night, I always face the what time did you come home question. In high school, my parents were up when I got home so I couldn't mislead them (you know, I'd tell them what time I got to my friends home...not my own). In university, they slowly stopped staying up, so I could fib a few hours here and there. By the time I got to Sheridan, I just said I don't remember. My brother does the exact same thing.

One night my older brother (who I learned the I don't know excuse from) tried the same stunt. Only thing was, my dad wasn't sleeping too well that night and busted him on the spot. So after a while it became a running joke within the house to say I don't know when asked what time we arrived. Later this morphed to "I don't know, why don't you tell me what time I got home, you were up". Of course my parents were in their bedroom all along and wouldn't confront us when we came home. No that would wait for the morning after when we would wake up around 12.

So back to my original story, I woke up around 8:30 to watch the end of the F1 race (yes I wake up early to watch F1, but I'll complain to no end about going to school for a 9am class). After the race, I face the quiz, to which I'm informed of what time I came home. SO casually I ask what time my brother came home. 6:30am!

Hey, go check out Yan's blog right now!

I Saw American Wedding last night. Great movie, a definite 4 out of 5. The story wasn't as good as the first one, and it wasn't as funny as the second one, but still it's a great movie. An alright way to end the trilogy as they got rid of some of the garbage characters from the first 2 movies.

Anybody pick up on how close Saddam may look to Einstein?

Hmm, having a terminator as a governor? I like that idea. I doubt he will do it thought, but it'd be nice to see him kick some ass. I'd like to vote for him, but I'm not a resident of Califorina. Ahh well. Work is good I guess. Long weekend is almost here and American Wedding comes out tonight so I'm definetly going to see that movie. I don't know what I'm doing Saturday, but I'm sure I wanna drink!