WHERE THE FUCK DID THE SUMMER GO?!?! Man, it seems like just yesterday I was boarding a plane for LA. Now it's August 31st and the summer is essentially over. The worst thing about this summer? It's rained almost every weekend. Add to that it hasn't been hot (we've had only 3 or 4 days over 30 degrees). Man now I'm going to have to take another vacation because of this bullshit. Ahh well, there have been highlights. Los Angeles and Las Vegas, getting a job, winning $100 at a casino, visiting 4 Casinos in Ontario alone as well as one in California and more than I can count in Las Veags. Hmm...oh yeah weekend trips to Niagara, one night in Ottawa, beer fest, rev fest, outdoor movie night, and wings at TJ's. Not bad by my standards. Lets see what the fall brings me. This is going to be weird because it's the first Fall that I'll have nothing to do with any kind of educational institution (hmm...maybe I can go back to school in a year or two).

On to other things, work is well, fucked up. I lost a puncher for the wiring closet. Had a talk with my boss and the AGM about getting a 15 inch LCD for the KVM so I can do work on the servers without remote desktop. As it turns out me and my boss are getting 19inch LCD's at our desks and the KVM gets an old 17 inch. Yeah, this company sure is wise with it's money.

In an update to yesterdays blog, seems like some of my questions have already been answered. The answerman is cool.

If you need any more proof that judging in fixed in the olympics. Here you go. I really feel bad for the families that have to put up with these atheletes and have to cheer them on knowing outcomes are virtually pre-determined. I think I should take up equestrian...you don't have to be an athlete and there's no judging involved. Now...only if I had a horse.

Also on a side note use firefox as your new web browser. I've used it and it just seems less sluggish than internet explorer. No real difference other than the built in popup killer (buh bye popup ad filter...you served me well) and tabbed browsing. Definetly worth a download if you wanna try something new. Also it's not vunerable to the same security flaws that IE is (although I'm sure there's a bunch that just need to be discovered).

Blog -- Olympic Edition

Boys and girls, it's that olympic blog time. Just some observations I've picked up from this years fixed drug fest...err olympics.

• Female beach vollyballers are hot. End of discussion.
• If the female gymnasts weren't sooo young they'd be included in this group.
• If they had medals for 4th place, Canada would find a way to finish fifth.
• We need more...*cough* more *cough*...less chokers. Where do I begin??? Oh I know, the curse of the dude that carries the flag (the separatist got booted out first round)...of course look back at past Olympics...this isn't the first time we found a consistent choker. Night like our track and field athletes. Sure, we've got Perdita Felicien following in the fine footsteps of Micheal Smith (yeah the triathelete dude), Mark Boswell and Ben Johnson...wait check the last one off the list, he was the only one in that race to get CAUGHT. Nevermind the fact that 5 of the 8 people that started the race later on tested positive in their careers for steroids. What gets me is that the coach of the dude that won the 100 meter title this year (no, I don't care what his name is) was the one that blew the whistle on THG. Yeah, like it's a coincidence his boy had time to get cleaned up and have a new designer drug in time for the Olympics. Ahh well.
• On the topic of choking, how about that rowing team?!? Undefeated in 2 years and still no Olympic medal! That diver who choked her way out of a medal. Canada doesn't need more training, they need more sports psychologists.
• You think a country with as huge a coastline as Canada could at least win one medal in swimming.
• Why is shooting an Olympic sport? What about equestrian. Why not auto racing or golf then?
• And what's the deal with ping-pong and badminton? What about pool and darts?
• If pro boxers are always dodging other fighters, why not let them fight in the Olympics where they can't dodge anything other than a punch?
• Sports that are judged should be demonstration sports only.
• Who else would like to see football as an Olympic sport? Not rugby, which would favor Europeans, football. Come on, at least give us arena football then.
• What about lacrosse?? There's no way Canada could choke there!
• If whining your way to a medal was a sport, Canada would be #1. The figure skaters from Salt Lake, The rowers who launched FOUR appeals after they were disqualified, the fag....err gymnast who wants answers (well...he's got a legitimate beef, the other guy did fall)
• What is an amateur athlete anyway?

Well...that's it for my blog -- Olympic edition

*UPDATE*

No joke, 2 minutes after posting this blog, I come across a blog of last place finishers at the Olympics. It's made by a Canadian. Go Figure.

Fucking backups can't work around here. We've got gigabit ethernet here, and I still get connection timeouts. WTF is up here?!? Now I have to call they ghey Veritas people and find out why their software is shit. Add to that we've got a user who likes to move folders because s/he is an idiot. Now try telling some engineer that one of their peers is an idiot (actually it's pretty easy because we've got a few suspects that we can make fun of) and due to horrible software our backups may/maynot have backed up the files. Well I was lucky today, but who knows about next time.

I gotta say, I'm proud of myself for telling managment what to do when it comes to hiring new employees. A new hire comes in Monady morning and within 5 minutes of walking through the door, management somehow expects us to have a PC ready for him. Nevermind the fact that I wasn't notified about it. So being the genius I am, I hide behind SOX and tell management to sign papers before I get ANY work done. Yup, I put the blame on the manager who told me to do something and I hide behind SOX (auditing basically) if they try to bitch at me. The controllers here are afraid of being audited so the second they hear SOX they're on my side.

Went to a charity casino in Brantford on Saturday night. They've got Texas Hold'em tables there. The only other place in Ontario where you can find them is Rama, and I'm not driving two hours to get on an Indian reservation. I did pretty good, up $70 at the end of the night. Took me 3 hours to get to that point but I made it. The thing I'm realizing more and more is if you want to win at poker, you gotta spend a long time at the tables. Espically if you're playing low limit hands where you can't really bluff because there's always one or two players who will just pay to see what you've got. Poker is a game of paitience after all.

Life has a weird way of turning for the better. One day you're working for a company that seems to be abandoning it's core business, next day your president says "I don't care if we made $100 million last year, there's no need to waste $40 on speakers for me!". Who knows where next year will take me?

Well here's an update to that lovely post I had yesterday. Seems like the controller who was brought in to turn around our division has resigned from his postion. Nice that I find out about an hour before it actually happens, although in hindsight, a conversation I was listening in on a few days ago should have tipped me off. Long story short, the asssitant general manager is moving away from the IT section and into the (former) controllers office! Woohoo, I only had to put up with that guy for 3 days and already he's gone! Now I'm back to staring at an empty office and I wouldn't have it any other way!

I think I've got an eye infection, so it looks like I might be forced to take Friday off. What a shame. You know, I never realized how cool your eye looks when it's all bloodshot.

Phonecall of the day: I got this popup in lotus notes that says a certificate has expired, do you wish to accept a new one? Does that mean I got fired???

Yes it does seem that with the whole restructuring going on, there are more than a few hires/fires happening at work. I think I've counted 2 new upper management hires, 1 resign, 1 mutual get the fuck out of here agreement since I started -- 3 weeks ago. Not to mention 3 office workers have been fired along with 4 new hires. It's actually getting to the point of being rediculous around here. Now when we need new hardware, the joke going around is "oh just wait until somebody gets fired, it should happen within 2 days, then you can have his computer". Sad thing is I'm one of the most secure people there because my contract runs until October 12th! Yay me!

What kind of bullshit is this?!? We got a new assistant general manager at the office and guess where the place him??? Right across from my office!!!! Grrr...that was supposed to be for the IT employee we were never going to hire!!!! Well...the good thing is my office is too small to share with anybody so I don't have to worry about anybody invading my turf...but still...what kind of crap is that?!? Just put the 2nd most important person across from me so he can see me sleep!!! Meh...it's not too bad...gives me a chance to kiss managements ass directly without leaving my seat.

Another weekend, another set of good times. If you guys wanna hit up a club downtown without much of a dress code, I strongly recommend Joe. I've been there twice and both times I've had a good time (even while staying relatively sober).

I've got a bitch of a sore throat right now, cut into my cardio time at the gym. Luckily I was still able to lift weights so this week won't be a total write off. I gotta clean up my diet though...I'm still eating way too much crap...but the wings and ribs combo at TJ's is soooooooo good.

We were talking about names at work today....Anthony Daniel DaLuca (ADD). Thomas Anthony (T&A). I've came to a decision, once a little Stu is brought into this world his name shall be Stewart Todd DeNiro (STD)! *rimshot*

Alright, bad jokes aside, my arms are sore and preseason football is on ABC...later!

Wow I was tired today...could barely stay awake on the ride home. Thats when you know you should be getting more than 5 1/2 hours of sleep at night...or at least start drinking cheater fluids (errr, coffee) in the mornings.

I can't believe the summer we've had here...hasn't been hot at all, and when it does get warm, it only lasts for a day or so before it starts raining. What a rip off. Sounds like I may have to go on vacation again to get some heat in my system.

I saw Harold and Kumar go to White Castle last night. It was alright...nowhere close to Dude Where's My Car though. One cool thing about the movie was seeing a bunch of locations that were around my house. Who needs Hollywood when you've got Brampton?!? Does this mean I can visit the Licks at the corner of Hwy 10/Eglington and take pictures??? I did the same thing when I went to Universal Studios Hollywood...so I gotta do it here..and plus...it's free!

Wow, today was actually busy at work. I barely sat down for more than 20 minutes before lunch. Kinda refreshing to be busy actually, makes the day go by MUCH quicker. I also found out that I was allowed to keep the speakers I borrowed for the weekend trip to Niagara. Sweet, brand new Atec Lansing Speakers!!! I didn't see that one coming...of course I didn't see the point in giving me a laptop with a gig of ram either, but the company found a way to do it!!! Yeah, I'm still having trouble figuring out who approved some of the purchases there. Like the $5000 plasma TV that does nothing other than show excel spreadsheets....sure it's nice to have a spreadsheet on a 40 inch wide screen...but plasma?!? Or how about the fibre optic cable that stretches half way across the plant floor and leads to a wiring closet NOT EVEN IN USE?!? Man it's going to suck telling users that the day's of 21 inch monitors are over! Ahh well, they should have took advantage of it while they had the chance.

But anyways, this wireless internet in the summer kicks ass! Sooo much more comfortable then it was in the fall. Right now I'm living the life, playing on http://www.partypoker.com and drinking a beer.

Well the long weekend is just about wrapping up...it's been a good time for me. Hit up two casinos on Saturday/Sunday. Ok, so they were both in Niagara Falls, but who cares?!? I tried playing blackjack...lost $40 and confirmed to myself that there is no point in playing that game. Played Sic Bo, lost $60...then came home researched the odds and realized there's no point in playing that game.

Came home Sunday night...tried watching Van Helsing. I don't know what it is about that movie. It looks sooo cool, the set design is great, but the movie just sucks. Anyways I only lasted through 15 minutes of it before I crashed out. Got a whole 12 hours of sleep Sunday night, which felt great!

Work has been going pretty smooth. No complaints from my end...could be better but could be much worse. Even with all the politics that are going on from the office stand point, I've been involved in none of them. So as long as I keep my nose out of it, I should be able to stay relatively clean.