i love the microwave, but just as a friend - not in THAT way

have you ever thought of putting random things in the microwave, putting it on high and seeing what happens? back in the old days working at mcdonalds we used to cook muffins until they started smoking, but the microwaves didn't have windows - or cameras for that matter.

this guy does...

http://www.u-starvin.com/micromaniac/

pride parade 2007

today was toronto's pride parade. always a very colourful event. i have hundreds more photos to sort through, but here's a little of what i saw.

the morning bike ride to work

well, the morning bike ride to job #2 anyways. haven't quite gotten myself up to the point where i can ride to job #1 yet becuase it's more than three times as far, but here's some of the details:

• Total Distance: 12.969 km
• Max Speed: 39.7 km/h
• Avg Speed: 20.7 km/h
• Total Time: 37 mins 36 seconds
• Calories Burned: 374.7

so by the time i go home, i will have burned approximately 750 calories. by my count, that's a medium oreo blizzard from Dairy Queen with some room to spare. If i was choosing to eat something healthy, i could eat 13 apples instead of the 1 blizzard, but that wouldn't come anywhere close to filling my ice cream needs.

when a regular cough just isn't good enough

there are two people in my office who have these bizarre, horrible sounding coughs that never seem to go away. i don't think they're actually sick or anything... unless they have tuberculosis or something.. because there aren't any other symptoms that seem to be apparent. and they never complain about being sick, but i just hear them coughing these horrible, loud, nasty coughs several times a day.

and how annoying is it to work for three weeks on accomplishing this one task, spending HOURS on conference calls with a client to establish the requirements and busting your ass to get it done as soon as possible to have it deployed only to find that they wanted something ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to what you were working on?

very annoying.

like Jerry Lewis annoying.

see, they wanted something that was relevant to their billing structure, but asked for something that was relevant to employee management. wonderful.

i'm gonna have to send Hulk after them.

stupid sunny weather on stupid sunday

it's a beautiful day outside for a bike ride. i'm stuck at the office working today though. at least it's one of those lazy days at job number 2 where i don't actually have to do much of anything. maybe it'll give me a chance to finish off my book.

i've been mucking around with various ideas for my new untastic website, but stumbled across a minor issue with my computer at home - FTP doesn't seem to work. i know, that sounds like your generic end-user type complaint and I should know better than that, but how is it that not a single FTP client works on my computer. i've set up exceptions in the windows firewall settings - not to mention the fact that the firewall is actually OFF. the only way I can upload files via FTP is through the windows command-line FTP client, and that is hit and miss at best. i've been debating making the switch from Windows to Ubuntu as a permanent desktop replacement, but have been having trouble coming up with a suitable iTunes replacement. i've been told that Amarok is a good alternative but i'm not 100% sure if it would work on the Gnome interface (default for Ubuntu) or if i'd have to use the KDE interface which is totally lame.

sorry, that got a little bit dorky there didn't it.

the temptation to buy a Mac Book Pro is overwhelming. the idea of having a computer that just plain works AND looks cool too is very tempting. the $3000 price tag, however, is not.

need some scooby snacks

generally at job number two i start to get hungry right around the 10 pm point in the evening...

oh, it just happens to be around 10 pm now.

the big down side though is that i am completely out of snack food. because at job number two i don't seem to be able to keep myself at one desk for any extended period of time, i have a tendency to let my snack stash get quite low.

i know, i know, i *should* always have a box of cereal at all desks but i've been slipping. the last two times i've been to the grocery store i've completely forgotten the fact that i'm out of cereal.

and how can one live without cereal? i shudder to think of life without at least one bowl per day.

maybe to compensate, i should go buy a box of really super-awesome sugary cereal so that when i work on sunday i'm prepared for the worst of the hungry-attacks.

any suggestions?

a new week, a new website

so, i've been busy for a while. saturday was spent in the sunny Kitchener/Waterloo area at the Stitch n' Kitsch show where admired, helped and shopped with dozens of talented artists and crafty people. i'll make sure to post a link in advance of the next show they put on so that everybody who's anybody can make sure to drop by.

sunday afternoon i got a sunburn on my neck at Woofstock (thereby officially making myself a redneck. har har). for anyone who may be a fan of dogs, this would definitely be your place to be. there was just about every breed from the tiniest chihuahuas in pink tutus all the way up to these massive albino great danes. i think one of the ridiculously cute moments was seeing about a dozen yorkie owners walking together and several dozen children saying "awww, they're SO CUUUUTE."

i've also started a new website. currently it's serving very little functional purpose other than to host a bunch of files for me, but it may become the new home of my very small and semi-functional web design business. it actually could even become the new host for this particular blog, i haven't quite decided yet - untastic.com. now serving all of your untastic needs. it's still in the very new and experimental stages, but it will soon become... well, somethign anyways.

sticky, sweaty day

because i was scheduled to work today, i missed out on the Ride for Heart, so instead of riding for heart, i rode my bike to work.

thanks to my handy-dandy speedometer thingy, i realized when i got to work that the temperature was a balmy 29 degrees celcius, and most of the ride felt like i was riding throught a warm, wet paper towel. all in all though, i still very much prefer riding my arse-kicking Trek 7.3 FX bike to work than driving any day of the week. fitness-wise, i'm probably about two or three weeks behind riding the 75 kms that i wanted to do in the Ride for Heart anyways.

i've realized that for job number two, i should probably take some french lessons. after a few calls come into the office, it makes me realize that 10 years of not speaking french has easily undone the 15 years of french classes that i've taken in my life. even the simplest of words seem to slip from my mind when i'm stumbling through a conversation in french - who knew that "manually" becomes "manuellement"?

well, i suppose i could have guessed, but then i figured i'd sound like an idiot making up french words. what ended up happening was me sounding like an idiot by NOT making up french words.