strange things are afoot at the Circle-K

although i have taken my bamboo picture this week, for some reason my phone does not seem to want to send me that picture. dumb phone. one of these days i'll have to get in the habit of actually bringing a proper camera to do my photo.

that being said, a change of daytime scenery may be in the works. i'm going to wait to divulge this secret completely for fear of jinxing it, but the odds are in favour that my commute may not be as long in the very near future.

the other day i made a totally awesome score at the goodwill shop. i think someone's mother went through their comic book collection and dumped it off at the goodwill, so i managed a few pretty decent scores at only 50 cents a piece. some milestone issues of Punisher, Punisher War Journal, Wolverine and Captain America to name a few. obviously, none of it's been graded but they're all in pretty damn good condition. they will be eBay'ed as soon as i get my scanner hooked up.

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Visit my sponsorship page to see my progress!!

technically i suppose it's thirty weeks now

but even if it's 30 weeks, i've still only posted 29 times


sometimes when i overhear my boss at job number 1 talking on the phone, it makes me want to hit him in the head with it. he's a completely non-technical person trying to explain a technical thing that he has no real understanding of.

grammar is something i apparently have no understanding of.

i think i REALLY want this - the Epiphone SG Prophecy EX. yeah, i know, it's not a Gibson technically, but it might just as well be. especially since Gibson doesn't offer the SG in that style, and even if they did it would cost like $3500, and i'm not a good enough guitar player to spend that kind of money on a musical instrument.

i also really like this bike - the Devinci Tosca SL 2, but i've promised myself that i'm not going to let myself buy a bike unless i put at least another 2000 km on mine. in theory, that shouldn't be too difficult - i'd like to be at a pace where i'm putting between 150-250 km a week on my bike this summer because it's my goal to lose the office belly that seems to have accompanied this especially cold winter. that and it's just real fun and all.

also, if I raise just $25 more in sponsorship money for the Ride for Heart, i'll be eligible for a draw for a sony home theater system. that would certainly be nice because the home theater system i have right now doesn't work sometimes. it takes about 20-30 clicks of the button to get the power to go on, and when it does go on the DVD player slows down sometimes so everyone starts talking funny. and not haha funny, but funny like the opposite of the chipmunks.

another effort for me to raise money for this - from now until the ride, if you buy a t-shirt hell shirt through my link here, i'll take my referral money and put it into sponsorship dollars.

i know, some of it is a little too offensive to be caught wearing, but there are some decent ones too:

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Visit my sponsorship page to see my progress!!

sometimes wednesday just sneaks up on you eh?

yup. that's my bamboo plant alright.


at job one my company has recently invested in some new tools for me to do my reporting duties because i create awesome reports about stuff. the only problem is that although this product makes neat charts and graphs and stuff, you unfortunately have to make a decision of whether you want it to look good on the web or look good on paper. apparently you can't have both which is bloody inconvenient.

and you know what else is inconvenient? people that drive BMW's. if i had a nickel for every time some jackass in a BMW tried to take off my front bumper with his "superior" car... well, i'd have a lot of nickels - so many that i'd have to roll them up and take them to the bank to exchange them for dollars and shit. sometimes i wish i could mount a snow plow or some push bars on the front of my toyota and just drive through those fuckers. then i'd say "geez, that german engineering doesn't hold up so well with a snow plow shoved up its ass."

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what?!? you haven't sponsored me for the ride for heart yet? well then click below and make sure you do that already...

Visit my sponsorship page to see my progress!!

just add water and watch it grow

six months and one week eh?


speaking of things that have been going on for months, have a looksie here:

this roll of lifesavers has been on my desk since i started. i even mentioned it before. it's definitely still there though in all of it's five-coloured glory. i suppose though that it makes sense that it's still there because i haven't thrown it out. i'm not quite sure why though - i don't have any intention of eating it. maybe i should add it to a time capsule or something like that. there aren't enough time capsules out there. seriously, weren't people from like 50 or 100 years ago obsessed with them? i think i should be finding these things all the time, uncovering the mysteries of 1958 with astonishing regularity. i think even the pope made a decree some time ago that some time ago. i'm pretty sure his statements had something to do with it being every human's duty to bury a time capsule at least once per year, and preferrably twice (once for a 50 year opening, once for a 100 year opening).

but then again, it's not like i've been burying time capsules all over the place, and i suppose i haven't been digging up my back yard looking for them either. those are probably things that should happen if i wanted to find one eh?

bamboo wednesday! six months later!

so here we are at the six month point. 26 weeks since the original bamboo wednesday post - still alive and green:



just look at the progress we've got there eh? got to be a good 4-5 cm of growth


i have an important meeting today and am beginning to think that wearing old reliable - the red shirt edition and blue jeans was probably not a wise choice. in my own defense, i didn't know i was going to be having a meeting of any sort today. well i don't look completely like a slob, i just don't look Frank Sinatra fabulous.

but then again, who does?

a weekend of movies ... and the godfather

i think i forgot to post this last week eh?


i spent SO much time watching movies this weekend, it was borderline ridiculous. some were films i've seen many times, some i've never seen at all, and one that i should have seen but just never got around to until this weekend.

first off was Fido, a reasonably new film out of Canada eh starring Carrie-Anne Moss and Billy Connolly as the main zombie in the film. yes, it is a zombie movie, but it's rather intentionally funny rather than unintentionally funny as most zombie flicks are. having to deal with zombies as a regular part of life, humans have found a way to domesticate zombies and an unpopular boy makes his pet zombie Fido his best friend. hilarity ensues. worth renting.

then came South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut. i know, who hasn't seen this movie a thousand times already. heck, i think i even saw it twice in the theater. that all doesn't mean you can't watch it again. and again. it's worth it all for the uncle fucker song.

next on the list was Guy X. i think that my expectations were set way too high for this one after having seen The Jacket, but i was kind of disappointed here. a soldier is mistakenly sent to a base in Greenland rather than hawaii and is baffled about the seemingly pointless nature of the base. he eventually finds out more than he should about the base and starts getting himself into trouble. the premise around this movie kept giving me hope that something more drastic was going to happen at some point, but it eventually just fizzled down into an overly mediocre ending. it's on Movie Network on Demand if you want to watch it, but i don't think i'd bother paying for it.

then the mafia movies...

Goodfellas seemed like a good choice after being thoroughly disappointed by the previous movie. i've seen it tons of times, but certainly don't mind watching it again. Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta all give some of their finest performances in this mafia flick. lots of swears, lots of killing and a brilliant story written by Nicholas Pileggi based on the true story of mobster Henry Hill. Joe Pesci won the Oscar for best supporting actor and it was nominated for 5 others. absolutely brilliant.

and speaking of brilliant, how come it took me 30 years to get around to watching The Godfather. my only complaint is that it's 3 hours long. and i'm not complaining because 3 hours is too much, rather that it's hard to get that much consecutive time to watch it - and believe me when you start watching it, you don't want to stop half way through. go pee and get your snacks first and you'll see why it's ranked #1 on IMDB's top 250.

i'm going to try to watch The Godfather Part II tonight. i need to know the rest of the story now. Part III shall follow later this week and perhaps i'll finish things up watching Casino (another Pileggi penned book-t0-film).

not so good with the wednesday! part of bamboo eh?

i've really been enjoying listening to the heavy metal versions of 80's pop music tracks made by bands like Korn, Disturbed and Powerman 5000. is that a bad thing?

i mean, they still rock hard, but they have that familiar sound that reminds us that as much as we try to put it behind us, the 80s still happened.

Korn did a version of Cameo's Word Up, which was coincidentally also re-done by one of the former Spice Girls at or around the same time. i can't remember which version came first, but i know which one i like better.

Disturbed tends to release one of these tracks on pretty much all of their albums. Their Down with the Sickness album featured Shout 2000, a cover of the Tears for Fears hit from the 80s and their album 10,000 Fists featured Land of Confusion, an old Genesis track i remember being regularly played at McDonald's back when i worked there.

Powerman 5000's version of Let the Good Times Roll, a Cars classic i remember being in frequent rotation as a kid stays quite true to the original, but adds a harder edge that i'm sure the song would have had if it were made 15 years later.

If anyone else knows of good metal versions of 80s tracks, leave a note in the comments so's i can hunt them down.

That's what they say, 500 up on the ladder

today marks the 500th post on this here place by myself, is it appropriate that it's two days after bamboo wednesday! should have been and i'm only just posting my photo now?


we're almost at the 6 month mark on this expedition of trying to find out why office people kill bamboo so frequently. i still haven't been able to figure it out, though i'm sure i will some day.

today my boss sent an email out saying that he was going to be taking a mini spring break with his kids out of the country, so he's not going to be around until wednesday next week. within seconds of people in my office reading this email you could hear the cheers and comments of "hey, does that mean WE can take a march break too?"

i think we should. well, two of these next few days are days off anyways because it's a holiday. maybe i can get away with the "making an appearance" style of coming to the office for monday and tuesday. i've already gotten a head start today i suppose since i didn't actually get into the office until nearly 1 o'clock. if i leave at 5, that would make today a 4 hr work day. frickin sweet. just like back in high school when i only had a part time job, except i get paid a lot more to do this and don't have any calculus homework to do afterwards. the sucky thing is that i have to go to job number two tonight and work there until 11 o'clock, so really, i suppose i'm going to actually be pulling a full work day after all.

bamboo wednesday! part 22! not very good at the wednesday thing!

so i took the photo yesterday, but somehow forgot to post it eh?


i bought new headphones today. originally i was gonna buy skullcandy headphones, but the guy at the futureshop convinced me that buying the sony ear-goggles would be better for the music i listen to. he also saved me $15, which is good. now i can spend that $15 dollars on things like ice cream and cereal.

or maybe cereal mixed with ice cream - like maybe some Count Chocula stirred into butterscotch ripple. mmmmm...

bamboo wednesday! part 21! and a Pontiac Grand Prix review!

although i do have a picture from what should have been last week's bamboo wednesday post, i uploaded it to my laptop rather than my work PC, which is where it's waiting right now.


i've been on holidays for the better part of the last week. thanks to Dalton McGuinty, many ontario residents got to have a holiday on monday, so i extended that holiday all the way to wednesday the week before. why not eh?

i rented a car to go on a road trip this past weekend, and inspired by Martini's review of his Acura CSX loaner, here's my review of the Pontiac Grand Prix that i rented.

to start off, the car was much larger than anything i've driven in recent years. and although a larger car does not necessarily make a more comfortable car, it certainly seemed to help in the case of the Grand Prix.

it took me a few minutes to figure out how to adjust the seat settings. the driver's seat is all automatic and mechanical, a luxury that i am most definitely not used to. other interesting luxury features were the inclusion of steering wheel mounted audio controls, cruise control, headlights that would automatically turn on based on how light or dark it is outside and a stereo whose volume automatically adjusts based on how fast the car is driving.

and fast i drove. the 200 hp 3.8 liter v6 engine made for some quick and responsive acceleration. hopping from 110 km/h to 150 km/h to pass old ladies on the highway was no problem at all.

although the volume and sound quality from the 6 speaker CD stereo were quite admirable, i was disappointed by the fact that an MP3 CD player or auxiliary audio jack (for my iPod) were not included).

fuel consumption was mediocre at best though. although i didn't track the exact amount of mileage, i would estimate that i drove in the area of about 750 km and spent $67 in gas at $1.05 per liter, a guestimate of about 11-12 liters per 100 km. with a Toyota Yaris as my regular car, i think i'm a little spoiled since even on the worst of days it barely breaks past 7.5 liters per 100 km (with the air conditioner running). from what i've been told, my gas consumption compared to other similarly sized cars is on par.

my main complaint other than the stereo was that actually entering the car seemed a little cramped. once you were sitting in the car, there was ample space, but it seemed that actually getting into the car could present an issue to someone with back or knee problems. all in all, it was a fun car to drive, give one a try.

more details to follow on what actually happened on my holiday later.

bamboo wednesday! part 19! and damned canadian weather!

okay, so technically it isn't wednesday. the weather was terrible yesterday so i opted to stay at home instead...



and if you read Studioloo Magazine, you'd know that this technically isn't bamboo either, but a reasonable facsimile. oh well, i'm going to keep calling it bamboo because i feel like it.

also, what's with all the retarded traffic on the day AFTER a snow storm? i mean seriously, it should not have taken me nearly two hours to get to work this morning. it snowed YESTERDAY. today is sunny. crapheads.

and also, the new Iron Man movie is coming this spring (some time in may i think). Marvel has released some new trailers that look awesome-tastic.

bamboo wednesday! part 18! and trouble a-brewing!

i promise that one day i will return to posting things other than just pictures of my bamboo plant.



t'other day i came across this sign at an A & W:


now, i KNOW that it's just because that's the exit side of the drive through, but it seems kind of funny to me that how this particular place is laid out that if you intend to park your car in the parking lot, you'll pass this sign on your way into the restaurant.

and that's kind of a shame, because i loves me a tall frosty glass of root beer. mmmmm....

bamboo wednesday! part 17! and work blows!

it looks especially green today. i'm not sure why. maybe it's just that i'm tired and have a weird green film on my eyes or something.


but that would be pretty gross if i did.

it just occurred to me

that i've been tracking the bamboo growth for 16 weeks - 4 months now.

so i created this slide show so that i can see the progress...



the other day i was watching the Back to the Future movies... well, the first two anyways cuz i didn't have time to watch the third ... and i noticed a critical flaw in the time travel theories part way through the second film. there's a point when Doc Brown is explaining to Marty that somehow this alternate reality had occurred because Biff from the future had changed the past.

now, if the past had changed to such an extent that it did in the movie, wouldn't they have some recollection because they technically would have been involved in that past even though they were in the future when it happened? my theory on time travel is that although you may be able to go into the past, you wouldn't necessarily be able to change things because they've already happened. Robert Zemeckis seems to take the Ray Bradbury theory on time travel, believing that by going into the past, you can somehow change the future. personally, my take on time travel is demonstrated perfectly in 12 Monkeys: the past has already happened, and nothing you try to do can change it. if i were to get into a time machine right now and go back 30 years in the past, i could not change the outcome because 30 years ago - 1978 - has already happened. it's no longer active.

but all in all, Back to the Future and 12 Monkeys are awesome movies.

bamboo wednesday! part 16! and boy, is it hot in here!

isn't it kind of late for bamboo photos?

still alive and going strong. as strong as bamboo can go anyways.

i'm getting tired of being busy at work all the time. it's really cutting into the slacking i'd much rather be doing.

oh, and if you haven't already played it, go buy yourself a copy of God of War. it is quite possibly one of the goodest video games i have ever played. it has all the prerequisites...

• blood - check
• ridiculous amounts of violence - check
• ability to kill innocent people - check
• ability to impale one of your enemies, then use that enemy as a weapon - check

yeah, when you've had a stressful day at work, just put your feet up and plug this one in. more gooder, all the time.

bamboo wednesday! part 15! and no new shoes required!

it's getting a little difficult to track week-to-week growth now because of it's size, but comparing against the first bamboo wednesday! post, you can definitely see how much this thing has grown



thank goodness for unmarked boxes of stuff. i managed to find the pair of vans that i bought last year that have been hiding somewhere in a box since before i moved last month. since they haven't been worn in a couple of months, they have managed to retain much of their comfort level.

which is good, because i hate the mall.

and just when i thought the tales would be over, we have a new page in the tales that were long thought to be lost about my douchebag (former) landlord. i got a phone call from her yesterday asking me if i still had the apartment keys.

what the hell? didn't i already tell her where the keys were MORE THAN A MONTH AGO?!?!?!?

and among the stupid natured comments were "oh, i thought you meant that you had them in YOUR mailbox" to which i replied "why would i put the keys in my mailbox if you don't know where i live?"

how retarded can one person get? first of all, i moved like 2 months ago, told her exactly via voicemail where the damned keys were and here we are in mid january and she's asking me stupid questions. i love it. what a retard.

actually, i shouldn't be insulting like that. calling her a retard would be giving retarded people a bad name.

retarded, maybe that's not the PC term - so does that make it alright that i call her a retard?

bamboo wednesday! part 14! a week late!

looks like even without water over the holidays, the ol' bamboo still managed to grow...


work at job number one is pretty busy right now. everyone seems to want their reports marked as high priority and the idea of negotiating a deadline seems borderline ridiculous as the clients seem to be handing them out instead. fuckers.

bamboo wednesday! part 13! thursday style!

you know it's bad when i can't even do my wednesday post on wednesday. Martini mentioned that it would be an awesome idea to compare the first week of bamboo wednesday with the latest bamboo wednesday, and i tend to agree with him. when you look at the two next to each other, you can really see the progress.

Here's yesterday's photo:

and the first photo, from September 26, 2007:

sorry I couldn't actually get the photos to be side-by-side. blogger's a little finicky about how things can be displayed and uploaded. judging by the two photos, i'd guess there's easily been 4-5 cm of growth since late september (1.5 two 2 inches for y'all americans). every day it amazes me a little bit more how most of the people in my office manage to kill these low-maintenance plants off in droves. what's my secret? keep the water full. i just fill the glass container to the top with water every day whether it needs it or not.

the other day i was at wal-mart. now, i've never been a pink floyd fan, i'd even go so far as to say my appreciation of their music falls somewhere below my appreciation for Anne Murray and Celine Dion, but they made me laugh. how? by the Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon slippers you can buy at your local wal-mart for $6.99


so now you can be tacky and show your love for the world's most over-rated band just by putting your slippers on in the morning. i didn't buy them, but i would buy pink floyd toilet paper if they had it.

bamboo wednesday! part 12!

two o'clock. still just a potato.


there's one other person in my office who has learned the secret of the bamboo, although it seems she learned it long before i did. her's is somewhere in the area of two feet tall. she must be way past week 12.

bamboo wednesday part 11! and the end of a condo (didn't i say that already?)!

as my bamboo continues to thrive, i'm finding it more and more difficult to figure out how so many office people can manage to kill these low maintenance plants.

friday november 30th marked the last official day in the old condo. unofficially i moved out quite some time ago, but the last day of the lease was november 30. i had spoken with my douchebag landlord the day before to make arrangements to hand over the keys, and she mentioned that she needed to do an exit inspection.

i thought to myself "you didn't do an exit inspection when the last people moved out, why are you doing one now?" - but then i decided not to care. she explained that she would call me first thing in the morning to arrange a time, and i mentioned that my time was very limited so she had better make sure to call.

the 30th came and went without a call from cuntzilla.

as did december 1st. and 2nd. and 3rd.

i decided she wasn't going to call (surprise surprise) so i dropped the keys in the mail box, called the building management people and asked them to deactivate my card, and then left a voicemail for my douchebag now former landlord to tell her that i don't have time to wait around for her call, i left the keys in the mail box and she can deal with the place as is.

i'm almost going to miss writing posts about my douchebag landlord. it's the end of an era, but an era i can very easily live without.

job number one has been insanely busy lately. heck, so busy that i didn't get my bamboo wednesday post out until it was almost over. we're nearing the end of a product release cycle, so everyone's getting retarded with their requirements and nobody's giving anyone enough time to fix all their bugs, and there's nothing more annoying than stressed out software developers and testers. thank goodness for the ol' iPod.